A question of sleep

It was once asked in a foolish manner “When the dreamer dies, what happens to the dream?”
Quite simply put, the dream lives on, self-perpetuating, driven by the energy and fiery passion that spawned it into existence. It evolves, changes, adapts, learns and will continue the work of its master. It knows no boundaries and may, in fact, dream a dream of its own. It can, in special situations,  bring forth an entire Universe, infecting worlds as it writhes and swirls and shapes the very fabric of existence. Life, time, space, you, me and all that comes into being is nothing but a dream within the dream of a dreamer…dreaming.

6/365 or why back to the basics is good, sometimes

Well, of course old things we did are the reasons why we are who we are, yet, just because we outran or passed a certain step in our evolution (as human beings, as artists, you name it) doesn’t mean we can’t return to all those happenings that beat the path for our current selves.
Much as everyone out there, I started photography with landscape and macro. Nothing too serious, really. Just a cell phone camera and a lot of eagerness and will to learn. I was only fifteen years old and looking back, I still can’t believe 8 years have passed ever since I decided the clicking of shutters at stuff made me able to express myself.
For you see, I have always been frustrated at my inability to draw or paint for the life of me so photography was the next best thing I could do to let out the ideas that blipped and blopped around my head.
So here it is, my 365 project bringing me around to outgrowing little plants, critters and bugs. This one is not much, but the sheer determination of that little plant, to grow higher and higher and towards the sun inspired me to do the same.
Not to mention that the photo happened in the very first location where I decided I should be a photographer. 😀
The main idea? Reinventing yourself is sometimes good if not necessary. And sometimes, in order to do that, you have to retrace your steps to the very roots and start on another branch 🙂

Her Sad Story (1/365)

And with this, I shall start my 365 challenge.
This is an image I shot during the making of a short movie (whose title is still unrevealed due to the movie being still in pre-production)
Hanging around on the set sure is fun and you can definitely snap some interesting things, from emotions to simple amazing and funny stills.
What’s so special about it? Other than it was a completely lucky shot and filled with emotion? Being shot on a 40-year old lens, full manual with no meter data whatsoever.
So…here it goes. My first post on the 365 challenge. I don’t have anything set in stone, I jsut want to redefine my style and work more on my photography since I feel I kinda’ neglected it lately.
Are any of you doing the 365 Challenge? Let me know!  🙂

A Game of Tick-Tack-Toe

Life is merely a game of choices, X's and O's, Positive and negative, Darkness and Light: Infinite dichotomy.

The History of a “Click!”

I had a flash of light pass through the cells of my imagination: it was a day that called for a photograph; like a hungry wolf, it craved, crawled and howled for one. My fingers itched to feel the weight of the camera, the delicate balance of the perfectly aligned mirrors, lens and the breath of the aperture as it exhaled with each blink of the shutter curtains flicking and falling, stirring old dust and setting the calm lakes aflame with ripples. So I picked up my old partner in mischief and head into a vast hallway of unknown steps, marble corridors, hidden pathways, dusty trails, abandoned highways and thickets. Where my light (for it was mine, and nobody else’s) took me, it was impossible to tell since a viewfinder only offers a limited perception, one eye at a time. It was a scream of colors, shades, blackness and blinding light of the impending doom, wandering, weaving, brutally reflecting, smashing, bouncing, twisting and turning, diffracted or amplified as my eyes slowly flooded and the tears began to pour out: a silent storm of crevices, like a rain of bokeh and softness. And then…and THEN, like that rebellious particle that just couldn’t stay put and just HAD to move, bringing about the end of an endless era of stillness into the fulminating chaos of Creation, expanding tentacles of hot, ionized gases, consuming the perfect black of the astral sleep…just like that I…clicked! The camera began to heave as the pulleys shook their old laziness and began to lift (screeching in silent tongues of the Ancient Ones) the mirror, the curtains stirred dust (into the space where imagination, passion, hopes, dreams meet their catalyst, blending and morphing) and flashed open and with the trembling of the entire apparatus, the aperture opened with a microscopic twitch of the fatigued ballerina, the whole dark corridor trembling, shaking smothered in tension and suspense as the light began to flood every dark corner where the slightest touch of Evil might have ever hidden, crackling noise of the suicidal photons, rushing rapidly towards the very fibers of mind, depleting their collagen nature, tearing though tissue and bringing about the Lux Aeternam shining upon Bliss. The camera bled! It bleed for an endless eternity as I stared in wonder, my eyes blind and my mind fractured, my heart into pulsating struggle, my breath nowhere to be found but my feet unable to support and collapsing like old pillars of antique temples when the Ocean of Sensation gushes in, with the delicacy of a raging Tsunami. For you see, in my imprudence, in my impossibility to understand…but, then again, what human being could ever possibly understand? Do gods dream of this when it’s time for Uthenera?  Have I reached the primordial states of hot matter and disoriented particles clashing into a dance of Death that sprung Life?… …in my childish curiosity, I pointed the lens (with the finesse of the accomplished artist, as I wanted myself to think, to believe, cold, calculated, with the grace of a…cannon) towards the very incipient mixture of primordial wonders, where worlds still rise and fall, nebulae of thoughts and condensed wormholes of emotions, ready to make you lose yourself and everything else in, where stars appear at any given moment and Supernova flashes are a common occurrence: her eyes… In a fraction of the time it takes for the soul to realize its nature, my light, her light, all the lights that ever were or ever will be, both dark and vivid, hidden or obscene formed a spectrum indivisible by nothing than the heart-reason prism, and in no manner by a measly, simplistic instrument constructed of cold condensed surfaces that merely copied one upon another, transporting form but not substance, creating but crystals of chipped Cosmos encapsulating casts of human conscience… It is alive, it has grown roots and it’s growing inwards, inverted and uncomprisingly unstoppable inside of me!  So it was born, and so it lives on: by these glimpses of blinks in the photon’s eye, by those tiny moments when you are nothing yet everything, when moving so fast you feel like grabbing light and whip it like a whip, with thunder and lightning alongside your shoulders and splashes of electric cuts that bleed…Life And I cannot help but wonder…how many of my atoms, formerly belonging to one of the Great Poets:  Ovidius, Homer, Virgil, how many of them, residing now in me, in my right temple or in the valves that open my heart, how many of them will release the energies they contained in a time where Aeneas walked the earth, lifting me higher and higher, how many of them will irradiate like a million plutonium Suns…just so that I can start to understand…how? (Because how is much more important than why.)

Of Stone, Wind and Reflections

…liniste. In intunecimea padurii vechi, scortoase si rasucite, cu pasi tomantici, vioi, se plimba un cuplu. S-au intalnit cand cararea lui, plina de cenusi si mangal s-a alipit cararii ei, plina de florile poetice ce isi scutura polenul in lacuri ale vanitatii, de ciulini cu zambete tepoase si degete agatatoare, de vita aninata maiastru dar otravitoare si de cioburi de culoarea anemonelor. Nu se poate spune cine a calcat primul dar iata-i pasind impreuna, cu binecuvantarea Batranului Stejar si imbujorarea macilor care le rad hipnotic, ascunzandu-si fata in soarele bland, rusinoase si timide.
Culorile cerului de septembrie tarziu se ascundeau timid printre razele de soare calde dar moi si lenese, incat frunzele cazatoare se impodobeau cu ele pana sa atinga pamantul care isi schimba haina cu un cojoc veritabil, tesut cu migala parca din sperantele ei. Se plimbau mana in mana, cu picioarele goale, pline de praful amintirilor pe calcaie si purtand inca mladierea copilelor verii – firele de iarba verde. Rochita ei lunga si alba joaca un dans stravechi cu Vantul care a invatat ceva trucuri de la fratele lui mai mare, Sburatorul; o valureste si apoi mangaie genunchii copilarosi, desmiarda spatele incalzit de soare si saruta galant mainile Domnitei precum o face cand se strecoara printre strajerii stravechi, saltand mai sus si tot mai sus, printre hlamidele norilor, ca sa sarute mana Reginei.
El, cu lumenul lemnului batand de seve galopante ca un suvoi de lava , cu iedera pe brate si radacini noi crescand din nadirul interior, misterios si candid, calcand alaturi, sub pasii ei si ochii plini de irizatiile undelor ce se arunca in bratele malului.
Norii deveneau rasfatati si, din cauza Soarelui somnoros, se imbufnau si se transformau in vata de zahar multicolora pentru a-l imbia sa mai stea si sa se joace cu ei, norii-niciodata liberi sa faca ce vor. Caci norii sunt mesagerii vantului si vor merge mereu unde merge si el. Oamenii si copacii au radacini: desi vantul ii indoaie, sfasie, rupe, apleaca, doboara, usuca, radacinile ii fac puternici si capabili sa simta mangaieri, adieri, avant  si de aceea sunt mai norocosi decat norii sau nisipul care, si mai ghinionist, nu e purtat numai de vant ci si de apa – mutat, rascolit, dizolvat…transformat.
…In ochii ei de culoarea nisipului mangaiat de mare isi pierduse el o scoica violacee, cu incrustatii intr-o limba a sirenelor ce povesteau despre iubire si afundare in taramuri albastre ale unei lumini efemere si pretioase ale carei ecouri se spargeau in valuri si in interiorul scoicii mov. Si valurile lacului aminteau de valurile marii, caci ajunsesera la ruinele vechi de marmura alba, sacre precum niste oseminte albite de vreme, misterioase si romantice, decazute si abstracte prin colturile sfaramate si scrisurile ilizibile tocite ani si vreme. Platoul rotund se intindea catre interiorul lacului, sustinut de piloni grosi, acoperiti cu muschi, alge si alta flora lacustra, aproape la fel de netezi ca suprafata nemiscata a oglinziii sub clarul de luna albastra. Cei doisprezece piloni se intind simetric la marginea platoului si sustin balustradele sculptate cu forme rotunde, intortocheate si organice: vita-de-vie, iedera si plante arborescente ale caror incurcare uimeste si atrage. Dintre cei doisprezece piloni, unul, cel din centru are capatul sfaramat de o forta incredibila avand in vedere grosimea, iar suprafata sparturii e neteda precum varful unui minutar al unui imens ceas solar. Centrul platoului se desfasoara sub picioarele lor, sonor si dur, un mozaic de forme si culori aranjate si dispuse in forma unei scene idilice ale unor personaje universale de mult uitate. Simt racoarea apei ce curge susurand din varful pilonilor, pe suprafata lor si mai apoi in cercul sculptat din centru iar de acolo serpuind de o parte si de alta a scarilor pe care tocmai le-au lasat in urma. Aici s-au asezat si sprijinit de balustrada veche de cand ploaia cadea dupa alte legi…
[…to be continued…]

Microcosmos

Sometimes I forget…I forget that the world we live in, all the small factual details that we take for granted are a part of something much bigger,immense,complex and undeniably impossible to encompass or comprehend with a human mind.
Only then I realize that the mind is nothing without the spirit.
Sure, you can detach yourself of all emotion,become cold,cavernous and strictly analytical  towards all causality and the free choice that we, as human beings, are so proud of. You can become so engulfed by either passion or obsession (a sign of interconversion is in order here) that feeling seems something afar and sometimes useless when all you see/need is that which you set your mind upon.
I’ve somehow ended up with a theory that declines some laws of physics and which got me into really odd conversations with very religious people or with some that simply cannot understand that sometimes looking in the mirror is the only way to look back and understand the hind side of things, the underside where the knot resides which holds the answer to the signs on the (apparently easily understood) surface.
I’ve always imagined that every one of us lives in a small sphere of time-space continuum, a bump in a fabric of the Universe’s superior side and a huge knot under, a knot where all the inter-human relations,causality,choices,possibilities,dreams,hopes and alternatives intertwine to models so vast and complex one will never understand since you walk down a single strand and follow its loops, dodging or crashing into others and their strings. And here is where choice comes into play. See it as the hand that moves the needle,intricately,smoothly,playing upon that which some call destiny,fate, God’s will or any other surrogate terms.
Sometimes, these strands intertwine with another and you end up with something so different than anything you have ever encountered before.
It is the case of certain special relationships between two human beings such as soulmates. That feeling of complete understanding,unidirectional vibration and wavelength identification between two soul cores resonating against each other’s pulse, amplifying echoes that end up caressing against the rib cage,heart and subsequently, the entire being.
This is an important factor because, unlike the above stated detachment and pure intellectual and analytical approach, this one offers comprehension and the power to dwell beyond the immediate reality and its constraining variables to dipping into essences that transcend reasoning and argumentation. This allows one to become a true artist that creates and doesn’t only reproduce, copy or restate the same sentences as others have done before him and just provide them with a new wrapping.Or at least, this is how I feel.
My art’s true goal has always been the creation of something new and innovative and expressing these ideas into various and intricate ways while exposing them in rather accessible mediums,but sometimes my vision differs so much from the ones around me that I find myself wondering whether it is I who deviates towards insanity or simply feel too much beyond or simply different from the way others perceive emotions and thoughts.
Sometimes, I wish I could just breathe it out (much like the Yogi’s Prana concept) and let the vapors condense on the surface of one’s mind and soul so that they can use these to form a lens inside, a spyglass that will bring this vision of mine closer and clearer to their comprehension.
This image tries to explain the idea that there are so many of these tiny Microcosms residing inside of me, just waiting for a “Big Bang” (a song, a picture, a feeling,a…person) so that they can start manifesting and agitating to their own plan, following the strands of another knot in another fabric of another Microcosm…

Heaven

Tell me there’s a Heaven…

From Behind Shadows

Listen:

Summer’s Banner (Haiku)

 Summer wind has come
Its banner; so old and torn
Calling for freedom…