States of mind and trust

That state of mind and trust when you realise:

that you are in Prague, it’s 40 degrees C before the rain, and you will hear Pearl Jam in a few hours

that zen is real and it is breathing down your neck (Lake Bolsena)

that you might win this game (I came second, Lake Zbilje, Slovenia)

that mom is scared and wishes to go but nothing bad will happen, again (in Vulci)

that you are about to leave Piran and Slovenia and sleep in another country tonight and every other night (taken almost three years ago on the day of the move)

that you are in the land of carciofi and Settimana enigmistica now (the scene I witnessed upon entering my new home)

that Pearl Jam were on to something with Yield (just around the corner)

that a house has indeed grown where there was none, as has the first dog, and sister (in Piran)

THAT WE HAVE JUST GOT A BESTIA! (Taken his first moment in our garden.)

that father WILL impersonate ancient architecture (in Pitigliano)

that the coming year will hopefully be just as sunny and chatty (taken on the last day of last year in Lucija).

Photo: a © signature mmm production (except cards by a kind donator)

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: State of Mind

WPC: Happy trios

Five happy trios of trios: an outdoors one, an animal one (here one trio is dead, sorry about that), a waterways one, a pack mentality one and a b&w throwback one. More information in the captions (plus click to view in full).

The right tarok is played in threes under trees. Bežigrad, Ljubljana.

In Pitigliano.

Two times three in Capalbio.

Three local nutrie.

Three local cattle.

Three local mackerel.

Happy pre-Pearl Jam Prague duck party trio.

Boat trio in Piran.

Non-typical Italian trio in Firenze.

Listening in to Etruscan ancestors in Vulci.

Happy branco (It. for “pack”) at home beach.

Happy New Year in Piran.

Happy uuuuu-ing with paternal grandparents and the green cat.

Happy 40th birthday (some years ago): One generation.

A smile in three generations (not fully related: child + father + the other grandma; mom is in the previous photo).

Photo: MM (+ BM – ‘uuuing’ + a friend – ‘one generation’)

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

WPC: Victory is peace

Victory is not when one side wins over the other.

Victory is when there is no war.

The Grotto, a dripstone wall at Wallenstein gardens, Prague

Memorial to I. WW victims, Roma

Roma

Trastevere, Roma

Constitutional Wall, Gianicolo hill, Roma

From the roof

Vatican Walls

Photo: MM

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

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: (Non)Sense of hearing

A little aurally-visual journey for Cee’s sense challenge.

It begins sombrely, in Prague, with a choir practicing.

It continues on the Spanish steps in Roma with another choir, Scandinavian. It was sudden. The beautiful notes startled us and made us smile. (Or join in – mom used to be a choir singer too.)

Two years ago I got my first record player for my birthday. All things come to those who wait.

With the player came a stack of old records and this bilingual collection of New Yugoslav Poetry. Nothing about Yugoslavia will ever be new again.

This is the wall in a restaurant in Piran, Slovenia by the name of Sarajevo 1984. There were winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, that year and I was 14 years old. More on that here. These are album covers of Yugoslav musicians of the time. The inscription below says: “If you are falling off a rock, you might as well try to fly. There is nothing to lose.”

Two images from my 40th birthday celebration 5 years ago. That grin is self-explanatory.

And to conclude: a proof that mom is indeed a rapper.

Photo: MM (and one by an anonymous friendly person)

For:

No vivid filters were harmed in the making of these images.

Prague

Montalto di Castro

Ferry to Isola del Giglio

I dived in! Isola del Giglio

Roma garden

Trilateral tarok tournament in Tournament Street in Ljubljana, flags, from left: of Slovenia, Ljubljana city, Italia.

Capalbio sunset

Winter at home

Photo: MM

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

Before the Beginning of Years

This is one of my favourite poems of all times. Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote it in 1865, more than one hundred years before I was born. Those who still can, bring more poets to this world, will you.

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance, fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears,

And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;

And froth and the drift of the sea;

And dust of the laboring earth;

And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;

And wrought with weeping and laughter,

And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span

With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south,

They gathered as unto strife;

They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life;

Eyesight and speech they wrought

For the veils of the soul therein,

A time for labor and thought,

A time to serve and to sin;

They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and space for delight,

And beauty, and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night.

His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

He weaves, and is clothed with derision;

Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.

Church by Jože Plečnik in Prague (I get a certain Monty Python feel from it). Photo: MM