Slowly, slowly, I’ve been winning this timid boy cat over …
Tonight, he was sitting there in the sun, on the couch. I saw the photograph of him, about the same time he saw me quietly lift the camera.
I had a split second, maybe 2, then he was gone.
I have since had to apologise to Mark, profusely …
My days here, are so different from those beautiful days back in Genova.
I miss the bars, and the lovely people who worked there, making the best coffe in the world.
I miss the noise of the city, and the quiet of the medieval centre.
I miss the musicians, and the everyday presence of ancient places. I miss passing by people whose faces look like faces painted in 400 year old paintings. I miss good pasta and sauce, pizza and walking.
I miss the Genovese.
BUT, I am learning to love hanging my laundry out on Dad's old clothes line, in the garden that smells of roses and all the other flowers he has there. And it makes me so happy to climb into my bed when thesheets smell of fresh air & sunshine.
I love the sound of the birds ... one of the only sounds as I hung out my laundry at 7am this morning.
I was always passionate about driving ... about wandering, and so I am happy to be driving again. Even if I enjoyed the kilometres I walked on Genovese footpaths, and the buses and trains. And I'm not sure how to avoid weight gain, other than via that boring path called self-discipline.
Reading. I have just finished 3 books, one after another. Reading late into the night, just as I did as a child.
My espresso machine is making me happy, I just need to go find 'the' coffee.
I love 32 celsius days (yesterday) and sitting here in the kitchen, back door open to the garden, and working.
Mmmhmmm, I called the plumber today. The bathroom tap is broken and it has leaked for days now.
Another thing to love, after a life lived in Europe, I phoned the plumber at 8.50am and he said, 'Okay, I'm doing a job just round the road, I'll come to you after it'. It was the same with the washing machine repair guy. That's quite marvelous really :-)
Here I am, just trying to find my balance again, in this smaller, quieter life that I'm living.
Buona giornata ...
Foto: these chairs, were just there, in this ancient ruin in Genova. I had my photograph taken in one, and couldn't resist the beauty of this still-life moment, Genovese-style.
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
Sometimes I feel like I've lived so many lives.
And occasionally, they collide, in the most unexpected ways.
On Sunday morning, I was wandering in from the car ... back from the babysitting gig in the city, when I bumped into an old friend from my days spent as an Airforce officer's wife.
There was Bridget, walking out from bringing Communion to my Dad, who can no longer attend church.
It was so good to see her. She had been an officer's wife too. We had long conversations, back then, about our real lives ... before those years we spent living on Base Woodbourne.
These days, she lives just along the road, with her family (she kept the same husband :-) ) and so, we have plans. One day soon, after Christmas and New Year, we shall have some of our long conversations again.
Meanwhile, I went back out into the garden with my camera tonight ... and remembered that my camera is the other place where Joy hangs out. I felt like I was losing Joy, and I had no idea what to do, since Genova is about 20,000kms from here. I discovered so many photographs, unprocessed, there on the camera card. That last storm in Genova, Ben Ohau with Dave and Jude, and Dad's Garden.
Perhaps I have finally arrived, here in this life ... I'm taking photographs again, with my camera.
Let's see it.
These two didn't know each other before this meeting but still, they became such beautiful friends.
Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.. Robert Frank.
I love when I get to work as a photographer. There is so much joy to be found in the place where photographs happen.
And these guys, they were so kind, in allowing me to quietly follow them around, trying to capture something of their souls via my camera.
