'Make sure you go to The Atrium
to see The World Press Photo Awards'
wrote Marion from ArtsPost
on her Facebook page.
The exhibition finishes tomorrow.

So off I went.
The sun was shining
in our peaceful city.
I was feeling happy and free.

2011
Press photograghs from a year on this beautiful planet.

I joined the slow moving crowd.
We walked in silence
as we passed from photo to photo.
I could sense that others were experiencing
the same emotional response that was dawning on me.

Suddenly I had the crazy thought I was in a holy place,
a cathedral.

I was walking the stations of the cross..




It was the photograph of a mother and son that triggered this feeling.
 The Madonna ..
a Muslim mother comforting her son.

I sketched her quickly
to remind me
the Pieta is not a historical happening.
It is life.

2011
tsunamis
and war
and hunger
and sadness..

the media
brings all this into our homes every day.

Today no written words were needed .

I wandered home in a pensive mood,
through the campus of Wintec
and gathered a handful of fallen treasures that lay in the gutter.

The cherry blossoms fluttered in the breeze like scraps of soft silk.

The tui and the waxeyes have sipped the nectar
from the kowhai flowers,
  now scattered like a golden carpet.

I brought these scrappy relics of early spring home with me.
While I sipped my cup of tea
I made a mandala and
pondered
on the
world I live in,
so mysterious,
so full of
pain
and beauty.

I gave quiet thanks for brave journalists
who bring us face to face with the rawness of life
that otherwise I would have no knowledge of,
living as I do in a comfortable bubble of plenty and peace.