Day Two & PPAC: Forma Viva 3.

Today we conclude the visit to the open-air sculpture exhibition on the Slovenian coast, and have a look at some words in my poem for Day Two.

Prompt 2: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words.” 

I chose the last tweet from the list of Top 30 tweets of 2021, the one from November 12 2021. My first stanza is this tweet in its entirety. I found it a little poem as such and just continued.

Not any word

“In Old English, 
MEAT was food of any kind, 
a GIRL was a young child of either sex, 
a DEER was any large mammal, 
a HOUND was any dog, 
a WIFE was any woman, 
a FOWL was any bird, 
to STARVE was merely to die, 
and an APPLE could be any fruit.”

In present Slovenian,
MESO is meat,
and if you read it back 
it’s suddenly OSEM,
the number 8.
Awesome.

Incidentally,
night is NOČ
and nothing is NIČ
and notch is KLIN
and ČIST is clean
and NOČ IMA SVOJO MOČ:
Night has its might.
Good night.

And now, the last half an hour of our 2017 stroll around the many sculptures, which started with this post. Between 1961 and 2001, sculptors from 30 countries created around 120 sculpture at the annual Forma Viva symposium in Slovenia, many of which are set here on the Seča peninsula to visit and admire freely.

No matter how many times I’m in Piran nearby, I only went there with my parents and amore for the first time in 2017. When the rest of us descended towards the Sečovlje saltworks with Croatia opposite, father fetched the car and drove around the peninsula to pick us up. It was not even 10 am and yet so hot. But we saw so much already that day.

Welcome to stroll along.

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  We were all a bit tired by then.

• 

  Some tall trees.

• 

  Ahh, slightly bashful?

• 

  Intertwined limbs.

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  Open book with hills? (As you can tell, I’m guessing here.)

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  This is a little unsettling.

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  Body parts in the freezer?

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  Many of these remind me of brutalist architecture, as they call it.

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  It’s what I knew growing up in Yugoslavia. Nothing brutal about it to me.

• 

  Spine bones?

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  What could this be…

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  Like that weapon to put on your fingers (well, not yours).

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  A giant snail?

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  This bar came just in time. It was open too luckily.

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  Mom and the saltworks at Sečovlje.

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  That is already Croatia opposite.

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  We passed a friendly face.

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  I have visited the saltworks once before. This time we only admired them from afar.

In this series:

• Forma Viva 1.
• Forma Viva 2.
• Forma Viva 3. (this post)

For Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) hosted by Marsha at Always Write

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: Just another day in Maremma

Olive tree:
Don’t.

Dog pulls
horse whinnies
girl falls
man clicks.

Olive tree:
Who says
nothing ever happens
in Maremma? (Read all.)

2019: Hello April Fools

We rely on the cycle
and the cycle is breaking.

We are beyond foolish.
We are dead fools.

What will go first?
Water? Food? The sea? (Read all.) 

2020: Dream house

“Are you nuts?
On a lagoon?
What about the mold
and the high tide,
the mosquitoes
and the smell,
musty rotten lagoon smell?
Blue Lagoon this isn’t!
What is its address,
Lagoon 1?” (Read on.)

2021: The roads not taken

But then
comes a year
when all the paths,
streets,
roads,
highways
and low
ways
unite in
not making the cut,
become
where we won’t go today, 
turn into
the path not taken. (Read all.)

This day in my blogging history

• 

  2014: I’ve got more men in Slovenia shirts: My farewell party in 2013.

• 

  2014: Grazie for changing my story. My open letter to Jeanette Winterson.

• 

  2015: “I’m Betty, I’m from London”? No, this is Manja in Lulworth Cove.

• 

  2016: In search of my Ikigai. Painting? No, really no, believe me.

• 

  2017: Silent Sunday from the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome.

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