Life, Divorce-Orphan Style.

Sometimes I describe the Belgian Bloke and I as divorce orphans ... 

We were both married long before meeting each other.  We divorced, completely unaware of each others existence on opposite sides of the world, and went on to lose almost everything collected over those years we were married to others.

I wandered off to Istanbul, and the Belgian got his own apartment here in the city and started all over again.  Later we met and since then we've been putting together a life that makes me smile sometimes.

I love our furniture but it's mostly from our favourite secondhand shop here in the city.  We rent the house that we live in but we are so rich in friends who come from all over the world.  There's much fun and adventure, mixed in with the more challenging times.

Today a new fridge/freezer arrived and I'm bemused by how happy this makes me.  You see we've been making do with a small fridge and a seperate tiny freezer since our beginning.  They came courtesy of somebody's caravan.  It's been YEARS!  I felt no sadness watching them leave the building this morning.  No sadness at all.

Meanwhile, that appointment I mentioned ... the one where I might get myself into trouble for not being fluent in Nederlands.  It went brilliantly.  I had an appointment with Districthuis.  Over years these appointments have varied in terms of success.  Not all of them ended well. 

I wandered along, signed in via their signing-in machine and my number was called.  I mentioned, Ik sprek Engels ... but that I could understand Nederlands. And I usually rush on explain that I do things to Nederlands that sometimes make it unrecognisable but no worries, she had already switched over to English.

That's the thing about Antwerp.  They're usually fluent in Dutch, French and English ... and other languages too.

Anyway, my new ID card is underway, and this is a good thing.  She was lovely.

Above, a glimpse inside the house the divorce orphans are creating  :-)  An 80euro oak table and 46 euro (total) for that beautiful set of chairs.  That secondhand shop is surely one of my favourite things about living in Europe ...

They Made It ... Look At Their Faces.

They made it ...

A shipload of Syrian men, women (some pregnant) and children.  People who chose to risk all to escape a situation so much worse than the situation that drove my not-to-distant ancestors out of the UK towards new lands. 

My ancestors had already been gifted the lands of another people, there were dangers but less than these people face.  And, of course, they don't have a government able to gift them the land of others.

But look at their faces.  They've made it after being abandoned on a massive ship, steering locked so they'd crash into land, and left to their fate by the people traffickers who made their fortunes with this one shipload.  And so the Italian military made yet another heroic rescue and landed 6 of their people onboard, unlocked the steering and now these people have been taken in by Italy.

Italy who can ill-afford more people but remains more humane than many countries.  Already I can hear my right-wing friends starting their engines, having read the news that tells us these people will ruin our lives.  Somehow not comprehending that the bankers have done so much more harm than these people running for their lives.  Somehow not comprehending the reality of corporate greed.  They have been convinced that their particular part of the planet is theirs by birthright, paid for by their taxes.  Gifted by God perhaps.

But anyway, these immigrants have chosen life.  The courage it takes to make these journeys ... where so many die at sea every month.  They've survived. They want to live.  And if we let them, they'll slip into our world and, most of them, will work hard to make a good life, a safe life, for themselves and their families.

The world needs to change its attitude towards this now 'illegal' immigration.  One day it might be us seeking new land, seeking shelter  ... humans have a history of this.   And honestly,  I really believe we need to just check in and see what we'd do if our children were caught up in a war that they didn't start.  What we would do if the people we loved were in danger.

It's a no-brainer for me.  I'd leave.  We only have one life and surely it's up to us to make it the best we can.  The people on these ships take unimaginable risks, give everything they own to make the journey.

This photograph shows the relief of people who have made it.  They're safe.  Soon, they may find out they're considered less than the people they will need to live amongst, or that, simply put, they're hated and feared.   They may be detained and imprisoned.  They may be sent home.  But for the moment, the look on their faces in this photograph, says everything to me.

We are safe.  We made it.

I love the New Zealand singer, Dave Dobbyn's, song to immigrants.  It makes me so proud. We have a country almost as big as Italy, home to just 4.5 million people but have we already been taught to hate and fear what these foreigners will do to our economy? Have we already been taught that we must turn our backs on them?  Let's see it.

 

'The more personal you are willing to be' ...

found in Gent..jpg

The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are… And when I say universal, I don’t mean universal only within our culture… There’s a lot of balderdash thrown around — “You don’t understand people who live in Sri Lanka and their response to the tsunami because you just don’t know that culture.”

Well, there’s an element of that — but, to me, cultural differences are a kind of patina over the deepest psychosexual feelings that we have, that all human beings share.

Sherwin Nuland, extract from yet another brilliant Brain Pickings post.

One of the constant battles I have with this blog of mine is just how much raw and gritty truth I write here.  And in struggling with 'how much', I suspect I lose quite a lot. 

I do know that friends in real life enjoy catching up on the details I usually leave off my blog.  I have a complicated family life ... like so many these days.  I have much to write about on the subject of being a step-mother, perhaps.  And even more about being a foreigner in this day and age.  Or on traveling without languages (usually).  And on just making it home ...   And even more on why I haven't dedicated my days to learning the language in this country I'm currently a citizen of.

I have this theory ... but that's for another day.

I love red wine.   I mostly drink sparkling water though, with 2 espressos per day, and lately, a hot chocolate sometimes.  Most other drinks don't agree with me because they're full of sugar, or sugar substitutes, or have too much caffeine or tanin or goodness knows what.  I used to be able to drink and eat ANYTHING!  Now I have food allergies and grass allergies, and they just added dust mites to that list but I've only just begun to check the facts of it all. 

I prefer not to take anti-histamines.  

I'm not good at learning languages but I love people and traveling.  It seems to work out.  We 'talk' anyway.

'I'm from New Zealand ... ' gets me further than I could have imagined, in terms of excuses for everything.  We Kiwis are a delightful people from an exquisitely beautiful country.  So yes, what am I doing out here in the northern hemisphere?!  That's something else I could also write much and often about.

I love photography and books, and writing and people and other cultures, and conversations that go on into the night.  I love sitting down on that airport bus, leaving to fly someplace, and I love coming home to people and places I know.  I love music. All kinds.  I love people who are passionate about what they do, and I adore people who are kind.

I'm a grouch.  I should write on my blog on my grouchy days.  I'm quiet and need space, and if you hurt me I'll disappear into a silence.  I'll try not to argue ... so don't make me.  Just believe me, it's better you don't.  I also love talking.  And meeting new people.

So you see, I leave a lot of this off the blog but I'm thinking, in 2015, I might experiment with just being me on the blog. Let's see how that goes ... I'd like to be more universal.

A Little About My Beautiful Red Bookshelves ...

I have 3 red bookshelves next to me here at my desk.  On those beautiful shelves you will find my favourite books, except for those that are missing in action ... loaned out to friends that I really trust and admire. 

I hope to see those loaned books again one day but if not, okay.  They were good books, they will only enrich the lives of those who hold on to them.  Accidentally.  Inadvertently.  Although if the friend who has my Maurice Shadbolt book, A Touch of Clay, could return it I would be so grateful.

So I reorganised my books over two days.  It's important.  I don't have much but what I have, I like to have right.

The top shelf now contains some favourite novels (like Night Train to Lisbon and When Nietzsche Wept), some very small collections (like anything I can find by or about Katherine Mansfield), and biographies ... although biographies spreads over shelves because there are some in the travelers section ... the mountaineers, the war photographers and journalists ...

On the end of that top shelf there are a stack of travel books ... rarely used while traveling but referred to often when home.

The second shelf contains books written by wanderers and wise people (like Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me and Honey and Dust by Piers Moore Ede).  Then we move into a small collection about writing and creativity (like The Three Marriages by David Whyte).  And they stand next to my collection of books from the Middle East, (with favourites like Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and To The End of The Land by David Grossman.  And one of my most favourite books in the world, I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti, a poet who writes the most exquisite prose too).

The bottom shelf is closest to me.  It begins with my Italian language books, dictionaries, and the books I have on Genova.  Mountaineers appear next.  Andrew Grieg's Summit Fever is a favourite but I've slipped Simon Jakeman's Groundrush in there too (about Basejumping, an exploration written back at the start of that interesting sport.)

The bottom shelf also holds the stories of war photographers and journalists - factual and fiction.  Favourites ... Small Wars Permitting by Christina Lamb and Denise Leith's What Remains.  I have John Simpson's series of books, and both of Frank Gardener's.  I just purchased A Thousand Times Goodnight on DVD, that's there next to the dvd Which Way is The Front Line from Here.

That shelf, the one that sits closest to me, ends with a collection of poetry books.  I have Pablo Neruda by Adam Feinstein and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness ... the biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, by Adina Hoffman.  I have a collection of poetry by Eugenio Montale, sitting next to books full of poetry by Kay McKenzie Cooke and Ren Powell too.

And so you have it, unasked for ... a glimpse of those books best-loved by me.

Music I've been enjoying lately? 

Well, whenever I wander over this website, I can't resist staying a while, as their auto-play kicks in ...