letter 51

eden is that old-fashioned house

we dwell in every day

without suspecting our abode

until we drive away

 

how fair, on looking back, the day

we sauntered from the door

unconscious our returning

discover it no more

 

*emily dickinson


letter 50

nigh on winter

you hold my hand tight

and life took place again

if you could know how many shadows

will remain amongst us

in the very moment of your dreams


royal cordillera

even when we cannot reach it

we know it is still there – so white -

looking on men and their secrets

as it always has been


letter nr.something

from which direction it will come?


Coordinates

coordinates of the corner

the home

i wish i knew them


south pacific

tell me a unique word

and if you look that close

you will see simply

a deep square of blue


from now on*

*amalgama #8: fernando ancil (brazil) and glaura cardoso vale (brazil)

——-

i always thought house was a place of care

and not an imprisonment

at the same time, i locked doors and drawers out

creating a barrier to prevent

strangers to come in and out

this flawed ideia of security

while fear scares me inside

 

for a long time house was only a room

where books, clothes, and long plays were gathering

while doors and drawers were still locked

i realized in the cloudy room the possibility to not to fear the world

locked doors and drawers

did not make possible strangers to come in and out

nor writing either


a table*

*amalgam #7: fernando ancil (brazil) and marina tsvetaeva (1933, russia)**

Oh, table, on which I write!
I thank you with all my heart:
You’ve given a trunk to me –
With goal a table to be –
 
But keep being the living trunk! –
With – over my head – your leaf, young,
With fresh bark and hot pitch’s tears,
With roots – till the bottom of Earth!
 
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October 22, 2005
** Marina Tsvetaeva is the great Russian poet of 20th century (1892-1941)

closed landscape*

*amalgama #6: rafael fares (brazil) and virginia yiny (spain)

A savage inside the cave and the man goes out to hunt.

Ripped in two both sexes.

She will be the womb, he will stay in the midst of

There and hither.

 

A tamed man cooks and the woman picks her children.

They have never been married.

They met each other cuz he was a migrant

He wanted a home, he was tired to be an errant

She wants only a lover, she had life done.


The Photographers’ Gallery (London) collects your stories about Home

We are happy to find that Photographers Gallery in London is collecting the stories on the same theme we are working on here! Please check this out!

An Idea of Home

Inspired by our exhibition Jim Goldberg: Open See, The Photographers’ Gallery asked people to contribute their stories and photographs using Flickr during the exhibition dates (16 October 2009 to 31 January 2010).This public gallery shows some of our favourites from this open submission. To see more images and read more stories, visit  www.flickr.com/groups/anideaofhome.
To read people’s stories connected to their photos here:http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pid=340

Our works are there too!


my world*

* amalgam #5: ko sakauchi (japan) and ronaldo macedo brandão (portugal)


three*

*amalgam #3: bruno vasconcelos (brazil) and ko sakauchi (japan)

When I was little, my dad used to say “if you’re lost, I can find you looking for the girl who has three moles like Orion on her thigh and bring back home anywhere you are.” Two out of three are almost gone now and maybe I don’t need them.


a leap (Christmas post)

…and this leap from age to age,

from the order of a child to that of an old man,

will not diminish us.

(Confidence).

- paul eluard-

… and, as ancient times,

i could sleep in the sea.

-paul eluard-


patterns*

*amalgam #2: yelena popova (UK) and eassis (Brazil)

“The house was quiet and the world was calm”

This is the sentence by which a man

loses his place, sells his peace

curses his soul. A poem

is not a lake, his home

among lilies, it isn’t

a chair by the window, a page

from Cristina, a song

in the evening, it isn’t

he or she, it is not

a thing…


of fruits and love*

*amalgam #1: lígia diniz (brazil) and anna volkova (latvia)

So strange, you see,
these windows so wide don’t get a grip of this city’s infinity.
From our room I see trees-with-branches-with-leaves-with-mangos so big
they could fall and smash someone’s head
and yet they are homelike for me.

(Ever since I was little I look up to the sky in terror:
such greatness must be famished for being so long so blue.
And in a city like this – all turquoise sky, no ocean, no woods –
it will surely feed on a lesser woman
like me.)

That is why (you see)
I need those trees-with-branches-with-leaves-with-mangos-so-big:
so I can hold on to them when the ravenous universe finally sends for me.
And that is why
when the sun is high
I ask you to close all the windows
and throw your body both gently and heavily -
I ask you to throw your body over me.


illusion

 

“we feel and essay

to infinitude”

 

 

 


retrospective

my love has no meaning

———————————-


Handschmeichler

I met a friend of mine with her 6 years old son.

He looked at me and asked his mom: ‘Why she keeps her hands in pockets?’

There is no such word in English as ‘Handschmeichler’ in German. But that’s for I need my pockets.

——————————————–

 

*autocromo, lartique, 1912


everyday dishes

on my writing desk:

a computer, notebooks, faded pictures, some lists to do.

among them rests a small chinese ball you once offered me

on its surface, a delicate blue painted foliage.

love can be that flimsy.

————————————————————–


here but not here

I never pick up the phone here.

I know it’s not for me.

Nobody knows that I am here.

—————————————————————————————-


Political license

for today, at least for today, i’ll close the windows and turn off lights for the men and children murdered in an indigenous village in brazil.

for today, at least for today, i’ll sing them a song I use to sing to my little boy when he feels threatened. it has no meaning. but i’ll sing it anyway.

(a song to Guarani-Kaiowa)

————————————————————————————–

 

the theme: drawers, chests and wardrobes


souvenir

kindly

i lay on the floor

in the middle of rests

you brought me


Garden

The herbs in the pots have breeded so many flies around, that I decided to cut all herbs off and ate them with my lunch.

No more home windowsill garden…

—————————————————————————————————————-

 



drawers, chests and wardrobes*


For a while we’ve stopped posting here. And we both started wondering why. Yesterday we met by chance on skype and talked about it (a little bit) and life. We always find something potentially interesting when talking about life randomly. It is, probably our method. A fluid, open-ended conversation about minor daily things: my son, your MA, films, books we are reading, and other ordinary situations. We were talking about what to do with our blog, trying to set a new theme and start publishing on it again. What does we have in common, besides “mouse gray” hair, red shoes, accents, photography and books? Our relationship has been marked by such coincidences. And it wasn’t different yesterday.

We were talking about leaving home, about having no more home, at least a traditional home. We are both having to deal with it, in different ways though. How is to live in between two cities and build up a feeling of home on the road, or how to feel at home when you had to leave your home unexpectedly and had no chance do set a new one? And, again, by chance, I wrote you a quotation from Bachelard’s La poétique de l’espace. You were reading it as well. So we decided to understand it better. The coincidences but, mostly, what drove us to this book. We both want to understand the idea of intimacy, of the relationship between exterior and interior, personal objects and spaces, the sense of building a home and live in it, or leave it, of home and its poétique.

So we decided to start writing/picturing to each other again, like the first time, when we fist ‘met’ each other, as a diary, as a description of ordinary time and space of life.

* from La poétique de l’espace, by Gaston Bachelard

———————————————————————————-

For this theme, we decided to do each post together: one of us will post an image, another – text. We are going to swap every time who will post what, but without indication on it. We try to build one story told by two people. Let’s see how it works.


we both look like from eastern europe

[2:44:03 PM] Ana: everybody was asking me about you

[2:44:07 PM] Ana: how you look like

[2:44:11 PM] Maria: really?

[2:44:13 PM] Maria: hahaha

[2:44:16 PM] Maria: what did u say

[2:44:22 PM] Ana: if we have ever seen each other

[2:44:34 PM] Maria: :)

[2:44:43 PM] Ana: i told you were from the east europe

[2:44:56 PM] Maria: haha

[2:44:57 PM] Ana: and that you have short red hair

[2:45:03 PM] Maria: yes i have eastern europe look ;)

[2:45:09 PM] Ana: do you still have red hair?

[2:45:12 PM] Maria: nope

[2:45:17 PM] Ana: hahahaha

[2:45:27 PM] Maria: its first time in my life since i was 18, i have my own colour of hair

[2:45:48 PM] Ana: oh!!

[2:45:50 PM] Maria: i have forgotten already what my color was :)

[2:45:55 PM] Ana: and what colour it is?

[2:45:59 PM] Ana: is it?

[2:46:06 PM] Maria: i cut all coloured hair since

[2:46:21 PM] Maria: we called in as a joke “mouse grey” :)

[2:46:36 PM] Ana: that’s my hair colour also!

[2:46:39 PM] Maria: !!!!!

[2:46:49 PM] Ana: yep

[2:46:49 PM] Maria: hehe

[2:46:54 PM] Ana: hahahaha

[2:46:55 PM] Maria: so you know then what i mean:)

[2:47:02 PM] Ana: yep

[2:47:07 PM] Maria: i hated it, that’s why i was colouring since 18

[2:47:22 PM] Ana: i used to colored mine as well

[2:47:34 PM] Ana: but then i got pregnant and i had to stop

[2:47:54 PM] Ana: so i decided not to colour them since then

[2:48:03 PM] Maria: but recently i started to think that most of my friends have grey hair and they are still young. they have to colour to feel they are still young. but i dont have grey ones. i am lucky, so i need to stop color and show my natural color then:)

[2:48:20 PM] Ana: and now they are long…

[2:48:46 PM] Ana: i use very short hair since my 13

[2:49:02 PM] Maria: i am always with short

[2:49:10 PM] Ana: i love then short

[2:49:17 PM] Ana: but now they are really long

[2:49:30 PM] Maria: i have now 70% of my head is with hair 2cm long :)

[2:49:45 PM] Ana: wow!!!

[2:49:52 PM] Ana: that’s great!

[2:49:59 PM] Maria: i was thinking to try to grow them longer. came last time to hairdresser and they cut me…2cm…so…:)))

[2:50:19 PM] Ana: when i was in boston, people always asked me if i was from east europe

[2:50:33 PM] Ana: because of my accent and skin and hair’s colour

[2:50:33 PM] Maria: really? why? did you asked them why

[2:50:56 PM] Maria: so if we meet up, we gonna look like from one country ;)

[2:51:04 PM] Ana: they told me i talk as a russian

[2:51:09 PM] Maria: really?!

[2:51:19 PM] Maria: so i am russian. then you talk like me?!

[2:51:27 PM] Ana: and one day i was in the russian neighborhood

[2:51:40 PM] Ana: and i listened some people talking

[2:51:55 PM] Ana: and it really sounds as brazilian portuguese

[2:52:04 PM] Ana: i don’t know why

[2:52:12 PM] Ana: it has to do with fonemas

[2:52:16 PM] Ana: fonetica

[2:52:21 PM] Maria: maybe

[2:52:31 PM] Ana: phonetic

[2:52:31 PM] Maria: but interesting that you felt that similarity

[2:52:47 PM] Ana: i imagine, but i’m not sure

(our conversation on skype, 10 September 2011)


Letter 49

Trying to fix words up


Letter 48

a big hole inside of me

full of emptiness

no a filler either

 

 


Letter 47

 


Letter to you

you are free to fly

up to you to decide

who holds the line


Letter from Krista

It has been for a while…
I have skipped some coffees. Time is rich in the mid-summer and ice seems to be melted.

Krista Mölder, photographer from Estonia

on the theme – tea coffee and something else


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