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clean / unclean animal

Posted on July 30, 2006 @ 3:29 pm by massimo | Filed under: animals,blog,india,people,wordpress

sacredcow india clean animal aynaku illustration adobe

A mild variety of viral gastroenteritis got me these days. So, all I can do is rest and drink lots of fluids; off course I abstain from eating any meat at all, including good fish. Due to the circumstances I am also reckoning well about clean / unclean animals, those that are / are not considered fit for food, for religious, cultural or health reasons… Cows are notoriously sacred in India. In today’s booming India, one can still see among rural people, the close relationship between cattle and their owners, who have high regard for their animals as individuals, as vital family-providers. Generations of Hindus throughout the centuries relied so heavily on the cows for all sorts of dairy products, the tilling of fields, and the fuel or fertilizer, that their status as willing “caretakers” of humanity grew to identifying them as almost maternal figures. Hence the strong resistance to killing and eating such close animal allies. Now days beef-eating has gained some acceptance in various parts of India, but only by those Hindus who are scorned by the others as being “extra-modern” or “over-Westernized”. By Indian law, the slaughter of cattle is banned and Hindu society considers eaters of cow’s meat as barbarians. Cows are sacred in India, but even they suffer from the extreme poverty: emaciated cows move about freely and safely, and seem to remind the foreigners how fragile we all are…

Illustration Friday‘s topic is clean

chocolate hills

Posted on July 22, 2006 @ 3:53 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world,blog,philippines,travel,wordpress

chocolatehills.jpg

Everybody can notice how often a distinction between the “natural” and the “artificial” is drawn: these categories actually face, and in most cases, they turned out to be absolute opposites. Can such a distinction be justified? The action of mankind towards the environment is too often entirely contrary to natural processes. I believe that now days only a very few inhabited locations –world wide- remain safe from this duality. The Chocolate Hills is a place where ambiguities between the natural and the artificial melt so exceptionally, that it’s hard to believe that these cone-shaped hills are not a man-made artefact. In 1988 the government of the Philippines declared the Chocolate Hills a National Geological Monument: really this is an unusual geological formation in the island of Bohol, consisting of at least 1000 individual mounds. What makes the whole setting fascinating is their mostly uniform shape and size ranging from 30 to 50 meters high. If you like to stay there you have very little choice: the only facility is the Government run resort, the perfect place to enjoy the hills and the intense green of the rice fields…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: opposites

sacrifice

Posted on July 14, 2006 @ 5:56 pm by massimo | Filed under: africa,blog,people,travel,wordpress

bizerte tunisia aynaku illustration adobe

Tunisia is the northernmost country of Africa and has a warm climate, a long and gentle seacoast, salt lakes and Sahara Desert oasis, Punic and Roman archaeological sites…and all just about 1 ½ hour flight from Rome! Yet my strangest memory relates to Bizerte where my girlfriend was attending an Arabic course since long. She lived in a comfortable student hostel and I too stayed there for a few days… Actually Bizerte’s vieux port is a beautiful place to hang about, with a double Kasbah overlooking the sea: its atmosphere took me completely. I was so excited by the great mixture of greyish, white and pale-blue plasters, by intriguing little restaurants and cafes that I wanted to move at all costs and managed to convince my girlfriend. No way, she certainly wouldn’t sacrifice herself or giving up her valuable accommodation for some rather noisy and crowdie lodging… I moved anyways, and got somewhere to a negligible hotel. I glanced the rooms inside and they were fine, I paid no attention to a dark door ambiguously tagged as “comfort room”, at the dark end of the corridor. Really, all I wanted was to spend the day hanging around, I was in a hurry, you see! It was an hot midsummer day and I sipped litres of sweet mint-tea, and was in a sweat all day long, and longed for a refreshing shower in the end. So I went back to my room, removed my clothes, swiftly entered the previously unchecked bathroom just to find out that an horribly stinky, rusty and huge rubbish container was unpleasantly placed just beside the shower. Thus considering the cause of such a bizarre setting and noticing, at the same time, reckless cockroaches happily slipping along the floor, I took my sacrificial shower.

Illustration Friday‘s topic is sacrifice

an overloaded skyline…

Posted on July 7, 2006 @ 10:03 pm by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,people,philippines,wordpress

In 1997 I had got an architectural commission in Boracay. I was asked to design a trendy ice cream parlour and it actually was under construction nearby the beach; I liked …