Time's Horrid Burden

Sometimes, it feels as if time has a weight, doesn't it? We are heavier, our steps are like the steps of a diver on the sea bottom. We have lost our lightness and the colours have faded.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory or the Melting Clocks

Recently I was browsing through my father's collection of Charles Baudelaire's 'Petits Poemes en Prose' when I came upon a text which I have liked since high school. I wanted to share it with you.

It gives a solution to the above situation and the solution is: get drunk.

Enivrez-Vous
Il faut être toujours ivre, tout est là ; c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu à votre guise, mais enivrez-vous!
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à
l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge; à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est. Et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront, il est l'heure de s'enivrer ; pour ne pas être les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous, enivrez-vous sans cesse de vin, de poésie, de vertu, à votre guise.
________

Get Drunk
Get Drunk. Always be drunk. That's it! The great imperative! In order not to feel Time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way.

On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk. And if you sometimes happen to wake up on the porches of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room, your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees,
everything that groans or rolls or sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer you: "Time to get drunk! Don't be martyred slaves of Time, Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
________

I know that this is not exactly a call for a healthy life style but Baudelaire gives us so many alternatives for getting drunk and alcohol is only one of them. Baudelaire is not paid by some wine producer and points out that poetry and virtue are also options. There must be dozens of other methods like making pictures in order to stop the passing time, playing scrabble or even cutting one's carbon footprint (I am sure Baudelaire missed that one).

But what if soberness is the intoxicating substance? Well, so be it: drunk by soberness is quite original, isn't it?

The bottomline is that we'd better find our way unless we really insist on staying sober and then risk being crashed by time's horrid burden.

'What's the time?', I am asking the dark night over Buda. It's time for a Cuba Libre.

Venice on the Run

I know that taking you on a walk in Venice is not as original as a walk in Szekesfehervar or Bandar Seri Bagavan (Brunei) but still...Arriving at Venice Santa Lucia by train from Mestre is like receiving a beauty slap. I usually start telling things like 'No, it's not possible, no who built this place, there is no place like that and similar stupid things...'. Please someone tell me a city in the world where the dive in its vortex is so sudden. Usually, the traveller is prepared somehow, the curtain is slowly unveiled.

I am sorry that the pictures are again a bit dark but I was in the city at sunset again. It is already a deja-vu to hurry and try to capture the last sun rays.

Canale Grande

Rio Marin

As I was very hungry and thirsty, I got quite drunk from one cold beer so all the following pictures are taken is a state of light inebriation.

San Zandegola with the last rays of the sun

What I found funny in this picture is the contrast between the four windows - flowers go from 0 to n. Maybe one big family lives there: four types of people live in the different rooms: the austere (0 flowers), the minimalist (1), the golden average (just enough), the excessive (n).

Windows

Looking at the water from this angle I wish I were a boat, quietly gliding on the calm canal.

Canale Grande with Ca' Vendramin Calergi Palace

As if a river of gold flows into the canal. All you need to do is scoop it up and model it into any piece of jewelry you wish.

Contrejour at Canale Grande

This bridge is kind of built under a naughty angle and leads to house with some crazy windows.

Crooked bridge - San Boldo

In any side street there is not a soul in view. It's so easy to escape the crowd in Venice. Never tell Venice is crowded. Only the main streets in Venice are crowded, the rest are totally empty.

Just a simple side canal,
a bit of the liquid gold has flown into it

Palazzo Scranzo in Campol St. Polo

Basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

I think the picture below is the best. The sleeping boats in the front as if some secret load is hidden in them in contrast with the houses in the back with dozens of restaurants where people do not even suspect this terrible blue secret.

Canale Grande

I took this picture and the next second the water was all over me and it's good that the camera survived.

Then I realized that our train was leaving in 25 minutes so Dora and I ran all the way to the station.

Urbino or the Eyes of Raffaello

Recently I formulated a principle: when at business trip, try to visit at least one place close to the destination. After shortly consulting the Rough Guide, there was no doubt that this would be Urbino - a fantastic medieval city - one that you wouldn't expect to find so close to the mass tourism beaches of Rimini.

Urbino reminded me a lot of the Tuscany hilltop towns located between Florence and Sienna. The town is located on a top of a hill, very dense and concentrated, with an inevitable palazzo at the top.

The main man there is Federico da Montefeltro (this family is everywhere in Marche) who - instead of buying 15th century equivalents of boats and cars - supported culture and architecture.

Being a walled city, the access to Urbino is through gates. There are no giants asking visitors questions before they let them in and killing them if they don't answer right.

Urbino Gate

In such towns houses and churches are perched on one another. In this case Palazzo Ducale is on the top.

Somewhere up there

The Duomo is the main church in Urbino. It was started in the 11th and finished in the early 17th c. I have always been amazed by those monumental constructions which take many generations to complete. What was the state of mind of the builders who were fully conscious that they will never complete the church in their life time? Or was such construction divided in small sub projects lasting a life time?

The Duomo, XI - XVII c

One perspective of the Ducal Palace, always on top, overlooking the valley and the rest of the town.

View at Palazzo Ducale (Ducal Palace)

Approached from below the palace looks like a multistory building. It has a light and spacious interiour though, obviously a place where many parties took place. I had often wondered how they used to sleep in these huge roomss and wasn't it cold and uncosy. This time I got an answer as there was a beautiful wooden structure (a room in the room) in one of the rooms where the bed used to be. I guess it was easier to warm up, put candles, etc.

Palazzo Ducale

We were fortunate enough as there was a Raffaello (Raffaello Sanzio) exhibition in the palace, a dozen works by him, his father (Giovanni Santi) and some other of their contemporaries. While looking at the paintings I was thinking that it is so contradictory to dedicate 5 minutes to a work completed in months and even years, to be moved just a tiny bit by something beautiful simply because the next one is coming. Don't these paintings deserve hours of contemplation? Isn't it better to pick one and study it in detail rather than gliding on the surface of a dozen of them?

It seems to me that this is the main difference between horizontal and vertical perception of reality - people, places, art. While the former is linked with diversity, easy and constant change (a kind of zoom-out perception), the latter is more of a zoom-in, looking-deep-into-the-eyes perception. I guess the secret is finding the right balance between two of them as both extremes would lead to a kind of madness - the madness of constant change and superficial look or the obsession the depth, the danger of falling into an abyss.

This is Raffaello's famous self-portrait. Just look into his eyes. Raffaelo was an Urbino native and lived only 37 years.

Raffaello self-portrait

We were hesitating if we should go to San Marino but finally decided to spend an hour there especially having in mind that it is the oldest constitutional republic in the world with the oldest constitution (from 1600). Can one easily miss the cradle of constitutionalism and parliamentarism? I totally agree the Rough Guide which says that 'it is not an unpleasant place'. It would have been a very nice place if it was not for the hundreds of shops obviously selling stuff cheaper than in Italy because of the lower VAT. Calling it 'pleasant' would be too strong and would endorse the San Marino-mall approach, calling it 'unpleasant' would be unjust.

In San Marino I was reminded that you want to be different you'd better work on the symbols. Difference in some cases is mostly a semiotic exercise: the clothes of the policemen, their semi-dancing gestures, the way the local dialect is written and others.

San Marino Senate

This is the small and compact San Marino Church, opposite the senate.

San Marino Cathedral

This tower is located on Monte Titano where the first small church was built in 301 by Saint Marinus from nowadays Rab. It reminds me of some ancient battleship. If there is a new deluge Noah could save some wood and, embark and set sails.

Montale Tower

From San Marino we set sails (or rather pressed the gas pedal of the unfortunate, suffocating Fiat Punto) to Venice. And Venice should be drunk pure, it shouldn't be mixed with ingredients like San Marino or even Urbino.

A Short Trip to Adriatic Italy or It's Good To Be Hated by the Bad Ones

This was definitely a crazy week in terms of travels. The itinerary of my body was Budapest-Treviso (flying) -Rimini-Ancona-Urbino-San Marino-Venezia (driving)-Ljubljana-Zagreb-Budapest (night train)-Belgrade-Lazarevats (driving). While my body is roaming around the Apennine and Balkan peninsulas my poor soul is trying to catch up, a small child running by his father.

However, this morning, after finally sleeping through the night with a humble one-hour spell of rumination, now reading quietly Huston Smith's The World's Religions, sipping Turkish-Greek-Bosnian-whatever coffee, hearing voices of playing children through the window (remember Rolling Stones' As Tears Go By) - body and soul might meet again.

And let me try to take you on a very short and incomplete walk along Italy's Adriatic coast.

Together with my two colleagues Venelina and Dora we flew into Treviso (north of Venice) into a hot summer afternoon. This made me regret even more the fact that I had lost my sunglasses. After renting a Fiat Punto we indulged in an ancient Italian ritual coming through the centuries - drinking of a cappuccino or as as the Italians say - cappuccio. For me, this is a great replacement of border controls and suspicious looks from border guards. Now an idea comes to my mind that border controls should have been legally replaced by a ritual welcome consumption of a national drink.

In Italy, the welcome should be like that: a smiling Italian girl approaches me and says: "Buongiorno, Ruslan. Welcome to Treviso! We are so happy you are finally visiting us. We have been impatiently waiting for you. Your cappucco has just been prepared and there is a heart shaped in the foam especially for you. Would you like to add some cinnamon or you drink it pure? And by the way, we would like to offer you a pair of sunglasses as we have heard that you lost yours and you would be driving 400 km. in the sun. Which is your preferred brand? And by the way what do you think of Umberto Eco's last book?" That's how Europe should be, shouldn't it?

Well, I drove south without the glasses, stretching the capacities of the rented Fiat Punto so much that I thought it would collapse in exhaustion with foam on the mouth. Where is a car's mouth by the way? We drove by Padova (thinking of Paulina), Ferrara (thinking of Jelica), Bologna (thinking of Umberto Eco - what's up with this man?), Faenza (thinking of bathroom tiles). When we started approaching Rimini I started thinking of Frederico Fellini but also of a nice dinner by the sea.

The Rough Guide has quite a disparaging attitude to all Adriatic Italy. The most common adjectives are 'bombed', 'modest', 'mass tourism'. Well, everything is relative.

That's the cetral square in Rimini. It is modest but only in Italian terms. It has an 'inconspicuous' palazzo on the right side from the early 13th c.

Cavour Square - Fontana della Pigna
(The Pine Cone Fountain)

Cavour Square - Pope Paul V
On the right - Palazzo dell'Arengo e del Podesta (1204),
Palace of Judiciary and Administration

To me, this bridge from year 21 (not 1921!!!) was the most beautiful thing in Rimini, especially at sunset. The bridge is still functioning, it is build in Istria stone and it spans over the river Ariminus (nowadays Marecchia) river. The bridge leads north to ancient Via Emilia and Via Popilia. I like this ancient fashion of giving names to the roads.

Tiberius Bridge, I c. AD

I don't know the name of this church but as I have a fascination of the interplay of setting sun and churches, I decided to put this picture here. For me, these three colours - ocher, green and blue - are the colours of Italy.

Church of the Setting Sun

This frightening and un-Italianly inelegant palace was the residence of the local feudal lord - Sigismondo Pandolfo. I liked the fact that he often acted as a condottiero (mercenary) to gain money in order to embellish the city: beauty was more important than peace after all, let alone than other details like human life.

The Residence of Sigismondo Pandolfo, XV c.

All three of us wanted to go and have dinner by the sea. I stopped a guy and I asked him the fundamental question 'Dove il mare?'. After laughing a good deal, he explained to us. Well, here it is on the picture below: that's the mass tourism a la Rimini, not very attractive.

The Beach in Rimini at Sunset

We had a good pasta dinner in a nice restaurant. When asking the waiter about the connection between driving and drinking in Italy and if I was allowed to have a beer, he smiled and said 'You are allowed two if you are a real man'.

Late in the evening, we drove into Ancona where we were headed to for work. Ancona is the centre of Regione Marche which is a partner in one of our projects. The next day together with Cornwell (UK) and Burgenland (Austria) we tried to figure out how to best use 220,000 EUR to develop a framework methodology for assessing the potential for low carbon economy of a region. We were thinking of this for some 11 hours in a 30 degrees room.

After solving this fundamental issue we were rewarded by Cinzia with a dinner by a beautiful beach in the Natural Park Il Conero, south of Ancona: mountain and pine forests going into the sea, white pebbled beach, the lulling sound of the waves: these were our companions for dinner.

The next day was dedicated to travel and pleasure. We decided to start with a walking tour of Ancona - after all, it's so bad to be somewhere and not have at least an hour of walk. Ancona is also very 'modest' and bombed in WWII. There is a huge industrial port and unfortunately the seashore is not an integral part of the city - you see it but you can't go close to it. I wonder if they are not contemplating a reshuffle a la Genova where the industrial port was moved away and the seashore was given back to the people.

Historically, it is interesting to note that Ancona was an important maritime republic after the 11th century and often fought against Venice. It was taken over by the same naughty guy who lived in the castle in Rimini before becoming a part of the Papal State in the 16th century. Ancona was the sole city in the Papal States in which the Jews were allowed to stay after 1569, living into the ghetto built after 1555.

Central Ancona

This is a church in central Ancona, I think Santo Sacramento. I was attracted by the spear in its tower as it reminded me of Babylon in the famous paintings by Brueghel - Tower Construction at Babylon.

Ss Sacramento, Ancona

Look at the spear and compare it to Brueghel's painting below.

Tower in Ss. Sacramento, Ancona

And that's Pieter Brueghel's construction of the tower in Babylon. It deserves a separate posts though.

Pieter Brueghel, Tower Construction at Babylon

Our short early morning walk ended by the beautiful fountain below from the XVI century. Then off we drove to Urbino, San Marino and Venice.

Fontana del Calamo (delle tredici cannelle), XVI c.
Translation: The Stem Fountain (of the thirteen pipes)

And something totally different from the book I am reading. This comes from Confucius' Analects.

The King said: 'What would you say of the person who is liked by all his fellow townsmen? 'That is not sufficient' was the reply. 'What is better is that the good among his fellow townsmen like him, and the bad hate him'.

So, if someone around you hates you that's how it should be after all.