Woodland dreams

I had this Rubberstamp Ave stamp for a while, and have been admiring it but did nothing. So, it is high time I do something with it.
The image was stamped on a patterned flowery paper. The collage has been made with the free Somerset studio papers and Basic Grey.

Wednesday Stamper/Dark Eyes

This little piece has been inspired by the famous Russian song "Ochi chernye" (Dark eyes).
So here's my nude dancing Gypsy.
If you'd like to listen to the song, there are many beautiful versions.
I'll add a link to two of them.
Sophie Milman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itbJkf74z24
and Nikolai Baskov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yI2ufRD5s

And here is a translation of the song lyrics.
Translation

Dark eyes, terrifying eyes!
Eyes fiery and beautiful!
How I love you! How I fear you!
Indeed when I saw you, it was an unlucky hour!

Oh, not without reason you are of the dark depths.
I see mourning in you in my soul.
I see conquering flame in you.
My poor heart is afire with it!

But I am not sad. I am not regretful.
My fate is a comfort to me.
Everything of the best in life that God gave us
I have given as a sacrifice to the eyes of fire.

"Joe, the only boy in the world" by Michael Blastland

Just a few quotes that I wanted to keep from the book I finished reading. It is a fascinating book, but I had to read it in small portions, as it is a painful kind of reading.

"It's a story of strange happenings and human riddles, it invites fantastical speculation and argues something barzen, preposterous even: that until you know Joe's unusual life,you won't fully understand your own..." (p.1)

The author calls his son "vulnerable, charming and tyrannical", that is so true, I can apply the same description to my own little guy.

"Joe was born with a perfect knot in his umbilical cord...
Nowadays he lives with the label "autistic": broad, ill-defined, ill-fitting and unexplained, a label that's best put aside before getting to know him. But for me at least, and perhaps others who know his story, the loop in the cord became a metaphor: it framed a passage for Joe into an altogether alien existence that is magical, mysterious and infuriating in equal measure. When he tumbled into that oblique version of life, it was through the looking glass, through the doors of the enchanted wardrobe, while behind him the exit shut tight (pp.2-3)"

Notes to myself, to check out the site
www.WrongPlanet.net

"I believe that we do not know what we are unless we have others, different others and similar others, with whom we can compare ourselves.We are all partial, and autism even if a little more partial than most, also adds something precious" (page 205)

Beach ATC (Sasha in Viareggio)

Commedia dell'arte

Venetian dolls-II

Venetian Dolls series

Tea party

Things we create

When I was a child, I had this fantasy that whatever images I did draw (paint), would move to some place where they have a world of their own. And one day, when I am no longer in this world, I will join them and be surrounded by what I created.
A strange idea of a strange child. That's why I tried to be kind to my drawings and make them beautiful. By beautiful I don't necessarily mean perfect, far from it. The imperfection could be more interesting than perfection.
I believe we give an anima to what we create. Who knows, perhaps when I die, I will find myself surrounded by little soulful Venetian dolls and pierrots, mermaids and sirins.

Posleslovie

Vchera ya razozlilas' na glupuyu zhenshchinu, i sterla svoi prezhnie zapisi. No rukopisi ne goryat, i zapisannye mysli ne ischezayut v nikuda. V etom est' svoe uteshenie.

Dance me to the end of love (Leonard Cohen)

Since I am putting together all the things I love, this is a must. My favourite song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pA5UhNaYw0

Uzh skol'ko ikh upalo v etu bezdnu (Marina Tsvetaeva)

This is one of the deepest poems I ever read, and this piece has been an inspiration for a series I am working on now. It is very poignant and beautiful.


How many people fell in this abyss,
I fathom from afar!
There will be time, and I will vanish too
From earth's exterior.

All will be still, that sang and that did struggle,
That glistened and rejoiced:
The greenness of my eyes, the gold of my hair,
And this my tender voice.

Life will continue with its soft hot bread,
With day's oblivion.
All will continue - under outstretched heavens
As if I'd never been!

Like children changeable in every mien
And angry not for long,
Who loved the times when in the fireplace
Into ash turned the log,

Violin and cavalcade within the forest
And in the village, bell...
Upon this dear earth - I will be no longer
That was alive and real!

To all - who are the friends and strangers
To never having known the measure, me?
I turn to you with this my faith's demand
And love's query.

Both day and night, in word and letter both:
For truth of yes and no,
For that though I am but twenty I am
So often in such sorrow,

For unavoidably my slights and trespasses
Will be forgiven me -
For all of my impetuous tenderness
And look too proud and free -

For quickness of events as they come rushing,
For truth, for play, say I -
Please hear me! But do also please love me
For this that I will die.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Passing me by, as you walk
To charms doubtful and not mine -
If you but knew how much fire,
How much life is wasted in vain,

On the rustling, occasional shade
What a heroic flame -
And how enflamed my heart
This gunpowder wasted in vain!

O the trains flying into the night,
Carrying sleep on the station away..
If you recognized - if you but knew -
Then and there, I know, anyway.

Why are my words so sharp
In the smoke of my cigarette -
How much dark and menacing angst
Is there in my light-haired head.

Boy-Madness

Boy-Madness

I have brought you a bouquet,
Scarlet-red roses, poppies.
I'm not same in anything,
I'm the happy boy-madness.

I'll blow out a yellow candle -
It will be a flashlight pink.
And a golden diadem
I will wear like a king.

I'm a conqueror sleepy
Kingdoms, a mage. Is't full, King?
I'm a doctor that is healing
Without pills or medicines.

Why the medicines? Why pills too?
We will dance together, kid!
Now flies mounted on a chair
A completely empty bed.

Where he's from - it is my secret:
Serpent, red, will weave and hiss.

Vdol' obryva

One of the Russian songs of the 1980s, created by the ballad singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky.
It is a very beautiful song called Fastidious Horses.

By the cliff, along the precipice, right over deadly ground,
With the whip, I strike my steeds; strike them hard to urge them forward.
I am getting short on air, gulp the haze, drink the wind, yet
With a fatal rapture, sensing: I am done for, I am done for!

Slow down a bit my horses, slow down, please!
Don't you listen to my stinging thong!
But the horses -- just my luck! -- are so hard to please!
Neither lived I so long, nor will I finish this song...
I will let horses drink, I'll complete this refrain,
Just a little bit more I will stay on the brink...

I will vanish from the Earth, swept by a storm like fluffy feather;
At a gallop, in the morning by the snow they'll drag me over
Can't you please prolong my journey to the end of my tether?
Can't you ease your dash, my horses, carry on a little slower?

Slow down a bit my horses, slow down, please!
Don't take orders from my whip and thong!
But the horses -- just my luck! -- are so hard to please!
Neither lived I so long, nor will I finish this song...
I will let horses drink, I'll complete this refrain,
Just a little bit more I will stay on the brink...

Just on time - one can't be late arriving at God's quarters!
Why do the angels over there sound like some nasty mortals?
Or, perhaps, it's just a sleigh-bell that's gone mad and burst out sobbing,
Or it's me shouting at my steeds to slow down my sled from dashing.

Slow down a bit my horses, slow down, please!
I am begging you, don't rush along!
But the horses -- just my luck! -- are so hard to please!
Since I haven't lived long, let me finish this song...
I will let horses drink, I'll complete this refrain,
Just a little bit more I will stay on the brink...
_________________