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Anna as Frida Kalo With shell, coral, hematite, amber, pearl and garnet necklace and earrings (hard to see, but there).

Before I went away I had ordered some prints to be done so that they could be placed inside the frame I had bought for my cousin's baptism present. I had ordered them from Apple, to be delivered at my parents' house.

Apple managed to pass them on to the Italian mail, who delivered them this week, ten days after dispatch. At my home.

So my father had planned a trip to Egypt in October. That was why I was planning to come to the US with my mom. Because she was scared to go with him. My father is a great enthusiast of Egyptian things, has been studying hieroglyphs and giving lectures about it - it's a great consuming passion for him. But they had been there a few years ago and my mom was spooked, and she didn't want to go back.

So today I called them and told them about Sharm el Sheik and begged my father not to go. He told that he's not going.

So here I am. I feel relieved and very dirty. I'm going to London in about ten days. Will I take the Tube? Probably. And God knows London needs tourism a lot less than Egypt does.  That's one of the saddest thing for me. A whole city economy that collapses overnight, on the head of people who really, really need the money.  Good chunk of a country economy that does the same, actually.

That and the UK police shooting a man point blank who turned out not to be a baddie after all. It was done in my name (I have been and will be again so often a passenger on those trains), and I can't really blame them for it, and I feel sickened and sad, so sad.

I think I wouldn't have told my father not to go if it was all of us together, or even if my mom had been there. More than fear, it's the thought of my father all alone that upsets me. We have had a wretched relationship all along, but I feel so worried for him.

I don't know if we will end up travelling to the US all together. In a way it'll be a recipe for disaster, because me and my father can't live in the same city for more than three days without quarelling.

But we'll see. Meanwhile, this is Caterina again, blissfully oblivious of what kind of world awaits her. She's still trying on various expressions.
( Read more... )

New and nifty toy to create mosaics from Flickr images: Mosaic maker

( It's only 120 k but just in case )

1. American lights, 2. Crown and Anchor, 3. Cat in the hole, 4. Reflected Chicago, 5. Squirrel in color, 6. Keep off the tree!, 7. Texas!, 8. Nuke the gay baby whales for Cthulhu, 9. Es muy delicioso, 10. Einstein Bros Bagels, 11. Xochitl & Tara 1, 12. Chuy's Fine Tex Mex, 13. What's up detail, 14. No chips for you bad boys, 15. My American affair, 16. No Entry. Go away, 17. Elvis, 18. B&W Bagel, 19. bagel, 20. Deep in the heart of darkest America, home of the brave, 21. Light at the end of the tunnel, 22. Chicago, 23. I love the camera, 24. Uh?, 25. kid

And also, I finally obeyed morgan_x's request. I know, you usually honor a request, but morgan_x can be very assertive when she wants in a very gentle way.

( Critters photos )

I could cheat and say that I wrote this post on the greyhound between Dallas and Austin, but actually I'm safely back in the Morgan's apartment right now. I completed my Greyhound experience with the trip back in a coach that smelled strongly of piss, while the sunlight got golden and orange and red and the lights came on twinkling and sparkly on the road from Waco to Austin, while I was surrounded by many interestingly pre-Columbian faces (the bus went down to Laredo eventually).

I don't think I had the time to write about the Insomniac Film Festival. It's a pity, because it was huge fun. We had 72 hours, at the beginning of which we were issued a genre (foreign film) and a character (Messiah), and we were supposed to mail a finished product not longer than 10 and not shorter than 5 minutes on Monday at noon. In the end, it involved lots of silliness, lots of sweating in costumes in the Kentucky sun, lots of grumbling from the writer, the lead actor falling asleep on the set on Sunday night after soldiering on bravely for the whole thing, coolers full of cold Bubba Colas, all the crew becoming part of the cast at one point or another, kung-fu, dialogue in authentic Italian spoken by deeply concentrated Americans and then cut, a hard-working G5, and my suggestion of filming the end of the world rejected on the grounds of the production not having that kind of money or means.

( A shot from the production, starring J as Satan and one nice good looking guy here hidden by a cable as The Messiah.  )

If the movie gets chosen among the first ten, they'll stream it from the site and y'all* get to see it.

*Maybe it's time I left Texas.

Ridiculously cute baby cat on flickr. I'm following her development and she went from being terribly cute to being a really beautiful small cat.

Being without Zip, this is my hosts' beautiful cat Sheba, the Pink Cat.

I am about to disappear for about ten days into the dark wastelands of Kentucky and Tennessee, where I will be cut out from civilization in the form of net connection, so this is my bye bye to all you people. I may compose some follow-up posts to Wiscon while I'm there, but in the meanwhile, you can see some of the photos I took at the party Sunday night on flickr.

If I pop up online again it might mean that the Horrible American Guy did not show up at the airport, but I do hope he remembers to pick me up.

I have almost exhausted the huge number of shots I took in Burano - though I suspect I'll keep scraping at the bottom of the barrel.


( Eight count 'em eight photos behind cut )

I finally got around to put up some other few photos from Burano on flickr.

There's a nice slideshow of the recent photostream here. It's dynamic, meaning it will always show the latest of my photos on flickr - but today it's Burano laundry almost exclusively.

( For those who are too lazy to clic the link, here's some of the photos: )

Still incapacitated by migraine. I'm very bored and getting frantic. The only thing I can do, and not for long, is work on my photos. Which is why I'm posting them here, behind cuts.

I asked my mother if she knew why the houses in Burano have those incredible colors, but she couldn't tell me. She also opines that the acrylic splendor of the houses I see now is a recent thing, encouraged by tourism. That may be, but judging from the laundry I saw hanging from the lines, they do love colors there and modern paints just happily met the Burano soul.

( Burano laundry behind cut )

Well, I feel right at home in Burano... this is my house:
( (And my soul, for that matter: this is my house) )

Anyway, I googled a bit, and found out that the legends say that the houses in Burano are painted that way either to make it perfectly clear where one property ends and another begins, or to allow fishermen coming back to land late at night (and, knowing my folks, warmed by wine) to recognize their own house in the dark.

Whatever, this is the result:

( Burano alley with laundry, behind cut )

Oh yes, and it seems that my efforts to photograph people are getting somewhere. I have been scolded by a fellow photographer because all my photos are empty and deserted, so I have thought about it and I decided that maybe if I tried connecting with people through the camera I might achieve some sort of connection myself as well: photography as therapy. The theory is that I should ask people if they mind being photographed, but I haven't gotten there yet. I have, however, managed to catch the beauty and tenderness of people I see around me and that is so much a part of my joy in life.

( The couple behind me on the long ferry ride to Burano.  )

Sunday I went to a cat show that's held in Padova every year. I have mixed feelings about this stuff. I think most people there genuinely love their cats, but I was a bit disturbed at the whole "yes but is it the most beautiful object around" attitude, though I understand that if you have to raise cats the shows are part of the business. There was a lot of genuine love for cats, however. And of course, some beautiful, beautiful animals. Unfortunately the light wasn't enough to do them proper justice and the only good photo I was able to take was this:

Yes, I went out and took some photographs. Here they are, some of them.

As I write this, the TV goes on listing individual small tragedies that make the global one larger and larger. I wish I could take comfort in the thought that people going around being happy about their new cameras are part of life going on. At least I am not doing this.