IO ALLA FINE NON SO COSA SIA UNA BELLA FOTO.SO SOLO CHE VEDO COSE E LE DEVO FERMARE.E CHE A VOLTE HO QUALCOSA DA DIRE.ALTRE VOLTE, NO.


27.8.10

"Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee

A relatively short book. I read it in a couple of days.
I love Coetzee for his conciseness.
The whole story is like a punch in your guts: shocking and eye opening.
David Lurie is a university professor who falls in disgrace: he loses his post following an affair with a young student.
One can't really empathize with him throughout, for all his knowledge and status he's actually quite a lonely, miserable, pompous man.
He goes and stays with his only daughter on a farm in the coutryside after his dismissal.
An uspeakable crime with life changing consequences happens there. David is forced to reasess his life, his inner motivations, his place in the world and his vision of his fellow humans.
All the arrogance and the selfishness he has always shown have to be tackeld. His shaky relationship with his daughter is under a microscope. Issues of race, history, politics and ethics in modern day, post apartheid South Africa are faced courageously as always, almost clinically but most definately masterfully.
Coetzee writes acute observations with sparse, punching prose.
This is, without a doubt, a great book.

In the book Lurie goes through some sort of redemption journey looking after stray dogs and disposing of the corpeses of the ones that have to be put down.
I know this is quite gruesome but as I was reading this book I was camping and my mum's dog was always around. She couldn't be more different from the dogs in the book, and she got some extra cuddles as I felt for them, nevertheless I took some photos of her whilst reading this so here they are!
Isn't she a gorgous lady (although bearded!) with the most adorable eyes?






23.8.10

Camping in Middle Earth.

So, I overcame my reluctance to camping and had a wonderful time doing just that on the Apennines Mountains with a bunch of friends!
Memories of an extremely hot summer camping on the Elba island, sleeping in tight and humid ridge tent traumatized me and made me vow never to camp again in my life.
17 years down the line, here's my lovely 6 year old begging me to go and camp so I gave in.
And I am so, so happy I did!
We rented a portion of woods, and my skillfull friends installed a shower and a toilet.
We spent the day exploring around, looking at all the different trees, flowers, bugs and rocks, snoozing in our tents and mushroom picking.
We had glorious meals around one huge table.
Spent whole evenings gathered around the campfire roasting corn, Parmesan skins, talking, singing (more or less in tune) and looking at the stars.
We slept like logs as the only sound we could hear was that of owls, hawks and foxes.
We drank water straight out of a spring and bathed in the stream.
I strongly believe that we were designed to live in such places.
Enjoying it was a revelation to me.
Here's the photos of the first few days.
More to follow, including misty mountains and woods that looked very much like Fangorn Forest!