Bleach: Before leaving for Beirut in the summer of 2004, I remember bumping into a bottle of Lebanese bleach brought by the sea like a hulk up to the beaches of Puglia where I was born. I could not be wrong: Made in Lebanon. It had surprised me and I never have forgotten it: the bottle was kind of milky white with red writings in French, English and Arabic of course. A few months later some friends invited me to Batroun, a wonderful place on the northern cost of Lebanon; it reminded me of Polignano a Mare or Monopoli. Here, I felt incredibly at home, I could pretend to recognize the rocks and the color of the sea, the smell and the wind. It was actually a strange feeling and it was even more difficult to share it with my friends, not only with the French and German ones, but especially with the Lebanese who couldn’t fully understand how so unbelievably close this landscape was to my home. Isolated in this absolutely amazing place - no one there but us and the sea - there was a small cabin that my friends had built and where we prepared hummus and babaghannouj. It was my turn to wash the dishes, I went back into the hut and looked for detergent near the sink…and I found something familiar to me: a bottle of Lebanese bleach was there, carefully stored with some other anonymous detergents in a metal bucket. I definitely could not be wrong: Made in Lebanon, red writing, milky white bottle. Two years later the war started, I haven’t heard anything more about my friends and their hut in Batroun, nor about this white bottle of Lebanese bleach…maybe it’s time to go back and find out… But that’s another story. When I saw this wrecked flip-flop, I told myself “hey, you’d better take a picture of that, no one knows where it’s coming from, and no one knows where it will end up going.” The sea can divide and the same sea can bind…what an amazing world of possibilities.

were really hurting my feet at first, but now that I've got them broken in, they're almost like being barefoot. Paying too much for shower shoes is nothing to brag about, but I found these "Rainbows" flip-flops and they've grown into one of those symbols of summer to me now. A comfortable, tough, durable shoe that you live in through the summer heat. They come small, and you get them wet and break them in--there's an entire internet niche devoted to people who are breaking in their "rainbows". My kids cringe when they hear me use the word "thong" to describe what my uncle called "Japanese Combat Boots." But that dental floss underwear got it's name because is resembled the "thongs" we wear on our feet. It was an innocent word that got hijacked along the way. But the kids are right, the word "thong" and my name will never appear again in the same sentence. Nor "Speed-O", even they do help me to swim faster! Blinded by Rainbows