An end, a beginning.

I look into the water and it’s like travelling through time and submerging in a parallel universe, where everything endlessly repeats itself yet adquires new meanings and nuances. 

An instant. My end and my beginning, love exploding in all its power, life bursting in reclaiming to be lived, fears and anguishes swallowing everything.

I fall back in the depths of the water.

Years. A long road leading me here, to another fleeting instant. I look into the water, my own personal mirror, life and love bursting in again, like a stormy sea. I dive and swim deep down again, but this time I am anchored to my heart.

You are standing there, I can see you face at the other side of the mirror, enchanting and disarming as always. I am standing there, chasing you and chasing myself. 

The water returns the same image, and it is finally me. A moment and it’s all gone.

An end, a beginning. Once again everything will radically change.

Fridays are for Readers: Nocturnes

I must confess. Though it’s an internationally acclaimed writer, I have just recently discovered Kazuo Ishiguro’s books.

I had bought one during my last trip to London in October, at Gatwick Airport while waiting to embark on the plane taking me back home. I love buying books while travelling, whether at local bookshops (better if with a peculiar charm) or at the airport. They are my personal souvenirs, and when I read them not only I am captured by the story but they also make me remember that particular trip, with all its memories and feelings.

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is the book that made me discover Ishiguro, and the first one I read in 2012. I wanted to start the new year with one that brought good and funny memories to my mind, one recalling me the importance of solid and honest friendships and of our passions.

Specifically, Nocturnes is a collection of five short stories, each one about music, love and the passing of time. At times melancholic and heartbreaking, at times fun and witty, this quintet is only apparently simple to read. Each story deals with the intimate struggles the characters are facing: getting older, holding on youthful hope and dreams, keeping alive a sense of life’s romance. All of them are experiencing a moment of reckoning, almost a moment of being, and find themselves at some crucial point in their lives.

The writing is superb. Simple yet delicately intimate and precise. Ishiguro’s writing somewhat recalled me Flaubert’s, with its precision and attention to details, yet never diverting from the very essence of the story. It harmoniously digs down into the human soul, and the stories quietly speak to you, but they resonate in your heart long after the book is back on your library shelf.

When Lindy was about to go, I said: ‘I love you,’ in that fast, routine way you say it at the end of a call with a spouse. There was a silence of a few seconds, then she said it back, in the same routine way. Then she was gone. God knows what  that meant. There’s nothing to do now, I guess, but wait for these bandages to come off.  And then what? Maybe Lindy’s right. Maybe, like she says, I need some perspective, and life really is much bigger than loving a person. Maybe this really is a turning point for me, and the big league’s waiting. Maybe she’s right.

Street Photography: Sidewalktalk

It’s one of those days when you surf through the Net with no purpose, reading bits here and there, following one link after the other while checking your Twitter timeline to see if any one of your contacts has posted something interesting. And then you stumble upon a website and you stay there, devouring all its contents, and cherishing the joy of this new discovery.

In his Sidewalktalk project, photographer and filmmaker Jonas Normann take portraits of the people he meets on the street. His concept is beautifully described as Life Photography. And you can surely feel life coming out of his pictures and videos.

Every face tells a story. And every story is worth telling. Sidewalktalk is my way of telling a story. [..] I get to know new people everyday from every walks of life and that’s what drives me to do what I’m doing. It’s an addiction. I get to know people who under other circumstances would have never talked to me.

We do love stories, and we have immediately fallen in love with Sidwalktalk. Take your time to look at the photographs and soak into the stories they tell. And don’t forget to take a look at his videos (the Onkel A video made me want to jump on an airplane and go to Denmark just to try this cafeteria!).

Happy new discovery!

Look up, the sky

I walk head down, counting the steps, counting my breaths and my heartbeats, feeling my lungs expanding and contracting, my muscles tensing under the effort.

I walk but I am going nowhere, I am running in circles, and I feel like the same old tune endlessly repeating, dispersing itself in the void.

I walk because I am tired of running, and I walk because I am tired of the pain. 

Rain.

Drops falling down and disappearing into the earth. Roots sucking the water, lymph running up to the farthest extremities.

Look up, the sky.

Silly things are important.

It’s funny. I’m always confidant of declarations and passions. I like when friends (or just people who think I may understand) tell me the sentence “it’s silly, you may laugh but I love….” (and whatever is their favorite feeling) and I never laugh. For me that is the best part of life!

Yesterday I was talking to Marta and we were discussing something… a “silly” thing… something she loves. And she added “it’s not important”…. my reaction to that was “of course it’s important! it makes you happy!”. Important things should be those that make us happy, not those that make us worry. Pay more attention to those little tiny things you enjoy doing and give it some importance to keep them in your daily life.

I love: laughing out loud (like, really… you can hear me…), moving A LOT my hands while I’m talking, hugging so tight my friends when I see them they have to ask me to stop, eating pop corn as if I was the cookie monster, smiling in the metro when everybody looks grumpy (got more than a smile back thanks to that^^),  singing in the street with my nephew (he’s a good singer) as if we were performing a concert, making my students laugh (best way to make them learn and I make their day better and lighter), enjoying at its maximum things I like, making sure I keep them in my daily life.

I may look like a crazy person if you’ve read them all together… but don’t picture me laughing out loud while eating pop corn and moving my hands running towards my friends to hug them in the metro. It’s not like that. But feel what you do, enjoy it. I try to keep in mind those things are very important. So I guess that, when someone tells me “you may think it’s silly but I like….” or “I never tell this but I love…. ” don’t be shy, don’t think it’s not important. Don’t stop doing it for what others may say. It makes you happy, it IS important.

In my photography it feeds the best moments of the making off… to relax and feel your body. Every small centimeter of your skin. Being happy helps to feel more confident, and although my photographs tend to be melancholic, that is just my artistic approach.

Don’t think you’re silly, you know you’re not. I know I’m not.

These are not the best photographs ever, but they created a great atmosphere, led to other better shots and, more important, they are remembered with a smile

He took this one on his “jumping-style”:

Of course, I always try to catch those fun moments in my weddings. They are things you’re not thinking about but they will bring the best memories when you look at. Memories of happiness. And THAT we should NOT forget.

Happy Thursday!

A walk in the parks

Lately I have been trying to re-descover Torino, and walk through its streets with different eyes. After a funny night walk to capture Christmas light installations, this time I spent a whole afternoon walking through its parks, alone with some good music and my camera.

Torino is a green city. It has some beautiful and quite big parks, especially along the river Po. You can walk for hours and even forget to be in a city, which makes it a lot more relaxing and pleasant.

That day the river was flowing slowly and peacefully, dictating the rhythm of my steps, and a timid winter sun played along with the water, the trees and the last remnants of snow.

I enjoyed my long promenade so much that I almost forgot to shoot. Sometimes it’s good to let your camera down, and just rest the eyes and mind. Yet, I took home some photograph of this not very much known side of Torino.

The Lonely Walkers photo project is slowly growing. It takes time and patience, as our cities unveil its secret sides only when our eyes are ready to see their beauties.

Falling in love.

It’s Sunday afternoon and you’re back from your dreams. 

One of my most beloved moments (those moments of being) is travelling by car in the afternoon/evening/night… almost in silence, looking through the window, enjoying the landscape passing by, remembering the whole day and all the memories to save.

You’re listening to a song by a new band (poets, you think), a catalan band. The song sings “Tornar és sempre la millor part de l’aventura” (“the best part of an adventure is always coming back”) and you think you know why… it’s not because you’re back, it’s because you feel so full, relax, calm and happy. That is the feeling on a Sunday evening when you’re back from your dreams.

You are listening to a new song while someone is talking to you. You know the whole conversation is not that important, it’s part of the adventure and the memory. It belongs to that moment. Those words you exchange become part of the whole. Meaningless words. Tales of memories. And you feel you’re kind of broken. In a good sense. You feel you’re flying, you can see the whole world and only this tiny part of this corner where you live. And the song describes perfectly how you feel. Like you want to fly further, somewhere you’ve never been to. But you can’t, you can’t leave what you have created here. 

The song talks about someone who moved somewhere very very far. Someone who created a new life there. And you think that’s you, but you know you can’t.

You feel broken. In a good sense.

You feel you need to fall in love. With life. Again….

And you close your eyes and feel the wheels running through this simple and familiar landscape. You feel home. You hear those words you’re not paying attention to. And you turn your head and look at those eyes looking at you, now at the road and now at you again; carrying a smile. And you smile at them. And you feel you’re the one in the song. But you don’t tell him. And you feel you’re going to do so many things while you turn your head back to the window….

You feel like broken. In a good sense. A pandora’s box. All is good and bad, but you feel it so it ends being good. Those lyrics are telling you what you never tell anyone and always think. 

You fall in love. With life. Again.

It’s so simple.

……………………………….