Humanism is the only, and I would go as far as to say the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.

– Edward W. Said

Random Wa/o/nder, part X

Throwback Tuesday : Saint-Émilion, France

A year ago today. Soundtrack: Arcade Fire’s WE album I heard live the night before in Bordeaux. With a glass of red wine because we don’t always fight the obvious.

I wanna get wild
I wanna get free
Would you want to get off this ride with me?

Random Wa/o/nder, part IX

Throwback Thursday: Madrid, Spain

Parque de El Retiro.

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

My two favorite things to do in the Spanish capital – walk in parks and discover art museums. Well besides tapas, sangria and churros…

La Fortuna.

Costa Rica, November 2022.

View from the ho(s)tel.

The heart of man is an ever empty abyss into which the whole world shall fall and be swallowed up.

– Zora Neale Hurston, The Fire and the Cloud (in the collection of her short stories Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick)

Random Wa/o/nder, part VIII

Throwback Thursday: Saint-Paul-de-Vence

Note To Self

You know how you always calm yourself when you’re boarding the plane and just after, up until you’re safe among the clouds, because even after years of travel you’re still extremely uncomfortable, hell even afraid of taking off? (A friend told you recently this is the normal reaction, we were not meant to be up there, in the sky.) You focus and think of joy, you think of love, you think of everyone you would give so much to see again, again and again, the hugs that wait for you on the other side, those welcoming smiles, the laughs, the predictable questions full of care. And so you envelope the arrhythmic beating of your heart with warmth and you breathe through.

Counting your blessings. Well do that in life when that certain feeling kicks in.

taking a gamble on a little sorrow

It was a slight surprise the first time I realized I was not the only one having that special relation to Janis (Joplin, who else, I always call those artists closest to my soul by their first names, with few exceptions). I could describe my feelings as her being a kind of a soul sister, heroine I look up to, and if I had any religiousness left in me, I’d even say my personal saint. Because when Virginie (Despentes, luckily there is one letter that differentiates her from the other greatest Virginia – Woolf) suggested in one of her novels building an altar to Janis in times of trouble, something clicked and I understood what it meant to pray to a mortal idol.

Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

– Alice Walker, The Color Purple

a scattered puzzle

Oh break my heart; oh, break it again, so I can learn to love even more again.

– Sufi saying

Random Wa/o/nder, part VII

Lac du Crès.

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.

– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Moment upon a moment

A future that is hopeless
Just makes each day delicious
Time is like a peel, it opens and reveals

– Iggy Pop, Morning Show (Every Loser, 2023)

Random Wa/o/nder, part VI

Thursday Doors : Rovinj, Croatia

Rovinj, Croatia.

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow—some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite that story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin.

– Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

Random Wa/o/nder, part V

Throwback Thursday: Roma, Italia

Piazza Navona.

Piazza Navona.

Music I gratefully discovered in France, part XI

Finally, I caught up with my old tradition. Maybe, some of you remember my summers in Paris always ended with Rock en Seine festival. After three years, I was right back to scorched fields and dusty airs of its mighty scenes.

I am a nervous system that runs on rhyme and ghosts. The ghosts howl through the words making them chime.

– Nick Cave, The Sick Bag Song

Random Wa/o/nder, part IV

Throwback Thursday: Carcassonne, France

Sometimes, the destination doesn’t get all the deserved attention, because something more important is happening during the trip. When it involves Jack White, I’m not even apologizing.

It was like nothing was happening in the world but us. I was not afraid. It was deeper than fear. I could not take my eyes away from his. I could not move. If it was deeper than fear, it was not yet joy. It was wonder.

– James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Random Wa/o/nder, part III

Throwback Thursday: Bled, Slovenia

Lake Bled.

Lake Bled is, for me, the perfect example of how wonder can loose its wonder for our minds and eyes. Sometimes, we get so used to the sight, we barely like it anymore.

The whole world is a sick joke about how beautiful you are

– Kate Tempest, Running Upon the Wires

Random Wa/o/nder, part II

Wordless Wednesday: Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, Lucca, Italy

Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy.

– James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain

Random Wa/o/nder, part I

Wordless Wednesday: Córdoba, Spain

What is the use of a love that makes one yawn?

– Stendhal, The Red and the Black

Kings and vagabonds

Thursday Doors: Alhambra, Granada, Spain

Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.

– Washington Irving, Tales of Alhambra

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? … Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Putting the puzzle back together

Finally, after two years of almost nothing, I went to a real concert.* Pretty much right after the first couple of seconds, I felt like I was coming back from the dead. Those dimmed lights, the smell of beer, the warmth of a crowd and then the groove that can only really be experienced live. Soon after the head, my shoulders, hips and feet followed and started a timid move from one side to the other. Yes, this is what being alive is, among so many other wonderful things. And it makes me feel so lucky …

Poets and gypsies

Thursday Doors: Granada, Spain

I’ve often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake …

– Federico García Lorca

I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.

– Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Traveling light, but not quite

reflections after my journey to Spain, march 2022

It’s difficult being an emotional kind of a person. Not just in relationships, especially with people who counter you with their rationality as if it’s the truth. (Hint: it isn’t, not the whole truth, anyway.) It’s just as hard when it means carrying everything you feel with you, no matter where you go, no matter how far from your life you try to escape, and no matter if the only person you have to deal with is yourself.

And there is nothing like solo-travel to make you realize and face your greatest weaknesses and the heaviest burdens. But luckily also your strengths and the joys when you can try to feel them, little patches of hope that spark here and there.

Romances and oranges

Thursday Doors: Sevilla, Spain

For lack of photos, I’m not doing justice to this at all, but Andalusia is a door lover’s paradise. Still, I caught a few in its capital Seville.

Music to wake up to

I’m not a morning person. Ask anyone who knows me. Still, that only means I find it extremely difficult to wake up early on a normal day. I do absolutely love mornings, though. Give me a cup of coffee in time and there will probably be no grumpiness at all (lesson well learnt by people close to me, luckily).

But, I largely prefer easy solitary mornings. It is my moment to slowly get my brain to functioning mode, my spirit down to Earth, and to give my heart at least the minimum of strength to bear the world – by not dealing with it right away. Which is why I thank the universe for my current freelance status and no rush to get to the office !

They told me our gods would outlive us. They lied.

– Nick Cave, The Sick Bag Song

Winter joys, part II

Throwback Thursday: Piran & Portorož, Slovenia.

Tartini square, Piran.

Piran from above.

Portorož.

Forma Viva, Portorož.

People and places do have something in common. Some you never get tired of visiting. When the two come together during the last days of 2021 at the tiny Slovenian coast with your sister, it almost makes you believe last year wasn’t so bad after all.

Honestly, a part of me still believes that, looking back now …

… it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are as significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Winter joys, part I

Wordless Wednesday: Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone

“We believed everything was going to be beautiful and now we know it won’t.”

I hesitated a lot before publishing this for fear of being misunderstood, but here it is. Please, bear with me. The pain is real.

I felt free and chained at the same time – like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.

– Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Summer memories, part III

Wordless Wednesday: Pont du Diable, Hérault

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.

– Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Jardin des Plantes de Montpellier.

My happy place.

Milano.

I’m lucky. Between my two homes (France and Slovenia) lies a country perfect for a layover. Beautiful and friendly enough as well as equipped with the best coffee, delicious food and good wine. Ah Italy, of course. It’s been too long.

Passion is not so much an emotion as a destiny. What choice have I in the face of this wind but to up sail and rest my oars?

– Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

Summer memories, part II

Throwback Thursday: Èze

And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Summer memories, part I

Wordless Wednesday: Aigues-Mortes

My go-to anti-anxiety songs

In future, I’ll try to make this blog my happy place (again?), not in a “good vibes only” style, but as a collection of moments of being that make life worth while. And music always is my happy place, so why not start there… Not just with the typical feel-good melodies, no, there are songs that work like magic (even sometimes is good enough, I’m not even aiming for always here) in those midnight moments of heavy breathing, heart beating out of rhythm and mind swirling out of control. Those save lives.

So, I’m sharing my top choices of the moment.

… and if they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more like the people they always believed they were. Nothing can pry them away from that; the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers.

– Toni Morrison, Jazz

Cirque de Navacelles.

“bah vouloir le bonheur c’est déjà un peu le bonheur” – Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

The revolution is about going to the playground with your best girlfriends.

– Bikini Kill #1, 1990

Narbonne.

It’s been three years of going back and forth between my two homes in Slovenia and France, not doing any kind of other real travel. And it’s been a year since I moved to the beautiful and warm South of France I once dreamed of. A difficult year, considering half of it was in confinement and the other half spent calculating all my expenses. So, here I am, trying to satisfy myself with crumbs, little day trips in the region, even though the borders are finally open.

Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.

– Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

I (almost) forgot

I almost forgot the warmth of the September sun, its gentle rays that stopped burning our skin some time after the last heat wave (now, I’m sitting here, sunbathing with the usual lateness, offering up my outside to its caress).

“‘Don’t you ever think of going back?’

Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.

– Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

Koseški bajer, Ljubljana.

You are that broken body in twilight, smelling of fire since it has never been tamed.

– Dimitris Angelis

Everybody tells you that you will never come back the same, nobody tells you how easy it is to fall back into the same old traps and patterns.

… this happy white woman who is constantly shoved under our noses, this woman we are all supposed to work hard to resemble – never mind that she seems to be running herself ragged for not much reward – I for one have never met her, not anywhere. My hunch is that she doesn’t exist.

– Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory

Music I gratefully discovered in Paris, part X

Yes, I’m not lying, I discovered these while still living in Paris, I’m just showing them a little late… (insert angel emoji)

Yseult: One comment on youtube says she is French Lizzo. I love them both and would gladly attribute such awesomeness to this French lady, but I must say I find her too different to actually say that myself, her voice, the way she sings, the open dark note to most of the songs… Anyway, decide for yourselves. I will always appreciate an urban take on la chanson française, to whichever side of the spectrum she takes it. I discovered her with the song below, right now though I’m all into Corps and 5H (hint to the song of the week widget on my blog).

la réalité me rattrape au réveil je suis dans tous mes états il n’y a pas de place pour les regrets

Hollydays: This one song was on repeat after I left Paris, actually, altough it is not new. It’s just so soothing. Like, you can dance, but you can also just lay down on the couch and do nothing but listen.

tu peux peux tu peux éteindre la lumière

Bagarre: These guys are something. I remember reading an article about them with all those superlatives on how different they are, in their sound, but also in their approach to pretty much everything, it almost made me not listen to them, because, you know, when reactions are exaggerated, they often lose me. I still did, I’ve come to trust the label they’re at for unique acts and their name means fight in French, so … ok  …  Anyway, they still intrigue me and they wrote a couple of songs I could sometimes (more often than I would admit) decorate with the #currentmood hashtag. I never saw them live, so here’s to one more reason to go back to Paris. For more, just listen. And, bye bye!

au revoir à toi la fin du monde au revoir à toi la fin du mois

—

I’ve just finished watching the French pop show on Netflix which I never should have watched…. bad idea, Ivona, bad idea. It’s happening in Paris of course and too many scenes take place near my old home. So, for reasons totally obscure I now love this song, joining the second one above for to dance or not to dance dilemma.

The title is lying now and don’t care. (insert devil emoji)