"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas..."

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...."

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

The Dry Salvages by T.S.Elliot

"... And under the oppression of the silent fog

The tolling bell

Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried

Ground swell, a time

Older than the time chronometers , older

Than time counted by anxious worried women

Lying awake, calculating the future,

Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel

And piece together the past and the future,

Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,

The future futureless, before the morning watch

When time stops and time is never ending;

And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,

Clangs

The bell... "

Extract from The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S.Elliot,

Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages

Photo and Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Michael Robartes by W.B.Yeats

"She.                   I have heard said

There is great danger in the body.

He. Did God in portioning wine and bread

Give man His thought or his mere body?

She. My wretched dragon is perplexed..."

Extract from W.B.Yeats Collected Poems,

Michael Robartes and The Dancers

Photo and Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Solomon and The Witch by W.B. Yeats

"And thus declared that Arab lady;

'Last night, where under the wild moon

On grassy mattress I had laid me,

Within my arms great Solomon,

I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue

Not his, not mine.'

Who understood

Whatever has been said, sighed, sung,

Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,..."

Extract from W.B. Yeats Collected Works,

Solomon and The Witch

Photo ( Installation's detail) by Sandra Saldanha

500 Viewers!!! Thank you for visiting my Blog!

Dear friends,

Thank you all for your support!

I hope to see you again in the next year!

Dance , Music, Art and Poetry 

has inspired me to write and create mixed media works,

, but above all they helped me to look closer within my landscape and appreciate the gifts of life

that are around me.

Now half way through my own journey,

 I start to understand what really matters during my passage in this world .

I am specially thankful for the love of my family and friends.

I would like to wish you all Happy Holidays

and a Very Creative, Prosperous, Loving New Year!

Photo and Text by Sandra Saldanha

Joseph Campbell's on Heros

"The hero . . . discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh."

Text by Joseph Campbell

The Pram ( details ) by Sandra Saldanha

" Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity."

John Hunter's account of the dissection of a Whale. ( A small sized one.)

From Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville, Extracts xxxi

Photo and Intallation The Pram ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

THE Wooden Horse (detail)

"Quick, give me some horsehair."

She scoured the key,

but it would not stop bleeding.

Drop after drop

of pure red blood

issued from the tiny key.

From 'Bluebeard' 

-Women Who Run With the Wolves

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Photo & Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Wardrobe ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

"How cold I grew", (says Dante) how faint with fearfulness

Ask me not, Reader; I shall not waste breath

Telling what words are powerless to express;

This was not life , and yet it was not death;

                                                      (Ibid., lines 22-25)

From  Dante's The Divine Comedy - Hell

Photo & Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Wardrobe ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

Afterlife

"Like oranges we roll right off the table.
I am lost like a goldfish stuck in sky.
No news of you, but I cry out
and you appear, carrying a photograph


of life tormented trees - how glad we are
to see our old stiff selves released
sucked down, and melting at the seams.
We'll make the mistakes we wished we'd made.


They say the soul might have some choice -
I could for instance be a taste or smell, 
something sharp curled on the tongue.
You and I as leopard breath or song.


From ' Split World'

Poems 1990 - 2005

by Moniza Alvi


Photo e Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Locket (details) by Sandra Saldanha

"... in those abyss places that are preverbal and primal,

 where psyche and body meet on the borderline,

 where all is timeless and spaceless

 and the patterns of the magical level of consciousness hold."

Text by Sylvia Brinton Perera

 3D Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Domain

Domain

Within me lies a stone

like the one that tries

to fill the mango

Inside it is the essence

of another continent.

I fear its removal -

but how much better

it could be

to take it in my arms

and race away with it!

Poem by Moniza Alvi

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Despedida

Despedida

Por mim, e por vós, e por mais aquilo
que está onde as outras coisas nunca estão,
deixo o mar bravo e o céu tranqüilo:
quero solidão.

Meu caminho é sem marcos nem paisagens.
E como o conheces? - me perguntarão.
- Por não ter palavras, por não ter imagens.
Nenhum inimigo e nenhum irmão.

Que procuras? Tudo. Que desejas? - Nada.
Viajo sozinha com o meu coração.
Não ando perdida, mas desencontrada.
Levo o meu rumo na minha mão.

A memória voou da minha fronte.
Voou meu amor, minha imaginação...
Talvez eu morra antes do horizonte.
Memória, amor e o resto onde estarão?

Deixo aqui meu corpo, entre o sol e a terra.
(Beijo-te, corpo meu, todo desilusão!
Estandarte triste de uma estranha guerra...)
Quero solidão.

Poem byCecília Meireles  Photo by Sandra Saldanha                                               

Gracias a la Vida (lyrics) ...one of the great hits by the Argentine Folk singer Mercedes Sosa who died today at the age of 74....

"Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro
perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco
y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado el oído que en todo su ancho
graba noche y día grillos y canarios
martirios, turbinas, ladridos, chubascos
y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario
con él, las palabras que pienso y declaro
madre, amigo, hermano
y luz alumbrando la ruta del alma del que estoy amando

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados
con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos
playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos
y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me dio el corazón que agita su marco
cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano
cuando miro el bueno tan lejos del malo
cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto
así yo distingo dicha de quebranto
los dos materiales que forman mi canto
y el canto de ustedes que es el mismo canto
y el canto de todos que es mi propio canto

Gracias a la vida, gracias a la vida "

Dogus @ The British Museum

"Breaking the silence

Of an ancient pond

A frog jumped into water _

A deep resonance."

Haiku by Matsuo Basho

From 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

Survival International

Survival International is the Movement for Tribal People

Totem Poles from the Vancouver Islands @ The British Museum

From the ground,

its startling colour stopped people dead in their tracks,

 from the air, it stood like a beacon and was visible from miles away.

Like much of the surrounding landscape, the tree was incorporated

 into the Haida's vast repertoire of stories, but as far as anyone knows ,

 its the only tree, in what was then an infinity of trees,

ever to be given a name by the Haida's people.

From  The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

The wanderer

"between two worlds, one dead,

the other powerless to be born."

From Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box (details) @ Central Saint Martin Window Gallery

(...) She took the keys outdoors, and from the oven she pressed ashes

onto it, and scrubbed some more. She held it to the heat to sear it. 

She laid cobweb over it to staunch the flow, but nothing could make

 the weeping blood subside.

   "Oh, what am I to do?" she cried. "I know, I'll put the little key

 away. I'll put it in the wardrobe. I'll close the door. This is a bad

 dream. All will be aright. " And this she did do. (...)

From  Women Who Run With the Wolves:

Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

'Bluebeard' by Clarissa P. Estes

Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box (the wardrobe's detail) @ Central Saint Martin Window Gallery

Midway this way of life we're bound upon,

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Ay me! how hard to speak of it - that rude

And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath

Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;

Yet there I gained such good, that to convey

The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith.

Poem by Dante from The Divine Comedy I: Hell

Translated by D.L. Sayers

Photo and  Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Timeless... childhood

"Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow-thronged loft by the shadow of my hand.

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land,

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,Time held me green and dying

Though i sang in my chains like the sea."

Poem by Dylan Thomas "Fern Hill" in Collected Poems

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Telling Tales @ The V&A

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box ( detail ) @ Central Saint Martins Window Gallery

3D Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Patchwork

Pieces of cotton pierced together

Squares, triangles, circles...

in passion red, bloody red , blooming red.

Needles cutting through the padded layers,

forming a patchwork of life experiences. 

3D Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha