SCENES FROM THE END OF THE YEAR

I'm writing and assembling this post in the last hours of 2022. It will be published in the morning. The first morning of 2023. So I'll continue writing as the new year has arrived already.

(Enlargeable)

Some of the photographs you'll see here were taken yesterday. Early in the morning. Some others - the previous evening. Some shots are a day or two older. All of them are about the end year's atmosphere in my hometown and some other places not far from where I live.

On the 27th of December, at about 8 Am, I arrived in Veruda, one of the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Pula. A friend had to buy some stuff in one of the stores there, and I took the opportunity to get a bunch of photographs while waiting in the parking lot. In the foreground of this first of the shots from Veruda, you can see part of the pretty large board that advertises Christmas stuff for children in the city.

For the most part, the place didn't look very Christmasy in the gray morning. From a distance, it seems that the buildings shown in this shot have no decorations at all. That's not true. Well, technically, at least. In the following photograph ...

... I zoomed in on one of the balconies to show you two modest pieces of decoration that genuinely tried to cheer up the early morning atmosphere in suburbia but that was beyond their power, so in my opinion, they failed proudly but still miserably. I mean, miserably in a good heroic way. It was a great defeat. Respect to all those little lamps and whoever put them there.

Here you can take a look at the neighborhood from another angle and direction.

A red shirt was hanging on the rope under one of the windows high on the block building. That thing turned out looking very Christmasy by accident, I suppose.

Now, before continuing the Christmas tour through Veruda, I would like to show you a little animation I made a couple of hours ago. I created the snowflake pattern a couple of years ago when I made hundreds of patterns in Adobe illustrator to sell them as stock images. That business didn't bring me any money worth mentioning, but at least I can make an animation or two using that stuff from time to time, and give a bit of motion to my lucrative posts here on HIVE. Yeah, Have a Great Day and a Bullish New Year, dear friends and other Hivers that I haven't met yet.

Some years ago, a reproduction of Picasso's painting was added to the facade of one of the buildings around the open-air marketplace in Veruda. That bland fragment of the city looks much better since then.

(Enlargeable)

A Christmas tree made of tubes and wires was also there but since the lamps were off, the spirit of celebration wasn't emanating from that thing.

In this last shot from Veruda, you can see the decorated window of a small bar near the marketplace.

From Veruda, I drove across the city to the suburban neighborhood on the opposite side of Pula. There, in Shiana, I visited Pevex, one of the big stores that offer a wide range of things from gardening tools to plumbing stuff and electronics. Here you can see my friend admiring the nicely decorated tree. I was thinking about those boxes. What could be inside them? Toys? Emptiness? Bloody human body parts?

I don't watch television. I loved the thing as a kid, and as a teenager, but now that media irritates me to the bone. I'm too old for that shit, but I like to see a bunch of TV screens displayed in a large store. I don't know, that very familiar scene looks kinda surreal and dystopic to me, but also strangely appealing at the same time. I often have a lot of fun with things I dislike. Hmm, the last sentence sounded pretty stupid and kinda deep at the same time. Like something that a cheap fake spiritual guide dude could say to its disciples.

At one point on my rambling through the store, I came across a nicely arranged Christmas table. Christmas bulbs were served for breakfast, and they looked delicious. Who wouldn't like to sink the teeth in that stuff?

Here you can see my reflection, trapped in a hellish red version of our world ...

... confined inside a fairly big Christmas bulb ...

(Enlargeable)

... that is still hanging on one of the branches of a tall seasonal tree erected on the seaside promenade of Medulin, my hometown. The photograph was taken on the 29th of December. In the evening.

Here I zoomed in to get a better look at the little lamps on the windmill.

Here you can see the shiny contour of Santa Claus and his equipment. Everything is frozen in time against the dark background of the evening in the bay. If you haven't received your Christmas gifts and packages, now you know why. The delivery man ended up stuck in this place. In the following photograph ...

... I zoomed in on the reindeer's antler.

Here you can see the lovely winter flowers ...

... of some exotic plant that I wasn't able to identify. It's a small tree that has lost its foliage but the flowers are still there. You can see them shining in the gloom. Medulin has never seen anything like this before.

This brand-new, unusual decoration surprised me.

It really gave a touch of magic to the Christmas corner near the sea. When the following photograph was taken ...

(Enlargeable)

... the night was very near, just behind the corner, so I walked back home.

On the way back to my neighborhood, I stopped for a minute in the park near the harbor. There I photographed the decorated trunks of the small trees and some people passing by.

The next morning, on the same stretch of the park, a man on a bicycle, holding a bag of plastic bottles, stopped near the garbage can to see if there's anything valuable there.

(Enlargeable)

This set of four photographs is dedicated to the deer in the park.

They were photographed a couple of days before. In the evening.

This is an early morning shot from yesterday. For a visitor from another planet, the green cross above the entrance of the local pharmacy would probably look like part of the seasonal decorations, and god only knows (that's just a figure of speech, as an atheist I don't take any kind of all-knowing god in consideration) what those decorations would look like to an extraterrestrial tourist.

(Enlargeable)

From that park near the harbor, the Christmas corner around the windmill looks even better. I'm proud to say that my hometown this year surpassed the city of Pula when it comes to the Christmas atmosphere. Yes, they have some bigger stuff, more lights, and more everything in the old center, but the decorated windmill, the snowmen & the lamp - tree in bloom are pretty unique. And then the location, there by the sea, all that stuff creates something small but special in the evening.

And that's it. 2022 ended when I was writing the last part of this post. The old year is gone, have a happy new one.

AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS, THE ILLUSTRATIONS, THE ANIMATIONS, ALL THAT VISUAL STUFF - IS MY WORK.

THE END