'The more personal you are willing to be' ...

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The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are… And when I say universal, I don’t mean universal only within our culture… There’s a lot of balderdash thrown around — “You don’t understand people who live in Sri Lanka and their response to the tsunami because you just don’t know that culture.”

Well, there’s an element of that — but, to me, cultural differences are a kind of patina over the deepest psychosexual feelings that we have, that all human beings share.

Sherwin Nuland, extract from yet another brilliant Brain Pickings post.

One of the constant battles I have with this blog of mine is just how much raw and gritty truth I write here.  And in struggling with 'how much', I suspect I lose quite a lot. 

I do know that friends in real life enjoy catching up on the details I usually leave off my blog.  I have a complicated family life ... like so many these days.  I have much to write about on the subject of being a step-mother, perhaps.  And even more about being a foreigner in this day and age.  Or on traveling without languages (usually).  And on just making it home ...   And even more on why I haven't dedicated my days to learning the language in this country I'm currently a citizen of.

I have this theory ... but that's for another day.

I love red wine.   I mostly drink sparkling water though, with 2 espressos per day, and lately, a hot chocolate sometimes.  Most other drinks don't agree with me because they're full of sugar, or sugar substitutes, or have too much caffeine or tanin or goodness knows what.  I used to be able to drink and eat ANYTHING!  Now I have food allergies and grass allergies, and they just added dust mites to that list but I've only just begun to check the facts of it all. 

I prefer not to take anti-histamines.  

I'm not good at learning languages but I love people and traveling.  It seems to work out.  We 'talk' anyway.

'I'm from New Zealand ... ' gets me further than I could have imagined, in terms of excuses for everything.  We Kiwis are a delightful people from an exquisitely beautiful country.  So yes, what am I doing out here in the northern hemisphere?!  That's something else I could also write much and often about.

I love photography and books, and writing and people and other cultures, and conversations that go on into the night.  I love sitting down on that airport bus, leaving to fly someplace, and I love coming home to people and places I know.  I love music. All kinds.  I love people who are passionate about what they do, and I adore people who are kind.

I'm a grouch.  I should write on my blog on my grouchy days.  I'm quiet and need space, and if you hurt me I'll disappear into a silence.  I'll try not to argue ... so don't make me.  Just believe me, it's better you don't.  I also love talking.  And meeting new people.

So you see, I leave a lot of this off the blog but I'm thinking, in 2015, I might experiment with just being me on the blog. Let's see how that goes ... I'd like to be more universal.

A Little About My Beautiful Red Bookshelves ...

I have 3 red bookshelves next to me here at my desk.  On those beautiful shelves you will find my favourite books, except for those that are missing in action ... loaned out to friends that I really trust and admire. 

I hope to see those loaned books again one day but if not, okay.  They were good books, they will only enrich the lives of those who hold on to them.  Accidentally.  Inadvertently.  Although if the friend who has my Maurice Shadbolt book, A Touch of Clay, could return it I would be so grateful.

So I reorganised my books over two days.  It's important.  I don't have much but what I have, I like to have right.

The top shelf now contains some favourite novels (like Night Train to Lisbon and When Nietzsche Wept), some very small collections (like anything I can find by or about Katherine Mansfield), and biographies ... although biographies spreads over shelves because there are some in the travelers section ... the mountaineers, the war photographers and journalists ...

On the end of that top shelf there are a stack of travel books ... rarely used while traveling but referred to often when home.

The second shelf contains books written by wanderers and wise people (like Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me and Honey and Dust by Piers Moore Ede).  Then we move into a small collection about writing and creativity (like The Three Marriages by David Whyte).  And they stand next to my collection of books from the Middle East, (with favourites like Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and To The End of The Land by David Grossman.  And one of my most favourite books in the world, I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti, a poet who writes the most exquisite prose too).

The bottom shelf is closest to me.  It begins with my Italian language books, dictionaries, and the books I have on Genova.  Mountaineers appear next.  Andrew Grieg's Summit Fever is a favourite but I've slipped Simon Jakeman's Groundrush in there too (about Basejumping, an exploration written back at the start of that interesting sport.)

The bottom shelf also holds the stories of war photographers and journalists - factual and fiction.  Favourites ... Small Wars Permitting by Christina Lamb and Denise Leith's What Remains.  I have John Simpson's series of books, and both of Frank Gardener's.  I just purchased A Thousand Times Goodnight on DVD, that's there next to the dvd Which Way is The Front Line from Here.

That shelf, the one that sits closest to me, ends with a collection of poetry books.  I have Pablo Neruda by Adam Feinstein and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness ... the biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, by Adina Hoffman.  I have a collection of poetry by Eugenio Montale, sitting next to books full of poetry by Kay McKenzie Cooke and Ren Powell too.

And so you have it, unasked for ... a glimpse of those books best-loved by me.

Music I've been enjoying lately? 

Well, whenever I wander over this website, I can't resist staying a while, as their auto-play kicks in ...

A Thousand Times Goodnight, & Ane Brun's Music

A Norwegian-made, English-language film set in Ireland, Kenya and Afghanistan, and starring French luminary Juliette Binoche, would seem to wear its internationalism on its sleeve. Yet globe-trotting, at least to war zones, forms the central conflict in “A Thousand Times Goodnight,” Erik Poppe’s gripping tale of a dedicated photojournalist torn between passionate involvement with her work and commitment to her worried family. Deftly sidestepping both melodrama and family-values messaging, Poppe imbues the film with enormous emotional resonance, brilliantly grounded by his leading lady. The absence of subtitles and the presence of Binoche should open global arthouse doors for this Montreal fest grand prizewinner.

Variety.com, a review extract

I have a collection of books and dvds by war photographers and journalists.  I began reading their stories, perhaps, because if I had known of this work I think I would have been drawn to it. 

Possibly motivated by the same things that appear to motivate those who actually go out there ... the idea that if the truth were known, some things might change, other things couldn't happen. 

But I didn't find out in time and so I read and watch their stories unfold when I can.

I enjoyed the movie, 'A Thousand Times Goodnight, intensely.

You get a small glimpse of the film in the music video below.  There's not too many spoilers, as the movie is used out of sequence but Ane Brun wrote the song for the movie ...  I find it exquisite.

And there's an interview over here, with Juliette Binoche.

December Snow, Antwerp

We were enjoying a mild winter we thought.  Frosts hadn't really arrived ... until suddenly.  Then we had snow.

It awakened the Grinch in me and yes, I complained, mightily.  I'm just not good at northern hemisphere Christmases.  And so I've remained quiet here while working my way through it all.

A photograph taken from the window behind me when I'm at my desk.