....birthday.....

I stIll mIss u (5/8/2013)

Oh Dusty I still so very much miss you........like a hole in my chest (5/8/2015)

In Avalon......

When the artist was asked why he spent so many (18) years of his life, even the day before his passing, working on this one painting he replied 'Why should I hurry? I am in Avalon'...............why hurry indeed?

'The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon'

by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
Pre-Raphelite artist, painter, stained-glass painter (and many other crafts)

owned by the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico
on loan to the Tate Gallery in London for the first time exhibited in the UK in 2009
currently sublet to the Prado Museum in Madrid

A letter...

Dear Mr.Keats,

please allow me to make my apologies for addressing you directly in such a manner, not fitting perhaps a lady towards a gentleman as yourself. However, my reasons are of the purest of nature and aim to nothing but the statement of their verbal companions.

There is nothing as morally debilitating as the belief in the superiority of the past. So it is not your times that I address but yourself and yourself alone, through my times and the eyes that behold them. For your era has been called the most cynical of all the era's of this world, but allow me to differ in opinion. History can only judge but I dare say if your era was the most cynical what, then, can be said of mine? And on to the purpose of my letter.....

You see, dear Mr.Keats, I am in debt to you. A debt I can never hope to make good upon. For it was you who opened my eyes, my soul, my essence even, to what I have now come to recall as Beauty. And not only that, superior of virtues, but also to literally everything, all things consisting this world, in matters of verbal recollection. I was of a very tender age when I came across your Endymion, a work not welcomed as it should be, I know, but a perfect, in its essence and simplicity, ode to Beauty. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'. I have with me a first edition of your selected works and letters, one handed down to me through a family of generations, which I hold dearer to any other material thing. Its cover is wasted, its pages tired, but the writtings remain intact. So is the nature of all great things I imagine.

I have been privileged in having an education and a free access to all and any literally works of yourself as well as many others from all four corners of the world. I have also been privileged in traveling, visiting many of the sites where you spent your days and nights as well as the place of your departure. And what the modern world has made of these places, Mr.Keats. Where is Rome, Carthage, Bagdad, Brittagnia, Athens?

It matters not, for I shall always see Rome and indeed the rest of the world through the prism of your words. The isolation of each of our spirits is a characteristic of the human condition, but your ability to live out your experiences and your dreams even in words, your gift of recording them to poetry for the rest of us to see, has been a benefit for which I shall never be able to fully convey my gratitude.

Dear Mr.Keats, so many have used your words and your images again and again, willingly or not, in their attempts at poetry or any other mental image making craft. Your 'Autumn', your 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', your Melancholy who '...dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;', your Bright Star, your Endymion ,finally, have rested with me for as long as the short years of my life have passed, to be called upon in all the dark or happy hours of these mentioned years, to be understood and finally lived and seen through my eyes.

I feel more and more , every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body guard. - Your words Mr.Keats and allow me to borrow them, just this once, to honor and celebrate the joy and grandeur of the Spirit, your Spirit and , if I may, maybe, in a small part, my own as well.

'I am as happy as a Man can be....with the yearning Passion I have for the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect.'

You say 'If I should die I have left no immortal work behind me- nothing to make my friends proud of my memory -but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had time I would have made myself remember'd'. I agonize over what more you would have left behind you if what we already have grant you the title of the greatest romantic poet, one that you never even dared to imagine I am sure.

Dear Mr.Keats, it is in moments of extreme joy or pain that your works find an adjacent place in my soul. And it is in part what makes them bearable, these moments.

I am all and only human. And aware of my limitations as well as the unbearable burden of my human nature. I am grateful that, in times such as these, your words console my soul, whose solidarity is profound and unbreakable, to my own sorrow.

In this hour of late, in the quietness that surrounds me, that always surrounds me no matter the astounding noises of the world, in this hour of sadness of having to leave behind memories not lived out in words but lived nonetheless, let me utter once again, in more humility I can convey through my untrained words, my gratitude for the joy and hope and companionship that your work has provided me.

I remain, hopefully for as long as my Spirit dwells here, always in your debt.

An unwise fool am I.........but with pure motives.


...................................................................................

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

.......................................................................


All selections and quotations from :

'Selected Letters and Poems of John Keats, edited with an Introduction and Notes by J.H.Walsh', Chatto and Windus, London 1954

Paintings by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), English Pre-Raphaelite painter.

1 - Ophelia (by the pond), 1894, oil on canvas, housed currently in a private collection
2 - Miranda - The Tempest, 1916, oil on canvas, housed currently in a private collection

Focus and strength - * With or without you

Decisions, decisions, decisions.....

From the smallest to the biggest, what to eat, which movie to see, continue striving with work and university when clearly overworked and tired, allowing people in and so many others.

My last university essay (a topic I'm pursuing just because I want to and has nothing to do with my industry, Computer Science) had to do with the Dark Ages and Early New Europe (Λιμοί και Λιμός LOL!!!!!!!! - very very private joke for a couple of eyes only).

I find myself not conflicted but strangely satisfied by my field of work and my field of studying at the moment. They say that there comes a time you stop studying, but not for me. I wish I had the time to go through everything that has to do with the human condition, how we perceive the universe, philosophically and scientifically, how we have evolved, who are we, what are we doing here.........studying for the joy of it is probably never stop asking the questions.

And, God, there are so many to ask :-)

Robert Frost said

'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler; long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth;
- Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same.
- And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
- I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.'

Cliche but true nonetheless.....

But I'm also dissapointed....well maybe dissapointed is not a proper word. In the past year I have fought with any and all strength that I could muster to stay afloat. And, to my great surprise, it seems I did.

I didn't quit university, I didnt quit my job, I was broken but it really doesn't matter how you fall but how you rise.....and I managed to rise in so many ways. And now, when I'm starting to get into balance, here comes something to blow me out of balance.

Worth it? I thought so......I would like to think so. Is that objective? No......is that right? What are the criteria to judge?

What I do know is that people very rarely find people that they consider unique. Divine beasts I should say in a world filled with anything but.......

And there are words, actions, thoughts that scar people......scar them and make them ache. Strong people can distinguish and even with a considerable effort and pain make a calculated decision. And rise to meet Life.

One asks you to open up and break the borders of your solitude for him. Well first of all he has to have the strenght and the will to do it for himself as well , and probably, be so kind as not to ask you to take such a huge bet on......blind faith. Faith....I have all the faith in the world in Newton's law of gravity. And I would bet my life on that.....all other bets....are difficult.

People.....as the song goes, 'everybody's got to learn sometime'. So if you want me to change , you gotta change as well.

I have my clusters and my databases and my Dark Ages and my music and my books and my memories and my solitude and all that consists and makes up Me. And that is worth to be appreciatted for itself, not compared nor used as a substitute. After all, if you're not the Leading Lady of your life you're always gonna be a supporting Actor.

My body is recovering, my mind is recovering and strong, my will is unbent......I want it all because I nearly escaped the Great Reaper so for now I want it all and I want it now.

Isn't that one of the things that make me human? I think so.

There is no innocence, only degrees of guilt - somethings never change - . Careful with your own.........guilt or innocence.

As the song goes ' I can't accept that we're going nowhere, lay down beside me, one last time lets go there....'

I ask for focus and strenght......

* Listening to With or without you by Connie Williams

I am still here

Life is pain.

Well thank you for the enlightenment dear Buddha but as I wrote some time ago in my fb I don't think the reason for life's pain is desire, I think the reason for life's pain is consciousness.

And as much as this was argued in my facebook status here it cannot be argued since ...well....it is my blog really :)

Anyway.....pain.....can be perceived in so many different ways spiritual or emotional or physical but still pain nonetheless.

The last 3 months have been a cocktail of sorts for me in this area.

Emotional due to the life changing events that took place in my life, changes I did not desire nor expected nor cared for. The very foundations I built my life upon were shuttered and I was left to gather the pieces frightened -truly frightened for what was left for me to be now- and alone.

Spiritual due to the fact that all the decisions I made in the past few years were put under the microscope and many were found wanting. Spiritual because the very meaning of my life was in question here, not just because of what happened but also because of the sudden (although not unexpected) disappearance of everyone I counted on as friend or even more. And not just disappearance but also attempts of manipulating the situation to some other ends...it is one thing to try and manipulate someone when he is strong but it is a completely another thing to do it when he is down. Now that...is cruel and immoral. Very immoral. Many of my memories from the past related to many people were shuttered and for that I am truly in pain. I was....in a very very dark and lonely place , quite resembling my images of Dante's inferno where I could see no light, only darkness.

Physical because I also got ill and was hospitalized which added to this whole situation the sudden break of my body...not unexpected under the circumstances.

But....we humans have an extreme tolerance as it seems and we also have amazing healing abilities. We have a built in mechanism to forget and survive I guess.

Well I have not forgotten, it is after all too soon , but I am beginning to see glimpses of light.

The road to enlightenment is a very lonely road , yes it is indeed, but does it really have to be so damn hard???? Yes...I guess it does.....

I was looking out my hospital window and was utterly miserable and lonely, it was evening and a very dark evening with no afterglow. Suddenly the first drops of rain started to fall, hesitant at first and then all the more bold and even violent. I got up and touched the cool windowglass with my forehead and that touch was sort of liberating, as if the anger of the storm calmed the storm within me, released me even if it was for a brief period of time.

I am used to my solitude, seek it even. Loneliness is marked by a sense of isolation. Solitude, on the other hand, is a state of being alone without being lonely and can lead to self-awareness.

In that dark place I could only enjoy my solitude in those hours of the night just before dawn when everyone is asleep, and nature is waiting for the first ray of light.

I had lost myself.

Now I am slowly beginning to find myself again but I am far too tired....oh so tired......so very tired......I do not have the luxury of being tired I have to perform, I have to be there for others and I have to work but oh I'm so very tired.

Sometimes I look at those fairy tale drawings and I see fairies sleeping this enchanted sleep of the fairy queen and I so long for that sleep, I so long to slip into this world as Marion did , to find my long saught after Avalon.

I read lately again Hamlet's monologue from the play Act III Scene I, 'To be or not to be'

Maybe it is that I have grown or maybe it is that I can finally relate to what this monologue is really about :

“	To be or not to be, that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life, For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th'unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch[1] and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.[2]	”

When we have shed of this mortal coil, and in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

But then again there is this unfulfilled promise to myself, that I will travel all around the world, see some new things just like Mac said and enjoy as much of this pale blue dot as possible.

But conscience ......it does make cowards of us all......you were right Hamlet.....I had to grow to really understand.

I am still here.

(on the left my spirit on the right my psyche)







(all pictures by Arthur Hughes, John Collier and John William Waterhouse, my imaginery companions)

To endure the quiet desperation

Which are the elements that signify and identify the human condition? What is this unchallenged reason that keeps the fire within burning and if lost the flames are extinct?

I am not making much sense probably ...the thing is it gets more and more difficult to see...

I would gladly live in the passion and poetry and drama and lyricism of Byron and Keats and Shelley and Burns and so many others...

But I live in the shadows of those ignorant of the story of Endymion who first told me that a thing of beauty is a joy forever...who first told me to open the eyes of my mind to the realm of the fantasy and spirituality of things as eternal as life in this universe itself.

Oh where is that beauty my fair hero? And where is that one human being to love another for which all other work has been but preparation my beloved poet?

I linger in a solitude that lacks all the romantic spirituality and is full of quiet desperation. My solitude has not the eternal steps of Rome or the fountains of Tivoli. Instead only silence...

My spirit is strong but my will is weak...I cannot seek comfort in pray that would only be a lie and a betrayal I can only do what so many have done before me...I must endure.

2009 - Advertising Space

Advertising Spaces by Robbie Williams

There's no earthly way of knowing
What was in your heart
When it stopped going
The whole world shook
A storm was blowing through you

Waiting for God to stop this
And up to your neck in darkness
Everyone around you was corrupted
Saying somethin'

There's no dignity in death
To sell the world your last breath
They're still fighting over
Everything you left over

I saw you standing at the gates
When Marlon Brando passed away
You had that look upon your face
Advertising space

And
No one learned from your mistakes
We let our profit s go to waste
All that's left in any case
Is Advertising space

Through your eyes
The world was burning
Please be gentle
I'm still learning
You seemed to say
As you kept turning up

They poisoned you with compromise
At what point did you realise
Everybody loves your life
But you ahahh

Special agent for the man
Through watergate and vietnam
No one really gave a damn
Did you think the CIA did

I saw you standing at the gates
When Marlon Brando passed away
You had that look upon your face
Advertising space

And
No one learned from your mistake
We let our profits go to waste
All that's left in any case
Is Advertising space ooooohh

I saw you standing at the gates
When Marlon Brando passed away
You had that look upon your face
Advertising space

No one learned from your mistakes
We let our profits go to waste
All that's left in any case
Is Advertising space

I've seen your daughter
Man shes cute
I was scared but I wanted to
Boy she looks a lot like you

Facing the new year bloody but unbowed, I will not speak, I will not yield, I will only dedicate this song to the previous years, to what I've lost and what I've learned and to everything that has been my life for the past years.

All that's left in any case
Is Advertising space

Invictus.


"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
Aristotle

"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than the suns and the stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning - solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may take acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude." -- from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Conduct of Life"

SOLITUDE

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breath his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter, fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind;
Quiet by day.

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixed, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Alexander Pope

Freddie Mercury - Lover of life Singer of Songs

'It was one of these parties that you had to come dressed as your favorite person and he just came dressed as himself...obviously'

(Freddie Mercury's 39th black & white birthday party in Munich, which was meant to last for 3 days and finally lasted 3 weeks. Footage from the party were used for the making of 'Living on my own')

Freddie, for being part of the soundtrack of so many people's lives, of my life......thank you.....you're still here.......

And continuum

The problem with writing about something so emotionally charged, like Freddie Mercury, is that for a while afterwards you are unable to write anything else because....well.....everything else in comparison is found wanting .....

So here below is a piece about a guy who literally embodies what for me was the most important topic of an essay in high school .....

The topic was what is better, to live your life, a long life like an ant, gathering and gathering goods so that you are provided in harsher times, or sing your lungs out all summer and die at summers end.......

Of course the 'correct' thesis on this is the first, which is what all of my classmates wrote about. I chose the second one to debate on, and was met with dismay by my professors. I was only a child and even though I was a bit shaken my belief still stood strong.

I would rather die singing my lungs out, living than keep silent and gather and become just a past of the mass of constructors.

After the last few weeks I think I have realized what has obsessed me with Freddie. He actually was a Lover (with a capital L) of life and he literally died singing.

In one of his interviews he says 'well of course I love music , its my life but if for some reason I stop making songs or people stop buying them I'll do something else, I dunno, I'll become a stripper.....(reporter)and what music will you strip to Freddie? (freddie) Well my own songs of course darling!'

He accepted what he was with such dignity, with such understanding but also with such easiness that one is enchanted by him.

'I'm just a musical prostitute my dear'

You gotta love this man.

Anyway these are great artists, great men who lived. I'm not a religious person (spiritual agnostic) but there is something in the Bible that fits perfectly "Those not found written in the Book of Life will be thrown into the lake of fire"

Now I know this does not refer to people's lives, it is actually a Christian reference to the Book of Life, however in a broader sense those who do not leave their imprint on life, they will be lost, forgotten and their existence will be matter less.

He certainly left his imprint on life. So now I'm stuck and at the moment I cannot write. It is my own personal Erinya my search for meaning, my search for an imprint on this life.

I feel the moments of time like dust slipping through my fingers and I long for this imprint but I also long for - deep breath - as Freddie said - Happiness.

I want to be happy.

And that is natural I guess but people tend to forget, or rather not understand what happiness is. So...one more time.......no more guilt......I want to be HAPPY.

I want to experience the universe.

I want to share what I have become and my journey towards what awaits me with someone who longs for the same.

Oh stars, you shine so brightly, you blind me in your eternal light.

And I still love you.

Those are the days of our lives - Queen

Sometimes I get to feelin
I was back in the old days - long ago
When we were kids when we were young
Thing seemed so perfect - you know
The days were endless we were crazy we were young
The sun was always shinin - we just lived for fun
Sometimes it seems like lately - I just dont know
The rest of my lifes been just a show

Those were the days of our lives
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one thing is true
When I look and I find I still love you

You cant turn back the clock you cant turn back the tide
Aint that a shame
Id like to go back one time on a roller coaster ride
When life was just a game
No use in sitting and thinkin on what you did
When you can lay back and enjoy it through your kids
Sometimes it seems like lately - I just dont know
Better sit back and go with the flow

Cos these are the days of our lives
Theyve flown in the swiftness of time
These days are all gone now but some things remain
When I look and I find no change

Those were the days of our lives - yeah
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one things still true
When I look and I find
I still love you

I still love you

Freddie Mercury

Sometimes it is far too painful to write about a person, and sometimes all words have been already said. Freddie, lover of life and singer of songs, 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991

Singer, performer, guitarist, musician, lover, friend, genius, shy, vulnerable, provocative, sexy beyond words can describe and a true candle in a world of so many dark places.

A man who could sing almost any music style (a unique characteristic), something that cannot be developed, a unique charisma, which consisted not only by being able to sing from the most powerful rock to the sweetest ballad or the operatic aria(with a full-voice range of 3 octaves!!!!) but also by being an amazing showman, his natural gift, his quality. A true genius, it has proven really hard to find another musician to combine his remarkable composition with a marvelous interpretation. Freddie was and will forever be one of the smartest and most envied voices in the history of music. With more than 680 live performances with Queen his vibrant, sensitive and most sensual voice and personality changed between each performance and especially in the live ones. It is my particular joy and my 'weakness' as if to say, to see and listen to Freddie's live appearances.....I prefer and adore his live performances which are always a tone down than his recordings, much more personal and provocative.

They say.....not a kind of magic but a picture says a thousand words.

Well here goes my attempt at 18.000 words.......for someone who really made me realize what the phrase 'I do not want to live in this world without you' means, for a light that went out too soon but also ......for the show must go on just like he did.

One big final bow........and the show must go on.

Queen Live @ Wembley 1986 - Its a kind of magic

Disappointment......

Disappointment is a strange emotion....

It can start mildly and then increase in such a way that takes over your whole mental process.

Emotions for me are mental processes so everything that has to do with the mind affects them as well.

Lately I keep getting disappointed by people again and again and again. It is a difficult reality to survive in, that is true but sometimes you think you find some people to share that reality with.

Lies. That is what I hate the most, and not just lying with your words but lying with your whole body, your displayed emotions, your eyes, everything.

How do you deal? I ask you world how do you deal? Because I don't know anymore.....and I feel so tired.....

So it's Xmas:)

Actually its almost New Years Eve and my msn tagline is 'Noone should be alone on Xmas' after seeing for yet another time 'Love actually'

In the last few days I've seen again 'Love Actually' and 'Meet Joe Black' and 'The Fellowship of the ring' and La Boheme (live that one in the Greek National Opera , a really great production of La Boheme, modern and vivid and full of colours, performers young and very talented, indeed a great production. Especially Musseta in a cheerleader's costume. Puccini's music though is eternal and can make your eyes water at any moment and under any circumastances. I was grateful my spirit was still able to weep at La Boheme)

I ve also seen a couple of theaters , worst or most hilarious (any way you wish to put it ) the one K.Dandoulaki stars in this year. Really bad choice.

Its the first time after 3 years I have a 2 week holiday during Xmas.

I was supposed to be in Vienna or Prague now but things have a way of working out for themselves and I was unable to go. I was actually literraly unable to go.

I am not well yet even though each day is yet another fight and sometimes this fight gets extremely tiresome.

I read and re-read Rilke's letters about solitude, I read Kahlil Gibran's Prophet and Jonathan Livingston Seagul and yet I still lack the strenght, as if my final remains of strength are only barely enough to get me through each day.

I am tired of the reckless and meaningless pretenses of people, of 'trains filled with the foolish and the faithless' as my beloved Walt Whitman says.

I live what Thoreau described as 'lives of quiet desperation' and I am trying but there is just no Earendil's light for me.

I am tired. And thats really not a nice thing to write for possibly the last post of the yhear but I am so tired. I appear to be great and everything but the truth is if I ever desperattely needed help and meaning that time would be now.

Life is very beautiful but also very lonely. And it is especially during Xmas that loneliness may become unbearable.

Anyway, I do wish Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to the world......and I hope its a year with meaning and light.

Perfect moments

Ever witnessed or experienced maybe is a better word a moment where you sit back and observer your life?

Its a really strange moment when you feel like u r actually sitting in the background and the environment around you, the people are interacting, going on, continuing and you are in a pause watching yourself, observing yourself actually ..... existing under these circumstances.

It has happened to me a few times and these times I vividly remember.

The strangest thing is I realized first I was having such a moment when I was very young.

I was on summer vacation with my grandparents and at that particular moment I was in the car with my grandfather. The day was really very sunny and warm, and the sea (we were near the sea) was perfect for a swim.

We were going shopping and then swimming. And I was really looking forward to it.

So at that moment, looking out of the car, I witnessed myself being happy and I thought (a cruel thought for a child) that I should hold on to this moment of perfect happiness, to remember in the years to come. I actually promised myself to remember that moment of happiness and all other moments would measure up to that.

Probably found wanting anyway.......I can never reach that sunny place anymore. And it aches........

How does one's fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark? Is it something that happens right away or is it a slow process?

And can it be reversed?

I guess that no rules apply here sometimes it can sometimes it cannot. Does life just throw in front of you something you didn't expect? And how many times can you believe again?

Countless maybe I am not sure......but as I was watching Stargate SG1 (the final season unfortunattely) I got to thinking that evn though nothing is forever there are certain things that just stay with you and keep you when all other lights go out, like Earendil's light:)

I wonder why nothing can ever be easy or simple for certain people? Probably because these certain people cannot accept a simple life of no thunder lightning......what Thoreau called quiet desperation.

Does a mind that travel unlimited roads guarantee happiness or misery? I guess a little bit of both:) And what happens when you meet another wondering soul......one that for many different reasons chances are really slim that you 'll ever get to travel a part of the path with...just a brief meeting , a random crossing.

I have missed just getting on a plane and landing on a new place of the world, there are so many I haven't seen yet:) I have noticed that ever since Xmas I am much more lonely, less communicative and quite...........well sad...

So I do hope and wish that this irreplaceable sparks......the ones that I so much love and depend on will not perish......

Its strange how a really bad thing, like a destruction at work, a really bad one, can introduce you to other wonderers.....other people you never really thought were out there......

Life is so full of strange and amazing crossings, I guess I have said that before.....

I feel like I have been at a stance this past months....and now I think, I believe, I feel I have to get out of it.....but I don't know how....

Gabrielle said in yesterday's episode of Desperate Housewives 'Don't hijack a Ferrari if you don't know how to drive'

Remember that because most people can't drive a Ferrari....and when they look at it they see the money it represents not its passion or its quality.

Very few people can drive a Ferrari.

I am angry tonight. At several things and that anger is taking over every bit of me.....so angry....

Strange how the psyche reacts......and I am listening to Enigma, who always calm me down..

Yeah right.....not tonight.

Anger I guess is a healthy way of feeling now.

Better than sad........strangest thing I am not angry at something in particular I am angry in general, with images flashing pass my eyes, with feelings, with broken words....

Earlier I almost through my cell against the wall to smash it....don't thankfully I love this phone (Samsung E900) but I felt like doing it....

If I didn't have to go to work tomorrow I would just take my car and drive all night......because I'm so angry I cannot ever breathe.....

Tired of endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish. I wonder or maybe I await for someone who does see the way I do....people are infatuated by the way I see and claim to be in synch....claim to be that person........right.....it takes courage not words.....it takes a whole life of sticking by these beliefs....pathetic excuses of people stuck in meaningless lives.....I'm tired.....

Tired of people trying to find meaning in useless relationships, in meaningless sex, in empty lives, in blank thoughts..........

Life is a mystery to be lived, a spiritual journey to be explored where are you loosing your time people???? Wake up it doesn't last forever......

Numb.....that's how I can describe myself now.

So strange...numb with sudden bursts of ache usually caused by images.

This is not a welcome numbness. It is not comforting nor soothing.

It is as if you take a step back and watch life from a glass window.......and you wait. I know this is a phase, one that one has to go through in order to recover. And it is also much more welcome than the nervous tension that precedes it.

But I do miss excitement. And spontaneous laughter. I miss waking up smiling or at least light.....at heart.

They say friends help you through. Very true as long as they are true friends and have the time and the willingness.

What helps me? Oh the usual (for me).....movies (I saw again 'Someone like you' with Hugh Jackman....my favorite, Love Actually, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade etc....), series (I saw yesterday at long last the first 2 episodes of season 6 of 24.....Jack Bauer rulezzzzzzz), music (Enigma A posteriori - I keep listening to Goodbye Milky Way), sleep (I guess I've been deprived for too long), books, art (I'm digging into the complete works of Leonardo and a study on Fairy art) and loneliness.

I feel empty and cold. There are moments that I'm better but mostly I'm just trying to refill a bottomless pit. Or maybe a fountain that was always full and ready to give but now......well I never thought it would happen but it has run out.

But then when I consider all this I get angry. Really angry and I say ...no I promise that I will not let the fire go out, spark by truly irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless and vain attempts of the not-quite, not-yet, not-at-all.

Life.....it does take courage. And the will to carry on even when things are so rough that you just want to curl up and cry. Well.....cry you must sometimes but then you wipe your eyes , you put on your makeup (yeah I'm a woman so what?), and you get ready to face the rest of your life.

With dignity, and respect, and strength and passion. So difficult when you have doors slammed at your face.

There is a certain connection that one has with his soul. Like a connection or a feeling, I cannot really describe it but I feel it, the true essence of who you are. You know it and you feel it, usually at your very best but even in the quiet hours of the night, or in crisis when you ache and you cry out and this connection with yourself keeps you and holds you and gives you strength.

I lost that......by trying to hard for something else. I didn't understand it while it was happening but I am now trying to re-establish it. Its not easy.

I just talked to Nikos P. I have never met a manager like him. I truly and honestly admire and like him.

Well...back to work. Always a good way of passing the time......

So...did I say I love Xmas?

Remind me never to say that I love anything.....bound to go wrong:S

Anyway this Xmas season was by far one of the worst....I can't write about it I don't want to remember it or reflect upon it, try to understand it or whatever. 2006 is over and with it a big part of ...I dunno what to call it.

Maybe in the future I will be able to write about it, reason with this Xmas, understand it and get over it. But at the moment silence is best practice.

Does everything that hurts you make you stronger? Perhaps but it also weakens your hope...and I'm tired of bleeding hope. I'm tired of picking up my pieces again and again and again. For anyone.

I don't exactly know what to write....thats a first for me:) But since this blog is something I will look to in the future I need to write something, anything.

So I'm hoping to go to the Venice Carnival this year, its my dream (well one of them anyway) and I need a dream right about now.

The truth is......as Occam's Razor principle states.....when you have two or more competing theories that make exactly the same predictions (meaning) the simplest tends to be the truth.

And the simplest is that it just wasn't worth it I am sorry to say.

Always trust relativity.

I miss my family.....

So much...especially during Xmas

It may sound a bit of a cliche but the truth is you recognize your true friends, the people who actually love you or care for you in the hard times.

I'm faced with a mean and unjust attitude by people at work and it's really hurtful.

However there are some people who do stand by me , who care and with the slightest actions or words of comfort are there for me.

And people I never knew cared for me....or never expected. Like Michael from marketing.

So a big thanx especially to Andreas .....

One life. Live it well

Driving home tonight after being with the guys of work suddenly, like a beam of light (maybe it had something to do with Bruce Springsteen singing Santa Claus is coming back to town) I remembered Xmas.......and I thought no matter how dark lately my life has been.....Xmas is coming again.

And I have been loved. I have been a child sitting by the Xmas tree a Xmas eve, after everyone had gone to bed, with all the lights off, only the lights of the tree, daydreaming of my life to come, with the absolute warmth of certainty of being loved. Loved by my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother.

And Xmas is coming. And I have seen Ble live in concert a starlight night without knowing or expecting it. And I have seen Baryshnikov live. I have walked the ancient grounds of Stonehenge, have seen the sun set behind the Great Pyramid of Giza, have danced on a boat going down the Nile, have slept under the night sky in the Sahara.

I have loved in Prague and danced in the great halls of Hofburg in the Vienna Grand Ball.

I have seen the great halls of Alhabra, heard the birds in the garden of the Khalif, have stralled down the streets of Florence and seen the Mona Lisa up close and personal in the Louvre.

And Xmas is coming.

The gifts of life.

And after almost 18 years, without ever even hoping of something like this, a dream of mine has come true. In two months I am going to meet RDA in person. My only true role model, the man after whom I have molded the sculpture of my personality, my ethics, my beliefs, my fights.

And Xmas is coming.

And I feel life again, fearlessly travelling in my veins, like a fine wine with all the strength of the earth and the warmth of the sun and the sweetness of the spring rain. Like nectar from Samos.

Because, after all.......I am still here. Still me. I am still here, I exist and my head is still unbowed. And this time I am smiling:-)

True strength comes only from within us, from our own investment to our spirit and soul.

I have been true and honest and fought the good fight with devotion and passion. I have lost maybe but I stilll have me, I have not yielded to the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at all.

My fire is still alive, maybe trembling sometimes but still alive and as a phoenix ready to be rekindled.

After all........I am a dragon :-) And dragons are magical beasts.....brave and alone and fighting the good fight. Noone can bare being close to a dragon. The strength and innocent honesty and absolute passion and morality and pride and dedication are too much for anyone to bare. Its easier to be near kittens. Dragons are.....too much. And they only keep company with other dragons.

(I am listening to Nitro and the song is Strong Enough by Cher :

I dont need your sympathy
Theres nothing you can say or do for me
And I dont want a miracle
Youll never change for no one

I hear your reasons why
Where did you sleep last night?
And was she worth it, was she worth it?

cos Im strong enough
To live without you
Strong enough and I quit crying
Long enough now Im strong enough
To know you gotta go

Theres no more to say
So save your breath
And then walk away
No matter what I hear you say
Im strong enough to know you gotta go

So you feel misunderstood
Baby, have I got news for you
On being used, I could write a book
You dont wanna hear about it

Ive been losing sleep
Youve been going cheap
She aint worth half of me its true
Im telling you

Now Im strong enough to live without you
Strong enough and I quit crying
Long enough now Im strong enough
To know you gotta go

Come hell or waters high
Youll never see me cry
This is our last goodbye, its true

Im telling you
That Im strong enough to live without you
Stron enough and I quit crying
Long enough now Im strong enough
To know you gotta go

Theres no more to say
So save your breath
And you walk away
No matter what I hear you say
Im strong enough to know you gotta go
)