WPC: Favourite place, or is it time?

There is a time and a place and sometimes they come together just right. Here are some of those.

I’ve encountered a problem with this WordPress theme, Edda, no matter how much I love it otherwise: the captions are too little no matter what I do. No wonder that some of you just skip them altogether, and yet they are an integral part of my posts.

You know that I’d rather be writing.

That’s why I’ll try to set it up differently, with photos in groups and descriptions above them.

For example, the three places below, close to where I live in the south of Tuscany, might be magical but they also bring back the times when:

1. Amore still went with me to the beach through the magic passage.
2. Bestia had been running free before I learned of the hunters and the boar and before I met a few vicious dogs right here.
3. Bestia had loved to play in the water (the Fiora river) before the cold sea and a wave too many made him reluctant and disinterested.

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Then we have three places in Slovenia that are not connected to a specific occasion but rather to a period in my life or a regular activity. Such as:

1. Here – the woods around Mostec in Ljubljana – is where I walked our first dog in all weather.
2. Here – the streets of Ljubljana where I lived for 40+ years – is where I could be in touch with the cheeky soul of my city and its people.
3. From here – my grandma’s apartment in Maribor – I could observe the Drava river when visiting my grandma all through my childhood (that green thing opposite was added later). This is the fourth floor and yet she stood outside on the windowsill to wash the windows from the outside. Or at least I remember it thus.

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The following two images bring to mind the luxury that was:

1. Spending almost a month each year in the little village of Duba on the Croatian peninsula Pelješac. Drawing by Miha Berčič.
2. An international poetry-translation workshop in Piran, Slovenia, where we translated each other (or just others, in my case), outdoors, with heavy dictionaries on the tables under the reddening vine. There were computers but no internet access. This is the only photo that remains of this occasion due to an error – not mine – in image transfer. Still angry about it.

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Here is the magic that is Piran and the facts that:

1. We actually have a house there. This was nine years ago when it was almost new. Now it’s much more pinkish. And the palm had to go just last week due to illness. Bye, palm! Another one is growing just out of frame.
2. The light is always magical there, especially just before and after the sun goes to sleep.
3. It has the end-of-the-world feeling for real. I don’t mind as long as there is ice-cream. And a door.

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But for the last five years Italy is my country. My previous blog had a page with my ten favourite Italian towns (apart from Rome, Florence and Siena that win without a fight). Here are two other places that always lift up my spirits:

1. Il giardino dei tarocchi (Tarot Garden) with sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle midway between Rome and Siena, just where I live. This one – the Oracle – is my favourite. Father is showing a good sense of how to approach her.
2. Non-Catholic Cemetery in Testaccio in Rome with a nearby Pyramid of Cestius. A surprisingly uplifting affair, which this tombstone illustrates well: “If you should think of me, smile to the next person you see.” A post from here with inscriptions coming up soon.

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As for the future, keep near my blog and you’ll see my favourite places, moments and doors coming up on a weekly basis. That’s what for me blogging is all about.

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: Favorite Place