by the sea

in early september, we all met at my parents' house for my father's birthday. one evening, the niece and i sneaked out to spend an hour at the beach. we splashed through the sea mud, did some drawing in the sand, gathered feathers and stones, and had an ice cream. walkers and horse-drawn coaches were scattered across the wide, empty ground of the sea. the tide is a magic thing.

this weekend, the niece will come for a visit, along with her sister and their parents. what are you up to?

unrelated

two favourites from france - unrelated. one taken in avignon, the other one on the terrace in st. rémy.

yesterday i had a funny day, where nothing worked out as planned. as if the wiring of that day was somehow wrong. today, i'm feeling a little under the weather: a stiff neck, pressure on my ears, light-headed. hope it's passing.

p.s.: feeling much better today, thanks for your kind words!

tapas with marion

i would never have found that small spanish restaurant without marion. safely tucked away in a side street, the front looked unassuming, and there were no customers in the first room. it was the tiny courtyard where everybody sat. it was hot, music was blaring from the kitchen, the dishes were marked on a board as long as my arm and my leg together. and my, were they good. (see those wine glasses. i want some.)

so here's to the lady, whose birthday it is today - happy, happy, marion!

there

there was a house off the main road, off the next one after, and down a dirt track, where we stayed. it was hot and i can still hear the cigales singing.

a very good day

one sunny day i drove to avignon to see the cy twombly show at the collection lambert and to meet mary. what a perfect day it was. i so enjoyed the exhibition, i think we needed something like three or four hours to see it, because we stopped everywhere, getting lost in some conversation. i remember we wondered how very different sol lewitt's work and his personal space at home were - would you have guessed a master of conceptual, highly cerebral art would have a study full of memorabilia and an amazing moodboard, and would take serial pictures of his crockery? and we did have such a good time looking at lartigue's stereoscopic photographs. what a cheek he was.

cy twombly's photographs were quite wonderful. i loved the early black and white images he took of the shared studio space with rauschenberg in new york, but his later polaroids were quietly poetic, altogether of a different kind.

very kindly, mary gave me a roll of kodak elite chrome, on which these frames were taken. and she introduced me to fondant au chocolat, which we had in the courtyard, after having successfully missed lunch service due to our chatting away. it was a revelation. thanks mary!

(the graphics on the wall are by douglas gordon. marion went as well, on another day.)

the season of rain

it's here again. the season of rain.

today, we are having mayoral elections in berlin, so i'll be donning my hideous rain cape soon, cycling to the polling station, then onto the museum bookshop for my sunday shift.

i'm starting to crave cakes, pears, lambs lettuce, walnuts, mushrooms. what's your favourite seasonal dish? any cake recipes? or savoury treats?

(these images were taken on a ferry ride - there's a post about berlin ferries over on mostly berlin. with the very same pictures, something i rarely do. i had to, this time...)

the pool

let's go to the pool, shall we? (back in berlin, outside my window people are walking past in woolly hats, which is worrying. in my mind, though, i can go back to the pool side whenever i want.)

p.s.: first two frames colour negative film, all others taken on slide.

lines

i'd like to say thank you for all your feedback. not only does it make me happy to hear from you, it is also so very helpful. i always tend to think that everybody else knows exactly what they are doing, that everybody else has a clear, distinct style, found their way, while i'm finding it often excruciating to be all over the place. rather like circling an unknown point-of-having-arrived, and constantly being somewhere along the wide periphery of that circle. since i feel i'm so far from that certain point, the circumference is great and the individual spots i'm checking in from lie wide apart. it seems so random.

still, on that journey, i'm learning a lot, and you often keep me going. so thank you.

this morning, i have some lines from the corbusier house in marseille for you.

morning

waking up at the hotel corbusier on a summer's day.

corbusier

well, i had to go. and of course, marion took me. to the unité d'habitation in marseille, one of le corbusier's most seminal buildings.

it's hard to put into words how connected i felt to this place. maybe you can guess from the photos i took.

p.s.: a new post here, with some news.

thinking

since last november life was moving so fast it felt suffocating. the scales were just tipping far too much. not in the way of having to work the odd extra hour, but in the sense of an all-encompassing state of working, where there was no time to even leave the house when the sun was - so rarely - shining, or to see a friend for a chat. occasionally there were precious hour-long breaks to meet someone, or chances to cycle to the garden, but even that was mostly impossible by the time june and july came around.

being away from it all for two weeks, staying in the south of france, two long weeks of hot summer days, days that were finally entirely unplanned and truly free, gave me time to think.

i don't want a life that feels like a race i can't win. time is a precious gift, not a string of numbered days. i will make space for shared hours, shared thoughts and ideas. because as much as i love my work, living and creating, and caring and be cared about, are infinitely closer to my heart. first things first.

going for a stroll

going for a stroll in marseille. what a fascinating city. and i've only seen a tiny fraction of it in 1 1/2 short days.

what you can't see is how hot it was. we simply had to go inside the shops because they were air-conditioned, you see. no other reason, of course.

of friends and places

it may not be the best way of travelling to marseille, on a very hot day in august on just 3 and 1/2 hours of sleep. but then there was marion, who met me at the station and took me to la caravelle for lunch. she is the best city guide, and it was so good seeing her again. the food was delicious - even though i couldn't eat the snails - the tender fish and soft boiled egg with new potatoes, haricots verts and aioli were wonderful. afterwards we went to the corbusier house, but that's another story...

p.s.: when looking at the old port, i can't get this reference out of my head. give me seventies movies any day.