Moroccan Nikita's

We had read the Perseides were going to shower the skies that night and thus decided to find a place out of the city's light pollution to watch the precious St Laurent's tears. We - me, the professor from Paris and Sarajevo - met at the Opera house at midnight on the dot and were to drive some 20 minutes to Kalmthout natural park. Maybe the meteorites confused the notions of time and space, or maybe we were too busy telling funny stories and trying to name the movies matching with the famous film themes we were listening to, anyway, somehow, we got a bit lost in various diversions and entered Kalmthout only an hour later. The streets were empty as in a dead city and the tune that just came up was "Twisted nerve" whistling...spooky! We drove around  Creepytown in search for a person that could show us the way, and it seemed completely deserted, until we finally found the only opened bar with a woman and two men standing outside. We stopped and kindly asked for th...

Men grow too old for love, my love, Men grow too old for lies; But I shall not grow too old to see Enormous night arise, A cloud that is larger than the world And a monster made of eyes. * The monster  made of eyes Up there the skies were infinite and the clouds hung at our feet. The days were hot, green and translucent, the nights were cool, deep and sparkling. We were gathering on the hotel terrace after every concert, they were telling jokes and we were all laughing to tears echoing far in the surrounding stillness. We had some beers, smoked a bit, I felt like a little walk and went down the terrace and turned right toward the church. I wanted to look at the sky. Past the second house was the last lamp, a bench and the beginning of a little path bypassing the hill. Past these, a curtain of darkness. I walked a few meters  and  disappeared behind the backdrop. I was all alone, and looked up, in the uncanny silence of the witching hour. My eyes were probably mi...

Summer in Antwerp is like summer anywhere else... just perfect.  Life unfolds in soul caressing sunny mornings and late warm sunsets, peaceful evenings mirroring in the Schelde unless it's in the beer you're having on a roof while listening to strange birds making even stranger noises. (In fact I think they're flying monkeys thinking they are birds, or the other way round. don't ask me what they're doing in Antwerp, I didn't ask them. I just shouted "f*** you!" when they were too noisy --which, as I was said, is weird too..) Summer and its storms that catch you on an open air festival evening. Sarajevo laughed at me when we hit the road between the corn fields and headed to Sfinks festival because I had flip flops on, whereas she had a pair of brand new sneakers to avoid wet feet...well when we came out of Anderland (the music box) after a great set of Acid Arab and all that was around was mud, I couldn't help from having an evil smile on my fa...

Sedlákovi umře nejdřív koza, potom kráva a nakonec i manželka.  Zničený sedlák si sedne na mez a běduje: "Panebože, co jsem provedl, že mě takhle trestáš?"  Zjeví se mu pánbůh, škrábe se na bradě a povídá:  "Já ti vlastně ani nevím, ty mě prostě tak nějak sereš." (A peasant first sees his goat die, than his cow, and finally his wife passes away. Hopeless, he sits on his porch and starts crying and complaining.  "Oh God, what did I do to deserve this?" God appears in front of him, scratching his head and says:  "Well I don't really know, nothing special, you're just kinda getting on my nerves." - Czech joke - it really makes me laugh) One of those days Just one of those days when, at some point, everything starts to bug you, for no reason, just brutal mood change with no rational motive. Day was pretty good... but i nsidious , the flower of carnage first starts with feeling like bitching about any extremely positivist post you see ...

There's a cat in the courtyard, that keeps on saying "halloooooo". as if it was answering a phone call and didn't hear anything. The cat is invisible. Always hear it, never see it. I disappeared, too. Well, from my blog.  It all started with a new job I enjoy, serving beauty again, how lucky. Moved into a great new house which decoration makes me feel I am in a retro movie every time I step in. Summer comes and goes but the occasional sunny afternoons spent with friends on my roof in deck chairs seem to be endless. I fell two times of my bike, but also managed not to fall off my bike while I was outrageously drunk. (it was my birthday, is that enough of an excuse?).  That was a fun night, with an even funnier ending. Being a bit "tired" as we were riding home around 5 a.m., me (sideways) and the violinist (scared of seeing me fall and taking a nap on the side of the road anytime), I of course forgot to take the right turn to my street and got a bit lo...

Bursts of laughter. "Dupka lata", meaning restless -literally "having a flying bum". It was the witches night after all. Coincidence made we met on a Tuesday again. Me, the pianist and the composer, tacking between four languages. Them two laughing every time I answer their Polish in Czech, me, although a bit under siege, repaying their laughter with mine. Our mutual  mother tongues understanding was getting better as the bottle of Zubrowka gradually emptied, even if English and Spanish still dominated the conversation. I had met her - ethereal creature with intense sparkling eyes-, in the South, late at night, and our first Czech-Polish (almost) fluent conversation about Albrecht Dürer and Günter Grass had sealed our friendship.We did consequently share several breakfasts by the river, many beers, a few friends, a couple of all night long walks in Seville, a mattress, and even found out we shared ...but that would be too much information. I had met him ...

We had to paint the bird cage for the white room, and this is how we discovered that the purple horse had disappeared. The horse had escaped and was hiding somewhere among the stuff waiting to be ordered. Only the turquoise ribbons had stayed on top of the cage, they obviously couldn't run away (they could fly , though, stupid..).  Renewing the cage with white spray paint on the terrace was fun (I felt a bit like a street artist every time I heard the pea while shaking the can) except I underestimated the wind, and found out suddenly my hand was all white. I didn't care much though, since daydreaming  under the spring sun was a much better thing to focus on.  When the paint was dry, we looked for the horse, but that was after she came home and asked me if I had changed the tire of my bike- which I hadn't done yet - since it was not flat anymore (If I didn't, who the hell did? Devil knows..).  We found the horse eventually on the sofa mingling with little el...

I jumped off my bike in the street right by the cathedral for a more than necessary coffee and waved back at the one who had once decided his professional career would be "blowing down this tube and making noises", which made him...a musician. The coffee was good, the cigarette too, but the wedding party going on inside, together with the cold that was hitting us outside made us quickly move to another place to have another coffee and lazy Saturday morning chat. We somehow ended up talking about our fathers who seemed to have some sort of similar mania: fixing it all themselves, leaving dismembered machines and devices of all kind in the sacred place of the house called "woman-don't-dare-to-touch,-order-and-don't even-think-of-throwing-away-anything-you-find-here". Rings a bell?  My dad loved to go to flea markets on Sunday afternoon, we would call it the "bric-a-brac" and me and my sister equally hated going there. Old stuff, from electric wire...

Today I came across this article a friend posted, about a website called "Recommend an ex".  The principle is simple. You broke up with a person but you think this person is great (which is exactly why you are not together anymore) and you want to ... help? be fair?  piss off your ex? so you post his/her photo with a link to their Facebook profile with a couple of sentences describing how cool this person is and why. I just noticed the website is meant mostly for the ones who dumped their partners, for it says :  "Now you have the chance to transform the guilt or remorse of that kick in the ass into happiness." So first of all, when you break up with someone and  feel guilty there's indeed no better way to  fix things up than  charitably recommending the very person who was not good for you to another victim. Are you serious?! Right.Whatever. Let's say the person who recommends his/her ex is totally honest and broke up for other reasons than his/her...

There was this sax player who took a pair of dice out of his pocket after the concert and made us play. Without any kind of stake. Just throwing dice. I was the first to give up, and went to dance for that, at least, made some sense to me.  "Les jeux sont faits."    I remember the one and only time I somehow ended at a roulette table in a casino. I lost the twenty euros left I had in my pocket straight away and decided I was definitely not going to try playing ever again. Just made sure I'd get my money back on the free drinks and cigarettes the casino was offering to its guests and left the place.  I do like the aesthetics of the roulette wheel though.The sound of the ball spinning. Surrounded by the silence of expectation. The ball rolls and rolls and you can only wait to see where it ends. No matter if you played big or nothing at all, you just get into it. There's always this ultimate moment when you let go because you placed your bets and. ... " Ri...

We were just finishing our dinner in the red room, the room that always made me thought a cat was missing there. Not really because of the occasional visitors from the zoo across the street (the mice, not the giraffes), just because the room had this coziness and elegance that a beautiful moving feline would only enhance. While Sarajevo, the owner of the non existent cat, was dipping a last piece of bread in humus, a ladybird appeared walking on her plate. Moving from the center to the edge of the plate rimmed with red dots, with a rest of chick-peas paste on its  back leg, the ladybird started circling around the plate's edge. We were so surprised to see it there, that we followed its movements, mesmerized: one circle, and then another one. How boring!  So we thought, does the beetle know it is moving in circles? We decided to help it out of the plate, and even to clean its leg of the food stuck on it. Moved it onto the red circular place mat. It went straight to the gla...

“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.” Woland While some, after a long day of work, bump into an Angel Gabriel lying on the ground, fat of all the messages it carries, while some see  people who are long gone to the flipside,  all the time,  I do encounter black cats behind windows or  even Devil's Elbow in a wine shop. It is no cheap buy... must be devilishly delicious! I left the bottle there, thinking I should first investigate how and when the other transubstantiation happened - the one that transformed the blood of Christ into Devil's Elbow- before drinki...

Brussels on a cold Valentine's evening. I had made it to my favorite bookshop while I was killing some time before going to cinema. My hands were itching at the look and the touch of all these beautiful books, but since my wallet was painfully empty, I had to leave it for another time. On the days of my other Belgian life, I used to spend some Sundays at the librairie Filigranes , and loved leaving, feeling slightly guilty, with a much bigger shopping than the one book I came to buy. My visit on that Thursday was quick, just to check the shop was still there, for my future Sundays. I walked downhill and found it, this amazing independent-to-the-bone cinema, one of these magic places that make you wonder how on earth they manage to survive in this rough commercial world of ours. A must visit, if not by going there, at least here I had been invited by my fellow A B to see her friend's (Sabrina Calmels) documentary "The Grand Scheme", following t...

My mission was completed as I found the flamenco artists we were looking for and was glad my guess was right:  the person I searched the musicians for loved the twin Flamenco Heavies. I had a tremendous time in Jerez, unsurprisingly, since I was never bored with gypsies. I managed escaping to Burtuqal, taking a walk in the sand and a long look at my beautiful Atlantic ocean. I finally went to Granada and I have to make three statements:     When arriving to Granada, I had like a déja vu, since the surroundings and the snow white peaks of Sierra Nevada behind the city look very similar to the Atlas behind Marrakesh... No wonder the Moors established  such a city there.. when they arrived they thought they were home!     I was told that the Moors had been pushed out some five centuries ago. It was a lie, they never left! I saw them in all the locals' faces.    When I visited the Alhambra, as much I was blown away, I have to say (and it s...

crossing   / ˈkrɒsɪŋ / n the place where one thing crosses another a place, often shown by markings, lights, or poles, where a street, railway, etc, may be crossed the act or process of crossbreeding Crossing into a new year,  crossing borders, crossing from winter to spring in one day (thanks for the invention of the plane), crossing into a new life, from the heart of Europe to Iberia, and finally, crossing the bridge of Isabel II, from Sevilla to Triana. I landed on time on the 31st, just on time to drop my luggage, run through deserted Sevillian streets, to hug my friends and stuff my mouth with the twelve grapes of luck as the clock struck midnight. When I crossed the bridge to settle in Triana, it felt like coming home. It is good to come back, to repeat naturally some daily habits one used to cherish, find the same smiling faces, be received as a homie. Triana the beautiful will never bore me.. as long as I keep on coming and going. I could cross...