Us

We run in our cages like little white mice, at fast pace, too concerned with the rhythm of his steps to realize he has no destination, no contact with the outer world, no understanding.

We fool ourselves with gods that don't exist, too frightened to do things on our own.

We forget we have roots and identities that go far beyond the nationality on our passports. If history is a garbage bin, we are the trash.

We build intricate webs and systems to push us forward only to find we're sometimes taking steps back.

We blame others, don't assume failures and and look anywhere else but ourselves.

We have fake dialogs each day, with ourselves, with the man next door that believes in freedom and with our working colleagues while negotiating peace.

We are consumed by ourselves, and we consume and act only for ourselves.

We are aggressive even in our harmless ways, imposing our thoughts, having to respect for the others p.o.v.

We forget to love and love to forget.

All these while we move forward.
How on earth is that possible??

Craving

Today I missed Emily and Anne and Sylvia and Virginia. How rare these moments got, when I could read and live and remember, and create. There were days when I couldn't get enough reading, when I sank into them, and they sank into me, days measured in pages read, not minutes or hours. Here's a taste for those who actually read this. You also might like Sylvia or The Hours.

I taste a liquor
by Emily Dickinson

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When the landlord turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

The Kiss
by Anne Sexton

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year,
tedious
nights, nothing but rough
elbows in them
and delicate boxes of
Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!

Before today my body
was useless.
Now it's tearing at its
square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's
garments off, knot by knot
and see - Now it's shot full of
these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite
wooden
and with no business, no salt
water under it
and in need of some paint. It
was no more
than a group of boards. But
you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.

My nerves are turned on. I
hear them like
musical instruments. Where
there was silence
the drums, the strings are
incurably playing. You did
this.
Pure genius at work. Darling,
the composer has stepped
into fire.

Mirror
by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.



" Let a man get up and say, "Behold, this is the truth," and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say." Virginia Woolf

I never made long term plans, they were commitments I knew I could not keep. Somehow things connected and events and opportunities were flowing one after another. I never compromised so much I did not find myself in whatever I was doing.

Life after @ is indeed less dreamy, and more challenging.You become more aware of what your values are and how values govern the life you lead. Money, ethics, excellence, responsibility, family, helping others, they often go to war against each other. And where there are wars, there are victims. We have evolved so much, we dream of living our lives as professional human beings, with high purposes and conscious choices, but when I look around most people are just trying to survive.

I am moving forward and learning new things, however I am passing through one of those moments I had when I was a kid, when I was writing in one of my so many unfinished journals: " I wish I was able to see myself in 20 years. How I look like, what I do, what kind of life I have." The view is clearer now, but as time goes by, a sort of inner impatience is cornering my mind: What do I live behind???