Heimat II
Just some more words about it, because I am thinking a lot about this after I came back, and although I think I do not need to say, there are two thinks that brings me back to that warm feeling to be back home, and this is by the presence of my beloved friends, there and also already here: with you, my dear ones, I feel always at home, and this feeling there are not distance or time that changes. You are all deep inside my heart, and I love you so!
And another thing that doesn´t change with time and space, and for me it seems very connected with the place where someone was born is the music! it seems is in our blood. I once spoke with an Austrian lady that lived for more than 10 years in Iran, and she said one time after long being away she was in a concert in Austria and tears came immediately to her eyes as soon as the instruments started to play, and her whole skin felt that sounds… the same always happens to me when I listen music from my homeland: my body start to dance without I even realise, and by an eye blick my soul floats into the air in joy, and then I feel very deep my roots.
this amazing picture from the “baiana” of the Brazilian Carnival is from a very talented Brazilian photographer called Zé Lobato, reproduced here with his permission, have a look at his beautiful images of the Brazilian people and landscape at Flickr
Heimat
Oh, joy:
And although the feeling that some things make part of my most deep self, it´s very sad to do not feel completely “at home” anymore. I once heard this known Italian psychiatrist speaking about that feeling, he himself living more than 20 years in Brazil, and now half a year in Brazil, half in New York, back in Italy some times, and do not feeling at home anywhere, also feeling very well at the lands he chose to live. It´s very sad to see that the decision of living abroad for a long time affects, maybe forever, that warm feeling of what the German speakers call “heimat”, that confortable feeling to belong to a place.
For me now is like this: when I am here, I miss there; when I am there, I miss here! And also this could make me a cold person, in the meaning of being distant because of losing inner links, I think in my case it made the opposite, it made me more human, trying to understand and to feel like the one near me, being here or there. The only thing I can not understand is agressive and violent people. Here or there. Whatever reason they might have.
my first patchwork
it was a lot of fun (and work!). I was never much into patchwork, I guess I was scared of combining so many colors and sewing so many shapes together, but it is a lot of fun! it is like doing a free puzzle, where you chose which is the next part to come, and one which to combine shapes and colours it´s the main goal! what a great adult entertainment 😉 mainly because after all that fun, you can still use it for something special or practical, like covering your baby (quilt), or yourself (well, that´s a LOT of work), or making something small like a time out handbag, like I did. Have a look:
here I was puting it together, trying which colours I would like to have…
here it was sewed, through the back you can see how to sew them together: think you have to sew in straight lines, so first you sew the small peaces in long stripes, then sew the stripes together, I started by sewing them first horizontally, then vertically (actually only 2 peaces were sewed in a vertical way, the one with the pattern of a car and the striped mustard fabric + flowers at the bottom):
and the result was this:
that´s it! this one is one-of-a-kind, I could not make a second one like that again. And this one became a gift for my beloved friend A.M. Enjoy it, dear A., I am happy it will be a companion to your time out!
oh, dear!
When I started this blog I wanted to do it for having a space where I could speak about craft, about sewing (my new passion), and a space where I could upload as many pictures I would like from my projects that I make for us, for friends, and for selling here and here.
But at the moment I do not find any time! At my little free time from children and housework I seat quick, very quick – before someone cries or calls me to read a story (actually I must “invent” a story most of the time) – at my sewing machine and let my mind fly in colours and shapes. A bit of daydream and freedom for this mind that in the last 5 years only thought about babys, children education, children nutrition, children kindergarten (now children school! oh my, time flies!) and I keep asking myself how so many crafter women can have a family, a blog, and still find time for sewing so many nice things. (do they have anyone to help they to sew? just curious, maybe I should do that, or at least someone to help to look for the children – I am only dreaming a bit, here in Austria work is soooo expensive, I guess I could never afford it). I have, for example, designed 16 new models and ideas for handbags and pouches and find no time for doing the prototypes!
I feel so unorganized. Sorry friends (and everyone) that comes here always searching a bit of my world, I promise I will try to be more consequent and come here more often to write what is going on.
So, this was a big post only for saying nothing at all… 🙂
For do not losing your time completely, I will let you with the Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, the most criative thing I saw the last days (via Milton Lima). They have created a polo shirt for Lacoste that is astonishing cool. As Milton said, for the first time I wish to have something from Lacoste ;).
They sewed together the logo of Lacoste, the little crocodile, in the shape of a shirt, it´s like a crocodile lace (note there are spaces between them, must be good for summer!), brilliant! See more about here.
it´s here!
Spring started more or less at the same time Easter arrived, two weeks ago. Sunday Easter was a warm sunny day, the children were so happy, and so did we. And made me wonder that a symbol of rebirth like Easter is, come together with all that new born green leaves and explosion of flowers everywhere. Obvious? Well, I lived almost 30 years without strong season differences, I´m still a child concerning with all this kind of seasonal thoughts.
welcome spring!
We are craving for some colours after this dark winter we had here in Austria this year: come flowers and leaves, we need you!
I made a book shelter (or netbook case if you prefer) to welcome spring, using one of my favorite flowers (the sunflowers) on a wonderful pattern from an amazing english fabric. I hope it will make you smile.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>you can read more about it in my little shop
Zerkalo (Mirror), Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975.
The woman, water, maternity. Some incredible images I didn´t remember. for example one of the first scenes where the children are, when the house in front of theirs is burning, the children come from the table where they were eating and stop in front of the door where the house is on fire, a curtain hangs and flies with the wind in between us and the children, a huge bottle of water, size of the smaller child, is by their side. beauty. and some scenes I am sure I haven´t ever seen (maybe a problem of transposition to another media?). many small details.
the children, after being mother I had another perception of them. the camera has eyes only for her. the mother. also all the others are there, most of the time that´s what we see. and himself. small, 3 years old. a bit older, the feet full of mud.
love. that can not be complete, it has to be apart. the father is always coming and going away.
also the whole time the beautiful different kind of films gives variegated moods and atsmophere for the light (its so powerful here, much fire) there is a moment this is so clear because it´s opposite to one another, and it´s a “dialogue”: two women arguing, when the camera is on the face of one of them the film has a green colour, the other´s more blue or gray. he paints with the colours of his scenes. in this case it gives a very nervous rhythm, hectic.
I guess the films are treated in a way to change their colour? or would be different kind of films? I have no idea how this is made in terms of material, but for me do not seem like just a light effect. I see it on the quality of the material itself, but maybe I am wrong. IF someone there has any idea, please, welcome!
and yesterday he said in a interview they played there, the only authours on the cinema will be the ones that create its own world. like poets. and not those who only reproduces our world.
A very new thing for me was when he said his movies are to be an spiritual meeting between the essence of people (also this should be alike with all real art, I think, I didn´t know he used to say this so declared, also one of the actors was there at the first day said the same, that T. used to say people should experience a moving on their spiritual being with them.
and at the end of the doc. yesterday they notice something very poetic and very dear to me: if we take the first scene of _Ivan´s Childhood_ (considered his first movie) and the last scene of _The Sacrifice_ (his last one), his whole work happens between the images of a boy by the side of a tree.
A Infância de Ivan_Tarkovsky
S., estava muito a pensar em ti.
Estive na última quinta com o ator que foi Ivan, neste filme. Estavam lá o câmera, um velhinho já, que falou do primeiro encontro dos dois, que ficou impressionado com a “elegância” de T. (faz idéia?!) e o cara que foi o Ivan, também estava lá, um menino de 14 anos naquele tempo, que foi simpático, jogou beijos (esses russos!:)) e contou uma estória que me lembrou você (e nossas bebedeiras): ele disse que um dia, indo de volta pra casa tarde da noite, ele se viu num carro com a cabeca do Tarkovsky no colo, super trêbado, dormindo já, e ele alisou sua cabeca e disse: “Andrei, como você envelheceu!” Mas T. tinha na época 33 anos… lembrei muito da gente, e da amizade.
Filmmuseum & Pasolini
One of my favorite places in Vienna is Filmmuseum next to Albertina Museum. Because they always play great movies from all times. There is, for example, a series called “Was ist Film” programmed by Peter Kubelka that plays movies since the beggining of Cinema till now: while the serie is unfinished, because Kubelka is still adding new programms – I was at the last one some weeks ago when he himself presented the filmmaker Günter Zehetner and spoke about 8mm films – they always start from the first programm over and over again.
I was doing 2 pictures of Kubelka, because for someone that loves Cinema like me, I just could not let it go the opportunity to do a photo (or whatever this seems to be) of the art film director considered to be one of the best alive 😛
So, with you, the resemblance of Herr Kubelka:
But I do not want to speak today about Kubelka. I want to speak about Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), because they are playing his movies at the moment in Filmmusem, and I wanted to speak a little about him here since it started, but I didn´t have the time. If you are from Vienna you still have a chance to see some of his films.
Pasolini is always somehow shocking, he provokes your emotions and thoughts, it´s impossible for me to go out of his movies without something had changed inside me. Although this is not a good example because it´s a very strong movie, after I left the cinema when I saw Salo, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) I was walking without direction in Sao Paulo for almost 15 minutes before I realized I was lost. Completely spaced out.
And by far one of my favorite movies is Medea (1970) starring opera diva Maria Callas. All the movies of Pasolini from the ´70 based on the Greek tragedies (he also filmed Oedipus Rex) or on literature (like The Decameron) are so special for me, because he really creates such a different atmosphere, the costumes, the locations, the music, the objects, the actors that usually are not professional actors but people invited by him to act, he makes it in such a way that a whole new world is created and turned “real” in front of your eyes. The landscape in Medea is so powerful to help on this goal (he shot much of this movie in Cappadocia, not too far from the location of Colchis, whith these houses made of earth bilded up by the cliffs in the middle of the desert), that when the movie finishes you feel like you really was by a fabled, magic, mysterious and mythological world. Great movie. Next Sunday at Filmmuseum. Someone there wants to come along? 😉
Maria Callas as Medea
trees
Because trees are playing a big rule in my life since I can remember.
One of my first memories is myself sitting up on the branches of a guava tree, having a long talk with my friend (the tree!) about how sad I was. I can not remember because of what, I just remember the crispy branche skin feeling on my hands and face, my deep and strong hug with “my friend”, and the feeling of safety I had on her lap. The feeling that on her I could trust, she would never hurt me.
We lived in a small city in the countryside, it was not a farm or cottage, it was inside a city! And we had an orchard in our backyard: 3 huge mango trees, 1 guava tree, 1 avocado tree, 3 lemon trees and some others! I could not climb just the mango trees, also I passed much of my time looking them and trying to figure out how could I ever do that, and, of course, eating their delicious mangos – all my t-shirts had permanent mango marks on it, if you don´t know, mangos are like apples, they dye the fabrics forever, because my very good child technic to get the flesh of the fruit was to bite a small peace of its skin out, leaving a little whole on it, and squeeze the inside out, on my mouth, and on my t-shirts… (if you are not from a tropical country, the mangos with the heat of summer, their season, get very soft when they are too ripe, almost liquid, actually like a cream. That´s how my “technic” could work out.)
Then I am already 8 or 9 years old, and I am reading my first novel (it was the first book I read that had more letters than images). And the book was called “Meu pé de laranja lima”, a children literature best-seller in Brazil in that time (70´) a story about a boy and his friendship with… a tree. I am underneath my bed, trying to read in that shadowy place because I was ashamed. I was reading, and crying (I cryed so much with this book till I got sobbing), and I remember very well how amazed I got of finding out a page of paper could move my bossom so much, could bring me to tears and to laugh and change completely my emotions, I got so amazed that I never stop to read anymore, reading was by far the thing I most did in my life until now. I even decided some years later that happened to give my life for the books (I studied history and literature the last 17 years at the University, and all my jobs had to do with them). And everything started with the story of a tree.
And I could keep going, remembering for example how I have decided just before I left Brazil, that I would start to fight for the trees. I mean, politicaly speaking. Because although Brazil is one of the countries that (still) have the most areas covered with forest in the world, in our cities people kind of “hate” trees, they think trees just give us work to do (to clean the “dirty” of their leaves!), and they cut them all! I remember my childhood the cities in Brazil had much more trees, it was pleaseant to go for a walk underneath their shadow and do not have that hellish sun burning your head (some old streets of Rio de Janeiro are still like that, with huge old trees on them, you feel cool, fresh, walking in a 40° temperature day is not a big deal). But the big cities, and even the small ones in Brazil are getting a desert, and so the Amazon. That´s why. That´s why I was thinking inside a cab in Sao Paulo, I remember, looking the “desert” our cities are becoming (not a single tree I saw this day) my thoughts were, “you know, that´s what I am going to do beside teaching literature, I´m gonna fight for the trees”.
But I didn´t. I left my country just some months after that thoughts.
nina (on my lap) and me, Jardim Botânico, Rio de Janeiro, 2005
I also want, before I get completely lost in my remembrances, to link this site about a book that I always wanted to have since I know it exists, but never find to buy (if anyone know, pleeease, tell me how, it´s out of print).
Jérôme Hutin went on many trips around the world (it took him 5 years) to photograph the oldest trees in the world. Then he wrote this book with the pictures he took, “Les Arbres Vénérables”. Beauty. And he´s doing, he´s fighting for the trees. You´re my hero, Jérôme!
Limabaum Shop
Limabaum 