An Al Dente Experience.

Dear Blog,

"you could be happy or you could be right" could this be the best advice to cooking pasta? -  This is my story of how today I waited 20mins for freshly (in front of you) made and cut pasta at the food market.

It sounded as if - when you put the pasta in boiling water, the pasta then sinks, after some moments it raises to the top and then it’s ready to mix in your sauce/s in the pan, you then let cook for some seconds and serve it.

As the water would not boil, every time the cook put the pasta in the sauce pan, we saw it turn back to dough! I was cold and standing next to water, I didn’t feel much heat either. He offered me it free at one point - I was keen to eat it as it started drizzling rain.

I gave him a 3rd chance, he admitted he was embarrassed, I told him – “don’t worry about getting it wrong” he replied “it’s kind of my job to get it right” I agreed in silence.

So again he made the pasta and this time it worked! – It was fabulously tasty with three chesses and spicy tomato sauce.

Now the cook was right and we both were happy. Which means before you can be happy you have to be right – but in any case you can be both happy and right.

Isis

Self Portrait with Death, by Arnold Bocklin

A Happy Poem

I would write about being alone,


About, finding yourself and or falling apart.


Making mistakes and starting again.


At some point, I stopped.


Today,


I sat at my desk


And I very seriously thought -


Where is my pain?


I must need to write it?


Put it on paper


Read it.


Then!


I realised....


I sat, and I thought and then


I saw that, I am no longer alone.


There was nothing to write,


No feelings came.


No one is there.


Alone is not there.


Isis



clockwork for dummies

tick tock                        
pain

                                            she IS 

a) FREE                             
                       

     not until THE END

                                                                              LOOSE       her     HEAD   IMPLODES IN THE DARKNESS

they

Care

                        too

much 

or

   too

          little

TO

make

little

                                                                                  DIFFERENCE.

ALONE IS THE END.

Anne Frank -



This new year David, my boyfriend, and I went to Amsterdam. On our last day we had planed to wake up at 8am and visit Anne Franks House at 9am and Rembrandt's House at 11:30am before arriving at the station for our train at 15:15. On the day and we only managed to leave the Hotel at 11:40am that morning, it was a very inhospitable day, rain and wind that we could feel flowing under our clothes as we walked in the street - but we fought it through  and left our beautiful room still optimist to carry out our plans.

As we approached the first thing I saw was the bronze statue on the street before we turned into the canal where her house stands. People were taking pictures of her, with her all in high spirits like Anne would have been with her friends in the years leading up to 1942.

When we turned the corner we saw the queue that we had not budgeted time for, it went on for at least 100 metres. We looked up at the house and saw people happily enjoying coffee, we later found out that we  had both being a little estranged by this unexpected development. The queue was to be expected I suppose, but the coffee shop? it seemed like a whipping from Capitalism and Consumerism. 

David grabbed my hand and we crossed the road to see the houses facade, part of the building had been renovated with glass. We could not see much or appreciate the house itself without going inside.

As we walked off, I looked around at our surroundings, the land under my feet and realised that, this landscape, the road in which I stood -  Anne would have known and it would have been part of regular routine. I looked up at Westmarkt Church  on the square and I felt I had established the connection I wanted with Anne, 62 years later I had come to visit her and we had meet, separated by time but not space we stood in the same place. We tried to imagine the Nazis marching and driving around.

Later as we walked away, David asked me if I had read her diary and with some regret I replied - no, .. not yet.

When we arrived back to London, we both went straight to work. The day after I was reading on what the Holocaust meant for children on my computer,.Whenever I read about the Holocaust I grow afraid, I am absorbed in lectures yet in fear. Suddenly, I looked up and saw David coming towards me - of course he was surprised - last thing he wanted was to scare me, but it was not him - I had been in back in time. He approached me and put Anne Franks Diary on my desk.

Having read it now, almost three weeks since we have been back - I want to write down some of my favorite passages from her diary.  

'Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind...As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.'

'Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.'

I'm not sorry; memories mean more to me than dresses."

'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.'

'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.'

'Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately people shape their own characters.'

'Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.'

'Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?'

'Isnt' it  a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.'

'In spite of everything that has happened, I still believe that people are really good at heart.'

'It is utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more.'

'I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman, such as Venus, for example. It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks.'




Below are pictures of Amsterdam during the War. This is the context in which she wrote. This is the landscape outside of her walls, where she hid in what she calls "the secret annex" Anne also dreamed of writing a novel after the war and considers publishing her diary as a novel, under that title. Anne wrote every day, describing her dreams, hopes and feelings. 



Symphony number 9

Symphony number 9 is a Collection of images I have gathered from various places. I decided to save them over time, now I want to  create a melody with each sequence.

Caution
If you don't like my symphony, please listen to Beethovens' version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOTCtW9v0M it's nothing like mine, i simply liked title and repropertied it. the word symphony send vibrations  through my entire body.

this is very simple -  all you have to do is hear the way that you feel. these images speak an idiom of symbols it works by feeling a short of chemical reactions, like love but not love in this case, i enjoy looking at them. they are challenging me. they are firing blank questions, sending messages. these silent pictures demand understanding. they work with your brain as it tries to make sense of the external world,  we learn we hear.

the main thing is that - there are no rules, censorship is something that exists outside of your mind. it does not belong to you.



Ebony Tree

Part One

In a room not far from the place she once called home, she laid alone in her bed. The white walls around her revealed the frames of  pictures that once hang, the  lighter yellow with brown the borders of a time that had left  behind, time had tainted all vibrancy - the photos depicting embraces and protective love now living real in memories, no longer visible, no sounds. She laid and said nothing, her lips still sealed.

Still holding the box given to her before departure, in her hands she held it through the years, unopened. The key had been lost while she walked back from the fence where she had waved goodbye - she had stood as watching the horse gallop away from her sight. When the snow had come the in the night it was impossible to look for it so she accepted it gone.

Sometimes while she sat at the window, she searched in grass with her eyes, pretending to her mind she was only looking around. But deep within she longed to find the key she had lost, too weak to walk she surrounded to time.

Her hair grew white and now reaching the floor in perfect order, she delicately brushes it with an ivory comb, made from a great African elephant shot down while the king leisurely hunted with his new wife.  In the mornings before she continues to wait, after leaving the freedom offered by her dreams she recalls a time when she was much happier. Her twinkling eyes tell many stories which now remain engraved on her skin - a perfect map of her life. 

As if by magic that time had stopped yet continued to pass. Lost in thoughts she remains, deep in her soul she hides the best that life once so kindly had given her, living of a past she dared not let go or else it would be lost forever... fall into the darkness of the infinite of things left behind.. and then what would be left of her?

Through the years she observed, the hills far beyond and the changing of seasons adoring the landscape, the trees as they shed their leaves and the wind blew them away, sometimes gently others with fury - lifted them them off the ground and threw them into an air dance of Autumn.

She slowly turned her head and placed her hand in her chest, sighed and rose from her bed. She walked toward the window and sat on the wooden chair next to the fire. She was cold. The unchanged Autumn  was here again. Far into the horizon she set her gaze.


***********