Edward Cullen

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb....."he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.

"What a stupid lamb..." I sighed.

"What a sick, masochistic lion.."

First dates....

"Most people think courage is the absence of fear. The absence of fear is not courage; the absence of fear is some kind of brain damage. Courage is the capacity to go ahead in spite of fear"

M. SCOTT PECK, Further Along the Road Less Traveled

I got this book in the most extraordinary of ways from a man with whom, to my astonishment, I had the best ever first date of my life, at an age where I could not recognize it for what it was.....but I did feel it and it was so intense that it stuck with me ever since, hiding and undermining every other first date (or name any number) I had ever since.

The Road Less Travelled books helped me along the way a long time ago and have done it occasionally since.....and whenever I look at that third book I always think of that man and how that book came along my way. Serendipity. A truly unrecognized and irrational but true force of nature to me. I should have known, we shared our first name (well middle name for me.......)

I never thought that this man and that night would be the criterion of all first dates that were to come since......

Not one heartbeat do I forget

Lost in Austen

Amazing! Jane Austen must be turning in her grave but still amazing!!!!!!

Not one heartbeat do I forget! Brilliant!

"I love you.
I didn't know that.
But it is clear to me now that I have always loved you.
Every time I've fallen for a man, I've closed my eyes and it's been you.
Even Michael, and I pretty much lived with him for a year.
So, yes. I have a past. But every...instant in it contains you.
Everything I am.....belongs to you."




Mr.Darcy, Pemberley, Elizabeth Bennet and now Amanda Price.......I'm so in love!

Rarely has there been a character as everlasting and romantically inspiring as Elizabeth Bennet. A witty, defiant, annoyingly wit-spirited, funny under social circumstances that frowned uppon fun, independent...tottaly brilliant.

Elizabeth Bennet is the epitome of the all-time classic female romantic figure, in a book which seems to be all about manners and well kept gardens but in truth.....Pride and Prejudice is about what we see and what we believe, the road to understanding and actually putting prejudice...and pride aside in order to really see into one another.

When Mr.Darcy sees Elizabeth he is not taken to her, she is not what a young woman of her age should be, not acclaimed to music or singing. She reads and laughs and is independent and witty. But he is irreversably attracted to her as she to him as the book continues because of his character, because of his truth.

Well in this series Elizabeth Bennet comes into the 21st century (as is so fitting for such an independent figure) and Amanda Price, a young lady that has gone through the battle of the sexes of this century, takes her place(not so lightly though, with a lot of self-battling and with a thrilling twist right at the end- not a heartbeat do I forget).

A young woman with all her notoriously known characteristics and a dash of 21st century.

I never expected to see one of my favourite heroes ripped apart and then put back in such a way but Lost in Austen has really captured (for me) the Jane Austen spirit, and my favourite book (I am not particularly fond of the rest except for Sense and Sensibility)

It is indeed a dream to find Mr.Darcy behind a door in your bathroom but my only problem continues to be....I'm still greatly and ever so strongly tied to the 21st century...(but I wouldn't mind Mr.Darcy)

Life and the awareness of living

Because of my recent obsession with P.Pullman and 'His Dark Materials' here are 2 quotes from one of his interviews:

"PP: Yes. When I took Lyra down to the world of the dead, I didn't know how I was going to get her out. But I relied on her quick-wittedness and I relied on luck or chance or whatever. The ghosts came along and they asked this question, as you described, and Lyra, for the first time in her life, has to tell a story that is true. Up till then, she's been a fantasist. She has spun lie upon lie, and story upon story, not only to get herself out of trouble, but also to entertain her listeners. And she is very good at it. She tries this with the harpies, who guard the world of the dead, when she first goes down there. But they see through it at once, and they screech and they fly at her with claws and they cry "liar-liar-liar!" -- which sounds like her name. So when she is confronted with these desperate children, so eager to hear about the world and what it was like, she begins to do exactly what they ask for, to tell them a story that's not a fantasy, but a piece of realism. And she describes the day that she and her friends played in the mud beside the river, and they had a great battle, and they threw mud at each other. She describes all the feelings, the mud squishing through her fingers, and the sight of the sun coming through the dappled leaves as it strikes the riverbank, and the coolness of the water, and the smell of the cooking fires. She brings all those things life. Then she has a terrible shock, because she looks up and sees the harpies sitting around listening to this. This is what they've been hungering for all this time, and they had never thought to ask. But now they've heard it, they want more. They want more, they want more.

That's the point at which Tialys, the Gallivespian who is the length of one of our fingers and rides a dragonfly, has the great idea of making a bargain with the harpies, as you've mentioned. From now on, every ghost who enters the world of the dead will have to come with a story, the story of his or her life, and tell it to the harpies. It doesn't have to be a big adventure; it can just be a description of a day playing with the children, like Lyra's, or whatever it might happen to be. In exchange for this true story, the harpies will lead that ghost outside to dissolve into the Universe and be one with everything else.

Of course, I stole that, as I stole everything else! I stole that from the Oresteia -- the bargain Aeschylus's characters make with the Furies that are following them about. "You will be the guardians of this place, and we will worship you and we will give you honor," they say. Then the Furies are satisfied, and they leave off their pursuit of Orestes. There's nothing new in stories. It goes round again and again and again.

But that was something that I thought was a good way out for Lyra, and it did reassert the value of story. States it fully and clearly, brings it out. And also the value of realistic story. It's got to be true. And there's a moral consequence; for those who have eyes to see, they can see it: you have to live. You have to experience things to have a story to tell, and if you spend all your life playing video games, that will not do."


And :

"The thing this is saying is what Will says later on about the angels. He says, "They wish they had bodies. They are envious of us. They wish they could smell the roasting coffee and these things. They can't understand why we, who have the power to feel these things, who have nerves and senses, aren't in a continual state of ecstasy. That we can touch things, that we can hear things and smell things, and taste things."

If there was one feeling or one idea that I would like readers to take away from the trilogy (though I don't tell them this is what they must take -- they can take what they choose), I would like them to take away this emphasis, this continuing and strong emphasis that I put on the value of being alive and having nerves and senses -- of having a physical body.

This is where I owe a great debt to William Blake, of course: "Show me a world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy," he wrote. And:

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

And: "Every thing that lives is Holy." Blake celebrated the sense that this world we live in is the most extraordinary, miraculous place, and we should cherish it, we should look after it -- with delight begins responsibility."

Original Sin and Consciousness

Ok so I finished book 2 of 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy, the Subtle Knife.

So many moments in this book are memorable even though I still like the first one better but with this I get a clearer view of P.Pullman's vision.

That original sin as a metaphysical happening meaning the enlightenment of man is to happen once more an Lyra is going to play the role of Eve, Great Mother of us all.

That experience is what makes humans have self awareness and leads them to a complete form of their daemon.

Daemons in this book and in Will Parry's world (which is in fact our world) live inside people's minds and hearts, and Lyra sees Will's daemon through his eyes.

It is a very touching moment when Pan , in the form of a German shepherd, licks Will's wounds because , as he explains to Lyra later, he desperately needed a daemon to hang on to life.

Another intense moment is the death of Lee Scorsby and his daemon Esther. The way they fight together up to the very end, knowing full well thay will die, and doing it to save Will's father and essentially to help Lyra......the way they look at each other , the grown man from Texas and his rabbit daemon in all that death and fire......heartbreaking

The meeting of Will and his father, the aknowledgement only for a moment in their eyes before John Pari's death by the arrow of a wich whose love he had refused.....

The cruelty of the children in Cittàgazze, the fear the Phantoms that suck the life out of grown people, people with experience and consciousness, the fighting of the witches, the death of the brave witch whose bones Mrs. Caulter broke but she refused to reveal the name Eve.

And ultimately the pain of the parting of one's soul, any kind of being , with his or her daemon.

P.Pullman says that the church tries to keep most people without the essential curiosity that leads us to knowledge, to progress, to the essential knowledge of being, that you are here, that life exists, that you are alive as a spiritual entity, that most people are kept in a condition like sheep or probably zombies...without a soul

I have spent my life mostly trying to understand and realize who I am , what I am and how I fit in into the great order of things. I know I will probably never really find out but the quest itself is the only reason to go on living.

Self awareness and the choice, the ability to consciously make a choice between good and evil as you perceive it........that is what makes us beings with a soul, with a daemon......

I guess my daemon would be a golden eagle.......because he is lonely and proud and free in the skies and he protects his own.....then again maybe a dolphin because of their extreme intelligence and compassion.....oh I'm not sure yet......but he 's in here somewhere......I can feel him in the quiet hours but also screaming in my mind when the noises tend to cover every other voice.....

Original Sin

Ever since I first took theology in school I wondered what this original sin stuff is all about. I even dared ask our teacher, an old and grey lady who seemed to never have achieved an orgasm in her life.

Of course the answers I got were a s vague as possible, something like 'everything that is bad', 'bad thoughts', 'bad actions' etc etc

And then of course when sex got in the picture original sin identified itself with it.

I think many people still think that sex was the original sin , partly because of the way the Church addresses it, how women are considered 'dirty', how everything regarding physical pleasure is considered sinful.

A few days ago I watched the movie 'Golden Compass', based on Philip Pullman's 'Northern Lights' book, the first of the 3 from his trilogy 'Dark Materials'.

So far I have only read the first of the 3 books and am going on the the next as fast as possible.

There are few times in one's life that something or someone opens up a completely different kind of thinking , of viewing the world, physical and spiritual, of perceiving one's existence.

I do not consider myself capable to even try to explain the many philosophical and spiritual aspects of 'His Dark Materials'.

I can only say that the concept that each human has a daemon that is the physical form of his soul, that this daemon changes shapes until it settles to a final one in adolescence, that the loss or parting from that daemon means an unconceivable pain for the human and in essence death, that Dust is particles of psychic awareness...

That many worlds exist simultaneously in our universe, that what we consider our soul has nothing to do with the Church God but is in essence our spiritual awareness.......that we are definitely not alone even when alone because of that soul

That the original sin was not in fact any stupidity said in a classroom where knowledge should but is not tought, but is in fact the act of awareness, of acknowledging your existence for what it is, deciding what this existence can and will be (in the trilogy when the daemons take on their final form) and living your life surrounded by particles of psychic awareness.

I have said so many times that I discovered in the recent years that I am in fact not an atheist but a spiritual agnostic. I want desperately this world to have some kind of meaning, but that does not mean following any kind of dogma because of fear.

Something P.Pullman said :"I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak… Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God."

Well that has changed with the release of the Golden Compass which has raised A LOT of argument from the Catholic Church, even though the movie has watered down the prime ideas of the book and of course has cut off the end, the sacrifice.

We owe it to our souls, to our own existence, to our own psychic awareness to guard and protect our daemon......as our daemon will always stay beside us....

When Lyra is trapped and is almost cut off from her daemon Pan (a process called intercision) her pain (played beautifully by Dakota Blue Richards and described superbly by P.Pullman) was almost touching my own soul, like if I was being cut off from my own soul, my own spirit which like a little animal lives inside my psyche and am still looking for its form, guarding and protecting me and always staying beside me, in the darkest hours but also the happiest.

Philip Pullman was influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost, by Dante's Divine Comedy and by Leonardo's painting Lady with an Ermine. Ermine being a symbol for royalty or aristocracy.
Pan's favorite form is that of an ermine signifying Lyra's nature. In contradiction to the Cronicles of Narnia His Dark Materials is a book that defies the usual good-bad ideas of the church but goes straight into the bigger issues like psyche and divinity and parallel universes and science. Pullman also refers to gnostic ideas, that the divine or in any case whatever is out there can only be touched or perceived through our own searching, our divine souls trapped in a material world.

So, to sum up, if original sin is the act of psychic awarenesses and if even sexual awakening is part of this process and of course of coming closer to the human essence that makes this trilogy one of the greatest for me.

It is in fact true that the church only tries to conceal original truths, drag us away from our oun awareness and try to put itself in the middle between us and whatever is out there.

But whatever is out there can never be perceived or understood by any church but rather by science and our own never ending search for psychic awareness.....

P.S. What is the form of my daemon?

P.S.2. Not to get things mixed up a person's daemon is not a 'devil' or a bad natured being. From Wikipedia :

A dæmon is a manifestation of the soul of a conscious person in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. In those universes with physical dæmons, they exist external to the human in the form of animals representative of the person's personality, although children's dæmons may change form at whim. The bond between dæmon and human is intimate, and dæmons must remain within a small distance of their human (with the exeption of witches); contact between a person and another person's dæmon is taboo, although dæmons may touch each other.

Generally, a person and his or her dæmon must stay within a short distance of each other. Forcibly separating a person from his or her dæmon causes unimaginable physical and emotional pain for both entities, often causing death; however, some cultures have mastered techniques that allow the dæmon to gain wider mobility. For example, witches, as well as humans who commit to becoming shamans, must endure grueling, ritualistic ordeals that involve leaving their dæmon for a time as they embark on a spiritual quest. After rejoining their dæmon they have gained the ability to separate from them. Both witches and shamans retain their intimate bond with their dæmon; the only change is in the distance they can travel apart from each other.

In the trilogy, a special guillotine is used by the General Oblation Board to separate people from their dæmon without killing them (intercision). However, unlike the ordeals undergone by witches and human shamans, the guillotine violently and permanently severs the bond between person and dæmon, and effectively renders the person a zombie; a being incapable of independent thought and without any identity. The General Oblation Board continually perfects the process through experimentation, but Lyra encounters at least one boy who could not bear living without his dæmon and dies. The separation process also generates a huge burst of energy, which was used by Lord Asriel to create a bridge into the world containing Cittàgazze.

Especially for Lyra:

Symbolism of named dæmons

The specific symbolic meanings of each character's dæmon-form are also noted.

Character	Dæmon	Meaning
Lyra Belacqua:	Pantalaimon	Moth: the longing of man for God (Carl Jung), first form mentioned Ermine: purity (Renaissance Symbology), "favourite" form Pine Marten: grace and empathy (Celtic Myth.)[citation needed], settled form

Will Parry:	Kirjava	Cat: guardian and protector, especially in confrontational circumstances (Celtic Myth.), settled form. Kirjava means "mottled" in Finnish.
Lord Asriel:	Stelmaria	Snow Leopard: understanding one’s shadow side (Pagan Myth.), associated with the devil (Christian Symbolism), settled form
Marisa Coulter:	Ozymandias (from BBC Radio)[5]	Golden monkey (species never named): cleverness and curiosity (Chinese Astrology), settled form
Roger Parslow:	Salcilia	Terrier: fidelity (Celtic Myth.), common form, also explained to be a form suited for servants in the series
Mary Malone:	never named	Alpine Chough: settled form. A bird of the mountains.'
John Faa:	never named	Crow: the soul of magic and link to the spirit world (alchemical symbol), settled form
Farder Coram:	Sophonax	Cat: (see above) settled form
Serafina Pekkala:	Kaisa	Snow Goose: vigilance and protection (Celtic Myth.), settled form. The name Kaisa is a female name in Finland, although Kaisa the snow goose is male in the books.
Lee Scoresby:	Hester	Hare: The Moon and Resurrection (Pagan), settled form
The Master: (of Jordan College)	Leonor (from BBC Radio)[5]	Raven: Bird used by Odin to collect knowledge, settled form
John "Jopari-Stanislaus Grumman" Parry: (aliases in likely order of origin)	Sayan Kötör	Osprey: often linked to those of otherworldly vision; its also common a symbol of abundance, settled form
Carlo Boreal / Charles Latrom, CBE :	never named	Serpent: often linked with the ability to manipulate and influence people, and with cunning, settled form.

P.S.3. I adore Pan and absolutely respect Stelmaria and Kaisa

P.S.4. Dust is also the thing that connects humans to their dæmons. This being is actually somewhat of a soul that can talk and is in the form of an animal. It sends the Dust to the human to allow the human consciousness. Even in worlds that don't have apparent dæmons, they still exist. Though they are not animals by any means. In some other worlds your dæmon is your silent consciousness in the back of your head, that other voice that you have that gives you intuition. If the bond between a human and their dæmon is severed both the human and the dæmon die. If it happens after your Dust has settled on you and you become an adult you simply become a lifeless shell. (and that final paragraph is what I feared all my life and never could quite put it as eloquently as this, and what almost happened to me last August.....maybe this is why Lyra's and Pan's pain brought me to tears)