31/12/07

... and that was the last day
of a year that started with tears
and a sense of hopelessly

a year like a parenthesis
a life with not life in between
just surviving, waiting

with more than tears, more disappointments
more attacks against hope
against horizons, beliefs, necessity
necessity of joy and significance

just a time in between …

dear christopher,

It was very nice to hear that you got my
Christmas’ card.

I took the picture in Berlin, last time I was there.
Is the interior of the famous Kaiser Willhelm Church
or better, the new construction after WW2
“the new octagonal church,
—the interior with its atmosphere of peace
and meditation and the intense blue light falling
through the honeycomb of concrete windows"...
is an extraordinary experience.

The first thing I do when I’m in Berlin is to go to this church
and I sit there in silence and just feel the ‘presence’
of the blue colors and the golden light of the
sculpture of Christ floating on this blue light..

christmas' eve

One step through the doors and I was in another world
Just candle lights and the voice of three Byzantine monks
singing in accords with deep voices.
I found a place where to sit and I closed my eyes
and the time went back to what we think
the 18th century was in a church in Russia.

It was Christmas’ Eve and the midnight mass.
People waiting, whispering—hardly noticing
the beautiful Gregorian’s chants.
I think that they didn’t know that priest had change the
program and this year wouldn’t become as the year before.
Then, half eleven pm the bells started ringing and the mass began.
The lectures combined with psalms sang by a choir
that enhanced the feeling of togetherness.
I thought of the people I love who weren’t there
sharing with me this moment and the ones that weren’t there
because they had chosen to put an invisible wall of betray between us.
I didn’t feel sorry for me,
I have probably built this life by my self
but never the less, I felt lonely.

sunset at moderna museet, stockholm

the beautiful and joyful Alexander Calder's sculptures at the winter's sunset

if ...

I’m hearing in every store the sound of old Christmas’ songs.

"Coming Home for Christmas" had never had a meaning to me
and with the years living as a foreigner, not even the crowds at the shops, affect me.
I just don’t get any feeling,
either sadness or stress because I’ve succeeded
in keeping me outside the Christmas' stress and
don’t be distressed because
I don’t have anyone special to buy a present to.

Every friend I have is telling me all the time
about the meaning of living
and the necessity of being thankful and joyful.
But I have difficulties to see why.
You think many times that’s better to think
of what you can do for the others,
independent of what you are doing or who you are helping to.
Though, many times during the last years,
I have been taken for granted
and then everything, had turned up to be at last my own fault
—if the time comes when I have nothing left to give.
Nobody either thanks or tell me how glad they have become.
They just go away without any explanation forgetting
how much they had told me that they loved me.
I don’t want to be bitter.
I just want to find happiness
inside my self and wait for my turn
... if ever comes ...

flying again

To reconcile my self once again with joy
to be able to fly and feel my self weightless,
glad without needing you for giving me the reason
for being, for laughing, for existing…

musetta

It was my last evening in Rome last year and in the most beautiful sunset I went to an operatic concert in the atrium of the church. They would play La Bohème.

The warm breeze and the short distance between the public and the singers created an special atmosphere. I was able to hear every word they sang and see theirs faces that showed empathy with the meaning of what they felt. Tears, laugh, smile, desire, impotence, pain and the most beautiful Musetta I ever heard and seen…
[click on the headline and you'll hear the famous "waltz of musetta"]

by the ocean

... and that day by the shore
we were playing like children
the sand felt soak under our feet
and we were near each other
and we played once again,
the sand was wet and cold
but we were filled with those feelings
that we always have shared in silence...

chairs and design

My former professor told me when we were talking about furniture design and chairs in particular that design is always related to a function and the function to the human body

We were talking about things that are art or design.
They are of course different.
If you design a chair you have to think that there is only one way to sit on it in
—order to get a proper rest, work, listen to music and so on.

The thing is that you can transform as much as you want the colors, materials, forms but you can’t transform the human body—not for the next trend or season anyway.

There are functional chairs (and many, really beautiful ones) and chairs made as a work of art.
They are not for sitting they are sculptures
Just for the eye.

posters for an exhibition

I got an invitation to be part of an exhibition last September.
I did not panic because I never do
but I had a problem because it had past a time since
I worked for a show and neither I wanted
to have the same old things at the gallery.

I found out after a while that I would design posters,
not for announcing anything especial
but poster as an art expression.

I illustrated words both with typography and the human body.
I like very much the shapes of a beautiful body and most of all,
the things that you are able to tell through a gesture, colors,
intensity and feelings, well, if you are good enough to translate
and catch those terms with your camera and different elements.
(on the picture, eight posters, mixed technique)

moonbeams

walking home right after the sunset in a cold night of november in the stillness of the autumn I saw moonbeams reflecting on the water, the skyline with the colours of an asleep tivoli I thought of you and my heart filled with longing.

images of a calendar

I’m looking through my window and the sun shines in a cold day of November.
It’s past noon and the sun is already on its way to the set. Days are short and nights like a quite and dark line lying as a boundary that keeping us for doing anything else than sleep and wait. I think about these pictures I’ve designed for a calendar and why they become as they did. I think that I unconsciously wanted the time be as timeless as what the images were inspired of. Those frescoes reminding the Pompeian's that defy time and changes.

you have a wink!

Not that I understood what a "wink" meant when I open my correspondence that day at a community where I have a profile, but I checked the profile of the guy that winked at me and I decided to answer to that. I just thanked him for the wink "especially because it came from such a handsome man". He wrote me back: “Hello, nice reading back from you. Can you tell me more about your relationship interest here?” and gave me his personal e-mail address.

My first reaction was estranged, because I had already had bad experiences from this and other gay communities with guys who don’t live in this country and especially if they are young, that see in me an opportunity to leave theirs countries.The “added value” is what is important if you try to break your loneliness and find a partner.

Never the less, back to the answer I wrote to my “wink” man.
I told him that it wasn’t easy to describe what you are looking for through e-mail or to someone you don’t know anything about. I usually answer when someone ask me who I am, that if I knew that I wouldn’t have need my therapist so far. And independent on what you want in your dreams, is only reality that decides if two people attract to each other. Anyhow, I wanted to tell him what I would like to find in a man. I wrote that I like a man for a long-term relation to share my life with, even when I have had bad experiences so far, as for instance the one I had three years ago when I found a man that I wanted to married but that “fairy tale” ended like an opera does: in a tragedy. He told me after a year and a half of our relation that he has found another man and that he wanted to take a pause from me for seeing where his new relation was heading! The time after that had been without any doubt one the most difficult I had ever had in my life. I told also to my "new friend" that now, after more than a year and what I learn of this episode; I feel my self-ready and open for a new attempt. I told him that I would like to find a man who I could trust and see as a partner; who has his own personality and independence. I don’t believe in relations in where you feel like the other is taking over your own identity. This is not my idea of love. You have not only to love the other but also, feel proud of and be happy that he is with you–and the other way around. You don’t need to create problems in your relationship but help each other to solve problems. To live in a relationship shouldn’t be a problem or a competition, but a shrine where you feel complete, accepted as you are and of course, understood.

unreal life

But you can’t expect that anything like that would become reality, can you?
No, of course not. I’m pretty aware of that, and knowing this, doesn’t change the situation—it is like it is.
Why would I take it like anything else?
I have told you many times that I’ve taken him like a marvelous parenthesis in my gray and full of nonsense life. It is like when the children get the "saturday-sweets." They do know that they would get them only that day and that's it. They know that they are aloud to eat as much as they want to and everything that there is there—the whole package. They have the right to do so that day, but as the same time, they know that the amount they got will soon be over—even if you would like to get some more. And you’d better enjoy that moment with intensity, with your whole body and soul, drink to the last drop, because that wasn’t real life but a stolen time.