Thursday Doors, March 30 2017

A bit of anniversary and another instalment of doors from “Slovenian Tuscany” which impressed even us who live at the source.

On this day three years ago, for some not quite determined reason (but mostly to show my photos and tell stuff to more than my immediate people), I posted my first ever blog post. It was not your typical happy-go-lucky yay-me tale, but rather told the sad true story of an escaped lynx.

But already the next day it got lighter in tone with tales of August – my month on Crete, my relationship with Peugeots and gender, and how my learning of Italian was proceeding. There was also the quotation below by Tahereh Mafi. I don’t know where I got it but only now I see that she is a young Iranian-American writer. I’d say that she took words out of my mouth, but in reality I believe that in her case this was much more literal.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

—Tahereh Mafi, “Shatter Me”

In the meantime I crossed over to this one, my second blog, and here we have it: three years’ worth of words, images, smiles, discoveries, mostly joy, some bitterness, Bestia, amore, family, friends, the sea, boats, animals, towns, Italia, Slovenia, nature, windows, stairs, arches, and of course – doors.

And since it’s Thursday, today we celebrate Norm and his brilliant idea to gather door lovers and their photos in one challenge.

The village Šmartno in Goriška Brda region of Slovenia, called “Slovenian Tuscany” due to its hillocks and wine-making, is a bright example of how prettily an old village can be restored but also, as some of the doors below clearly show, what happens when no restoration takes place.

The combination is such that I think I didn’t stop clicking for a moment. The first part of Šmartno doors can be found here, then, just for a change, here is a nice 6-window post, and for any who might need it, here is the inside of the lovely village church. One more door post from here will appear in a Thursday to come.

I wish to let everybody who has ever spent any amount of time on my blog know how grateful I am for your time. In this day and age it is not a given that anybody hears.

Photo: © signature mmm

For Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors challenge.