My Closet's Flying Heart

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Love City

"Erotic City"
If you are Greek, you know it: it's Thessaloniki!
This is the taboo-belief that my city carries literaly for centuries...For the rest of Greeks-especially for the Athenians-, Thessaloniki is the synonym of amorous mood.

Historians relate it to the Port and all that...erotic activity that all cities with ports had.
Some people believe that it's the University Campus that feeds the city with so much warm, impassioned, youthful blood, that romance is just inevitable!
Some put the blame on its women that have always been sharp and pretty.
Some others think it's the fact that this city never sleeps. Just like all the lovestrucks.
Others that it's a small city and the faces become easily familiar.
Or that maybe all cities are erotic when you're just a visitor.

Most people that live here smile ironically when they hear this characterization and I know a lot that absolutely doubt it. I know a few that get really mad! And I'm sure there are some that are secretly kind of proud!!

And we've all had those moments we have furiously mumbled "what an erotic city!!" stuck in he traffic or when the Thermaikos Gulf has "that" smell or being packed like sardines on the bus...

Dress: Sewed by Mrs Despoina

Fabric: "Love City" by Alexander Henry from Fabrics and Trimmings, Etsy

Coat: FORNARINA

Earrings: from SHOPHULLABALOO, Etsy

Ring: from Lilians Treasure, Etsy

( I've added the colors. The ring was originally brass)

Shoes: Miss L Fire

(...and Nicole, thanks for the heart-shape-clutch!!!)

Photos by PyThEuS

And I? I just want to believe it. Because I always try to see it through the eyes of the new student, the tourist, the nightbird and the freshly-in-love.

Because this city's sunshines have a dazzling light and the cloudy misty days have an unexplicably poetic sadness. As for the sunsets and the sunrises, words are so poor to describe them. Just like Love...

But above all, it's the sea... A great poet of this city had said it: nothing is more similar to love than the sea.

"Sea is like Love:
You fall in, not knowing whether you'll ever come out [ ]
Alas, we won't give up on swimming
Just because a few have been drowned.
Alas, if we betrayed the sea
Because it has ways to swallow us.
Sea is like Love.
A thousand relish it- one pays for it."

DINOS CHRISTIANOPOULOS (1962)

And there's also the view of Agnes who has lived in several cities of central Europe. When she comes to town and we walk the streets together, she always says "At last! I came again to the only city that makes me feel like a woman, because men here stare like men!"

A photo of the '60s I came across, affirms it's always been like that!!!

At Michael's Gate in Bratislava, Slovakia

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Burnt Thursday's Cube

If you don't live in Greece, in Venice, in Cologne, in Nice, in Rio de Janeiro, in Lucerne or in New Orleans, you may think I've gone crazy! If not, please let me know which place on earth you are while reading this, so I Iearn more about places where Carnival is an institution too!

The latin word "Carnival" and the greek word "Apokria", have the same meaning: "Away from meat"!
Apokries for the Greek Orthodox Church, is the three week period before Ash Monday, when the 40-day long Lenten Fast begins and lasts till Easter. However the festivities have their origins in ancient Greece and the celebrations in honour of Dionysus (Bachus), the god of wine and joy, that used to take place to celebrate the end of Winter.

Today it's "Burnt Thursday" or "TsiknoPempti" as we call it in Greece and it's always celebrated eleven days before the beginning of Lent. The "Burnt" part refers to the grilling of meat, a big part of the celebration of this day. If you respect yourself, you have to taste some grilled meat! And of course, dress up! Children follow the tradition but Tsiknopempti is a good excuse for fun for the grown ups as well. There are many home barbeque-parties and all the bars and clubs are colorfully decorated in order to welcome appropriately the dressed up party-goers.

But the real party goes on in the streets. What really amuses me is not the costume-wearing people, but all those who walk around normally dressed, even after they've finished work, having ONE crazy element on them! Serious looking gentlemen with clowns' noses, sharp ladies with an axe struck on their head, grannies with alien feelers...
Somewhere amongst those people there's also going to be me today, wearing the costume I made last year but never went out with it after all. It waited patiently for a whole year and it was meant for you to be the first ones to check it out..

Rubik's Cube & hat: made by me!

Earring: OVERDOSExsrz, Etsy

Bag: ModCloth

Thank you Mr.Erno Rubik for your "Magic Cube" and for the inspiration!

Photos by PyThEuS

Wall in Bratislava, Slovakia

Friday, February 6, 2015

Fungi Charm

I love mushrooms! Apart from being one of my favorite delicacies, in my eyes they are also charming in a strange way...
Such an unbelievable huge variety, so many different colors and shapes and some of them so beautiful.

They are suposedly a food easy to be found. No farming, no watering, no special care needed.
You could just drop by the nearest forest and literally bump into them. All you have to do is pick them up! Well, it isn't quite so!
As it usually happens with people, we easily judge by the looks, but it's never wise to do so. And this is exactly the aspect that has always made mushrooms not only fascinating for me, but also something that fills me with awe...

An old greek saying warns: "All kinds of mushrooms can be consumed. Some of them only once, though". Exactly! The most beautiful ones are usually the most dangerous...

You can't just rely on your eyes or instict or luck. You have to study them, learn how to observe them, know them and tell them apart. Of course, there's always the safe choice called "super market", but frankly nothing compares to the taste of wild mushrooms.
I have to admit after all, that I love them for not being that easy!
And for being one of the most educative surprises of nature, teaching us that regardless of being born a fungus, a parasite, you could always turn out to be a treasure...