all new, all fresh

i'm one of those silly people who still make new year's resolutions. actually, i make resolutions several times a year, but never really succeed in fulfilling them. it's funny how they're always about the same issues, same things that seem to bother me since ever: becoming more productive and creative, overcoming some emotional bagagge, losing weight, getting a better job, trying harder at school, being truer to myself, living healthier... i guess these are the things most people worry about. does being unable to carry these promises out mean i'm not becoming a better person? i don't really think so. i think it just means i'm aware of my faults and i'm still learning to live with them. would i really be 'happier' if i managed to accomplish any of these things? in my opinion, a much bigger step towards the so-called happiness is being able to forgive myself for not meeting my own expectations. there now. i have spoken. :)

2013. a brand new, fresh, clean set of 365 days for us to fill with ourselves. quite the best new year's gift i could ever imagine.

the sound of music

lately, all my creative energy has been channeled into music and the band. i really can't tell you how sorry i am that i didn't get involved with music before. it amazes me to an extent where i can't really think about anything else, and luckily, i'm surrounded by perspective young musicians who keep on inspiring me. only yesterday, there was a major jam session going on at the place where our band usually practices, and it was so good to see (and hear) all these different people, who don't even necessarily know each other, make music together, communicating with rythms and vibes.

in this confused world, it finally feels right. it feels like the seventies. it feels like we could make a change.

i don't really want to wander away into writing a bunch of spiritually-oriented shit, but i can tell something's going on when the right tune is played.  if you've never played with a band, try it. really, try it :)

hangover

since this blog is organically becoming a personal poetry stash, here's another recent piece.

the hours we have abandoned
before the sun arose this morning
are creeping through the gaps
between our minutes. this time, they decided,
blush-faced and cold-handed,
they will not remain the guards
of what we yesterday called home. no,
they will take their toll on this
pale morning, when we fall out
of our beds like corpses.
the sequenced movement of
past night still echoes in our conscience.
our bodies betrayed us, they
grew old before we noticed
the blood stains on our linen.
now we stare, dead-eyed,
into the white of our windows,
as the hours gently squeeze us,
our mouths dry and our limbs trembling,
and every option of oblivion is
lost.

a list like this one.

it's been a while. how are you doing? here's a product of my recently resurrected poetic ambitions. i'm thinking of calling it simply a list, though it sounds somewhat dull. any suggestions?

it is a fact that i love
green leaves
red nail polish
golden chandeliers
and the sea,
whichever colour currently available.
i am the mishappen
wunderkind of middle class
my mind is good at remembering
grocery lists and
second hand poems.
i hate jazz. i like to pretend i understand it.
i drink three to four cups of coffee every day.
i know it will kill me.
i am good at everything,
the best at nothing.
i draw, i sing, i read,
a well-bred lady of the century.

it's just that i sometimes forget
to be myself
some unknown words come flodding from my mouth,
and i have to stop and make a list
of all the things i am,
a list like this one.

early winter renaissance

i can't believe i am actually saying this, but this year i am sort of enjoying the chill of the coming winter and the low set sun. i've always been a summer person. i love the colours of the sea, the wide cloudless sky and the heat. but when the first snow fell this weekend, i was happy as a child. i also have a brand new coat, and the descending temperatures gave me a chance to take full advantage of it already. there's something about the foggy mornings and the northern wind that makes me want to snuggle up with a book and a cup of tea. speaking of books, i recently finished hesse's narcissus and goldmund, and it gave me some things to think about. also, (and i'm sort of ashamed to admit it) i read twilight this week. yes, i did. i can't really say it gave me anything to think about, except for some quirky teenage fantasies i believe every girl experiences at least once in her lifetime. right now, i'm starting with kerouac's on the road again.

also, i've decided to start drawing again. it's sort of liberating.
aaand i'm writing quite a lot of poetry after a few years of absolutely nothing. aaand my band is finally starting to be productive.

yay, i'm experiencing an artistic renaissance! i hope something good will actually come out of me before it ends.

time

it is what drives me to my end
and pushes sunlight through the vastness
always defining, with the other hand
the sense that things make sense inside us
the omnipresent longing
of things to dissolve and blend
into a creeping shadow
of what has been used and tends
to swallow generations yet to come
who are alive, in other moments, like i am
now that i look up to the sky to catch
a glimpse of something
too beautiful to understand.

the world of light

i recently started a new job at a little shop that sells and designs lighting. it's a dream job for me, as it has to do with architecture and the technical side of it, while on the other hand manipulates light, the most romantic and elusive of all substances.
i've never given lighting or light design much thought, and now i'm somewhat ashamed of it. after all, it's one of the most important things in architecture! for the last few days, i wasn't really able to think about anything else. our psychology depends on the quality of light so much without us really knowing it. for example, i figured that our mind is pre-programmed to find the light, coming from above, the most natural. it's the active, motivatonal light, and therefore suited for working and living spaces. on the other hand, light coming from below or from the walls, soothes us, so it's adequate for spaces where we should relax. it's a simple trick, yet it affects the deepest animal instincts inside us. the world of light is something completely new to me, and i'm eager to conquer it.

what matters

i came across this piece of awesomeness today: tom in rome by jonathan galassi

bolder than antonio canova
outdoing the apollo belvedere,
you demolish every red guide reader's
half-baked callow notion of an
adequate response to what we see:
forensically investigating daphne,
how she limb by limb becomes a tree,
you scant the art, stern sage who's always known
what matters in a figure is the stone.

you are toffee, you are sand in sunlight,
you are handsome, winsome, bright and lithe:
chaste carrara, blue-veined parian,
hand-warmed pentelic when you buck and writhe
more contorted than laocoön,
diminutive fine subtle lordship, master-
work surpassing alabaster,
as i am tufa to your travertine.

go ahead and shame us in the forum
with your ironic fine decorum, do:
antinous with glasses and umbrella,
deus ex machina of the novella
whose story was that my roads led to you.

thank you, new york book review, for publishing this. i can't get it out of my head now, especially the fact, that what matters in a figure, is the stone.

amazing artist: rune guneriussen

rune guneriussen is a norway based artist, whose work concentrates on creating magical landscapes from ordinary objects. i especially like the pieces that involve lights. straight from a modern fairy-tale.

letting go

'train yourself to let go of what you fear the most to lose' was always one of my favourite quotes, as i have a huge problem with letting things go. perpetually holding on and clinging to them, i am often stressed out and anxious. lately, i'm trying to convince myself to change my routines, escape my own patterns and cherish changes. the trick, i think, is in respecting and being thankful for the things you love, but knowing when it's time to let them become memories, glowing from the past. you can live without anything. even without things you fear the most to lose. as frusciante puts it: 'what is anything anyway but a series of things running through your brain?' it's a lesson i hope to learn through the years.

september sentiment

changes are good, or at least so they say, though the change of summer into autumn is one of my least favourite changes. i like autumn, don't get me wrong, it's just that i like summer so much more.

september always gets me thinking about the plans for the coming season, the coming year. what would i like to change? what are my goals? where will i be next september? and it also brings back memories of all the past septembers, which usually gets me freaking out about the passage of time, my age and getting old(er).

so september is a sort of a reality check after the dreamy summer for me. it's a time to make up my mind and sort things out. it's time for changes, for the better i hope.

a little something

nothing can feed this hunger i carry within anymore

not cigarettes, alcohol, drugs

not food, and now,

not even you

like nothing can tame the fires that burn in the night

like nothing can scare away

little black birds that came with the spring

nobody wanted them

nobody hoped for them

but now that they're here

we might as well let them sing

the book of questions

i just finished reading per olov enquist's 'the book of blanche and marie', and immedately started reading it all over again. it is that good, yes. based on a few facts from the life of marie curie and her assistant, a former histerical patient, blanche wittman, the book is actually a scientific diary of the women's pursuit of love. enquist manages to make the two main characters feel alive, active, and for the first time in my life i realised the great scientist marie curie was really just as confused and tender as any of us. the book is lyrical, symbolic, beautiful and terrifying, and that made it the perfect read for another woman in love.

joy

sometimes, without any warning and with no obvious reason, happiness comes streaming through me like a mountain torrent. i know it won't last, so i'm trying to swim with it as long as i can.

amazing artist: edward hopper

edward hopper's images of random situations really got to me today.

the portal

for 8 years now, i've been spending at least one week a summer in a tiny seside village in croatia with a group of friends and their families. i first went there when i was 14, a self-conscious giggling girl with big glasses and big dreams. now i'm 22, and i'm giggling a little less. still, i can easily say that the destination is my very favourite place in the world. it's nothing special, really, but in these 8 years it has managed to gain an awful lot of emotional and sentimental value for me. to me, it represents this part of my life, the evolution of my self. and every summer, when i see it again, it's funny how the place looks exactly the same, in spite of all the changes i went through during the year. it's like a time capsule, a portal, a little drop of eternity, within which every wave of the sea, every night at the beach, every grape i've eaten, every sunburnt afternoon, every peaceful evening merges into an image of one, unchangable, unbreakable, unforgettable essence of summer.

blue summer playlist

here's some music i've been listening to lately. hope you enjoy it!

• mogwai: take me somewhere nice
• the knife: colouring of pigeons
• flunk: blue monday
• cafe del mar: we can fly
• blueneck: lilitu
• balmorhea: remembrance
• hungry ghosts: i don't think about you anymore
• low: lullaby
• sysyphe: sinking
• leech: inspiral

gifts of the moon

the moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in your cradle, and said to herself: "i am well pleased with this child." and she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the window-pane without noise. she bent over you with the supple tenderness of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. therefrom your eyes have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. from contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a certain readiness to tears. in the amplitude of her joy, the moon filled all your chamber as with a phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance thought and said: "you shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. you shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of women. "and you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. you shall be the queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." and that is why Iiam couched at your feet, o spoiledchild, beloved and accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all lunatics. by Charles Baudelaire painting by pat de groot

the hour of mercy

so. the summer is in full bloom already and i haven't had the chance to embrace it yet. again, i wish the days were longer and i had more time. the funny thing about finals is that they are never really final. still, they seem so important when they arrive, as though there is no worse thing in the world than failing an exam. despite the daily races and everlasting hectic work i'm trying to hold on to my new hakuna matata philosophy. the world is young, the mornings are blushing as brides and it would be a sin to miss it all. also, i'm reading yehuda amichai's selection of poems and enjoying it a lot.

the city of madmen

two days ago, a. and me went for a one-day trip to venice because i had to make a few drawings for my sketching class. it was only my second time there, and i have to say i loved it twice as much as the first time. when you're aimlessly wandering through the narrow streets and squinting at the reflections of sun in the canals, with a cigarette in one hand and a sketchbook in the other, it's easy to slip into a different time. suddenly, you can catch a glimpse of a merchant from the 17th century in his silk and silver through the window of a palazzo, hear the beggars' murmur in a back alley and the subtle sound of oars against the muddy canal water, run into a group of gipsy children playing in the campo, and follow a lonely gondolier into a dark brothel. venice is where history is alive and a part of today. it's the city of madmen, as vilanelle from 'the passion' puts it. it is the city of watery mazes, where you can get lost just to be found again at the shores of the immense, vast green sea.

poppy fields

i really do admire poppies. i love how their bloody red pops out of the green and yellow fields in late spring, and makes the landscape a bit psychadelic. i love that they perish so quickly after you collect them, as if they were trying to say they can only live when they are perfectly free. i love that opium is made out of them, which makes them a little dangerous, a little deadly. and right now i would like to fall asleep in a poppy field, just like dorothy from the wizard of oz.

to record only water for ten days

do you know that awesome feeling when you find an artist that is compatible with your taste and psychology in every possible way, that quotes your thoughts in their lyrics and pictures your world through their art? last week, i discovered john frusciante, who has been around for a while, but i have never paid much attention to him. such a shame! he recorded 11 albums and all of them are perfect. so now i'm just going to sit back, relax and hit 'play'.

fire in the night

there's nothing like sitting around a fire with your friends, laughing, loving and celebrating the night. again, i've escaped for a few days, this time for a weekend of intense improv and theatre workshops. life can be so good sometimes. i'm trying to hold on to the feeling and save it up for later.

wanderlust: india

right now, my heart is in india. i crave bright colours, aromatic spices, funky patterns, nine-handed deities, crowded streets, muddy warm rivers and abandoned temples.

all i really want to say today

movie weekend #2

a. and i have just returned from a little vacation in goričko, a national park in the northeast of slovenia. we had ambitious plans that included hiking, swimming and sightseenig, but then we realised all we really wanted to do is to sleep, eat and watch movies. in three days and a half, we managed to watch 11 movies. 11! and it was great. it seems we have developed a passion for movies in which the main character suffers from memory loss or has some sort of split personality - out of 11, 5 had such plot. fascinating. here's the list:

albert nobbs (2011) glenn close embodies a 19th century woman, who tries to make her living pretending she is a man. i enjoyed it very much, it's pretty sad though.

carnage (2011) two couples meet for a talk after their 11-year-olds have been in a fight, and the afternoon gets really dirty. it reminds me of sartre's play behind closed door.

the ward (2010) huh, i hated the cheap-horrormovie beginning, but loved the unexpected end.

knowing (2009) great idea, horrible movie. nicholas cage really isn't my favourite actor.

unknown (2011) liam neeson's world falls apart after a dramatic car accident. determined to prove his identity, he discovers a terrible truth. it reminds me of the bourne series.

snatch (2000) great directing, brad pitt's great accent, great music. a funny gangster movie.

shutter island (2011) this one has been chosen for the best movie of the whole weekend. it includes memory loss and split personality, of course.

the interview (2007) a serious journalist has to make an interview with a popular soap-opera star katja, and the night reveals all their dirty secrets. well, almost all.

the machinist (2004) christian bale is sooooo skinny in this movie! another split personality plot. worth watching, however.

number 23 (2007) jim carry in one of his serious roles. a dog catcher discovers a book that describes his story, and starts to freak out after finding his whole life can be summed up to the number 23.

appaloosa (2008) a western starring viggo mortensen, renee zellweger and jermy irons. not very hard on the brains.

so, you definitely have to watch albert nobbs, shutter island, snatch and number 23. take care xx

from the land of thousand lakes

tapio wirkkala is probably my favourite designer of all time. equally at home in the matropolas of the post-war time an in the wilderness of lapland, he managed to create an unique style theat became the platform for finnish design as we know it now. his work is sophisticated but organic, simple but detailed.
as i have a sort of an obsession with finland and finnish language, even the names of his collections overwhealm me: jää, tunturi, kanttarelli..
i am a proud owner of two ultima thule large glasses myself, but i definitely won't stop here. if i ever win the lottery, wirkkala's designs will be among the first things i buy.

on simple pleasures and old friends

recently, an old friend of mine, who just so happens to be the only devoted reader of this blog, and is currently studying abroad, sent me a book. i haven't recieved ordinary mail in months (apart from annoying bank letters and such), and it was the sweetest surprise. a package from a distant land, weathered from all the hands that touched it, sent with love and care. and there's more! on the first side of the book there was, written in ink, an old fashioned dedication. it really made my day. the book itself is 'the passion' by jeanette winterson, and it sure is an interesting read. as the title says, it's a story of passion, obsession, war and love, but not in the melodramatic kind of way. the two main characters, vilanelle from venice and henri from a small village in france, meet in the midst of russian zero winter. they are both driven there by passion, but ther passions are very different one from another. apart from the captivating and inventive story, i especially love the rich, poetic style, that still manages to be very down-to-earth, in a magically realistic sort of fashion. vilanelle's descriptions of venice are among my favourite parts of the book. and there are also a few quotations that i find worth remembering:

'the cities of the interior are vast and do not lie on any map'

'there's a lot of talk about freedom. it's like the holy grail, we grow up hearing about it, it exists, we're sure of that, and every person has his own idea of where.'

'trust me. i'm telling you stories'

art forms of nature

i'm in love with these inspiring and incredibly detailed drawings from ernst haeckel, a german 19th century biologist, published in his book kunstformen der natur.

easter morning

hey! it's been a bit busy around here lately, and the spring fever is definitely getting in my way. however, there are holidays coming up, and i'm going to take a little break from everyday this weekend.
i always loved this time of the year. easter is very symbolic in the sense of resurrection of nature and return of light. everything is coming back to life. sometimes, really early, when the coming day is nothing more than a thin light at the horizon, and the chill of passing night is still making you shiver, and everything around you is bursting with new hope - i can't describe that feeling other thean with the words 'easter morning', and it doesn't even have to be real easter.

picture: claude lorrain -easter morning

amazing artist: beth cavener stichter

apart from it being slightly scary and more than slightly disturbing, i like beth cavener stichter's work a lot. just imagine one of her pieces sitting in your living room - fabulous.

i like words

this is surely one of the best job applications ever written! i'd hire the man in a moment... because i like words too :)

movie weekend

hey! how was your weekend? mine was relaxed and lazy, and i used it to catch up on some movie-watching. that's how the setlist looked like:

-melancholia, lars von trier



-quills, philip kaufman



-hugo, martin scorsese



-pitch black, david twohy




i think i liked quills the most, eventhough it's a classic hollywood blockbuster. however, it has amazing cast (geoffrey rush, kate winslet, joaquin phoenix, michael caine...) and intelligent dialogue. melancholia is also great, i liked the photography and the symbolic level it's taken to. hugo has a wonderful beginning, but i think it loses focus towards the end, as for the pitch back.. well, it's a science fiction / action movie, and doesn't require a lot of thinking, but it's great for late night relaxation.

the hills are alive with the sound of music

the weather has been really nice around here for the past few days, and i have finally found the time to grab a beer with my friends, sit down and relax in the sunshine. eversince, i have had this wonderful feeling of being at a summer music festival, and i really don't know why. i guess there's something in the air, and the hills are alive with the sound of music :)
anyway, i'll probably be heading for tolmin for metalcamp again this year, and maybe to hear metallica in belgrade on the 13th of may. do you have any good concerts coming up?

amazing artist: pakayla biehn

simply stunning. check out her website here.

p.s. i really really like this song.

emily dickinson

Upon a Lilac Sea
To toss incessantly
His Plush Alarm
Who fleeing from the Spring
The Spring avenging fling
To Dooms of Balm

wanderlust: italy

i've always been fascinated by the renaissance. to me, it represents one of the peaks of art in history, and the works of michelangelo, da vinci, titian, alberti, raphael and the rest are just magnificent. so naturally, i always wanted to see where they lived and how they worked. the cities of florece, lucca, peruggia have an unstoppable charm for me. i've never actually been there (yet!), but i just hearing their names i can clearly imagine young leonardo walking the barely paved street on his way to the workshop, or michelangelo buying an orange in the humid heat of mediterranean noon.

beyond the boundaries of fantasia

i believe my love for fiction literature has been mentioned before. even as i was a child, i adored stories about distant lands or times, stories about the unknown, unexpected, unimagined. one of the first such books i read myself was ende's neverending story, a story of young bastian's travel to a parallel universe inside of a book. i especially liked the collision of reality and fiction, similar to the one in sophie's world.. a movie adaptation of the neverending story has also been released in 1984, and i liked it just as much as the book.
i also think that the story has a great moral. when all in his life is falling apart, bastian has to save his fantasy world using imagination and a 'dangerous' book he finds in the library, and that, i think, is escapism at its finest.

saper vedere

how are you? i've had quite a week. there hasn't been a lot of time to close my eyes and dream away, so i'm ready to do so now.
sometimes i feel i'm living in the wrong time in history, but i'm sure i'm not the only one. the reality of today seems just too messed up and hectic for me, and i miss the renaissance pursuit of beauty and truth, and people who would want to know a bit about everything, the concept of 'uomo universale', and time to study and enjoy the world at the same time. i can picture myself sitting in an old library, studying, drawing and calculating for days and days, but the world just doesn't work that way anymore. everything is happening so fast. i always try to keep in mind some words of the great da vinci, 'saper vedere', 'to know how to see'. and day by day, i'm trying to see, explore and enjoy, despite the worries and expectations.

going out

tonight, it's time to hit the town and fall under the spell of the night. i'm looking forward to it, as i haven't had a night out in months.
are you familiar with barney stinson's get psyched mix? i too have a couple of songs that really get me into that ecstatic mood of going out.

1. florence and the machine: hurricane drunk
2. billy idol: shock to the system
3. guns'n'roses: night train
4. amorphis: sky is mine
5. van halen: jump
6. billy ocean: lover boy
7. queen: don't stop me now
8. him: vampire heart
9. ac/dc: born to be wild

i'm sure i've left some out, but these are really my favourites. and you? are you heading anywhere tonight? it's gonna be legandary.

amazing artist: oleg dou

this week's amazing artist is a mysterious russian photographer oleg dou. he combines photography with digital techniques to create eerie and meaningful pieces, mostly focused on the human face. i think their eyes are especially captivating. here's some of his work.