new little garden

the smell of communism

While in Croatia with Sunci, strolling in Hvar, at the sight of this flower Sunci exclaimed "That is the smell of communism" As it was planted all over the country during the communist time, then in Russia I spotted the same flower and asked a Russian friend about it, who gave me the same answer, yes in fact during communist times this flower could be found all over.

All the weight of the word "communism" becomes irrelevant, it shaped lives and countries, yet is does not cease to be man's construction. At the core of human beings, where only existence can be sensed, and our sensorial perception before being rationalized and going directly to the unconscious becomes our connection with the world and reality, such a complex idea in an instant is condensed to smell. Suddenly there is simplicity, just a smell, a flower, a memory.

This reduction also shows a side of existence, regardless of the situation, we are living and our senses awake. As long as we are alive we are sensing the world, never silent, never neutral.  

Barra de la Cruz, Oaxaca

black earth, crisp air

Walking the Iztaccihautl

Extracts from - The Walking Man - by J.M.G Le Clezio

One can waste the better part of a lifetime in walking without actually being a walking man. That's obvious. And on the other hand one may have walked very little, really one may never have cared for walking, never been good at walkig, and yet be unquestionably a walking man. Such is the law of all deep-seated life, according to which beings and objects exist only in terms of a pattern peculiar to themselves, an achievement for which they are granted no handicap, no limit and no appeal. 
* * *
Paoli strolled like this along a succession of streets, some of them shady, others sunny. A mysterious force had entered into him, had distended his muscles and sinews, and was propelling him forward, over the resonant concrete. It was rather as though his body were inhabited by a perfect mechanism, where nothing was left to chance, where each movement followed naturally upon the one before, simply owing to the play of the driving-rods pivoting on their axes, of valves commanded by complex, decisive systems of gears, wth smooth wheels and cogwheels, ball-bearings steel pins and an infinity of screws. In his brain, nothing was clear. No idea could manage to take shape, not the tiniest thought. It was an expanse of fog, prevailing from end to end of his skull, from which nothing emerged except the rock, the tense cry of determination. A sort of tightrope, stretched to breaking-point, extending straight ahead of him, as far as the horizon and even beyond, along which he was walking without understanding. 

yesterday's sunset

Monte Alban, Oaxaca

after the rain

Mexico City - Cerro de la Estrella, Iztapalapa.

On Saturday Lore, Luis, Caco and I climbed to Cerro de la Estrella, a little hill with an archaeological site at the southern edge of the city in Iztapalapa.
Desolate parks, horse training, old cars, a dead iguana which we could not figure out if it had been a pet or part of some witchcraft, or whatever else...what is certain is that it was out of place.
At the top of the hill you get probably one of the best views of the city than anywhere else. This spot used to be the site for the New Fire Ceremony practiced in prehispanic times every 52 years. Now they do a representation of Christ carrying his cross, and there are some remains of some contemporary hippitecas (Aztec hippies) doing probably some sort of rituals. The crowd varies from local families, athletes, lovers, redeemed criminals, us, etc. Towards the hill there is a sign encrypted in the concrete steps "I met you in the 03947 police patrol and I fell in love with you"

It is an interesting place. 

grasping time

Nothing is more of a unique mark of an specific moment as the sky.
It does not matter how contrasted or subtle...light is the greatest reminder of the present.
Photographing the sky often is like marking time in relation to absolute concepts of existence, and time regardless of all the social, visual...etc.
.. no moment in the sky (or anywhere) repeats itself.
+ + +
Right after writing about the sky I turn to it and it is very rare and magnificent as if vowing to its acknowledgment... being in the car it is impossible to get a good picture...
The moment is gone.

Pictures taken in between October-November 2011 through Lebanon, Russia, France and Switzerland. 

western europe

Spending some time in Europe it seems almost impossible to slip away from the established functional and social structures that are more ingrained and institutionalized than in other countries. 

The change of consciousness and the possibilities that seem an open field in other parts of the earth, but are imminently heading on the same direction of institution. 

(again re-reading my own notes!)

reading from my diary

After the last post I was looking into my notes, I found something I wrote while pondering about what I perceived intuitively of social and development values from Lebanese society.
Arabic culture coming from the desert and its inherent austerity, it would inspire a natural tendency towards abundance. How the landscapes and environments generate social values, how vegetation shapes societies. Universal human nature reacting to climate and vegetation.

A sense of place

To know a people, British writer Lawrence Durrell once said, you need only a little patience, a quiet moment, and a place where you might listen to the whispered messages of their land. Landscape, he thought held the key to character. He wrote that you could depopulate France, resettle it with Tartars, and within a few generations find, to your astonishment, that the national characteristics had reemerged: the restless, metaphysical curiosity, the passionate individualism, the affection for good living. Is is what he called the invisible constant of a place...Just as landscape defines a people, culture springs from a spirit of place. 

Wade Davis, extract from Breaking Trail essay. 


- - - - - - - - -


But the essential act of faith is physical movement through space, a walk across landscape, pilgrimage that brings the supplicant from the realm of human society to the bleak reaches of the puna, and the endless possibilities for redemption or madness inherent in every encounter with the wild.
...
The effort is the sacrifice, a term that does not mean to give, but rather to make sacred. This is the key to the maestros' art of healing. It is not enough just to identify a symptom and eliminate it, with either medicinal plants or the intervention of positive magic. To heal the body one has to seek realignment, not only with the supernatural realm, but with the earth itself, the source of all life. It is the movement through sacred geography that makes atonement possible. This is the true meaning of healing. To make whole. To be holy. To give of oneself to the earth, and thus rediscover balance, the foundation and essence of well-being. As much as any aspect of the contemporary cult, it was this pursuit of equilibrium that linked the maestro to the ancient traditions of the Andes.
Pg. 189-190, Shadows in the Sun, Wade Davis

winter nest

One of the last drawings of 2011