After the snow.  The Landscape talks.  About poetic Stillness.

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Are you aware of what is happening around you? You convince yourself through your everyday routines that what surrounds you is normality, is logic, is life. Your life. Then, one day you open your eyes and realize the anormality of your surroundings, the illogic relationships that you thought were the string that kept all of it together. What a strange world. I opened my eyes and suddently I realized my life was completely out of focus. Only then I figured it out. I put my eyeglasses on and then the blur disappeared. Everything became clear. Clear but yet nothing seems to be logic right now, but, at least, I am aware of that! Photo by lilypenelope

It has been a long time I haven't written a thing on my blog. Lack of inspiration. Lack of motivation. Yet too much free time on my hands. I have been waiting. I have been thinking. I am still waiting and thinking. Time passes so slow some times it feels my life is going backwards. I wish it was tomorrow. I wish it was next month. Then I'm thinking "Shit, it's only the 16th!". But time goes by anyway. With its numbers. And its unexpected chain of events. Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Are You leaving? Are You escaping from Something? From Someone? From Yourself? Or are you running towards Something? Towards Someone? Or towards Yourself? Photo by lilypenelope

I've been asked to create a sort of emotional essay...not really sure how, why and whatever! Yet...this picture is what comes to my mind. The colors of my soul. Photo by lilypenelope

You are just a piece of Junk! Not because I think so but because that's where I found you, in a junk yard. I have a different opinion though on your identity essence. You are amazingly interesting. What is your story? Where did you come from? Who owned you? Who put you here? I wanted to take you home with me. Maybe hang you on my living room wall. To admire you, to imagine where were you before. But You are still in the Junk yard. The wall was to high to be climbed. I had to leave you there. Since ultimately you are just a piece of Junk. Unfortunately. But at least I have a snapshot to remember you. Photo by lilypenelope

What's hidden beneath the petals in a flower before its blossoming time? Beauty? Nature is going to decide. And you'll now what lays beneath the doors to its heart! What's hidden behind the doors to your soul? Beauty? Fear? Happiness? Nature is going to decide. Just remember where in tha heck you have put the keys... but maybe you forgot...but hey....it's human Nature! Photo by lilypenelope

Trapped in time. Grids and Nets. Lines. Maps. Concrete and Silk. Entrapment, conquer and [dis]-illusion. Design and functionality. And the experience, wandering along the canyonlands of my soul. Preys and Captors. Connections and Detachments. Are You the Prey or are you the Captor? Or are you ultimately the captor of your own prey, yourself? Spaces designed to protect, spaces constructed to hide (what?) or transparent volumetric traps? How to enter, and how to escape? Is there a code, a password to your secret-safe-deposit-box hidden behind the the door of your soul's vault? What if its complexity got lost. Between Concrete and Silk. Treasures and secrets. Hidden behind the lines of your imaginary soulmap. Photo by lilypenelope

Couple of years ago I read a fascinating book about litterally the "small pleasures in life". Small pleasures like those gestures, actions that we, consciously or not, encounter on a daily basis often without even realizing how important / fullfilling they actually are. "Whether it be a croissant in the street, the Tour de France, a potluck, shelling peas, a glass of port, the smell of apples, the mobile library, a garden in August, getting your espadrilles wet, or an autumn sweater".

Lately I have been often talking about the fact that, after years of profound struggling with food allergies / intollerances I tried my very last option to fix/solve these problems. I seriously couldn't handle anymore the fact of getting convulsion, badly sick, sometimes even fainting in restaurants even after telling the waiter(s) I couldnt eat certain stuff (but still finding them hidden somewhere on my plate!). After almost 8 years of trying every type of possible "medical solution", and after being told there was nothing I could do since it was, unfortunately a permanent state I should live with for the rest of my days, a friend of mine told me about an alternative cure (that apparently fixed all of his allergies/intollerances in a couple of months): Magnetic bioresonance. Well, I said, what the heck...one more try wouldn't hurt plus it was completely natural. It turns out another friend of mine had a studio of naturopathy right next to my office and...so I went, without having any expectations.
4 months have passed and my allergies/intollerances are gone, they disappeared!!!!

Why have I started this post with a book on small pleasures of life? Well, right now I'm in the phase of re-introducing all the food I haven't eaten in 8 years. All that food that contains lactose: yogurt, ham, sausages, butter (ohhhh yummy risotto!). Let me tell you...eating just bits of this stuff was like eating the best things ever for the first time ever! A milk shake at the bar on the boardwalk, a sausage at the barbecue with my friends, the famous risotto made by my mom (finally the real way...with butter not with olive oil!!). Well, exactly like those things Philippe Delerm was talking in his book "We Could Almost Eat Outside: An Appreciation of Life's Small Pleasures" (in italiano, en français) Photos by lilypenelope

The sky is infite. That's what we all are used to say. Where is the line though that divides the limits of the infinite? As you all know I adore staring outside my windows. Not really in a voyeuristic way...really! I just look at the sky thinking "that freak of a weatherman was wrong again". I look outside, I admire the beautiful everchanging color of our everyday roof, the sky. I look at the birds flying, I listen to them sing. I look at the planes flying and I smile trying to imagine where they are going. I dream about me sitting on a plane flying somewhere. Hopefully not next to the old fat lady that made my flight turn into a nightmare. When I found this old picture I took from the top a building in Downtown Los Angeles with my friend Efrem a feeling of joy started running through my body. First of all remembering the adrenaline while we were illegally going onto the roof to shoot some pictures. Then remembering the beauty of the city from a different angle. Ohhh those old billboards!!! Such works of art! There, on top of the roof of a huge building the sky wasn't only above us but right in front of our estatic faces. The billboard was the arrival yet creating a new starting point for our endless imagination. A man made construction in the middle of the sky. In front of us. Sad to realize that from my apt, shifting my eyes from the infinite above to the reality in front of me the line is very visible. Not a line through the infinite. But the line of my bank account going lower and lower. In front of me the taxes Building!
Photo by lilypenelope

Modernity discovered through design magazines. And then re-discovered through a reflection. An old mirror. A vintage lamp. Past and present. Design. Photo by lilypenelope

Photos by lilypenelope

Sometimes reality and dreams cross path. On that particular path I found myself driving couple of days ago! Curiosity told me to keep going on a road I've never experienced further than my own home at the lake so, since I had nothing much to do I took the car and kept going. It was a rainy day and spring apparently was playing hide and seek! Would I find it on top of the mountain? Maybe that's what drove me!! While I kept going up I found interesting things to shoot. Strange trees, beautiful flowers, rain drops on grass (post below) and, on top of everything my tripp was surrounded with the typical smell of nature touched by the rain. I kept going higher (on the mountain!). Til I met Fog! To be said: I love reading mystery novels. Especially scandinavian ones (Mankell, Nesbo, Indridason, Nesser...). For some reasons, the landscape, all of a sudden, appeared to be those narrated in those fantastic books. With one little uncomfortable detail: "what if the killer jumps out of the woods and stabbs me to death?". Yep, sometimes I wonder if I maybe dont read too much of those books!! A strange feeling started to appear: fear. No houses near by. Only those of German tourist who come in the summer. But hey I said to myself. This Fog is amazing. The landscape is surreal. Fear can be managed! Then, details of life/fiction started to appear. An abandoned truck with a swiss licence plate (and I was in Italy). My mind started to flip: "Oh geeeee. What is this doing here?" "Where is the owner?" Al this thoughs were spinning in my head and, I decided never to live the car but shoot my pics from inside!!!
Ultimately I got til the end of the road. In a huge land covered by fog. Only a sign was visible. The name of the area and its height. "Acqua Minerale 590 m" ("Mineral Water 590m". That's when My already freaked out brain started to lose it! What if this one was the perfect place for a murder? What if this was a great place for those authors to set their stories in? Then worse of all.... "Oh geeeeee....what if this would be the perfect place for a real murder??" Seriosly I needed to come back to reality! While I turned my car a strange last (messed up) thought crossed my mind: "What if the (fictional) murderer just jumps out from the Fog and.... "Swiss architect found dead on top of a mountain in the region af the Lake Maggiore. Her body was found in "Mineral Water"". Yep...that would make the headline!! But would people ask "Who was she?" Or "Was the water sparkling?".
Photo by lilypenelope

A planned city. Streets, boardwalks, lines, crossroads, buildings and numbers. I wasn't sure where the original old city centre was so, I started walking on "Main Street". A Post Office. A Newstand. A Starbucks. A restaurant owned by an italian family from the neighborhood. A park where young and old people were spending their beautiful saturday afternoon. Yet something was missing. Where were all the stores I remembered being there once? Probably moved to the suburbs. New structures have appeared. And many other left to their own destiny. New and decay. Gentrification and sprawl. Traffic. Yet I found human presence. Man made structures. Geometry and well thought out plans. Where am I going? Where is urbanism going? Photos by lilypenelope

I kept walking as the night followed me like it was my own shadow. I stopped, admiring the beauty of history reflected on the dark water. Then I saw it, the sign. Pont Neuf was right in front of me. My memory flew back in time. When I fell in love. I started dreaming, imagining, improvising new thoughts. That's when a strange sound hit me. Was somebody following me? Or was it simply the sound of the night with is dark presence, kidnapping my soul? Photo by lilypenelope