Behind The Red Curtain

Posted by Sylvia Van Nooten (Milano, Italy) on 10 December 2006 in Miscellaneous.

The confessional box at the church in Quarna Sopra

Still from VALENCE, France

This oneis just like a childhood memory. It reminds me the ambience of a little church in a french village of the Alpes, near the italian frontier...Fine capture.

10 Dec 2006 7:27am

Duncan Galbraith from kyoto, Japan

It looks so, I dont know the english word for it (Ive been in Japan so long I've seriously forgotten how I'd say this back in Enland!) but in Japan we'd probably say 'local'. In english this word just means near but in japan it's a word used for a place which is part of a small community and outside the realms of 'the city'. By outside I mean outside the zone of influence which cities tend to impose on their subjects/immediate surroundings. I'm purely referring to my experience in Kansai here. Many people I meet in the city in which I work, upon finding out I live 'in the sticks', enquire 'why?????'. Its almost as if they expect me to be living off the land with no access to running water! Anyway...I'm digressing. what I mean to say is this has an almost timeless quality. It's almost as if time has stopped here from looking at purely at your picture. God, Ive rambled...sorry, I lost the plot here.

10 Dec 2006 5:14pm

Sylvia from Milano, Italy

No no, you haven't rambled Duncan! Anyway, I recognize the symptom of living too long in another country-- one's English changes, it gets 'infused'.

And yes, Quarna is another world from Milan, a tiny world. I don't live there, it's the vacation house of 'the family'. But what's also a trip is how the people of Quarna look at me and my husband with a sort of awe, we live in 'the big city', and what does that mean?

And Still-- Quarna is in the hills above Lake Orta, very close to the Swiss border, and probably very similar to the village you are thinking of.

10 Dec 2006 5:26pm

Carlos Coyote from Menlo Park, CA, United States

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, he has no vestment!!! He's probably hitting on the alter boys anyway . . . excellent image Guru, you do have the eye of the artist .
Duncan, perhaps the word you seek is provincial, if that's not too much of a negative connotation.
Like mah American is like only infused w/ Californese dudes, comprende?

14 Dec 2006 6:59pm

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