The Return to Innocence
Memory. One of the strongest muscles in our being. It can contract and ruin your life crushing you underneath or it can gently lift your soul in the light, no matter what life throws at you.
When I was a child my grandmother used to have in a corner of her garden a columbine that used to grow again and again every year. I remember how fascinated I used to be as a little girl by the filigree shape and the delicate yet robust structure of this flower. I could study it day after day when it bloomed or when it’s petals were falling. I used to be very caring with the flowers. And when I say flowers, I mean beings, living creatures that I respected deep in my child’s heart. It never ceased to amaze me and make me happy whenever I saw it, because only there, in that corner of the garden, hidden in shadow under a lilac tree one could have found my columbine. There were no others, it was unique and the neighbours had none. It’s incredible how simple things that adults don’t even notice can be such an awesome thing for a child.
Many years I grew up with the beautiful columbines, studying them as they opened their purple-blue flowers. Columbines meant holiday, freedom and childhood. Not in so many words, but with a warm cosy feeling deep within. Words meant nothing then, only the heart was full of feelings and of a light that an adult is losing somewhere on the way.
This year I was contemplating my bare garden, frozen and with no trace of life. Then suddenly an incredible invisible force, a singular touch of grace has awaken the life in the sleeping buds and wrinkled flowers that rose their heads and stretched their beings in the warm sunshine. Then mesmerised I have discovered hundreds of columbines.
Is it God’s message that life is beautiful and full of diversity on a multitude of layers at the same time? Or is it just a cosmic coincidence? No matter what it is, it has brought back to me that warm cosy feeling in the midst of a busy life full of stress. The morning when I saw the columbines bloom I felt how one must feel when they win the lottery. To others this means nothing. To me it means the return to innocence.
400 words, memyselfandela, June 1st 2015
Photo: Adela Galasiu, May 2015
BBC. Soul. Music. Peace.
Yesterday lovely Nicola Humphries, BBC producer and wonderful woman with a big heart, has given me the opportunity to tell a story.
It has all started with my beloved Rhapsody in Blue and Gershwin, but for me this represents the tip of my soul iceberg. I have dived very deep in my past to the times when I was a happy child. I have spoken about life in the Communism, oppression, the tragic death of my father which has coincided with the beginning of the Romanian Revolution on the 22 of December 1989. I have tried to describe life as it was, but time was short and words don’t come always easy. I have had moments when my mind has frozen and when I could not find my words as in the back of my eyes I have kept my tears, because I cannot get back in some moments in time without feeling again all that intense pain.
I am in love with music because it has always been for me a gate to freedom and a window of hope in the darkest moments. I have remembered the most intense moments that I have lived and witnessed, the blood on the streets of Sibiu, the fear when people were shot, the agony of not knowing what was happening with my father when he did not come back home, the death striking my family when we have least expected, the love and the absolute loss.
I may be different than other people given the intensity of situations that I have lived, things that could have made other people get insane. I have been through things that normally do not happen to other people. Those have been moments that have not destroyed me, but made me stronger. This is one of the reasons why I write and I have started my blog. I believe that despite all pain, beyond all loss, life is both a path and a fight. We can all create a better path and win our battle. I truly believe that none of us should give up, that we should all have peace of mind and hope in our heart for the day to come. I believe it because I have been myself on the edge of despair and I have looked into the abyss of depression many times in my life.
As I came out of the BBC I have entered the Church of All Souls. I believe nothing is accidental. I have been not given the chance to speak about me alone, but the chance to recall and mention my mother, my father, my love, my loss, my hope. Maybe it was a way of setting myself free and closing a deep pain of the past, a bleeding succession of losses that I have lived with for a long time.
I believe in God. We have all a lesson to learn. And I believe that at the end of the road we shall all find love and peace.
500 words, memyselfandela, February 2014
Photos: Adela Galasiu, February 2014
Many thanks to wonderful Nicola Humphries and BBC 4, Soul Music.
Lunatic
The absolute solitude embraces the caryatids but has not forgotten the smile in your eyes.
I spend my days with my rebel freedom, with the stone kings and the frozen time.
Life continues to pulsate in the depths of my heartless veins.
On the same stairs where you were holding my hand
The rain has replaced the sound of your footsteps beside me.
Your wish for happiness has not yet extinguished my soul.
I write like a lunatic on the corner of every table I happen to find,
In the silent places where I have once been with you.
Lunatic. Yes, I am a lunatic. The absolute lunatic for loving you.
111 words, memyselfandela, February 2014
Photo: Photobucket
Walking In The Air
Come dance on countless whispers, in the pure atmosphere
High above, beyond all worries.
The same lonesome trumpet illuminates my night
Come float with me beyond all words.
I won’t forget you, weary soul
In this dimension where we found each other.
If I would turn the distance in a golden thread
It would lead me far away to the moon.
Our clay existence, the cage of our bodies are nothing
In this realm where our deepest thoughts ignite.
Sleepless nights sublimated in the dark shadow under your loving eyes
Will never ever keep you from floating in the air.
100 words, memyselfandela, November 2013
Photos: memyselfandela, November 2013
Rose
the night crystallizes truths
despite of all the imperfections
in the crevasses of my broken soul
left at the end of the day with
raw images of degradation and fragments
from fights of silent dragons and demons,
of humans rifted in the damnation to feel only nothingness
because they have nothing holy in their soul,
though they deserve angel shapes.
truly pure love is the one
that gives itself whole, without judgement,
with no hope of reward
with complete oblivion of all fruits and all joy,
of all gratification, of all praise and ego.
the one that does not build temples for
his self satisfaction, his wisdom or nobleness.
this love is the condescendent eye
on all creature, the rose that blooms in the winter frost.
there’s no way above this nightmare
that is at the same time lesson and life
but to give love to all, without any expectation.
no angels walk on this ground,
they must leave us so we can make our own choices.
there’s no oneness but the one
we freely give to stranger and foe.
there’s no wholeness but love,
and if you don’t have it, give it
and if you can’t imagine it, create it.
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200 words, memyselfandela, 2013
Blue Jeans Haiku
Blue jeans, the symbol
of your free mind and soul. In
them I want you all.
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memyselfandela, 2013
Friedensengel / Angel of Peace
Illuminating presence over the city
guardian while Munich sleeps
with his olive branch bringing the blessings
of the Angel of Peace
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photo: memyselfandela, 2001
memyselfandela, 2013
The Image of Freedom
Have you ever wondered how freedom looks like? We are so used to be free that we take it for granted…
On April 13th 1945, a division of American soldiers was ordered to investigate a train abandoned by German soldiers near a concentration camp. The train was packed with Jewish families: over 2,500 people – men, women and children. The Germans were about to move them to a new concentration camp.
The Americans were able to release them all, and the photo below was taken by Major Clarence L. Benjamin, who participated in this operation.
This is the image of freedom.
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100 words
memyselfandela, 2012
memyselfandela 