NOT A DAY ON ANY CALENDAR

Rumi (1207-1273)

Spring, and everything outside is growing,
even the tall cypress tree.
We must not leave this place.
Around the lip of the cup we share, these words,

My Life Is Not Mine

If someone were to play music, it would have to be very sweet.
We’re drinking wine, but not through lips.
We’re sleeping it off, but not in bed.
Rub the cup across your forehead.
This day is outside living and dying.

Give up wanting what other people have.
That way you’re safe.
“Where, where can I be safe?” you ask.

This is not a day for asking questions,
not a day on any calendar.
This day is conscious of itself.
This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness,
more manifest than saying can say.

Thoughts take form with words,
but this daylight is beyond and before
thinking and imagining. Those two,
they are so thirsty, but this gives smoothness
to water. Their mouths are dry, and they are tired.

The rest of this poem is too blurry for them to read.

Translated by Cleman Barks in “The Essential Rumi”

My world, my California, still needs to be made.
To make a new world you start with an old one, certainly.
To find a world, maybe you have to have lost one.
Maybe you have to be lost.
The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I will wait for you…

 I will wait for you.

With the stubborness of a chair.

Venezia. January 2012. Ink on hand.book paper.

Rosetum, Milano, built in Lombard style in 1896. Graphite on hand.book paper.

What a fantastic way to start the Year!

The Liebster Blog Award is an award given to bloggers by bloggers, and is reserved to ‘upstart’ blogs with less than 200 followers.
It originated in Germany and its meaning is ‘beloved’, or favorite.<3
It was bestowed to me by the Kuwaiti artist (und blogschwester!) Ghadah Alkandari at PrettyGreenBullet, whom I consider a role model as a 360 degree artist and blogger.
Needless to say it is a great honor to receive this, and more to receive it from Ghadah.

Check out her other awardees, it is blog goodness at its BESTE!

I in turn will have to bestow the award onto five upstart bloggers, so stay tuned, deliberations have just started.

In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theatre. The play is finished, but the echoes remain.

Arbit Blatas

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.

Alexander Herzen

There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.

Mary Shelley

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

Erica Jong

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand.

Lord Byron

…

A train-ride takes you from Milano to Venice..whose real name is Venezia, the Most Serene city and splendid, golden Republic. On the train you think about Byron, his letters written on trains, his Venetian Countess.

Through frozen fields and dormant earth, through fog and long-gone rice paddies , you deboard to the Sublime.

At dusk the lights from bars and cafes shimmer on the dark waters, and you start thinking in cliches, such as temporarily inhabiting an Impressionist painting.

Yet the feeling is fresh and true: each visit to this surrealists’ dream had its poignant moment of suspension of disbelief.

Each time the city grabs you and takes you away with her.
…
Here’s a taste of today’s acts of flanerie in La Serenissima.

Crocheting Cathedrals. Il Duomo with parasitic architecture (stage for New Year's festivities). Ink and watercolor on hand.book paper. December 31, 2011.

Aperol and Spritz. Most of the older ladies in my neighborhood are incredibly fashionable, decked in the latest trend winter coat. Here's two enjoying a mildly alcoholic aperitivo at 11 AM. Ink on hand.book paper. December 31, 2011.

Santa Maria Presso San Satiro. The obligatory pilgrimage to the second Bramante's church. Last year I drew Santa Maria Delle Grazie, which is near to my place. I am always amazed by the playfulness and modernity of the oculi (round windows) on the Northern Romanesque facade. I found out that the space in front of the church is called 'Largo Jorge Luis Borges'. Can it get better than this?
Ink on hand.book paper. December 31, 2011.

Window of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio. In an act of Flanerie, I got lost trying to reach the Roseto, and found these whimsical, almost Gaudi-like windows on a palazzo I had not seen since my childhood, painted in the typical warm 'Milanese Yellow' (think saffron rice and add a patina of melancholy, smog and time). Ink on hand.book paper. January 1, 2012.

S C A T T E R  J O Y

Wishing a Luminous 2012…The World Over.

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” 

Vincent van Gogh