It was a good day ... !

It's your wairua journeying here to your turangawaewae... your spirit returning to the place you belong. nothing can keep you from being here... not physical time or distance love you.  can't wait to you are here in person though, sitting on my porch with a wine and laughter xxxxx

Pippa.

It was one of those awful days that became magnificent.

The infection on my back has healed but I had to wait until tonight to hear that from the doctor.  The story of why I was there is almost laughable, now that I'm on the other side of it all ... but that's for another day.  Perhaps.

Meanwhile I'm assisting in organising a symposium later this year.  The subject is so very dear to my heart.  We worked hard on it today, more to follow tomorrow.

Then I had a rather exciting project arrive in the mail tonight. 

And the words at the start of this post came from Pippa's Facebook post ... I had written to her back in New Zealand saying, ' It's you, you're working the magic of the land on me. I know the smells and the air and the views somehow.'

She has moved house and is posting photographs of the landscape she sees. 

Pippa replied with the words I posted first.  I think she's right and, one day, I hope to be home again.  Sitting out there on her porch, drinking red wines and telling tall stories ... like we have done through the years.

Madeleine L’Engle, Home

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes…
Madeleine L’Engle, The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth


Home ...

Life is different in Italy.  Different to any place that I know. 

Then again, I could say the same of New Zealand, and of Istanbul. 

I know I find points of intersection in each place I go, as well as individual features that make me love those people, or that view.

There are the things that seem familiar and take me home.  And the views that fill me with longing for places I've known ...

Home is a thing I've been trying to define forever.  Is it inside of me or back in that place where I was born and raised.  'My' country or those places where I've felt most welcome.  Or that place where I felt a deep (and inexplicable) sense of recognition and would have liked to have stayed a while, just to see because I feel like I'm still looking.

Some places engage me, so deeply, that I could spend years just attempting to photograph the feeling of them.  The moods, the light, the people ...

Genova's like that for me.

Anyway ... I'm listening to this particular song by Sting as I work here.  On repeat, as I do sometimes.

 

Out of Time ...

the streets of rome 2.jpg

Wandering in Italy often allows you to see things as they might have been.

The cyclist rode into my shot while I was distracted by my camera settings and trying to capture the soldiers, who had appeared suddenly.

And then seemed to disappear just as suddenly too.

At first I considered the image a reject.  I don't like blurring my foregrounds however I'm keeping this one.  There's something I like about it ...even if it's simply the feeling that I was caught out of time, just for a moment or two.