Today's prompt encouraged us to write a poem about an animal, which was an excellent excuse for me to to write about a cockroach for the first time! I dedicate this one to my patient hissers, Kafka and Rilke. The Cockroach He burrows, searching for the trail left him by his ancestors, alive with the warning …
Early 20th-century Photo-Postcards
Found these two lovely photo-postcards at a flea market in Italy. Judging from the clothing style and  the automobile, I'd date them to the early 20th century, possibly the 1920s, but please do correct me if I'm wrong. They were displayed together with other photo-postcards in which various people from the group photo also …
Battles and Treaties
It took me a while to come up with something today, but I eventually managed to get it together. (DAY 24) War Front We observed our reluctant silence with dignity, like old friends on the war front. Your hopes were bruised, as was my vanity. Stubborn in our anachronism, we pledged our truce over cheap …
Added more ghosts to my ever-expanding collection…
Just about time I shared my new haul of vintage photographs with the world, isn't it? I bought these in Bucharest, at a Christmas/ winter holidays fair, after some negotiations with the vendor. To be fair, though, he didn't seem to mind my haggling. Actually, he looked quite happy to finally find someone who was …
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Dead (?) Bodies
[D]ead bodies can talk if you know how to listen to them, and they want to talk, and they want us to sit down beside them and hear their sad stories. [...] They don't want to be voiceless; they don't want to be pushed aside, obliterated. ~ Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead This is …
Of Ghosts, Dandies and Little Sailors…
So. I promised some comments on the recently posted photo-postcards. I've chosen to have a closer look at some that particularly picked my curiosity. The first would be the photograph showing the phantomatic silhouette of a woman, pasted onto a black carton "frame" with a postcard-style verso: The look of it - the silhouette fading …
Of New Beginnings…
After complaining about LiveJournal's incompetency for about half a year, I've finally decided to switch to a more - hopefully - professional blogging website. I was getting too tired of all the spam comments, the compulsory flashing ads and, most of all, the all-powerful ddos attacks under which it regularly succumbed. I have successfully managed …
The Grim-Looking Ladies
Having decided to get over the various generous offers of intimate and intensely satisfying (guaranteed!) services that are the only comments I get these days, here I am sharing yet another one of my finds with the universe. I do love flea markets, and I usually end up leaving with at least one abandoned memory …
I don’t steal memories. I buy them 30p apiece.
My long-standing hobby of rescuing/collecting other people's memories has resurfaced again. It would have resurfaced before, only, to my shame, I was unable to find the usual place in our local market selling vintage photos&postcards. It's like the magic little shop that Terry Pratchett pokes so much fun at in his Discworld novels: it would …
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Nostalgia: Day Twelve
Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was very much to my liking, and so I've written a poem accordingly. The prompt: Spend a few moments examining an old photograph—a found image, a photo from childhood, an iconic shot from history—and give it a title. Then put the photo aside and write a poem using this title. The "photograph" …
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 