satyr's head: stone imitating flesh.Detail: acupuncture needles on the neck, to deter pigeons...

:

Via San Stefano, Bologna: sculpted heads, mangled by time, as idiosyncratic as the human faces they were modeled after

Osteria del Nonno, six pm, on the hills of Bologna. Being led blindfolded to a place whose geography and character you could not possibly suspect or hope for. Reconciled all at once with travel as a realm of possibility. The simplicity of it all. A rustic square, a late summer afternoon, wine, cheese, crescentine bread, and your own fragile family to close the circle of your world. “I was walking, sore-footed, under hot sun, hot pavements. Was it then I bought a peach? That's as I remember. From a stall near Charing Cross Station. It was the first fresh peach I had ever tasted. I could hardly believe how delicious. At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh By my ignorance of the simplest things.” (Ted Hughes, Full Bright Scholars).

air de papa jeune?

Reverse gravity

Portraits (1) Hotel Porta San Mamolo, Bologna

Portraits (2) Piazza Magiore, Bologna

Portraits (3) - Trattoria Rusticana, Castello D'Argile

Portraits (4) - Bologna Centro

Portraits (5) - Trattoria Rusticana, Castello d'Argile

aphrodisiac breads, bulging tomatoes, fresh pastas

chilis

half lights (4)

half lights (3)

half lights (2)

half lights (1)

we found Venice cramped, its arteries clogged up, a labyrinthine prison. Bologna was a stony wilderness where you were free to roam.

Porta San Mamolo - secluded, red-themed, retro

Variations on a theme

Other Venitian windows. Other details. Details that the eye probes and which baffle the mind. Arrangement of Crostinis on a white plate like touches of paint of a wet palette; a makeshift mirror sticking out of from a window in the first floor of a Venitian building; a single, random Maltese Cross in Chiesa degli Schalzi by the Santa Lucia train station, a bronze doorknob with two embracing seahorses (Venice, ‘Fallen Queen of the Sea’); a ladder-like structure jutting out of the ochre walls, leading nowhere; the gold-painted inside of an ostrich’s egg; the carved symbol of a blessing hand, topped by a cryptic street number; the blunt kiss from one insistent sister to the reluctant other; spaghetti clumsily rolled over a fork; patterns of black dragonflies adorning the curtains of Café Florian, the earth-like texture of Porcini mushrooms; coils of black ink entrapped like amber inside an egg-shaped glass; a basket of truffles, resembling pieces of coal; the sharp glint inside the slit of Rebecca’s black black eyes; the self absorbed couple of Café Florian, catching my own reflection in the background; Frida’s clownish expression in the train leading to Venice; the small black dot in Olivia’s steel-blue, wide-open eye; the oddity of a Chinese bride in full wedding gown at Plaza San Marco.

  

the only deserted street in Venice, like a respite.

Chaos of goodbyes. I thought I had forgotten my camera bag inside the train. Panic onboard, hilarity, relief, and eventually, a pang of sadness as the train ruthlessly recedes into the distance. Happy melancholy gazes are left superimposed on reality, like scars on the mind.

A perspective on our Venice visit.

Most delicious food from South Tyrol mountains, brought back by nonna e nonno

late afternoon stroll in nature reserve

in the log cabin, Luca scans the banks of the small lake for water birds

Italian countryside, back from a walk in the woods

shimmering glimmer in the wood. Autumn is nigh.

Villa Smeraldi, unkempt gardens, decrepit walls, haunted corridors: late August's forsakenness

summer on Frida: light-bodied, like spring

the forgotten butternuts, ripening in the shade, from another age

A hedge of late-August cultivated flowers, waiting, waiting for an audience

In Bentivoglio, nestling behind Villa Smeraldi: a disheveled garden, where vegetables and time hang, suspended.

La mozzarella di bufala (Trip to France / Italy August 2011)

Lesser bush babies (Hartbeestpoortdam)