The train from Jakarta to Surabaya had slowly left in the late afternoon; sitting in my second class berth, I was contemplating the nearby thriving tropical landscape from one of the wagon’s window, when a fellow swiftly entered my compartment. He was an elderly tall man with an old fashioned suit on. This unexpected travelling companion fascinated me immediately. Actually he looked like one of Conrad’s literary heroes, with a deep mystery of his own. I fancied about him, a man travelling on a shoestring at a time in his life when most of people have settled down for ever…I started to gaze at him apprehensively, somehow trying to send him a silent and gentle enquiry: “just talk to me”. On the contrary the old man looked at me fiercely for some everlasting seconds, then got up and- as quickly as he had entered-he got out and vanished…
I wonder if he had put me at the top of his danger list just for being so much like he was.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: fierce

Lightnings are electrical discharges, giant sparks of electricity, from mature storms. Lightnings cause a lot of electric current to pass through water; wooden boats are not safe at all since the vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with no cabin…
The short sea passage between Gili Trawangan and Gili Air found me on board a small local boat without a cabin. It is always crucial to listen to the weather on a small aquatic vessel: during that early afternoon at sea, the sky was threatening, thunderstorms were forecast and lightnings too…
When the first powerful strike came and the air filled with static electricity on a giant scale, the anxious boatman pumped up the engine, trying to get the boat fast, trying to get to land and find a safe shelter: actually it was raining and pouring! The storm went on for half an hour and our navigation turned out to be very uncomfortable…
When we got Gili Air’s sandy beach at last, everything was over: off course!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: elettricity

The Mentaway Archipelago located  in the Indian Ocean, at about 100 miles off Sumatra’s west coast, used to be  far off beaten tourists’ routes…
A small cargo ship,  a tramp steamer almost, shuttled among those islands, carrying stuff of all sort and a few passengers. Coming to each island, the slow cargo finally anchored a few hundred meters from the seashore, waiting for the natives coming by means of paddle boats to get their stuff…it was a time consuming processes, and a beautiful way of travelling by sea. On board that ship I was too; as the only first-class paying passenger, I had the privilege of sleeping in the captain’s little cabin, instead of lying low the bare and rusty deck meant to ordinary native passengers. When off his duty the captain, a young, cute, well mannered fellow,  spent his time in the cabin and liked to tell about his young wife and family, who lived somewhere in the islands: in a house, he said, “where you can’t see the ocean, nor hear its sound”…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: captain

According to Hugo Ball, inventor of Dadaist phonetic poetry and co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, 1916, the ultimate meaning of a poem however resides in its meaninglessness, by allegedly choosing the word at random and because of their sound…
In Bali I was waiting for the night bus to Lombok, I had bought my ticket already and had nothing to do in the shady and large waiting room. There were just a few chairs and a table, and not even a human being to talk to. Upon the table was a sort of guest book. I kept on turning over the pages vaguely, until I came across a strange set of signs tagged as the old Indonesian ka-ga-nga alphabet, traditionally written on bamboo or palm leaves.
The unexpected discovery struck me greatly and I spent more than a couple of hours copying the mysterious signs in my notepad and arranging readings of purely phonetic tropical nonsense.
Nga ba ma nya ja sa ha ra,
la wa sa da na ca nya…
Finally the big red bus came…

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: poem

Many fish use camouflage to blend into their surroundings. Camouflage has two purposes: it helps fish avoid being eaten and allows them to make sneak …among them stonefish are found in the tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. Averaging about 30 centimeters in length, their subdued colors and lumpy shape provide them with exceptional camouflage. Few fish can match the sinister reputation of the stone fish: when stepped on, the fins in the dorsal spine inflict an extremely painful and sometimes fatal wound. The stonefish is a master of disguise and deception, it looks like a piece of coral or sand covered rock, so alas, never put your bare hands upon rocks while diving tropical seas: it turns out to be really dangerous sometimes!

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: camouflage

About IF’s rejection, here are three works I like: cate anevsky ; gee,that’s swell ; zari_ZHM

No much time to post this week: I’m rather busy with the Cuprarte Art Festival opening, next Saturday. So I have drawn myself wearing a sarong. Sarongs are large sheet of fabric, wrapped around the waist and worn as a skirt by men and women throughout much of southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and on many Pacific islands. The fabric is often brightly coloured and printed with intricate, geometric patterns. In hot climates there is nothing better than wearing a sarong and I can’t give up the habit now and here, during a really warm Italian summertime. The members of a lovely African family living in the house opposite mine, watch me benevontely from their windows, and smile a lot…

Illustration Friady’s topic is: suit

Here are three interesting links on last week’s topic: Flossy-p ; Pookha ; Asafaga .

Bali is pure fascination and Balinese traditional masks are a component of it. The Balinese carve many elaborately detailed wooden masks with a wide variety of forms, reflecting the Hindu belief that everything has an active spirit. The mask maker dries the wood and, after the carving is finished, an undercoat of white gesso is applied with the coloured paints applied on top. Some of them are real masterpieces and end up into famous collections. One of the most famous masked dances is that of the confrontation between Rangda, the widow witch, and the Barong, who resembles a small Chinese dragon. Other performances are based on stories of the royal courts, and usually have their clown elements, just as the English Elizabethan dramas do. A village drama frequently goes on all night with the villagers informally coming and going, eating, laughing when the comic characters make jokes at the expense of local people and enjoying the story which they have all known since childhood…Here is my personal demon mask!

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: mask

For some reason I was always on the run in my wild, wild years. And I was used to buses and mini-buses, coaches, lorries and trucks to travel around. I travelled on the cheap -mostly- and often ran the risk to never get where I planned, safely and according to my schedule. In Africa and Asia there is a kind of contest between carriers going to the same place, village, town, or beach: they actually run a race, a competition. Also, every cheap means of transportation never run on time! Sometimes hard rains make a main road devastated and every sort of coach packed by the common run of mankind, has to take off its usual run…Sometimes the roads are too bad for a coach to go, to force its driver to have the passengers getting off and all together hardly pushing, until the bloody wreck is able to run again. No matter if this motion runs some of the passengers into the ground, the expedition has to go on – you see. I wonder how many trips of the sort I did, but I am pretty sure that some of them have been really formative for me in the long run.
I learned to hold on, I learned that some people are forcibly on the run because of need, poverty or wars. I learned that those slow and wrecked coaches are always able to run passengers back home, despite their discouraging features. And the drivers, they really happen to be as decisive as soul-rescuing priests along the road: maybe that’s why they always leave their engines running!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: run

Dance! Once in a lifetime –at least- a beachcomber happens to join full moon parties and happy dances. Sometimes parties are spontaneous: someone strikes up the band, so to say, a glass of rum in his hand and a few companions by his side. Sometimes parties are carefully planned by beach resorts crafty owners and involve trendy disk-jockeys, fashionable people, hard drinking and much more…It all depends where you are. Goa made a reputations because of hers trendy and demanding parties. In Perhentian Island, east coast of Muslim and severe Malaysia, some “underground”, really freaky beach parties, due to the circumstances, where held under the pale moon light. You might feel almost illegal while drinking an absolutely expensive and rare bottle of beer, somehow imported from the mainland by some laic and enterprising Chinese smuggler…ah, ah!
In the volcanic island of Camuigin -Philippines- I sat once by a coconut tree all alone. Maybe it was the way I contemplated the enchanting sea, or the way I looked to the moon and the distant constellations, or just because beer was cheap (finally!) but I fancied mermaids and tritons dancing and rocking between the waves, sharks and eruptions, an almost mythical outlook you know: and tonight is full moon again!

Illustration Friday‘s topic is dance