Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes

Back in the days when I was the wife of a New Zealand Airforce officer, living on Base Woodbourne, up in Marlborough (‘up’ because I came from ‘down’ in Dunedin) I bought a book that has traveled everywhere with me ever since.

I devoured Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun, as we moved off Base and out of that airforce life. We were heading to Fiordland, in the south west of New Zealand, chasing that husband’s career - back in the 90’s. (Yes, I’ve lived here before) And I read that book, holding it close, through the crazy days of packing moving and unpacking.

It’s a beautiful poetic prose book, one that I dip in and out of when I’m seeking beauty and some kind of peace ... a book that takes me wandering even while grounded.

Some years later, I was flying between Istanbul and New Zealand, on my summer holiday break from teaching, and Under the Tuscan Sun was there as a movie choice on my Singapore Airlines flight.

I had at least 19 hours of flight time ahead of me, and so I selected it as a movie to watch, as I flew to the other side of the world ...

The movie is not not like the book. Do not expect it. It’s a nice enough movie but it contains none of the depth and richness I find, again and again, when I go back to my tattered copy of the book.

An extract from the book: I remember dreaming over Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’, which I don’t have with me, only a few sentences copied into a notebook. He wrote about the house as a “tool for analysis” of the human soul.

By remembering the houses we’ve lived in, we learn to abide within ourselves. I felt close to his sense of the house. He wrote about the strange whir of the sun as it comes into a room in which one is alone. Mainly, I remember recognising his idea that the house protects the dreamer; the houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace.

And this: ‘Choice is restorative when it reaches towards an instinctive recognition of the earliest self. As Dante recognised at the beginning of ‘The Inferno’: What must we do in order to grow?

The foto: The Ligurian house I wanted, passionately, madly, deeply.

Portraiture ...

If the photographer has forged a relationship which permits an atmosphere in which the subject feels relaxed and safe, there is an intimacy that allows the person being photographed to be uninhibited and to reveal unknown aspects of herself.
- Eve Arnold, Magnum Photographer 

Lockdown, Week 4, Manapouri

We seven are doing okay, out here on the farm for this Level 4 Lockdown, where Nature does spectacular most days.

I walk every morning, with 2 hunting dogs who will go as far as I am willing to wander. They put up with my puny efforts. They know that I know they could run all day, if required, but they wait for me.

And yesterday morning, that was me, out there on the side of highway … walking along the side of the almost empty road, with my big old Canon camera in one hand, its leather strap wrapped round my wrist. And my other hand, well … I really was holding on to a medium-sized, rather fluffy, dead possum.

Mana, the male hunting dog, had caught and killed one of New Zealand’s more noxious pest; captured roadside, in the depths of a stand of native flax bushes.

Why was I carrying it?

It was a time thing. Rather than kill and devour these dogs like to, quite delicately, pluck the fur from the possums before eating them …

Standing on the side of the road, waiting for their impromptu picnic to unfold, held no appeal. So there I was, roadside wandering, carrying that big old dead possum by its tail … just another Manapouri Day in the Life of Di.

I only dropped it once.

The tail of a Possum works as a kind of hook, there at the tip, and it’s quite strong. As the possum began stiffening, its tail suddenly seemed to curl round my thumb.

I may have exclaimed, quite loudly, and dropped it for a moment but I after a second check that it actually was dead, I picked it up and got it home for them.

My wandering life … it’s more than roadside wandering with the dogs. I try to head out again, in the evenings, across the fields around sunset because the landscape really sings then. So many variations of light on landscape. I can be incredibly beautiful..

And I’m learning, the light always changes, depending on the time of day, the weather, and the season.

And each element seems to find an infinite variety of ways to combine and create new kinds of beautiful. Scenes so breathtakingly exquisite that I have no idea how experience them.

You know…?

Last night, I turned in slow circles, crossing the Lightning Paddock, watching the sun set behind the Hunter or the Cathedral Mountains, painting the Takitimu Mountains with a wash of light that made my soul sing.

I have been so fortunate. I have lived in, or visited, so many beautiful places around the world but Manapouri … this farm. I am so blessed to be here.

So very blessed.

This Other Life ...

This Fiordland life is full of creatures, especially now we have time to really see all of them.

There is the Fantail, as pictured above. We have a gang of 4 who, when ignored, have been known to fly right up to your face for attention.

Bellbirds chime at daybreak, and again in the evening. It’s a liquid song, like nothing I’ve heard before.

We have woodpigeons what whoosh through the trees. They’re a pair I think, and accompany all of us as we move through our days.

And then there’s the landscape.

Lately, there have been so many misty mornings. Mornings that become blue-sky beautiful before 10am.

It’s breath-taking.

But see for yourself. Here it is, in-between sunlight and mist.

Saturday morning, out walking the dogs.

Arundhati Roy

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.

Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us.

Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

- Arundhati Roy

Scenes from a Fiordland Life ...

Here I am, all tucked up in this Covid-19 lock-down, happy to be where I am …

We’re out in the country, in a sparsely-populated part of New Zealand, hunkering down and hoping the storm passes through without touching us … without touching family, friends, anyone and everyone.

But it’s too late for that wish, I know it.

There’s going to be a period of adjustment, with the possibility of 4 weeks at home, due to the Prime Minister announcing a state of emergency today.

No one is sure of what shape that will take.

There’s a friend needing a ride to Queenstown Airport, hoping to catch one of the last flights back home to Australia. We’ll try that tomorrow.

The Department of Conservation, my employer, has us working remotely, from home.

Claire, my flatmate/landlord and friend, has 4 weeks off from her job. My girls are here, blowing in from other places, to become part of this tiny community.

The supermarket is open over in Te Anau. There was a brief panic but things settled down and our shelves are, generally, well-stocked.

And then we woke to snow on the mountains yesterday but we have a fire, here in the lounge, so that’s all okay. We had shopped over days, quietly working out what we might need if forced to stay home. So we’re good.

The Fiordland community is a stunning community. They are used to coming together in times of disaster … in a way that makes the disaster seem entirely manageable, if we simply work through it together.

Although, this summer season it does like we’ve experienced it all. And we’ve come through. I expect people here will continue to support one another, in those ways that they always have, and so, I feel quite blessed to be part of it.

Restaurants have given away the last of the food in their kitchen, as they’ve shut down their kitchens, gifting meals to the elderly and the vulnerable.

Facebook groups have started up: kindergarten teachers entertaining children at home, work groups that allow us to stay in touch with each other now that we’re working from home. And then there’s the community noticeboard, humming with life. Perhaps I might be heard to whisper a small vote of thanks, in the direction of Facebook.

Even the dogs … out here on the farm, are squirreling away ‘food for later’. I saw Koru tucking her possum, almost tenderly, into a ‘bed’ out there on the path.

Don’t look, if squeamish … just saying but I couldn’t resist sharing a photograph. The ‘stuff’ I have cleaned up lately. Mark, formerly Dad’s cat, vomited up his self-service mouse meal. The skull had not digested, at all My daily life, here in Manapouri, is one that makes me smile more often than it makes me cry. And really, what more can a soul wish for than all of this …

Kia kaha (stay strong) We’ll get through this, and perhaps we’ll learn new ways of being here in this world that gifts us so much.