A Lightness of Being ...

For me, there is this feeling of an incredible lightness of being that comes with that first really summery Sunday morning of the year.

We can finally open the door to the garden and enjoy the scent of the Jasmine I'm growing not far away.  But better than anything else, in those early morning hours, Nature often wins out as the dominant scent in the air ... especially on a Sunday when the roar of that massively busy highway nearby becomes so much less.

I wandered outside with my camera just now, startled a thrush, then watched a pigeon fly clumsily away.  The lawns will be mown today, there is a BBQ planned for our evening.  It's the first of this summery season. 

And the rhubarb is going crazy out there, so are the raspberry plants.  The fern has experienced new hope and is growing accordingly, and my beloved New Zealand Lupins are finally making an appearance too.  The yellow ones, the kind found growing at beaches back home.  Those ones that have a scent I love like nothing else.

Somehow they manage to contain both this huge celebration of summer and the promise of the sea.  I would fill my garden with these if I could.  But they're not in flower yet so I still don't know if they will grow and smell as they do on the other side of the world.

But it was the Elderberry blossom that turned my head this morning.  Perhaps more photos will follow.  The elderberry berrries are usually gobbled up by the pigeons but the birds were here first and do so little to harm the environment that it feels okay to let that situation be.

A good morning to you out there in the world.  I hope your Sunday is lovely in that way you need it to be.

Found ... as I wandered, reading.

Did you know, the British Library has put 1,200 literary treasures from great Romantic and Victorian writers online?  It's true.

This TED talk, Does Money Make You Mean?  was interesting.  There's some lovely stories of good things that people with money are doing ... at the end.

Glen Greenwald, fearless journalist & scrappy fighter, has turned up again, thank goodness.  He's now the editor of a 'news website describing itself as being committed to “fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues'.  You can find The Intercept here.

New Zealand takes 3rd position in the Global Peace Ranking.

A Sherpa and a native Nepali paraglided off of Mount Everest in 2011, they flew into history, and I read nothing about it.  There's a new book ...   Western-orientated media, you break my heart sometimes.

And perhaps that's enough.  Maybe 'more' than enough ...

Another peony.

In Celebration ...

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin, Writer.

 

There's a new project ...

Or perhaps it's a new way of seeing a project that has shape-shifted, changed, and developed so much since I first imagined it.

And it keeps getting better.  Maybe that's because it continues to move closer to my original idea ... that orginal intention.

I'm so excited.  There will be a newsletter from me next week.  And I'll be giving away copies of my favourite photograph too.  To celebrate.

And ... there's so much more to tell but not today.  It's 5pm Friday as I write this and I need to rest for a little bit before beginning again.

Meanwhile the peonies I bought from Dieter are exploding in soft pink lushness.

Processing ...

I've been trapped in chair here, processing a series after series of photographs over weeks ... or that's how I'm telling it. 

I finished the latest series tonight.  170 ... a most beautiful Irish/English family.  I am pleased.  I hope they are too.

Etel Adnan's book, Sitt Marie Rose, arrived in the mail today.  I photographed her while working in Berlin and wish I had read this before meeting her.  It shall be read, over days, on those trams that I ride here.

I'm off to Genova soon.  I am very much looking forward to that. 

This photograph was taken there, in Piazza De Ferrari one day ...

'The House Protects the Dreamer' ...

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard, Philosopher.

I needed to try and capture that place where I spend most of my hours for a project I discovered recently.  I'll write more on that when it happens.

Today the sun came out for a while and this is what I saw ...

Climbing That Gate Again ...

There are mornings when I wander back through the city, feeling something like happiness.  It's not that the pollution has disappeared, it rarely disappears.  And it doesn't seem to be weather-dependent, as I've noted this 'feeling' on drizzly misty mornings too ... no, it must be some random thing, like the stars aligning someplace else. 

Perhaps it's partially about whatever I'm reading.  At the moment I'm moving between C.K. Stead's novel Mansfield, and Piers Moore Ede's All Kinds of Magic.  Both are rereads ... old favourites that live on the red shelves next to my desk here.

I also have Marsha Mehran's Pomegranate Soup underway ...

All these books probably say something about my state of being at the moment.  I'm a little restless perhaps.

This month and the previous, I have spent time with the loveliest families, attempting to capture something of what I see when each of them  come together. 

Then Sunday evening I slipped into the abyss that is a Monday, 9am dental appointment.  A broken tooth was involved and I was a bit nervous but my dentist ... she's the best that I've ever had and so there's always the confusion of catching up with someone I very much enjoy seeing.

It went well.

I'm transcribing interviews from those days spent in Italy.  And processing photographs too.  I'm cleaning and cooking ... and failing to cook and clean too.  I'm losing and finding myself via books and good movies.  I'm waiting to fly. 

I'm back in Genova at the end of this month ...

Climbing that gate again.