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.
21-JUL-2010
Waiting for the storm....
Weather is a great metaphor for life - sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and there's nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella and time is a storm in which we are all lost.
Lord Byron said poetically:
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”
I’m neither a poet, nor a smart lady...
I like the wind, the dark cloud rolling over the sky like restive rams.
I like the hope of a refreshing rain ready to fight the hot army of summer.
20-JUL-2010
Splash....
The water is your friend.
You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move
Don't wait for your ship to come in - swim out to it
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
When the earth floods from global warming, the swimmers will rule the world.
19-JUL-2010
Elvis’ walk over the roof...
Only recently I have known that this silent and nicely disquieting black cat is called Elvis.
I had been used to find him roaming over my home, coming from his mysterious abode through the roof.
He didn’t disturb, he simply came in, from the window, took a tour around with the wonderful imperturbable disdainful look which only cat have, occasionally, if he was particularly in friendly mood, approached to sniff at my hand , but obviously he could not tell me his name , which probably he ignored too.
Then once, while I was looking at him, all absorbed in his phlegmatic and noble solitary walks on the roof tiles, a neighbour told me
“Does Elvis come also inside your home?”
"A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere."
~Groucho Marx~
17-JUL-2010
Like sea anemones in the sky...
Suddenly I heard the shots, and then I smelled the smoke and then the dark veil of night was lit up like in a joyful thunderstorm.
They were so close, practically over the roof tops of my street, unexpected...
Also the people sitting at the sidewalk cafe downstairs were surprised in a delightful way and they cried merrily “OHHHHH!”
Everybody likes fireworks; they wake up the child who still exists inside every adult...
I climbed up on my windowsill in a privileged position.
“Damn, where is my camera, where is my camera...”
I thought they were like sea anemones of light swimming in the sky.
Just for the little story, they celebrated the 35th anniversary of a local rock festival
17-JUL-2010
Eulogy of idleness.
I feel like a female, Swiss contemporary version of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov.
Oblomov, as surely you know, is the main character of the most famous novel by Ivan Goncharov.
Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, before the ideal of industrious modern man, when idleness was still looked upon by Russia's serf-owning rural gentry as a plausible and worthy goal, there was Oblomov. Indolent, inattentive, incurious, given to daydreaming and procrastination—indeed, given to any excuse to remain horizontal—Oblomov is hardly the stuff of heroes.
Yet, he is impossible not to admire.
He is forgiven for his weakness and beloved for his shining soul.
Someone has even compared Oblomov to Hamlet for answering “ No” to the fatal and famous question “ To be or not to be?”
I have not the titles to get deeper in this literary matter, but I can simply feel a deep sympathy for Oblomov, who probably had to cope with hot summers too.
All what is wise to do today is to do nothing active and to laze quietly, just daydreaming, brain don’t perspire even when it works.
14-JUL-2010
The cat who liked me too much to allow me to take a photo of her...
This cat, a lady cat, lives in a small village where we often go in the morning to buy bread (the best baker of the area!) or to have a cup of coffee and a croissant in a local easy-going cafe, which has a calm and flowered terrace.
There is not any danger for cats to stroll freely and at their pleasure in the village streets.
This one, who usually spends her happy feline life lazing philosophically on a wicker chair in front of the door of what I suppose, must be her home ( I cannot say her owners’ home, cats ,as it’s well known, have no owners, they have just human partners), for unknown reasons has an enthusiastic liking for me.
She usually doesn’t pay absolutely any attention to people, or simply avoid to be caressed by good-willing passers-by, with a disdaining and a little scornful movement.
But when she sees me she run to me to rub herself against my legs.
This display of benevolence honours me, but on the other side it prevents me from taking photos of the cat, as I’d like, because she comes immediately too close to me.
I took that this morning I could manage, because she seemed to be sleepy and I had the presumption to be quicker than her in my reaction....
No hope to have a gracious shot of an elegant cat curled up on a wicker chair among flower pots...
All what I could have, trying to be quick is a kind of snapshot of a furry bullet.
12-JUL-2010
Wind...
In the late afternoon, a little after seven, it was like if someone had suddenly opened a big window in the sky and all the energy of repressed wind could go through.
A moment before there was only the stagnant calm of a sultry hot summer day, all seemed to be motionless, as if the slighted movement could make even more difficult to breathe.
And a moment after the wind started howling and running along all the surfaces, nearly in all directions.
The birds had to change their rhythm of flight and seemed astonished.p>
The lake reacted like an old tiring horse which makes a sudden effort to gallop under a lash.
The frantic fingers of the wind ripped away from the roof all the pieces of moss and threw then into my home through the open windows, which had started slamming.
It was absolutely beautiful, noisy and wild.
12-JUL-2010
Secret garden...
"...Our house is taken in possession
By him, while he enjoys a rest.
July, with summer air and thunder-
He is our temporary guest.
July, who scatters from his pockets
The fluff of blow-balls in a cloud,
Who enters through the open window,
Who chatters to himself aloud,
Unkempt, untidy, absent-minded,
Soaked through with smell of dill and rye,
With linden-blossom, grass and beet-leaves,
The meadow-scented month July."
~Boris Pasternak~
11-JUL-2010
Sunflowers don't need any caption...
This photo doesn’t need any caption, it’s impossible to misunderstand...
It's a summer morning; this is a detail of sunflowers field.
I won’t bore anyone today with my useless lucubrations
10-JUL-2010
It's a sunrise - The sun feels hot too....
Mr. Sun felt hot, it might sound like a paradox, since the source of heat was Mr. Sun himself, I cannot explain this peculiar features of stars’ temper, they are capricious characters, I only know that even Mr. Sun felt hot and his face was all red and swollen and he really didn’t feel like getting up, he wished to keep on sleeping on the soft mattress of the night, lazy and without any responsibility.
You’ll tell me, he never sleeps in reality because while we don’t see him where we live, he’s on the other side of the earth doing his job for people who live there.
You might be right rationally, of course, but, believe me; stars often have their private life in parallel dimensions.
I can tell you for sure only what he thought when he had to make an effort to come out among the tangle of morning mist which stuck on him making his movement goofy and slow.
He was not happy at all, he felt tired and hot and he had the impression to perspire, but, being the sun, all the droplets immediately got dry and he had not this relief either.
“Would it be really so tragic if I went back to sleep right now? – He thought -They will get scared; some fanatics will start screaming nonsense about Armageddon; they’ll be upset, but tomorrow I’ll be at work as usual once again and they’ll quickly forget their temporary discomfort...”
The moon, that was nearly completely new in that very day, even though she remained very old (another astronomical paradox) heard Mr. Sun mumbling and whispered to him:
“It’s your problem, my dear, but remember that in the present economical crisis, when one has a secure job it’s sensible trying to keep it. I know a lot of unemployed stars, who would be happy to be immediately engaged at your place...”
“Ah damn! – Mr. Sun sighted – you are right!”
He tore the curtain of mist and rose.
09-JUL-2010
The excellence of total simplicity...
The best things are the simplest, but only if they are absolutely perfect in their few essential elements.
When we try to make all complicated, too charged with decorations, sauces, excess of ingredients, it’s probably because the core is not worthy by itself.
Making something complicated in an average way is easier to make something simple in a perfect way.
Just grilled bread, garlic, tomatoes olive oil, pepper salt and basil, it’s apparently easy, isn’t it?
But if the bread is not the right one, if the tomatoes are not perfectly ripe, if the olive oil is not of first choice from a country where they know how to make it, if salt is just common one instead of “ fleur de sel”...and so on, so on, well the perfect simplicity fades into average mediocrity.
We have understood each other.
Now I have to dedicate the necessary attention to my “ bruschetta”.
08-JUL-2010
Evocatively refreshing view...
We tend too often to take for granted what we have as its sure availability made it banal and less precious.
Event thought it’s not possible to correct completely this flaw, since it’s part of our imperfect (and for this reason so wonderful) nature, we can be fully aware of it at least.
I’m so used to have a splendid natural display just out of my window that I not always appreciate it as it would deserve.
The Mount Blanc, all happily covered with snow (lucky mountain!)is getting pinkish in the light of early sunset.
It’s not very clear, the heat affects the transparency of the air, but it’s there, old patient giant...
08-JUL-2010
Dead calm...
“What dreadful hot weather we have!
It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance”
I like this so dandy and slightly snobbish quote, this way I’m obliged to confess my deep liking for the witty aspect of Victorian age (I think only that aspect anyway).
I find it...refreshing, and it’s hard to say how much I need anything refreshing right now.
Anyway, in spite of my disliking for all excessive formalisms and mannered attitude, I cannot help thinking over about the bad effect heat has on people’s behaviour and appearances.
I would never impose any Victorian clothes style on anyone anymore and I shiver with creeping discomfort only trying to imagining me squeezed into hard corsets or trapped into all those gowns and thick underwear with long sleeves and hats even to go out to check mail in the box at the end of the garden...
But also the view of nowadays ladies and gentlemen showing themselves dressed up as Hawaiian beachcombers even when they visit an historical town far from any beach, only because it’s summer is rather depressing for me.
I suppose this is another story, as always....
I’m trying to tame my new camera and I can only take photos at random from my windows.
I’m lucky.
07-JUL-2010
The outline of the roof tops....
Well, let’s put things like that...I had claimed I would have not spoken of my little and absolutely not interesting everyday matters, but in a way I have to justify this photo.
To make a long story shorter, I cannot get out from home for a few days until some little wound heal.
Nothing serious, but I cannot wear shoes of any kind, so I’m trapped at home barefoot.
It’s not any big problems, since I’m in my summer hibernation, so it changes very little, except my opportunity to take photos.
I have just climbed (strictly barefoot) on the windowsill of my window in the roof, because a glorious and naturally extremely saturate sunset has set the sky over my home on fire.
This is all what I have to show you.
“Today I saw a red and yellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am!
Of course, I thought that yesterday too, and it rained. “
~Woody Allen ~
07-JUL-2010
Born on the 7th of July 1922
There is not any need, I suppose, to write a specific caption to explain or describe this photo...
My father and I have not many photos together, maybe because I don’t like allowing others to take photos of me or maybe because both of us are rather reserved and occasionally even apparently bashful.
This one, which is relatively recent, is the last one we have together.
Today my father is 88, he’s still amazingly well for his age, both physically and mentally and I’d even dare to say that lately his temper and mood have become milder and nicer.
I had dedicated a small gallery to his oldest family photos, in case you are a bit curious about the long life of this gentleman, who, among the more important and worthy things he has done in his life, has done me as well (with the fundamental cooperation of my mother who had also the main role in the matter, but it’s not her birthday today, so she has to stay temporary aside), you might give it a look.
Clicking on this small photo album
He’s with my mother now, while I’m 300 km away, I don’t intend bother you with a detailed explanation of the reasons.
I spoke to him by phone this morning, I think he’s happy to be arrived until this point of his existence and I think he’s right.
“Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. “
~Mark Twain~
06-JUL-2010
I missed the crows....
It’s even too easy, looking at a field of wheat under a stormy and nicely menacing sky, thinking of Vincent Van Gogh and his desperate paintings
I hope to capture also some crowds here, but they disappointed my expectation.
I wonder why storms can be so appealing, maybe because they are a natural metaphor of the turmoil of our inner feelings, our confused nature which is also so exuberantly rich in all its nuances.
So many artists were tormented and restless beings and this banal ascertainment necessarily leads to another broader question:
How can we deal with the gap that exists often between moral values and creative talent in human beings?
Would we appreciate more a person without any genius or artistic talent, but who is rich of good feelings, humanity, serenity and kindness or an extraordinary artistic and creative skill which coexists in the same body with a miserable and selfish or even corrupted nature?
Would we extrapolate and admire only the work of geniality without being influenced by the flaws or the fault of a less perfect nature for what is related to common daily life and relationship with others?
There are exceptions, of course in both sides, but exceptions, as they say, are there only to confirm rules.
05-JUL-2010
The brand new day looks already tired early in the morning....
I have decided to remain faithful to my decision to stop mentioning the usual stereotypes related with summer, heat and bla, bla, bla...
On the other hand, being a kind of living paradox, I post my photos on the web, I write very long erratic captions, but I realize I don’t feel like speaking strictly about myself, as bloggers ( what an horrible neologism) are supposed to do with indestructible self-confidence in the attention others can pay to their personal vicissitudes.
I’m too self-ironical to not perceive the creeping feeling of ridiculous which would invade me if I entertained you only with a not requested description of the banal details of my little life, thinking it’s worthwhile.
I have studied and analysed the behaviour aspects which is possible to perceive going a little deeper, maybe just looking at photos people take and post and at their comments.
There is always something to learn from everything, isn’t it?
And it’s always much more useful to learn rather than giving lessons.
The sun comes back incessantly day after day; it’s reassuring, but also a bit troubling if one starts looking over our narrow borders.
I’m happy if someone like any of my photos, how could it be in any other way?
I’m gratified by the fact that some people take even the time to leave a comment to let me know they were here.
What intrigues me instead is that I receive the most interesting and well articulated long comments...privately.
In a way we expose ourselves to the global reality of the Web, but then, when we want to express something more authentic, we prefer to do it in a slightly secluded way, as a dialogue.
I think it might be always connected with what crossed my mind yesterday, that is the depth of communication can be expressed only in a limited circle, because enlarging that sphere too much makes it weaker.
My private correspondents really suggest interesting topic, they take time to open a much less banal approach to what I’m trying to express by images and, poorly, by words.
I’ll answer all of them, with pleasure.
It’s so refreshing to have an intellectual exchange for the sake of it, not because of any polite obligation.
04-JUL-2010
Of clouds and friendship....
Clouds invite to speculate or simply, following their ethereal shapes our thoughts try to fly a little higher too.
Human mind is the more complex thing we know, and we understand it only in intuitive way, since the complexity is very hard to measure.
In spite of the complexity of our mind, we – human beings – are superficial by nature. Once Paul Valéry wrote that depth is not deeper than skin.
With nowadays technologies we can theoretically meet and known more people and communicate with them.
But in reality it’s not a very relevant change, which doesn’t change at any deep level our way to interact and our own essence.
We keep on sharing the relationships which really matter for each of us, like love or real friendship (we use the word “friends” too superficially and too quickly and it tends to lose its real meaning to become only a synonymous of “general acquaintance”) with a very limited and reduced circle of people.
A couple of hours ago I spoke to my best friend (technology has given us the precious opportunity to keep in touch with our dear ones even when they are very far from us) and just for fun I asked him to guess what I had on my desk, on the right, excluding all the usual objects which invade my desk normally.
Of course there was not any web camera on (I don’t like web cameras).
I heard him giggling...
“ So let me see, for you it’s about 4 pm, how is the weather there? Hot?”
“Then you have your favourite big glass which you stole, oopps, you took from a Pub in London and it’s full of lime juice, a little of mint syrup, and a lot of sparkling mineral water and, I presume, three or four ice cubes, because you like the noise they make against the side of the glass”.
The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
04-JUL-2010
The nice spontaneous chaos of nature....
I have taken a resolution, like a kind of promise to myself, which I do want to keep.
I will not repeat once again that it’s summer (everybody knows that in the hemisphere where I live it’s summer), that it’s hot (all mass media dedicate space to this sometimes disturbing, but fundamentally natural climatic condition, giving every year the same lapalissian suggestions
“Drink a lot of water, wear light and comfortable clothes, and don’t go out in the hottest hours of the day”
Luckily they are there to tell me what to do, or else I would have stopped drinking and I would have gone for a walk at 1 pm, possibly along a motorway, wearing my thick wool coat and a transparent plastic bag as hat!)
I won’t keep on annoying my casual few readers with the statement that I dislike summer and I don’t care at all for beach life either, I have already declared that clearly and nothing will change or improve if I repeat it again and again.
So if we feel like we might speak of other things.
The photos I’m posting here are like the environmental representation of my mood and they are like the set when my more or less confused thoughts are articulated.
Then, leaving aside all presumed slight intellectualism, I like taking photos in every time of the years and it’s good to practise, trying to improve the little I can do.
Just another common day have started.
03-JUL-2010
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
I get out of my lair early in the morning, when nature is not a cruel stepmother yet...
There is this intact beauty, which still allows me to admire the lazy dances of the clouds without looking immediately for a shelter in the shade.
When the rhythms of time seem to be slower, the physical activity leaves place to an erratic series of reflections, which - with exaggerate optimism - we might call daily little philosophy of life.
As we struggle to make sense of things, life looks on in repose.
Looking at this field vibrating under the morning breeze suddenly I remembered a quote from “Alice in Wonderland”
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
I have always enjoyed the witty and eccentric quotations of Lewis Carroll, but I feel ill at ease thinking of some aspects of the biography of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, ministry of the Anglican Church and talented photographer.
I’m reading an interesting book on this subject, but this is another story....
02-JUL-2010
Good morning, here I am....
I could not help thinking of what a kind lady wrote me only a couple of days ago.
She used to visit Geneva often some years ago and she was nicely surprised by the habit local people had, at restaurant and cafes terrace, to share their bread basket with birds, mostly sparrows, which are the cheekiest ones, maybe because their agility and their reduced dimension allow them to approach the wished bread slaloming easily among forks, cups and glasses....
It’s always interesting to see ourselves through other people’s eyes, because too often we don’t notice anymore what is too usual for us and we miss the freshness and the amusement which is in that.
It’s not the case, at least for me, in this little summer ritual.
I find it amusing and nice day after day, even though it’s just a little moment, as light as the flight of a sparrow...
In the relatively fresh air of early morning , we sit at a sidewalk cafe table and they join us.....
02-JUL-2010
I got up early, but later than the sun...
Early morning is a precious time, always, but now in a very special way.
The refreshing fingertips of night have wiped away the sticky and sultry traces of the former day and the new one is still intact in its ephemeral cleanness.
Like all nice things, for the mysterious alchemy that makes them temporary to give them their value, it won’t last.
The only wise attitude is to enjoy it.
I wonder why the repetitive song of a fountain is relaxing and, in this circumstance even more refreshing, while a dripping tap can drive us crazy...
All is relative and strictly connected to a specific context, I suppose.
I savour every drop of this atmosphere and I’m well.
01-JUL-2010
If you don't know where to start from...start from a cup of coffee!
You might not believe me, but I’m very strict about what I do and I’m the most severe and intransigent critic of my own photography ( in other personal matters I’m probably much more self-indulgent, but this is another story...).
I tend to find all possible and impossible flaws in my snap-shots and I’m always a bit surprised to realize they might interest someone.
Besides that I’m always concerned by the uselessness to show something personal in my photos, since my self-irony , my sense of ridiculousness and my certitude that keeping a low profile is the best way to not be overwhelmed prevent and preserve me from the occasional temptation to think I might be important (smile).
I want to be honest, I’m not humble at all, I’m conscious of some of my little skills, or else I would not be in condition to criticize what I do.
But I do think that remaining always aware of our limits and avoiding carefully to make a fool of ourselves, trusting too much what people tell us in an apparent praising way is already a good result.
This erratic preface is an elementary way to introduce what I think I’ll post in this gallery, which will be necessarily a bit personal.
I have already diffusely stated that I don’t like summer and I dislike a lot of other things that a majority of respectable people like.
If I claimed I’m sorry for this attitudinal difference I’d tell a lie (grin).
Anyway in summer I have the golden rule to not go anywhere and to spend most of my time indoors, except very early in the morning or under the pressure of some strictly necessary task.
For this reason I won’t’ be able to post any exciting picture of exotic places.
It will be only my little daily reality, even more banal than usual, whit the pretentious expectation to find something worthy in that.
The best way to start everything is to do it from the beginning.
The beginning of my day, to start it in the most positive frame of mind, is a cup of coffee; I’m terribly fussy about coffee.
Here you can see my first cup of coffee in this little countryside café which I have already photographed so many times (when you love something iterating it increase the pleasure).
It’s relatively early, about 7:30 pm.
The temperature is already suggesting the later heat, but the sun is still merciful and there is a light breeze, very light...
I can hear only the comforting noise of a little village early in the morning, birds, shutters which get open, invisible steps....