I finally developed the Tri-X photos and pushed the developing time to 1600 ASA, I had 12 rolls from P1 to 11 and one from Nord Brabant and Belgium. I push the film to 1600 and everything looks pretty good. Not too grainy. Not having a real telephoto lens was a liability so there’s a flat sameness to the podium shots and I don’t have all that many close-up candid shots.
I’ve got two more rolls of Ilford KP2 still to develop, and I still haven’t made proof sheets. I only got a chance to peek at the negatives, and most of them look clear.
My instant camera is lousy at group shots. The electronic eye keeps focusing on the far wall, no matter how I try to trick it. So I have too many shots of Bei Dao, Duo Duo and Paul Vangelisti, but the flash is so handy. I need a compact flash system, and a better camera. My flash cable broke on my Pentax. The Minolta is fine for scenery where the focus isn’t critical. But other than that, it’s not worth carrying around.
In the mail arrives two more postcards from Vins, one of a pun on Magritte’s painting, This is not a Pipe. Mam-am fume une pipe: women bring home the bread. He wrote, “So good, your call, deep joy jumps up in me on hearing your voice. And I love you as deep, or deeper, yet than ever before.”
The other card, with two translations of poems from a Dutch woman poet, about the writing process, called Children.
I needed some photo IDs of our Belgium trip. We visited an outrageous oval castle outside of Belgium, a steel van Beersel in Beginhof, in the town of Diest. There was also a round church in the town of miracles is Scherpenheuvel, or Sharp hill. During the Middle-Ages pilgrimages were made by pagans to a holy cross-shaped oak. The tree was "Christianized" with a statue of the virgin Mary. Clearly a Celtic hangover.
The river in Louvain or Leuven is called the Dijle, where the medieval drown girl, Magrietken, or Mariika, met her end in the moat and became a saint.
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