Ziva's Inferno

Friday, April 6, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: Tragedy

It's early January and the air at Helsinki airport is clean and cold. It smells of water and pine trees and snow.

It's dark. It'll be late before we're home again.

We've spent New Year's Eve in Prague, standing on the Charles Bridge while fireworks set the sky on fire. We rode trains through Germany, explored Berlin. And now we're back in Finland. The bus driver's laconic voice wishes us welcome home. Everything is okay, he says, we'll be in Turku before midnight.

There's a woman sitting a few rows behind us on the bus. She's crying. Loudly and inconsolably, as if her world has been torn apart and she has nothing left. She's in Finland, but she's not speaking Finnish. She's on the phone with someone, speaking in an exotic language, her voice thick with tears. In moments like this, I wish I wasn't so Finnish.

Finland is full of people minding their own business, observing, quietly ignoring. She sounds like she's all alone in the world and she's lost everything she ever cared about. I wish I could go to her, sit down next to her and ask her if there is anything I can do to help. But while the air is clean and smells of water and pines trees and snow, she's riding a bus in a country of a solitary people. A people who carries their burden alone. They will listen to you cry, they will feel your pain, but only from a distance.

For her, the bus is empty.

This post is a part of the 30 Days of Photographs II challenge. Please visit the rest of the participants for more fantastic photos: MikeWJ, Nicky and Mike, Mo, Meleah, John, aka nonamedufus, Bryan, aka Unfinished Person, Mariann, Malisa, Nora, LaughingMom, Tanya, Elizabeth A., 00dozo, Cheryl, Kristen, Pam and Katherine. *

Thursday, April 5, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: Power

I do not like electricity. I assume my dislike of it stems from growing up with a father who was an electrical engineer, and seeing him stick forks into the electrical sockets while telling me never to do what he does but what he says. Of course, then he never did tell me anything about electricity, which has left me with all sorts of conflicted feelings about forks and electrical sockets.

I know how to change a broken light bulb, and in a pinch I can replace a blown fuse, but ask me to touch anything metallic during the cold and dry winter months, and I will look like an idiot, trying to just barely make contact because maybe if the contact is really brief and feather light, I won’t get a shock from the static electricity.

Yeah right.

Still, electricity brings me the internet, toasts my bread in the morning and makes the little rabbit dance (don’t ask.) So what if some days it takes me 5 minutes just to work up the guts to open the door of my car, it might just be worth it.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: The Experiment

How can I possibly explain this in 250 words or less?

It was an experiment, you see. A bright idea one of the two of us had, I can’t remember who it was anymore, but I’m fairly sure it couldn’t have possibly been M.

“Sure,” he said, I’ll try anything once. Which is a lie, by the way, he won’t. He says he will, but he’s a liar.

And then, well, the corn field was pretty big, and the shoes wouldn’t really fit. And the ducks were chasing the beavers and the extension cord wasn’t really long enough and um, well, you can see how that would have been problematic.

Now, the mask, it was, like, so complicated! And really, who carries duct tape around wherever they go anyway?

Then M started doubting the whole thing, and well, you know how it is with the ducks and quacking and the echoing.

But the top hat really put the finishing touches on the outfit. And the bite marks were hardly noticeable from a distance. It might have needed a ribbon, or a bow or something, but M said it was fine the way it was. Well, you know how men are.

Who would have thought it would be so difficult to hold the “David” pose for so long? It seems pretty straightforward, but you’d be surprised.

Yeah.

It appears I cannot explain this in 250 words after all. I’m terribly sorry. But the photo really says it all, don’t you think?

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: From An Ant's Perspective

Monday, April 2, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: Architecture

This is the Church of Empress Alexandra Martyr, located at the market square in Turku. It’s an orthodox church, and a beautiful building, ordered by Nicholas I of Russia in the early 1800’s. I don’t know if Nicholas also ordered the impressive wrought iron fence, or if that was a later addition, but I like it. Luckily, the gates are kept open so no one will have to sacrifice their nuts to get in when the bells are ringing.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II: Silence

“Then something woke you. What woke you up? Did you dream? What was it?”

“I woke up and heard the lambs screaming. I woke up in the dark and the lambs were screaming.”

“They were slaughtering the spring lambs?”

“Yes”

“What did you do?”

“I couldn’t do anything for them. I was just a –“

“What did you do with the horse?”

“I got dressed without turning on the light and went outside. She was scared. All the horses in the pen were scared and milling around. I blew in her nose and she knew it was me. Finally she put her nose in my hand. The lights were on in the barn and in the shed by the sheep pen. Bare bulbs, big shadows. The refrigerator truck had come and it was idling, roaring. I led her away.”

“Did you saddle her?”

“No. I didn’t take their saddle. Just a rope hackamore was all.”

“As you went off in the dark, could you hear the lambs back where the lights were?”

“Not long. There weren’t but twelve.”

“You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?”

“Good-bye, Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

From “Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris. Sorry about the photo, it was the best I could do, in Finland the lambs are still hibernating this time of year.