Sunday 7 September 2008

oh Princess Bird, are you there ?





What do we know about life? Even if you think hard about it. Who told it to be? Life, that is. Why does the sun roll across the sky, why does the mouse scuttle and scurry, the tree stretch upward, the mermaid splash in the river, the wind smell of flowers? Why do people hit each other over the head with sticks? Why is it that sometimes you don't feel like hitting, but want to go off somewhere in the summer, without roads, without paths, toward the sunrise, where the greengrass grows all around, shoulder high, where the blue rivers play, and above the rivers the golden flies swarm, the branches of unknown trees hang down to the water, and on those branches, white as white can be, sits the Princess Bird.







And her eyes take up half her face, and her mouth is human, red. And she's so beautiful, that fancy Princess Bird, that she can't get over herself. Her body is covered with lavish, delicate white feathers, and she's got a tale seven yards wide that hangs like a braided net, like lacy goosefoot. The Princess Bird turns her head this way and that, admiring herself, kissing her lovely self all over. And no one in his life has ever been harmed by that white bird. And no one ever will be. Amen.

Tatyana Tolstaya
(The Slynx)



16 comments:

  1. Oh I like the colours in these, the top picture is like an impressionist painting.

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  2. & why is green grass grass-green??? - (almost gasped at this green: a most discreet, barely noticeable gasp, of course)

    PS :good luck with the exhibition - will it travel abroad too? or is there at least a website for us, poor virtual voyeurs?

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  3. I'm glad you like them, sorlil! yes, I thought that too - a little bit of impressionism :-)

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  4. oh ffflaneur, you often make me smile, you know that :-) (a most discreet, but clearly noticeable smile :-)

    and this time I have to really laugh: of course it won't travel abroad, I am not a 'real' photographer! as for the website, I'm working on it! meanwhile - yes, you gave me an idea, I'll post the entire exhibition here, if you think it is a good idea? anyway, some of the pictures are already here in my blog.

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  5. a great self-obsessed beauty that never hurt anyone?? this too i have to see...
    but we humans need our fictional ideals, el dorados and princess birds and philosopher's stones...

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  6. zuma :-)
    maybe she can hurt, but nobody perceives that as 'hurting' or 'killing', only as a 'sweet bliss', given the fact that she is such a divine creature - like the sirens, or Loreley or Circe (we go back to our mythological beauties and seductresses :-)

    but the book is very good, I enjoyed it and can only recommend it.

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  7. What do you mean you're not a 'real' photographer?? I'd buy a book of your pics any day, and I'm not even into photography in a big way.

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  8. these photos are beautiful, they transcend the color itself captured--and rise upward like a soul that has hit upon something sweet scented and goes in search of.

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  9. but in one of your recent posts did you not yourself allow that the wildest griefs arise from moments of remembered happiness, and what moment could surpass in happiness a vision of pure and unblemished beauty. Will not the traveler, venturing through your green fields and violet, and beholding suddenly the sight of this princess bird, not forever after years with melancholy that one glorious vision that renders mundane and uninspiring the rest of days and years?

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  10. These are really lovely, Roxana. You are 'not a real photographer' in the same way that Lartigue was not a real photographer - you are doing it for love, not for money.

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  11. sorlil, thank you, it is so nice of you to say this!

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  12. mansuetude, you know so many lovely words... each time you talk about my pictures, new eyes seem to open in me, wondering, peaceful eyes...

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  13. yes zuma, I think I remember that :-)
    but then is it really the Princess Bird who hurts and kills, or the Loss itself, its inevitability ?

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  14. thank you, neil, for coming here and seeing the most important thing right away.

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  15. these photographs are gorgeous. gorgeous, gorgeous.

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  16. thank you katrina, it means a lot to me.

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