30 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 30th, 2008 @ 03:33:07 pm, using 53 words, 31 views
Reflection of clouds on wet sand @ a CF beach - taken on Easter morning, a week ago today.
Currently shattering window panes with a rendition of…
Sheryl Crow - Home/Sheryl Crow
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 30th, 2008 @ 02:55:58 pm, using 43 words, 29 views
Thanks to the doorman who lent a helping hand :D
Click here to check out ‘This just in…’ and similar shots
28 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 28th, 2008 @ 12:37:47 pm, using 27 words, 43 views
My search for interesting silhouettes continues…
27 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 27th, 2008 @ 08:01:00 am, using 29 words, 29 views
Thank you, Tom Anderson! ;)
26 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 26th, 2008 @ 10:03:53 pm, using 21 words, 61 views
Seu garçom faça o favor de me trazer depressa
Uma boa média que não seja requentada
Um pão bem quente com manteiga à beça
Um guardanapo e um copo d’água bem gelada
Feche a porta da direita com muito cuidado
Que eu não estou disposto a ficar exposto ao sol
Vá perguntar ao seu freguês do lado
Qual foi o resultado do futebol
Se você ficar limpando a mesa
Não me levanto nem pago a despesa
Vá pedir ao seu patrão
Uma caneta, um tinteiro,
Um envelope e um cartão,
Não se esqueça de me dar palitos
E um cigarro pra espantar mosquitos
Vá dizer ao charuteiro
Que me empreste umas revistas,
Um isqueiro e um cinzeiro
Seu garçom faça o favor de me trazer depressa
Uma boa média que não seja requentada
Um pão bem quente com manteiga à beça
Um guardanapo e um copo d’água bem gelada
Feche a porta da direita com muito cuidado
Eu não tô disposto a ficar exposto ao sol
Vá perguntar ao seu freguês do lado
Qual foi o resultado do futebol
Telefone ao menos uma vez
Para três quatro quatro três três três
E ordene ao seu Osório
Que me mande um guarda-chuva
Aqui pro nosso escritório
Seu garçom me empresta algum dinheiro
Que eu deixei o meu com o bicheiro,
Vá pedir ao seu gerente
Que pendure esta despesa
No cabide aqui em frente
Seu garçom faça o favor de me trazer depressa
Uma boa média que não seja requentada
Um pão bem quente com manteiga à beça
Um guardanapo e um copo d’água bem gelada
Feche a porta da direita com muito cuidado
Eu não estou disposto a ficar exposto ao sol
Vá perguntar ao seu freguês do lado
Qual foi o resultado do futebol
—— ∫ ——
A live performance by Brazilian singer Maria Rita
25 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 25th, 2008 @ 11:36:32 pm, using 171 words, 42 views
There’s something about crying in front of someone that makes bonding a foregone conclusion. The helplessness of having latent feelings overflow in spite of yourself, over great coffee of all things and seep through your face for an audience of one. Knowing all too well the steps that make up that metamorphosis, your eyes reddening and watering, all systematic like tango steps, tears rolling without effort or control, oblivious to rule or dictation… that feeling of nakedness, of having to look to your left when there’s nothing and no one there - precisely because there’s nothing and no one there - of feeling like it’s appropriate to hide, to try and make things difficult for that inconvenient, unaccounted-for embarrassment that will always find room to squeeze itself in.
Then, ultimately, changing the subject with an inconsonant smile and quietly savoring the feeling of having been seen.
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 25th, 2008 @ 10:59:14 am, using 1568 words, 94 views
At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to read more than I have in recent years - to get back to my lost and now target voracity. Reading adds ease to my own writing, it showers me with unsolicited and welcome ideas. Such resolutions, however, always end up getting lost in the hustle and bustle of every day life. So I thought I might give myself an extra push in terms of establishing some discipline, in the form of this post.
Below is a modest list of books I have on a waiting list and that I would very much like to get through in the coming months for one reason or another. I plan on updating this post regularly, crossing out the titles and adding some favorite passages as I finish each of them.
The Romantic Movement
Valis
Me talk pretty one day
The Invention of Solitude
Ignorance
Ensaio sobre a cegueira
Prague
Though Eric read many books, it wasn’t unfair to say that this activity was free of all curiosity, for he read not in order to discover things, but primarily so as to avoid stumbling upon them. He wasn’t looking for congruence; if he was fearful, the last thing he wished to read about was his own fear. He might have gained some relief from the fear of an African arms dealer pursued by a crack Marine unit - a fear perhaps, but not his fear.
(The Romantic Movement - Alain de Botton)
—— ∫ ——
Read more! »
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 25th, 2008 @ 09:15:47 am, using 208 words, 39 views
sil•hou•ette [sil-oo-et]
–noun
1. a two-dimensional representation of the outline of an object, as a cutout or configurational drawing, uniformly filled in with black, esp. a black-paper, miniature cutout of the outlines of a famous person’s face.
2. the outline or general shape of something: the slim silhouette of a skyscraper.
3. a dark image outlined against a lighter background.
—— ∫ ——
My interest in silhouettes began accidentally. I set the self timer on my camera one day to get a shot of the dress I was wearing for the benefit of someone I couldn’t show it to in person. In characteristic amateur fashion, I pointed the camera against the sunlight (DUH!) thereby capturing a shot of a silhouette instead of a dress - such a happy and welcome accident!
Setting the flash to off, I realized I could enhance the darkness of the silhouette. Eventually that first shot got named Cartilha’s Serendipity and I haven’t stopped pointing my camera against natural light since. :D
The images posted below were all created on Gimp.
Click here to check out The Silhouette Project - Part II
23 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 23rd, 2008 @ 08:28:52 am, using 53 words, 36 views
Four different versions of a photograph taken of A.R.P., a friend of mine and her adorable dog K., created with the help of The Gimp (#1 in my heart) and Fotoflexer (#2)
22 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 22nd, 2008 @ 06:57:12 pm, using 486 words, 65 views
Buckley creeps in from time to time. Like a ’short-lost’ friend. Like someone who can only fade so far into the background. Everything you care about that gets ‘backburnered’ into the recesses of your soul eventually steps forward again. One of these days I sat at the computer for a couple of hours straight just looking for Jeff Buckley interviews on YouTube, not really knowing why, finding few and yet marveling at the shimmering surface and the deep waters running beneath it - marveling at how what he said, though wholly unconnected to the hand I’ve been dealt still manage to fit it like a glove.
You find answers in the unlikeliest places.
Buckley is a good place to look.
It’s sort of like predicting the future… I mean, like, anytime you make plans for the future… an emotional future with somebody or… you know, any future whatsoever… there’s nothing quite as spectacular as what the future will provide you without your help… (Jeff Buckley)
Looking out the door I see the rain
fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations
as their shoes fill up with water
And maybe I’m too young
To keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you’re on my mind so (you’ll never know)
I’m broken down and hungry for your love
With no way to feed it
Where are you tonight? Child, you know how much I need it
Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run
Sometimes a man gets carried away
When he feels like he should be having his fun
And much too blind to see the damage he’s done
Sometimes a man must awake to find that, really,
He has no one…
So I’ll wait for you… And I’ll burn
Will I ever see your sweet return, oh, or will I ever learn
Lover, you should’ve come over
Cause it’s not too late
Lonely is the room the bed is made
The open window lets the rain in
Burning in the corner is the only one who dreams he had you with him
My body turns and yearns for a sleep that will never come
It’s never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It’s never over, all my riches for her smiles
when I sleep so soft against her…
It’s never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It’s never over, she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
Maybe I’m too young to keep good love from going wrong
Oh… Lover, you should’ve come over…
‘Cause it’s not too late…
19 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 19th, 2008 @ 09:44:53 am, using 765 words, 52 views
Back in 1996, he taught me the word ‘uxoriousness’ and the memory of that brought a stunted, warm and dry smile to my face yesterday as I learned of his passing.
I had once sat at Borders Westwood in Los Angeles and heard him read from his screenplay adaptation of The English Patient, led there by the kind of excessive love of a film (I wonder if there’s a word for that kind of love) few motion pictures have inspired in me.
I admired him greatly. As a director, he took on quite a challenge when he chose to direct the movie version of a near impossible-to-adapt novel. I’ve always felt a kinship with people who can’t resist a challenge. On his foreword to the screenplay he acknowledged the difficulty of adapting such a book to the screen:
Michael Ondaatje’s mesmeric novel has the deceptive appearance of being completely cinematic. Brilliant images are scattered across its pages in a mosaic of fractured narratives, as if somebody had already seen a film and was in a hurry trying to remember all the best bits. In the course of a single page, the reader can be asked to consider events in Cairo, or Tuscany, or England’s west country during different periods, with different narrators; to mediate [sic] on the nature of winds, the mischief of an elbow, the intricacies of a bomb mechanism, the significance of a cave painting.
Upon deciding to adapt the novel, he recounted a decision which impressed me:
I promptly borrowed a cottage in Durweston, Dorset, and loaded up my car with books. I began adult life as an academic and nothing gives me more pleasure than the opportunity to tell myself that reading is a serious activity. I waded through eccentric books on military history, letters and diaries of soldiers in North Africa and Southern Italy, pamphlets from the Royal Geographical Society written before the war. I found out about the devastation visited on my father’s village near Monte Cassino, discovered we had a namesake who was a partisan leader in Tuscany, learned about the incredible international crucible that was Cairo in the 1930s.
The one book I didn’t take with me was The English Patient. I had been so mesmerized by the writing, so steeped in its richness, that I decided the only possible course available was to try and write my way back to the concerns of the novel, telling myself its story.
It takes someone with a strong sense of individuality and command of storytelling to do that - to not deny oneself room for creation in the face of something already created, to fend off the crippling effects of intimidation, self-doubt and self-imposed restraint when none is called for. He was by no means a follower. Another trait I’ve always had a lot of affection for.
As a result, the novel and movie of The English Patient are the least interchangeable novel-movie counterparts that I’ve ever encountered. They are complementary. Companion pieces. They both brim with moments, words, images individual to each of them - well worth visiting and revisiting.
I can’t think of a better tribute than to post here a scene I love - the scene that taught me the word ‘uxoriousness.’ A scene sprung from the imagination of Anthony Minghella that is nowhere to be found in the Ondaatje novel and stands as something that would be unknowingly yet sorely missed had it never been created.
D’Agostino: Mrs. Clinton - Count Almásy
Katherine: (smiling, offering her hand) Hello. Geoffrey gave me your monograph when I was reading up on the desert. Very impressive.
Almásy: (stiff) Thank you.
Katharine: I wanted to meet a man who could write such a long paper with so few adjectives.
Almásy: A thing is still a thing no matter what you place in front of it. Big car, slow car, chauffeur-driven car, still a car.
Clifton: (joining them and joining in) Broken car?
Almásy: Still a car.
Clifton: (hands them champagne) Not much use, though.
Katharine: Love? Romantic love, platonic live, filial love - ? Quite different things, surely?
Clifton: (hugging Katharine) Uxoriousness - that’s my favorite kind of love. Excessive love of one’s wife.
Almásy: (a dry smile) Now there you have me.
(The English Patient - A Screenplay)
14 March 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on March 14th, 2008 @ 01:48:50 pm, using 69 words, 29 views
Dedicated to the best and most patient of men.
It’s funny… often my first thought upon looking at that image of the Christ doesn’t derive from the welcoming, comforting goodness the statue is often associated with. I see, instead, someone on the verge of diving or bungee jumping.
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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