Lepopisana

Your white shirt has grown thirsty dark brown roses. Your blood oozes and flees around the corners of your sash. [...] Let me climb up, at least, up to the high balconies; Let me climb up! Let me, up to the green balconies.* He came from the port of the city of Cabra. God knows what happened to him, or whose path he crossed, to give him bloody red roses oozing through the white cotton of his shirt. He had to return, it's been too long. It's dark, the air smells of green wind and green branches. Somewhere in the distance he senses her waiting, but at the same time there's something sinister in that waiting. He can feel a strange taste of bile, mint and basil in his mouth .   It's not his time anymore, he feels as if he's there on borrowed moments, belonging to nobody. He looks up along the greenery, the overgrown rumbled down house. He thinks he can see her crossing the balcony and stopping by the wrought iron railings. He imagines her swaying her hips fo...

England England is a theme park set up by sir Jack Pitman. No, according to sir Jack, we shouldn't call it a theme park, because it's not it. It's quality leisure. It's set on the Isle of Wight and it includes all important English historical figures, events and places. Even the King is payed to move to the island in rule from there. Actors are hired to represent historical figures, and they do it according to the script. Sir Jack Pitman wants England England to encompass everything that is really English. The project is more sucessful as anyone thought it would be, England England becomes better than the original Old England. The people and places, set up in the theme park are not just representations of the people and places. They are even better, not substitutes, but enhancements and enrichments. The problem arises when the actors start to believe they are who they are hired to represent. Robin Hood and his Merry Men start hunting for their own food, s...

Sometimes the process is more interesting than the final artwork. No, the process is always more interesting than the final artwork. All possible paths leading from one idea, can later give a good insight into the background of creation. It's thinking that's sexy, not the final artwork.  I started with a green moth, Actias Luna. I don't know why I chose it. Everybody does, it's almost on every other artwork I see on the internet. Sometimes I think I shouldn't find it interesting, but I do. Luna Moth doesn't live in my neighbourhood, the chance of seeing it is nil. Anyway, it being green, made me think of Federico Garcia Lorca's Romance Sonambulo, than the green maiden waiting on a balcony, than abandoned buildings overgrown with greenery, than an abandoned greenhouse in Manfred's garden, Manfred being someone I once invented in a story. Why there's an abandoned greenhouse in his garden, he doesn't say. From there it went to the man climbin...

I read mixed reviews about this book. People seem to either love or hate it. I loved it. I loved the writing, the short chapters, like impressions taken out of a person's life, flashbacks written in a way I could almost see them. (Sheets of paper tumble down the rows of cots, and in Werner’s chest comes a quickening. He sees Frau Elena kneel beside the coal stove and bank up the fire. Children in their beds. Baby Jutta sleeps in her cradle. His father lights a lamp, steps into an elevator, and disappears. The voice of Volkheimer: What you could be.) I loved the author's unusual choice of words to describe ordinary things like the sound of fire: the sound of dried roses being crushed in a fist ; or the swimming of flies . I know flies don't swim, they fly or swarm, but for me swimming of flies implies slow or dazed movement . I imagined that's how the soldiers must have been feeling: dazed and nightmarish. What I loved the most was the ability of the author t...

“I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark.” Andrea Gibson  Today is the first day of winter, winter solstice, the longest night. The day the sun stands still. Some people say we should look into ourselves, find peace, gather strength and prepare for the light. Even though I often fail to turn the light on in the office, I don't like darkness. Some people, where I used to work, called me Dark Lady, which I'm not. The truth is I find darkness unnerving. Not in a strictly negative sense though. It's not scary, it's just ... too big to comprehend. Like a deep void, silent and impenetrable. There's nothing there, but then again, anything may be there.  My first contact with Erebus was on a snowy winter day when I was ten or eleven and I read an article about ...

What's in a name 2016 was the first reading challenge I took part in. I didn't know what to expect but in the end quite enjoyed it. I chose the books I was going to read beforehand even though I could chose as I went along. I wanted to see how close I'll stick to the list, since I'm not particularly good at following set plans like dieting or Inktober, but that's another story. Anyway, what I read was: A country: Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie An item of clothing: The Greatcoat - Helen Dunmore An item of furniture: The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje A profession: The Fencing Master - Arturo Pérez-Reverte A month of the year: The October Country - Ray Bradbury A title with the word ‘tree’ in it: The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino There's only one book from the list I replaced. For an item of furniture I was planning to read The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad. After a couple of chapters I couldn't make myself continue. ...

It's interesting how I slip into monochrome, the moment I start using letters. Most of my moths are predominantly green, however I managed to include some red, yellow, brown and quinacridone gold. These letters are mostly green. There's a wisp of yellow at the bottom, but was covered with green while the water kept flowing down the paper. It seems that for me, letters without being the part of words, are the most abstract entities I can imagine. Or perhaps there's fear in that abstraction. Letters shouldn't be without meaning, they were invented to carry speech, words, meaning. Stripping them of all that, scares me. The more I abstract things, the more my palette shrinks, the more I slide down the monochrome line towards the void, silence, darkness, cold and oblivion. * Zanimivo kako zdrsnem v monokrom v trenutku, ko začnem pisati črke. Večina mojih nočnih metuljev je resda pretežno zelenih, vendar sem uspela dodati nekaj rdeče, rjave, rumene in zlate, ki t...

...that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain...  I grew up with stories from the Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. All those stories fuelled my imagination always reminding me that not everything is just what it seems, and that things and beings everybody teaches us don't exist, watch us from the shadows all the time. The October Country is a collection of nineteen stories. I couldn't say they were scary. They are macabre, unsettling and fantastic. Most of them smell of wet earth and fallen leaves, whispering rain and smo...

This might just be the last one about the green maiden standing on the balcony, waiting. My mind is full of the dark roses seeping through the man's white shirt, while he climbs to the high balconies.  * Tale je morda zadnja o zeleni mladenki, ki čaka na balkonu. Moje misli zaposlujejo temne vrtnice, ki mezijo skozi belo srajco moškega, ki pleza k visokim balkonom.

I enjoyed the last, or still current reading challenge, since I haven't written the last two posts yet. This year's categories are: A number in numbers (84, Charing Cross Road; 12 Years A Slave; 31 Dream Street) A building (The Old Curiosity Shop; I Capture The Castle; House Of Shadows; The Invisible Library; Jamaica Inn) A title which has an ‘X’ somewhere in it (The Girl Next Door; The Running Vixen) A compass direction (North and South; Guardians Of The West; The Shadow In The North; NW) An item/items of cutlery (The Subtle Knife; Our Spoons Came From Woolworths) A title in which at least two words share the same first letter – alliteration! (The Great Gatsby; The Luminous Life Of Lilly Aphrodite; Gone Girl; The Cuckoo’s Calling) More information on the challenge can be found at The Worm Hole .   Is it only me, or is next year's choice more ... uhm ... challenging? I know I don't have to decide what to read right away, but anyway. Let's ...