anita's vineyard: that panama hat

anita's vineyard: that panama hat: Everything is inside. I mean either inside my bags or the garbage bin. The steward at check in counter asks me how long i would be in Mala...

that panama hat

Everything is inside. I mean either inside my bags or the garbage bin.
The steward at check in counter asks me how long i would be in Malaysia for. This is just to explain how big my bags are.
So I am going around the empty rooms and i see that everything is inside or on me. I have boots and a cardigan tied to my waist, I could not fit them inside. I am also having a small jacket with me. It is august.
Then the last bit, the panama hat i had also kept out to wear it today, the only way to bring it along. I hold it in my hands. I run my fingers around the straw knots , around that black tissue strap. I remember when i had it bought by my sister. I wanted it to mark my status as tango dancer and as daughter of countryside people. My granddad had the same hat, a clear straw panama hat for the hot sunny days out in the fields. A hat he would move up his forehead with a beginning of a smile, when he had to see who was coming. Then with his eyes free he would recognize the person and the smile would give way to "hello, how are you?"
So i hold my panama hat, i do not want it to leave it in the empty flat that soon will be occupied by other people. I hold it lightly like something delicate, as delicate as a memory.
San antonio de Areco, Rosario, all those places would have been perfect for such a hat. DI carli music and high heels in the night, the hat and the summer heat in the fields during the day.
It is not a big deal to bring it along, it is not heavy. I am next to my door and i turn to the mirror. I look at myself and wear it. It does not really fit me. It used to , though. I move it on the side, I move it on the front. I do not really like me in this hat. But the hat is beautiful as if it were woven out of the pampa straws. I look at myself. I think i am not going to wear it. I think i am not going to bring it. It thought i wanted it, but now i think i am going to leave it here. For somebody that i do not know and will come to fill this place with his things and his dreams.
Maybe he or she will like it. Maybe he or she will throw this alien object away, wary of all the meaning it could have and they did not give it.
I go. I close the door and caress the Singapore boat stranded on the Mandi beach I took in a picture a long time ago. Some tears stream down my face. It was just a hat.

Begins with the end: back to Paris from China

When i get out of the train , the sky is grey and the lion statue seems as lost as I am, forgotten there half asleep and so annoyed to be in the middle of the square, nor on one side nor  the other.

It is exceptionally luminous to be 7am in the morning.

I remember where I put my key but I totally forgot the digicode to enter the building.

Then after a long number of trials I manage to find my way in.

It seems one of those gray mornings when I begged my grandma and my mom not to go to school.

I check that the dolan rubab, the one from Mohammad Emin in Kashgar; the one I picked among all those other fancier ones in his Kashgar store , the simplest one and the more harmonious in his body curves, the one that only Mohammed Emin’s father can play, is all in one piece and I put it to rest in front of my bed. Under its watch I can fall asleep safely and build fat dreams, just for a little before resuming my life or getting to think how to resume my life. I suddenly wake and cannot remember where I am, I know I live here, but where is here? This is something that happens to me more and more, I cannot just recall what am I doing in Paris…how did I drift here??? A coffee will fill the air with home scent.

I shower and get down to go to work. 

The courtyard is bizarrely empty; is it the rain that chased everybody inside or the town has been deserted after an atomic bomb? I cross the front door and a shy sunlight is greeting me. The trees , still burgeoning with a lot of impatience one month ago , are now dressed up in an abundance of leaves. The branches and the sun draw for a second a contorted checkerboard on the pavement . The small kid from the other side of the street slowly plays inside it ; his racket is larger than his back and his knees are wobbly. I think I know his elder brother, he has given up the tennis racket and has a guitar now. He is probably moving on to another type of sport. 

I suddenly see all the other people around me. The middle age concierge in front that is bringing out the rubbish in a red striped shirt. The blond girl cycling across the streets. The forest of cigarettes held up in the street bar. All is silent and I feel I do not want to talk, eventhough eventually I am in a place where I can talk the language and not make my way out of smiles and looks. Then I suddenly realise, if I talk this all will be real.

I think of the Kim-KI DUk's BinJip, I remember that the shouted word brings the violence, that the silenced is the feathered dream of peace and love. I stick to the silence as long as I can.

But then I pop by my friend and I have to say who I am. Strangely I remembered this digicode, and not mine….

I come to the office. It seems that people in the metro are all startled to see me, I do not know these people, what did I put on, how am I dressed? How can they possibly guess that I have not been in paris these last weeks? Maybe I have a tan from yesterday .

Two blues eyes are singled out inside a dishevelled fringe, I remember that this is Paris, plenty of eyes and sighs ,and  I turn back ... but i cannot tell whether they were there or i had made them up...
I arrive to the office, I realise that slowly all the actions that seemed unknown to me are coming back to life, little by little I relearn the talk of the town, of the metro card , of the office badge and of the different codes to enter worthless and virtual worlds. 

I relearn the way out here by actions. 

I relearn to swipe the card at the market , to choose fruits and products. The boy must just come for the summer stages, he is wide and youngly uncomfortable, he looks and stutters with its pen as a broken heart that cannot avoid to keep still thinking to his love somewhere. In the fleshy eyelids I see the blank forming , that moment when your guard is off and the thoughts come in pouring. To stutter and then come back, the click on the black color and the pen is ready for my signature on the slip. I would like to tell him that I know, that you are bound to lose , if you fight and if you do not , you can only wait. But as tears , as daydreaming are not reusable, not recyclable, not resellable , I do not say anything. I cannot tell him how long this siege will last, maybe forever, maybe just another click on the pen.

All day my mouth has uttered words in this un-native tongue, I find myself hesitating but not for the lack of words, not for forgetfulness, I am just amazed by the fact that I am all of a sudden able to speak french again, I make jokes in it again and it all pours out of my mouth without me commanding it.

so who am I?

the night of the match: el partido y tu ojos de cielo

Songs and film tell the epic nights ravelled around a match, this memory is about one match not so long a time ago, a match where I danced a night and a storm away.
Buenos Aires was charged with the expectations of the match to come, the spring afternoon got sucked into the night where Argentina had to fight to gain its place into the championship. The town quickly emptied in the evening and we all hardly noticed the thick and heavy clouds. When the wind started to sweep the deserted streets, I was already in the guest house. I lied down to recover a bit of energy for a night out at the milonga, I did not even remove my high heel pink and red shoes, feeling like a doll waiting to go down to his ball. I did not watch the match and in a rave-like siesta,  I started to hear far away all the forgotten windows clattering in the tension of the match. Baires was holding his breath and in this place of passion sweat and blood, the clouds must have sucked up the electricity, the atmosphere charged with emotions and in the middle of silenced sighs of hope and fear , of beers waiting to be opened, of cries and relief. The match ended and as to reply instantaneously the clouds burst open , all the relief materialised in streams of water pouring down the streets , all the souls sweat together and fell back in town. I took a taxi and went to the milonga , the taxi driver told me the result and i sighed too thinking of a happy smile going down from the bus uttering  a "maybe I'll come to the milonga tonight, after the match" half door,
and then with my doll shoes, a springtime flower shirt tied below my breast and my heart to give, I entered the milonga. And it was the most beautiful tango night I have ever danced, a night suspended between my furtive glances at the door and the clock,  and my eyes closed while I abandoned to the dancers, letting my legs learn the earth and the ground. I danced and danced , light as plume and as heavy as the promise of maybe not love but surely not dream,  of lips to encounter of smiles to change and eyes to be close , of softness imagined between two hands and two faces, between the sky and the ground, a heart offered  for the slaughter and the party and the feet rooted to the ground. The ripening pleasure of the body mingled with the expectation that is not yet a desire for a smile that was not turning up yet. But still I was there and I danced , because every promise of love can only be danced, because the swirl of my skirt could be the festoon welcoming those eyes when they would come in. I cannot imagine another way of explaining what tango is if not this sweet mixture of a hope sure to be fulfilled and that fear that already knows. Every step in the ballroom, every smile exchanged, your body gets lighter and your heart is heavier. On and on you cannot ever stop to feel, embrace and wait . Live suspended in a dream. And I have never danced again any better than that night, where my life was leading me through steps my sweet dancer had taught me that afternoon. Never my body had been that supple to listen and respond, my legs so long to round up like silk. Never I had so glown when closing my eyes and being seen.
The night closed out on tu ojos de cielo and the cumparsita.
The sky was clear again, the rain had gone. I went walking back to the guesthouse, the dream had evaporated, and the world had been washed new... the dreams of the night before trickled away in the gutters ...i was not in the least disappointed

more pieces from old paris moments

melting in the air in between two places, we walk swiflty living the life of shadows , living the dream of everyday

Would you like my old disc player? come and have a tea 

outside and inside , still and moving, hot and cool , shadows and light , everything is inside the other

feel like blooming?

just a couple of weeks ago the wind was diminishing me and now i feel like my heart is swelling and my senses catch the newly born smells in the springtime. The clear sky and reassuring rays brings the promise of a summer and ripened fruits, long evenings to pluck and heat to cool off in the nights. I do not know where such fullness and bloom come from, I am just so happy that in these days where I type on a computer, where I trickle my thoughts my body and my soul have not forgotten how to answer eagerly to the call of springtime. So no matter how many i-stuff one can have or play with, still one can not help but respond to nature. So good to know, from the inside.

the man with the pigeons

suddenly the end of summers makes way to the chilly wind: the drastic change is one of the feature of the north and many a times the foreigners get caught out in the street with their sandals and sleeveless shirts, bare arms to the newcome autumn. 

One reason more in addition to the stench from the pigeons that was pushing me away from the man living in the corner between Leroy Merlin and Pompidou. With in the eyes the pictures from one movie in the beaubourg, I would probably have wished to walk past him fast and gain back the metro or even better a warm living room. I just could not move and stayed.

He was chasing away pigeons or was he embracing them ? this misery to my eyes was quite piercing, but I did not want not be human, not to witness his strange dance while the night was falling. The place was coverd in guano , as if being on the street in the first night of autumn were not enough , he had to make his place among the awful fat birds. And then again, he seemed to merge into them into a strange tragic desire to disappear. 

The night fell and everything was getting dark.

Strange as it may be , it was not that cold in the main street where the other tourist were trodding. I still wonder if he is so abandoned, can he become like one of those birds? does he want to ? to forget his humanity ? and what is humanity ? I have never seen him since, I just hope I will still have the courage to watch, to stay there with him, even at distance , the next time I see him caught in the night. 

A paris summer potpourri: from august 2009

Some pieces of memory triggered by a friend looking for Paris pictures: one summer I was walking around with my almost new camera to carve paths in the town and reading Paris music through lens. 

Going around I found in a courtyard pegs left alone by fresh sheets , still shining colours in the silent courtyard.

A market in Charonne, shoulders and wooden ships to conjure up other horizons hidden in the concrete buildings of an almost suburb.

Intoxicating sun in Menilmontant; the plunge down is like to dive in the town, everything is possible up here.

Getting caught in the neighborhood party, children and grown ups dancing; they all probably share the same level of happiness in different ways of showing.

Everybody has his own way to tango and being together is always as fun.

Abdul, a violinist from Ethiopia: the white hair seemed to infuse experience and wisdom around him, in the pavement up to the trees. He touched his heart when he spoke of his country, when he said he was a violinist. His lips easily opened up in a smile and told me to go away with a couple of book from a large pile in front of him: I tried to say I had already too many in my house, but he did not want to hear and added "to give is good for the heart, and the best thing to give is knowledge"

a lady caught up in a moment of relax

In place Saint Marthe , the children were hypnotised from the cabaret-like show going on.

the evening falls gently and you get trapped for that moment in twilight caught in your world: be it waiting somebody, be it your thoughts or your memories or maybe somebody on the phone inviting you in his or her world.

A glimpse from Saint Marthe square, the children outside the restaurant keep running up and down the street; it is late in the night, it must be summer !

Last one is the best one of all: going home hands in hands, the rare privilege of knowing where home is and having somebody to bring or being brought by.

"Have a beer , it is solstice.. just lay in the sun all day, it is solstice" the guy told me offering his can as if I were one of his neighbors and not even wondering how I had found my way through the boatyard. Then he went again to taste the sun..

For some kind of magic the sun was still warm at something around seven in June, 21st of June in London outskirts of Twickenham. Which is in fact a much less poetic way of calling this lost pearl of countryside suspended nowhere in time and space that was baptised Eel Pie Island.

What else than magic could I call this tiny piece of land which is linked to greater London by a small foot bridge. When you cross the first house has written on the small panel Kuala Lumpur ,which adds to the already well settled state of dreaminess one brings on from the bridge. Looking around it seems that there is no public path to walk among the country house,but a small tiny way brings to the boatyards. I sneaked in into two almost closed doors, to my fascination with sea and boats the large titans parked to be repaired or repainted made me feel like inside this dot of land were larger worlds , as a game of boxes.

I always feel like a child in front of this lords of the sea, able to cut waves and cross horizons.

I went on trying to discover hidden corners , I was in total awe thinking of the time this place had a hotel well known as ballroom , that misteriously burned down.
The memory and the warmth of that summer solstice came to me in an another propitious sunny day when at la cite de la musique , the passionating class about rock history held by Olivier Julien brought us back to the days of the british rock . 

Pete Towshend had in fact his own recording studios opposite the island and called them inspired by the island itself.
Life goes and summer withers and ends: still some dreams linger on and can revive through a small foot bridge. The warmth of the solstice light can feed a whole winter time

caps and lids

an old japanese sir

In back light two pieces of very white and wise hair were floating in the afternoon breeze around the oval of wrinkles and elegant japanese eyes. He walks slowly in my direction and I recognize in the twist of his face some sort of pain while he looks down at a plastic bin halfway in the street.

I turn and close my eyes as my heart squeezes sharply inside me as I realise that he is stretching his hand inside the bin. I just grieve at this world we are living in , where an old japanese man has to live his most mature days to fumble in a garbage bag to get by.

As I try to run away from this scene, I stop and decide to catch this and live through with him the despair of this world. The time I take my camera, he has lifted some washing liquid container.

The time I switch it on , I see that he has get rid of the container and walks away gingerly with the red lid in his hand. Amusement makes its way through my surprise : the old man was in fact trying to correct some careless parisian mistake ; the plastic lids have to be recycled elsewhere in this place ! And he took care of the situation even if at his venerable age and in his serious black outfit he had to put his arms through the garbage... A warm relaxation pervades me, I witness a scene of joy and not of catastrophe. I know for sure that the scene I imagined exists somewhere as piercingly painful as I felt it. I know also that people care and we are not lost. There he walks away with the red cap in one hand and the dangling stick in the other.

glimpes of Naples

Napoli when we were still waking up to the day and to the bright sky ...
old and bright fresh as his inhabitants that can keep this place alive just by their wits notwithstanding the neglect from the governement.

A door bell is like a ticket to another world

Music from traditions bring new life to the square, it is impossible not to feel the feet and the hands tickling to dances, I do not remember this music but I know my body is made of this substance too

 

Naples could look like a Mitteleuropean city in some places

and in spaccanapoli the only feeling is like being at home

In some parts it reminded my of Bombay, yet I would say that Naples has more the sweetness of Calcutta

still a place where you can warm up in the sun , where the streets are one's garden