All at sea

Tonight I'm "all at sea / where no-one can bother me" - sipping in the breeze as the silence of a kiss. Drinking on the beach, watching the sunset and the sunrise, singing songs of make-believe... and dreaming dreaming dreaming away :-) see you there - or see you when I return.

So fly away Peter and fly away Paul - from the finger-tip ledge of contentment.
The long restless rustle of high heel boots calls.
And I'm probably bound to deceive you after all.
Something must be wrong with me and my brain - if I'm so patently unrewarding.
But my dreams are for dreaming and best left that way - and my zero to your power of ten equals nothing at all.
(Jethro Tull, One White Duck)

We never change, do we

Disclaimer: this post may sound ultra-rationalistic and somewhat derived from Ayn Rand’s objectivism. Well it is not. Read closer.

Following the short Easter holidays, my topic for the day is departure. Leaving may sound like an escape from one state to another for most of us, but it comprises more than just a movement between two points, A and B. When leaving, one usually does it with a purpose and with the (sometimes shared) illusion of return to the point of origin of movement. While this may physically be correct, in spirit you never return the same. Leaving means journey, and each journey we undertake changes us, perhaps unknowingly, in most cases irreversibly.

Leaving means taking a direction and is thus an act of decision as well as an act of self-expression. When leaving a place, a job, a relationship, a life, one exits a system only to enter another system, breaks free from a set of dependencies only to accept another set of dependencies, so you might understand leaving more than just a signal of termination - it signifies commencement. It is the articulation of desire, of feeling harboured deep within us and is not meant to harm or to produce grief in what is left behind, but to fulfill one’s potential to the highest achievable level, by exploring potentialities.

Thus, I would not consider departure as an equivalent of breaking free as it is often understood, but as a state of continued dependence, which is probably more acceptable than the previous state. It is but feeling that causes us to change.

If you don’t need it every day
But sometimes don’t you just crave
To disappear within your mind
You never know what you might find
So come and spend some time with me
And we will spend it all at sea
(Jamie Cullum, All At Sea)

Dragonfly

This day is one of preparation for feast, for the ones who fasted. I found myself thinking this morning - what does fasting really mean? Is it really about denying yourself those cookies, about being what you are not in order to train the will and feel at peace with respecting cannons (and in some cases brag about it)? Or is fasting something that we do every day, with every word we speak, every desire we feel and every look we have at things that do not belong to us although we might have wished it? Thinking about it, it ocurred to me that fasting is actually one's own indulgence towards him/herself. We should love when the time comes, taste the wine when it fills the glass in front of us and laugh when there is something to laugh about. Fasting means being moderate in our everyday life and doing things when they are due, and living at peace with oneself - and the others. It is something perpetual, and not a twelve-weeks-a-year-must-do.

May Easter bring light!... and may it be the beginning of a wonderful fasting/feasting time.

I have this theory, that if we told we’re bad
Then that’s the only idea we’ll ever have
But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty
Someday we will become what we see’cause
anyone can start a conflict
It’s harder yet to disregard it
I’d rather see the world from another angle
We are everyday angels
Be careful with me ’cause I’d like to stay that way
(I'm sensitive, Jewel)

Listen to the girl...

It should be funny to be somewhere up on the puffy clouds and look down on what is happening in the city. Some of the people down there may not be able to sleep, others have a lot to think about... In my experience, the night can be a good adviser if it is used for the purposes the season entices... Rest, at this time of the year.
Reminds me of one of my favourite movies :)

Sam: Boss, ain't you going to bed?
Rick: Not right now.
Sam: Ain't you planning on going to bed in the near future?
Rick: No.
Sam: You ever going to bed?
Rick: No!
Sam: Well, I ain't sleepy either.
(Casablanca, 1942)

The trick is to keep breathing

Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a
settled cheerfulness, but this – no matter how admirable – has nothing to do
with joy… which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco
painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape… it transforms it.

(Sir Wendy Beckett)

Sometimes I feel like looking deep into the night, taking in a breath of fresh air and exhalating all my being into the unknown. It is in nights like this one, on the edge between spring and summer, when warmth is not yet complete and cold need not touch you if you don’t stay out for too long. And if you listen hard enough, you can hear the sound of the city snoring, whispering, barking, breathing, living…

Good night everybody, wherever you are :)

Some call it faith, some call it love.
Some call it guidance from above.
You are the reason we found ours,
So thank you stars
(Katie Melua, Thank You Stars)

Hour for Magic

Last night I wrote a post about a story I’d read once and that impressed me. Seemingly, Blogger wanted to warn me about my long texts and didn’t save my draft upon previewing. Perhaps it is better this way, the story was a bit long and it would have given way to various Christian, management and existential interpretations on life and what lies beyond it. The idea behind the entry is still nagging at me: the magic in creation is the one spark in our everyday existence that can transform it into bliss. The episode I quoted to illustrate this was a young man pulling out his heart from the chest, a heart so filled with passion and love that it shone like a guiding light for others, illuminating darkness and providing warmth. The same heart was full of bloodand misery when its owner died near to it, in the grass, after fulfilling his mission. Overlooking the setting and the background of the story (close in essence to Plato’s Cave, but defying it by a sort of a happy-end), the plastic image behind this becomes visible: pouring wonder into one’s being – even for the one moment of illumination that will stay with us until the end of time – is the most we ever get from life.

We do not live for moments, though. We are born into processes most of us sustain without taking a step outside the movie and asking who we are, where we are heading and why on earth we want to get there. Our relations are thus loveless, our business lives become pointless, the politics we do are meaningless and our reasoning thoughtless. Reminded of the American Prayer. Jim Morrisson. Break on through the other side (if it'd bring something, I would :) )

Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful
Comes death on strange hour
Unannounced, unplanned for like a scaring over-friendly guest you've brought to bed
Death makes angels of us all & gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
No more money, no more fancy dress
This other Kingdom seems by far the best until its other jaw reveals incest & loose obedience to a vegetable law
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant family

Luck Be a Lady

Paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher's "Being a leader is like being a lady. If you have to tell others you are one, you probably are not" - having an identity is the same. If you need to re-state it and theoretise it all over again, it probably does not exist.