Old style beach resorts

Italy, Adriatic Sea – beach resorts and old bathing establishment.

Shots by me

Just besides the famous and well-equipped beach resorts of Romagna, there’s an area that was once a cheap public holiday destination for children. This kind of holiday was government-funded and children were sent here for 1 or 2 months a year, depending on the economic conditions of their families. Unofficially it was known as “colony”. I also spent a couple of summers here, when I was 7, maybe 8. I keep a few tolerable memories of me playing on the beach, a certain chaos, my small white cap with ties, the labels with my name on stitched in each piece of clothing, the smell of the soup at midday, the sand in the flip-flops…

Now, it’s mostly in disuse, but some establishments have been renovated and keep on living under a religious management.

Line, light and color

Italy, Adriatic Sea – line, light and colors.

Shots by GGRuff

 

The love alphabet

Life is hard for collectors. Only a few samples of the entire collection of photographs slipped through her fingers. She jealously treasured it to the end. The reason for such a strict custody lies in the folders of this story.

They fell in love on the eve of the War, which left them both unharmed. He, a test pilot, used to wear a pair of thin mustache, à la mode until 1937. She, conveniently desirable and given to reverie, couldn’t stop smiling and addressing him letters in a delicate and airy handwriting that she thought proper for her unique and special reader.

In return, she received overexposed snap-shots, stressed by an intangible chromatic intensity, painfully suffocated or burnt by the solar bulb, which he imprudently took during his solo flights.

The first she got was wholly black. She promptly praised his effort to catch the entirety without falling behind the single element. Nevertheless, she exhorted him not to exclude other ways to approach the universal beauty.

Such a warm support produced an increase in his audacity and more shots soon came: inconsistent walls of clouds, massive skies opening on a solid void that she imagined to be desperately deaf to the comforting sound of the backwash and the leaves rustling.

In a word, they made up a new love alphabet. And it drew the interest of the public.

When she was called to share her memories or unveil their secrets, she waved and said “Phew! He was a skilled dancer, but often his steps were out of my reach.”

Fenestrelle Fortress, Val Chisone (Turin) Italy

MICROfiction #23

A1: the very best of

of the journey this is a brief part

a long queue, a rite of passage,

(not a significant turning point, indeed)

 

Photo Festival – SIFEST in Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy

# 6

A boat in Camogli

He was expected in Wien, but never got there. He crossed the border at night, the jacket in tears, the blood-soaked save-conduct in the pocket and a wound in the belly.

When the feeble lights of the village blinked in the dark, he realized how ridiculous that entire story was and leaned against a wall before passing out. It was a bizarre sensation, something like being caught by strong hands and thrown abruptly through a hole in the ground. The liquid torpor he was floating on was animated by jelly like voices which exhorted him not to give up. “Only slivers” they said, “can sew up the interstices between life and death and blood” they went on, “is the essential condition to pass through the two-dimensional door”.

He woke up and stared for a while at the colorless filament of the dawn across the room.

Instinctively, he lifted the blanket and looked at his belly. It was untouched. The head fell back on the pillow while the last nocturnal frame faded definitively away. The sea came to his mind along with the stillness of the wrecks after great, terrible storms.

He stood up and went to the window. A line of houses which looked alike were drying in the sun. The parking lot was empty.

“Oh God, give me a fresh start” he thought and looked the other way”I’d like to be a fisherman, with a yellow and pale blue boat in the water off the port of Camogli”.

Art installation in Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy

MICROfiction #21

Tie them strong

scraps of fabric

carefully sewn to the sky

(look twice, those aren’t clouds)

 

a secure knot,

some thread, the needle

a couple of painful stitches

 

in the tragedy of the names,

a map to cross the desert

of the memory

 

bent, still at work

the hand moves up and down,

commanding the tide

 

a whisper on the lips,

the thread trembles a while

then flutters away – not that far away

 

scraps of fabric, fragments of life,

tie them strong ‘cause time will try to rip them off

(like the rudest passer-by)

Giudecca Island, Venice – Italy

#3

Hesitation

What a strange story.

When the fame knocked at his door, he wasn’t ready.

The day he realized his qualities (originality, critical thinking and musicality) were finally known, he allowed himself a long moment of hesitation.

He woke up in the middle of the night, wrote down a couple of lines on the kitchen wall and vanished.

 “Don’t look for me”

“How good is coffee in Istanbul”

MicroFICTION # 7

Haiku # 358

taking on our lives

unconscious of what came first

 – tin-plated roses

Atelier of an artist, Istanbul

# 358

Haiku # 354

it must look stunning

– for those who reappear from hell

the lively village

Docking, Istanbul

# 354

Haiku # 353

year comes to an end

breathless, prostrate like a plough

stuck into the ground

Urban view

 

# 353