Price or value

Last Sunday I was lying on the ground in the local park. The grass was slightly wet from the short rain but pleasantly warm from the scorching sun. Boris was making frantic circles with his new blue bike, immensely proud that he had just biked with me on the street, giving priority, taking priority, careful when there is a 'Stop', keeping a straight line, giving a hand sign when turning.

Little brother Andrej ,keeping a niche activity, was deftly flying on his 'Micro' scooter which recently replaced a low-quality Chinese brother.

Then I saw it. Boris was tired, red and.....thirsty. He simply went to drink water from the beautiful metal tap in the park but at this moment I realised how important this water-drinking business had been to me for many years.

Of course, we do all kinds of banal things every day and usually we do not attach a special contemplative value to them as otherwise it would be too difficult to go through the days. But this time I somehow thought of the magic of it all: what else could one do on a lazy Sunday afternoon but think of taps?

I remembered different taps from the past and how it feels to drink from them. I can remember the tap in my secondary school (5th school in Sliven) toilets and drinking litres of water there heart beating violently after hours of football in the heat.

I can remember so vividly the tap in my grandmother's yard (23, Asen Zlatarov street, Sliven) and the time when it was too big for me. I tried to reach the metal nuzzle but somehow fell in the stone basin and cracked my head. This was soon after the same head was cracked by a stone kindly thrown at me by a friend and a bit before I cracked a classmate's head with a piece of wood which I tried to throw like a boomerang.

I also remember the fountain somewhere in the middle on the road from Shiroka Laka to Solishta (Rhodope Mountain, Bulgaria), those 5 kilometers that looked endless on an August afternoon. The value of water was so high for us then.

This reminds me of the difference between price and value and how it was illustrated somewhere by an example of water in the desert: there is no price or it remains the same, value is infinite.

I am thinking now that different people surely drink in a different way like different people jump in the swimming pool differently.

The difference would come from:

- the way one keeps one's lips: a small pout or a wide-angled approach gulping larger quantities of water;
- drinking straight from the nuzzle or not: sometimes there was no time to kid around so I had to drink straight from the nuzzle. This speaks of strong thirst and kind of voracity.
- the way one puts one's palms: drinking elegantly from one of them or dipping one's mouth and nose in a basin made by both.
- naturally the angle of the neck relative to the tap is also revelatory of one's innermost sexual desires.

Naturally, entirely different skills are required when one drinks from the river or from a puddle (I haven't but one never knows).

Let us not forget of the water either. This is of course a topic for a different blog post but see how playful it is on the picture below: shooting out in a relative straight line, reaching the point where its kinetic energy turns into static and then tiredly falls down into semi-random pattern.

Boris, Alfama, Lisbon

It is obvious how different people (Boris and Andrej) drink in a different way. There is the playful, naughty, theatrical drinking of Boris, almost licking the water, ready to please.

On the other hand, there is Andrej's ferocious approach to the act. He attacks it as if he wants to drink it all or as if this water has just eaten his ice cream.

Andrej, Alfama, Lisbon

Balconies: best of both worlds

Balconies have always fascinated me. I realise that wherever I go dozens of the pictures are from balconies. It's good watching balconies but also being on balconies. I got the taste for sipping wine or beer in fresh air especially after spending hundreds of hours on the one below, the beloved Tulipan street, 16 in Budapest.

Somehow on a balcony one has the best of two worlds: the security of home and the clear sky: the fridge is never too far and Venus is there for you with your first glass of wine. Balconies are even better if you can play music in the background or even if the only music is the one of the cicadas.

View from Balcony on Tulipan street, 16 (Budapest)

Poruguese balconies are a special breed: there is rarely place for a small table or chair. It's a balcony to lean on and greet your neighbour or an observatory balcony. The one below is a thought over composition: the scarf and the flower match perfectly well.

Central Lisbon: composition

The balcony below would be lovely in summer when the tree is in leaves. That's in Alfama - a magic place with an Arab history and feel.

Balcony in Alfama: old Arab part of Lisbon

Fortunately, it is still not forbidden to dry one's clothes in Portugal. Who was the one to decide that this was ugly.


The balconies below are on the hill symmetric to Alfama - Bairro Alto. Writer Fernando Pessoa was living not far from here. One can see that buildings are better taken care of. And....no clothes, maybe drying them here is forbidden after all.

Bairro Alto (Lisbon)

The one below is in Bairro Alto too, the ex-resident is back, transformed into a dove. Balconies are also the life behind them. Remember La Vie, Mode d'Emploi (Life: A User's Manual) by George Perec.

Abandoned house: Bairro Alto

Somehow, the is the most hopeful balcony. It is right above a Fado place in Alfama. I imagine that this tree throws a lovely afternoon shadow in the room and the light plays endless games on the white bed cover.

Balcony over a Fado place (Alfama, Lisbon)

The balcony below is a small rooftop garden, ideal for watching a World Football Championship or a good movie in the open air.

Rooftop balcony

And there are a couple of balconies outside Lisbon too. Like the one below. Maybe.

Corner balcony: Coimbra

Even trivial things so used and tried

Today I was fully under the spell of Andrey Tarkovsky's Mirror. A month ago I had the urge of watching quality Russian cinema again and we started by Mirror and what a good choice.

I was thinking today why I liked it so much and what makes it different. I know it sucks a bit to demystify beauty but a bit of rationalism wouldn't hurt after all. I live in France after all, 200 m. from the place where Voltaire spent the last 20 years of his life.

One of the things that I really liked is the dream-like character of the shooting. Tarkovsky kind of invites us all to dream with him of his childhood. I don't know how he does this from a cinematography point of view but it seems to me that it is mostly through the long takes. I like so much these long minutes when the camera roams in forests and meadows, looks into the eyes and then away into the distance. Good life is a long take, isn't it? Today I have been thinking that a long take shows a bigger respect to the viewers, there is less trickery in a way. Long takes slow down time and free space for thinking.

This is the second reason I liked it so much - the free space. Mirror is a movie where there are lots of free spaces for thinking and living-with in a compassionate way. By free spaces I don't mean clumsy gaps but silences which one can load with emotions or let go in a Buddhist way. It's again about respect for the viewer, about giving him/her a share of authorship.



Dealing with time in this movie is phenomenal. Tarkovsky shows so well that one is the child one used to be. In a way time is one, times merge together and childhood is not left away in a dusty attic. Indeed, it is reflected in a mirror and often swims in white haze but it is still there, just a dream away.

Mirror is a also a movie about the father, the missing father. Arseny Tarkovsky, an important Russian poet, left the family when Andrey was five. The father who used to appear on the horizon came no more. Arseny's beautiful poetry is read throughout the film. There is no judgment there. Things are as they are, beauty is all around.

This is a link to the First Date poem which is about love, of course. Both the Russian original (very beautiful) and the English translation are there.

And suddenly all changed, like in a trance,
Even trivial things so used and tried.....

And....if you are curious about it, just watch at the scene I embedded. It's seven minutes but it is worth it. It's a scene of intense beauty where one finds all: the longing, the endless sadness, the mysterious wind.........And among all this the amazing stranger who comes by mistake, quickly understands all about her loneliness, falls with her and then surprisingly throws this pantheistic idea about the plants which feel, know and comprehend. All our problems come because we refuse to trust the nature which is in us, because we don't have time to think....

From Village to Village, Violin in Hand

Yesterday, at dinner, when asked what he wants to be in life my elder son Boris replied 'I want to be a Gypsy'. He clarified that he wanted to be a Gypsy in order to play his violin all day long, do gardening and wonder from village to village.

Gypsy girl with a mandoline,
Camille Corot, 1874

I think this is not such a bad choice at all although we tried to explain that you don't become a Gypsy, you are born one. We also mentioned that you can play violin and do gardening without necessarily being a Gypsy. However, he insisted on the choice of profession for some time. It is possible though that you can play violin, do gardening and travel from village to village only if you are a Gypsy.

Gypsy in reflection, Courbet, 1869

I don't know from where Boris gets his fascination about Gypsies. When asked how he know that Gypsies wonder from village to village he answered with his usual matter-of-fact air 'I just know, it's like that'.

It is a known fact that Gypsies have long been romanticized as we can see on the Corot's and Courbet's paintings. Unfortunately it is not the case any more in France especially after last years Bulgarian and Romanian Gypsy incursion. At the entrance of Ferney-Voltaire where we live it is written in an euphemistic way that wondering people are not welcome on municipal territory. I am afraid Boris will have to change his choice of career.