Italy // Capalbio - How Niki remained, Part 3

May 2002 - La Jolla (California), platform no. 21 

I hate wearing black on rainbow days. 

I was standing at the traffic light...waiting. My hands wet, the umbrella closed, a foot in the puddle. I didn't care. You know what...I was there for her

a young lady met accidently on a train fifty years ago...

I remember that moment as if it were yesterday.

"I was raped by my father when I was 11, so perhaps it's no wonder I started shooting my paintings" - Ms. Saint Phalle says.

People were just passing aside, some were even getting caught in my umbrella at the traffic light. My foot in the puddle and myself didn't care. You know what.. she had passed away

I had been following her works since the 80s. I saw "the beautiful things" she was able to make. 

In the end she did it.. "her Parc Güell".. do you remember? T H E  T A R O T   G A R D E N

People said that two peculiar things happened in the late nineteen-seventies in the Italian village of Capalbio: 

ONE: the mail started arriving late

TWO: "monsters" arrived on the hills nearby...

Although no one suspected it, there was a connection between these two occurrences. The postman, Ugo Celletti, had been helping Niki to give body to her monsters. The mail... well..could wait.

Art was for Nicky a way to give voice to her psyche, define her indentity. That was the Tartot Garden.

H E R   W O R L D

“Men’s roles seem to give them a great deal more freedom,” she wrote to a friend, “and i was resolved that freedom would be mine.” - Niki

The traffic light turned green. I crossed the street.

Bye Niki

Australia // Sydney - New Year's Eve 1963: The Bogle–Chandler case, part 1

-- My sToRy -- 

Buongiorno mondo! It is such a long time since I last spent a word on my lovely Sydney.

I miss you every now and then ... I can't believe it was 5 (almost 6) years ago...

Tonight, I'd love to talk about a particular district of Sydney - The Rocks...

I won't tell you about the history of this area, maybe in a later post, I'd rather tell about the lives of the people there. Margaret Chandler. 

'I believe we secretly love each other'

The Rocks - Summer 1962

Margaret Chandler

With one hand to Joe and the other to the bag, Margaret was struggling to walk through the crowd. Her heart was beating too fast to catch what was happening. 

Geoffrey, her husband, might have been late that night for dinner and she desperately needed him to be there. He was a researcher at the CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, just at the very beginning of his career. 

Margaret was a housewife, bringing up their children, taking care of their house... well she knew how to 'behave'. 

Her heart was now up her throat.

'It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man's dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary.' - G. Orwell, Coming Up for Air

"Haaaah", Joe and Kathrine were fighting and her head was too noisy to catch what was happening.

She turned on the TV and finally she managed to be there. 

She saw her slender figure walking with Joe among the crowd only a few moments ago and she realized in that moment what was all that mess: WOMEN RIGHTS FOR A BETTER FUTURE. Well, she might have spent a word on that too. 

Their house started to become claustrophobic. The life of a housewife was not really what she was dreaming of. 

Acting - That was her ambition. But Geoffrey didn't seem to like it that much, so she just went on...

till one day... 

it was pouring with rain... Joe and Kathrine were at her mother's place.. she was bored of that rain... she entered the Governor Hotel for something strong. 

A voice from the back: "Margaret..Don't drink alone. People always find out, and it ruins a reputation"

Margaret: "Oh, Gilbert..." - Gilbert to the bartender "Nevermind.. I'll take the same".

Gilbert Bogle was physicist at the CSIRO. He was a colleague of Geoffrey.

They spent a good two hours in front of their margaritas... talking about everything... It was like fresh air for Margaret. She would have never left ... but the children were waiting for her. 

Walking back home ...  the sound of his voice coudn't leave her. 

[to be continued...]

'There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts.' - 

G. Orwell, Coming Up for Air

Italy // Capalbio - How Niki came back, Part 2

June 1983, Florence - platform no. 9

"Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul."

I love looking outside the train windows. Even if I usually have work to do.

I love trees, grass, houses...that run away. They are so fast, while I am just sitting in my train compartment. 

At that thought... I stood up all of a sudden. 

I had the urgency to move in the movement of the train. 

So I walked through the sliding doors, as if I were chasing after something.. till the handle of my bag got stuck in those unfriendly dirty doors. I pulled .. I walked on... memories came flooding back.

Never mind I didn't have much time to think.. 

That day I had to make some studies for my book .. I ended up into a waiting room of my physiotherapist and I saw her.

Here it is

That was her name. 

Niki de Saint Phalle... almost 20 years later and again that face. 

I was curious. 

I grasped the art magazine and looked for her page:

An Artist, Her Monsters, Her Two Worlds

I ripped out the article.

At home I started reading:

"LUNCH is about to be served at the country home of Niki de Saint Phalle, and there is a worm on her chair. "Yeuuch," the French-American artist says, recoiling in horror. "Do you think you could remove that?"

It is a modest worm, quite still in the summer sun. When one remembers that this is an artist who created a sensation in the early 1960's by firing a gun at her canvases in performances [...] and who has since sculptured myriad serpents and many-headed monsters, the creature appears risibly innocuous. But there is genuine alarm in Ms. Saint Phalle's cavernous blue eyes. 

"I tend to paint things I am terrified of," she says. "Worms, snakes, spiders, that kind of thing."

I fell asleep with my cup of tea still full. I never finished to read that article the day but the thought of that female figure with short-fringe hair couldn't leave me.

[end of part 2, to be continued...]

Italy // Capalbio - How I met Niki, part I

April 1955 - Barcelona, platform no. 23

The train was early that day. For sure not me being late ;) I jumped on it..just in good time..so in time that my luggage got stuck halfway through the train door.

Funny.

I was sitting on the floor..struggling with my bag and my thoughts... "my life is quite often stuck halfway through something..cannot explain how" - I smiled.

I stopped pulling and in that moment - with my back leaning on the toilet door - I decided just to enjoy watching my bag halfway through. Inhaling something new.

Exciting.

In that very moment the toilet door opened. My back was now down to the floor...

A female figure came out with short-fringe hair. Graceful manners. She helped me to stand up and called the train conductor to get my bag unstuck and she walked away.

Hypnotic.

I finally took my stuff and and got to my seat. The woman I met before was sitting right at the window of my compartment. She was reading some international newspapers and out of a sudden she started saying loudly:

"Come early tomorrow, for we shall do very beautiful things". She looked at me.

"Pardon", I whispered.

She continued. "Gaudì said that in one of his last days just outside the Sagrada Familia". She smoked.

Majestic.

I couldn't help watching her. She looked like lost in her thoughts...yet talkative. "A fatal tram accident killed him... I often wonder about life, creative intelligence, sensitivity, coincidences, moments of impact..", she continuted. "As our meeting outside the toilet...a few moments ago...you know.. I can see people", and still..

"Do you know Parc Güell?". I nodded. 

"I want to build something like that one day". 

Next stop Marbella. Next stop Marbella. [voice-over]

She threw her cigarette, took her bag and left the compartment. My eyes followed her silently from the window. She suddenly came back and said: "Niki, Niki de Saint Phalle, nice to meet you. Please... come early tomorrow, for we shall do very beautiful things..". 

She turned her back and left. 

[end of part I, to be continued]

Australia // Sydney - The Baxter Inn

Some folks call her a runaway
A failure in the race
But she knows where her ticket takes her
She will find her place in the sun - T. Chapman

I am not actually a whisky drinker, but after this post I think I'll try to gain some knowledge about that. At least because I know a few whisky lovers who told me it is something worth a try.

If we think well... history is plenty of famous whisky drinkers, such as Bill Murray, Frank Sinatra, the baseball legend Babe Ruth, Margaret Tatcher, Humphrey Bogart, Winston Churchill, Walter Scott, Mark Twain.... I could go on like this for several lines... I guess.

Today I want to tell you about a very nice place I was once in Sydney: The Baxter Inn.

You wouldn't know this place was here unless someone told you about it. At the time it was my friend Nicolas, now it's my turn to inform you about its existence.

The entrance was already a nice adventure... you know it looks like one of those weird places you are not supposed to enter unless you are in search of some troubles... well something like that :)

You go down this alley off Clarence street, through a tatty door with no sign at all, walk down some narrow stairs and through an old cellar... you really think you have got to the wrong place but after opening an old door.. you will feel like Alice in Wonderland. I felt in this way.

Alice: How long is forever? 
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.

You enter another world. Crazy.

The first thing I noticed was the wall full of bottles of whisky. The menu board starts at the very top of the ceiling and it sneaks down under the counter and it goes even further.

The second thing were the well-coiffed bartender, simply magic.. they were definitely belonging to another time...though from today (see their "pants"). They look like they have just stepped out of the Great Gatsby movie.

The atmosphere was amazing, people everywhere, top shelf music.... in a perfect prohibition-era style.

If you go to Sydney, please have a look to this place.

You will find it here > Basement 152-156
Clarence Street, Sydney 2000

It's all for now. A big big hug :)
[ed. remember the healing power of hugs / if everything looks hard, go and hug ;) - oh... well... soon after the covid-19]


“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Turkey // Let's have olives for breakfast and Ayran to drink

Rabia arrived home after a 12-hour flight.

Exhausted to wear those high heels and that tight skirt.

She sat on the bed, unbuckled her blazer, stretched her arms, kicked off the heels and laid on the bed staring at the ceiling.

Staring at the ceiling...finally some rest.

It took a good 15 minutes to realize there was an unheard message on the answering machine. That red sign... she was not really in the mood to hear that she should have started a new shift in 8 hours.

She just wanted to stare at that ceiling.

Flight assistant - that was her job


"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it."

At that very moment the doorbell rang. Her neighbour, Özge, came to drag her to the Altın günü (*).

Özge: "Rabia, did you check your calendar?"
Rabia: "... what?... hey Özge, I was about to sleep..12-hour flight.. hemmm"
Özge: "It's the Altın günü..come on... you promised you would have been there this time.."

Özge grabbed Rabia from her hand and she dragged her fiercely to her place.

It was her third time she handled to stop home for more than 8 hours and she just wanted to enjoy some "no-flow".

"If there is free flow, there is no pain; if there is pain, there is lack of free flow.”

At that table she found all she was expecting form her place: chai, ayran and Altın günü.

Altın günü is the best way to keep up with all the misdeeds and gossip among friends and neighbors and to make some good savings. Rabia was happy to have some contacts with the earth and that was the best way for her to be up to all the facts happening while she was in the sky.

Furthermore, it is a good example of solidarity among women and well.. sooner or later it would have been her turn ;)

She had in plan to purchase that beautiful Kartell chandelier. She thought how it could look superb while staring at the ceiling.. the chandelier..

Rabia arrived home after a 4-hour Altın günü.

Exhausted to wear those high heels and that tight skirt.

She sat on the bed, unbuckled her blazer, stretched her arms, kicked off the heels and laid on the bed staring at the ceiling.

Staring at the ceiling...finally some rest.

Flight assistant - that was her job


(*) Altın günü DEFINITION:

Altın Günü (The Day of Gold) is a specific form of Turkish women’s networks functioning as a type of rotating savings and credit association promoting both savings and make financial capital available to its members with trustworthy relationships.

A way of empowering women by mutual assistance of other women. For example, a person is inviting at her place a group of friends and each of them gives .. let's say... 50,00 €, that makes a good amount of money for the host. Well that is a kind of rotating savings, because on a next reunion, all the other people will receive the money back.

Hope you get somehow what I mean... if not... let me know and I will try to explain it better. And of course I will talk about olives and ayran another day ;)

Australia // 7-Eleven - my home (sometimes) at nights

----- mY StOrY -----

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

One of the things I abosolutely love is the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.

Walking around, looking whatever and not caring about speding time in observing.

It's been almost 5 years since I came back.. but who knows why.... you really never come back from a journey or...if you do... you are not the same person anymore.

Yeh... I know... a commonplace :) but damn true!!

I have actually to thank a person for that...I have never written about him and I don't even think that I'll start now to write about this person... but everyone has an epiphany in one's life and my breakup was exactly that... I usually like to define it a moment of impact... but this time I prefer to bother Joyce and to steal his words..."epiphany".

“I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real
adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.” 
― James Joyce, Dubliners

Well... in my "wanderings", I often ended up in one of those convenience stores... sometimes it was because I was waiting for friends, some other times to take a 1-dollar-capuccino (of course... in its beautiful taking aways cup) and some other times to rest a little bit after a shift or before starting a new one.

I remember there was a standing chair just close to the windows in one of those at the corner between Elizabeth St. and Liverpool St. (in Sydney -- btw, is it still there?) and while sipping my capuccino... I was spending my time in observing people running everywhere... I loved that. That was my first 7-Eleven "meeting".

---------------------------------------------

Out of curiosity I made some research and I have just learned that it is a Japanese-American international chain of convenience stores founded in 1927 as Tote' m Stores.

In 1946, it changed its name into "7-Eleven", for the opening times from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, seven days per week. The first convenience store was born after a Southland Ice Co employee in Dallas started selling milk, eggs and bread from an ice dock.

Today (June 2019), the chain has grown to about 68,000 stores in 17 countries (more than McDonald's just to have an idea). Customers can grab drinks, snacks and everyday products on the go. Its main core is to meet the market needs. It has actually become a real case study. 7-Eleven is a very good example of how a brand needs to and benefit from adapting to a local market.

What does it mean "to adapt to a local market"?

For example, customers in Taiwan can service their bicycles or photocopy at a local 7-Eleven, in Hong Kong they can pay their phone and utility bills, and in the US they can pick-up their online Amazon shopping there.

The first 7-Eleven in Australia opened on August 24, 1977, in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh, Victoria. One of the main traits of the Australian stores opened in suburban areas was that to operate as petrol stations.

Actually, in 2010, 7-Eleven bought Mobil's remaining Australian petrol stations, converting them to 7-Eleven outlets, resulting in a huge success.

Well...there are other things to tell about its history and its development, but it'll be for another time... now I'm getting a bit tired :)

Just a note:

Each year on November 7, 7-Eleven promotes "7-Eleven Day" by giving away a free Slurpee to customers. - so please... do not forget to get yours!!

A man who swears to do something which it is not in his power to do is not accounted a sane man. ― James Joyce, Stephen Hero