Category: Travel

Travel photo notes

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Skiing on Vancouver Island

We have just came back from the last skiing trip of the season, and coincidentally, I’ve finished sorting through the video footage from our first trip of this year (see below). The 2023-24 season at Mt. Washington started really slowly. During our first visit, just before Christmas of 2023, the was so little snow that we were constantly concerned that the resort would close. Only a couple of trails were open, and it was raining a lot. I didn’t even shoot any video because of the poor visibility. Still, we ended up skiing every day and enjoyed the change of scenery. 

During the second trip, which we took right after the New Year, the conditions improved a lot.

Take a look!

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Quiet

Every time I travel and have a chance to live in a new place for an extended period of time, I appreciate how quiet our little cul-de-sac in Victoria is. During our last stay in Paris during my sabbatical, our apartment was on the ground floor, and the entrance from the street led directly to the living room, or séjour, as our Parisian friends called it. When people outside would sit on the steps leading to our door (I suppose, that was a convenient place to sit on the relatively lively street) and have a conversation, it would sound as if they were sitting inside and talking to us. As much as it was nice to have a chance to listen to some native French speakers, it made us appreciate the relative silence of our usual suburban living. Funny enough, the sound insulation in our Paris dwelling was so marginal that it worked, or rather didn’t, both ways. When my daughter or I would start playing violin (being very diligent students) the people outside would often leave, not because of our poor skills (I hope), but because the music would interfere with their conversation. Another evidence of the power of the music.

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L’Arbre des voyelles

Last summer in Paris, I saw, almost by chance, the sculpture by Giuseppe Penone called “L’Arbre des voyelles”, or “The tree of vowels.” I wasn’t specifically planning on visiting it, but it was marked as a point of interest on Google Maps, and I was curious to see what it was. It is located in the Tuillleries garden, in the somewhat wilder and greener part of the park. As the name suggests, it’s a sculpture of a tree. It is incredibly realistic, despite being mage of bronze. As I later learned upon doing some reading, Penone used a 30-meter uprooted oak tree as a model, eventually casting it in bronze. The bronze tree looks like it really belongs in the garden. In fact, my first thought was that it could have been easily replaced by the original tree without any loss of artistic value. But then, of course, provoking this kind of thoughts was probably the artist’s intention.

Regarding the deeper meaning, when I was looking at the sculpture, I was focussed on the roots and completely missed the significance of the five branches. At the points where the branches touch the ground, there were planted five different species of oak trees. So the significance of the artwork (or at least one of the points it conveys) is to show the role of human creativity in the evolution of the environment.

Initially, I also didn’t understand the significance of the name of the sculpture, but reading about it later, learned that the roots apparently resemble the vowels A, E, I, O, U. Penone mentioned that he was inspired by the hypothetical alphabet of the druids. On the other hand, these letters are also associated with the famous sonnet “Voyelles,” written by Arthur Rimbaud in 1871. (I read it on the Internet, so it must be true!)

For what it’s worth, it’s a nice association. Here is the original sonnet:

Voyelles

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d’ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
—O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!

Here is a English translation by Oliver Bernard: (“Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)”):

Vowels

A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!

And I also liked this translation into Russian by Nikolai Gumilev:

Гласные

А — черно, бело — Е, У — зелено, О — сине,
И — красно… Я хочу открыть рождение гласных.
А — траурный корсет под стаей мух ужасных,
Роящихся вокруг как в падали иль в тине,

Мир мрака; Е — покой тумана над пустыней,
Дрожание цветов, взлет ледников опасных.
И — пурпур, сгустком кровь, улыбка губ прекрасных
В их ярости иль в их безумье пред святыней.

У — дивные круги морей зеленоватых,
Луг, пестрый от зверья, покой морщин, измятых
Алхимией на лбах задумчивых людей.

О — звона медного глухое окончанье,
Кометой, ангелом пронзенное молчанье,
Омега, луч Её сиреневых очей.

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The art and science of the Eiffel Tower

When I was first learning about travel stock photography, the Eiffel Tower was given as an example of a universally-recognized landmark that is both most-photographed and most demanded for editorial purposes. This is a bit surprising, because with so many images of it available, one would think that the demand would be satisfied many times over.

Still, there is something more to photographing the Eiffel Tower than simply chalking up another must-take image on the itinerary, at least for me personally. Just being there reaffirms that I am, in fact, in Paris. This is why it this one of the first sites I like to visit when I am in the city. Also, it somehow represents the synergy between the art and engineering, which I find fascinating.

For example, I found out recently that one of the first wind tunnels for fluid mechanics experiments was designed by Gustave Eiffel and installed in the aerodynamics laboratory at the foot of the tower in 1909. It was later moved to its present location in Auteuil in 1912, where it’s still operational, in principle. It is also curious that around that time, Eiffel was involved in a scientific argument about equivalency between testing the aerodynamic properties of objects in a wind tunnel and towing them through air on railroad tracks. Apparently, he appealed for mediation to Henri Poincaré, who declared that the tests would be equivalent, provided that there would be sufficient room in the wind tunnel to from around the tested object without obstruction (what we now refer to as low blockage).

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Fiction


I write quite a lot as part of my job as a university professor – journal papers, reports, research proposals, etc. All of this is squarely in the non-fiction category. Recently, I came across a suggestion that writing fictional stories could a fun creative exercise and a way of cultivating observation and communication skills. I decided to jump on it, taking advantage of my sabbatical. Frankly, at this time I’d jump on any idea to mix things up in terms of the workflow and study techniques – that is what a study leave is all about, I think.
Writing fiction is a completely new thing for me, though. So, as any good student, I turned to YouTube.  I decided to try this exercise, described by Abbie Emmons as a “story smoothie” (the point being that all stories are, in-fact, re-told old stories that are “blended” into something new):
  1. Take your four favourite scenes from fictional literature (or even movies, Abbie suggested, but I was happy to be able to recall four books that I liked).
  2. Take one of the four components from each of the four books/scenes – genre, theme, plot and character(s) – and mix them up into your own story.
  3. For a bonus point, change the genders and social positions, etc. of the main characters. Et voilà, c’est fait – the blended “story smoothie” idea is ready.
I do realize that there is much more to writing than generating a story idea, but it has always been the difficult part for me. I really liked this, somewhat algorithmic, way of tackling at least this first creative aspect of writing. Because I am on sabbatical in Paris, I decided to base the story here.
Can you guess where I (mostly) took the main character and the plot from? Hint: It’s an opening of a famous novel, which was made into movies many times, and the action of which mostly takes place in Paris too.
If it doesn’t ring a bell (yes, I am aware that cliché is not our friend – it’s on my list of things to work on), then I blended the ideas sufficiently well to at least avoid blatant plagiarism.
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Travel photos

This summer, we took or first post-COVID long-distance trip. I had a conference in France, and my wife and daughter joined me. Afterwards, we followed up the conference with a few days of family vacation in Antibes. It was a great trip overall, and it reminded us how much we missed travelling. Looking back at my photos, though, I realize that it has always been a bit of challenge for me to enjoy the experience of the foreign locale at the moment. Interestingly, my photography interest is both the reason and the cure for this difficulty.

This disconnect with reality is described by Anthony De Mello in his book “Awareness” (the book has been largely a disappointment, but that is a different topic). He says that most people plan their vacations, book flights an, but when they get there, they immediately start worrying about their flight back home. So they are not fully present to experience their travel destination. They take pictures, but they miss the smells, the tastes, the sense of the place. So people bring back pictures of the places they didn’t actually see.

On the other hand, taking photos gives me focus by providing motivation for visiting specific sites, waiting for a certain time, when the sun hits the subject with the golden light. These are the moments that I tend to remember afterwards. During this trip, for example, we were having dinner at a street-side restaurant just steps from the Eiffel Tower, and I kept popping out from the table to peek across the corner to see if the setting sun had hit the tower.

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Samurai Tales book

While browsing through my bookshelf, I stumbled on a book called “Samurai Tales” by Romulus Hillsborough. I bought this book at an airport, during one of my first trips to Japan. I read it then, during the flight, and found it to be a nice match for my interest in Japanese history and all things related to kendo, while unmistakably written for a by a foreigner. Incidentally, an advice for foreigners that I came across early on in my becoming fascinated with Japan and found to be absolutely essential for adjusting to living there – while being eager to adapt to the Japanese culture, do not try to “become Japanese”. First, this attempt would be doomed to failure by its objective impossibility, and second, being authentic (yet considerate to others) is perhaps the most valuable trait that allows one to bridge the cultural gap.

This time, what caught my attention was the photo on the cover of the “Samurai Sketches” book. It’s the last portrait of Sakamoto Ryoma taken in 1885, just days before his assassination. The remarkable feature is how relaxed he looks. I realize of course that this is probably due to the slow shutter speed used in those times. Yet, the contrast between the national-scale turmoil of the Meiji Restoration period and the personal-scale tranquility that the key players of that drama were able to project, even if temporarily, is amazing. Somehow, when I initially read this book, I didn’t pay much attention to this aspect, being mostly engrossed in the excitement of the quintessential samurai saga of loyalty, individual bravery and martial arts. This time, I am looking forward to re-reading it from a different perspective.

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Flashback to Milano

While flipping through my sketchbook yesterday, I came across this picture, which I sketched exactly four years ago to the day. My wife and I were on sabbatical in Milan, and our daughter and I were drawing plants on a sunny day in the Brera Botanical Garden – a quiet green nook in the middle of the city. There, we met a local artist, who came over and mentioned that he used to have the same kind of sketchbook. We chatted and looked through each other’s sketches – mine on paper and his on his phone. It was one of those fascinating “one chance – one meeting” moments, which I often go back to in my memory. Actually, it turned out to be not just one meeting, because we later had a chance to visit the artist’s home studio, being somewhat overwhelmed by his and his wife’s hospitality.

I took thousands of photographs and video clips during our six-months stay in Italy, but the sketches, which I got into a habit of doing fairly regularly, definitely carry more emotional content for me personally. On reflection, this makes me want to pick up the sketching habit again.

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Snow days

It is easy to distort reality with the stories we tell ourselves and the memories we form by doing so. For example, I’ve been living in Victoria sufficiently long to somehow assume that winter almost never comes here. “Six months of spring, six months of autumn,” is how I like to describe local wether to friends who don’t live here. When we went on sabbatical in 2017, we missed a heavy snowfall, and thought that it was our unique chance to see snow around our house in years. But as we were heading out to play in the snow this weekend, my nine-years-old daughter happily remarked that so far it snowed in Victoria every year of her life. That is, actually, a fact, and we even have photos to prove it. I thought that it was good to get calibrated in how I view the place I live at and generally, how we spend our lives. Not that mild winters is something to complain about to begin with, but if we look closely, we don’t even have a reason to fret about being deprived of snow days. Those are short lived, but we made most of them this year – sledding at a local hill, having a snowball fight with Bruno, our dog, and building a fortress in the front yard. Now, it looks like it will all melt away just in time for the start of school tomorrow.

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Christmas lights in Victoria

COVID had a huge impact on the Holiday festivities in Victoria. Basically, there were no festivities. Some of our favourite things, like ice-skating and watching the light-up at Butchart Gardens, were not possible this year – everything was cancelled and closed. On the other hand, it seems that individual people had stepped up and decorated their houses beyond what they would typically do in a more normal year. We took advantage of that and drove around the city on Christmas night to see these DIY designs.

We followed a map that someone had created on Google, which showed the most prominent light-up attractions. We spent a couple of hours driving along the route that I made up using a lot of guess work, because the online map didn’t offer any details except a bunch of pins indicating the decorated houses. Upon consideration, I noticed that they were clustered in groups throughout the city, probably because the peer pressure of neighbours putting up the lights pushed the other people in the same neighbourhood to follow suit.

I took my camera, but because it was pouring rain (and because I was lazy), I took most of the pictures without leaving the car. By the time we reached downtown, the rain had stopped, so we parked, walked around shot a few photos of the completely deserted Inner Harbour and the Parliament Building, also illuminated. I also took a picture of the new “Blue bridge” from the Esquimalt side – something that I wanted to do a long time ago, but never found the time.