Sydney Intro/Retro-spect(ive)

You may remember the above image from last Christmas's blog entry, when my daughter & I were in Sydney. I've been sitting with my photos from that trip all these months, returning periodically to sort, consider & arrange them. The majority of the pictures I took were mainly for the sake of recording our activities & adventures with my brother & his family (and my sister & hers when they joined us)——as a way to preserve the memories of our time together. Somehow, on this very first visit to Australia, it felt more "right" to just take everything in——to get a feel for the place & not be distracted by trying to photograph the landscape, the water, the architecture & the thousands of details in between. The camera is a wonderful tool, with many uses, but I find it can also distract from the actual experiencing of places, of moments.

Not until the final days did I feel truly ready to take in my surroundings through the camera lens. Fungus-spotted stone & an eroded rockbed at the water's edge called to me at the end of a bush walk and ended up becoming a sort of framework for stringing together the earlier, fairly random, photos. And then the awesome view of that vast country, with its rich colors & patterns, was the ultimate glimmer of magic as we flew across it on our way home a couple of days later.

So, at long last, I thought I'd share a sampling of screenshots I'm using as a reference for a book structure I've been putting together...

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Working with the photos from this adventure——even the non-family ones shown above——has at times been difficult. They each hold the memory of moments not necessarily seen, but contained within——memories which underline the distance between Italy & Australia, driving home the reality of just how far-flung my family is. (My daughter & I in Florence, my brother & his family in Sydney, my sister & hers in Beijing, and my parents on the east coast of the US for all but the few months they spend in Italy.) When I think about how much of my nephews' & niece's growing-up-years I have missed, I find myself wishing we could more easily be part of each other's daily lives... If anything, it makes me aware of just how precious the three-week stay with my brother's family was.

I do wonder if my parents realized what they'd started when they left their own families and brought their children to live in Brazil for five years! I'm sure it's what has given us each the freedom to feel we could choose to live any place that called out our names. And we are lucky to be able to meet in so many different & wonderful places whenever we have the chance.

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My box of Sydney-found treasures——bark, leaves, berries, papers & things I have momentarily forgotten——is still awaiting the right moment to be opened. I like the idea of putting some time between the discovery of the individual items & their collective unveiling, but I must admit that I am beginning to grow curious. And I wonder what additional memories will surface?