berlin

berlin is just amazing. in one word, it is cool. it simply rocks. as a visitor there are so many places to visit in berlin. you need to hop on a bus/ tram/ train and try to see as many areas as can fit in your tight schedule. we stayed again in the borders between kreuzberg and neukoelln. these two, are two amazingly lively and inspiring areas of berlin. to visit or live there. i am fully aware of the problems that the popularity of berlin has brought with it. the gentrification which is taking place, the price rises, the brutality with which the poorest within the community are being treated with. and this sucks. in berlin or here in london. it sucks, in general. and unfortunately it happens more and more often. i don’t decide to ignore the problems, i just can’t stop praising those creative communities, how alive these areas feel, how many lovely things are happening, the markets, the cafes, the workshops and how many talented musicians are playing music at the streets.. in addition to this, berlin offered me one more pleasure: it is a paradise of old automobiles. i love old cars/ bikes/ bicycles and in berlin i was indulged in a eye feast of automobiles with (bags of) character.

freetown christiania

christiania is a semi-autonomous region, in the heart of copenhagen.

it first started as a a squat and remained like that for nearly 40 years, but has recently gained its independence.

an alternative and diverse community with its own rules.

i can’t think of a better way to prove christiania’s colourful character other than its architecture. (in fact i can’t think of a better way to describe a nation or a community in general, other than its architecture and urban planning)

P1060535

P1060536 P1060537 P1060538 P1060539 P1060540 P1060542 P1060545 P1060546 P1060544 P1060548 P1060551 P1060552 P1060553 P1060554 P1060555 P1060556 P1060557 P1060558 P1060559 P1060560 P1060561 P1060562 P1060563 P1060564 P1060565 P1060566 P1060567 P1060569 P1060570 P1060572 P1060573 P1060575 P1060577 P1060578 P1060579 P1060580 P1060581 P1060582 P1060583 P1060589 P1060590 P1060591

a bit more copenhagen

urban design

colour and texture

copenhagen

scandinavian light

bikes and roses

flower and cafe shops

details

rural denmark

we came back from denmark.. i felt like i needed a couple of days to digest the fact that we are here. back to this city.

but my brain cannot accept it. since we came back my night dreams are full of “plans” for the next trip to copenhagen, as if it is something that will happen in the next week or next month. not as if this will take place in, at least, a year’s time from now. my brain cannot register the fact that this trip is now over.

i am missing denmark already.

the vastness of the country side. the calmness. the wild life. the quietness.

the beauty of danish houses. simplicity, colour, natural materials. blending in with nature. almost disappearing amongst their environment.

green, everywhere. attention, on every single thing.

respect to what surrounds us. the essence of life. of living. of co-existing.

P1060005 P1060065

enjoying (the last day(?) of) spring

we have been honored to enjoy a full week of spring.

of course we had some short intervals of rain and hail in between (probably to be reminded that good things don’t last for long), but the weather remained warm and.. promising..! until yesterday.

today is the beginning of a new era. i don’t know the name of it, i can’t guess.

after a horrendously long winter and just one week of spring, today’s rainy weather and a “promise” of dropping temperatures in the next couple of days seem.. weird..

i am taking a deep breath and hope for more of the lovely weather that we experienced last week. and i leave this post with a picture which sums up what spring is for me (and why i miss it so much): new life, endless fields of chamomile, walking under 20 degrees Celsius and coffee at the park.

(picture: yesterday, at Springfield and Lea Valley parks, Hackney)

..close some doors

Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.

– Paulo Coehlo

marilyn monroe’s unpublished poems

Marilyn Monroe’s Unpublished Poems: The Complex Private Person Behind the Public Persona

“Only parts of us will ever touch ~~only~~ parts of others.”

Did you ever begin Ulysses? Did you ever finish it? Marilyn Monroe did both. She took great pains to be photographed reading or holding a book — insistence born not out vain affectation but of a genuine love of literature. Her personal library contained four hundred books, including classics like Dostoyevsky and Milton, and modern staples like Hemingway and Kerouac. While she wasn’t shooting, she was taking literature and history night classes at UCLA. And yet, the public image of a breezy, bubbly blonde endures as a caricature of Monroe’s character, standing in stark contrast with whatever deep-seated demons led her to take her own life.

But her private poetry — fragmentary, poem-like texts scribbled in notebooks and on loose-leaf paper, published for the first time in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters (public library) — reveal a complex, sensitive being who peered deeply into her own psyche and thought intensely about the world and other people. What these texts bespeak, above all, is the tragic disconnect between a highly visible public persona and a highly vulnerable private person, misunderstood by the world, longing to be truly seen.

Only parts of us will ever
touch ~~only~~ parts of others –
one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth.
We can only share the part that is ~~understood by~~ within another’s knowing acceptable to
the other — therefore so one
is for most part alone.
As it is meant to be in
evidently in nature — at best ~~though~~ perhaps it could make
our understanding seek
another’s loneliness out.

Life –
I am of both of your directions
~~Life~~
Somehow remaining hanging downward
the most
but strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

Oh damn I wish that I were
dead — absolutely nonexistent –
gone away from here — from
everywhere but how would I ~~do it~~
There is always bridges — the Brooklyn
bridge – no not the Brooklyn Bridge
because But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there and the air is so clean) walking it seems
peaceful ~~there~~ even with all those
cars going crazy underneath. So
it would have to be some other bridge
an ugly one and with no view — except
I ~~particularly~~ like in particular all bridges — there’s some-
thing about them and besides ~~these~~ I’ve
never seen an ugly bridge

Stones on the walk
every color there is
I stare down at you
like ~~these the~~ a horizon –
the space / the air is between us beckoning
and I am many stories ~~besides~~ up
my feet ~~are~~ frightened
~~from my~~ as I grasp ~~for~~ towards you

Beyond her poems, the rest of Monroe’s intimate thoughts collected in Fragments are equally soul-stirring. Writing in her famous Record notebook in 1955, she echoes Kerouac’s famous line, “No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge”:

feel what I feel
within myself — that is trying to
become aware of it
also what I feel in others
not being ashamed of my feeling, thoughts — or ideas

realize the thing that
they are –

In her 1955-1956 Italian diary engraved in green, she writes:

I’m finding that sincerity
and ~~trying~~ to be as simple or direct as (possible) I’d like
is often taken for sheer stupidity
but since it is not a sincere world –
it’s very probable that being sincere is stupid.
One probably is stupid to
be sincere since it’s in this world
and no other world that we know
for sure we exist — meaning that –
(since reality exists it ~~should be must be dealt~~ should be met and dealt with)
since there is reality to deal with

In 1956, Monroe traveled to London to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl. She stayed at the Parkside House, a luxurious manor outside the city, and used the hotel stationery for her thoughts:

To have your heart is
the only completely happy proud ~~possession~~ thing (that ever belonged
to me) I’ve ever possessed so

I guess I have always been
deeply terrified at to really be someone’s
wife
since I know life
one cannot love another,
ever, really

Some of her undated notes live between the discipline of the to-do list and the expansive contemplation of philosophy:

for life
It is rather a determination not to be overwhelmed

for work
The truth can only be recalled, never invented

Tender, tortured, thoughtful, the texts in Fragments hint at what Brooklyn-based novelist Arthur Miller, whom Monroe eventually married, must have meant when he said that she “had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control.”

by Maria Popova

re-blogged from brain pickings

Marisa Merz

Marisa Mertz, sculptor (born 1931 in Turin, Italy)

101823641546986919_rLKl5gAO_c

101823641546986924_hg350jW6_c

101823641546986936_AMzrCSa5_c
101823641546986921_geOgttN3_c 101823641546986927_8ORLGAbH_c 101823641546986932_SzuJWSs3_c

Born in Turin, Italy, Merz was a central figure and the only woman associated with the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s and 70s. Known for her unusual use of materials such as copper-wire, clay, and wax, Merz’s works reflect the poetic sensibility that delicately entwines her vision of art and life.

The artist introduces in the language of contemporary sculpture techniques which are traditionally considered to belong to handicraft or to be typically female work. In doing so, however, she identifies a brand-new destination for them, giving the various procedures and materials she uses full artistic dignity.

sources: