Claudia, Autore presso Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

DECEPTIVE BEAUTY

Jan 19, 2025 | ENVIRONMENT

Deceptive and dangerous is the beauty of the intense pink-orange and red sunsets that close the short winter days.

If you often witness these visual ‘spectacles’ it may be that you live in a wretchedly polluted area like mine.

You must think I’m obsessed if I even associate sunsets with my periodic returns on the subject.

Actually, these sunsets conceal a massive presence of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere.

ISPRA Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e Ricerca Ambientale explains nitrogen dioxide (NO2):
a reddish-brown gas, poorly soluble in water, toxic, with a strong, pungent odour and strong irritating power. It is a pollutant with a predominantly secondary component, as it is the product of the oxidation of nitrogen monoxide (NO).

Nitrogen dioxide is a widespread pollutant that has negative effects on human health and, together with nitrogen monoxide, contributes to photochemical smog.

Photochemical smog i.e. the formation of secondary pollutants is conditioned by the presence of light radiation in the ultraviolet region.

We grow up learning that the sky is blue, did you as a child ever have the ‘why?’ period?

Why the sky is blue is explained to us by Rayleigh’s Scattering.

To summarise the concept in a small format, a bit like espresso 🙂 the scattering of light reflecting off small particles.

I would also point you to an interesting publication reporting on a study of sunsets in paintings, and at this point I cannot fail to mention William Turner.

Title of the article published by EGU European Geoscinces Union:
Further evidence of the important environmental information content in the relationships between red and green depicted in the paintings of the great masters.

Assumption: We examine sunsets painted by famous artists as information for the optical depth of particles after large volcanic eruptions. Images derived from precision colour protocols applied to the paintings were compared with online images and found to provide accurate information.

We can imagine what changed in the atmosphere after volcanic eruptions, but there are no volcanoes here, so what happens?

When nitrogen dioxide particles are present in the air, it is as if a kind of geometry is created that obstructs the sun’s rays.

In these cases the red light through an interplay of different frequencies and wavelengths somehow manages to prevail.

Deceptive beauty.

That is why we see sunsets of intense, bewitching colours and allow ourselves to be enchanted by what is invisible to the eyes …

THREE by Valérie Perrin

Jan 11, 2025 | BOOKS, MUSIC

We had already chatted about Valérie Perrin about her previous book Fresh Water for Flowers.

I have also read Three thanks to Valeria and her Mum.

As you know, I have a bit of a fixation on three, not by chance on the idea of three sides I imagined my Heron’s formula.

And on the concept of three this book builds a real apotheosis.

You know I don’t like to reveal too much, but I want to tell you that there was a moment while reading when I felt terribly dumb for not having understood beforehand, so much so that I would have even gone back to look for the exact point where I was so blind.

However, it is no secret that Three by Valérie Perrin tells the story of three friends.

Friendship, the kind that survives suffering, the kind that heals disappointments, the kind that bridges loneliness, but above all Friendship of the kind that comes about quite naturally, because it cannot be otherwise.

Friendship almost as predestination and deeply felt choice at the same time.

Friendship as destiny and Friendship as salvation.

Friendship that lasts a lifetime.

Do you have friends who fit this description?

Or maybe you can describe your idea of Friendship even better.

The three protagonists get to know each other and grow up going through years that I experienced at about the same age myself.

Do your childhood friendships endure stoically under the blows of life or have the paths taken inexorably different directions?

Valérie Perrin very often quotes songs and song lyrics, which as you know I particularly love.

And so I discovered Indochine, which I did not know.

Here you can find a playlist with the songs mentioned in the book.

Another key element in the book is water.

Even with reference to water, we can find Valérie Perrin’s ‘three’: pool, sea, lake.

A further metaphor for evolution: birth, life, death.

CAFFEINATED ZOMBIE

Jan 4, 2025 | A COFFEE WITH, MOVIES, ISN'T IT IRONIC?, ISN'T IT IRONIC?, MOVIES, ROCK, ROCK, A COFFEE WITH

Caffeinated zombie in particular is impersonated … can we say ‘impersonated?’ Just kidding of course!

I mean, reading the title you must have immediately thought of Jim Jarmusch’s film The Dead Don’t Die, do you know it?

If you don’t know it, ‘this is going to end badly’ …

I don’t know about you, but we really like to quote some iconic lines from this film.

But back to our caffeinated zombie aka the Iguana of rock: Iggy Pop.

Born James Newell Osterberg Jr., you can really say anything about him.

Even that he roams Centerville with his inseparable pot of coffee.

Caffeinated zombie

Over all I like to recall his friendship with David Bowie.

“He resurrected me” were his exact words in an interview with the New York Times.

Together they went to and from Berlin and together they gave us that little gem that is China Girl, not to mention the legendary The Passenger.

Together is the adverb that can also be used when referring to Jim Jarmusch because the interpretation of a zombie is one of the many occasions in which he and Iggy also collaborated.

Staying on the subject of zombies for now, what do you think?

Do you like films and series with their range of versions from the most macabre to the most ironic?

The word zombie has its roots in the West Indies, roots intertwined with woodoo rituals, but why am I telling you about it at the start of this year?

To quote The Simpsons: ‘zombies prefer to be called disadvantaged living.’

That’s it: let us rise from slumber and worry less about definitions.

Let us live, let us feed on beauty and not on our fellow man, let us distinguish, let us change.

Otherwise, as Adam Driver repeats: this is going to end badly.

And of course I would also like to toast, like the old Mallory: Chardonnay!

GIFTS, HOW?

Dec 28, 2024 | WHO CARES

Gifts, how?

To tell the truth, for me the beauty of presents is the search, the moment when you think of the most suitable thing for the person who will receive it, the instant when you look at the eyes, hoping it will be a surprise, hoping to see joy.

But I also have been so lucky to receive gifts of the kind that

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropiateness rather than in its value.
Charles Dudley Warner

So here it is:

the illuminated sign

Regali come?

which my husband has already strategically placed in my reading corner.

The bookmark with the cup

Regali, come?

ready to be with me in reading my next book.

Il Caffè della Terra coffee produced in Vigevano.

Regali, come?

How about it?

Would you like to tell me about a gift of yours?

A gift received or given, a guessed gift or an embarrassing gift, a useful or desired gift, a bizarre gift or the gift you will never forget.

I generally always take a long time for presents, some people choose a shop and then find everything quickly.

Do you have a strategy or do you rely on chance?

Do you plan months in advance or do you dedicate yourself to presents in December?

Do you ever follow a common thread?

Do you prefer to request gift wrapping from the retailer or do you take care of it yourself?

Lately, many shopkeepers use the logo shopper bag, which is no longer included in the price.

Do you think the anti-waste concept or the surprise is more important?

What if you receive a gift that for some reason you will definitely not use?

Coffee’s ready, sit down and we’ll talk!

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

Dec 21, 2024 | ART, ART, MOVIES, CULTURE, CULTURE, MOVIES

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodòvar’s film that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

I went to the cinema with Monica thinking I would be moved but actually I got angry.

You can find the review on the blog Matavitatau and incredibly this time Nick was more lenient than me.

Of course: The room next door has a lovely part.

Everything concerned to the visual sphere represents perfection, starting with the colours used in a sublime as well as communicative way

In an interview, set designer Carlota Casado mentioned Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings among the references.

If you look at her paintings:
Oriental poppies
Ladder to the moon
Jiimson weed white flower

you can get a clear idea of the range of greens that I particularly admired.

The costumes, which we could call outfits, by Bina Daigeler are a riot of colour, style and quality.

Every single detail is meticulous, even I quote: ‘the coffee machines.’

The settings are fabulous: New York at its most magical and a house that represents the perfect blend of architecture and nature.

The set is Casa Szoke, designed by the Aranguren+Gallegos Arquitectos studio near Madrid, in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, and located on the slopes of Mount Abantos in the forest of La Herrería.

As if that were not enough, the furniture elements are well-known design pieces and the painting People in the sun by Edward Hopper becomes an integral part of the narrative as well as the visual.

And Almodòvar completes the representation of beauty by quoting James Joyce: The Dead from Dubliners

The snow falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, upon all the living and the dead.

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodòvar’s first English-language film and his intention, I would say successful, was to make it as American as possible.

But then there is the verbose part, let me use the term, the dialogues in my opinion are that much excessive that they break the balance of everything else.

And there are a number of unfinished elements.

I will not go into the profile of the protagonist, nor into the euthanasia issue, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

But remaining on the mere portrayal of the illness and the physical and psychological suffering, perhaps because I have unfortunately experienced it from my side, I could not help but get nervous.

An exclusive death.

Real life, however, is quite different.

Did you enjoy it? Did you find the ending unsettling or inspiring?