I giorni della merla

These should have been the traditionally and (till some time ago) statistically coldest days of the year. "I giorni della merla" (the blackbird lady's days) are somehow celebrated and long waited, at least in the northern regions of Italy. A time to stay put at home, cozy and warm.
I don't know about similar traditions and sayings here in Austria. The weather has recently taken a break, forgetting traditions to respect and stats to maintain: it will give us some more chilling days, for sure, but not soon ... later on.

My Little Paradise Lost

It is always a question of profits and losses. Every change brings with it many new things, acquaintance and experiences and requires the sacrifice of some others to put aside, temporarily forget, safely store for better times. That's why, distracted by the novelties and the hurry of the imminent change, we soon engage with a quick revision of our material and immaterial assets, making a cruel classification, ending up in putting away the less urgent tasks and plans, the less important objects and activities of your past for the sake of the coming challenge. And you carry on with a new life, full of empty spaces to fill and white walls to decorate, until you realize the importance of those little things you had stowed away: how they actually were the connective tissue of your previous everyday life. And you begin thinking about pulling them out of the drawer again and putting them there, on the shelf, to get dust and apparently do nothing but remind you of their existence. It's still early, in this time of the year: I'd better think what to grow on my balcony, as soon as the good season comes back again. I miss the simple and useless moss.

Don't look for a focal point in these pictures. There's simply none.

Like a faucet that gives no water

I have been keeping this image, and many more like it, stowed away for too long in my digital memories, thinking it would have been useful in times of scarcity and fruitlessness, to better express my mood and feelings. I realize only tonight that I should have used it long time ago. That kind of mood and those feelings are already here since years.

My disks are brimful of images and, to my regret, most of the recent ones are worse than ever before. I continue shooting as much as years ago, with different tools, resulting in more and more often bad pictures that I strive to believe I could be so superficial while aiming and shooting. And it's not just a matter of tools. Only a minor part of them is worth of attention. Still, even for these few survivors I fail to find, or better, to reserve (there's little to be found, actually) part of my time for completing the second part of the flow and propose to an improbable audience something that can be defined ... presentable.

More and more often I linger for a good quarter of hour in my car, early in the morning, soon after reaching my company parking area, looking at other's pictures and quickly cutting one of mine, if available, using my mobile. Which is a contradiction in principle.

I can't afford more. And it's really pitiful thinking at all the good stuff I used to make few years ago. I had so many plans: all disregarded. Maybe I'd better considering to search for a new source. This one gives no more water.

There, where the sun sets

Never trust the navigators, you might turn nostalgic.

Last afternoon, on our way back home, after a day spent in Althofen among young fencers from all the nations that color the maps of this corner of Europe, in the attempt to avoid the long queues on the Austrian highway due to the endless maintenance works, we opted to follow the instructions of both the car and the mobile navigation software. Having left at our shoulders the small industrial town north of Klagenfurt, in just a handful of minutes we have found ourselves on a steep, serpentine-like road in the middle of the Carinthians mountains. I knew the route was definitely shorter than looping around the massif using the highway. What I couldn't estimate before was the time to drive along such a road, surrounded by walls of snow at nearly half the speed the navigators thought I would go. To make things a bit more complicate there were the breathtaking wilderness and the views behind each bend of the road. Eventually, we had to stop.

As we got on the highest point of the track, not far from a local ski station, we parked our car on a melting icy slab and got off to take some snapshots. In font of us there was a marvelous panorama of the west lands, were the sun was about to sink and there I spotted the line of the Alps. Which made me think of Italy and the winter sunsets of the sea line of the horizon.

Grand Tour 2017-18

I'm ready to begin the new year with many pictures that I had the opportunity to take during the recent Christmas break. Together with friends from our former hometown, Saronno, we engaged on a Grand Tour around central Italy. A week-long trip where we had the chance to show our kids something different, beautiful, new and unexpected. Let me start from our last stop in Siena. We arrived in the old Tuscan town during a storm: the strong wind swept so much the hill that few people only dared to walk along its narrow streets. Surprisingly, the old medieval town, appeared to us as desert as one of the several villages in the nearby countryside. Now that I'm back in Austria, once again, my biggest regret is that I'm no longer equipped with the right gears. I continue to take bad pictures with my mobile or with a DSLR that's falling apart.

The shot below was not staged but ... stolen. There's no need to add more, I think.