Quotes Loved Lately ... and an early run at a birthday

Homelands don't exist.  It's an invention. 
What does exist is that place where you were happy.
Susana Fortes, from Waiting For Robert Capa.

A sign you are getting better is when you care less what others think of you.
Robert Moore.

Great artists don't have careers, they have lives.
Gregory O'Brien.

It showed her she had to live 'in the gap between what could be said and what really happened'.
Nelly, in The Invisible Woman. 

The writers I know, or whose lives I have read about, have one thing in common:  a stressed childhood.  I don't mean, necessarily, an unhappy one, but children who have been forced into self-awareness early, have had to learn how to watch the grown-ups, assess them, know what they really mean, as distinct from what they say, children who are continually observing everyone - they have the best apprenticeships.

Doris Lessing.

Today was mostly about a birthday, not mine but an early Miss-9-celebrating-10.  Her birthday falls in the school holidays and she has made some precious school friends here in the city.

It was all about water fights and laughter, a toast made with plastic goblets, and gifts that made her swoon.

It was a good day here in the flatlands of Belgium.

Oh, and about this Flemish side of Belgium, the place where I live ... VRT News channels made this.  It so captures the Flemish I know.  They have their serious face ... and then there is this crazy-beautiful side that I sometimes forget about.

On my facebook page I wrote, 'One of the biggest secrets about Belgium is how amusing and wicked the Flemish folk are. VRT-Nieuws is our news channel of choice and it was hilarious (and yet unsurprising) to see them ALL dancing to Happy here. They wear a serious face oftentimes but scratch the surface and ... well, you get a sense of them here. Loved this.'

 

Château de Fontainebleau, France

Imagination rules the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was a huge day in France today ... and while in the area, of course, we wandered off to explore Napolean's place in Fontainebleau.

Favourite moment was escaping the 3 tour groups (with guides) who dogged our footsteps and finding ourselves alone when we reached this magical corridor.

I am quite the brat when it comes to preferring to visit popular places alone.  We achieved that illusion today. 

See.

Barbizon, France

We have returned to the hotel so the Belgian bloke can watch Belgium play Algeria in the World Cup. 

Currently this is not going well, at 67 minutes we have 1-0 to Algier however it has been lovely for me to sit down and go through my photographs ...

We wandered all over the area today, visiting Barbizon too.  As in, The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name from the village of Barbizon, France, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, where many of the artists gathered.

Source: wikipedia.

It is incredibly, stunningly beautiful there but very expensive.  It wasn't a love at first sight kind of response but it was a beautiful village to stop a while in.

Update: at 70 minutes, Belgium scored.