I'm back at the desk now ... for days I suspect. I just realised I have an unprocessed folder of photographs from Genova.
I'm torn between delight and something like despair, knowing how many hours will be spent here at the desk.
I can't share all of them, I need permissions but this one ... I love the moodiness of this one.
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
we wonder if there is a place here for us,
if we will tell our stories to island visitors some years down the line,
this island gets under our skin, into our blood
little remnants of it coming home in our memories.
Leonie Wise, extract from where the road ends.
Beautiful people, beautiful photographs, beautiful words.
Here is just one of Leonie's exquisite images from that particular post.
She has opened a conversation for me ... we wonder if there is a place here for us.
I know that curiousity. I have been looking for 'home' since forever. I'll know it when I find it and in the meanwhile I'll enjoy where I am, like always. I've spent the last 30 years moving towns, moving countries.
Perhaps it will always be like this for me but perhaps one day I'll arrive ... and somehow I'll know that I'm home.
TRAM 11
Tram comes. Tram goes. Going: a young Zairean
humming huskily with baby, plenty of time,
intimate with each other, in public
yet still alone. The tram looks on.
Tram comes: a Moroccan woman tries to quiet
her whining little tatty boy. The more she shakes him,
the more syllables fall from him.
Until an Antwerp woman's ta-ta-ta
brings him to himself. And to all of us.
Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling through the town.
Public transport civilizes us, makes us festive,
maintains our confusion.
Herman de Coninck
Translated to English by Cedric Barfoot and Sonny Williams.
Way back in 2007, that was me reading Herman de Coninck's poem on stage in front of more than a few people.
"Though some, in darkness of heart, seeing their land ravished, might wish to take arms and kill the aggressors, I say it must not be. Let not the Pakehas think to succeed by reason of their guns ... I want not war, but they do. The flashes of their guns have singed our eyelashes, and yet they say they do not want war ... The government come not hither to reason, but go to out-of-the-way places. They work secretly, but I speak in public so that all may hear, " Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III told his people in March 1880.
You can read more of the man who was rumoured to have influenced Ghandi in his peaceful resistance. Tim Finn and the Herbs sang about Te Whiti too.
Regarding the music clip at the end of this post, Mark Bell asks the question of Little Bushman, regarding the 2009 collaboration between Little Bushman, composer/arranger Psathas and the NZ Symphony Orchestra – did he actually manage to enjoy the experience given the enormity and pressure of such an undertaking?
His reply, over on Mark's interview, made me laugh.
I am loving all this digging around and finding New Zealand music and movies I've missed.
Raf, Gert and I were talking of flashes and cameras at the kitchen table last night and there I was, relaxing.
It makes me laugh to confess that I have become a woman best-suited to low-light, layers and filters.
