You can read more Mark’s work on his website
So Many Months Since That Previous Post ...
I found a home, one that I love more than my beloved Genova … which is good, since that Italian door is so closed to me in these days. If we leave our country, our government won’t allow us back … except via a lottery system which is, as you can imagine, a nightmare.
I have access to the most beautiful river, in the world, ever … And a beach I adore, like those beaches I loved in those days before I flew from New Zealand, escaping a very bad marriage.
I am beach girl again, living by the tides, when I can.
I have a casual job, that I love and I finally purchased a laptop, screen and memory that allows me, once again, to claim that I am also a professional photographer.
I have been reunited with my external hard-drives, after not having them work via my ancient and dying laptop, that one that has been dying, since flying back home to New Zealand.
I lost my father in August.
I met a man, and he has become my anchor, my partner, and my most-loved friend.
The doors have opened, as we have found the courage to step through them … and now, in these days, I am finding the tribe I belong to.
We are blessed.
I hope you are doing well too.
Love, Di
The Wild West Coast, New Zealand
We are beginning to live by the tides, and by the ebb and flow of the polar blast currently roaring its way up New Zealand. Smiling, a little, when we realise we have seen his beloved Mohikinui River in flood, twice now, in 3 days.
We went to sleep, loving the sound of torrential rain on the roof.
We woke to a thunderclap so loud that we thought the world was ending.
Since then, the day has been spent with us all quietly searching for comfort. In sleep, in food, in moving slowly through the hours of this day as it unfolds. The thunderclap, its lightning strike really, killed our power supply, making us doubly glad that our house has a big wood-burning fire.
We lit it, loaded the firebox and I cooked our porridge on its hot top … heated water for coffee, and thawed out our frozen blueberries.
Voila, breakfast was achieved, in the most satisfying 'wilderness' style.
The tide was fully in by mid-morning, the river had filled to almost over-flowing again. The tide pushing in, the river pushing out at its mouth. The Mohikinui is one of the last 'natural untouched' rivers in New Zealand. There is so much pleasure to be found in watching it slide by, from up here on the hill.
The sea is choppy today. Whitecaps as far as the eye can see. White clouds scudding across the sky, ahead of the next front rolling through, with high winds, heavy rain …
Nature on steroids. Nature at its best. I can write this because the house here seems sturdy. Built for every kind of West Coast weather.
The water pump needs electricity to move the water from tanks to tap. I waited till 8.30am, then wandered out to phone the site manager, just wanting to be sure it was a general power outage, and not just us, up here on the hill.
He said, no. The linemen were on it. He promised he would bring up a generator if the fault wasn't found.
10am, the linemen rolled up our driveway. The weather, atrocious. We greeted them with smiles and offers of coffee. They smiled back, thanking us but needing to go across wet fields to the power pole out there.
I watched them through the binoculars we brought traveling, just in case there were far-away things to observe. I watched, and after 20 minutes perhaps, they managed to hook something to something and voila, I opened our window to 'thumbs-up' them when they looked.
The power was on.
The coffee machine …
But since then, we have achieved almost nothing except acknowledging, or perhaps accepting, that there is nothing we need to achieve, for no one.
The sunshine is Spring-bright outside. I'm squinting as I look over my screen, watching the sea flow in, the river flow out. The collision is happening 500 metres from here, I can't miss it.
The drummer is drumming on his Jembe It's good to hear. Perhaps today is the day that he will set-up the stripped-down drum-set he brought with him.
But there's a break between rainstorms and wind, we need to go out into this wild West Coast weather.
Another day is done.
La vita è bella.
Note: the image below came about while out walking. Selected in a hurry, fitting into the time I have online.
a new morning routine ... in another new place.
I woke this morning, wandered out to the open-plan living area, heard the precious old pup following me, fed him his possum pet-roll, noted the mighty river had returned to its pre-flood boundaries,and realised that we are 6 sleeps into this new life and things that were new, have taken on their own peaceful familiarity.
I swallow down my teaspoon of Apple Cider vinegar, in a cup of water, then quickly reward myself with a small Lavazza coffee. (We have learned to carry the coffee machine with us, beginning each day in the best way). Then there's lighting the fire, making up a small pot of porridge. Peeling pears, leaving them bubbling while I take my place at my laptop …
My laptop, in front of the massive picture window, with a view of the mighty Mohikinui river mouth meeting the Tasman Sea - here at the huge round dining table that sold me on this rental cabin, out on the edge of civilisation … bottom of the world but top of the South Island, New Zealand.
I am resting, truly resting, after so many years of fight or flight; of making-do, of finding ways to celebrate a life that has been so determined to be anything-but-normal.
Sitting here, I remember other morning routines in other countries with other people.
Istanbul, where I spent my first morning awake at a barred window, the soft heat of summer and the scent of flowers I knew no names for … listening to the call to prayer float out over the city, wondering if this time I had leapt too far, alone, in search of financial stability after a long marriage failed.
My new abode was located in a modern suburb ... last apartment block, under one approach to Istanbul's busy international airport. The Marmara Sea was off to my left when I stood on my balcony. My breakfast routine was a lonely one.
I found ways to love it.
Belgium was another kind of life. I had more than one kind of coffee machine during the 10 years spent there but a noticeable lack of any kind of fire for heat. Fires have only really reappeared in my life since I moved to the mountains. I love the invisible, instinctive feeling of making a fire. Wood-smoke and warmth …
Italy and a morning routine of long walks. The quiet joy of being recognised and welcomed by baristas who were so kind to that stray Kiwi who slipped through their Genovese streets with her camera; passionately in love with their city.
Often there have been dogs in my life. And incredible locations, like Berlin, Portofino, Stavanger, London, Oxshott, Naples, Cairo and that tiny Swiss village. And people. Remarkable souls who wove their way into the tapestry that my life has become.
After the Belgian divorce, I kept saying Yes as the world called by and invited me off on yet another adventure. I used to smile sometimes, comparing myself to Alison in Wonderland; slipping down rabbit holes following those that I trusted.
Home to New Zealand, and there I was, almost back where I had begun, living with Dad as his mind slipped away.
That was another new life. I returned in the summer, my breakfast was sometimes taken in his quietly lovely backyard. Roses and fantails, on the best days.
Manapouri: dog-walking and fog, wet fields and mice. There was another kind of breakfast routine. And on and on and on, I wandered … till now.
Out here, on the edge, we have created another kind of life … far from the voices who scold and advise; who judge, without taking care of their own lives. And the peace is exquisite. Finally there is time to reconnect with the selves we used to be … as children, almost.
The mornings are my quiet time … where I get to read and write while looking up at a view that is so empty of people, in a place where there are absolutely no expectations beyond what I expect of myself.
So I potter these mornings, quietly cooking and fire-lighting between writing and reading and thinking, delighted to have someone to nurture. This someone I can nurture but who, more than just accepting these gifts from me, nurtures me in return.
These quiet days are the days we have stolen, before we move on into the next stage of Us, and they are all about recovering from difficult years and disappointments.
They are days full of shared music, good food, resting walking and reading. Of sharing our space with his old dog … that dog who has made me one the pack, gifting me his unreserved love.
The Tasman Sea, and the landscape in front of me, both shrouded in a soft sea mist that blurs the horizon, blending the grey and white sky with grey and white water. It's a soft morning, startlingly warm to this woman who has become used to the lower south-west corner and its mountains. Van Morrison is playing, my porridge and pears are ready to eat, the fire is ticking … life is good.
Ciao, from this place of quiet rugged New Zealand beauty.
Happiness is ...
I picked up my camera recently. Intense again, like I used to be when I wandered the caruggi in Genova. I spent days, simply following a friend & his dog; walking the river’s edge, and Manapouri’s lake-edge bush tracks, with them.
I am still working my way through the results but I feel like my soul was involved. It has been a while since I lost myself in photography, day after day after day.
My music of choice lately (read, on repeat), is Snow Patrol: Live & Stripped Back at Porchester Hall. I was late to Snow Patrol party however I am surely making up for time lost now.
My Queenstown life is a beautiful life. One day I wandered into town, with a friend. We had tickets to hear that incredible New Zealand writer, Witi Ihaemara. And he was so much more than I could have imagined. Another evening, I wandered along to a members-only screening of Liam Neeson’s latest movie - over at the exquisite Dorothy Brown cinema, (20nzd per year membership) in Arrowtown. The bookshop in there almost destroys me, in these days of limited income however, I enjoy the pleasure of browsing. It is one of the most beautifully curated bookshops I know, any place in the world.
Life has a sweetness to it these days. I simply want to savour it …
Scenes From My Life ... lately
Or perhaps I could title this small slideshow, Places I Love…
I suspect, a life lived between Queenstown and Manapouri would please me, as much as I used to dream of a life lived between Italy and New Zealand, back when I liked the idea of forever summers.
But I suspect I had forgotten the joy of Fiordland rain pounding down, and the possibility of being curled up next to a good fire.
The photos below … Manapouri, with my little friend, Tui the Wonder Dog. The photograph of her at my feet … cosied up keeping warm, it was the place she always begins, when wanting to sit on my lap while I work at the computer.
There is a Manapouri Spring flower series. And a glimpse of Gemstone Beach, a much-loved south coast beach of mine now. St Clair beach in Dunedin, then a small taste of my life here in Queenstown.
The Fork & Tap cheeseboard, out in the pub garden … divine.
The wee orange, that tiny Toyota that takes me every place, parked down by the lake early one morning.
I’m grateful.
