To Know a Place
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’
Cape Town, 2024
My English teacher, Jennifer Lloyd, gave me a copy of T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909 - 1962 as a gift when I left school, with the inscription, “May this book be a source of inspiration and pleasure to you in your ‘exploration.’” At the top of the page she had written, in her beautiful handwriting, this excerpt from Eliot’s Little Gidding. I have the book still, minus its dust-jacket. The spine is cracked, the blue cover is faded, the edges are worn. But the words are still alive on the page.
And there has been a certain amount of exploration, if truth be told, over these past two months, of the mental and affective as well as the physical kind, quite apart from all the exploring (and getting lost) that has happened over a lifetime.
There have been two months of work for the EU, three weeks of it in South Africa, entailing a certain amount of policy exploration, at that difficult junction where policy meets reality; time with family, and important conversations about growing up and family relations; and time too in Florida, for a reunion of Rob’s Herman cousins - raucous, hilarious, but no less meaningful for that. And Florida, of course, is a trip of its own, if that’s the kind of trip that you’re into.
All this travel - time travel, thought travel, air travel - makes me think about place - what a place is, and what it means to know a place. South Africa, for instance, where I was born and grew up and spent most of my working life and brought up my children is a place so deeply written into my being I am barely aware of it, until I stop and consider, and even then I only glimpse part of it.
In East Coker, the second of the Four Quartets (Little Gidding being the last) Eliot wrote -
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a bypass.
There’s that word ‘place’ again. Houses rise and fall. In my beginning is my end. Much to think on here, as I trudge across that open field, or past that factory, into my seventies.
Robin in the Magnolia
It’s been a couple of weeks since we first spotted, in the magnolia tree that stands in the yard before our front porch, a robin’s nest - a sturdy-looking construction of mud and twigs, wedged into a scaffolding of branches, in a shady and protected spot, in line of sight from our house.
It’s the first time in all the years we have lived here that we have seen a bird’s nest in the magnolia, and it feels almost like a sign - a little gift of life.
We have kept an eye on the female, checking on her several times a day, as she has sat quietly in the shade, incubating her eggs. Not that there is anything we could do, or could have done, if something were to happen, but it seems like a responsibility in a way, a duty of care. And, of course, we have been anxious to see her chicks - waiting, like her, for those wide open mouths to appear above the nest, clamouring for food, and declaring, ‘I’m here!’
And then, a few days ago, we saw them, just as we had imagined - eyes tight shut, beaks open wide, four baby robins, the mother robin already busy on her rounds, darting off for worms, shovelling them in.
Hopefully one day soon we’ll see the chicks hoist above the parapet, jostling for space, sprouting their feathers, and getting ready to fly. Until then we’ll keep watch, and count each day blessed.
I was going to start this post - the first since March - with news about my April visit to South Africa, on a short-term contract for the EU, and more news, about the Herman/Pazdro family reunion that took place in late April and early May in Daytona Beach, in Florida - the first family reunion in fourteen years - but then we saw the robin, and there was something about seeing that robin in our tree, taking up residence, so to speak, in our house, that seemed in some silly but not stupid way no less important, so I thought I would write about that first.
And then, for some reason, those lines of Eliot’s took shape in my mind - how does this happen? - and I went to the shelf, and took down the volume of poems, and there on the flyleaf was the quote from Little Gidding, and I realised I would have to start this blog with Jennifer Lloyd and a sense of place.
Daytona Beach
Daytona Beach, Florida
Our visit to Florida in April was all about family - I can think of no other reason, quite frankly, to go there, except perhaps to drink at Hemingway’s bar in Key West and trawl the Keys for shrimp and sunsets - but of course a trip to any part of the States is a chance, for me, to add to my Americana portfolio. So off I set with the trusty Leica, hoping to bag a few shots, armed to the gills with prejudices and preconceptions - many of which were fulfilled, I might add. But Daytona Beach, where the family gathered, proved sufficiently surprising, both in tacky mediocrity and moments of serenity, to warrant a portfolio of its own.
So here it is, the link to Daytona Beach - my new portfolio.
South Africa
A place, and also a state of mind
Cape Town, 2024
My trip to South Africa in April was for business, not pleasure; there was little time or opportunity to take photographs or to think about taking photographs.
Still, I took what I call my baby Leica with me, a compact Digilux, and managed a few frames, which I am still busy processing. Here are just a couple of photographs, all taken in Cape Town, to give you a flavour.
Oh, and of course I took a bunch of family photographs too, mostly of the English and South African grandchildren (the English lot were visiting over Easter) but I won’t share those here.
Americana
Although most of the photographs I took in Florida landed up in my Daytona Beach portfolio, these four photographs, which are not of Daytona, found their way into my Americana portfolio instead.
Juried Exhibitions
Praxis Photo Arts Center
This photograph, a Namibia landscape, was selected for the On the Road Again exhibition at the Praxis Photo Arts Center in Minneapolis. The exhibition ran from 20 April to 11 May.
The Glasgow Gallery of Photography
This image, an old favourite of mine - a close-up photograph of a yellow Mini snowed in in our back yard - was selected for the Glasgow Gallery of Photography’s Yellow exhibition, which runs from 5 -31 July.