the encapsulation of the reversal.
24 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
This is a photograph i took with my humble camera, of the Tiber River with the Castel Sant’Angelo in the background when I was in Rome during the Easter Vacation last year. I added an Irish Blessing Vic posted on facebook which I thought was so beautiful. It has its own photographic flaws because it seems oddly tilted, but it’s been one of the few photographs whose imagestuck with me for a very long time more than just what it represents pictorially. It is telling of alot of aspects of life which are currently going through my thoughts. As much I want time to sometimes stand still, it just keeps flowing on with the currents of the Tiber River. At the same time, there is something unending and still about life, or a particular essence which I can’t really put my finger too as well. The Castel Sant Angelo has been used as a fort, a masoleum ( i think) , a castle, and now it’s one of the most visited museums in Europe. But there is something about it that remains as it is – perhaps we are like that as human beings as well… And those few birds soaring in the sky in this photo – I wonder what they are doing now.. ??
I remembered the three of us taking a lazy, long walk along the river, stopping by just in front of a carnival like scene, sitting on a bench and shan shared her potato chips with us. We talked about the politics of the body, how is it that being ‘fat’ is something which is abhored in society perhaps because of the certain stereotypes and constructs our society were accustomed to, and how there is always this distaste for people who are ‘larger in size’, how we view so myopically all these images of the body. This conversation went on for at least an hour, before we decided to continue walking lest it got darker. Along the roads at Lungot Castello were street peddlers, mostly Africans i suppose ( i’m cringing at the use of this term… sigh) hollering out to the tourists and trying hard to sell their imitation bags and wallets. I didn’t know what to feel then, and neither do I now.
But i read a fascinating line from Franz Fanon just now, that ”Europe is literally the creation of the Third World”.
And that really, really blew me away.
