Guatemala mon amour

This winter I have been for the first time to Guatemala. The country is quite famous for its colourful traditional fabrics and the more infamous civil war that affected mainly the poor people - as usual I should say!- and most of all the Maya population. My mind always brings together colours with fun and playfulness maybe because the Italian religious colour of mourning is black and that of happy celebrations is white. All other colours are free of meaning, with specific superstitious exceptions of course!

So before going to Guatemala I did associate their colourful wear with a cheerful population… now I may say that I was wrong. 36 years of civil war - born from the well-known interlacing interests of economic and power of North and South America (Operation PB Success) - which has finished only in 1996, cannot leave smiling people on its way.

It has been the first time that I have seen a policeman with a tommy-gun inside a church while the Mass is being celebrated! Of course I couldn’t resist asking him to take a picture… I didn’t want to forget that and he accepted to model but outside the church!

Basically it’s not that Guatemalans are not polite or nice, not at all. It’s just that they don’t seem yet to have recover from their recent history and what it has brought in the present time, such as for example a perception of simple being at peace that you can feel while speaking with Tibetans who as well have been coming under so grave injustice - I met Tibetans in Nepal many years ago… maybe I will now have the possibility to meet more angry ones! -  or that lighter smiling aptitude of Mexicans for everyday life, a country that still continues having so much poverty and heinous eruptions of violence.

Guatemala still remains a place to visit for hundred “touristic” reasons!

Having been there I think the first one is exactly that: with a respectful tourism you may bring money to help its development and in change you can receive a great lesson of XX century history from the best teacher I have ever met… LIFE! 

An informal coverage of the Royal Wedding

On Friday morning the streets of my Borough were unusually empty and quiet… I suppose that quite all the streets of London were silent at that point of the day! 
Most of the people were stuck in front of TV-screens and those more dogged in front of Westminster Abbey. It must have been a very hard job to find a good street location to watch live the wedding but Britons like to camp out for such special occasions. 
Of course at the time I showed up the hot zone was already fenced off from ages but I was there to look at the crowd not at the crown...

About the end of the ceremony the excitement went up again in a collective desperate flow of hope to gain a good place but unfortunately the best positions on the grid were being kept busy. 
Finally the area encompassing St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace was partly reopened and a river of people started moving slowly in every directions.

While in the Palace they were partying with the Queen’s canapés, people in the Parks were simulating the Royal Family picnicking and enjoying the moment. 


Weather forecast had been heavy rain showers: of course the sun went out!

A big crowd have been persistently populating the area all day long. I came back to Buckingham Palace at 7.30 pm. after a break and they were still there standing. I suppose that it was more a matter of melancholy about the end of the day rather than eagerness about something else they expected to occur.

Obviously I have seen all the official part on the BBC.

To sum up my royal opinions the real winner of the day is for sure Harry with his rolling gait and informal look.

I do love the Queen-Granma as well who didn’t let her blue blanket at home and put it on her knees even for two minutes in the royal car while going at the ceremony.

Prince William appeared to be so naturally confident, sweet and elegant that everybody conjures up his mother while I feel the urgency to underline that even his father must have been the co-creator of such a nice chap.

And finally Kate who continued to show only one facial expression and a half: one polished smile and half a thoughtful face. I have been looking at her images for a while and it seems that she has no more than this. Even on Friday she appeared with this small range of facial expressions, but I can’t believe that a human been has no more than this… that is to me one emotion and a half!

I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor chap and continuing to hope that she may have other facial expressions behind this one and a half… otherwise this is a serious case that makes allowance for a new-traditional invocation:

That God save the Prince!  

the indian rosary...and the catholic one

Out of the blue some times ago my über-creative sister has asked me to take pictures of her new born malas.

Firstly hearing the question by phone I asked her: what’s a mala???

Honestly I did know what a mala was, it’s just that at that time I wasn’t thinking about mala and most of all that she could ever spend her time making one. I know very well her fascination for Yoga culture otherwise she would have never become a yoga teacher of course!! It’s more because creating a “necklace” takes a lot of time and I suppose she hasn’t a lot. Out of this familiar consideration, I have obviously agreed with the proposal and suddenly found my table packed with these beautiful malas – by the way this is not an adv-post made up to sell them out! I even don’t know if she is up with that for selling or not…

Anyway if you want to learn more about mala meaning she gives a very simple and charming explanation in her website: http://alessandrayoga.com/2010/10/14/beads-of-awareness/#more-606

As usual while taking photos my brain started working on its own.

I thought: Oh my God these malas are so gorgeous and so attractive. Out of my familiar proud, and taken that I don’t spend my time saying prayers and counting them out on the mala, I just realized that they were so nice to be worn on.

And with the same natural pattern of mind I conjured up my hometown and the image of all touristic streets nearby the Vatican City filled up with cheapjack religious goods. I don’t want to be offensive: I consider those cheapjack-goods not at all because of their religious purpose. What I realized it’s that most of these oriental religions have a nice-looking apparatus that now totally lacks in our catholic one. And the way they have tried to modernize some stuff seems to be only a no-U-turn-way towards the worst...

Of course I’m not suggesting that John Galliano should design a new Pope’s fashion collection… which would not be a very bad idea… I’m just thinking why not to make the all thing more appealing??