Saturday, October 31, 2009

ROMA AMOR...mora, arom, maro, armo, ....etc

Sharing a hotel room in Rome... just like the Barcelona story.
First day... out in the rain... with my monsters...




by night fall we all learned to cage the monsters in the 7 hills hotel.





so the next morning we let the city unfold its show.


shy...





postcars from Italy... to Beirut.



and later in the weekend.. it got more contrast... more color...



wind of windows


window to window






by this time.. we decided to make new friends and start tasting the good wines and the food. Here they go... strangers and friends and mostly good times.
I wish my mind would have been more where my body was.

















Saturday, October 10, 2009

Tea for V




No sugar please... thank you.
I took off the scarf and placed it next to me - i loved how it matched my dress. How come he was late ? In fact, while i was glad to be here on time and able to act pretentious about punctuality i was somehow intrigued about him not being here already. Most of vampires were late on dates.. i never met any but i knew that much. Having all the immortality on their side made time such an fancy notion. He was different.
My hi-school best friend, Amara died in his arms - so in love i got scared then. Also my great aunt died in his arms, i found her journal... and in fact that's where i got to know him so well... as it seemed it was one of the few times he has almost lost his head for a girl.
So i knew he was always on time. I knew he never lied - always telling the truth. If you asked him the right question he would have told you the real thing - it was a pact he made with himself... and that makes him so vulnerable to me.
Lucky enough... knowing so much about him made my talks rather plesant - as i avoided so many questions that i felt he was expecting.
I've seen him a bit torn apart by the fact that he could not really show his inner secrets.

The tea was slowly steaming my hands as i was playing imaginary piano above my cup. I had a large ring on my left hand with a ruby that was waiting for the tea to match its color. Before going out i didn't had too much choice of perfume - i have so many and i pick them by their names but the dress asked for "Mirage" by Mirror and i lift the fragrance and my neck up.. on my red high heels boots. That's when he came around and i wasn't sure if the perfume was messing with my mind or he really shaved and cut his hair and was wearing elegant clothes. It was totally against his type.
- I'm sorry i was late... the traffic.
- Don't worry... i entertained myself exchanging glances with the kids from across the room, i said. He didn't seemed to hear me. What will you have? i asked, knowing that he takes a Bloody Red Bull - his medicine as he calls it. I knew from a letter sent to Amara that he found a race of Lamas who's blood had the taste so similar to humans, and so close to her blood perfume that he bought a whole farm.He was carrying some fresh blood with him, every day, using a "designer made" thermo bottle, so he can mix with his drink... usually Red Bull.
- What are you having? Smells great. Is it tea? I'll have some...
- Oh... i said, genuinely surprised. Are you a tea drinker?
- Well... i love warm drinks, he said, and i have the feeling that i have been missing the tea flavors, i was too rough in my youth to have the capacity to detect and enjoy the delicate construction of tea.
- Ha ha, i faked a laugh, tell me about your youth then. And i was really worried about the answer since it was the first time i asked him about his past.
- Well, i'm so old i have already forgotten it.
- Come on... you're not, only few years older than me - i pinched his guts again, hating the fact that he was avoiding my questions.
- Well... a girl told me once, as she looked inside my eyes that... i have a very old soul - and i was 14 at the time.
I knew very well the story... it was my great aunt, and no... he was not 14, only his body was that age at the time. The immortality to the half vampires was a process of transition, as they could be born and die yet pass into the next shell usually their own children. Their aging was different -much slower than humans and unless they had a violent death, they could transfer all their lifes into their kids as they were dieing. Cancer produced a lot of these kids with very old souls, and a series of long lives transfered into them. So he was looking 14 for my great aunt, 22 for Amara and 30 something for me.
The tea arrived on the table and was taking it's time for the infusion. I realized that the process was dragging us into the tea cup - our mids were finally getting the right watering, the right temperature, and the right intentions so our feelings open up like tea leaves spreading silence and tension in our hearts.
But i intended to face him, to confront him straight to his core - i was quite happy on how i was mastering my feelings as of late and i knew exactly who i was dealing with this time.
Yet he was different today. Our last talks were so... him... what could have happened? We had great time, as friends, long talks about nothing. I was really intending to break this boundary, to tell him that i know everything about him, all about being a vampire, all about how girls fall for him and he never falls in love, all about his thirst and... uh.. I've seen his eyes looking at me, his nose sniffing from across the room the flow of my blood.
I had so many man falling in love for me the last years, all i got was trouble and depression, a feeling of loneliness as nobody could make me snap my heart again and here i was, ready to jump into yet another extreme thing and he was denying my entry.
- sugar? i asked.
- I don't know... yes ?
- Maybe not.. if you're into tea.. like seriously.. you don't add sugar. It dirties the flavor. And there it was... my answer. I saw his weakness for a split of a second.
The weakness i have been seeing so much lately... that hesitation of the answer.. that proof that feelings have messed his mind already. DAMN - i wanted the strong guy i knew... not this act. I wanted my vampire, my truth, my confrontation, i wanted the guy who could speak of love and death and blood like a doctor does.
I will confront him, and my words will cut like knifes and i'll butcher his soul for being weak in front of me. Why do i always get to ruin the men i could like?
I take the tea cup with my most elegant gesture, straighten my back, take a sip... a second sip... long pause, gather all my venom under my tongue, prepare the question about vampires, and blood and Amara and my aunt and... the tea is infusing trough my mouth, the leaves are falling at the bottom of my heart, the mind knows that there is no more need to shine... you can lie now, you can pretend, you can shut up your inner seeds, and you can deny yourself all the truth, all this man stands for, you can ignore all the reality... since finally... a feeling is real.

- I love cinnamon in my tea...
- Me too... said the vampire.






Saturday, October 03, 2009

Summer Thoughts

Just before everything goes under the snow i thought i'd dig some shots of summer.
This is south of France... Bayonne... all red and white... all party...














and around...