Green cage in Porto Ercole. Photo: a © signature mmm production

Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage.
—Smashing Pumpkins

Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.
—Shannon L. Alder

If you haven’t yet, switch to my new blog. We will all have to sooner or later.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
—Miles Davis

Photo: Gelateria della Palma in Roma. A © signature mmm production

Happy birthday, self! And thank you all who come to play.

Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images.
—Helen Levitt

Nah. Just lazy. In Orbetello. Photo: a © signature mmm production

The pictures are there, and you just take them.
—Robert Capa

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.
—Dorothea Lange

Quotes reblogged from Lignum Draco’s ETCETERA ETCETERA ETCETERA
Location: home
Photo: a © signature mmm production

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard

“Come on, guys, let’s wait for her!” Around Roma with friends. Photo: a © signature mmm production

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
—Annie Dillard

Ikigai

This is something that has been troubling me my whole life. I know, I’m a bit old to not have it sorted out yet. Ah, well.

I’ve come across this neat little scheme a while ago. It struck an instant chord.

In my profile it says that I’m “living in order to learn to earn”. I realise what a luxury this is, most people are pushed into a direction, not necessarily ideal, by circumstances, early in life. But each day I am closer to the centre. Ikigai! Sounds like a war cry.

Let’s see what all I have tried so far:

Natural habitat and pose.

Yes, I excel at this too.

Smoke and coffee (even without a boat)? Tried it. Liked it for 20 years. Don’t like it any more.

Well, yes, but the system can do that alone just fine.

Well… not closing any doors.

No, no, this is mom’s thing. (She made these during her last visit out of the blue!)

No, really no, believe me.

This is more like it…

…while he told me to do it so long ago. And I don’t mean drinking.

But they don’t let me forget my natural calling here. I’ve come to the right country. Etruscans – my spirit animals.

Be as it may, the sanest meaning of life that I’ve heard recently comes paraphrased via C. G. Jung:

Our job in life is to become the person we are when we die.

Photo: a © signature mmm production

Harriot Stanton Blatch: “Sojourner, can’t you read?”
Sojourner Truth: “Oh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.”

From 12 Historical Women Who Gave No F*cks

My two reading matters, one bigger bestia than the other. Piran, Slovenia. Photo: a © signature mmm production

The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.
—John Bowles

Six friends doing their own perfect take on Village People for sister’s 30. Photo: MM

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: Dance

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (quote reblogged from Zimmerbitch)

Lefkada 07: past, foreign country, differently. Photo: MP

When happy 8th goes Marching in

Now is the time to Mother a new story into the world.
—Cathy Pagano

Mother a new story, heal the mother wound, fill the mother gap, and sister a new mister? 😀 Happy March 8th and solar eclipse to all concerned.

Photo: a © signature mmm production

Give the children love, more love and still more love – and the common sense will come by itself.
—Astrid Lindgren (quote reblogged from Pilot Fish)

Yes, mom, your shoes again. As for common sense: no matter how it may look like, promise, it IS in there somewhere :D. Photo: a © signature mmm production

You may have the Universe if I may have Italy.
—Giuseppe Verdi
(Quote reblogged from Italophilia. Grazie!)

The Italy of my amore, taken by him with his phone at two different times of day: early in the morning as he was waiting for his daily train to take him to work…

…and in Ostia with the setting sun. I love it how despite working so hard he still has eyes for beauty around him. Photo: MC

‘I’ is a verb dressed as a noun.
—Julian Baggini

Photo: a © signature mmm production