Liking the music embedded here tonight. New music for me.
The Belgian bloke and I have spent the entire day moving our desks and creating a new office space. Yes he has a swollen tendon in his shoulder, one that no longer moves through the bone without pain but he was careful, and I was helpful ... or tried to be.
I love our new space. I haven't moved much but he did and the result is quite drastic ... to us.
Photographs to follow in the days ahead, if I work out how to capture it all.
Welcome to Walker Creek, Fiordland. My favourite place when I lived in Te Anau.
Technically, the last image isn't the creek, it was actually taken further into the national park, at Mirror Lakes but I added it because it gives you a sense of the same kind of mountains just beyond 'my' creek.
On arriving there, I would make a small seat for myself in the long grass while my dog, Sandie, made herself at home in the creek. We could spend hours there, dreaming the day away.
When I returned, back in 2012, I was so intent on breathing in both the air and the scene that I didn't take any photographs of this creek. These images all belong to the Belgian bloke who made a beautiful job of capturing those places I loved to well while I wandered off into dream-mode again.
I yearn for that particular air, the peace of the place and the overwhelming sense of Nature pressing down on me but ... I have also become accustomed to Italy, France and to being here in the centre of the world.
I am divided in these days, unsure of which place is more for me. Loving Genova, and loving the memories of home. Perhaps it's best that I wander a bit longer.
These days have been about a mix of good friends who have wandered through, coming from the UK and Italy, with New Zealand due at the weekend. And into this mixture there is also what feels like the end of summer, a yearning for New Zealand, planning for Italy, laundry and dishes and vacuuming, and sometimes ... exploring my photography archives, wishing I had more time to just write too.
A beautiful confusion perhaps.
I feel like a cat, turning and turning and turning again, attempting to settle into my life, clear on a way forward.
I found myself writing this blog post after searching to see if I had a photograph that captured Walkers Creek, a favourite creek in Fiordland National Park. That creek my dog used to swim in while I sat on the grassy bank, with a beautiful mountain range directly in front of me.
I think I wanted an image that confirmed my memories of that place. It was about 60 kms into the park, back when I lived in Te Anau. 60kms ... like so many of my 'runaway' places. Anakiwa when I lived on the airforce base back in Marlborough, the Arrow River when I was in Cromwell, and Pilots Beach when I lived out on the Otago Peninsula.
But there was another favourite place and I did photograph it last time I was home. I was up recording a New Zealand dawn chorus to bring back to Europe, staying at Hunter and Claire's place. I was wrapped up in warm clothes, out on the veranda, voice recorder mounted on my camera's tripod when I suddenly saw all that was directly in front of me.
I love this view ... Manapouri, New Zealand.
Tonight I'm listening to Rupa and the April Fishes as I work. Sharing their song titled Neruda here.
... with an Erica Jong twist.
I found this beautiful image out walking, early one morning, at Cooks Beach, in the Coromandel, New Zealand.
Listening to favourite song, favourite singer, as I load this.
It opens with a torrential downpour in the recorded version. I think I love the sound of that rain, more than anything.
I think, one of the things that become most obvious when you leave the country where you are known and understood, is that those invisible unspoken things protecting you ... the habits, the customs, the family and known behaviours will disappear. Out here, it's just you.
One of my favourite poets, Anne Michaels, writes in her poem Blue Vigour:
I think, if you have lived through a war,
or have made your home in a country
not your own, or if you've learned
to love one man,
then your life is a story.
Yes. A story because all that you have known and understood is somehow broken. Smashed even. Each country is different. The way I lived in Turkey is different to the way I live in Belgium.
Those 3 months in Berlin ... so different to all my 2 and 3 week stays in Genova, Italy.
And I feel like a blind woman sometimes, reading braille. The braille of being human ...
So this behaviour, I wonder, where did it come from?
What formed these people, their culture?
Why is this acceptable here and not there?
I'm always curious. And not learning the language of each place I arrive in helps somehow. I do try learning but I am beyond terrible. I think I have some kind of learning disability however these weren't invented until after I was educated and so ... I am simply judged lazy.
But not learning the language ... sometimes I'm not sure it's some kind of gift. It means I have had to become a close observer of body language. I was a photographer alreadyand so perhaps I always was a close observer of body language. Even in that country called Home.
There's a massive birthday approaching this year and I have this feeling of being filled in ways that I didn't expect. Filled with so many stories, of so many people and places, that perhaps it's time for me to re-evaluate who I am and where I am heading.
Anyway, enough ...let's leave this post with the ultimate in wise men, quoted there on the photograph below.
