This flower is...

...bending over clover leaves,
hope, faith and love, or sign of Trinity.
It's bending over a part of the same plant it belongs,
and they seem to be talking,.

It seems to be bowing to the leaving sun.

It's closed, but seems a promise of new blooming that is coming with the new day.

That's why I like this picture.

And again, Beauty makes things work out :)

Few minutes ago I had written a really bad post, something like a complain.

When, later, I opened the picture I want to use for the post..
I changed my mind.
I thought:"Oh boy! How could I waste this present with such a bad post?" :)

The bad post was anyway necessary, due to it and the picture I understood that even if life has its "imperfection" alike the flare in this picture (that, despite the flare, turned out as I wished) it's life, a present, something to love given by Love.

Ok, there's too much sense in this post (mebbe).
I have to go to sleep, tomorrow might be a really bad day of "fighting" with classmates. HELP!

Have a wonderful Monday!

P.S.
A question for, both English and Italian speaker, or for just English speaker if they can understand why I am surprised by the sentence: "to get on like a house on fire".
In the dictionary I've read this sentence is the translation of "andare d’amore e d’accordo"... I am still trying to fully understand the reason. House on fire is an house that it is going to be destroyed, isn't it? House aren't supposed to love to be on fire!.

Ahaha, I do love learning these idiomatic expressions! :)

One of my first "best" shots...

I cannot remember if I ever talked about this picture.

As the data says it has been taken in July 1999. In those days I was in England for a "study-vacation". I went there with some classmates and a teacher, to learn English of course.
I still don’t know why I did such a stupid thing, I had been studying English only for 9 months, at school, as well as Italian school can teach English to an 11 years old Italian girl. I guess I only knew thing like the use of the auxiliary verb “do”...And surely I wasn’t old enough (12) fur such a travel.
But, I was following my dream. I can say that since I have memory I have been fascinated by English language, by the skill to be able to speak and understand 2 languages… When I was 9 I wished I had an English or American relative that could teach me to speak English, so, 2 years later the idea that I could learn that language from people who were native speakers, was really fascinating.

Dream isn’t reality. By definition.

That travel had been a kind of nightmare.
I was unable to understand a lot of things that were said (and I think it was normal). Food was few and quite disgusting (a day I put ketchup in white rice because it was so "white" and with no taste that I started to appreciate ketchup, and I felt fooled when a day there was "pizza" and I found a piece of bread with 2 spots of a weird "fresh tomato sauce" and 2 slices of cheese. That's not pizza! You cannot seriously call it pizza! You cannot call it pizza to Italian people!) .
Italian classmate used to send me away because I was “the strange girl that uses internet”, teachers send me to classmates because “I had to stay with people of my age”… as result I found my self “alone” in the middle of known and unknown people. What to do? When happened I used to talk with students coming from other countries, but with such a poor English as was mine the best thing I could do was to speak Italian with a girl from Spain that answered me back in Spanish. Quite useless to learn English, don't you think?

The 25th July 1999 we went to an amusement park. There were interesting things, some funny too. I hadn’t a great day, if I am not wrong, that day I got so angry with a girl (she behaved as a cheerleader who think to be the smartest human being on this world) that I was going to punch her on her nose. I didn’t.
But I felt extremely bad I had reached such an high level of hate, I felt sad that in no way I was being able to have “friendly” relationship with people around me.

After lunch, I think, I discovered that kind of river (dunno what it was exactly), with ducks. It was calm, peaceful. I sat there alone (yep, I was being a quite reckless girl)…The minutes I spent there, had been the best part of those days. The duck of the picture got so close to me that I had been able to picture it with my compact film camera. This simple event made me smile, made me be happy and glad to be alive and there.

Before I didn’t feel at home, after I did.

That’s probably the reason that made me to love taking pictures.

In my life, often, has happened that everything and everyone seemed to be against me, that I couldn't do nothing more than wishing to be somewhere else…
And for some unknown and weird reason, during the saddest moments there is something alike that duck getting so close to me that make me feel “at home” again. That makes me, again, able to love this world and this life.

That makes me feel loved.

Seeking for help... for future plans

... nothing of worrying! ;D

I have been quite silent in these days because I am trying to study (as usual) and because I am building, with the fantastic help of my boyfriend, my new website where there is also my new blog . As you can see it's still under construction, indeed I still didn't delete the test post "bedda gioia" and other test posts ;D.  It's also the only active section).

Here I need all of you. 

I would like to move some post of this blog there... but I would like that this site will be  a little more "formal" so I have to choose the proper post...for example, surely not this crazy post.

Does anyone of you can and want to help me in the choice?

Another big problem is my crappy poor English...I think it can ruin the blog... so, I am talking to native English speaker: do u wanna help me in editing the post will be moved there?

Choose a post you liked and if you want to edit it, send me it back and will post on the new site... of course: no hurry and I will thank you there. I don't mind to say that I need help with English language, it's the truth :)

And who of you feel to write an "about her" few lines? I ask this because I would like to create a section: "here is what people I know think about me"...I have seen most "photography" site have an about me written in third person, and I still don't understand the reason; the about me in first person might be a normal one... but I didn't know what to say... so I had this idea.

I thought it might be nice and funny for eventual future (far future) visitor to see what friends think about the crazy girl that takes the pictures... I want a "formal" site but not a "too conventional" one.

You are supposed to be sincere :D. You can be mean too, just not too much please or I'll cry! ;D

Oh, and if you have any idea u can tell me. You can tell me also: "everything is crappy you should do this way..." :)

These are more ideas and plan I have in my mind... I hope to create and complete soon the "principal site section", where I want to put galleries of the best shots.

Every plan came out when I have realized I was running out of space in free accounts as with flickr (that's why I am not uploading all my new pics). I am supposed to pay to have more space and so on... but I preferred to pay some euro more and have an "all mine" space where I can build the site as I like it.

As you can see it's a big work, there is a lot to do still and to clean up and... I feel like I am running to catch a too fast and far dream...

So, why am I telling you now? 

To bother as less as I can, so, if you want to help me you can take all the time you need to do whatever you decided to do:)

Thanks Thanks thanks.

P.s.

As I say in the crazy post, I will take this site on because I enjoy a less formal site where I can write and show almost whatever I want to show :)

Silence.

It’s said to be gold.
For a Catholic, especially during Lent, silence is important because it allows thinking and praying. That’s true, silence sometimes is as precious as gold, and even more.

That’s the good silence.
There is a bad silence? In my humble opinion: yes, there is!
Something that literally drives me crazy is the minute, or so, of silence asked when something of bad happens. Beside the fact that I have big problems to accept that someone tells me when I have to keep silent or not, I wonder what the hell they think you can understand ALONE in one minute? Alone? Yep, because if you just keep silent, if you don’t pray if you don’t think (keeping silent doesn’t assure that you are “thinking about”) you are alone and you will just waste a minute of your life.

I think there are many “shades”of silence.
Indeed in the midway from bad silence to good one, there is that kind of silence that you cannot define “hurtful”, but you are in even if you don’t want to. I grew up in this kind of silence. I have a good family and I had some friends, but for years I spent most of my free time staying at home and that’s why I started to read, write down stuff, do some “artistic” works, chat online or (later) taking photographs.
For me I wasn't being in silence because during each of this activity I could hear my voice in my mind... but if something distracted me from my activity, this made me realize how lonely and silent I was being.
Just for example... when I read I hear the voice of my mind, or if the book is cool I can see images and hear characters' different voices and I don’t feel alone…unless something call back me to reality. Often, when I used to read at night, was a man on a carriage pulled by an horse passing at 4am. The horse step noise made me realize that I had spent all the night awake and alone.

I used to consider these “silent situations" normal life situation… till a night of few days ago, when I found myself thinking about what I have done in my life. That night I realized that I spent a lot of my time alone surrounded by a silence similar to the one that was surrounding me in that moment, and…that was a silence I couldn’t stop! Even listening to music wouldn’t have made me able to destroy my loneliness and sadness.

I wished I could turn on my computer and listen to my friend voice, as I used to do some summers before... and this made me realize that I couldn’t remember the voice of the only friend (known online) I spoke via voice for a lot of time.
In that moment I hated silence! I linked it with the idea of being alone an sad, and this drove me crazy because I felt alike I wasted my youth with reading, writing, chatting, taking pictures…
But, while I was thinking this, in my mind comes up this image:
I took this photo in April 2006. In the back yard of my country house. I was ,again alone at silence but there was no way that I could consider that silence annoying. Nothing could make me think that I had wasted my time that day. Indeed I consider that day, one of the happiest day of my life.
Once again a picture calmed me down, made me appreciate what I had received in my life. I appreciated life itself.

That’s probably a goal of good silences, and that’s probably the kind of silence I feel more comfortable with.

Being alone, with my camera trying to create, but I would say “to save”, wonderful frames of this world.

Am I blasphemous if I say that this the best way I can pray?

To my friends

It’s weird. It’s about 20 minutes that if I want to write down something I start thinking in English… well, in a weird English, but surely not in Italian.

That’s weird. It’s not a particular day today. I mean, nothing “special” related to American or English friends happened today… Well, I guess is quite useless to try to figure out the reasons of this unusual situation.

I think it’s more important to focus on what this situation made me to think about: friends.
I know, I know. I have been talking about friends a lot of times, but they are pretty important in people life… or at least, I think they are.

In these days a lot of my friends are dealing with pretty complex and difficult situations. Some are dealing with health problems, someone is trying to fix family situation, others have problems at work, and so on...

I wish I could do something more than just praying. I know, praying is important, but…I wish I could do more. Even hugging them, or just have a cup of hot chocolate (tea or coffee are fine too) with them.

I cannot do it.

The only thing I can do more… Is it probably keep talking to you through pictures?
Most of you have "met" me through my pictures... I hope you will enjoy if I keep showing my "works" ;D

I could start with this one…a kind of sun set “at the sea”. Ok, that’s not exactly a sun set at the sea, but this is the sea at sunset time at least. I already talked about the place where I took this picture.
And I know that, at least some of you like the sea because you live pretty far from it.

Or I could just show up this man at the sea, in what I think it’s a canoe.

Sincerely, when I took this picture I wasn’t thinking about its possible “meanings”, I just liked the aesthetic aspect of that situation.

Tonight, instead, when I saw the picture thumbnail on my computer desktop I thought that this could perfectly represent how I “see” most of you.
You may look left alone in the “middle” of the sea, but most of you have a lot of friends.
Where are the man’s friends in this picture? Nowhere, they are just on the right, in a building on the coast (of which you can see a part on the right in the sunset picture).
I am glad that most of you can count on your families and/or friends.

I wish all of your problems will be solved (in the best way) as soon as possible.

Oh... This doesn't mean I don't think about those friends with no "big problems" or that are going to get married in few months, or that are enjoying their first grand baby ;)