But do you know this idea of the imaginary homeland? One you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you'll never truly be at home again. What you've left behind exists only in your memory, and your ideal place becomes strange imaginary concoction of all you've left behind at every stop.
Claire Messud, from The Woman Upstairs.
Today's image is of one of those lions that guard Genova's Cattedrale di San Lorenzo. I love those lions. Whoever created them did a beautiful job.
... But when we give ourselves permission, we move past this. The world once again reveals itself to us. We become open and aware, patient and ready to receive it....We give ourselves permission because we are the only ones who can do so.
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro.
I love catching up with the wise words of Terri Windling via her blog, Myth & Moor. She's a soul-soother somehow.
Meanwhile, I completely agree with the concept of time. Something beautiful always emerges out of taking the time to play ... some of the best art, or the beginning of a series idea.
Needless to say, I'm missing Genova. Here's an imperfect glimpse, taken between the portrait shoots I was doing for my book.
A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape.
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human; the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown …
Theroux
Sourced from Steve McCurry’s photography blog.
Sometimes the photographs, I take here in Genova, are a simple celebration of being back in this place that I love. It’s not always easy living here, without language, without anything resembling huge amounts of money, without family ... but I keep coming back. My camera loves me for it. My photographer’s eyes appreciate it too.
I find something of New Zealand in the sea and the hills. I enjoy the quiet kindness of the Genovese met along the way. These days, I am reading my way into their history. Steven Epstein’s book covers the period between 958-1528. Titled ... Genoa and the Genoese, it captures something of the complicated and rich history of this Italian city that so few people I know seem to know.
Hanna came with me this time and she surely fell for the city, hoping her plane might be cancelled ... just for a few days. There was so much more she wanted to see, and do, and photograph. I watch it happen… everyone who comes here with me has fallen under the spell of this city so far.
It’s good to be back.
Photography is a more intense way of “looking”. No photographer simply travels. He cannot allow himself the luxury of just looking around. He does not see landscapes; he sees photographs, images of reality as it might appear in a photograph.
Cees Nooteboom in 1982 in the Holland Herald, KLM’s in-flight magazine.
Being solitary is being alone well; being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.
In good times arts are magical, and in tough times they are essential. That’s when you need them the most.
Art makes you human.
Bruce Dethlefsen, Wisconsin Poet Laureate
I love the beauty of this ancient gate, especially that painting catching the sun on the day I took this particular photograph. The lovely thing is that this particular gate takes me back to Paola’s place and so I passed through it daily.
Porta Soprana is one of Genova’s five medieval gates and it was constructed back in the 12th century to deter Emperor Barbarossa.
How hard it is to escape from place. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences ... little rags and shreds of your very life ...
Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand writer, in a letter to Ida Baker, 1922.
I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.
- Nietzsche
Another quote that gives me hope regarding my way of being ...
