The Master

“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


A few hours before flying home to Athens, Kubrick's photos serve as the perfect antidote to impatience. Before he started making movies, Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine in post WWII America, taking pictures of anonymous people in interesting places like zoos, circuses and the subway, and capturing celebrities including Betsy von Fürstenberg and Rosemary Williams. His photographic collection published in the excellent Stanley Kubrick: Drama & Shadows, says more about the genius-filmmaker than a million reviews and analyses. Here are a few of my favourite ones, while biting my nails in excitement:

Spring Symphony

                   cave church, gellert hill, budapest- april 2011.





Άκου τα σήμαντρα
των εξοχικών εκκλησιών.
Φτάνουν από πολύ μακριά
από πολύ βαθιά.
Απ' τα χείλη των παιδιών
απ' την άγνοια των χελιδονιών
απ' τις άσπρες αυλές της Κυριακής
απ' τ' αγιοκλήματα και τους περιστεριώνες
των ταπεινών σπιτιών.

Άκου τα σήμαντρα
των εαρινών εκκλησιών.
Είναι οι εκκλησίες
που δε γνώρισαν τη σταύρωση
και την ανάσταση.

Γνώρισαν μόνο τις εικόνες
του Δωδεκαετούς
που 'χε μια μάνα τρυφερή
που τον περίμενε τα βράδια στο κατώφλι
έναν πατέρα ειρηνικό που ευώδιαζε χωράφι
που 'χε στα μάτια του το μήνυμα
της επερχόμενης Μαγδαληνής.

Χριστέ μου
τι θα 'τανε η πορεία σου
δίχως τη σμύρνα και το νάρδο
στα σκονισμένα πόδια σου;


[απόσπασμα από την Εαρινή Συμφωνία του Γιάννη Ρίτσου].

Happy Easter

                        -Ευχαριστώ, νονά!

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse —
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

-William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916

art on my sleeve

Then there is confusion

 even out of happiness, like a smoke

 the words get heavy, some topple over, you break others. 

           and outlines disappear once again.

                                                                                                                               John Ashbery- More Pleasant Adventures 

Art has always inspired fashion, yet when Greek designer Mary Katrantzou's magnificent prints and structural designs explicitly paid homage to the late John Chamberlain's expressionist art, the outcome was stellar. The neo-dadaist sculptural squashed automobile parts gave way to a beautiful abstract mass of colour, texture and material that in turn was turned into a fashion statement.  

return of the babushka

"The one thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!' said Anna, kissing her again. 'You haven't told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But I'm glad you will see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live."
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Book 6, Ch. 18

Sneak peek into Ulyana Sergeenko's jaw-dropping S/S 2012 collection, from Russia with love. Sergeenko's personal style is reflected in the ultra-feminine vintage designs combined with accessories featuring elements from her own cultural heritage like the traditional Russian embroidered scarf (a personal fetish). Obsession:

    

Pinch me, am I dreaming?

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

                              

photo 6: cotton baby blue summer hat H&M.

For Humanity's Sake

21st of March is the date emblematizing among other things, the memory of a distinctive human urge to demolish the wall of discrimination and create channels of intercultural communication by embracing difference. Poetry, Down's syndrome, the elimination of racism are causes uniting humanity in a worthy mission, reminding all of us that we (should and could) live together in harmony. Let this day be celebrated and lived everyday, everywhere, by everyone. Let us be poets of a brave, new, compassionate and peaceful world.


See links:


racial discrimination day


&


down syndrome day

For Poetry's Sake

Η Παγκόσμια Ημέρα Ποίησης είναι πολλαπλή γιορτή για το BabogMoro: η αυτονόητη χαρά της ποίηση (δηλαδή της δημιουργίας από το "ποιώ"), άνοιξη, ισημερία, αλλαγή της ώρας σύντομα, αναμενόμενη επιστροφή στην πατρίδα, ο ποιητικός κόσμος μέσα από τα τέσσερα αθώα παιδικά μάτια τους που με κοιτάζουν καθώς γράφω. Σήμερα νοιώθω ποιητής του κόσμου. 

Ένα παιδί τριανταφυλλί 

ήρθε μου πήρε το φιλί κι έγινε δέντρο αμάραντο

μεσ’ στη παρθένα πλάση.

            Δεν τη γνωρίζω την ιτιά από την πέρα όχθη,

δεν την ανάβω τη φωτιά σ’ απρόσιτη κορφή.

Λυθήκανε τα χέρια μου, λύγισε το κορμί μου,

εκεί που δέντρο ατίθασο σκύβει για να λουστεί.

Εκεί που η νύχτα χάνεται μεσ’ στ’ ουρανού τα δάση,

εκεί που εσύ περίμενες τ’ άστρο σου να σβηστεί.

                  Ποιος θα μπορούσε να το πει

         πως ήμουν ήλιος το πρωί και μια φωτιά τη Δύση.

Μάνος Χατζιδάκις

Shortly

Back after a hectic week cooking for friends, entertaining, St.Patrick's celebrations, academic duties, a long due book review, and family outings. With a new camera on the way, I am looking forward to capturing new faces in a new section for BabogMoro. Stay tuned...

Microcosmos

I took these shots of a brother and a sister swimming in the pool from my hotel room in Sydney. They remind me of the strong bond I share with my own brother and how much I yearn for the days of our childhood. This one is for you M.




It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?

We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.


Rainer Maria Rilke