One Of Those Days ...

On how one orients himself to the moment, depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.

Henry Miller, reflecting on the art of living, extract from a superb article at Dangerous Minds.

Today is the day where I step back into the 'fray'.  While I get to travel and have some truly marvelous adventures, there's a price to it all.  I live in a house full of people and I'm what might be called the chief cook and bottlewasher.  Mediator, babysitter, housewife, wife, mother, cleaner ... all those roles that so many women fulfil on top of everything else that they do.  So it's nothing extraordinary and yet it is challenging sometimes.

And it's not so much that our partners force us into that space... For me it's simply the fact that I was shaped by those expectations of womanhood from the time I was small and so yes, I clean the house as thoroughly as I can before I go traveling.  I clean it up when I return.  I speak for those who don't speak here and generally organise life when I'm in town.

I was the eldest child and somehow I carry that with me too, that feeling of being responsible.

And so I have returned to process a portrait shoot I did for friends before leaving, an interior shoot too, and I'll be photographing another family during the week.  There is ongoing work with A New Way of Seeing, the advertising and still the web content needs enlarged.  My book-writing course (which has fallen down into a hole that looks more like a crevasse than a crack but I have until December to finish up on that), my book about Genova, and so much more.

I dream about being one of those people who simply lines up one thing at a time, or of being at ease with the beautiful chaos of my life.  I dream of having a personal assistant, someone who does all the work I can hand over, that doesn't need me, leaving me free for the intense stuff only.  I dream of having a cleaner ... oh how I dream of that in this quirky old Belgian house.

So I write, with so much joy, of my adventures woven into a work day but there's the other stuff too.  It's life.  It's normal but I decided to write of the other side of my life ... the things I don't write on because they're less about joy and more about that grittiness that is everyday and real too.

Now ... to make a list and get things lined up and in some kind of order.  That list will be long.

Denise Leith, 'What Remains' ...

I flew today, waking at 4am for a 6am flight from Stavanger to Copenhagen, Denmark.  And I have to confess, I love this feeling of the world making itself real as I travel.  Norway and Denmark were places that confused me back in New Zealand during those long-ago geography classes but today I learned where they were, having bravely taken a window seat, no longer fearing there may be dragons at the edge of my known world.

Copenhagen ... on an island so flat, or so it seemed from the air, that it looked like one big wave might roll over the city and cover it. 

But as I flew, I was reading.  Devouring one of the best fictions I've read.  'Best' because it was well-written ... best because it was written by a war journalist too, and their stories are the non-fiction genre I read most.

Denise Leith has a Ph.D. in International Relations, which she teaches part time at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her special interests are the politics of war, human rights and humanitarian action, peace keeping and peace enforcing, Middle East Politics, the Rwandan genocide, the United Nations and US foreign policy.

Denise has two published non fiction books, The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia (University of Hawaii Press 2002) and Bearing Witness: The Lives of War Correspondents and Photojournalists (Random House 2004) and the novel What Remains (Allen & Unwin 2012). She is also a contributor to the anthology Fear Factor: Terror Incognito (Pan Macmillan and Picador 2010) and 'A Country Too Far (Penguin 2013).

I was reading her book, What Remains, and I read as the plane climbed up out of Stavanger.  I read, glancing just briefly out as we passed over fiords in Norway.  I read as the pilot flew low over the North Sea, landing at the airport in Copenhagen.  And I read as I snacked there, breakfast, and continued to read after boarding that second plane returning me home.

And while I was curious about the view from those plane windows the book held me fast.  I dove into the story of Kate Price and war zones, of Pete McDermott, and a big love. 

I read the closing chapters on the 45-minute bus ride from Brussels Airport to Antwerp, wiping away the threat of tears while reading it right through to the end.  Then, still not quite home, I spun back to the start, just to be sure of what I had read there ...

I fell into bed here in Belgium, slept for 2 hours and was woken so that I would sleep tonight, only to realise I was missing the story that had carried me across a small part of Europe.

Denise Leith also knew the journalist, Marie Colvin, who was killed while reporting in Syria.  She has included an interview she made with Marie.  It appears in her book Bearing Witness but that particular interview is there on her website.

If things are never spoken of, if people accept all without informing themselves, then incredibly horrific things can happen.  I so very much admire those who go out and bear witness for as long as they can.  The price is huge.  I'm recommending Denise's book ... so very highly.

Meanwhile, I'm still playing with my new photo-editing tool.  I was out on the Stavanger fiord yesterday and took the shot below.  It was stunning out there.  Just stunning.

Norway ... Just So Much.

I'm not even sure how to tell my stories from these days spent in Norway.

The days have been intense, the company superb, the food a delight, the weather ... all that I needed it to be.  I've met lovely people and smiled often. 

Today, after a session with some exquisite horses, Ren took me on a boatride out into the fiords here.   No words but here I am, doing the 'selfie' thing while out there on the boat.

In Norway Today ...

I love the amusing things I'm finding here in Stavanger, Norway.  The big red supply ship, with the huge mouth and sharp teeth painted on the bow, parked in the harbour below.  The hairdresser's sign in the photograph at the end of this post.  And the graffiti ...the graffiti here needs a whole  its own post.  It's divine.

And Norwegians speak the most beautiful English.  Ylvis prepared me for the English but oh... it is everywhere in this country I've not known until now.  The interview I'm linking to, switches to English at about 1 minute but these guys were my very first introduction to Norway.

Today though, we were in the most exqusite teahouse I've ever had the privilege of visiting.  Thank you to Selman, for his hospitality and kindess, and his truly good tea.

Rebecca and Karoline were such a pleasure to spend time wandering with, and I'm loving the light and the photography too.

It's like that.