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Wednesday 30 June 2010

Fortunes and fortune tellers

Ok, unpacking is boring. It might take days. Unless there are new exciting things waiting to come out of the suitcase. And this is always the case when I come back from my Silk road trips.

I like clean uncluttered interiors, and I am really happy that our new/old house still has a great capacity to welcome my little treasures. The newly acquired painting “Nostalgia ” is the queen of the evening, of course. I hung it the very same day, jet lag or no jet lag. It seems like I had it forever. I can’t hold myself from posting this photo. There is always a little space for nostalgia…

I am also a proud owner of an antique “suzane”. I still don’t know where to install it, but I am still a proud owner :)

Semi precious stones, ceramics and silver hand-crafted jewelry are something to consider bringing back as well.

Oh, and the (good) fortune telling. To be frank I am a little afraid of fortune tellers, but not this time. The mood was light, the price was fair, and the fortune lady looked nothing like one, it was rather a joke than adventure (ok, a little adventure). She told me a lot of good stuff (perhaps because I warned her NOT to tell me the bad stuff). I can’t tell what it was, otherwise it won’t come true :)

Oh, speaking of new interiors, Teatro Palino and the UnvermeidBar are re-opening this coming Friday. The second floor is available now and the brand new kitchen with fancy cocktails and delicious treats.

Have a great week everyone and only good news for all!

Love, Anna
P.S. And for those of you who hint I haven’t been posting much of my own works lately, I post a fragment of my new painting “Sleeping blackbirds”. For mosaic parts I am using motifs of early islamic tiles. I like this one, with lotus heads in cobalt-blue, turquoise and bole red...magical, almost hypnotic. 

Saturday 19 June 2010

Nostalgia

My little niece Lidia is born under the constellation Aquarius and she is a water freak. She was promised a trip Tashkent when I come to visit, to Aquapark, the famous aquatic fantasy of my childhood.

We are back this afternoon and today is the hottest day that I can remember. As our heated beyond all limits taxi rolled on melting asphalt away from blurry from the heat border, I looked out of the car window at the sun-burned steppe, and only one thought could console me: I've got Nostalgia.

Here is the story. Stealing a few hours from our amusement program (amusement takes a lot of energy and time!) I took a taxi to “Broadway” street; in my student years it was the center of art, culture, and night life of Tashkent. Things have changed since then.
The area close to the presidential palace is cleaned up, reconstructed, and…fenced. Wide, clean, and empty streets; monumental, well-lit buildings create an impression of one endless mausoleum.

I miss the noisy, kitschy Broadway; but marching along unrecognizable quiet streets I find a few art dealers. Looking through hundreds of canvases I notice a small painting which is standing out among the others, or rather it looks a little lonely there. Something in it touches me deeply, but I can’t quite place it… Perhaps it makes me think of me and my sister (I would have been the half-headed one…). Or the sad fox on the background reminds me of the little prince. I pick it up and guess what? The author is born and grew up in Tajikistan. All become even clearer to me when I find out the title... “Nostalgia”.


I want to know the artist.  The very next day I steal few more hours from our amusement program, and meet Bakhtiyor Umarov. We talk. He shows me a catalog of his works: canvases radiate humor and optimism; his personages are grotesque, naïve, and full of life.





He explains: "“Nostalgia” is somewhat different, experimental..." He exposed in London and Paris. And he is extremely modest. I want to see more of his work. Bakhtiyor gives me addresses of galleries I can visit. He signs “Nostalgia” for me, we say “Goodbye”, and I hail another taxi to dart across the city to Art Gallery Caravan One to have a look at this painting.


Time rolls a few centuries back as I step inside the Caravan One. Tasteful design, hand-made fabrics and tableware, beautiful paintings on the walls - inevitablly with Oriental aura - everything breathes history and tradition.

I am fifteen minutes early for a vernissage; I am invited and I stay. Airy and detailed graphic drawings hung in the courtyard are by Khilola Shermatova, it is her vernissage tonight. She is beautiful and radiant; Peri is the first word which comes to mind...

People arrive. Even the shower doesn’t seem to spoil the magic, on the contrary, it feels like a good omen.



I feel a little emotional all of a sudden; my freedom, my “rootlessness” doesn’t seem like an advantage anymore, it feels, well, lonely. Perhaps it is only nostalgia; perhaps it is time to go home…

Saturday 12 June 2010

3000 miles away

3023 miles to be precise. I am lying on a comfy sofa, clicking away on my computer; Fashion TV is murmuring on the background (good motivation technique not to eat in the evening :-), yet everything feels different, everything IS different. I am in some other dimension, another era, a different planet.

I am in Alexandria Eschate (English meaning "Alexandria the Farthest"), the final destination of Alexander the Great. Alexandria Eskhata was founded by Alexander III of Macedon in August 329 BCE as his most northerly base in Central Asia. Alexander built a 6 kilometer brick wall around the city which, according to the ancient authors, was completed in only about twenty days.


Nowadays Khojent is a modern city, but it’s history continues to live in folk tales, in the architecture, and, of course, on the markets.

Here I am, at one of the biggest markets of Sogdian region - "Panjshanbe" (The name translates from Farsi as "Thursday").

Ground floor is occupied by food merchants. Here one can buy warm bread, vegetables and fruit, meat, flour, nuts, honey and oils.

Arches of the first floor are thousands of little shops where I got lost immediately. Carpets, iPods (for 20 USD), real and fake diamonds, hairproducts and DVD players…you can find almost anything here.  
I don't need diamonds today; I am here to look at people. Tajiks are full of life, even in the midst of the heat (which is rather impressive- the heat, I mean). They are curious and willing to strike a conversation, they laugh and make jokes. Women are more reserved and shy. 

Most women wear calf-long colorful dresses and matching pants underneath. Hair is normally covered with a scarf (or two, depending on the degree of religiousness). Many young and middle age women dress in “European” clothes, skirts and business suits. 98 % of population is very tolerent, something to learn and copy from, perhaps?.. 

Everyone can find something for the soul here. I found beautiful mosaics. I have seen them many times as a child, but now they have a special meaning to me…


"...Flat baskets full of fruit and vegetables arranged with a fine sense of design, of decorative art and harmonies. Strings of chili hang from the rafters. The scent of saffron, and rythmes of Chagall-colored laundry hanging like banners from windows, and in gardens. Warmth falls from the sky like the fleeciest blanket. Even the night comes without a change of temperature or alteration in the softless of the air. You can trust the night." (Anais Nin)

Good night and good Sunday, everyone.

Friday 4 June 2010

Departures and Arrivals

"I never travel without my diary. One should always
 have something  sensational to read in the train".
Oscar Wilde

There is always something very exciting about departures. I have a feeling of thrill invariably at every train station, every airport. Illusion of a new beginning, of a new venture. People, connected strictly by one purpose – to go someplace else, to leave - for a day, a week or for good. Change is the only constant.
This time I am travelling by plane and the diary I am holding is not mine, but of Anais Nin, her Vth volume with the trip to Mexico (I thought it was a suitable occasion to reread it)… While she is floating in the hand-carved canoe near Acapulco, I am being checked for drugs and explosive materials; I am changing terminals, cities, countries. I am waiting. The sun is shining through the glass walls of the airport café in Riga (a pleasant change). Soft trumpet music is pouring out of the speakers. It’s a near-perfect transit experience…The power sockets are different and I cannot plug my laptop.
“I had a recurrent dream always of a boat, sometimes small, sometimes large, but invariably caught in a waterless place, in a street, in a city, in a jungle or a desert. When it was large it appeared in city streets, and the deck reached to the upper windows of houses. I was always in this boat and aware it could not sail unless I pushed it, so I would get off and seek to push it along so it might move and finally reach water. The effort of pushing the boat along the street was immense and I never accomplished my aim. Whether I pushed it along cobblestones or over asphalt, it moved very little, and no matter how much I strained I always felt I could never reach the sea” (Anais Nin).
I cannot push the plane nor change its course when it lands in Samarkand instead of Dushanbe due to thunderstorms. More waiting. More Nin’s diaries: “I took delight in the market. There mere arrangement of ribbons women wore in their hair, the decorative way fruit was laid out in huge round baskets, the birdcages, the smell of melons and oranges, the playfulness of the children. I took delight in the animated and crowded square, in the jetty where the fishing boats returned with their colored pennants flying. I loved to watch the fisherman pulling in their nets at sundown.”
Finally arriving to Dushanbe at daybreak. The air is warm and fresh from the storm. Crowds of people outside of the airport, many of which are taxi drivers offering their services. The young driver of a shared cab I took starts racing with another taxi on the busy morning street…he is grinning in the back mirror. City overflowing with fountains. Breakfast of sweet cherries and apricots and green tea. I am so far away from home and yet this is home.