A little of this and a little of that

I was sad when I headed out this morning, after reading all the bad and sad news but then the morning became a little sublime, everything was kind of sparkly.

I was offered a place on a Barista course (with a real Italian barista) being held here in Antwerpen after a lovely conversation with the cafe owner ... a woman who makes the best coffee I've had here in the city so far.

Then I accidentally found 2 books, hoping I'm still on the 'fabulous book roll' I've been on of late. Mansfield was adored and devoured, now I have a book by Rasheed El-Enany titled Naguib Mahfouz. This book was the first to be published after the death of Naguib, Egypt's Novel Laureate. A comment on the back reads: He was not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola, and a Jules Romain.
London Review of Books.

And then, writes she who was recently paid, I couldn't resist Isabel Allende's The Sum of Our Days.

One of the best things about working again has to be the freedom to buy books whenever I want them ... and to travel again ... and to dress in a style I like rather in the style of what I can afford.

It's not that there is a lot of money, it's that I have money again. It's been a long two years in that respect but perhaps it was like having my palate cleansed between courses. I'm more thought-filled about spending, more appreciative of the freedom of it.

And now I'm home to hide from the midday heat and pick up all the children I've acquired over the last 21 years ... I was laughing with the cafe-owner that, although I never got round to dreaming of being a mother, I have surely ended up embracing it in all its forms.

I'm a mother, a stepmother and a grandmother ... and we're off to the library today once some of the heat goes out of this 24 degree celsius day (That's 75 degrees farenheit to you Mary Lou).

Photos ... next task tonight has to be photographs. First the exhibition opening in Zonnebeke needs to go out to all kinds of interesting people, then tomorrow the wedding photographs. I remembered to take a little time off from the constancy of work here.

I'm thinking I might stun everyone and go to the doctor about my knee on Friday. I can't stay on anti-inflammatories forever but I'm surely a believer in their magical powers in these days.

Tot straks from this kiwi.

What do we do??

Do we avert our eyes?

Do we stay silent because it's simpler that way?

Do we speak out and find ways to protest?

I wonder if these are some of the questions asked in Germany during the second world war?

I've been reading some news ... The New York Times, then this, and now The Independent with this and this and this .

I'm deeply sad as I sit here wondering but free, with choices.

The Flemish Wallonian Divide - from the outside looking in

The New York Times appears to have made a poor job of reporting on the situation in Belgium.

Having interviewed the equivalent of America's KKK and a few Flemish nationalists, they failed in giving a balanced view of the Flanders/Wallonia divide here. It's the second time I've read an imbalanced report on the situation. For some reason, foreign journalists are drawn over to the French-speaking side of the argument. I guess it makes a good story but I prefer to read something balanced and work things out for myself.

Gert left the house muttering that he would be writing a letter explaining the situation to the paper.

It's difficult to have outsiders come in and attempt to comprehend the problems when Belgians themselves struggle to explain.

Sunshine, blue skies and a little musing

I find my life bewildering sometimes ...

Today as I dropped Miss 3 off at Kindy, shopped for milk, cheese - accidentally discovering a lovely Australian wine on special - then waiting forever for a tram, I realised that I swing between the sublime and the everyday - the challenging and the dull and I'm never sure what will be next.

On Friday, I woke in Berlin, too edgy to enjoy breakfast, not really quite on the planet as I thought through the day ahead ... following the bride, documenting her day, the wedding, the family, the musicians, the unexpected ... generally charged with capturing everything, not by her but by my own internal manager.

Gert has stepped up into the space of second photographer and has started putting his soul into his work. I saw it this time. Before he had been 'the technical guy' - these days he's becoming something else when he works with his camera.

Walking back to the Pension through a warm Berlin night around midnight, he teased me about how nervous I had been at the start of the day ... laughing when I asked 'Was I?' but yes, too nervous to eat well, unable to answer the simplest of questions ...

To capture the moment, sometimes I need to find my way into the soul or the heart of a family or group or subject. This family hadn't been all together for years and the children live between 2 countries - I wanted to gift a series of portraits as well as the days and ceremonies.

I did it.

This week is all about working my way through the 1000 images that have survived the first two cuts. It's about creating an order of events, merging Gert's work and mine, sending the best back to Berlin and over to Israel.

I have never had the experience of photographing so much exuberant and deeply felt love. I need to ask permission but I'm hoping to post some of the photographs in the weeks ahead ... just waiting until the bride and groom return from Venice.

Sunshine and blue skies, 28 degrees celsius expected.
Have a lovely day where ever you are.

Gipsstrasse, Berlin

Gipsstrasse, Berlin, originally uploaded by - di.

I love the fact that the street signs are there in the background ... probably because it was a fabulous night in a beautiful city.

An extract from Katherine Mansfield's 'At The Bay'

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though one immense wave had come rippling, rippling—how far? Perhaps if you had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish flicking in at the window and gone again...

If curious, you can read more here.

Katherine Mansfield, Author

I went all the way to Berlin to discover the book that is presently feeding my New Zealand soul. There is a truly superb bookshop on Knesebeckstrasse 23 called Marga Schoeller Bucherstube and its English section created something like a small death in this lover of books.

Simply titled Mansfield, the book was written by C K Stead, another famous kiwi writer who confesses to using what is known about one of New Zealand's most famous writers and then creating the missing unknowable pieces based on his research and letters and other material links to her friends - people like DH and Frieda Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Lutton Strachey, Aldous Huxley, TS Eliot, Viginia Woolf and more of the extraordinary figures from that time during World War One.

Stead writes, This is a work of fiction, therefore employs imagination, guesswork and contrivance. Like every historical novel, it fills as best it can - and sometimes also is glad to exploit - gaps in the record.

Virginia Woolf once famously admitted that Katherine Mansfield had produced ‘the only writing I have ever been jealous of.’.

To explain a little:Katherine's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H G Wells), KM concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Gert was reading over my shoulder on the train back to Antwerpen, only stopping when he realised it was very much a book he wants to read after me.

Berlin

trumpet, berlin, originally uploaded by - di.

Just in from Berlin ...

I was 3 days without the internet however 2000+ photographs were taken and so many beautiful things were experienced.

A wedding in Berlin, a Jewish/Muslim wedding, with a Balkan band playing through the second night of ceremony and festivities ... a German pension where the landlady came through with our fabulous German breakfast every morning.

Our room with the enormous windows in the historically-protected building in a lovely section of the city.

And then there was the family of the bride and groom, their open-hearted generosity with the photographer and the love between all of them that invited capture.

So much was beautiful that I was moved to tears 3 times and even more delightfully, my photographs moved people to tears on their first viewing. Weddings are always quite the stressful thing, specially for the photographer charged with capturing everything about that special day. Gert has moved from 'photography assistant' to 'photography partner' and with two cameras we covered every event over the two days, pleased to discover we work well as a team.

There was a huge pool of musical talent wandering through the white rooms in the huge rambling family home and everyone took turns to play and entertain. So many talented people played for us all.

The bride's siblings played beautiful music too and then there were the friends from the music academies and etc ...

And then there was Shabbat for family and close friends on Friday evening ... it felt like a privilege to be there and witness the ceremony.

I have never seen so much love in a family.
It was stunning to be pulled in and included.

In other news there is a whisper of a project that would involve me flying into Cairo, Istanbul, Dubai, Tehran, Beirut and East Jerusalem but I'll write of it if it happens. I'm still getting my head around it all but have said yes to being interested.

Tot straks from the tired happy kiwi chick ... photographs from Berlin to follow in the days ahead.

The New Zealand was running this story today ...

Together in Life and in Death.

This & That

So I was taking the anti-inflammatories for my root-canal and my knee is rapidly improving ... it's grand. Peter will be pleased, having elicited a promise from me about seeing a doctor one day soon.

It was good to walk without a limp today ... that limp I had been rather successfully ignoring until I tried keeping up with Shannon in the city. She's one of those gorgeous long-legged creatures who stride everywhere. I was the limpy creature.

Work today but I had to race away from the office early.
I have this 'situation' going on there.

Last week I took my laptop with Photoshop CS2 and opened it just once and briefly.
This week I opted out of making my bag 'that' heavy and so of course, I had to go home to work on some photographs for an exhibition not-my-own, needed within a couple of hours.

2 hours of hard labour and that was done.

Did I mention the weather ... 24 degrees celsius today.
It was grand, even if I was the chick falling asleep over a book on the train between Brussels and Antwerp.

Hope alles goed over in your world.

Tot straks from the kiwi in Belgie.

New Zealand Humour.

Mark reminded me of a New Zealand advert that delighted us all when it first appeared.

It went like this ...

Yesterday, after the lovely lunch in the sun with Shannon, I realised that my temporary filling had fallen out.

I was quietly distraught, knowing I would have to wait to be seen this time.

I went in today, quite happy really, knowing I could deal with another patch-up relatively easily but HAH, everything had changed and we had reached root-canal status.

Mmmmm, so I'm home with stage 1 of the root canal. Back for the final repair the day before I fly out to Italy.

Children and child-like ones - do not neglect your teeth because the problem doesn't go away, it simply gets worse.

But the day started nicely.
A visit with the lovely Peter. We were out on his balcony, enjoying the sun as we caught up on each others news. It was difficult to drag myself away in the end but I did.

After much dithering I walked over to the port buildings and picked up an extra flash we need for the wedding in Germany. I couldn't be bothered but mmmm, maybe it was best and I'll just laze about for the rest of the day now. Psychologically limping after visiting the tandarts and despite the fact she's quite adorable.

Tot straks.

Peter amused me with this Facebook youtube.

A friend had a recent experience with a work-orientated Facebook account showing an explicit dating advertisement on her page, simply because a 'friend' had added himself to the raunchy dating site.

We were discussing the work-related stuff she wanted to show me and all I could see was this horrendously explicit photograph. She was mortified when I finally asked if it was ummmm appropriate to have that kind of image there.

She hadn't noticed it because it's not what she expected to find there on here account ...

A lovely 24 hours ...

Yesterday and Ruth arrived bearing wine, then Shannon rolled in fresh from Holland and we all just kind of hung out for the afternoon. I cooked a piece of roast lamb from New Zealand, with potatoes, kumaras (sweet potatoes), carrots, onion and garlic finding their way into the big roasting dish too.

In a moment of inspiration and realising that summer has begun, we moved the old oak dining table and ecetera out onto the balcony and ate dinner as the sun was going down.

It was a dinner with much laughter and conversation, one that ended with apple crumble and whipped cream, coffee and as many Oreos as were required to tame the tummy.

This morning my eyebrows were transformed into something stunning by Shannon, my delight with them amusing her endlessly. We wandered into the city to find her some European glasses before making our way to a cute little restaurant on Hendrick Conscienceplein for her birthday lunch.

Wandering minstrels serenaded us and we ate next to the St Carolus Borromeus Church - the baroque church built by the Jesuits around 1620. I love that area.

Tonight Shannon's back in Holland, flying out Wednesday ...
By crikey, it was a lovely 24 hours.

(Author's note: Shannon's first words to me on meeting were 'Do you say 'by crikey' in New Zealand?' Taken aback, I wasn't sure and told her I thought it was an Aussie thing however ... it turns out I do, most specifically when someone's in trouble but it's a little amusing.)