And again a flooding disaster is unfolding in Genova, Italy.
One dead. Countless numbers of cars thrown about by flood waters. Buildings flooded. Metros under water.
It's incredibly difficult to watch the city suffering.
Foto source: Il Secolo XIX, via Facebook.
The black-and-white photo goes back
to '67. Taken around Christmas. Perhaps a Sunday
drive out from Gore. A bit of a breeze parts Nana's perm,
her own steady caution holding down hands
that shine below the folded-back cuffs
of her bri-nylon cardigan.
Grandad's road-worker's hands lie relaxed
over the roof of the car, taking ownership
of its dim-blue. Both of them
caught by me at fourteen, when I press
the slow shutter of my Brownie box camera
with a pronounced click. Just a moment ago.
Kay McKenzie Cooke, a country girl again.
I love this poem, so much. It captures familiar scenes, people I almost know ... from my childhood. And Kay's descriptions seem better than a photograph because I know the way her Grandfather's road-worker hands would have looked on the roof of his car. I saw my Grandfather make that same gesture, so many times, back when I didn't know I was even looking ... or remembering.
3 sets of Kay McKenzie Cooke's beautiful poetry books have arrived in time for my 'Home & Away' Photography exhibition, soon to be mounted here in the New Zealand Shop, Antwerp.
Kay has signed and written a small message in 6 of her books, the other 10 came straight from the publisher ... hot off the press and her new poems are just delighting this New Zealand girl so far from home.
The new collection is titled, Born to a Red-Headed Woman, and the Otago University Press tells the story of it more fluently than I can: Using the extraordinary capacity of music to revive the places and people from our pasts, this poetic memoir springs from over 50 song titles or song lines and spans more than four decades.
Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke’s new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author. A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity to the natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.
Born to a Red-Headed Woman is documentary, vivid, ever grounded in the workaday detail of farming, the changing decades, family, city life and job. Yet at times the language peels right back to the tender nerve of major, formative losses.
If Cooke’s observations of the daily are the simple melodic lines that seem to coast on the surface, beneath that runs a rich bass line of meditation on time, on meaning, how to live a life true to oneself, and to familial love.
I love Kay's poems. Not the least because they take me home.
One of the most difficult things for me in these days is the absence of beauty.
I've always been a bit of a monster about my need for a particular kind of 'beauty'. It's necessary for me to be happy, somehow. And it's not about skin-tone or weight, it's not about fashion. For me, it's just all about my environment. A favourite beach, an old chair on a wooden verandah, a pier, or a view.
My history is littered with places found and colonised by myself ... and back home, in New Zealand, there were dogs too.
Belgium has challenged me. In NZ I was known for not liking brick houses. Not at all despite them being a sensible option. They felt wrong to me. There's a lot of brick here in Flanders. Our house is brick however the Belgian bloke did paint the walls so that we live in a space filled with various shades of yellow through into terracotta.
And in all of the places I've lived there's been that place I would run away to. The place that somehow restored my soul. I don't know how to describe it. It's a need not dissimilar to my need for music, perhaps. I have a 17 song playlist that creates some kind of 'space' for me when I work.
I like what I like and it's looking more and more like I'm particular.
And so here, in this incredibly industrial city, located on the crossroads of Europe I struggle. But I had found a variation of wandering. I discovered the blog of Mystic Vixen - created by Elizabeth Duvivier, and she took me wandering with her and her dogs, via her words and her images.
But it's been summer, she bought a house too, she organised some massive international gatherings ... I've missed her.
I also wandered with Nina Bagley, over on her blog called Ornamental. But it's been summer and Nina, like Elizabeth, has been busy. And so there's been no virtual dog wandering out there in Nature via my Plan B escape routes.
So I thought, 'Okay Di, if it's that important to you, why not write what you want to read? Go find it here in the city.'
But I can't. And it's so very frustrating. I've been home here in Antwerp for a few months now. Here, where there's no dog and where Nature is somehow smothered so that I struggle to walk in that beautiful park where the 'mist' from the massive international highway next door wraps itself around trees and softens vistas.
And I know this seems so very negative and yet it's my truth and so I think it's okay for me to write of it.
Anyway, I'm sure of my ability to find those places. I've been doing it for years and have become an expert at finding that space my soul needs. I'll keep searching because oh how I miss it.
Don't be surprised if you read it here one day, Di got a dog and life is good.
The photograph was taken at Hunter and Claire's place ... down in Manapouri. In Fiordland, New Zealand. I went out walking one morning, amongst the trees Hunter has planted over years. The light, the air, the birdsong. It was quietly spectacular.
Crossing the pontoon bridge in Antwerp was so much more fun than I had imagined. I met a remarkable older gentleman and his wife as we queued. Together we laughed and chatted our way across that pontoon bridge.
On the other side we hunted down Choice New Zealand pies, discovered the Cava stand, and spent a good hour speaking to strangers at Hilde's pie stand, about New Zealand and pies of course. One man, who so very much wanted to live in NZ, proposed marriage to me. He offered my Belgian bloke his wife in exchange. There was much laughter. Benny was there with his fries in the Retro - Food bus too.
It was a truly delightful way to spend an afternoon.
Below is a view from the Left Bank back to Antwerp city ... with the story too.
A highlight of this commemorative programme is the contemporary reconstruction of the 1914 pontoon bridge, symbolising the connection between the past, present and future. The temporary pontoon bridge across the River Scheldt near Steen Fortress will be built by Belgian and Dutch engineer battalions on October 3rd, 2014.
The construction of a contemporary “Peace Bridge” is a technical feat. Above all the bridge will be a unique experience for the many tens of thousands of visitors who will be able to cross the River Scheldt on foot, following in the footsteps of the Belgian army as well as of the more than 10,000 refugees who fled a burning city in search of a safe haven. The reconstruction is a reminder of a significant historical moment in the city’s history as well as an invitation to build bridges in the present and work together to create a connected, inclusive city.
She dances ... acting exquisitely, making me laugh.
Miss 10 and I have been studying French, via recordings, her books and my intention ... I never studied languages in New Zealand and so 'intention' is all I have to offer.
First up, there was much laughter as she tried to add Italian endings to words like 'ecole'. Unashamed she told me, 'but i'd rather go to Italy. France, not so much.'
My girl I think.
And so we laboured over the half hour of French study, and I may learn French as a result, before we broke open Sandi Thom and I Wish I Was A Punkrocker. Then we moved on to the song that her mum and I used to sing along to, as we drove along the crazy winding road that was the peninsula road home, back in Dunedin.
Blue by Eiffel 65. It made those wicked tight corners, between hillside and harbour, 'interesting'.
So yes, it's like that over here at the end of a long day here in Belgium.
Now this ... it had Jess and I in hysterics, one day back when we lived in Te Anau and waiting in the car for her Dad, this came on. We almost died as the story unfolded ...