Three Matches

There is a French poet - Jacques Prevert - whom I have liked for a long time.
I especially appreciate his haiku-like simplicity, cinematographic imagery and
tender playfulness.

I was actually looking for his poem Barbara but I came upon and remembered
two other beautiful short poems.


Paris at Night

Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier
La seconde pour voir tes yeux
La dernière pour voir ta bouche
Et l'obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
En te serrant dans mes bras.

(Translation)
Three matches one by one struck in the night
The first to see your face in it's entirety
The second to see your eyes
The last to see your mouth
And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
As I hold you in my arms.
__

If I was a film director I would keep this image for a beginning of a film. I can
even hear the sound of the match stick.

Stormy Sky from Our Terrace

Alicante

Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans mon lit
Doux présent de la  présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie

Still Life with Oranges, Jacques Oudry

(Translation)
An orange upon the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Freshness of the night
Warmth of my life.
_

If I was a painter I would design a picture: a table with an orange, a carpet
and a dress on it.

Jacque Prevert by Robert Doineau

How I would like to have a chat with him!

Pour Toi Mon Amour

Je suis alle au marche aux oiseaux
Et j'ai achete des oiseaux
    Pour toi
     mon amour
Je suis alle au marche aux fleurs
Et j'ai achete des fleurs
    Pour toi
     mon amour
Je suis alle au marche a la ferraille
Et j'ai achete des chaines
De lourdes chaines
    Pour toi
     mon amour
Et puis je suis alle au marche aux esclaves
 Et je t'ai cherchee
Mais je ne t'ai pas trouvee
     mon amour

_

And the last one is the coolest: he keeps looking for his love at different
places: the bird market and the flower market. At the end he goes to the
slave market and he doesn't find her there. What a cool way to say that what he
loves most about her is her freedom.

Bruges, or Venice of the north

We came back from Belgium last night--it was my first visit to the country so for me the trip had all the excitement of seeing things with virgin eyes (so to speak). We stayed in Brussels, with a day trip to the medieval town of Bruges on Sunday.

I have plenty of pictures from Bruges and only a handful from Brussels, and there is an easy explanation for that--in Brussels I walked around pushing a stroller with Andrej and making sure Boris was close enough to me, so that allowed for few photo snapping possibilities.

So, in this post I'll take you on a walk (and a boat tour) of Bruges.

We were welcomed by a heavy shower and ominous looking skies, which dampened the enthusiasm. Amazingly, it cleared up and we had an afternoon of glorious sunshine afterwords.

Even though they are primarily a tourist attractions, horse carts don't look out of place among these medieval streets and houses.

Paris meets Amsterdam--the mixture of French and Flemish cultures is what makes Belgium so interesting (and unsustainable, some would say).

A little bit like Venice, on a smaller scale (minus the stench, but plus rainfall--plenty of it).

This is Van Eyck square--the famous artist lived here until his death.

This one and the following three pictures were taken from a boat while we toured the canal. It was great to see city from a different perspective, the only downside being that we zoomed passed everything, so there was no time to really pay attention.

What's in the Hair or Sheep Shearing Day

We have been silent for some days but we are in Brussels all of us and there is little time left to write - too much work and too many friends to see in the evening. Of course, you know that Brussels is the new Babylon so who would write in Babylon.... Actually, what were the people doing in Babylon? I guess one can google by 'employment Babylon' or 'occupation structure Babylon'...

However, yesterday night my hands were itching to write a post so I meanly used the kids to fill in the idea gaps. A couple of weeks ago we were in Lazarevatz, Serbia - a famous centre of culture and arts and....hairdressing wizards.

As all the art museums were closed for some reason and as the Bolsoi Theater Ballet had just left town we decided to have our hairs done.

That's how kids used to look before the interference of the hair magicians. Boris is thinking 'Don't cut my hair. It is a symbol of my individuality'.

Boris, long hair

Andrej is shouting: 'Don't cut my hair, I am a lion and I will eat you if you do so'

Andrej - little wild lion

Lately, Boris has a favourite line: he goes to English speakers and he says all of a sudden 'I am a famous artist. Do you want my autograph?'. Have I taught him this? No, not at all. Yesterday, he had a problem as our friend Helene took out a piece of paper and handed it to him for an autograph.

Boris, a famous artist. Locally.

And here is a famous schmoozer and fly hunter. He is posing for the press together with his fly extermination equipment.

Andrej, the fly hunter

Well, every famous artist needs a haircut and that's how Boris looked after it. He is obviously posing for some local magazine.

Boris, short hair

Andrej's metamorphosis was bigger and actually he lost half of the size of his head after the haircut. After that he had a more favourable brain-to-head size ratio. He was not so daunting a lion any more.

Andrej, short hair

I don't know if you have a similar thing but for me haircuts are quite a ritualistic thing. Taking place on a relatively regular basis, they kind of measure the time of life, don't they? We look into the mirror for half an hour or so and no one can accuse us of vanity. I also contemplate the colour of my hair and I have followed its change from bright red to grayish passing through several other hues. It would have been a good life project to keep a bit of hair in a book every year. I have heard of stranger hobbies.

I am also loyal to my hairdressers as they provide some continuity to the ever changing landscape of our lives. During my childhood I used to visit the same Armenian hairdresser and sit on his wooden chair, then I used to go for many years to the same woman whom I still visit when back home.

Some things don't change (a short walk through Lazarevac)

The main street (a pedestrian zone in theory, although not always in practice) of my hometown on a hot Saturday afternoon in May. It's interesting that it looks almost completely deserted on this picture that Ruslan took, because that's exactly how I think of it--a place where nothing ever happens. Small town life for me is the equivalent of a v-e-r-y slow death.

This might not be Santa Maria della Salute*, but it's the best we've got. This is the Church of St. Dimitrius which, in its crypt, preserves the remains of thousands of Serbian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers who died in the Battle of Kolubara, during the WWI. It was a major victory for Serbia and the Austrians were kicked out, but Serbian army suffered terrible losses and was later decimated by typhus so it was no match for the Austrians later on.

My old neighborhood still looks surprisingly good. I never thought of it as beautiful until I've seen how small towns in Bulgaria look like. It made me realize that where I grew up was actually clean, tidy and with lots of green, which is not bad at all for a provincial town in Serbia.

Ever since I was eleven, there have always been cats in the life of my family. They were just ordinary street cats that we would adopt, or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we were adopted by them. Over the years dozens of cats passed through our home, some of them quite extraordinary chaps (like Beka, who had been left in a village about 20km away and managed to find his way home after three weeks of roaming). At the moment, there is only one cat who has the privilege of being in the house but my parents probably feed another dozen in the neighborhood. Pictured is one of those.

My grandfather's roses still blossom in the backyard of my father's childhood home, even though my grandfather is not around any more to tend to them. There is something reassuring in that constancy.

(My bloggy friend Delwyn from A Hazy Moon had a very thoughtful post about constancy and change after visiting her hometown in New Zealand. It was on my mind when I visited Lazarevac, and I found it curious that for Delwyin the primary impression was change, whereas for me it was sameness).

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*a famous church in Venice.