a way with roots

once upon a time there was an image i really liked on rachel's hi happy panda, a photo taken by rachel herself. i saw the potential of it, which was, between you and me, pretty obvious. admittedly, the image stayed on in my mind a little, as pretty images do. so then, dear reader, can you even begin to imagine what happens when unexpectingly you open up an envelope from the americas, with exactly that image in it, cautiously pressed between the hard covers of a vintage almanac? 

is it pure magic, or what? besides the stupefaction, a tiny tear sprang from mine eye. just to say, THANK YOU, sweet californian-soon-to-be-bostonian lady of the americas... now to hunt for a perfect frame. 

corner view ≈ box of tricks

oh! this box of tricks! it's coming too soon! how the hell did the universe, and more exactly mam'selle, know i am into boxes? see, i can tell you about my boxes around x-mas, but for now, this is all i can show. 

no tricks up my sleeve, no bunnies from top hats, no hidden agendas, no. but boxes filled with goodies.... launched for december month, and not a day earlier. bear with, bear with. he/she who waits is a patient darling and will be rewarded. and that's a promise.

a cunning box of tricks, on jane 's corner view, hosted by fuoriborgo.

i blame the first class train compartment

there was just one person missing. i thought about him all through the train ride, as i cut through sunday landscape and seemingly chased fluffy clouds strewn into a steel blue sky.

even if i would have tried, i couldn't have banished his image from my mind. dashingly, he would sit opposite me, hand resting purposefully on his cut wooden cane. it could very well have been a duck's head, gently caressed by its preposterous owner.

his black mustache would be so articulately cut into art deco mode, it'd be another focal point throughout the journey.

we would converse in french. he would politely bend himself over backwards, to make up for his unexpected lack of expertise on the language front. he'd be acting galant, cautious of any possible mishaps.

then, of course, he would move onto to the most pressing topic of the day. who'd-done-it. he'd start whispering, slipping into terribly portent mode.

can you feel him present too?  ma foi, mon ami. too right!☻

drawing | body

this is the body that i trust. it came to me on a hot june day. i was graduating from library school and we'd been sipping champagne. on a hot day, go figure. i made it to the city centre of ghent, to the multimedia shop that delivered no less than two cameras, one for my partner in crime...

this is him, e.!
don't you find too he's a too non chalant photographer?

the winning photo of that year, for some reason disappeared, i'll have to poke e. it was e. who made it, it was i who pointed out the coffeehouse in which he shot his shot. i guess a well and truely coop, oh, and the best coffee. 

... one camera for me

how come? we'd just tumbled out of a contest trumps up and both won us an extra light weight, ultra performing olympus. mountains never came so easy...  by circumstance, that e-410 has grown into my most trusted friend. therefore a proper ode to photography and its abilities. when you have a good camera [buddie], and a spying eye, friendship runs all the way to china. multidimensional julia is hosting a few more bodies! go spy, with your little eye....

greetings from tunis

they talk back to me from the album pages. they jump right out of their fancy cellophane corners and whisper, amongst other undecipherable comments, السلام (salām). i notice the woman's blond hair. did she have a hard time? were the men she met at her holiday destination galant or oppressive? did she stay inside, in the end, or did she find herself condemned to wearing a tight head scarf, at all times? did she at least feel a little like audrey hepburn? in the scarf, i mean.

no. i don't know the family. little did the family realize they would end up in my home scanner this week. that's the trouble with images losing their home and ending up in thrift shops. they become public property. i bought six images today. because the girl in the right bottom image reminds me of shy me. at that age. 
☻ and so. to the family. greetings from tunis.

corner view ≈ a positive thought for bad moments

the quote being a little on the biblical side, i find scriptural sayings often explanatory and clarifying. my late ants alice and marie were biblical ladies. in my infantile perception, i realize today they applied a language only a little short of speaking in tongues. which in itself is a phenomenon i've been fascinated by since talking heads' marvelous 1983 album. i'm deviating.

i usually prefer pragmatic solutions to stuff i don't always get straightaway. in a life in which i didn't even know the meaning of the word pragmatic up to a few years ago, i dare now safely utter i find mathematics foremostly a philosophy. and swimming in the pond, besides training, rather classifies under natural sciences, and then some. cooking is relaxing (if this is your case) and noise delivers peace. right?

 

it's a toughy. i've been thinking about collecting, since my attention got caught by a magazine article, in which collecting was considered an eligible excuse for trying to save time, perhaps even stopping time. in a bottle e.g., or in a shallow dish. i'm off again, in the  opposite direction. 
all this to say, in dire times, i wishfully think, this too shall pass. this week's sensible theme a positive thought for bad moments, chosen by ibabe, on jane's corner view, hosted by fuoriborgo.

drawing | wings

i really can't say i've been a devoted beatles or wings fan, but they sure pop to mind when i hear about the wings drawing theme for this week. i might be a little biased by a past, in which i succumbed to the mull of kintyre. so smitten, i could easily just have upped and away to the mull, age fourteen. all these snippets of memory that form a pattern today which hasn't changed that much from way back. i've not been to the mull, although i came pretty close here. 

those were the days with l., when son and i couldn't move into the new, old house, and l.'s kitchen view offered us this pretty sight, each and every morning, through october hales, november floods and heaps of december snow.

now, if only we had wings.... in growing some, you could flap on over to jasmin's & her flock for the weekend. ☻

vintage finds | greetings from belgium

north sea could be costa nixa

no extravagant holiday plans this summer, i'm afraid. we have a standing joke round here, if we don't go elsewhere, we say we go to costa nixa (nixa standing for cost free or nowhere), or else costa back yard (which luckily we have, by now). we've had SUCH splendid spring weather that maybe we will have an off summer. i dunno. it would actually suit me fine, since it would most certainly trigger another string of renovation projects, which are calling...☻

vanessa bell's bedroom in charleston farmhouse
lucky bird to wake up next to the garden, each morning!

when i go thrifting, and i stumble upon pictures from days past, from places all over the world, i always feel a little eerie or sad, for these lone pictures did belong to someone, once upon a time. may, by showing random snaps over the next months, thrifted from shoe boxes to moldy photo albums, from torn handbags to dark corners in cobwebby attic trunks, find a way to your heart too.

the kick-off to this new greetings from label forms an exception to its own rule already, what else? what you find below are mementoes from closer to home, pages from a little booklet i made for a purpose which then faded. vintage accelerated, if you like. it does sum up parts of a life. our life.

☻ greetings from belgium