Sufism

Come, 

Let us be friends for once,

Let us make life easy on us,

Let us be lovers and loved ones.

The Earth shall be left to no one.

-Sufi poem

Stories and Dervishes

"Expand your horizons, open your heart and write what you can feel.
Stories are like whirling dervishes, drawing circles beyond circles, connecting all humanity." - Elif Shafak

Gypsy: 3 years, 4 countries, 17 apartments...

I started making a mental list of how many times I moved in and out, how many houses and how many countries over the past 3 years. It was kind of an adventure, so I decided to write it down so as not to forget it....

October 2008-November 2009: New Zealand

-For the first two weeks a colleague let me sleep in the guest room, until I find a place I feel like living in for one year.

Our deepest fear...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Unknown)

Weegee 1950 - The golden Painted Stripper

The golden painted stripper - Weegee 1950

A beautiful stripper, used to be on stage and to be the focus of the attention, sips her drink completely unfazed by the the camera. 

She's used in being peered and watched, with greedy, covetous looks, and she doesn't care of a pair of eyes more. 

In the background instead, a totally different reaction is displayed by her admirers.  They're used to following her movements with indiscreet and shameless looks, to 'swallowing' every single move and step she takes, as if she was their property. 

But once they become the object of the attention, their attitude changes completely. They hide behind their hands, afraid of being caught by a jealous wife or simply wishing to go back to the darkness, from where they can watch and ogle without being noticed. They want back the unevenness of the situation, so that they can feel in a position of control again.

This is the spirit with which WeeGee approached every single snapshot in his career; venturing into the nooks and crannies of a perfectly imperfect society and showing the hypocrisy filling every bit of life in the America of the 1950's. 

This is what strikes me most every time I watch his pictures, his unbiased and relentless pursue of the real, behind the surface.

Precious Moments

Doisneau - Basier

Stealing an impossibly poignant, yet simple and utterly true moment.

The frantic everyday life merges with the preciousness of a loving gesture.

Wishing to be lips, wishing to be crowd, wishing to live the dream.

Kismet

Kismet is a turkish word, and it's one of my favorite words ever.
When I asked a friend abut its meaning, she told me it cannot be translated precisely. It means faith, but not the faith in god or in some supernatural instinct. It's more an attitude toward life, it's faith in the fact that things will end up well and destiny will take a positive turn. It means relying in a positive solution, when you cannot have safe predictions.

Over the past two years I lived in 4 different countries and moved 15 times.
Fifteen different apartments, fifteen different 'families'. Each of them left some gifts or some scars, each of them took my hand and walked to my side during my travel.

I can barely recognize myself when I look back and I see the scared, shy girl,  convinced that none of her dreams would ever come true; the overwhelmed young woman who never left her home town for longer than one month.

The journey made me stronger, more confident, sometime aggressive, but even more flexible and receptive. I learned to look at things without giving anything for granted, I stood on the side of the outsiders and the foreigners. I embraced the change with every single bit of my soul, welcoming it in every form. Through the many voices I had the luck to listen to, through the hard experiences, through the tears and the laughs, through the food, the endless miles of solitary driving and the little epiphanies ambushing me in the most inopportune moments.

And I learned to dream, again. But with a lot of sense of humor this time, because the journey taught me that nothing is set in stone, not even my mind- least of all my mind! 
Now when somebody asks me, 'will we meet again?' and 'where will you be next?', just one word comes to my mind: kismet.

The journey changes you...

Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you- it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you... Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

Anthony Bourdain