Labas, mieli žmogai, gal noretumėt atvykt į mano foto parodos apie Gruziją uždarymą šį penktadienį 5 val (liepos 24 d.) ? Iki septynių galima bus pasiautėti ten. Atsiveskit draugų ir giminiečių! Galerijos reikia ieškoti ne Stiklių gatvėj, o kieme prie Amatininkų restorano Didžiojoj gatvėj. Būt smagu pasimatyt!

Cactusas Evakas

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2009.07.08 – 2009.07.26 Vilniaus fotografijos galerija (Stiklių g. 4) Vilniaus fotografijos galerija (Stiklių g. 4) Galerija dirba kasdien, išskyrus sekmadienį, nuo 10 val. iki 19 val. Šeštadieniais – nuo 10 val. iki 15 val. CandyCactus Fotografijų paroda “Gruzija” CandyCactus yra menininkė žongliruojanti lėtu gyvenimu, maža ekologine pėda ir momento grožiu. Jau eilę metų gyvendama nuoseklų klajoklės gyvenimą anapus knygų, CandyCactus yra gyvenusi bendruomenėse, kurios vienu ar kitu būdu yra silpnesnėse pozicijose – su čigonais Rumunijoje, su kurdais Turkijoje, arabais Izraelyje, musulmonais Gruzijoje. Palaikydama mažos ekologinės pėdos idėją, CandyCactus į Gruziją iš Lietuvos nuvyko dviračiu, kur keliavo pėsčiomis, traukiniais, arkliais. 2008 metais praleido žiemą mažame musulmoniškame kaime Adžarijos kalnuose. CandyCactus pagrindinis meno objektas tai pats gyvenimas, kuriame svarbiausi maži dalykai mažoms publikoms – nuo žaidimo gatvėje su čigonų vaikais iki dainų draugams. O čia – nuotraukos iš Gruzijos Vilniaus publikai.

“Some have entirely forgotten the lost heritage and the mystery of their abandonment; their games absorbed them, they have become gamblers, they have theories of chance, their talk is all of Progress of one sort or another. They forget the great mystery of life. We tramps and wanderers remember.”

“The town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms.
The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town are
never out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets.”

“Then the spirit drove me into the wilderness to my mountains and
valleys, by the side of the great sea and by the haunted forests. Once
more the vast dome of heaven became the roof of my house, and within
the house was rebuilded that which my soul called beautiful. There I
refound my God, and my being re-expressed itself to itself in terms of
eternal Mysteries. I vowed I should never again belong to the town.”

“I never knew in advance where I should make my night couch; for I was Nature’s guest
and my hostess kept her little secrets. Each night a new secret was
opened, and in the secret lay some pleasant mystery.”

from “A Tramp’s Sketches” by Stephen Graham, a guy who hunded years ago was a tramp in Caucasus. His writings are like medicine healing the sadness being once in a while back in what they call civilization. I am back in Tbilisi, suffocating of cars, dust and noise. Will escape soon. Mountains are close.

Hundreds miles of silence are hundred miles of silence.

Where have I been?

If you’d ask me where I was
I would tell you, I don’t know
In a stone, in god’s ear
in robe’s hole, on the edge of the page

Well, we have been carrying on bikes this viola, electronic piano, a huge mic and an apogy soundcard – finally they got used.. We are all in sounds

Nomadic Garden

Karviaganys

Sweaty greetings to all who will be reading this. It is the hottest part of the year in Thailand.
Now we are packing our studio in our bike bags and are heading to a monastery to lock ourselves in for some time..

“Where are you off to?”
“I don’t know,” Snufkin replied.
The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.

November – Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, mosquitonet, bike, no return ticket and hundred miles of silence

In Germany feeling like Snufkin..

“To this old park came Snufkin with Little My in his pocket. He crept silently along the fence, looking in at his old enemy, the Park Keeper.

“What are you going to do to him?” asked Little My. “Hang him, boil him, or stuff him?”

“Scare him!” replied Snufkin and clenched his teeth around the pipe-stem. “There’s only one person in the whole world whom I truly dislike, and that’s the Park Keeper. I’m going to pull down all his notices about forbidden things.”

Snufkin now rummaged in his knapsack and pulled out a large paper bag. It was full of small glossy white seeds.

“What’s that?” asked Little My.

“Hattifattener seed,” answered Snufkin.

“Oh,” said Little My, astonished. “Do Hattifatteners come from seeds?”

“They do,” said Snufkin. “But the important thing is: only if the seeds are sown on Midsummer Eve.”

He began throwing handfuls of seed between the fence rails. He crept noiselessly along the whole of the park fence and scattered his seeds everywhere, but was careful to throw them sparsely, so that the Hattifatteners wouldn’t have their paws entangled when they came up. When Snufkin’s bag was empty he sat down, lit his pipe, and waited.

The sun was setting, but the evening was warm, and the Hattifatteners began to grow at once. Here and there on the neatly mowed lawn round white blobs were appearing, like snowball mushrooms.

“Look at that one,” said Snufkin. “In a little while it’ll have its eyes over the earth.”

He was right. Very shortly two round eyes appeared beneath the white skull.

“They’re especially electric when new-grown,” explained Snufkin. “Look now, he’s got his paws!”

The air was already filled with a faint rustling sound from all the growing Hattifatteners. The Park Keeper still hadn’t noticed anything unusual because he was keeping a keen eye on the woodies. But on the lawns all around him Hattifatteners were shooting up in hundreds. They had scarcely more than their feet in the ground. Soon they would take their first steps. A smell of sulphur and burned rubber drifted throught the park. The Park Wardress sniffed.

“What’s that smell?” she asked. “Children, who of you’s smelling?”

Faint electric shocks were noticeable in the ground.

The Park Keeper began to shift his feet uneasily. His shiny metal buttons were flashing small blue sparks.

All of a sudden the Park Wardress gave a cry and jumped up on the seat of her chair. She pointed a shaking finger at the lawn.

The Hattifatteners had grown to life size and now came swarming and moiling towards the Park Keeper from all directions, attracted by his electrified buttons. Small flashes of lightening crossed the air, and the buttons were crackling. Suddenly the Park Keeper’s ears lighted up. Then his hair crackled and sparkled, his nose began to glow – and all of a sudden the Park Keeper was luminous from head to toe! Shining like a full moon he scuttled off toward the park gates, followed by an army of Hattifatteners.

The Park Wardress was already climbing the fence. Only the little children were left. They sat quietly in the sandbox and looked very suprised.

“Smart,” said Little My, impressed.

“And that’s that!” said Snufkin, pushing back his hat. “And now we’ll pull down every single notice, and every single leaf of grass shall be allowed to grow as it likes.”

All his life Snufkin had longed to pull down notices that asked him not to do things he liked to do, and he was fairly trembling with excitement and expectation. He started off with:

NO SMOKINGThen he flew at:

DO NOT SIT ON THE GRASSAfter that he turned on:

LAUGHING AND WHISTLING
STRICTLY PROHIBITEDand the next minute:

NO HOP, NO SKIP
AND DEFINITELY NO JUMP
ALLOWED HEREfollowed suit.

The little woodies stared at him with more and more astonishment.

Little by little it was dawning on them that he had come to their rescue. They left the sandbox and gathered around him.

“Go home, little ones,” said Snufkin. “Go wherever you please.”

But they did not go, they followed him everywhere. When the last of the notices was trampled to the earth and Snufkin lifted his knapsack on to his back, they still followed at his heels.

“Shoo, little ones,” said Snufkin. “Run along to your mamma now.”

“Perhaps they have no mamma,” said Little My.

“But I’m not a bit used to children!” said the now terrified Snufkin. “I don’t even know if I like them!”

“They seem to like you,” replied Little My, grinning broadly.

Snufkin looked at the silently admiring group that had flocked around his legs.

“As if one weren’t enough,” he said. “Well. Come along then. But don’t blame me if everything goes wrong!”

And with twenty-four serious little children at his heels Snufkin wandered off over the meadows, bleakly wondering what he would do when they got hungry, had wet feet, or a stomach-ache.”

Tove Jansson

berlin ist berlin ist berlin ist berlin.

My pendulum said I should not eat bread, a duduk player told me.

Hm. But how do you ask her? ( I was not sure if pendulum was masculin or feminin. Intuitivelly I would say feminin.)

You just have to ask, he said.

Hm.

First you ask, where is YES, and were is NO. Then you can ask questions just to see if it works, like am I a woman or am I a man.

Gosh.

He pulled out a carabin tied on a string.

I remembered I had a carabin on my keys. Just have to find the string. And then to ask, where should I go.

But you have to be specific.

Like this? :

Should I learn to build yurtas in Mongolia?

Should I get an IT job in India?

Should I go to sleep now?

I guess it says YES. Good night.

I am tired of traveling. I thought a library for the winter would be cool to have around. So I found an incredibly interesting course in TU in Berlin and decided to enroll myself there. And yes, I realised I might be a victim of the untranlatable German phenomena called “Torschlusspanik” – the feeling of panic one has, when the gates are closing in front of her. Not really that I would panic, I just thought, it would be nice to go to study again.

My diploma, original, had to reach my beloved friend and cousin, coming all way from Lithuania. She would then bring the thing to the office in the university, since the university does not accept originals sent by mail.

When she finally went to the postoffice, they said since no one came to pick it up within one week, they sent it back. Back where? Somewhere in Lithuania?

The deadline came. Diploma was somewhere in the air between Berlin and Lithuania. The university office said, they cannot make any exceptions. They would not wait.

So, no Berlin. But what then? Winters in Caucasus are harsh and cold, I will not do this again. I guess the answer will come by itself.

Even being sedentary one cannot stop traveling I guess. Yes, I was on one spot, next to the sea. I would read books and practice poi and then have some future building activities – trying to buy a piece of land in order to set up a garden in the epicurean sense.

One can survive there before and after the season. I was before. Piles of plastic bottles, the unimaginable green around and quietness, interrupted only by at the sudden busy Georgians who seemed to grab histerically all their tools and try to repair that has not been repaired since ages. But that’s fine with me as long as the bars, playing “chornye glaza” – the music type I cannot bring over my heart, were not opened yet.

I did not move and people came here with their stories.

There was this Russian familiy around. While eating at the only opened inn I told them from the other table, that they were as smart as me to come before the season would start. Their child, Petia, had a summer cap that looked like a white boat, like from the old times. His face was incredibly Russian. Like from the old pictures in black and white. But here they were. In colour.

It took some time for us to strike the conversation. Both, me and them rather shy animals. Another, when we already would dine all at the same table, Ilja said: I am actually a Georgian. It sounded stupid. Trying to what? To complimet the culture this way, or what? No, my grandgrandfather was Jugashvili. They called him Stalin.

In Georgian tradition there is a toast that one drinks for the ancestors. One spils some of the drink to the ground.

Let us drink to our ancestors: your grandgrandfather, and my grandfather, who was forced to write a poem for your grandgrandfather.

We did not talk about politics, the future or the past. We drank toast for the houses, boats and the black sea.

On the last day, when they had to leave, I ran around trying to find them. I wanted to give them a small childish badge with moomintroll, we were talking so much about.

I found them finally. Ilja and Olia smiled. Like in one of those books of Tove Jansson they started digging in their bags, unpacking and causing a chaos just before having to leave.

They pulled out a small black bag. They said, you might need the bag more than a badge, don’t you?

There were moomintroll on it.

http://www.io.com/~fazia/Moomin.html

I waved them good bye like a grandma from the old animation film about the lion Bonifacius. I will miss you, I waved to them.

Armenia. Just crossed the boarder and walked to Haghpat. Green valley. Exactly as I like it. Mist in the air, green, clouds, water.

There was a certain guy Sayat Nova, who used to write poetry in Armenian, Georgian, Persian and Azeri, he spent many years here in this black monastery, he must have been sad, since he loved the sister of the king, and for this was imprisoned and later killed here. Now Armenians and Georgians cannot agree, who’s poet he was. But who cares? Those days no one cared about the nationality, but now.. I found a quite place in the cemetery and slept there. Cemeteries are the quietest places anyway. And if the ghosts should visit me in the sleep, they are welcome.

Although it is nearly impossible to imagine Armenians and Azeris in one place without fighting after the Karabakh war, there is such a place. Close to the boarder between Georgian and Armenia there is a bazar called Ptgavan, which means “the paradise of fruits”. There they trade peacefully – Armenians, Azeris from Georgia and Georgians. Like in times of Sayat Nova. Trade will save the world? Well, at least the small scale trade seems to be an excellent way for people to communicate again.

Corporations are just about to swallow all small things on one hand. But if I think consequently – in terms of nationalism, corporations provide excellent transnational brands that mentally somehow connect people. It is not about being Muslim or Christian, it is more about having Nokia or Sony Ericsson mobile phone. Trade will save or enslave?