31-AUG-2008
The last stronghold of summer…
I know the official end of summer is fixed in September on the equinox... But in my personal imaginary conception it ends on the first of September, maybe it’s because September is one of my favourite months.
In all cases I consider that this erratic visual diary, which has kept me company during my summer hibernation, has arrived to its end.
This last image might be seen in a slightly symbolic image, if one feels like, but after all we can have a symbolic vision of every image, since it depends on the meaning we want to attribute to things.
Thank you to all the patient and kind people who have followed me until here with their interesting, helpful and amusing comments.
I’m going out from my summer hibernation and I think September will be a nice month.
30-AUG-2008
The end of the storm....
The end of the storm, the end of summer...
We tend to forget sometimes that the end of something is necessarily the beginning of something else and all is cyclic even though always different at the same time.
I cannot help thinking of some lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot, which I like very much
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”
29-AUG-2008
"Mum, is there a storm coming?"
Summer is going to be blown away, day gets a bit shorter and mornings are cooler.
Sky wears dark colours when rain is coming.
28-AUG-2008
Two old friends and their daily aperitif....
Different times of the day to tell a quiet good-bye to summer.
Sitting under the still needed green shelter of a big sun umbrella, two old friends sip their glass of beer and their glass of white wine in their daily ritual.
They look the lake, at people strolling by; they look at the time passing...
27-AUG-2008
Now that it’s ending I’m afraid I’ll miss something of summer...
How voluble I can be, even though I claim my consistency...
I have survived summer very easily, in my usual reserved way, but I think that I’ll miss the flavour of a coffee taken in early morning at a sidewalk café table, the time to read the newspapers headlines before the sun is too mercilessly hot and so many other simple , but important little details of my daily routine.
26-AUG-2008
Lady Summer puts a little too much make-up on...
Lady Summer puts a little too much make-up on in the evening to cover her first wrinkles.
She nearly moves me with her exaggeration and reminds me of aging beauties who refuse to surrender to time dictatorship.
There is always a good lesson to learn...
Suddenly I thought of what O.W. used to say:
"A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite,
and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.".
Oh well, Lady Summer, I meant to say that these colours suit you quite well.
Enjoy your night!
25-AUG-2008
When summer wakes up in a gloomy mood....
When summer wakes up in a gloomy mood, with a livid shiver in the air, a slightly lurid sky which fights with the sunrise pink nuances, it means it’s nearly time for this season to pack up the baggage and to leave for nearly another whole years.
Nevertheless there is in this melancholy fading a captivating beauty, more intimate and deeper, like the one we can see on the still beautiful, but a little tired face of a mature woman who had been too shining attractive, but nearly stereotyped, in her young years.
I don’t know rationally why, but I picture in my mind spring and summer as female characters and autumn and winter as male ones.
22-AUG-2008
Praise of silence
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace.
You can find a feeling of enriching pace in the deep serenity of silence
right in your room, your garden or wherever you might look for it.
Someone said once that real silence is not merely an absence of noise,
but it begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
Also summer has learnt to speak in a lower voice getting older...
21-AUG-2008
Simplicity needs quality
Someone mistakes simplicity with banality.
Perfect simplicity is never banal, while artificial complexity and compulsory search for originality often are.
In all artistic disciplines simplicity supported by accuracy and creativity produces the most valuable effects.
In this case I have found an excellent means to enjoy the remains of summer in two very simple elements.
A fresh salad and a quite unpretentious book of pure entertainment, without any intellectual pretention.
Simplicity...
But simplicity based on quality and accuracy.
The salad is made of all just picked up vegetables from our kitchen garden, only the olive oil and the salt are not “home produced”.
The tomatoes are peeled and all the seed have been taken away before cutting them in small cubes.
The eggplants have been grilled separately, after remaining for a while, salted, to let their bitter liquid go out.
The basil was cut with scissors, not minced.
The book is a kind of detective story, an easy reading, but it’s rather original and the characters have nuances, without being too stereotyped.
In the background summer fades way slowly....
16-AUG-2008
Voluptuousness of pineapple “carpaccio”.
“Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today”
Quality is always more enjoyable than quantity.
The sublime perfection of a homemade pineapple sorbet with basil syrup, all on the top of a fresh pineapple “carpaccio”.
13-AUG-2008
Summer walk
It’s so unusual a summer early afternoon like this one.
It’s flavour of spring, a denial of sultry weather to offer instead a bright and nearly bracing day.
Air is transparent and clean as if it had been carefully washed up by last night rain.
How easy is feeling happy when one wants to feel happy.
The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimist lends encouragement.
12-AUG-2008
Upstairs, downstairs...
There is something violet in the early morning light and one can smell a scent of rain in the air.
We could nearly pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist and it would not be too bad, for a while, like when one pulls the sheets over one’s head in the morning to postpone for some minutes the moment to wake up completely.
It’s not a matter of deleting reality, it's just an attempt to push it away for a break, being aware that it remains there in all cases.
As a character of comics said
"I love mankind, it's people I cannot stand".