Marroni Caldi (Roasted Chestnuts)

As I posted my artwork "Interconnected" on Instagram, the thought crossed my mind to contact @verbonnet and ask him to write an accompanying story. Stephen Paré and I have been friends on Instagram for many years now, and our discussions have, I believe, been mutually inspiring.  Mobile art is only one of Stephen's many talents, and I am delighted that he agreed to my request. What follows is the result of our collaboration.   

Marroni Caldi

(Roasted Chestnuts)

I’ve had I guess two mystical experiences in my life. I am not going to try to explain to you what I mean by that - anyway, I’m pretty sure that I can’t. Neither of them lasted more than a couple of minutes, although I’m really not too sure – otherwise, they were completely different. The first one took place in 2009. If I ever figure out how to talk about it, I will. 

The second one happened the day before Christmas, about a month ago. 

We’re not particularly rich but we’ve got a talent (by which I mean my wife has) for being invited into beautiful homes as guests. Christine does trading online and I’m writing a novel so we might as well be anywhere; we took an extended vacation last year, working our way from the Arctic Circle in Norway at Summer Solstice south to Italy and finally Athens, where I’m writing this.

We had Thanksgiving in Lyon (duck instead of turkey, petits pois instead of green beans) and then three weeks of grey weather in Geneva with an affectionate elderly couple who were early to bed; I finished a chapter and then some, gazing out at the lake, feeling excitement and accomplishment despite a head cold that had me sleep a lot. 

And then on to Rome for Christmas, to see the Pope in the basilica, the shepherds at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and this year’s weird and controversial crêche, which I find ugly but which I’m defending anyway because it’s under attack by the right-wing self-appointed guardians of our culture.  

Christine’s uncle has an apartment in the San Saba district, and he was lending it to us for twelve days while he was ‘in Italy’, by which he means literally anywhere away from Mamma Roma, including New York. For me, too, Rome is the center of something both momentous and familiar; but it is as though I’d discovered I had a different birth mother at age 31 - there’s no regret and no rewinding, not even the wish to rewind - only wonder and whatever heightened moments you can find to spend together while your lives continue on in their settled course. 

The first night I was in bed early and slept immediately, only waking at 9, bedsheets soaked with sweat, the way you do when the illness leaves you. I felt good again. Christine was long gone so I set off walking toward the Pantheon, thinking of cappuccino. 

There’s a piazza in front of Santa Sabina, and as I approached it I could see a street vendor with a chestnut roaster (why are they always men?). After a few steps I could smell the sweet aroma and decided to get some.

That's when it happened.  

"Interconnected" ©Linda Hollier

As I looked toward him I saw another figure, also walking toward him from my direction. It was a bearded man, young, congenitally deformed, with an odd spiraling, laborious, start-and-stop sort of walk, supported by two sticks. The chestnut vendor was turned the other way, talking vividly with someone, a customer, gesticulating as he did with that tool they use to pierce the shells.

I’ve always been interested in the ways that people match their postures and gestures as they talk; there’s a dance that goes on. I was watching the chestnut vendor ‘leading’ as his customer nodded and tilted his head and turned slightly in response to each of the extravagant gestures. Then I noticed something else: the bearded man with the sticks was ‘leading’ the vendor. It was unmistakable. He would pause, and the vendor would pause; he would start up his exaggerated spiraling movement, and then the vendor would gesticulate. But the vendor couldn’t see him! His back was turned.

I was looking, observing, trying to sort all of this out, when I saw something impossible. That crippled fellow, with his stopping and effortful starting, was leading the wind that moved the trees in the little park behind him. The trees were following him, starting and stopping with him. 

An old Fiat came along, and stopped in the street when the man stopped, moving along again when he did, its clutch jerking with his laboring walk.

He stopped, and I sneezed. He moved, and stopped again, and I sneezed again.

I must have come to a halt as I watched all of this, for it was only after the crippled man had disappeared into the park that I realized I was just standing there. The chestnut vendor was looking at me curiously. I sneezed again, roused myself, walked up and got some chestnuts from him. I will never forget the deep compassion I felt for him - well, it was love. That’s the real word, isn’t it. We had taken part in an extraordinary moment together, however unconscious of it he might have been, however ordinary it might have seemed. 

As he handed me the paper cornetto of nuts, time was slowed, the elegant turn of his hand and the crinkle of paper and his mischievous amused eyebrows arching as I grasped the bag - all a slow inevitable unfolding, an orchestral music whose every sound of every instrument I could hear.

I was about to start crying so I hurried off with my nuts and turned down the pedestrian street, tears streaming down my face in the Roman sun and north wind, appetite gone, but every twenty feet stopping, smelling the chestnuts, filling myself with the odor over and over, receiving a blessing, the grace of an ordinary day. I left them on the fountain in front of the Pantheon as a kind of offering.

---oOo---

After writing the story, Stephen let me know that he was writing music for it as well. Listen to Stephen's reading of "Marroni Caldi" set to the music he has composed to accompany it.

lindahollier · Marroni Caldi

Compassion and a here2here perspective

This week Karen Armstrong will speak on “The State of the Charter for Compassion”. Having completed her book “The Spiral Staircase A Memoir” last night, I got to thinking again about the Golden Rule and the need for compassion in the world today. 

Deciding to participate in an edit activity on Instagram this morning, I was inspired to try to convey these thoughts through an image.  The photograph to be edited was of the city of Honfleur in France.  

Recently I had come up with two edited photographs combining the cities of Dubai and Cape Town. I decided to attempt a similar edit with the photograph at hand as I suddenly realized that in a sense a theme was developing in these edits.  

Bringing cities together in an image was a reminder of the need to take the perspective of others no matter where they may live, no matter what they believe, and no matter how different we might think they are. 

Compassion does not mean feeling pity but “feeling with”.  It is a stepping into the shoes of the other until the self is totally suspended and we are able to see the world with the eyes of the other and feel with them their joy and suffering.

Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity - Charter for Compassion. 

The image is a powerful tool and one that I believe can assist in an opening of the heart to compassion. (taken from “Linda in Wonderland”). 

As I worked on this edit, fusing as it were Dubai with Honfleur I was reminded again of the wonders of technology, but at the same time was overwhelmed by the opportunities it offers to meet others and bridge gaps.  With the aid of social media apps we are catapulted into the here2here, where we meet people from all walks of life.  And the other we soon discover is not as different as we thought them to be.  In fact we have more similarities than differences. 

I was born in South Africa, have lived for almost ten years in Europe and am now living in the Middle East. The whole experience has encouraged me to take different perspectives and widen my embrace. 

Aware of the value this has brought to my life, it has been my wish when using Instagram that my photographs will encourage the taking of different perspectives. I was honored this weekend to have two of my photographs exhibited at an Instagram exhibition in Padova, Italy, and this wish formed part of the short biography which appeared next to my work.  

And so, my love of writing is beginning to come together with my love of architecture and photography. What exact path this will take I am unsure of as yet. I write of it now to put it out into the world and to express my willingness to step out into the unknown. 

Linda in Wonderland

The calendar year was 2012, one hundred and fifty years since Lewis Carroll first began writing “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.  Sitting next to a stream, Alice was still pretty much aware of the fact that even though she sometimes thought she knew who she was, she was also conscious of having changed several times over the years, not to mention since that morning. Bored, she had peeped into her sister’s book, but it had no pictures or conversations. Alice found that weird.

All of a sudden, a white rabbit with iphone in hand, alarm going off rather loudly, attracted Alice’s attention. Following the sound of the alarm playing one of her favorite hits,  Alice ran after him. He passed a digital stream, and as he popped down a rabbit-hole Alice followed him further, only to find herself soon tumbling into what seemed to be a very deep well.

 

Whether the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, Alice did not know. What she did notice after a while were the symbols on the sides of the well depicting the various portals available to those entering this world of wonder. 

She did not know it yet, but by clicking on a link, the traveler in cyberspace can be transported from one place to another. By downloading an app, the user is offered tools and information unheard of before. 

As she fell, Alice remembered what she had learnt at school that week.  Her teacher, a forward thinking wonderful lady, had introduced her class to mindfulness. Sitting in a circle each morning the children focused on their breathing and the feelings they were experiencing. Alice decided that this was as good a time as ever to put this all into practice, and so, taking a deep breath, she allowed herself to be fully aware of herself, her feelings, her muddled emotions and her surroundings, which were rather strange to say the least.

She felt she must have reached the centre of the earth when she suddenly landed with a thump. She thought she spotted the white rabbit but he soon disappeared out of sight. 

Alice found herself in a room with a little table.  On it lay a tablet. To examine it she picked it up, swiped its screen and squealed with delight at what she found. There were stories with pictures that were interactive when she touched them.  There were conversations going on in real time! There were maps and dictionaries, newspapers and magazines. She could play games and even draw using her finger.

She noticed a camera and a special app and before long was taking pictures of herself which transformed her at once into someone tall, someone short, someone with a huge funny face and then someone all squashed up. She squealed with delight.

Swiping the screen yet again she found an app called Instagram. She realized that she had not landed in the centre of the earth, but was somehow in all places at once, as she watched photos from all over the world appear on her screen in real time. This was truly here2here! People commented on these photos and she noticed that many of the comments said Linda!!!

Linda? She thought her name was Alice! But then anything was possible when time was no longer linear and she felt herself so close to the other and the other felt as she.

To find out more about who she could possibly now be, she clicked on wikipedia to discover that the name Linda might be derived from the same root as the linden tree, with a German and ultimately Celtic root.  The image of the tree is often used to indicate a gentle personality. 

Alice was confused but read on. Linda could come from the “Celt Lindworm”, another variation of the mythical concept know as the ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail. The ouroboros represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. More worlds of wonder were possibly awaiting her, whether she be Alice or Linda or whoever. 

Muchalinda was also the name of a snake-like being who protected the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment.

The name Linda in Xhosa means “wait” and that perhaps made a little sense. Perhaps if she waited long enough it would all become clear to her.

This was getting curiouser and curiouser, until for now at least, it all suddenly made sense.

Linda was also used in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to mean beautiful, pretty or cute.  People on Instagram were indicating that they liked a particular photo!!!

Alice looked up and saw the Mad Hatter laughing at her. She was not sure whether time had stopped or it had been transcended. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Cheshire Cat smiling.

---

When starting this website, it was my intention to explore the concept of here2here through word and image and thereby promote a shared vision of diversity within unity. My blog and my presence on twitter are, and share, my explorations through word. To explore here2here through the use of image I have recently entered the world of Instagram.

I often feel like Alice, as a world of everyday happenings, memories and creativity appears on my screen in real time. In the gallery, “Some Instagram Pics”, you can see some of the images I have shared. If of course, you are on Instagram you can see more of these pics there. If not you can follow them here.

The image is a powerful tool and one that I believe can assist in an opening of the heart to compassion. 

 

We live in wonderful times. Wonder is there when we stop to see it. What is more, modern technology is making it possible to share these moments if we so choose.

I end with one such example. On New Year’s Eve, the Burj Khalifa, lit up with fireworks.  Standing on my balcony directly opposite the Burj Khalifa, overwhelmed at one stage by tears, I witnessed an event of beauty. You may not have been with me, but in a sense you are as I share with you a video of the event made possible through moving imagery and the world of youtube. Take a few minutes to step into this wonderland.

Suspended Together

The minute I connect to the internet I enter a space, which though not visible to the eye, is filled with enormous activity.

Going “online” is an entry into a web of interlinked connectivity and information. Navigation in this space has to be learnt, but once mastered, opens the door to a world of connections and information.

This ever-growing web of interconnectedness is suspended, as it were, over all that takes place in the world today. We are reminded of what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere. In 1959 he wrote that technology was creating “a single organized membrane over the earth”.    

Not only is this web of interconnectedness suspended, but the minute we crawl into it we become suspended together.

“Suspended together” is also the title of an artwork recently featured in the exhibition entitled “terminal”, which I visited in Dubai. The artist is Manal Al-Dowayan and the piece created in 2011 is neon with black paint.

Although part of an exhibition focusing on air travel, this piece also spoke to me of the concept, which I have chosen to call here2here.

here2here is first an foremost a space of community, a place of the “we”, a place where we are “suspended together”.

At first, I used to think of this space as an in-between place, a place where we meet before going our separate ways.  In some sense it still is, but as advances in technology make connectivity and communication more instant and accessible, and with the advent of social media, this here2here space is also becoming a place where many of us spend a good part of our day. 

My physical state of being, my location, what I am thinking, or that which I would like to share with another, is available 24/7 if I so wish, with others sharing a similar stream.

A collective stream of consciousness is arising as it were, and is flowing even through hand held gadgets of individuals.

Suspended together we ride virtual waves, we hear the opinions of others we are only able to meet because of this space, and we are challenged to broaden our worldview.

Our electronic interdependence also allows cultures to meet. It is enabling the taking of a planetary perspective, the taking of multiple perspectives, and is encouraging dialogue with other perspectives. We begin to recognize diversity and at the same time we realize the need for unity. 

We are learning to develop empathy, as the “other”, we suddenly realize, is more like us than we had imagined.

Karen Armstrong, in “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”, states that compassion means “ to endure (something) with another person, to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into her point of view”.

As we are suspended together, the heart is encouraged to open to allow this all in. 

The compassion so essential to a peaceful existence in a global world begins to blossom.