31-JUL-2010
The bread we can eat only once a year...
July is over and this gallery has come to the last image.
Tomorrow, the first of August is the Swiss national day, we have our simple traditions to celebrate it, and we are low profile people ;^)
But I don’t intend to go in details telling you about our legends, our history and all the rest, not here at least.
I have chosen to dedicate the last page of this series to a little simple thing, a typical bun.
Frankly speaking it’s good, but it’s nothing so wonderfully refined and amazingly delicious, it’s a plain good bun.
What makes it special is that you can find it on sale only once a year, in coincidence with our national day.
The fact we have only one day a year to eat it, makes it precious and refined, while if it was on sale in our baker’s shops every day, probably people would snob it after a while.
Someone among you, maybe a little fussy, would ask why I could buy it today, since the national day it’s tomorrow....
Well it’s because this year the national day it’s on Sunday, so not all the bakers will be open tomorrow.
So exceptionally this year we’ll have this bun for two days in a row.
It’s sold like that, every bun with a little Swiss flag on....
And it was the last page and the note book is finished.
30-JUL-2010
Even if there is nothing to laugh about, laugh on credit...
Laughing is a peculiar human feature, even though some, with the stubborn tendency people have to see all from a merely human perspective, looking for their parameters in everything, attribute that to animals or other branches...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said once that nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
I don’t know why, but suddenly came to my mind another quote, by Bertolt Brecht, if I remember right, who ironically stated that righteous people have no sense of humour.
It’s intriguing and I won’t keep over expressing my own opinion, I prefer to smile silently...
What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!
Just to remain on the light side I might dare to suggest everyone, myself included, to laugh a lot, so when we are older all our wrinkles will be in the right places.
29-JUL-2010
Will they come in?
Well, they should and should do it in a hurry, because the small restaurant of Giuseppe is already full.
When a restaurant is cosy, with an excellent and creative cooking, a very nice and pleasant little staff and the number of tables is limited, clients never lack.
One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton;
he who does not cannot be otherwise."
28-JUL-2010
Rainbow is the smiling face of rain...
It’s getting like a habit, a nice one, nevertheless a habit... two rainbows in a week or I’d say four, since both of them were...double.
I wonder if what makes all nice things even nicer is their rarity, more than their peculiarity; their incertitude, which doesn’t allow us to take them for granted.
After the heavy shower I reported in my former photo, I was practically sure to see a rainbow when the sun suddenly came out again.
It was once again a gracious geometry of colours in the sky.
I liked looking at it, waiting to see it fading away as suddenly as it has come.
But I was not in such a frantic hurry to catch my camera and in a totally merry childish mood as I felt only a few days ago, when I was the witness of another rainbow – among many other witnesses, surely, but I felt as if it was an unique gift only for me.
We are so capricious in our liking sometimes or maybe it’s just because we are too sure to see it fulfilled.
I had simply to move from a window to another one and the rainbow were there, exactly as expected.
28-JUL-2010
It rains on the castle and on my roof...
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Mostly if you are safely and comfortably indoors....
Like a welcome summer rain, humour may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
27-JUL-2010
Casual encounter between neighbours....
I have always liked the music of Pink Floyd, even though they might be considered out of date by many by now.
I’m out of date too, I’m proud to have never been in fashion.
Oscar Wilde, who as always knew what he was speaking of, once said:
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
But this will be the subject for another day speculation...
What was I telling about?
Ah, yes, Pink Floyd.
Their music..... I think it’s suitable either for early morning or for the golden hour before sunset.
It’s not a music composed for full daylight.
It’s oneiric in a certain way.
I have just come back from a short walk, just by the lake, because it’s a nice time for that.
I took a photo of a snobbish swan (it happens that beautiful creatures are totally deprived of mental skills, swans are not as quick as ducks and sparrows...) and suddenly I heard in my mind an old song
"A Pillow Of Winds"
Already the title is beautiful...a pillow of winds...
“Now wakes the owl
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone”
26-JUL-2010
Typical Swiss merry scarecrow....
It‘s not necessary to be a child to feel like dancing in a sunflower fields.
It’s not necessary to be silly to sing silly songs.
It’s not necessary to be a fairy to create daily magic.
"Just living is not enough.
One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
~Hans Christian Andersen~
25-JUL-2010
The sunset fisherman....
The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive
but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end
Your imagination is under there.
24-JUL-2010
Many golden sheaves ...
Many golden sheaves lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay
As girls with golden hair who
Might rise from where they slept and go away.
Summer gives me time to reminiscing....
"Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind"
~William Butler Yeats~
23-JUL-2010
When I don't know what to take photos of...
It happens often that a person who enjoys the hobby of photography is at home and wonders what can take photos of...
The answers to this question maybe several.
Someone takes photos of pets, someone looks for inspiration in still life compositions, someone runs after a relative begging for a portrait model, others take photo of their own feet, or other parts of their anatomy.
All these choices are nearly equally respectable and might produce nice photos, with a little luck and a certain accuracy (when there is neither a good subject nor a suitable dose of technical accuracy it’s practically impossible to get anything slightly better than a miserable snapshot).
I open the window and compensate my limited skill with the happy chance I have to live here.
Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold.
But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which colour to slide down on the rainbow.
Not every rainbow has a pot of gold at the end, some just have a cloud!
So don't miss all the beautiful colours of the rainbow looking for that pot of gold.
23-JUL-2010
There is always something to fix at the beach...
In Los Angeles county, California they have Baywatch,
All in proportion I suppose.
But, honestly, who is the most original and full of fanciful personality?
I can guarantee that the honest lifeguard, or beach caretaker, as you prefer,
in this photo has never undergo any plastic surgery to get any silicone extra appealing accessory....
22-JUL-2010
Just vegetables, but MINE!
I know it’s a quite banal photo; it’s just a common still life without any apparent mysterious grace…
I’m sure many of you have read that wonderful little book written for children but so suitable for adults called “ Le Petit Prince” ( The little Prince”) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, so I won’t bore anyone summing up all the story.
At a certain moment the Little Prince, who had dedicated time and love to the only flower which grew on his small planet, a rose, finds out that there are gardens full of roses everywhere on the planet Earth and feels melancholy and disappointer because his rose, which he considered unique is just a rose among many others.
But then he realizes that his rose remains unique, because his cares to make it grow well and all the attention dedicated to it have made his rose really special for him, so actually different from all the others and unique.
And here we come back to this banal picture of fresh vegetables...
They are not aesthetically so perfect like the ones which are selected for supermarket stalls, they are twisted, I would say they have more personality; nevertheless they have not the standard qualities of vegetables everyone can buy.
But in a way they are unique, because I have picked them up from our kitchen garden, after checking everyday if they were ripe enough.
Being totally clumsy and basically a city-girl, I had more or less unconsciously considered that vegetables grew in supermarkets, only recently, thank to my husband, I have started enjoying the pleasure to have our own vegetables and, believe it or not, they are quite unique and taste better than everyone else!
I have learnt that gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.
