OH! THE PLACES YOU'LL GO, Oh! that bygone time of Dr Seuss reading, Veronica's nose admiring, trying hard to get the tiger out of the tea pot and thousands nights of story spinning...
Tucking you in bed, a goodnight kiss and Good Night >Moon...
I won't cry Child, I'll take solace in the poetry of our beloved Shel Silverstein 'where the side walk ends'
See Child, up to now you've been sheltered, walking on the sidewalk.
But there comes always, sooner or later, that terrible edgy moment and the sidewalk ends. Then you're left to step in the dangerous traffic of life and make it safely out from one place to the other. The walk is well worth its risks and if you patiently wait, for the traffic light to pass to green then a Shel Silverstein kind of invitation might be waiting for you...
If you are a dreamer come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
So go in Child. Take up that invitation the world is offering you and we too, will eventually chime in and sing the same song that generations of parents sang to generations of children; the lyrics going about..." Listen to the wind...carrying your heart's wishes...then you'll find... your own path...listen to the wind...in the stormy night...and you'll find...your own path... OK, OK, I'm not good at this, toneless as an empty bucket's bang bang; so go on sing it by yourself.
See Child the fire you leave behind, here, will be kept warm and alive for you to comeback whenever you like...
Speaking of fire, I remember that other poem, in Farsi, that I used to love when I was your age. Something like this:
Yes, yes, Life is Beautiful,
if you light its fire
it will soar high toward the sky
but if you let it down to die, then
all that remain
are ashes scattered in the ensuing still life.
Love you Child.
Mom
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Sunday, August 5, 2007
On change and the imperfect thoughts
Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jewelled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.
Ada Louise Huxtable
Our summer here, in Nettle country, has been a far cry from the right kind of summer days. We have yet to witness one of those 'stripping-down-to-bathing-suit' days or a perfectly balmy night...and all of it not only because of the rotten weather. Indeed ever since, a few months ago, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with an illness necessitating a major surgery, our days and nights have been angst ridden...of course nothing comparable to what himself has been going through neither what his wife (my little sis) has had to cope with, specially in front of their lovely daughter.
Yet both of them kept up the mood and acted coolly. They even took a short vacation trip just before the surgery and had a terrific time, soothing their battered spirit in the uplifting warmth of a Greek island, believing that all that happens, happens for the best as my late uncle would say.
The surgery is over now and doctors are confident that it went well. my brother-in-law has been wheeled out of ICU, that dreadful yet life saving place.
He is recovering in his hospital room and upon his own request, we are not allowed to see him. We will wait till he feels ready and comfortable to see us again.
Despite this good part, we can't just shed down our tension, not yet, not when, in a few days it will be our beloved Boston cousin's turn to undergo heavy surgery for his back.
I guess I could say... and so on in a Kurt Vonnegut manner...
Well it is just that. Going on so...
There is this old friend, that I visit every now and then in Ghent, battling deep depression for over three years now, her old self gone, trying to no avail to grip one end of the rope that will enable her or her doctors to pull it up from that dark abyss invisible to most of us.
Last I saw her, just before my brother-in-law's surgery, my tired eyes hidden behind dark glasses, I asked her to walk from our meeting point in the Zen garden just outside the train station till Sint-Baaf cathedral and light candles. Which is exactly what we did.Though I knew how Cathedrals can overwhelmingly weigh us down, outlining our smallness and that maybe our timing was wrong. But we went on. As we stood under "The Adoration of The Mystic Lamb" its incredible beauty made me feel even more weighed down in a painful way. I reflected that the brothers van Eyck in all their greatness must, most certainly, have had to go through the changes of their own lifetime. Maybe as they finished the very masterwork that kept our heads skyward, they experienced the delusion of directing time. Their Art made it through the trials of time, from the Middle Ages into the twenty first century, imperturbable in its beauty.
Then it sunk down that we too, with all our flaws and endowed with emotional intelligence, will be able to stand up to those changes no matter their conspicuous character, no matter that can take the shape of absence, your own daughter's, who is going away to the feast of the world leaving you to face the emptiness of days with no sweet sound of music practice, no complaints over a vegetarian dinner just because absolute beauty will always be on duty.
Time spent drawing with my niece, in the afternoon light, our inside chit-chat at long last hushed by our concentration; times when my daughter arrives, late night from say a London trip, entering by the front gate while my son makes his come back from one of his nightly bike rides from the back door, in almost a synchronized motion, joining each other over a late snack on the kitchen counter, Their laughter fading in the night as fatigue takes over, or when I walk out of a cathedral with a cherished friend battling ugly depression, but able to laugh in a self mocking way while talking, over coffee and speculoos, about her own history of passing out on the most impromptus moments in life, actually finding herself lay down on a marble table in the lobby of an old Roman house... I take off my dark glasses and let my eyes get, once again, acquainted with light and the lighter side of life. So the changes come up close to the point of becoming memories.
Summer 2007 is not yet over and there is hope for balmy nights, meanwhile spending evenings with Haruki Murakami, sipping chilled white wine has its own rewards. In the opening pages of his "Norwegian Wood" he so pertinently points out that:" Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts."
Flora
Ada Louise Huxtable
Our summer here, in Nettle country, has been a far cry from the right kind of summer days. We have yet to witness one of those 'stripping-down-to-bathing-suit' days or a perfectly balmy night...and all of it not only because of the rotten weather. Indeed ever since, a few months ago, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with an illness necessitating a major surgery, our days and nights have been angst ridden...of course nothing comparable to what himself has been going through neither what his wife (my little sis) has had to cope with, specially in front of their lovely daughter.
Yet both of them kept up the mood and acted coolly. They even took a short vacation trip just before the surgery and had a terrific time, soothing their battered spirit in the uplifting warmth of a Greek island, believing that all that happens, happens for the best as my late uncle would say.
The surgery is over now and doctors are confident that it went well. my brother-in-law has been wheeled out of ICU, that dreadful yet life saving place.
He is recovering in his hospital room and upon his own request, we are not allowed to see him. We will wait till he feels ready and comfortable to see us again.
Despite this good part, we can't just shed down our tension, not yet, not when, in a few days it will be our beloved Boston cousin's turn to undergo heavy surgery for his back.
I guess I could say... and so on in a Kurt Vonnegut manner...
Well it is just that. Going on so...
There is this old friend, that I visit every now and then in Ghent, battling deep depression for over three years now, her old self gone, trying to no avail to grip one end of the rope that will enable her or her doctors to pull it up from that dark abyss invisible to most of us.
Last I saw her, just before my brother-in-law's surgery, my tired eyes hidden behind dark glasses, I asked her to walk from our meeting point in the Zen garden just outside the train station till Sint-Baaf cathedral and light candles. Which is exactly what we did.Though I knew how Cathedrals can overwhelmingly weigh us down, outlining our smallness and that maybe our timing was wrong. But we went on. As we stood under "The Adoration of The Mystic Lamb" its incredible beauty made me feel even more weighed down in a painful way. I reflected that the brothers van Eyck in all their greatness must, most certainly, have had to go through the changes of their own lifetime. Maybe as they finished the very masterwork that kept our heads skyward, they experienced the delusion of directing time. Their Art made it through the trials of time, from the Middle Ages into the twenty first century, imperturbable in its beauty.
Then it sunk down that we too, with all our flaws and endowed with emotional intelligence, will be able to stand up to those changes no matter their conspicuous character, no matter that can take the shape of absence, your own daughter's, who is going away to the feast of the world leaving you to face the emptiness of days with no sweet sound of music practice, no complaints over a vegetarian dinner just because absolute beauty will always be on duty.
Time spent drawing with my niece, in the afternoon light, our inside chit-chat at long last hushed by our concentration; times when my daughter arrives, late night from say a London trip, entering by the front gate while my son makes his come back from one of his nightly bike rides from the back door, in almost a synchronized motion, joining each other over a late snack on the kitchen counter, Their laughter fading in the night as fatigue takes over, or when I walk out of a cathedral with a cherished friend battling ugly depression, but able to laugh in a self mocking way while talking, over coffee and speculoos, about her own history of passing out on the most impromptus moments in life, actually finding herself lay down on a marble table in the lobby of an old Roman house... I take off my dark glasses and let my eyes get, once again, acquainted with light and the lighter side of life. So the changes come up close to the point of becoming memories.
Summer 2007 is not yet over and there is hope for balmy nights, meanwhile spending evenings with Haruki Murakami, sipping chilled white wine has its own rewards. In the opening pages of his "Norwegian Wood" he so pertinently points out that:" Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts."
Flora
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Aangenam Amsterdam
Coming across “Thirty Centuries of Persian Art and Culture” on the Shore of Amstel River
A couple of years ago, as I sat in a beginner level class in an attempt to master basics of Flemish language,I learned the word aangenam first thing first as in ‘aangenam kennis making’, nice to meet you! It was my very first words venturing into Flemish and I took it for an open sesame leading denizen foreigners (see previous blog contents) straight into a spot in the heart of Nettlelanders; but que nenni! Not at all, just some wishful thinking.
Paying recently a neighborly visit to the next door Nederland, I couldn’t help but notice, once again, how high the Dutch scored when it comes down to switching into English even when one is actually trying to show off a basic knowledge of their aangenam language versus the unforgivable look of Nettlelanders while you are bravely attempting to get by.
Anyway Amsterdam looked to me a bit shabby and run down this time but it still had the power of running wild my imagination toward the seventeenth century, when Armenian merchants arrived there, then the trendy center of world trade, with their silk loaded caravans making the long journey through Russia. They offered their silk for the bullions they brought back to the Persian Safavid court. The resulting wealth contributed to the modern state building of the time, in Iran. So in a way, between Amsterdam, Russia and Persia it has always been an old story. That’s what's giving such a natural feel to the opening of the Hermitage museum on the canal belt and an even homier feel to its seventh exhibition featuring Persian Art.
The old days of Golden Age silk trading are long gone and embarking into a search journey brings nothing but deception. Much like the time I visited the Willet-Holtuysen house dating back to that meaningful time. The name belongs to the art collecting family who owned it in the nineteenth century which of course explains why I couldn’t find the least littlest bit of my own quest into that particular moment of history so dear to me. Yet I keep imagining those Armenian merchants_ who competed and won against the powerful East Indian Company when the great Shah Abbas Safavid auctioned the monopoly of trading his silk_ as business dinner guests in the Genteel Gratchtengordel houses.
So one guesses how much I was amazed to discover that the Hermitage Amsterdam, a work in progress, which opened his doors in 2004, featured ‘Persia, Thirty Centuries of Art” as his seventh venture into the rich collection of the Great Hermitage. It was tough the old days were kind of resuscitated!
A sleepy Shah as guide and Art narrator…
A short walk from the Herengracht, crossing the bridge over Amstel river toward the n° 14 on the Nieuwe Herengracht got me at the door of the museum’s 500 m2 exhibition space divided into a total of six galleries where the big portrait of a stoned looking Nasir Al-Din Shah from the pool of Qadjar dynasty greeted the visitor with words some humor driven curator had put in his thick whiskers covered mouth:
“Ours is a land full of people, full of Art. Your visit will be a joyful reacquaintance with these delights”.
Boy! Despite his opium imbued look it was though the guy knew what he was talking about.
The exhibition focused on the recurring leitmotif of old forms and traditions.
The first gallery displayed a sample of pre-Islamic art. Small everyday objects that the languid eyed Nasir explained as the starting point:
“Our story begins with the Elamites a people who lived in our realm many thousands of years ago. It was they who made the first works of Art. Simple pieces yet already imbued with an aesthetic style that would continue to characterize our Iranian Art.”
What captured my attention was a dark blue coffee jug with its bird’s beak looking spout. A knock-out piece of modern design out of a thee drinking nation!
The second showroom outlined Iran’s tradition of bronze and ceramics production. Here again my ever so sleepy Shah went on with his towering comments:
“We Iranians love flowers, plants, people and animals. The prophet Mohammed, may God bless him and peace be upon him, warned us not to have divine pretensions and breathe life into man and beast in images. But our artists could not resist this temptation, for they desired to represent the creation of Allah. The Iranians preferred to call their craftsmen artists and they in turn interwove form and decoration to create aesthetically pleasing objects, from simple bronze cauldron to candle stands for mosques.”
It seemed to me that then as now, artists, shahs and simple mortals were all already outsmarting God and the forbidding ways of his prophet!
The third section outlined the importance of Iran’s fabulous calligraphy and miniature painting featuring works of my hometown’s master, the famous Reza-e-Abassi of the Isfahan school of painters. So I was sufficiently in awe to take the Shah’s word as some spell binding statements. With his outwardly gaze he went on as though guessing my state of mind:
“In the eleventh century hijra (18th century) Isfahan masters were influenced by contacts with the west. These contacts gave miniatures a more ‘three dimensional' character and added European towers, houses, bridges and horses to the painters repertoire. In the second half of the 12th century hijra (19th century) Iranian artists were also fascinated by Indian (Mughal) painting.”
I stood there in front of fragile illustrations of literary epics, tragic love stories some of them learned on the school benches and reflected on that bygone story book place I lived once upon a time.
Pulling myself out of a nostalgic reverie, I followed the fourth part with more bronze and ceramics and learned that Kerman was one of the most important center of ceramic production, that in the years before the Safavid period a new style was introduced and artists began to engrave ornaments and inscriptions (suras from the Koran etc.) that resembled a large net. Metal ware was also decorated with expressions of greeting and congratulations or wishes of happiness and success. Then came a time of Chinese influence; dishes from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries with a central medallion and the Ming dynasty porcelain patterns all of it an outcome of the trade between Iran, China and Europe.
The fifth group of glass and textiles showed the skills of Iranian glass blowers. Beautiful curves and the transparent blue colors combined to the beauty of brocades, mantles, scarves and garments, usually worn indoors by royals left me to ponder about the more practical side of cloth washing job. How they managed to not damage such a dainty material? Nasir Shah didn’t seem to have an answer for this and I skipped all together the subject. One shouldn’t bother a royal with such trivialities.
So that brought me to the sixth and final part of the show. The lethargic Qadjar period of loose cloth fashion and beard growing. Animal figures were no longer made of copper or bronze but of steel. The central piece in this Qadjar gallery was a carpet featuring Persepolis, symbol of the Qadjar’s will to link themselves to the grandeur of the oldest dynasties. Portrait paintings made its appearance…that’s probably how Nasir ended up leading visitors through this very exhibition while the West was already opening his way into the legendary realm of Iran.
I bade farewell to Nasir, his sleepy look so familiar by now and headed out to the museum's store stocked with various Iranian items. I gave in to the temptation of the moment and bought Mijn Minnaar, My lover, by the late Forough Farrokhzad, the celebrated poetess of the twentieth century as a gift for my daughter,wondering about incredible turns of fate…my own daughter discovering Forough’s beautiful poems in Dutch! The DVD of Jafar Panahi's movie “Circle” winner of the 2000 Venetian Gold Lion tackling the women’s treatment under the rule of Islamism as well as a cookbook for the first Flemish speaking friend who comes up showing some interest in Persian cooking.
Yeah! Het was me eens aangenam in Amsterdam.
Flora
A couple of years ago, as I sat in a beginner level class in an attempt to master basics of Flemish language,I learned the word aangenam first thing first as in ‘aangenam kennis making’, nice to meet you! It was my very first words venturing into Flemish and I took it for an open sesame leading denizen foreigners (see previous blog contents) straight into a spot in the heart of Nettlelanders; but que nenni! Not at all, just some wishful thinking.
Paying recently a neighborly visit to the next door Nederland, I couldn’t help but notice, once again, how high the Dutch scored when it comes down to switching into English even when one is actually trying to show off a basic knowledge of their aangenam language versus the unforgivable look of Nettlelanders while you are bravely attempting to get by.
Anyway Amsterdam looked to me a bit shabby and run down this time but it still had the power of running wild my imagination toward the seventeenth century, when Armenian merchants arrived there, then the trendy center of world trade, with their silk loaded caravans making the long journey through Russia. They offered their silk for the bullions they brought back to the Persian Safavid court. The resulting wealth contributed to the modern state building of the time, in Iran. So in a way, between Amsterdam, Russia and Persia it has always been an old story. That’s what's giving such a natural feel to the opening of the Hermitage museum on the canal belt and an even homier feel to its seventh exhibition featuring Persian Art.
The old days of Golden Age silk trading are long gone and embarking into a search journey brings nothing but deception. Much like the time I visited the Willet-Holtuysen house dating back to that meaningful time. The name belongs to the art collecting family who owned it in the nineteenth century which of course explains why I couldn’t find the least littlest bit of my own quest into that particular moment of history so dear to me. Yet I keep imagining those Armenian merchants_ who competed and won against the powerful East Indian Company when the great Shah Abbas Safavid auctioned the monopoly of trading his silk_ as business dinner guests in the Genteel Gratchtengordel houses.
So one guesses how much I was amazed to discover that the Hermitage Amsterdam, a work in progress, which opened his doors in 2004, featured ‘Persia, Thirty Centuries of Art” as his seventh venture into the rich collection of the Great Hermitage. It was tough the old days were kind of resuscitated!
A sleepy Shah as guide and Art narrator…
A short walk from the Herengracht, crossing the bridge over Amstel river toward the n° 14 on the Nieuwe Herengracht got me at the door of the museum’s 500 m2 exhibition space divided into a total of six galleries where the big portrait of a stoned looking Nasir Al-Din Shah from the pool of Qadjar dynasty greeted the visitor with words some humor driven curator had put in his thick whiskers covered mouth:
“Ours is a land full of people, full of Art. Your visit will be a joyful reacquaintance with these delights”.
Boy! Despite his opium imbued look it was though the guy knew what he was talking about.
The exhibition focused on the recurring leitmotif of old forms and traditions.
The first gallery displayed a sample of pre-Islamic art. Small everyday objects that the languid eyed Nasir explained as the starting point:
“Our story begins with the Elamites a people who lived in our realm many thousands of years ago. It was they who made the first works of Art. Simple pieces yet already imbued with an aesthetic style that would continue to characterize our Iranian Art.”
What captured my attention was a dark blue coffee jug with its bird’s beak looking spout. A knock-out piece of modern design out of a thee drinking nation!
The second showroom outlined Iran’s tradition of bronze and ceramics production. Here again my ever so sleepy Shah went on with his towering comments:
“We Iranians love flowers, plants, people and animals. The prophet Mohammed, may God bless him and peace be upon him, warned us not to have divine pretensions and breathe life into man and beast in images. But our artists could not resist this temptation, for they desired to represent the creation of Allah. The Iranians preferred to call their craftsmen artists and they in turn interwove form and decoration to create aesthetically pleasing objects, from simple bronze cauldron to candle stands for mosques.”
It seemed to me that then as now, artists, shahs and simple mortals were all already outsmarting God and the forbidding ways of his prophet!
The third section outlined the importance of Iran’s fabulous calligraphy and miniature painting featuring works of my hometown’s master, the famous Reza-e-Abassi of the Isfahan school of painters. So I was sufficiently in awe to take the Shah’s word as some spell binding statements. With his outwardly gaze he went on as though guessing my state of mind:
“In the eleventh century hijra (18th century) Isfahan masters were influenced by contacts with the west. These contacts gave miniatures a more ‘three dimensional' character and added European towers, houses, bridges and horses to the painters repertoire. In the second half of the 12th century hijra (19th century) Iranian artists were also fascinated by Indian (Mughal) painting.”
I stood there in front of fragile illustrations of literary epics, tragic love stories some of them learned on the school benches and reflected on that bygone story book place I lived once upon a time.
Pulling myself out of a nostalgic reverie, I followed the fourth part with more bronze and ceramics and learned that Kerman was one of the most important center of ceramic production, that in the years before the Safavid period a new style was introduced and artists began to engrave ornaments and inscriptions (suras from the Koran etc.) that resembled a large net. Metal ware was also decorated with expressions of greeting and congratulations or wishes of happiness and success. Then came a time of Chinese influence; dishes from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries with a central medallion and the Ming dynasty porcelain patterns all of it an outcome of the trade between Iran, China and Europe.
The fifth group of glass and textiles showed the skills of Iranian glass blowers. Beautiful curves and the transparent blue colors combined to the beauty of brocades, mantles, scarves and garments, usually worn indoors by royals left me to ponder about the more practical side of cloth washing job. How they managed to not damage such a dainty material? Nasir Shah didn’t seem to have an answer for this and I skipped all together the subject. One shouldn’t bother a royal with such trivialities.
So that brought me to the sixth and final part of the show. The lethargic Qadjar period of loose cloth fashion and beard growing. Animal figures were no longer made of copper or bronze but of steel. The central piece in this Qadjar gallery was a carpet featuring Persepolis, symbol of the Qadjar’s will to link themselves to the grandeur of the oldest dynasties. Portrait paintings made its appearance…that’s probably how Nasir ended up leading visitors through this very exhibition while the West was already opening his way into the legendary realm of Iran.
I bade farewell to Nasir, his sleepy look so familiar by now and headed out to the museum's store stocked with various Iranian items. I gave in to the temptation of the moment and bought Mijn Minnaar, My lover, by the late Forough Farrokhzad, the celebrated poetess of the twentieth century as a gift for my daughter,wondering about incredible turns of fate…my own daughter discovering Forough’s beautiful poems in Dutch! The DVD of Jafar Panahi's movie “Circle” winner of the 2000 Venetian Gold Lion tackling the women’s treatment under the rule of Islamism as well as a cookbook for the first Flemish speaking friend who comes up showing some interest in Persian cooking.
Yeah! Het was me eens aangenam in Amsterdam.
Flora
Friday, July 20, 2007
Nettle Diaries
As I'm posting for the first time my own blog, I feel compelled to say a word or two about the title. Nettle Diaries. Here I'm in the remote Zoersel, a leafy area of Belgium in the Flemish speaking part, once again an alien as I've been throughout my life. I'm surrounded by woods where nettles grow freely and abundantly. They are stinging plants, though milder and weaker than poison ivy, they have terrific health effects. They are loaded with iron and despite their frail, lowly appearance they battle successfully against the rheumatoid threats hang over our head under a cloud loaded sky. you can enjoy the wonderful culinary taste it offers by making nettle soup, nettle flavored mashed potatoes or nettle infusion for the elderly pain of arthritis to name a few. So you guessed right! I'm planning to write some stinging stuff prickling, nettle like, the politically correct with curative overtones...But also about things I love, such as a good book (recently I much enjoyed Muriel Barbery's 'l'élégance de l'hérisson' or 'hedgehog's grace') or delicious recipes, food shared around a joyful table with friends and family, indeed cook&book rhyme perfectly or how it feels to be forever a DF. A Denizen Foreigner that is. I've been pondering this two words for a while. they define better than the old world diaspora the experience of scattered and exiled people like myself. Denizen foreigners actually belong to the places they live but their identity have a mythical dimension shaped out of the actual "being through this and that", living here and there in the temporal.So here I'm now and five years of living in Zoersel gives some perspective to write in this Flemish setting alike to Ingeborg Bachman's Nebelland setting. Nebula, I saw. Nebula's heart, I ate.
Flora
Flora
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