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.