CHASING STRANDS OF PEARLS

CHASING STRANDS OF PEARLS

Lela pointed out the story of Meri Shervashidze telling me that she was the first model to walk the catwalk with a string of pearls for Chanel and that she stood out for the sophisticated style and way of giving beauty as you can see here where Lela added a tag for me:

A very beautiful story that must be told, since I believe it is not sufficiently known.

Unfortunately, there is little information about her: for example, I tried to search through official Chanel websites but I could not find anything.
Maybe you can be better than me.

According to Vogue, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel herself was photographed in conversation with the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, wearing her pearl necklaces in 1920.

So a year before Meri arrived in Paris.

But let’s take a step back: Meri Shervashidze was born in 1888 in Batumi and descends from the family of the sovereign prince of Abkhazia.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are other from Tbilisi and from the rest of Georgia as the Observatory tells us but you Lela correct me if I’m wrong.

When she was still a young girl, the family moved to St. Petersburg where Meri became the empress’s maid of honor.

In 1918 the wedding with Gigusha Eristavi, here there is a small family tree.

At the sunset of Georgian independence, and shortly before the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Meri embarks directly to Paris, stopping in Constantinople in Turkey where she participates in a beauty contest, winning it.

Arrived in the Ville Lumière, Meri settled in Rue de la Tour, sixteenth arrondissement, near Bois de Boulogne and it seems it was the aforementioned Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich who introduced her to Coco.

Paris in those years frames a particular type of beauty, so much so that the writer Alexander Vasilyev wrote a book: “Beauty in Exile” or artists, models and nobility who fled the Russian revolution and influenced the world of fashion.

Meri’s style and elegance do not go unnoticed: Saveli Sorin paints her portrait which is located in the palace of the Prince of Monaco.

Meri is also photographed by Man Ray but emblematic is the meeting with Galaktion Tabidze in 1935 because it is believed that her compositions in Georgian are dedicated to her although some publications are earlier .

Here you can listen to the poem in the original language, personally it strikes me to hear the name “Meri” which by now in the light of this path to find its traces, for me it has assumed the typical aura of women who have been able to leave a mark.

And because elegance comes from within, Meri Shervashidze spent the last years of her life in a nursing home preserving beauty, nobility and majesty until the last day of her life, at the age of 97.
She is buried with her husband in the Saint Genevieve des Bois cemetery.

I remember the period in which I listened to Destini incrociati – Fates crossed and I find the story of Meri could be told in this way, even if I later found that Giacomo Zito and his collaborators have paired Coco Chanel with Luchino Visconti

we can always make a new episode, or not?

And asking ourselves what “we can do”… I would say that we rather cannot talk about elegance and strings of pearls without mentioning her
Here the post with the iconic Breakfast at Tiffany’s scene. 

And you, do you have other strings of pearls to chase?

AT AMALIA’S TABLE

AT AMALIA’S TABLE

As promised I go back to have coffee with three c by Laura: the pen of the group At Amalia’s table

We tell about Ischia between chat and coffee.
It’s the slogan underneath the photo of six gorgeous smiling women.
Fantastic! Don’t you agree?

I obviously couldn’t help but immerse myself instantly!

Following the blog I discovered absolutely interesting information, tales, stories, traditions and itineraries that led me to go beyond the perhaps best-known entrance of the Terme to find out for example unexpected details on agriculture that honestly I would not have imagined.

Because At Amalia’s table friends talk about Ischia, going in search of the soul that not even the Ischitans know fully, in a succession of in-depth studies that also range geographically up to Casamicciola, Lacco Ameno, Forio, Serrara Fontana and Barano
Did you already know these places?

Coffee as a meeting point.

What to say? PERFECT!!

And coffee was the very first exchange within this project that grew up at Amalia‘s table, which kicked off thanks to which the friends met, and subsequently matured between walks, villages and characters

In particular, I became passionate about the stories of Aunt Mariuccia and Sue: opposed in a sort of mirror vision that I advise you not to miss.

But there is another character to discover: Laura
Interpreter and translator, she changed her life by exploring herself through a total immersion in nature, during which she retraced the Ischian experience of the Danish author Bergsøe

La pietra cantante – The singing stone is one of her translation works that fascinated me as soon as I discovered that Laura translated it from a text in gothic characters … as I already said, I love these things that I consider a bit like dreams.

At the bottom of dreams isn’t it always nice to write to be continued?
So we can’t help but continue the discovery of this Singing Stone soon, right?

SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

Imagine you sit down and pick up your favorite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances.

With an opening like this, what do you think?

I was immediately attracted to it and continued reading:

But you also expect the book has its own independent existence behind those appearances. So when you put the book down on the coffee table and walk into the kitchen, or leave your house to go to work, you expect the book still looks, feels, and smells just as it did when you were holding it.

Have you ever thought otherwise?
Where is this question leading us?
If I had not “spoiled” through the title, I would almost leave in suspense curious about your answer.

The article, which I recommend you continue here is titled “Is Reality a Game of Quantum Mirrors? A New Theory Helps Explain Schrödinger’s Cat.”

Also thanks to a quote from the new book by Carlo Rovelli it is about this theory useful to understand in a very simplified way the concept of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.

Off course this information always comes to me from Massimo, because I am rather in chaos already considering only one dimension … yet in this case, even a less brilliant mind like mine can grasp this concept in a basic way.

Research from Yale University has been published on Nature mainly by Zlatko Minev according to which it is possible to predict the quantum leap and therefore to know before opening the box.

But regardless of this I would like to dwell on the idea of two different opposing versions, yet both true.

The cat is alive and dead at the same time.

A bit like a sort of extreme take on the famous Sliding Doors.

Finding myself in a particular moment of life, with the aggravating circumstance of being a chronic indecisive, I will inevitably have to make crucial decisions.

Are you resolute or recriminating?
Do you attribute events to chance, to fate, or do you ever think that something could have gone differently?
The typical question what if… is it just a mental journey for you?

Are you a fatalist or would you rather be able to close the lid of the box to save the cat?

AVANTI, PARLA – COME ON, TALK

AVANTI, PARLA – COME ON, TALK

Come on, talk! About an order or a peremptory invitation?
Changing the pitch can be both.
What if the request comes from a longtime friend and the tone is simply curious?

As happened to me when reading Giulia Caminito‘s book, also in this case I found a completely unconventional way of writing, even if I have not been conquered in the same way.

When Porci con le aliWinged pigs came out, Lidia Ravera‘s debut book, I was still reading Mickey Mouse but the echo of the sensation generated remained impressed on me, as well as the post-1968 wave that brought with it an epochal change.

This book brings back to those years, however, in a slow and alternating way, more like an undertow that laps slowly.

And slowly one realizes that the story was built specifically as a system on a very specific foundation: the base, the true fulcrum of the whole story.

If on the one hand I was curious to deepen a page of Italian history of which I have never read, but which I have lived through news stories, on the other I found myself questioning my way of thinking.

Is the constant effort on myself to eliminate judgments and prejudices really effective?

And again: would I have had the same point of view if I hadn’t found myself in front of a perfect “grandmother”?

How often have we said then that it is not enough to give birth to be mothers, but if life offered a second chance?

I firmly believe that children and young people teach us constantly, and that they are saving.

The food for thought also ranges from the controversial question of knowing how to forgive oneself, to the survival instinct.
From the intrinsic power of silence to the benefits of music.
From consistency to hypocrisy.

All this is a portion of what emerged from the conversations with Monica: this time too I owe this reading to her, just as I owe to her the enrichment on a human level that I was able to draw from it.

What do you think about it?
Do you prefer a book to reveal a story or a reflection?
Come on, talk …

MEMORY OF WATER

MEMORY OF WATER

If vibration is energy, than resonance is the reverberation of energy, and resonance is thus capable of relaying energy.”

These words of Masaru Emoto contain the essence of his studies on the memory of water.

Did you already know this theory?
When Massimo told me about it, I was literally enchanted.

Music, as I have already written, for me is energy and constitutes an essential component.

Even water is a a very important element that in my case takes the form of the link with the sea.

But how do they combine?

Masaru Emoto undertook extensive research of water around the planet, not so much as a scientific researcher, but more from the perspective of an original thinker. At length, he realized that it was in the frozen crystal form, that water showed us its true nature.

How? By freezing water samples previously exposed to music of various kinds and subsequently observing the crystals.

It even sounds like a fairy tale right?
It strikes with all the delicacy of the Japanese universe and their attitude, which I sincerely envy.

Listening to this interview I have been impressed by some passages, for example when he declares: “I feel I have a lot in common with Don Quixote.”

Or when he speaks of Japanese spiritual tradition and HADO: literally the crest of the wave, which represents precisely the energetic vibration that is transformed into the memory of water.

Wonderful.

However, I must also say that personally, considering Japan and water, my thoughts cannot help but run on the dramatic situation in Fukushima  and the imminent running out of time left for the tanks.

Also for this reason, Dr. Emoto’s intent to dedicate himself to children, who do not have the negative imprinting of adults, is even more precious through his Peace Project.

How to blame him?

And it seems we can not be wrong even with regard to his studies on which a double-blind test was carried out to reconfirm.

What do you think about it?

On the emotional wave of this way of music materializing into crystals, I then found myself reflecting on another wonderful moment in which music impresses the memory: pregnancy.

In this regard, I would be SO happy if someone wanted to tell me their experience.

I have always made our son listen to music: before he was born and also after. On the type of music, perhaps I was not very orthodox …

In this regard, I found Dr. Alexandra Lamont‘s thesis: senior lecturer in music psychology at Keele University, according to which children can remember things from the uterus much longer than we thought.

The University of Leicester research study reported by NewScientist explains that:

Psychologist Alexandra Lamont found that year-old babies still recognised and had a preference for musical pieces that were played to them before being born. Previous studies have only shown babies being familiar with pre-birth experiences when they were a few days old.
Lamont had thought the children might develop a taste for the style of music played by their mothers, but this was not true. Instead, she was surprised to find that the babies could discriminate and remember individual songs.

By Alexandra Lamont I also found a World Café participatory discussion “coincidences? I do not think so …”

A part from jokes, what music would you like to crystallize in your memory?

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