jellyfish girl 2

illustration by Kat Menschik for Haruki Murakami's short story "Sleep".

jellyfish girl

beautiful artwork by Katsumi Asano

home

Here are some shots of the fishermen village I have spent a few days in. It is a remote place in the Danube Delta, one famous among tourists who are looking for a non-mainstream and peaceful seaside vacation, amateur fishers and photographers. An electronic music festival and an independent film festival take place there each year during summer and have made it more popular for tourists.

There is no other place I can think of, that can get me to living so presently every moment than Sf. Gheorghe in the Danube Delta. It has been three years since I have last been here. It's incredibly peaceful and I manage to forget about anything else when I am there. I actually feel separated from the rest of the world, which is why the nickname of the village, "the end of the world" seems more than appropriate to me. There may be phones and TVs now, but to buy a magazine, one would have to head over to the post office and the boats coming from the big town (There is no other way of getting there) would not even ship bread daily, let alone newspapers. I noticed more cars this year (maybe less than 10 in the whole village, though), which is a bit annoying, but I could still see people riding their horses.

We usually live with a local family, and enjoy local home cooked meals. It initially took me some time to get used to not having a proper bathroom inside the house and showering with sun heaten water from a tank. The schedule was pretty much identical every day: During breakfast I would watch 'Meercat Manor' on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel's 'How It's Made', then we would spend some hours in the morning at the beach, I would have a couple of hours of sleep in the afternoon, a late afternoon walk or boat trip on some river channels (I'm done with fishing :) and finally, after dinner, we would all watch a movie at the open air theater that was established for the film festival. By 22:30 I would be in bed. I actually had the luxury of being able to turn off my cell phone (I would not be able to do that if there would be the possibility of any relevant emergency).

I would honestly have no objection to doing this throughout the year. I would not miss work, loud music, busy streets, people I have to interact with that are not my friends, my cell phone, I could even get used to not having internet. I was an incerdibly free person for 9 days and I hope I can hold on to that feeling to fuel me for the next months. Knowing I've got my place there and I can always choose to go back there, sure is a comforting thought.

time to recharge

A small village on finest sand. A sunny place drowned in reed and purple fields. A place of millions of birds in motion. A place of wild horses with a sad fate and cattle that like to bathe in the Black Sea. A place of warm greetings from strangers. A place of occasional silent boats in an architecture of river channels that local fishermen know like the back of their palms. A place of the most dramatic cloud formations, sunrises and sunsets. A place so far from the rest of the world that it can only be reached on a ship on certain days of the week.

I'll be heading home, to the place that has been holding my heart for years: Sf. Gheorghe in the Danube Delta.

perspectives

Photo by gzi24◎歌無岸

We all share the same eyes. And we struggle, have desires and obsessions and anxieties and insecurities.

And we are sad and/or desperate and live

from one day to the other.

Or, if not, we kid ourselves and die

with the illusion that there must have been a reason.

And in the end, what is it all for? When we are honest to ourselves, we all miss seeing through the eyes of the child we once were. Why did we have to trade them?

there's no such thing as jellyfish

interesting and beautiful video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on jelly-like creatures.

via nerdcore

iron

I absolutely love the black and white, slow motion video of "Iron" by Yoann Lemoine aka Woodkid. Lemoine is French, 27 years old and amazingly talented in a number of fields (photography, film, illustration, music). The clip was directed by him and the amazing cinematography is by Mathieu Plainfosse. I just love the characters, their motion and the overall fierceness conveyed, as well as the way how it all visually complements the song! Enjoy:

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

via artschoolvets

james pan's jellyfish series

Do check out the amazing jellyfish photography series by James Giovanni Pan:

via das kfmw

no idea

As a kid, I have always heard people giving me pieces of advice, tell me ultimate truths of life. And I accepted these words of wisdom, tried very hard to keep them in mind. And even though I tried to rationally grasp the meaning of those words, I knew that there must be a deeper essence within them, one I would only be able to understand through my own experience.

And yet, there was one exception. We were in our final year of high school, studying for the final exams and for the entrance exams at the uni. Everyone was extremely tired and stressed out. I can't remeber the narrow context of my teacher's confession. I remeber she was talking to one student while everyone else was listening and then she said to the whole class:

"If you are terrified by the possibility of failing this exam, you have no idea of the proportions of the hardships of life."

She took her time finishing the sentence, stessing the "you have no idea" part. Her tone was crushingly honest and she was smiling while she said it, the type of smile that says: "And I should know." Her statement robbed us completely and instantly, with only one sentence, of both our fear and the only standard we had ever had for hardship. A heavy burden was lifted but a heavier one had been dropped. This was the only time the meaning of another person's words had a major impact on me, whithout me having any experiential basis for them.

Thanks, Ms. R. for teaching me perspective.

lotus flower

Wayne McGregor of Random Dance choreographed Radiohead's "Lotus Flower" of their new album "The King of Limbs". Enjoy this piece of marvel:

Radiohead - Lotus Flower von h0nki

subcarpati

I was certain I had blogged about this before, but I seem to have missed it:

Subcarpati come from Romania, are based in Bucharest, and combine folklore and hip hop sounds in a quite original fashion. The project is by Alexe Marius Andrei aka Mc Bean (member of the Blanoz collective and singer for Suie Paparude, whose album you can download for free and who have one of the best horizontal scrolling sites I know, designed by Stefan Lucut).

I highly recommend downloading for free their entire album from their website (at "descarca albumul Subcarpati").