Hero, Family Of The Year

Miss 10 slipped a note into my pocket last night.  I'm famous for losing notes slipped into my pockets ...

This morning she appeared here, so excited, did I still have that piece of paper?  I wasn't sure.  She looked sad.  I wandered over and looked.  It was okay, I hadn't 'cleaned' my pockets, without thinking.

She had written 'Family of the Year', Hero.  I had to hand over my keyboard.  She's in love, with this song, and like me she plays favourites on repeat. 

She's delicious ... and needless to say, I have it here, playing, on repeat.

This and That & Everything!

If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday ...'

Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The extract was longer but perhaps this is enough to remind us to leave some time for our senses to do their work ... to smell the flowers perhaps.   There are more quotes from his book here.

These days find me rushing, like a mad woman, through life.  Cleaning, organising, packing, remembering, searching, sometimes finding. 

I am so tired I will probably sleep all the way to Italy on Wednesday.  Meanwhile the Belgian bloke is having a shoulder scan, this week I hope.  He's been in pain for far too long now and physio isn't helping at all.  It seems he has either torn a muscle or ... he needs something for inflammation of a joint somewhere in there.  We'll be so glad when he can use his arm again, and sleep without waking when he turns.

Jess has broken her finger.  Ignoring it didn't speed healing and so she's 'limping around' in terms of what she can do with that ridiculously painful middle finger.

Miss 10 has taken to lolling about and generally enjoying her summer holidays. And Sander is crossing Belgium 5 days per week for work, as usual.

I suspect, if we sat down together and talked of what we noticed yesterday, we might just be a small group of grouchy stressed people who noticed not much at all ... except Miss 10 who may have noticed things. 

I talked to my Dad this morning.  I wanted to wish him well for his hospital tests on Tuesday but, in good news really, his tests were on Monday and he had come through the actuality of them really well.  It was lovely to be talking to him as he had worried me with talk of having to go off his heart medication for the test.  He's staying at my sister's tonight.  They didn't want him to go home alone.

And so the new website needs fine-tuning.  There are emails to write and to reply to.  I'm behind on my writing course, yet again ...   I'm in and out with the laundry, packing ,and ironing while searching for some really important notes I had made.

But I did finish the family portrait series of shots I took last Sunday.  I'm so pleased with the results.  They were another really special family full of adorable little folk, as seen below.

Reading & Writing My Way Back ...

Sometimes I get so caught up in issues close to my heart that I lose my own way.

And really, I know that at any given time, in any given century, there are 'bad things going on'.  I would be naive to imagine otherwise.  And I do understand that I know very little of the facts of those 'things'.  I know I need to understand that an absolute 'truth' doesn't really exist.  No situation is black & white.

Perhaps the best is to seek a series of narratives from different sources, accepting that truth is in there somewhere ... in different ways for every soul involved.

I had to find a way back from the sadness that set in after spending days reading of things so bad and so sad that they slipped in under my skin ... like tics perhaps, quietly poisoning my peace of mind and stealing my sense of beauty.

I found my way back tonight.  I've been lost in other, rather beautiful, worlds for an hour or more, since discovering Jodi's blog - Practising Simplicity.

She 'introduced' me to Katie and Reuben's - House of Humble.  And they led me over to Inked in Colour by Sash.

And finally, I felt like wandering across this after-midnight-silent room, to pick up my beautiful shawl, having this sense of finding my way back to myself some.  The Russian tailor made the changes I asked him to make to the shawl and it's quickly becoming this beautiful thing that makes me smile whenever I wear it.

Martin Luther King said that, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'

I believe this, so strongly, but I also see that I need balance.  When I speak out there's a sense of standing some place alone.  I want the world's eyes to turn to this topic that seems so important to me but in pursuing that desire to share, to speak out, hurts me. 

I grew up watching The Diary of Anne Frank on television.  It was screened, at very least, annually.  And we studied her story ... more than once, in school.

For a long time, years really, watching that movie I would to hope that someone would speak up for those people trapped in that holocaust.  But no one seemed able to so effectively.  The excuse used later was, we didn't know.  And so it is that periodically I am compelled to share information that asks people to 'see' and to 'know'.  To help bring about change. To stop really bad stuff happening.

But the slope is slippery and the deeper I go the further I am from that place, that creative space, where I prefer to be.  I love being a photographer, observing and capturing without interfering too much.  I love writing ... telling stories the way I imagine them.  And I believe, so strongly, in justice for all even as I understand it's impossible.

Periodically I step into the ring and challenge peoples desire to turn away, not to see, not to know. 

And afterwards, after the sharing, I have to find a way back to way I prefer life to be.  The women I discovered tonight pulled me back onto those paths that involve flowers and fruit trees, beautifully captured, along with so many stories. 

It's good to be back from that other, much sadder, much harder place for a while.

July 4, 2006

Today was Antwerpen, tomorrow the road ... that was the title I chose, 8 years ago today.  And I wrote:

Antwerpen was stunning today ... 30 degrees celsius and we were out in the city with our American friends.  (Old friend and a favourite traveling companion, Mary Lou, and her, then, new husband.  Oh the adventures we've had ... in New Zealand, Turkey and Europe.) 

We ate lunch at het Elfde Gebold and it was lovely, as usual. And later we sat a while in the Shoemakers Alley a while, a secret space here in the city.

We ended the day in Rivierenhof, a huge park here in the city, wandering home, at 10.30pm ... still 21 degrees celsius.  (not unlike tonight, here in 2014).

But no ... I almost forgot, we got stuck in the elevator I've so often teased friends about.   (Our first place was top floor, tiny elevator the shook and wobbled a lot.)

FOUR OF US, in this tiny airless nasty elevator.  It was 11pm by then and none of us were carrying a cellphone!!

We were lucky, Gert pushed various buttons and managed to get us level with a floor eventually ... we spilled out and nothing but nothing would convince me to get back in. He rode to the top alone while we 3 took the stairs.

The elevator is officially no longer amusing. 

I found this blog post while searching for poems by Kapka Kassabova.  Google-searching, and I was beamed back to an old blog, the one I began way back in 2005.  I thought it might be fun to post something here from that  day back in 2006

Back when Mary Lou was still criss-crossing the world to travel with me.  She had not long arrived  ...

Perhaps I should have titled tonight's post ... Missing you, Mary Lou. 

I'm Back ...

There's no headache this morning!  It feels so unbelievably good.  I found this area in my neck at 5am ... because it was stiff and sore, so I rubbed and stretched it for a while and voila ... I woke with no pain.

Meanwhile everything continues to happen here.  My huge ring-binder folder, the one I use for my book-writing course, is full of assignments and we're only halfway through.  It's been beyond excellent having to work out things like defining your book's genre, imagining how it will look - ideally.  Hardcover or soft, photographs, text, binding-style, after learning about different options for bindings.

Creating a vision board, a mind map, a set of core values for the book and the process.  Listening to published author interviews, learning all that Christine Mason Miller knows from her publishing successes.  Writing a synopsis and so much more.

It's intense and although we only work with Christine for 6 weeks, the material remains available to us for 6 months.  This course is all about fitting a book in around real life and all the distractions that most people live with ... which is so realistic for a creature like me.

Last night I began trying to select books for the journey next week.  I love reading at night in Genova.  I'm still not an electronic book reader-type, although the Belgian bloke is working on me.  My camera gear makes me a little sad about the extra weight I can't really carry in books but read I must. 

I have Kay Cooke's 2 poetry books on my desk, and 2 of Ren Powell's too.  I'm thinking they would be a great study while I'm out wandering.  Gert found me another Claire Messud book, secondhand, and I picked up Christos Tsiolkas's book, Dead Europe while in France but I think that one might be a little bit darker than I expect.  Let's see it.

There's all that but then I adore La Feltrinelli's in Genova.  It's one of my favourite bookshops out here in the world.  The English selection isn't huge but it's good.  Really good.  Last time I didn't allow myself to go in.  This time, we'll see ...

Anyway, enough of that.  I'm behind with my photo-editing.  I was lucky enough to wander over to Brussels last weekend, to photograph my lovely colour therapist friend, Marcia's, beautiful family.  I need to get on to that now that my head has stopped aching.

They are a truly, madly, deeply exquisite family and I so love photographing them.  It took most of the day but it wasn't just about photography, there was also a delicious cooked lunch after the picnic captured below.

That Post Where I Chitchat ...

Lately, I've had a low level buzzing going on in my head, probably caused by a whole lot of must-do's, and it's just not conducive to any kind of work flow.  But you know that already.

I've come here to blog a few times but deleted after just a paragraph or two.  There was no fire, no words came.

Tonight, it's 25 celsius as I write this ... almost 10pm, still quite light outside, with swallows whistling up and down the street like crazy out-of-control children.  I know summer's coming when the swallows return.  I do love them.

Here in Belgium, our team of three have been hard at work on our A New Way of Seeing - Photography Retreats project, fine-tuning and preparing.  It just keeps developing in ways that excite and delight us.  It's hard work but we're having fun.  It's a big old dream coming true.

Next week I'll be back in Genova, and will spend two nights at Lake Como before returning home but more on that once I'm there.  Then there's Norway in August and a photography workshop that I'm so looking forward to there.

Which reminds me ... I met the loveliest woman on the train between Genova and Milan last time I was there.  Her name was Patrizia, I think, she lives in Denmark.  I didn't have any business cards left but she wrote her email address on a scrap of paper and I did the same.  We talked for most of those 2 hours on that train and I did so enjoy her company.  Unfortunately I lost the scrap of paper somewhere between Milan and home.

Patrizia, if you did manage to hang on to my details and do read my blog, I would love to hear from you.

As for today ... I biked over to the Russian tailor.  Dank u wel to Lucy for letting me know about him.  My beautiful shawl, purchased in Genova, needed some of its fringe cut.  It's a little bit long and perhaps a little bit too red on the ends too. 

Dimitrii was lovely.  I explained that I had a history of cutting things that shouldn't be cut and needed him to be doing this thing for me.  Actually mostly it's been my hair that I've cut (and regretted cutting) but it was enough to make me terrified of ruining the shawl if I shortened the tassels myself. 

Actually, I  had my hair in the 'about to be cut' position the other night but couldn't find scissors. It's  really long at the moment, and rather warm here in Antwerp.  To explain, I've had a lifetime of going to hairdressers who talk me into letting them cut my hair short and really, I hate it short.  But once I'm in their chair, I'm weakened by promises of end-result glamour.  Mostly they lie...

So I pick that beautiful shawl up on Saturday and then, I shall wear it whenever possible. I think it will be just right for evenings out.

My head must be clearing though.  I excavated my desk today, its drawers, the cupboard and all storage boxes within reach.  It's all rather beautiful again.  My typewriter has a permanent place but it's an interesting creature.  It has a European keyboard, with the A, M, and other important keys not in the place I prefer them to be.  I make mistakes.  I have a bottle Pritt Fluid.  One needs to really hit the keys.  After a typewriter session, the computer keyboard feels plush and luxurious.  The delete key is heaven.

I have begun packing the cords, cables, and equipment required for out there on the road.  A small pilot's bag is slowly filling with 'other' plugs for the slightly different Italian sockets.  The USB modem is  there.  The card reader, the tripod, the sunhoods for the lenses, and etc.  On Wednesday I will become my other self, the one known as Sherpa Di. 

The biggest news though ... Miss 9 will wake as Miss 10 in the morning.  We are so full of thanksgiving when it comes to that little person.  Today she presented me with a great big hand-made book of her paintings and text.  'Voor Di' is there on the cover.  It's something I'll treasure.  Her art works are stunning. She insisted on reading it to me tonight, translating it as she went.  We finished our most recent book series last night and so it was timely.

I think I may have prattled on a little but I wanted to catch up some.  I've missed blogging.  Actually, I have missed being able to access my mind and write coherently.  Here's to the headache being gone on the morrow and to lucid thought returning. 

Failing that, then I shall just have to wait for Italia to work its usual magic on me.

The photograph ... found in a beautiful village in France.