The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that I suffer from performance anxiety. As a matter of fact, I work at home, I rarely set foot in direct sunlight and most of the time I’m sociable like a brown bear. I’ll soon be unable to produce human sounds due to glottis atrophy. So when I must do the most secret and intimate thing I can think of – the most embarrassing thing after masturbation – i.e. to arrange a photo set in the basement or in the attic, or in whatever room nobody will happen along accidentally, and to take pictures… well, if this includes other people’s presence I feel just as natural and at ease as somebody sitting naked at their finals.
So, each time I take pics of other people I have all those pre-exam funks (including without limitations colitis, itches, nausea, manual abilities reduced to a minimum). But with Rob it was different. It was a cold and rainy day, so our plans to get out and get lost in the woods blew up in my face. But she came here and did it all by herself. I fall platonically in love with all my models so my opinion doesn’t count. Let me show you:
In march, that madman, Matteo Grandi, invited me to Perugia to take a few Green pics for the April issue of Piacere Magazine. Do you want to see the online magazine? It’s here.
It involved a great amount of walking between the editorial office and the Parco di Porta S. Angelo, some getting lost, getting found and the Minimetrò, and time passed by chatting pleasantly with the disillusioned people from Perugia and my beautiful first official model, Krystiana.
With all the working and financial chrysis and personal epiphanies, I didn’t need it for quite some time, so I forgot where I’d put it. In retrospect, it probably went with all the lighter clothes when I changed my summer wardrobe, or was lost in the anarchy of moving out. I was really worried, I have to say, that I’d left it in my old flat in Rome. Luckily, at a certain point I got a stiff neck and my left leg went numb, so I could finally lay my hands on it. It’s getting some air on the terrace, now.
My blog is becoming multilingual and it will take some time to fix a few things.
Right now, if you visit danielavladimirova.it/blog you should be able to read all the older posts + the posts in Italian if you’ve set Italian as the main language of your browser. Otherwise, you should see just the English section.
The Italian part will contain all the useless bla bla, the English part probably news on pics and so on. I haven’t thought it through yet, as a matter of fact: I was just thinking that writing in a language which is not your own won’t work unless you’re Samuel Beckett.
So, right now I’m working on this and recovering from this year’s flu and all the mysterious illnesses I’ve gone through in the past few months. In the meanwhile, I’ll distract you with our Istanbul adventures filmed during our first holiday with a camcorder.
43 is a number of I Ching that keeps showing up. I’ve grown so used to it that I’ve started applying it liberally to any question or concern about my life. It’s one of the endless variations on the theme Γνῶθι σαυτόν. Try it yourself, it answers just any fucking question. For example:
1) Should I tell that chap that I like him?
2) How to deal with my crazy ex puncturing my tires at night?
3) I feel stressed and worried, how to get out of the puddle?
4) Jealousy is driving me mad, how should I put that little slut into her place?
5) What time is it?
Each time I see it I exclaim, eyes-wide-open, “You see? I Ching are speaking directly to me, I Ching… know!” (As you can imagine, I don’t look up I Ching every day but only when some pressing matter makes me lie awake at night, and obviously times like these involve a certain Search for Higher Meaning.) Oh come on! It’s an innocent pastime: yin and yang are perfectly balanced and cannot harm you. You’ll go on seeing in them what makes you feel better and every once in a while will feel comforted in a consolatory and superficial way, like those people who buy Bach flowers and read zen books written by celebrities.
Anyway:
breakthrough
/ˈbreɪkθruː/
1. (military) An advance through and past enemy lines (or vice versa).
2. Any major progress; such as a great innovation or discovery that overcomes a significant obstacle.
3. (sports) The penetration of the opposition defense
For the time being, this sort of concept is only a mantra or wishful thinking. I’m currently more or less an old crock and resemble the comic relief characters of old plays like Le Malade imaginaire. Which is some sort of absolute minimum, and a good start for times of Great Resoluteness.
PS: next week i Ching said 31: influence, which is a really sexy hexagram if you ask me.
Grace is the ornament, the outer shell, the pleasing frame, the surface. Essential content is elsewhere, this is just a frivolous though charming addition. It won’t warm you up in winter, or make your day.
There’s nothing to write about the beauty of form, it’s an amusing and small feat for a cold and lazy Sunday afternoon.
