Portrait of a city

Super summer



But icy winter ...



Living statue

"Johnny Cash was a friend of mine"

Over the course of an acquaintance spanning several decades a Swedish fan, who went by the name Lars, had been a life friend of Johnny Cash until the Man in Black passed away in 2003. Years ago, out of his own personal collection Lars organized a small memorial show here at a Hard Rock cafe in Stockholm, where a large number of documentary photographs, clothing, accessories, personal items were on display.

Following the wood stairs I walked up to the second floor of Hard Rock. Fortunately I was the only visitor that day so the host had the chance to stay a bit chatty with me while presenting his exhibition. Though he appeared to me a bit reserved at first, but once he started talking, he really seemed to be a nice decent guy who knew well Cash and his family in the US. It was very interesting indeed to hear Lars narrate many of his stories and anecdotes - how he got to know one of the most influential musicians of last century and how the quintessential "father and son" relationship lasted throughout the years.

Something that just caught my eye, among the exhibited stuffs, was a hand drawing by Johnny Cash in his late life while he was terminally ill. Lars told me that it was a gift from Cash deeply cherished. Kind of surprising for me to see this artistic side of Johnny Cash. The creation itself didn't look overtly sophisticated, and yet, upon closer examination, you could feel unmistakeably a certain tension of the frailty as opposed to the strength for each stroke, as if in a perennial conflict between sorrow and redemption within the confines of human psyche.

"As sure as night is dark and day is light."

Varnhem to Stockholm

For the past several months I've been accustomed to awakening most of the nights at about 4 a.m. and getting up only to drink something. I always thought coffee was the culprit, but today, after picking up Mark Obama Ndesandjo's novel "Nairobi To Shenzhen" and spending the last hour reading along, I was just stunned.



"It was the angst that roused him from sleep." Ohhh, that drumbeat of unease has struck me lately, too. It's weird at such moments the mind tends to become so alert, hardly befuddled by the immediately precedent period of slumber. Memories "ebb and flow, enter and exit the consciousness". Talking about the verses from my own high school that suddenly leaped out of obscurity and are as clear to me now as yesterday, it's Thomas Gray's musing from year 1750:

"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

......

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way."

It's 6:10 in the morning now. Everything seems to have stopped.

My photo gallery of Sweden at Pbase:
pbase.com/tsienni/sweden

雪国

川端康成的《雪国》我在每天往返的火車上斷斷續續將它念完。 恰好這段時間北國的大雪一直接連不止地飄落著， 整個月份都被一種靜謐的氛圍籠罩， 好似時間又被拉回到聖誕那天， 就此停下腳步。 “穿過縣界長長的隧道， 便是雪國。 夜空下一片白茫茫， 火車在信號所前停了下來。” 每次我一翻開書， 就是開頭這一句。 透過車窗， 外面天空廣闊， 風中揚起一片片雪塵， 白色的樹林在身後流動。

離開家鄉來到這片土地是在一個年初， 記憶也總會在冬季的某一天突然蘇醒過來。 一層淡淡的煙灰， 帶著溫熱， 會從生命的某個角落徐徐升起， 時而隱沒， 時而顯現。

川端康成的世界裡， 也許一切最終都是徒勞的。 但是對于流亡者， 確是福音。 釋懷的春天， 就在冰雪融化後。

Curves

I hated boxes. There are still so many things in life that have the potential to box me in. Reading Oscar Niemeyer this evening makes me feel good. "It is not the right angle that attracts me. Nor the straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free, sensual curve." I can safely say "ditto" to him! Well, if I could ever go back to my teen years and choose what to study in college, I think I'd definitely wish to become an architecture student with all those sweeping curves tangoing on my own design sketchbook for sure. Don't you love it? ;)

"God has no recent posts"

Humans do curious things and harbor curious thoughts. Just today I got pointed to a Facebook fan site called "Getting a text as soon as you pick up your phone and feeling like Jesus", under the page category "Other Business". Meh blah. Typically Facebookish, the system at times feels just like writing on sort of a dry-erase marker board. It easily ends up overly indulgent in its execution.

But I got to say, amidst the constant flow of those little snippets of mundane lives, there's a chance to take a deep breath once in a while - even in a virtual cyberspace. That's what gave me pause when I ran into this FB page:
facebook.com/pages/God/10141208299

The first thing I read there: "God is on Facebook". Woah. :) Some of us mortals might remain skeptical, but hey, see, computers could simply leave no doubt whatsoever. Immediately next follows a gentle Facebook reminder, that in order to connect with God, all you need to do is to sign up. Not complicated at all.

And the most stunning. What appears to be a machine-generated statement in the middle of the blank. Revealed as such.

"God has no recent posts"

Not since Kierkegaard have I ever read anything similarly profound as what was said there, or more accurately speaking, what's really been unsaid. Now comes the ONE.

Me definitely not a religious type. Just when the long holidays are drawing near, spirituality tends to ring in my little world.

I wonder if David Hartman was right when he quipped: "to say that God's thoughts are not human thoughts is only to admit the limits of human understanding".

Two

One plus one equals more than two.

24 hours in Östersund

Just on the spur of the moment I managed to make a trip to "Republiken Jamtland" on my off day. At first I received an email that morning from SAS about the bargain deal they offered, then I called the hostel in Östersund and was told they had a free room for the night so I went straight to the airport after breakfast. Haven't been backpacking for years, it surprised me how uncomplicated the whole trip turned out to be. Perhaps I'm not very keen for planning in general, improvisation once again made my day.

The hostel was really cozy in a typical Nordic wood house. Plus, I was the only guest at my floor, so I felt quite at home. The hostel manager was a super nice Swedish lady who told me the local tales of Jämtland, including of course the monsters in the lake Storsjön. Later I took a promenade along the lake myself, not seeing anything unusual, though, only the lovely forests wrapped in a white mist. The atmosphere was really idyllic here.

If you visit Östersund one day, you shouldn't miss the moose farm at the outskirt of the city, which I only knew about after I left. Wish I could have stayed longer.












Jamtflaggan, the flag of Republic of Jamtland, by the side of the national flag of Kingdom of Norway, in Sweden!

Amsterdam - Hamburg

Although my first-time ever visit to Amsterdam was brief, once I was there I almost instantly fell in love with the Dutch type - their laid-back, outgoing personalities most impressed me.

Without knowing beforehand anything about this city I had booked a hotel very close to Leidseplein. It turned out to be a good choice. The location was abuzz with vibrant nightlife. Pretty refreshing to pass through thongs of crowd down a street packed with different kinds of restaurants still remaining open at 1 am on a weekday.

Check out my online album:
pbase.com/tsienni/september

When I reached Hamburg by train, it was exactly ten days before the German General Parliamentary Election. One curious find I encountered was this graffiti inscription that was seen left on a candidate ad for Guido Westerwelle, the leader of Free Democratic Party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's new governing partner. Not sure if it's because the liberal-leaning of the pro-business Free Democrats caused consternation among some die-hard German nationalists. "Stop Islam", that's what it reads in public near Hamburg Hauptbahnhof.

"Utanförskap"

Eritreanska midsommarfirande i Husby, den omtalade "utanförskapsområden". Många reagerar på begreppet strukturell diskriminering men när jag var där, jag såg en annan sida av de marginaliserade som bor i miljonprogrammet.

Reportage Gallery

Where is my Iranian vote?

Anyone who has watched Nahid Persson Sarvestani's documentary "Drottningen och jag" from last year, a surprising tale of encounter between a communist girl and the Iranian exiled empress, would perhaps be less surprised to find both the Iranian communists and royalists coming together to demonstrate against the alleged vote rigging in Iran's current presidential election.

On June 23rd, hundreds of overseas supporters of Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, many of them wearing masks, turned out in Stockholm to began an almost daily protest for Iranian democracy and press freedoms, culminating in the break-in and storming of the Iranian embassy in Stockholm several days later.

Some dissenting voices were also heard during the open demonstrations. While I was attending a rally at Sergel's Square, at its conclusion all of a sudden a few pro-government old guards started to yell at a young female protester, who, then, angrily retorted: "I'm not going to be shut up by you orthodox zealots!" Luckily with the police standing by, the argument didn't descend into violence.

I was asked why most of the slogans were exclusively in English, but how many of us could actually tell the difference of Farsi from Arabic just by looking at the written signs? There are other plausible reasons as well, or does it really matter?

My new baby

Thanks to the jerk who stole my D300 in downtown Stockholm the other day, I finally come back to tinker with films - not that bad, huh?

The good deal I found at tradera.se gave me a mint conditioned Contax G-1 plus Carl Zeiss Planar T* 45mm f2, costing less than 3,000 SEK in total. I wished it was a G2, but I actually liked the older version more, which felt more right in the hand, a great back-to-basics I should add. The Zeiss planar is said to the sharpest 35mm lens ever made, but nay, more relevant for me is its "normal" focal length I'd like to accustom my eyes to.

Last evening I shot my first Tri-X roll, how neat! Mastering the rangefinder focus is a wild guessing game, though. I assume I missed roughly 50% of all the exposures. An alright start.

That's what happens when you lose motivation or ambition, feel stuck or slow forward - just unlock the shutter and press on.



Although, a dream camera like this one still my heart pause!
Leica I Schraubgewinde (Modell A, 1930)