Michele Roohani

It seems we can’t get away from the lipstick, the pit bull and the dog eat dog atmosphere of the circus of American presidential elections! To ease the general anxiety here are some pictures of real dogs and cats.

Dogs are hot these days—many people prefer them to having children. They say when you get a dog you are buying yourself a tragedy…

Man’s best friend,

this image will give nightmares to mullahs: a dog on a persian rug!

I am not a cat person - I had to look hard in my archives to find these two pictures.

Funny background:

If I had a choice I would have loved to have a beagle like this one who will always be my favorite dog or a border collie. Maybe in another life…

“Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.” Mary Bly

A great cartoon can make you want to laugh, cry, and think all at once. These are the best cartoons I’ve seen lately:

Massoud Ziaei’s works are little gems:

and for the bibliophile:

The following are from this young cartoonist:

his humor is getting darker:

and darker:

I laughed a lot seeing this one from Hamid Bahrami right after the batman movie:

I love his light/bright sense of humor:

There are some very sad cartoons:

 the quiet gnawing pain of children of divorce.

After the great masters, Ardeshir Mohassess,

and Kambiz Derambakhsh,

these young artists— mentioned earlier—bring in a sense of freshness. This is a very funny one called frustration from Randall Munroe:

and one from the late Roger Blachon:

and this from Roger Tetsu (passed away in 2008 like Blachon—bad year for cartoonists named Roger):

and  last but not least, one from the great Sempé…

I found this fabulous Russian site that archives many cartoonists’ work; once you’re in, there is no coming out soon…

The Desert Garden at the Huntington’s was in full bloom and I couldn’t resist sharing these beautiful images with you. First some gorgeous Echeveria succulents:

They have fleshy leaves with small delicate flowers like these:

These are called black succulents and are truly magnificent:

Agave (of the tequila fame) , Aloe and Cactus are all members of the succulent family—the cactus having more prickles than others. They are water-retaining plants. Just look at this gorgeous queen victoria agave:

and this pretty pink flower of another agave plant.

This one had small blue and red blossoms.

You all know this more common succulent: the creeping ice plant.

This desert garden is nearly 100 years old and has more than 3,000 species of desert plants. Let’s go to the thorny cacti now; you don’t want to get lost on this road on a dark night!

I loved these peach hued blossoms on this prickly pear cactus,

they turn yellow when they open.

This is a more dramatic version of the same plant—it almost looked like under water coral…

Cactus is an oxymoron to me. How can a plant with fleshy leaves and prickles that repel you have such brilliant and intensely colored flowers? It rejects you and invites you at the same time…

A closer look,

and the piece de resistance: the red flower cactus.

This young gardener was busy the whole time that I was visiting the gardens.

“Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.”  Lou Erickson

It’s been a busy tough week so that’s all I have to share:

The card is from yet another under-represented French artist: Cécile Veilhan. This particular work of hers is called un printemps abricot or an apricot spring. I have most of her work but she’s still a second to my favorite, Gaelle Boissonnard…

Exploration of the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

I love California’s warm summer nights and winter days. If I could have a custom made climate, I would ask for warm summer nights of Los Angeles infused with the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms and cool, cloudy winter days.

In other words I would take the best of both seasons. With the way the “custom made” world is progressing, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days my wish comes true.

I took these pictures in a small hotel in Paris with these typical windows with fake Parisian balconies and cheap curtains. It was magical though - something in the quiet of a curtain’s movement in the breeze reminds us of less noisy times, less hurried lives, less superficial connections…

It’s highly unusual for me to add something to a post once it’s been published but Marie-ancolie romanet, my photographer friend, asked me to add this picture of hers that goes with her comments. Check out her site, she has superb images…

Sadly many new technologies have contributed to increasing our isolation (TV, iPods, etc.) but it doesn’t have to be that way.

As children, we start the conversation by playing together, as young adults our conversations become intense but something strange happens in midlife: all those ideals sediment in our heads and we get comfortable in our somehow more quiet and prosaic lives - we sink gradually to the bottom of our minds.

Unfortunately for many of us, by the time we get to old age, the conversation has died down completely or has diminished to a competition about who’s more sick and who’s children are more ungrateful - Man dies in solitude and silence…

To fight the loneliness of it all, we compromise our standards/principles and settle with a wide array of less than par exchange of ideas.

Sharing opinions, ideas and images is my motivation for blogging. Ideally a post can be the start of a conversation; the Internet equivalent of sitting down in front of a cup of coffee (make it tea) to relax and shoot the breeze. The conversation is at the root of creativity and it can help change our mindsets.

To make the conversation flow easier, it’s now possible to be notified by e-mail when someone makes a comment on the same post you have. All you have to do is check the little box labeled “Notify me of follow up comments via e-mail”, which appears below your comment.

There have been so many great comments and I can’t mention them all, but here are some of my favorites:

• Ali (he has his own fan club among my readers!) on “Leaf peeping” in L.A.
• Lily Daryabegi on Suicide, a fundamental human right
• Entropy quoting a poem by Tagore
• Melvin Sokolsky on Contagious enthusiasm: Gustavo Dudamel
• Tamas Ungvari on Matters of the heart
• BMZ on Ahmadinejad, Bush and Sarkozy: fatal combination
• Gens Deau on Africa exasperates me
• Anousheh on Southern California is burning - sudden and intense changes…

One of my favorite thinkers, Theodore Zeldin believes that “conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits - it doesn’t just reshuffle the cards it creates new cards.” I agree with him when he says “we are increasingly leading bubble lives in which we insulate ourselves from everyone apart from an ever diminishing circle of friends and acquaintances.”

A good conversation starter would be this very funny NY Times article about the books that end love stories.

Happy New Year to all of you hamvatans! These are some pictures of the ghost of Nowruz past and present. I remember new shoes, the intoxicating scent of hyacinths, the goldfish and the mint bills - and of course the sound of naghareh when the year changes.

No Ruz is the day when life’s glory is celebrated; it usually occurs on March 21st or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. It’s a feast of renewal and freshness - No (new) Ruz (day).

It has often been suggested that the famous Persepolis Complex, or at least the palace of Apadana and Hundred Columns Hall, were built for the specific purpose of celebrating Noruz by Darius the Great (522 -485 BC). It is celebrated in other countries as well as Iran. Tajikistan is one of them.

In spite of trying hard, the islamic republic of Iran has not been able to erase this semi-pagan spring festival; they have tried to replace Zarathustra’s spring equinox celebration with the muslim eyds to no avail.

The original haft sheen or seven sh’s were: Sharab (wine), Shekar (sugar), Sham (Candle), Shir (milk), Sharbat (Sherbet), Shaneh (comb), Shahd (nectar) but they were replaced by seven S’s to eliminate sharab (wine) after the arab conquest.

The haft seen is made of:
Sabzeh – wheat or lentil sprouts growing in a dish symbolizing rebirth
Samanu - pudding made of wheat symbolizing wealth
Senjed – dried fruit of Jujube tree symbolizing love
Seer - garlic symbolizing medicine
Seeb – apples symbolizing beauty and health
Somaq – sumac berries symbolizing the sun
Serkeh – vinegar symbolizing age
Sonbol – hyacinth flower symbolizing the arrival of spring
Sekkeh - gold coins symbolizing prosperity and wealth

Too much information, wouldn’t you say?

“Pourquoi les hommes ne savent-ils pas
Que la capucine n’est pas un hasard…” Sepehri

آمد بهار ای دوستان منزل سوی بستان کنیم
گرد غریبان چمن خیزید تا جولان کنیم

امروز چون زنبورها پران شویم از گل به گل
تا در عسل خان جهان شش گوشه آبادان کنیم

آمد رسولی از چمن کاین طبل را پنهان مزن
ما طبل خان عشق را از نعره ها ویران کنیم

بشنو سماع آسمان خیزید ای دیوانگان
جانم فدای عاشقان امروز جان افشان کنیم

آتش در این عالم زنیم وین چرخ را برهم زنیم
وین عقل پابرجای را چون خویش سرگردان کنیم

کوبیم ما بی پا و سر گه پای میدان گاه سر
ما کی به فرمان خودیم تا این کنیم و آن کنیم

نی نی چو چوگانیم ما در دست شه گردان شده
تا صد هزاران گوی را در پای شه غلطان کنیم

خامش کنیم و خامشی هم مایه دیوانگیست
این عقل باشد کآتشی در پنبه پنهان کنیم

Rumi

To hear my good friend (Houri)’s voice accompanying the preparation of haft-seen, click on the view here.

Postscript:
About the seven sh’s, somebody mentioned the omnipresent SHAHNAMEH on the Norouz spread and I have to agree - the Great Book’s almost always been on mine even now that it’s become the tame haft-seen. For some comic book version (for the heavy readers) check this site out.

check out this link to see  george bush’s haft-seen.

Is there anything in the world more effortlessly beautiful than a flower (in this case a cabbage)? We can’t stop marveling at their generous beauty.

This ornamental cabbage was exquisite in the morning sun.

I am not a “nature person”; I need the big cities’ concrete to be happy but it is often the quiet elegance of trees and flowers that reconciles me to the countryside.

These gorgeous carps - Koi Fish - were the best companion for the flora of this morning stroll. They are symbols of love and friendship.

I have decided to go easy on this post - no links, no major earth-shattering opinions, nothing but beautiful images and maybe this poem by e.e.cummings:

“i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

Just watched Charlie Brown agonizing over the girl with red hair in a peanuts valentine special - Snoopy of course gets all the girls as usual.

I would like to share the work of an artist that I admire greatly. Having been in the greeting card industry for years, I seldom get impressed by new art in this business. Gaelle Boissonnard is an artist living in the Loire Valley region of France. Her work is exquisite and I have been collecting it since that fateful day I fell in love with her images in a small shop in Mont St. Michel.

There is something otherworldly about her work - it’s fresh, whimsical, happy yet somehow profound (let’s not forget that these are commercial works being sold in small shops). They don’t scream at you, they share their beauty quietly.

I did get in touch with her and am still waiting for her distributors to start doing something in the U.S. It’s easy to find her in the card shops in France now but she’s difficult to catch in the internet.

Just found out that she has a book out too.

I wished somebody would start putting words/poetry to these gorgeous paintings of hers - something like Prévert’s Immense et Rouge:

“Immense et rouge
Au-dessus du Grand Palais
Le soleil d’hiver apparaît
Et disparaît
Comme lui mon coeur va disparaître
Et tout mon sang va s’en aller
S’en aller à ta recherche
Mon amour
Ma beauté
Et te trouver
Là où tu es.”

or Tagore’s great piece:

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.”

or better yet, Rumi who keeps bewitching people after 800 years…

I believe Rumi should not be translated (I’ve read soooo many bad/mediocre translations) - his work loses its magic - Happy Valentine’s Day people.

Ok people, brace yourselves - this is going to be an image heavy post! I will take you through a couple of days in Paris - the way I like it: hitting the streets early in the morning to catch the blue hour of this great city; Montparnasse is a very busy neighborhood at 8:30 am.

This was my first time witnessing the changing of the ads:

I walked to a favorite café that reminds me of my twenties, La Rotonde.

I don’t like them anymore (remember the whipped cream out of a can?) but nostalgia and Balzac take me to them every year.

the cafés are changing in Paris - here is the old generation Select and the trendy Lotus.

Of course anything that remotely reminds me of Los Angeles while I am in Europe is not welcome so this kind of restaurant/café just makes me wince but the worst offender is Starbucks and its paper cups.

I bought a pariscope from this news stand,

and had a coffee while looking for the hottest exhibition in Paris.

I decided to see Giacometti in Centre Pompidou . “It was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray! ”

What a great show it was - complete with the artist being filmed while painting and sculpting.

His drawings (included some fabulous small notebooks), paintings and sculptures made a large window into the soul of this great creature…

Even though I am not a big fan of the Centre Pompidou, I have to admit that the view is breathtaking…

I visited the Maillol museum a couple of days before this and liked its architecture as much as the collections:

Maillol is very different in his style from Rodin - they were good friends.

The picture bellow shows the plaster versions of the bronze sculptures above.

On a more colorful note, living in Los Angeles, I am deprived of pretty store windows - abundant in New York, Paris and London.

I am ending this post with two images of my loyal laptop that’s getting very old but gets the job done.

Café crème or Petite Arvine, a good post I hope.