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boat people

Posted on December 28, 2008 @ 11:48 am by massimo | Filed under: africa,another green world,beach,news,people,travel,wordpress

Someone told me on the Vietnamese boat people who had landed on Pulao Kapas’ beach many years before.  I came across the boat’s wreck a few days later. The boat’s left over, nearly completely buried by the sand, really struck me. I stopped and stayed by that unplanned and clandestine monument a long while and   felt distinctly the very tragedy that was behind it…
Since a few years Italy is first in Europe for illegal immigration by sea. Some 25.000 desperate people somehow reached our shores in 2008. During the last three days, from dec 24 up to dec 26, about 1500 African  migrants have landed in Lampedusa Island, nearby Sicily.
Due to jingle bells and the like, Italians mostly have not paid much attention to this significant occurrence, while the ghosts of Christmas ideals rerun on Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Channel Five…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: clandestine

a surprising man…

Posted on August 22, 2008 @ 10:52 am by massimo | Filed under: animals,another green world,blog,fun,people,philippines,travel,ukiyo-e,wordpress

I like to edit again an old post written on November the 22, 2006…this fellow had a totally anti-routine life…it’s worth taking a look at his “biography” whic my friend Gino edited recently…
enjoy

Among the strange people I met, Max Maxwell is certainly the most unfathomable. I firstly met Max in Boracay Island, in 1990. Max comes from Bombay and belongs to the Parsee upper-class.
At that time he was a fit, middle aged man who enjoyed beach-tennis, wind surfing and excellent Italian food. He basically travelled between Boracay, Koh Lanta, Laddak and Hong Kong, making his earn out of fashionable batik-shirts, rattan-bags, Tibetan amulets and first rate (yet fake) Ray-Ban sunglasses. Max had an enormous ego, he was desperately scornful and selfish and, for some reason, he always surprised me. He had seen the World, that was the fact! When some harmless tourist, tried to approach him by asking silly questions such us “Have you been…?”, Max’s provocative answer simply was: “thanks for not talking to me!”. And that was all. As I said Max loved food and he was in the selected circle of acquaintances of my friend Gino.
Gino ran the cosiest restaurant in Boracay according to Max’s parameters and one day at Gino’s, for some unpredictable reason, Max allowed himself to talk to me! Max abhorred “stupid talks” but, after a good beer (he used to sip beer always by the same special glass that he-himself carried in a bag), Gino and I had the chance of glancing over his wonderful life…Finally Max decided to present Gino his photocopied biography. The document (his masterpiece) stated the man “born in Bombay during a devastating cyclone” and amazingly went on with Max ”making friends with Miles Davis, art-directing Vogue Magazine, etc…”I still have that rattan-bag he sold me and –still- I wear that  fake,Ray-Ban, and Gino and I still dispute about his reliability, his clever scorn and puzzling behaviour.
On December 8, 2006 I received a stunning report from Gino…

BREAKING NEWS:
MAX MAXWELL DIES IN GOA AFTER COMMITTING SUICIDE. HE LEFT A NOTE IN WICH HE SAYS :
“DON’T BE SORRY FOR ME. I’M THE ONE TO DECIDE MY TIME WAS OVER”

Illustration Friday ’s topic is: routine

fierce

Posted on June 29, 2008 @ 4:10 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,people,travel,wordpress

java aynaku travel illustration

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

fail faith

Posted on April 13, 2008 @ 1:55 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world,blog,news,people,wordpress

Buddhist teaching is clear and logical: that we can neither define, describe, nor usefully discuss the nature of that which is beyond the perception of our consciousness. According to the teaching the ideas of eternal self or eternity in nature may be described indirectly by analogy and symbols. …

homage

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

 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 Papalagi

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

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 …

backwards self-portrait

Posted on December 15, 2007 @ 10:28 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,people,wordpress

The past and present exist side by side, inhabiting the same person. This is my backwards self-portrait, while drawing Aynaku’s illustrations. Usually all I do is to sit behind my desk and concentrate, trying hard to merge into my memories: slowly a sort of transparent vision surrounds me  and the image materializes on …

the admiral’s hat

Posted on November 2, 2007 @ 10:53 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,china,people,ukiyo-e,wordpress

This is Zheng He the great Ming navigator wearing his favourite straw hat….
Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored a series of seven naval expeditions and Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet.
Zheng He’s first voyage consisted of a fleet of 317 ships …

burma / myanmar

Posted on October 9, 2007 @ 11:00 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,people,wordpress

Here are a pair of instructive links to know about Burma and  the most updated news on current ongoing genocide in that county.

wedding breakfast

Posted on September 16, 2007 @ 11:46 am by massimo | Filed under: fun,people,travel,wordpress

In Dondaduwa, a Sri Lanka south-west located coastal little town, I was invited to a local wedding breakfast. I felt honoured by this unexpected ask and was really curious. Just past the sunset, a little crowd of friends and relatives gathered an open space behind the …

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