MAgic*soaps

Jabones màgicos -Fortune Soaps- will change your life.

In Venezuela, these babies claim they can do more than just polish, clean and sanitize: they will bring you success, love and money. Just remember to use them, er, religiously!

ps: you can treat yourself to supernatural soapy help at http://www.amorysuerte.com/jabones-magicos.php

What is time?

A beautifully written text on time’s subjectivity by Kapuscinski.

” The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively; and as a measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute, true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature. It flows equably and without relation to anything external.” The European feels itself to be time’s slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function he must observe its ironclad and inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must heed deadlines, dates, days and hours. It moves within the rigors of time and cannot exist outside them. They impose upon him their requirements and quotas. An irresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man’s defeat – time annihilates him.

Africans apprehend time differently. For them, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, course and rhythm (man acting of course with the concept of Gods and Ancestors). Time is even something that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends after all on man alone. If two armies do not engage in a battle, then that battle will not occur (in other words time will not have revealed its presence, will not have come into being). Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs to life under our influence but falls into a state of hibernation even non-existence if we do not direct our energy towards it. It is a subservient, passive essence and most importantly one dependent on man. The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview. In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is scheduled in the afternoon but find no-one at the appointed spot, asking “When will the meeting take place?’ makes no sense. You know the answer: “It will take place when people come”.” 

Ryszard Kapuscinski – The Shadow of the Sun

*The attack of a Flaming Yellow Toy soldieR*

An unexpected encounter in my sister’s staircase in Nantes, France.

The WAOW factor

I know that amongst all the magnificent landscapes, good actions and other stunning people & souls the world has to offer, choosing the following picture as a ‘WAOW factor’ might sound shallow and unimportant..

However, I aim to find beauty in all things and these Jean-Paul Gaultier boots definitely met my requirements: they are surprising, colourful and delicately embroided… they made me think of spring in Japan (which, in itself, is an achievement since I’ve never been to Japan!)

 

Another couple links to shoe websites involving waow factors:

http://www.rupertsanderson.co.uk London-based designer… for his ridiculously beautiful collection of shoes where each pair calls out your name in high-pitched tones you can’t ignore. They’re easy to wear in any occasions and yet out of the common.. My kind of combo!

     

http://www.manoloblahnik.com/ to share the dream… Highly creative world-famous Manolo. It’s all about telling stories through incredible shoes you’ll feel lucky to wear outside a SATC set.

 

Learning to Fly & other curious moments

”Although airlines had been around since the mid-1920s, civil aviation was still in its infancy. Flying enthusiasts, looking for something to do, were offering round trips, or else hiring themselves out to air shows, as here at Berlin’s Tempelhof Aerodrome in 1932. Oskar Dimpfel is seen hanging by his teeth from a trapeze.”

‘‘Santa Claus recuperates from the Christmas ballyhoo on a beach in California. This 1950s caption alludes to the fact that Christmas more than any other season is the climax of advertising and retail sales in the USA.”

”The American dance craze, the Charleston, named after the town in South Carolina, took the world by storm in the 1920s, but in 1926 it provoked critical voices in the medical profession. This skeleton is being used to demonstrate the deleterious effects of the ‘dislocations’ required by the dance.”

” The Gallery of Phenomena in the Lunapark in Paris acquired a new live exhibit in the early 1930s. The promoter hoped that the German Adriana (!), the bearded lady, would attract the crowds.”

” These Liverpool dockers are being served the tea for their tea break by window dunmy Mirabel the Mermaid in 1957. As a rule, the figure adorned the displays of British ship’s chandlers and shipping lines. The photo was taken as she was being transported to a shop window in Belfast.”

From Curious Moments, Archive of the Century at Könemann Editions.

Our french Mad Hatter, CHAPELIER FOU

Music for sore souls/ sweetly paced/ gracefully strung

Your new hero…

Your new hero (click there) It’s definitely worth it!

You’ll see at the end.. YOU too can be a hero.

How to go further

I’m sure we’ve all been somewhere great, somewhere fun or somewhere beautiful. Well, here is a small travel-post about somewhere MAGNIFICENT.

Ryanair does not go there, it’s too far. Actually to reach that place you have to take a plane to Mexico, drive to the region of San Luis Potosi, find the highest mountain, reach 2700m. with your rented car, on a bumpy road, through cacti and ghost towns, then cross a 200m long spooky tunnel with no exits but only humidity leaking on the walls to the dodgy lamp bulbs (I know. It’s far. But I did warn you; this post is called How to go further) AND, finally, into the village. REAL DE CATORCE.

Although it is hidden and remote, the village attracts people from all around the world:

 ”Real is a place full of magnetic energy and unforeseen resources; when it seemed it was to forever fall into oblivion due to its mining situation, it strongly stood by its patron saint, Charrito, who saved it from total abandonment. Later in the seventies, it became famous for the peyote and was target to people from all around the world in search of revelations and hallucinations. Still today, a good percentage of visitors come in search of the famous cactus, hoping it will improve their lives.”

So you’re walking the streets, you’re above cloud level and people around you have their feet on the same ground as you do (full of magnetic ‘radiations’) but their heads in the sky: they are here to pray Churrito or they are hippies who ended up here living where the peyote grows.. Not so long ago, shamans came from Guatemala and the south of Mexico to worship Pachamama and eat the peyote: spiritual forces talking to them through the sacred cactus.

When on the top of that mountain you feel exhilarated. It’s high, you’re high (on oxygen, on altitude, on magnetic forces, on happiness) and you want to stay there forever. Believe me, I’m a city girl. And this was the first time I considered retiring from the world and live in a small shack with a goat and a garden.

We were there, looking at the landscape and we felt the urge to scream, sing and clap our hands and dance around like mad people. And we did. And it was amazing.

If you ever have the opportunity to travel and you’re looking for a destination that will move you inside and out, that will shake your very core and waken the shaman in you… Real de Catorce is the place to go!

http://www.realdecatorce.net/

‘Or gluttoning on all, or all away’

Madonna once sang to have and not to hold… As wise and selfless as it sounds, Shakespeare’s greedy, possessive and dramatic approach to loving is far more touching and exciting.

SONNET 75

So are you to my thoughts as food for life,

Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife

As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth found.

Now proud as an ejoyer, and anon

Doubting the fliching age will steal his treasure,

Now counting best to be with you alone;

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

And by and by clean starved for a look,

Possessing or pursuing in no delight

Save what is had, or must from you be took.

Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

 

I know the illustration to this sonnet might come as a surprise: Shakespeare’s loving is oppressive, stifling, while Chagall’s lovers are always lightly flying in the air… But I guess it’s what passion is about; wings & weight, delight & starvation, storms & sweet-seasoned showers…

And may the world see my pleasure!

Marc Chagall – The Birthday

Announcing the best-dressed men in America

“You’re looking at a revolution.

The most influential men in America are breaking out of their socks-out of their old, blah, boring, one-color, no-style socks.

At Interwoven/Esquire Socks, we saw it coming all the way. That’s why we make the great fashion socks that are making it happen.

In lots of great colors and lengths. all in the first Ban-Lon© pattern socks ever made. They feel softer and fit better than any sock you’ve ever worn.
That’s why we dress the best-dressed men in America. Or Anywhere. ”

From The Golden Age of Advertising, the 70’s, TASCHEN

(Many of you wondered what was my phone screen saver… now you know!)