3 beautiful things found ...

Today I wandered into my Rome archives and rediscovered this shot where I had ended up using a bridge as my 'tripod' one evening while lost in that city I always get so happily lost in.

The second beautiful thing today was a chat with Lisa Chiodo.  She is one of those magnificent women I get to call a friend.  You can read about her and Sam and their big beautiful dreams over here here on their website. 

Think about booking a holiday with them too ... you won't regret it  :-)

The third thing ... after dropping Miss 10 off at school this morning, I discovered that the new bakery nearby sells the most divine custard-filled eclairs.  I carried one all the way home, reading Cees Nooteboom's divine book, Roads to Santiago.

A sample of his writing: I wander around.  The coolness of the garden contrasts with the heat of the landscape, the coolness of the church contrasts with that of the garden, it is almost chilly where I am now.  The thick walls of a church prevent the outside air, the ordinary air, from having its way.  Suddenly I am standing before an arbitrary structure made of stone: its mere presence alters the quality of what little air has managed to come in.  This is no longer the air wafting in poplars and clover, the air that is moved this way and that in the breeze.  This air is church air, as invisible as the air outside, but different.  Church-shaped air, permeating the space between the columns and, deathly still, like an absent element, rising up to fill the pointed vaulting constructed of rough-hewn blocks of stone.   There is no one in the church.  Enormous columns rise directly from the paved floor, the position of the sun casts a strange, static pool of light through the oculus somewhere on the right of the church.  It's a little ghostly.  I hear my own footsteps.  This space distorts not only the air, but also the sound of each step I take - they become the steps of someone walking in a church.  Even if one subtracts from these sensations all that one does not in fact believe in oneself, then there's still the imponderable factor that other people do believe, and especially have believed, in this space.

Cees Nooteboom.

3 beautiful things found + the doctor told me ...

I had a doctor appointment this morning, at 8.48am.  I wondered, later, what drove me to write down such a freakishly incorrect time but on checking the email I realised it was correct.  I think it's all about him having a new appointment every 12 minutes.

I was back for a repeat prescription as well as a blood test.  I can feel my anemia is all but gone however the blood will tell.  I hope it shuts up about me not taking my vitamin D.  I was prescribed 4 different pills and potions, I chose to take 2 initially.  Maybe I regret this ... maybe I don't.

I do understand any consequences are my fault.  Most especially the sadness that comes from being low in vitamin D but I need a change in direction.  Sadness helps focus one on the demands that emerge out of 'changing a life'.  I'll start with it this week, now that the other 2 appear to have worked.  And ummm, it may be that being low vitamin D doesn't really help a soul to make changes... 

I did decide I might adore my doctor.  It became clear when I explained how one of my health challenges had disappeared during my first 3 days in Italy.  He looked up and said, very seriously, 'then you must go to Italy more often'.

'Seriously' but with quite the twinkle in his eye.   Probably knowing there's nothing that sounds so good as being able to say, 'Well ... the doctor told me.  So I must, mustn't I.'

Today, still searching for a particular Istanbul photograph I'd quite like to post, I found another that I remembered loving.  This one was taken inside Dolmabahçe Palace, that fabulous Istanbul palace where Ataturk lived.  The place where I learned that I love a particular shade of red ... the one that's like slightly faded raspberries.

The quote below, from Goethe, seemed like more good advice.

And the song ... Beyond the Blue by Josh Garrels, just really worked for me on this cold grey rainy Belgian day.

3 beautiful things i found today ... day 2

There was much that I loved about living in Istanbul but I had to smile when I discovered that I had gone as far as photographing my favourite cheese there.  It's divine.

And I loved this small text titled For My Mother When She Doesn't Feel Beautiful.

Did I mention I've been listening to this song a lot lately?  Sting, They Dance Alone.

3 beautiful things i found today ... day 1

There was this image ... captured while wandering Istanbul streets.  I need to go through the 8,000 photographs I took there on that visit with my beloved Canon 5D MkII. 

The quote from Lisa St Aubin ... I'm still considering whether I agree with these words or not.  I think I'm an odd traveler sometimes.  I love to return to those few places I love and I dream of being there when I'm away from them.  New Zealand, Genova ... wondering where I would most like to live.

And this song, from the band Sleeping at Last.  I love their name, as I've been an insomniac for days now The song ... I'll Keep You Safe, or perhaps All Through the Night.

Climbing out of sad ...

Today was one of those really shitty days ...

I never used to write out of them but I will today ... write as I climb out the other side of some serious sad.

I usually go on a reading-jag, or a find a beautiful movie, or listenhard to music.

Tonight I found all this new music to consider.  I'll see if it's some to love.

There was Andrew Belle and In My Veins.  Laura Marling.  Lissie.  Olaf Arnalds, Old Skin.

Sometimes I just need to find someplacebeautifulenough and tonight I found hernameismoon.

I found her site perfectlywonderfullybeautiful.  And stayed there until I started to feel okay again.

And I had an idea that everyday over the next month I'll post 3 beautiful things found during my day.  Perhaps being proactive about beauty is how it should be. 

I noted quotes in my journal as I devoured the new website.  I loved ... 10 years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn't settle for it.

Mandy Hale.

hernameismoon introduced me to awelltraveledwoman who wrote ... you should not have to rip yourself into pieces to keep others whole.

Wise advice I thought, wishing they sometimes taught useful things in school ... rather than all that other stuff that still involves me finding algebra, and other silly things, terrifying.

Georgia O'Keeffe photographs appear, randomly, throughout awelltraveledwoman's website.  It seemed like a place I was meant to find too.

Which reminds me ... Annie Lennox was there as I started to climb out of sad.  I was searching for an album she put out just before I flew from New Zealand.  The sculptor who moved into my cottage on the edge of the harbour told me of it.  She did a good thing, introducing me to Annie ...

Did I ever write of this song?  I love it so much at the moment ... Ghosts in the Orange Blossom Air!!

Perfect. It is.

Now, to for the roadtrip so I can play it all.

A Grey Day in Antwerp.

Some of my worst days in Belgium are surely the grey days.  Belgium does 'grey' like no other country I have known ... which is saying something when you come from Dunedin, New Zealand.

The complication is that the greyness can't be relieved by a mountain or hills draped in mist.  There are none.  Nor are there any massive lakes or fast-flowing rivers.  Nature always feels constrained here.  So many people, such a long history.  Then again, the history and culture is surely the bonus.

And so here I am, on a grey Saturday in winter, at my desk ... knowing I don't have the strength to go out.  I've been reading Georgia O'Keeffe today ... almost finished now. 

But I was distracted from Ms O'Keeffe by Here I am - the story of Tim Heatherington, War Photographer.  It slipped in-between O'Keeffe and I.  In fact, it turned out that I finished the book about Tim first.  I couldn't put Alan Huffman's book down.   And then, I couldn't resist returning to the dvd, Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?, by Tim's sometimes-colleague, the truly interesting Sebastian Junger (there's an interview with Sebastian attached to Sebastian's name).

So this is what I am doing with my winter ... although yes, I am preparing for Italy and fly later this week and this time it's something completely different. 

I'm heading off to a small village on the side of a hill ... I think.  My espresso is an 18 minute walk away and there are two dogs involved.  I'm house-sitting for a New Zealand artist who lives there, somewhere between Rome and Naples  :-)  I love the idea of this.  And I am looking forward to meeting her friend and neighbour Jack, and Cees too. 

Once there, I have two tasks and I am trying to convince myself that 2 is hardly anything at all but okay, perhaps they are complicated.  I want to finish my book about/on Genova.  I have the photographs, I have interviews, I simply need to collate everything and create something exquistely beautiful.

Yes, I am a perfectionist who frequently terrifies herself into inaction because NOTHING is good enough.

The other project is all about the photography workshops.  I know the workshop experience I offer is superb.  I know that women have a most excellent time.  I know that there's lots of laughter and really good conversations.  But packaging it ... did I ever write that I struggle with marketing.

Mmmmhmmm.

And then there's tonight ...dinner with people we haven't yet met.  The parents of my daughter's good friend.  There is a pavlova involved and Jess is going to whip up a chicken pie.  I have some Spanish Cava (champagne) in the fridge.  I think it'll be okay. 

Ohbutthismorning ... I woke from the depths of an intense dream to the sound of our doorbell.  I'm the Antwerp Pavlova-Baker and it makes me laugh because I'm not a grand cook however I do have some set pieces that maybe create the illusion that I can cook.  So most Saturday mornings, 8.30am, I'm usually awake for the pick-up of 1 or 2 New Zealand pavlovas.  This morning ... not so awake. 

In fact, so very asleep.

The good news is I didn't fall down the stairs as i dressed stumbling down them.  And I didn't break the pavlova while moving it from the baking tray to the plate and wrapping it ... while barely awake.  And ... I think ... I was lucid in the conversation I had as I worked.

Tomorrow ... no plans.

And in Best News ... Miss 10 has moved schools and is so happy that we are left wondering how come we didn't do this  sooner.  I guess you get used to things ... they seem normal and you know you're the problem.  This new school oozes kindness and safety in ways that made us realise we had forgotten how a really good school can seem.  Fingers crossed.  It's only been 2 days but we are hellishly impressed.  And it's good to see her so happy after so many months of something like misery. 

They welcomed her with a card the kids had all signed.  Another child made her a cookie, and yet another wrote up a timetable for her.  The kindness of it all simply melted our hearts.