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christmas at sea

Posted on December 31, 2009 @ 10:50 am by massimo | Filed under: blog, books, fear, sailing, travel

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

homage

Posted on March 29, 2008 @ 7:16 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, books, fun, people, wordpress

corto maltese hugo pratt aynaku

 Venetian Hugo Pratt is my favourite comic book creator .Due to his rather mixed family ancestry and his nomadic life, Pratt had learned snippets of things like kabbalism and lots of history. Many of his stories are placed in real historical eras and deal with real events.
As a student I had the chance to meet Hugo Pratt in early 80’ in Venice, but never met his best known character (adventuring during the early 20th century), the laconic sea captain called Corto Maltese who realised he had no fate line on his palm and therefore carved his own with a razor, determining that his fate was his to choose!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: homage

the Papalagi

Posted on January 5, 2008 @ 4:49 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world, blog, books, fun, people, wordpress

papalagi aynaku travel illustration

In 1920 a South Sea Chief’s comments on Western Society, The Papalagi, which means, the White Men, were translated into German by Erich Scheurmann.
These speeches by Tuiavii of Tiavea were not delivered as yet, but the essence had been written down in the native language, out of which the first German translation was made. Tuiavii never intended to have his speeches published for the Western public, nor to have them printed anywhere at all. They were strictly meant for his Polynesian people.
Yet Scheurmann, without Tuiavii’s consent and definitely in disregard of his wishes, took the liberty to bring these speeches to the attention of the Western readers, convinced, that for white people with their Western civilization it could be very worthwhile to find out how a man who was still closely bound to nature saw them and their culture…
These days I am reading one more time The Papalagi and find out the booklet still 100% actual. To know more about Tuiiavi’s point of view, here is a link to his almost complete  writing.

Illustration Friday’stopic is: 100%

monkey

Posted on January 21, 2007 @ 12:11 pm by massimo | Filed under: animals, blog, books, china, mythology, ukiyo-e, wordpress

“Monkey King (or Sunwukong) was born from a stone. He wanted to be like the immortals and be free from death. He was extremely smart and capable, and learned all the magic tricks from a master Taoist. …

submarines

Posted on April 29, 2006 @ 11:00 pm by massimo | Filed under: ancona, blog, books, fun, wordpress

Maybe I could have submit half of my blog for “under the sea”! I might add something else about because I’m thinking of submarines. When I was a kid I use to go …

flavour…

Posted on December 30, 2005 @ 6:57 pm by massimo | Filed under: beach, blog, books, philippines, wordpress

Melville’s novel “Moby Dick, or the Whale” has been a fundamental reading to me! Basically I was astonished by that powerful narrative which is not a newspaper story with the flavour of a novel! I still keep on reading a chapter …