never easy..

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

"It is easier to blame others than to look inward;
to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share."

obama's cairo speech 4 june 2009

how everything turns away

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;
the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

w.h. auden’s musée des beaux arts

::

:: blue sweater haiku :: {.....and another sapphire remembrance}

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

:: the bright blue sweater
lightens my dark exterior
then hang it back up ::



i have this bright blue cardigan that i wear often because i love the color and it's a nice contrast to the consistently black wardrobe that hangs in my closet. the other day with my sister {when i was in santa barbara} we somehow got on the topic of my blue sweater, i was wearing it that day, and one of us {i don't recall specifics} or perhaps both of us decided that a blue sweater haiku might be in order. so as she scurried around her apartment doin' something {again, i don't recall...} i scribbled down this blue sweater haiku, and in my usual indecisive nature, created a series of final lines for the haiku that i liked and i couldn't narrow it down to just one, thus i decided to create a blue sweater haiku series, because with the simple altering of the last line, each haiku meant something, signified something completely different. this is the first in a series i'll continue... and, as always, i adore the challenge of finding the perfect images to go along with each one.

and now, i'd love to stay and chat but i've got to get dressed and ready to go! i got a new yellow sweater the other day... perhaps the next installment...? we'll see.

and ps please if you haven't yet check out my sweet friend eni's photos you can see them all right here
i often use her images with my writing. they're so colorful, capturing moments of life... she has a great series of images on istanbul that i will share soon {where she lived for many years} and also on tirana, albania the beautiful city she calls home.

bonne journee

x c

cleverly disguised

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

ink-stained hands word-stained
pages rustle with the breeze
can't get you--
--out of my mind
::

train music

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

wow, i wrote this poem years ago on a train {imagine that} going from bordeaux back to paris, i scribbled it down on an old piece of scrap of paper in my purse..... at the time it meant something completely different to me than what it whispers to me today as i read it over and over after having found it tucked away in the files of my old laptop. it's startling how much it still relates to my life in yet a completely different way... almost prophetic.... big thanks and teşekkürler to eni, it's your gorgeous albanian train photo that reminded me to look for this in the first place. the way past and present, future and memory all blur together - suspended - speeding past in slow motion, through an air that's both very much the same, familiar and yet transformed - changed - leaves me sitting here perplexed, yet i can't help but feel some breath of hope. and this image, this photo, inspires another poetic sentiment within me, which i will share another time. perhaps that whisper i heard was destiny, or maybe just a haunted whistle of trains past.

train music

empty parking lots and street signs
my reflection and reflections
looking out looking in
music and time melt together
not sure how fast we’re going
empty words and broken dreams
looking forward
signs in the distance
going back
not sure how fast we’re going
music and time melt together
looking out looking in
my reflection and reflections
empty parking lots and street signs

for what it's worth

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

...and as shakespeare wrote

{every time i repeat this quote to myself
it finds new meaning somewhere within me}

"fortune brings in some boats that are not steered"

the complexity was always there..and i saw it..

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

woke up this morning • and everything and nothing • had changed forever

bon week-end.

© Eni Turkeshi Photography eni's {delightful} flickr

"i will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet"
gandhi

sunglasses on, darkness, fioricet, water, coffee..

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

that headache that i mentioned yesterday turned into a migraine before i was able to drive home from what could have been an enjoyable evening in the very warm spring night air with a very warm algerian. not sure how i squinted past the streetlights and through the stoplights enough to drive home, but i'm here. been in the dark ever since. and thus, for the time being, my post for today will be simple with a rather appropriate blurry image {colorful for those of you who aren't sitting in front of the computer with big dark sunglasses on, as i am!} et voilà ...i'm delighted to share another of eni's photographs. enjoy! and please check out her flickr...

ok. to bed.

haiku is a city and laundry looks best drying out the window of an old building, weathered and worn and painted a beautiful shade of green...

© Eni Turkeshi Photography

funny and intriguing the things, places, people, images etc. one stumbles across on the internet in this current social media explosion.

the other day, in the midst of a blossoming love affair with haiku poetry {after trying to inspire my students to play around with it} and sharing a bit of it on here, i noticed a visit on my blog from a place called haiku, hawaii. i thought to myself how rather ironic it was that, in my current obsession with writing haiku, haiku had paid me a visit! as fate {i mean it must have been fate that brought that visitor here on the particular day i made my haiku debut, what else could it possibly have been..?!} thus, as fate would have it, my haiku was visited from someone in haiku {call me ignorant, but i didn't know such place existed, learn something new every day!}. so then i went on twitter to tweet around a bit, and sure enough, had a new follower from haiku, hawaii {by this point i thought fate must be working overtime..} well come to find out just today, a week after all of this, this individual who resides in haiku, sent me a message that she had seen my blog show up in her google alerts for haiku {as in the city}! how very cool, and kind of funny, and now i wonder if i should question the role that fate played in all of this, or simply see it, from any angle, as a sign to share another haiku today. and so here we go:

and with those few words
i'll never be able to
unless you listen

and one more thing, while on this subject, i also had brought to my attention by another twitter follower, the website twihaiku where you can post haiku on the site that simultaneously appears on twitter as well. @twihaiku it's kinda fun. {the first haiku i posted was made haiku of the day yesterday..hmmm so ya that is kinda fun, kinda cool..}

and about the green building laundry part of this rambling post's title {if the picture didn't give it away yet} i discovered a new very fav flickr friend yesterday {ok well it was more like 3 in the morning today, but who's keeping track} her name is eni turkeshi of eni turkeshi photography, her photos are fantastic capturing 10.5 years of color, movement, light and character in istanbul and also her beautiful hometown of tirana the capital city of albania. check out her photostream and also her blog. she has a poignant view of place and a warm and kind spirit. love her images, you will see more of them on here in the very near future.

ok, that's enough out of me for a while. as you can maybe tell, i had a headache earlier and took two different kinds of my prescription headache medications, so i'm feeling a bit...well, better on va dire...

bonne journee, tesekkeur eni, and more haiku to come...i'm sure. x c