KING SIZE
or
A WEEK OFF SEASONS
1997
After the first September rains we traditionally remember that summer is winding away again and it's time for a holiday.
This time and by sheer accident we found ourselves in Balchik, in the palace of the Romanian Queen, to be particular.
Krasimir Marinkov, an expert on the local customs, sheltered us in Prince Nikolay's villa, though he allotted us to the servants' quarters.
Anyway, this was where we actually belonged.
We were feeling as serfs set free a minute ago and we did not know what to do with our freedom.
In the mornings the place was swarmed by crowds of polyglot tourists and we strained our ears to the guides' horror stories of gambling, love and bloodshed.
The prince shot his brother in a fight for the crown with their mother!
About noon, after our first cup of Lavazza, we had apple pie in the local Vienna-style sweetshop.
Our evening bottle of Merlot was waiting for us on the veranda.
Wind and neon lights (just like in the park scene of Antonioni's Blow Up) got us back to the half-heard stories of the morning.
That green colour pretended timidity and nobleness in the day but the chemistry of evil crept out from the cypresses at night.
Royal affairs!
However, we did not see either Dracula, or Vanko Urumov.
As early as the second day we gathered strength and we took to work.
To indulge in landscape paining after a 20-year pause is a risky initiative.
Generally speaking, realism is opium for the masses, something like a day's hire. You have breakfast, you get to a job enthusiastically, the sun is beating down, the mosquitoes are stinging and after dinner you wander if you really did that thing and, more important, why?
At about 5 in the morning, eaten up by mosquitoes (of another, more severe battle head species), you feign sleep and you wait to hear the stupid tune of your cell-phone alarm set at 6.
/ I am not yet skilled in the operation of such devices/
I rush down to the beach to take pictures of sunrises (and sunsets), we are in the bosom of nature, remember?
The clouds fly out from the one side of the scenery, the heavenly body pops up at another.
I act the true photographer, I am shooting in manual mode.
Nothing comes out, I knew it before I started. I have no choice and I switch on into A. Things come out nicely.
I have my breakfast, I calm down and take to my painting brush again.
That's it.
We were there and we gave it a try.
|
|
