somersaulting

i'm still dealing with the newness, with the commute, with the four-in-the-morning-wake-up-calls one day and the two-in-the-morning-bedtimes the next.
bear with me.
please.
and in the meantime: my links - all of them - are more than worthwhile.

from china with love

between being slightly overwhelmed by my (great) new job, and distinctly overwhelmed by a nasty flu, i haven't had the time or energy for a lot of important-to-me things.
i did manage, though, to spend a splendid evening (smiles and recognition and endless camera-talk) with the wonderful tomo in amsterdam last week...
and i did manage to pick up some developed and printed test rolls from a couple of new/old cameras.
these two images are from a great wall DF-2 which my husband, sweet person that he is, negotiated at a beijing market stall during his recent holiday in china. i confess: my inexperience with the waist-level viewfinder had me waving the thing wildly in all directions, much to the puzzlement of passers-by, but i am not displeased with the results.
my second oriental souvenir was a seagull TLR, which turned out, like the great wall, to be in delectable working order - and it smells ravishing - but i'll save its little efforts for another day.

a kind of a hush

all is past, he tells her, all is healing, all is well; in his eyes, though, transparent and blue, is a sadness that belies his story.
circumstance has tatted his existence into a mystifying intricacy, and she wants to reach, touch, reassure him: that someday, though the curtain may stay draped, he
will see the fineness of the filaments and not the empty grimness in between.

an open book and an empty cup

"the sky really was that blue", says graham, in his first post about the europephotobloggers meetup*.

it wasn't just the perfect weather, though, that bestowed brightness on the weekend - it was, first and foremost, the people: those i had met before and was delighted to see
again, those i had hoped to meet and whose aquaintance i was happy to make, and many, many new, but now-familiar names and faces.
the energy, the sharing of creative insights, the good humour, made the get-together
a great success, a true feast.

and london itself - whose sidewalks we explored at length: thank you, eric! -
was the icing on the cake.

*many more impressions (everyone's) on flickr!

with somewhere to be

the week to come will be spent picking and packing, and peeking daily at the weather forecasts - rachel and i are off to london on friday for the europephotobloggers meetup.
this new old camera will, without a doubt, be slipped into my suitcase: it has an
uncanny ability to make even the greyest of days glow.

and counting

a week has become ten days, and i have been twisting myself into knots trying to translate everydayness - a summer cleaning, a profitable garage sale, a beautiful
concert in theater carré, too few sessions at the gym, and the dilemma of what
to take to london in ten days time - into some sort of uniqueness.
but there are places in the world where, sadly, such simple things would be sorely appreciated, so i feel - though subdued and uninspired - singularly blessed.

asleep with the fireflies

it's a focus thing.
i'll be back in a week.

piece of cake

"birthdays are occasions for looking forward to the making of plans, for dreaming dreams, and hoping they will come true."
-unknown

well: what a coincidence!
that was precisely what i had in mind for today.

tea with grandfather

he sits, silhouetted by light and lace, corduroy rustling on corduroy, composed, hands clasping cup, pensive.
gazing solemnly over his straight and weighted shoulders is himself, as a boy. between them, dust dances, filling the metres, the minutes, the decades, with movement and memories, and the space between black-and-white and grey with a lifetime of colour.

if pigs could fly

well.
i suppose this was their reasoning:
if you won't brake for cows, and you refuse to slow down for geese, perhaps - just
perhaps - sheer incongruity will stop you in your tracks.
it did us.