SL-WEEK 8: Art on the Road

Not that there are no arty roadside attractions in Italy but for this challenge let me artify a little myself for a change, even though I’ll let nature do most of her work. Lazy-ass photographer. Most of the time driving around my new home feels like a gallery drive-through anyway. The roads are Capalbio-Tuscania-Bomarzo and Capalbio-Piombino. Big screen is where you find it.

Photo: MM

For Sylvain Landry’s SL-WEEK 8: On the Road challenge

WPC: Creepy Sacred Forest

Even though Wiki says that Sacro Bosco, the park of Bomarzo near Viterbo in Italy, also called Park of the Monsters, was “intended not to please, but to astonish”, the creepiest thing in it is the dog cage they offered to house the dog during our visit, since dogs are strictly forbidden. Rather sorry now that I didn’t shoot that.

My uncle immediately protested at the sight of it and volunteered to wait outside with him. So I had to dash, but was still able to shoot the monsters from the hip.

The order to build the park came from patron of the arts Pier Francesco Orsini in the 16th Century upon the death of his beloved wife. After almost two centuries of neglect it was restored in the 1970’s and now you need to pay to visit it and mind any (non-eyeseeing) dog elsewhere.

I don’t know about how it was then, with all the swooning ladies and terrified children, but it is still very effective. As for creepy: what is creepy for me, might be just another Sunday morning for another. You’re welcome.

At first glance it seems a park just like any other.

Or is it.

Even though they gave me a little plan, I lost myself almost immediately. I’ve got that from fairy-tales. So the first fellow took me by surprise.

And then I was trying to hurry, get back on track, not miss any of the statues and take as many photos without thinking. This is what came out:

Not your usual 16th Century mermaid

Dragon lady

Come rest in my lap.

What exactly is this bear doing?

Not too creepy, but painful.

Looks like Poseidon to me.

This elephant has had it.

Well – creepy needs work.

I dare you to drink here.

To rest or to die?

Hmmm…

Yep, dead.

A lion-fighting dragon.

A very cool leaning house. You can enter and the floor is so askew that you get all dizzy upon exit.

He saw you first.

Turtles are not what they seem.

Amore remembered this whale the most from almost 40 years ago.

Not creepy at all.

After I’d already spent my promised half an hour – it was more like one – and thought I was done, I came upon the tallest and most dramatic statue. Luckily there were some workers passing to give you perspective.

Rather than creepy, the Bomarzo Park of the Monsters is a kind of curiouser place, and has inspired many artists, including Dali and Niki de Saint Phalle. It is worth more than just one hour of your time. There is a lovely Etruscan pyramid in the neighbourhood too but we left it for another time.

Photo: MM

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Creepy.”

WPC: Look where you’re going

There is a poem from my childhood. It describes a little girl walking and her mother telling her not to look left, not to look right, not to look up, not to look down. So the little girl closes her eyes. So the little girl falls. “Why did you fall, little girl?” I like to look no matter what they tell me. Down as well as up.

If I look down, there is a variety of things to see. We can hop from one to the other easily.

Let us count what all I see when I look down: This is in Il giardino dei tarocchi

Most usually it’s bestia, no doubt about that.

From bestia to flowers. In Piran.

From flowers to me.

And back to flowers.

From flowers to clover.

Staying green: when mould starts to cover everything. Early November in southern Tuscany

When the ground dries out. On top of Ljubljana Castle in August.

Eye-catching pattern. In Porto Ercole, I think.

The sea! I see it from closer up a lot too but without the camera. In Piran.

Leaf shadows in Bomarzo’s Monster Garden.

Stuff. Capalbio beach in the winter.

Happy feet on sand.

Happy feet on grass.

Happy feet and love stones and home-made bread.

The witch and the shells (Can hear her already: “Why am I the witch again?”)

So that it’s the wizard too. New pavement in Ljubljana’s Slovenska street.

One of the most impressive impressions from my first visit of Roma needs a separate gallery – various floors:

In St. Peter’s

In Pantheon

In the Vatican Museum

And when I’m looked at and for like that, I don’t mind being the one who is beneath one’s feet either.

Photo: MM

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Beneath Your Feet.”

WPC: The Doors are for afterwards

… when your mind is already gone, said a critic. I must say that I love both The Doors as in the band, and taking photos of various doors, especially here in Italy.

Every Thursday I post a few for Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors challenge (here are all my entries and the featured photo is from one of them) but I liked posting doors (and windows) even before I’d learnt of it.

And before having this blog, I assembled so many Pinterest doors that I had to put them onto a dedicated board, together with arches, windows and stairs (none of these are my photos).

I embrace this opportunity to post all my recently taken doors photos for this week’s WPC so that I’ll take new ones even more gladly.

And since it’s today that Jim Morrison died in Paris 44 years ago, I will sprinkle my favourite Morrison lyrics abundantly around like you wouldn’t believe. You did ask for it. 🙂

Words dissemble
Words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks

Plant them
They will grow
Watch them waver so

I’ll always be
a word-man
Better than a birdman

Roma

I see you live on Love Street
There’s this store where the creatures meet
I wonder what they do in there
Summer Sunday and a year
I guess I like it fine, so far

Bomarzo, Monster Park, the Leaning House

We’re perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We’re reaching for death on the end of a candle
We’re trying for something
That’s already found us
—
Give us a creed
To believe
A night of Lust
Give us trust in
The Night

Montalto di Castro

The music and voices are all around us
Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream come with us
Everything is broken up and dances

Montalto di Castro

Wow, I’m sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain
South
I’m sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T.V.
Tower. I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud

Montalto di Castro

Morning found us calmly unaware
Noon burn gold into our hair
At night, we swim the laughing sea
When summer’s gone
Where will we be

Isola del Giglio

I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
—
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant family

Photo: MM
Lyrics: Jim Morrison / The Doors

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Door.”

Holiday check-in by runaway uncle

Greetings all the way to Slovenia on her Statehood Day from the runaway uncle who only reads my blog when he is in it because it’s in English and it’s “too complicated”, says he who speaks Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish and who knows what else.

As you can see, he is suffering greatly and daily.

He needs to drive through ugly countryside…

…to hideous locations, for example Piombino below:

He needs to walk the bestia in terrible conditions.

Bomarzo

Tuscania

He needs to eat asparagi con burro e parmigiano.

And he needs to drink the green ones that concern him a little.

Whereas red ones don’t at all.

Photo: MM

And here is a topical tune by Slovenian Americans or American Slovenians with the greatest lie in a title: because pivo is. And I don’t even have to translate a thing.

The Vadnals: No beer today

We were driving through Ljubljana on a Sunday afternoon

all we had left was a dinar (old Yugoslav currency)

we stopped at a gostilna to have a little pivo

and then we heard the bartender holler:

No pivo today, no pivo today

you can’t buy pivo on Sunday.

No pivo today, no pivo today

you gotta come around on Monday.