Dvorak – Rusalka – Song to the Moon
Czech Lyrics
Mesiku na nebi hlubokem
Svetlo tve daleko vidi,
Po svete bloudis sirokem,
Divas se v pribytky lidi.
Mesicku, postuj chvili
reckni mi, kde je muj mily
Rekni mu, stribmy mesicku,
me ze jej objima rame,
aby si alespon chvilicku
vzpomenul ve sneni na mne.
Zasvet mu do daleka,
rekni mu, rekni m kdo tu nan ceka!
O mneli duse lidska sni,
at’se tou vzpominkou vzbudi!
Mesicku, nezhasni, nezhasni!
English Translation
Moon, high and deep in the sky
Your light sees far,
You travel around the wide world,
and see into people’s homes.
Moon, stand still a while
and tell me where is my dear.
Tell him, silvery moon,
that I am embracing him.
For at least momentarily
let him recall of dreaming of me.
Illuminate him far away,
and tell him, tell him who is waiting for him!
If his human soul is in fact dreaming of me,
may the memory awaken him!
Moonlight, don’t disappear, disappear!
Here / Aici
You can reach from your distant world
my caged sea of dreams
and my head resting on your sands, in a thought.
Hungry eyes gaze full of unspoken stories
lost in this wind, flying, diving, jumping
in this phase of time that belongs to us.
Memories, white and blue
embrace your bones, fill up my breath
dissolving in this finest infusion of light.
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Poți atinge din lumea ta îndepărtată
mare mea de vise incuiate
și capul meu rezemat pe nisipurile tale, într-un gând.
Ochi înfometați privesc plini de povești nespuse,
pierduți în acest vânt, zburand, scufundându-se, sărind
în această fază a timpului care ne aparține.
Amintiri, albe și albastre,
îmbrățișeaza oasele tale, umplu respirația mea
dizolvandu-se în aceasta minunata infuzie de lumină.
63 words, memyselfandela/ Adela Galasiu June 2014
Photo: Adela Galasiu, May 2014
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
Rhapsody in Blue – Be Passionate, Be True, Be You!
Today I offer you a rhapsody from my heart. An effusively rapturous and extravagant discourse. My expression of enthusiasm and praise for a musical piece that I absolutely madly deeply adore.
Whoever has read my blog in the past knows that I am passionate about Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I have written about it in the past and I listen to it every once in a while when I am happy or when I recharge my inner batteries. Yesterday, as I read one very surprising comment on my blog, I have realised that I have never taken the time to put together all the reasons why I love this musical piece so very much.
The comment came from a BBC Radio 4 producer who is researching for a programme about Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I was first of all completely surprised that my post about Gershwin even showed up in an online search. But it was even more exciting for me when I had the joy to discuss on the phone with the producer and I was asked what feelings this particular piece of music awakens in my memory and heart.
If I want to explain what I feel about it I need to rewind my whole life. My memories of it start in childhood when I heard this piece on the radio and have simply fallen in love with it. Coming from a family that loved music, I have listened to both classics and modern music as I grew up. I have fed my spirit with opera played on old magnetic cassettes, with Chopin and Beethoven, with Ravel and Vivaldi, just like I have fed my soul later on in my life with the music of the 80’s and the rock music. When I was a child music was a great joy for us, as in the communism we did not have access to all the variety of entertainment that one can experience now. It was only natural that I fell in love with this piece that infuses Jazz, Impressionism and classical elements molten in a 20th Century romantic theme offered with brittle and quirky interruptions.
This appreciation for the Rhapsody in Blue has continued throughout all my life. Every time when I was defeated and low I have sat and listened to it. Unlike other people with linear lives I have been through many changes, I have witnessed a lot of pain, loss, death, suffering, but also love, joy, sacrifice and hope. Wherever things were worst in my family I was present. Throughout this all, whenever I have listened to this piece of music I have added another pearl of feeling to what has become now a very long string. To me it is now not only music, but a masterpiece and pure beauty. And because it has been with me through it all, happy moments, sad moments and great changes, it has become a part of me and a symbol of life itself.
When I say life I don’t mean only good things. Life has many layers, ups and downs, just like the human mind and heart. There are many shades and colours, numerous moments of darkness and light that create the clear image of our multidimensional reality, a rich kaleidoscope of feelings, moments, images and sounds that create a whole.
Many people don’t know that this piece of music was a commission and that it has been written in a train. This may sound uninteresting for some, what is a train you may say. Well, for me a train means volumes. My father has passed away in a train. I have loved travelling by train all my life. Even now the train is my favourite transportation to wherever I go. It brings memories, it revives moments in my past, it is also (for those who believe that dreams have a meaning) a symbol of change, passage and novelty in one’s life. Gershwin says himself: “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise… “. He is right, it often happens to me too to hear the tune in the noise…
Rhapsody in Blue was a challenge because it was created in a very short period of time, against the clock, by a young and ambitious Gershwin that didn’t want someone else to steal his idea. This speaks volumes for me again. Under a similar pressure I have left Romania and started a new life in a moment when I felt I must do and I can do more with my life. I was young, ambitious and a bit unaware of what life may bring. But I didn’t care, I had only one thing in my mind- I wanted to make it. I think it is out of such moments of determination that meaningful things get born.
Did you know that the original title was “American Rhapsody”? In the end the title of this piece was inspired by two famous paintings of James Whistler of which one, “Nocturne In Blue And Green of the Thames at Chelsea”, has been rejected and misunderstood in the beginning because it was too modern for the moment when it was offered to the public. There are people who, despite of being rejected for their ideas or passion, carry on and believe in their dream until one day that dream proves to be an extraordinary thing. They may not see all the staircase, but they go up step by step, they simply have faith. It is not easy to believe in your own value when maybe nobody else does, yet being consistent in your efforts brings great results in the end.
Gershwin was not conservatory trained, an awareness of which he carried with him to his grave, and something his arch critics would never allow future students of the piano to forget. Yet, no conservatory teaches talent, so nothing can stand in front of Gershwin’s unique style and genius. Pianists have consistently interpreted Gershwin somewhere between the classicism of Chopin and the 20th Century romanticism of Rachmaninoff, but when it comes to Gershwin’s strict rhythms, what is not heard is more important than what is, for it is the magic of the split-second spacing between the notes that brings Gershwin’s Rhapsody to life in a melodic thread woven itself into a masterpiece.
The Rhapsody, with its composer as soloist, was premiered in front of a packed house that included Rachmaninov, Kreisler, McCormack, Godowsky, Sousa, Heifetz and Stokowski. Even the ones that later did not like it when it was first presented to the public and said it would have been “structurally flawed” have categorised it as a “sentimental” piece. It is as melancholic as my Romanian soul and it is full of feeling and light. It is sad at some points. It is happy, rhythmic and improvised too. Through all these characteristics it is ALIVE. If you would listen to only a part of it, if you would take a bit out of it, if you would listen to it all it would be just as alive, and that is amazing. It is a series of stories put all together, a series of songs that match perfectly in a single, uninterrupted composition of continuous and extravagant enthusiasm.
I have listened to it through various moments in my life and I have understood it in different ways. It speaks to me of happy childhood years. The first clarinet trill reminds me of a new beginning, of a new day, of sunrise. I am an animation movie lover, so when I have seen it translated into image by Disney’s Fantasia 2000 I have added even more meaning to it, as I thought that the animation is a perfect illustration for the hope trapped inside this fabulous piece of music. And I will always remember how I danced on this piece with the man I love. In a moment in time, in a quiet evening, in a quiet flat, in a quiet neighbourhood in London he has taken my hand in his hand and we have danced on this wonderful rhapsody. Our souls were dancing too, we were happy, the heart was full, the world was in the right place and we were in the right feeling.
I love Rhapsody in Blue for many reasons, for the sweet sentimental parts, for the crescendos, for the vivid pace, for the epic dimension of it, for the jazz veins and the classical bursts. My interpretation of it is perfectly subjective, I see it through the lenses of my own soul, maybe different than other people. But for me it represents life itself seen through the eyes of an optimist. Unflawed and tightly woven, with its early 20th Century innocence and brilliant musical statements taken in and out of the performers and listeners souls, Rhapsody in Blue is for me a personal stairway to paradise.
Photos: “Blue”, Adela Galasiu 2013
1500 words, memyselfandela, January 2014
More about Gershwin : Gershwin plays Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue – posted in April 2012
BBC Radio 4 – Soul Music – The stories behind pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/soulmusic
Wash
God, have mercy, let it rain today,
My heart is so black, like my mind in ways.
Oh , there was a time when I could feel his taste.
His smiling eyes before me, tears down my face.
Sin for sale. Lover, will it feed your need?
Tell me, why you planted all these devil’s seeds?
What is now the truth? Can we get it back?
It’s was on the inside but you lost it’s track.
What was clean and pure is now left outside
On these paths of living we walk without guide.
What you knew and hid kills our frail tomorrow.
Bring your love back, lover, I may die of sorrow.
Bring life back, reborn, wash my love with tears
Be not scared to feel, love above all fears.
memyselfandela, January 2014
ROMANIA ROCKS!!! ROMANIA E MINUNATA !!!
Today is the 1st of December, National Day of Romania. / Azi e 1 Decembrie, Ziua Nationala a Romaniei.
I may be far away with my body but today, as I go to work, I will show a whole world my passion. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve today, I wear it in the open fully exposed! 😀 / Poate ca sunt departe cu trupul dar astazi, cand merg la servici, voi arata unei lumi intregi pasiunea mea. Nu imi deschid inima azi, ci o port la vedere complet expusa! 😀
Happy Birthday Romanians!!! / La Multi Ani Romani!!!
I Love You Romania!!! You Simply Rock!!! / Te iubesc Romania!!! Esti pur si simplu minunata!!!
Photo: memyselfandela December 2013
Night
I have lost my way often lingering on cursed unknown streets
Hoping to find the invisible path that leads to you.
I am grateful for the gift of being alive
For the roses I bewilderingly find blooming under your blue sky.
When night comes, when my eyes cannot close
They can sometimes seize the star that lights up your dreams.
As it twinkles high above you, almost fading,
The distance to you means nothing anymore.
One day when my soul will look for a place to hide and to rest
It will find the shadow concealed between your loving arms.
—————————————————————————–
100 words, memyselfandela, November 2013
Corner of the Loner (29.11.13)
Don’t be scared of life, of the cold anonymous world.
Cut the wires that feed your fears.
Live today as if it would be the last day left on the face of Earth
Even if everything may crumble around you.
Don’t listen to your clutched fists
Don’t hear the bad words flying around you.
Don’t hide from your dark side.
You have yourself and your gentle thought rising above your eyebrows.
Join your heart for a ride deep inside yourself,
Turn your arms towards who you really are and embrace your soul.
When you will be your own friend
You will never feel empty again in your silent corner of the loner.
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111 words, Memyselfandela, November 2013
More on : Corner of the Loner
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
The Simple Things
He was sitting on by the water in Mexico when it hit him how much he hated himself. Which kind of sucked. Because he should have been happy. He should have been ecstatic. After years of struggle and poverty and horrible physical pain (getting almost killed by a semi truck sucks too…) he finally had it. He finally had everything he ever thought he wanted. He was 30 years old, in good shape, good friends, professional success, fun toys, plenty of free time . . . Even better he was one of only three guys on a yoga retreat and was spending his days stretching and snorkeling and chugging margaritas with a bevy of beautiful, intelligent, passionate (and flexible) women.
He should have been happy. He should have been doing a victory lap around the mess that was his twenties and screaming to the moon about how he finally made it past childhood trauma and adulthood disappointment to become a “success.”
But he just couldn’t do it.
Nope. Instead of being happy, he was damn miserable. Angry. Emotionally nauseous and, worse yet, viciously angry at himself for not waking up to how good he had it.
One night he found himself sitting on the shore alone watching the waves come in. Everyone else had gone on to a bar to order large amounts of drinks in broken Spanish, but the bile in his throat and the voice in the back of his head wanted him to be alone. Alone and vulnerable.
It was pitch black but for the shine of the moon off the water and all he could feel was the pathetic bottle in his hand, the drink in his gut and the tension in his jaw threatening to break his teeth.
He wasn’t man enough to admit it, but he had tears in his eyes.
“Why?” he thought to himself in a silent whisper. “What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I just enjoy this?”
It was a rhetorical question, so he was pretty shocked when he got an answer. It came in a voice as dark as tar and as toxic as venom.
“Because you don’t deserve it,” the voice in the back of his head grumbled. “Because you’re evil and dangerous and anyone foolish enough to love you deserves to be harmed.”
He closed his eyes and could finally see it: what he really thought of himself. Not a man or even a boy, but a creature with claws and teeth and a cruel, cruel grin. A creature who’s only glee came from clawing at his heart and pulling him down and reminding him to never, ever feel even one moment of happiness.
He flew home a few days later feeling like he’d gotten into a duel with Godzilla and damn it, bloody Godzilla won. The entire time on the plane home his brain stormed and he counted down the hours until he could go see his therapist.
“How are you?,” she asked as he walked in, her eyes half squinting as she searched his face.
For an hour he let the words flow out like a dying breathe, rambling at Speedy-Gonzalez-pace, desperate to get every hatred and criticism and imagined crime out of his heart and into the world. Finally, after minutes that felt like days he looked his therapist in the eyes and said:
“I’m so sick and tired of hating myself , beating myself up , punishing everyone around me … I’m wondering what would happen if I just decided to stop and actually LIKE myself for a little while instead.”
The therapist looked at him with kind eyes and a half smile and said “Well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”
And so he did.
Right then and there he decided to try liking himself – maybe even loving himself – for a while.
And at first the creature in his head and his heart raged like a angry lion and dragged its claws against the inside of his skull.
But instead of arguing he did something kind of weird.
He pointed and laughed. He dressed it up in silly shoes and ugly makeup and mocked it . And suddenly a weird thing happened: he felt this glowing freedom rising in his chest and this crazy, irrational smile pulling hard at the corners of his mouth.
Suddenly he felt . . . happy. Ecstatic.
For the next two weeks he walked around on a love-high. His friends asked him what the heck had happened. His enemies got confused when he was actually nice to them. And that beast in the back of his brain shrunk and shriveled and cried.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly as easy as that, for every time he would fail or feel ashamed about something or feel like some woman was getting close he would feel that creature rise up. He would feel that bile on his tongue.
But now . . . years later . . . here he is with nothing to hide.
A string of broken relationships turned into one amazing love with the girl of his dreams. 
And years and years of anger and pain turned into . . . something simpler. Nicer. More wonderful. He’s not into the “woo woo” stuff a lot of his friends are, but he is into this one simple fact:
“Happiness is a choice. Liking yourself / loving yourself is something YOU choose to do, no one can make you miserable or happy but YOU.”
900 words, memyselfandela, November 2013
Simply Rock
“Oh please let it rain today.
This city is so filthy, like my mind in ways.
Oh, there was a time, like a clean, new taste…
Smiling eyes before me, inches from my face.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Sin to sell, buying just a need.
Just who planted all the devils seeds?
And what the truth, the truth that lies at home…
It’s on the inside, and I can’t get it off.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
What’s clean is pure, but hey,
I’m white on the outside, though I stray…
What she don’t know today might kill us both tomorrow.
Bring it back someway…bring it back, bring it back…
Back to the clean form, to the pure form.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.
Wash my love.”
In Bloom
When are you coming,
You weary soul and hungry breath?
I hide your beautiful memory framed
Sleeping deep in the fire of my heart.
My breath rests easy on your chest
As the night blooming in your loving eyes
Comes out of depths of your soul
That you have even forgotten.
What does your heart hide for me,
You dawn ethereal love?
No more tears, no cage of stone
To hide my crumbling being.
The delicate touch of your smile
As you kiss my moonlight shining lips
Awaits for the sun to melt us
In a passionate bud eager to explode.
100 words, memyselfandela, October 2013
A Million Shades of Blue
Shades… A million shades… The afternoon was made out of so many shades between the black and the white.
The sky was not perfectly blue, the heart was not perfectly light, the hope was not really a hope.
If it would have been love or no love at all, all would have been so simple, but the heart was flooded by all those shades of colors and feelings and electricity boldly lingering in their touch. It was a delirium of things and images passing before her eyes while she was processing the remains of the previous days.
“Why is life not simple like in those romantic movies where all is fine?” was the thought lingering in her mind while watching him stop in front of another little shop, with the amazement of a child that has just seen something he was hoping to discover for a lifetime.
Entering the shop she realized that it would make a beautiful present to compensate his birthday. She missed it, it’s true, but not because she didn’t care, but because she didn’t know him yet back then. But still, she would have loved to have been there with him that day, and in her heart she was.
He loved them all. It’s true, they were all beautiful ties, hand made, real, just like he loved to feel authentic and sharp and real…
With a smile in the corner of her soul she sent him to have a look in the back of the store while she took the tie he had admired in the very first moment. 69 pounds, that was the price. It was perfect. The colors were perfect, shades of color, shades of life. The price spoke volumes. To him it would have probably meant an erotic thing, but to her it was a tangible translation of the moon dust trapped inside their bones, of their breath as they were kissing and talking about the muses watching over their love, of the raise and fall of their entwined souls, or the incarnation of all the things that were present in that very second when she wished him happy birthday, now, better later than never.
In the back of her mind there was only a song lingering talking about the raise and fall of the same moon dust that was still shining in his eyes just like that night when they have met the first time, not even knowing if tomorrow will ever come or if there will be a chance for another minute together.
The day was fading, in the corridors of the city, in the tunnels covered in graffiti, as the two lovers were getting back from a city adventure that meant all and nothing, while lights were shining on the side of the road, like fireflies dancing songs known only to themselves.
And the light was dying in millions of shades of obscurity, while the moon, all alone, saw the loneliness crawling back in the souls of the eternal loners.
500 words, memyselfandela, September 2013
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea At 36
What is life dear friends? Is it a journey, a lesson or a choice? To me it’s all and so much more. I am 36 now and grateful to have met and known each one of you. I am honored by each one of you stopping by to read for a moment in time the imprint of my existence here, in this virtual space that can sometimes be a million times more real and intense than the indifferent reality in which many don’t think, don’t stop, don’t feel. These are thoughts coming from the depths of a mind that you have always heard, but whose bodily envelope you have never got the chance to see till today. This is my tribute to you all and especially to the most unique loners and thinkers I have had the honor to meet through this wonderful expression channel offered by WordPress.
When it comes to life and feelings I have made quite an adventurous journey so far. I know that most of you have been through similar experiences, some of them known to me. I may not know you all, my dear friends sharing this lonesome island of thought with me, but what I know is that my experience is just as unique as my fingerprints, and all of you are just as unique.
My life has started in my early years with the naive me discovering the world in all aspects. Just like you have all done it. But because I was pretty much a loner even then, I have taken in the colors, feelings and characters around me on a more intense note. And in time I found out that there are not many capable of sharing the same intensity of life like me. But it was then when I have also met my darkness and fears, and so I have wasted a lot of time of my life swinging between the devil and the deep blue sea.
It was hard to allow the outer world inside my own world. The most painful was to give something of me to many that have never understood who I am and what hides behind the green of my eyes. That because they were too busy to judge me using units of measure that are far too conventional for the ineffable in me.
The beauty of life has unfolded under my eyes later when I have accepted myself for who I was. When i have embraced my solitude knowing that it will bring me in the end to the best in me. And my solitude has been the greatest teacher and one of the most profound states of mind I have been through.
Just like many other people I have mourned for a lost love or a lost past until the day when I understood that whatever has happened was for a reason. That behind the loss hides the chance to change. Not the world, but myself. Not to die, but to grow. Not to freeze, but to develop. Not to stagnate, but to complete myself.
At the end of that labyrinth I have found that my soul has become my mate and that I am truly my best friend. That was the epiphany of inner balance, me becoming what God has created me to be, the best me, the sensitive me, the passionate me embracing life and capable to absorb and distill it just to offer it in the form of an essence that carries across my own soul.
Every day brings the promise of a new beginning. We don’t need to regret anything, whatever happened was meant to be. And it was meant to be part of our inner growth, mental awakening of heart blooming. I see every day as the first day of the rest of my life. And at this point in my life I embrace both the devil and the deep blue sea. The little devil of wild feelings and thoughts I have tamed in me and the deep blue sea of living, two extremes opposed at the beginning of my existence, but two sides of the same coin that has always been my soul, fallen on the bottom of this ocean called life.
memyselfandela, September 2013
Black & White Morning
morning wakes me up like a barbarian
memories of my once living language
draining from my soul.
night kisses day goodbye
and succumbing dreams fade
in the emerging reality of the conquering senses
33 words, memyselfandela, August 2013
You Look Like Rain
It rains with words here
however they are not just words, they are feelings.
It used to pour with memories
yet they were just heartbeats left behind.
Though drops fall over my soul
I’ve always loved it, for rain reminds me that I’m alive.
memyselfandela, 2013
Digital art: memyselfandela, 2013
Psalm
mute words speak
for the tears in my soul,
so You take them,
make them a river,
make my heart a stone,
crush me, make me a pot
to burn all the pain.
33 words, memyselfandela – August 2013
The Oak Tree and The Ivy
Once upon a time there was a love story between a simple man and an ordinary woman. Little matters how they got to know each other, maybe it was at one of the same social events that they were both attending. It was love at first sight, he used to say that he fell in love with her inner light, but in her humility she didn’t even know that she had it. She loved his spirit and wisdom and everything about him. He was like no other, and the love shining in his eyes was incredible.
Happy days they have lived together, yet they knew that he will need to leave one day for a while, for a final battle. He was determined to make peace with his past, to solve his problems, so that no bad memories could ever again threaten their happiness. But nevertheless, they were happy and they were one heart, so problems didn’t seem to matter.
They have spent time reading and dreaming and sharing the beauty of life in a way that nobody ever did. And for a spell they were completely lost in their universe of absolute love.
One day as they went on the beach he built for her a wonderful sand castle and he decided to close it under a glass cover so that she could have it always close to her in her house until he was back. It’s not an ordinary castle, it was their castle.
“Wait for me , hide your soul inside the castle, and in no time I’ll be back to you my Love”.
The day before he left she took him in the woods. A beautiful light was shining there and there were flowers everywhere as the spring was bursting with joy and color. Walking on paths known only by her they found a quiet place and stood under an old oak tree. And she took a picture of him as he was smiling leaning against that tree. As he saw the tree he said:
“It’s a most extraordinary tree, but I can’t understand why.”
And she told him that it was so because the tree was not alone, but loved and surrounded by the most beautiful green ivy. “The tree has many scars, yet he is covered by the ivy that gives him his strength. They are one, and this is love, they never let go of each other”.
He smiled. Yes, NEVER LET GO. Of course it made sense. And as he got inside the train that took him away from her he fell asleep smiling thinking of her love and the beautiful tree and the ivy…
Days have passed and day by day he forgot her more. The eyes you don’t get to see you forget, they say. She was writing him every day but he hardly found any time to answer her. His problems were solved, his life was secure , everything was all right yet no matter how much she loved him, he failed to hear her anymore.
And his absolute love crumbled like a handful of sand flowing between his fingers. He had a stable life yet his soul was empty and he was not happy , never happy as he used to be by her side. But maybe he was scared that he could not make her happy or maybe he forgot all the happy days. Sometimes in his dream he used to see her smile and hear her calling his name, he felt her kiss on his lips and her forehead leaning against his. And he kept telling himself again and again:“I need a bit more time, but one day, soon, I will go see her, and I will make things right and one day we’ll be happy.” And today became tomorrow , and that became one day soon, and then this became someday, and the day never came and his heart left her more and more.
She felt him far away and it pained her just as the blood draining from one’s heart must hurt. And she felt cursed and abandoned yet she was true to her love. “NEVER LET GO”. And she thought to herself that maybe something horrible happened to him and so he can’t make it back to her yet. And she waited, and wrote him how she missed him and how much she loved him. Yet no more answers…
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Not many years have passed and the news of her death arrived to his ears. It was only in that moment that he remembered her eyes and smile. A veil was suddenly lifted from his eyes and he realized that even though he took her love for granted she was now no longer there. And he saw the piles of letters in a corner of his library, abandoned, forgotten and never answered…
He got scared and felt sick and desperate. As he felt the pain creep in his heart he decided to attend the funeral so he went to at least see her a last time.
In her house, that now was unchanged, he saw on the wall the picture she took of him. “Never let go” he remembered, as his heart crashed in pain… And he realized that he got so lost in his own idiocy and crazy life that he let go the only soul that ever truly loved him. Willing to see her again he entered the room where the wake was being held. God, he hated wakes, but he wanted to see her, touch her, maybe it wasn’t true… maybe he still had a chance…
As he entered there he saw a simple closed coffin, a red rose fading on it and on a side table, under a glass cover, a crumbled sand castle…
“Oh how I love you… “ he mumbled, his tears flowing as rivers all over his face… “My Love, how could I have been such an idiot as to leave you?”
His knees couldn’t sustain his weight anymore and he was helped by few people to have a sit next to the coffin. As he touched the cold surface he leaned his forehead on it just as she used to lean her forehead on his years ago and he screamed:
“Oh my God, please, please make a miracle, please take me instead. My Love, please forgive me for what I’ve done, please forgive me, I would do anything to turn time back, I would do anything to make you happy…Anything, anything… Please forgive me”…
As he cried so badly he felt a ghostly light hand touching his shivering shoulder. The room turned around him and all turned black. Then, feeling his heartbeat in the temples and ears…
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…. he finally opened his eyes and saw her loving eyes crying in front of him…
At first he could not believe what happened and he looked around. They were again in that wonderful forest where they have been years before. He was leaning against the oak tree and a wonderful light was shining over them.
“Love, how come you are here, where are we?” he mumbled.
“The day you left you’ve had the most horrible stroke my Love , and you’ve been caught in a nightmare for many years. And when I saw you dying I was in such a pain that I asked God to have mercy on me and take me also. I think I died of a heart attack. But I know that God smiled and decided I deserve to be here with you, so He turned back the time…”
Suddenly his heart exploded with joy and as he held her in his arms and kissed her he whispered:
“We really have a second chance Love?”
“Yes my Love. Just remember, NEVER LET GO.”
1300 words, memyselfandela, 2013
Photos of the forest: memyselfandela, 2013
Smaller Evil, Greatest Pain
Have you ever thought how much power your words, simple words, have? Like asking a question that for us seems to be simple or like telling someone a positive word that can change not only their day, but maybe even their life. Have you ever though of this? If not, let me tell you a story so that you will understand better.
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This is the story of a young woman that has dreamed all her life to have a child. Yet, like in any real life story, what one wishes may end up by not being the same thing with what life brings.
When she was very young, Mary has never thought that having a child might ever be an issue. She grew up among children and she loved them all, and her childhood memories were so very unique and beautiful that she knew she must oneday create that beauty for her baby as well.
Yet as she grew up she witnessed situations of young girls having unwanted pregnancies and she heard people talking with a mean passion about those unhappy situations. So as she matured she was rather stressed by the thought of getting pregnant too soon or unmarried. In her heavily religious environment and judgemental society, among neighbours and people that were more than curious about all the pain and all that anyone around does in the constant hunger for sensational and gossip, Mary knew that this is a very delicate issue. A personal issue it should have been, but the world she was living in made it much more complicated than that.
So, because she was a responsible human being and after much thinking, Mary ended up oneday by taking the contraceptive pill. Of course from a religious point of view it was a great sin, and also none of her friends gave her any advice on that . Also her mother was not open minded enough to talk to her about life. And having an unapproachable mother made it not easy for her to take decisions, but she made her choices thinking of choosing the smaller evil.
Years later, after getting married and when she thought it would be time to have a child, Mary gave up on the contraceptive pill. But that day has been only the first day of a life she would have never imagined.
After the time passed she realised that the dream she carried in her soul was slipping away from her, little by little. She understood that something was wrong with her. But at the same time she had to face the mean enquieries and curiosity of a whole cortege of family and friends who were asking her again and again the same idiotic question: “when are you finally going to have a child? Your bloodline will die.” To make things even worst, all her relatives, friends, neigbours and work colleagues were having babies one after another. It seemed like life was making a giant prank on her expense. And every time when she saw other women around holding their children in their arms she felt like dying more and more.
She hoped then that going to a specialist will solve the problem, but that did not happen. Instead she was sent from specialist to specialist and none was good enough to figure out what was wrong with her. Or maybe her dream was not yet meant to come true.
And she gave a serious thought to adoption, but as much as she loved children, not only that adopting was very complicated, but also even without having a child of her own she knew that the bound to a child of her own blood must have been something different and stronger.
After years of battle on her own , as none in her family supported her, Mary ended up by closing in herself and not talking to anyone anymore. She avoided talking to all the people that have hurt her in the past with their lack of sensibility and questions. She left her husband, she kept distance from all the family. She felt like her life was very much doomed and cursed, and so she ended up by burying that loving heart she used to have, to burry it so very deep that she could no longer hear that voice of unspoken pain that she had accumulated over years and years of failing and not being supported in any way.
To Mary this was a wasted life. Little it mattered to her that she helped others or that she cared for people’s pain becuase she knew exactly what pain is.
She used to keep inside long conversations with God and ask for forgiveness for all those years in her life when she used the contraceptive pill, and she asked for forgiveness for what she considered to be the heaviest sin of her life, a sin that nobody could have erased to release her from the endless curse.
She used to sit in the park sometimes watching the children play, with a heavy heart, with a smile on her face but an endless sorrow flooding her being.
One day, talking about her life to someone, a stranger that knew nothing about her life, she was answered: “You are such a special woman that God still needs a lot of time to create a soul for your child. It takes longer for you than for other women because your child will be the most special gifted little soul you have ever seen, and many will envy you.”
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Here is where the story stops. Little matters what happened next. Life is open and Mary could have seen her dream come true, or maybe she ended up by dying alone and still dreaming of her little child and aching for every year when she grew older on her own.
It is often in life that we cannot come close to understanding someone else’s pain and life struggle, as we can only see with our subjective eyes and understand nothing but our problems. Often we have no sensibility towards other people and their pains.
And we often judge other people’s pain as “not as bad as ours”, because “our pain is the greatest”.
Is this a corect way of seeing life? If we are centered only on what we feel and need and experience and don’t think what sort of feelings we give others, what sort of a life are we living and what are we?
memyselfandela, 2013
Alba
White Bird, shake your wing over me
Snow on my lashes with white snow flakes, graciously, silently, vapour like
Strew on the top of my head your wisdom.
Once I did not know you, I was living my life without your song
I was speaking so many words and did not understand any …
Now I have embaced you, you are me, I am silent.
Oh how beautiful it snows with oblivion in my eyes…
When you will fly away, I don’t want to be left behind,
Cover me with your wing, Solitude.
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Pasăre albă, scutură-ți aripa deasupra mea
Ninge-mi genele cu fulgi albi, grațios, tăcut, vaporos
Presară-mi pe creștet înțelepciunea ta.
Cândva nu te cunoșteam, îmi trăiam viața fără cântecul tău,
Vorbeam atâtea cuvinte și nu înțelegeam nici unul…
Acum te-am îmbrățișat, tu ești eu, eu tac.
Ce frumos ninge cu uitare în ochii mei…
Când vei zbura nu vreau să râmân în urmă,
Acoperă-mi inima cu aripa ta, Singurătate.
memyselfandela, 2011
LOVE IS.
When she talked about love it was almost like talking about life itself. It has been a lifelong quest and mystery. Yet with her adult mind she could finally get close to what love was and what love wasn’t.
When she was young she imagined love must be a sort of peaceful place, very much like her home used to be when mom and dad didn’t argue violently because he drank too much or because something went terribly wrong. She knew things were not right with mom and dad, yet they were her only image of love.
And then , after dad was gone, her love image started to fade. Love was for her a place far away from that heartbreak and sadness and tension she used to feel floating in the air of that tiny place she used to call home. Home felt no longer like home…Love was the escape from that sad prison, was a pair of arms to hold her with no word instead of constantly blaming her for not being the perfect child. Love was a sunny day far far away…
Years have passed and she had grown. She had no idea how other women were like, she only knew that in her childish way of feeling life and the world she will one day find out what love is. She gave her best to the men in her life. Yet none of them ever came close to make her feel loved. She got so used to see them preoccupied only by themselves and their needs and wants, by their rules and pleasures, never looking at what she feels, never trying to ever make her smile, never caring… In the end they were for her a list of people, each one with other huge qualities and flaws, each one turning his back in their sleep instead of holding her near, each one thinking only about their damn control and desires, never about the beauty of love and life together… At that point she accepted that probably she was never to find the love. She was tired. Tired of always giving it all and seeing the man in her life only take and never care about filling up her soul with something too. Tired of feeding his soul with trust, strength, hope, tired of putting a shoulder to forever solve his problems and never getting to live a day when he was finally done with those problems and looked at her. Tired of being robbed of ideas and feelings, of giving all her love just to receive sometimes a friendly kiss… Tired of treating all like kings when they treated her like a pauper that needs to wait and forever be understanding and patient for one day, one day love will be possible. And that one day never came.
Some called her muse, some good friend, some empath, some angel, and funny thing, they all said they loved her even if they didn’t because they were too busy loving themselves. They have all regreted her when she left. But she knew that none had really loved her. They were in love with how good she made them feel about themselves, not in love with her.
One day she knew that the change was there. She was tired of being alone. She was tired of giving love to people that could not love. She knew that she doesn’t need to proove anyone anything, because she was beautiful and that was all. She was, just because. She knew that she doesn’t need any man to tell her how golden she is. That she doesn’t care anymore if they ever had or made time for her. That it didn’t pain her anymore, for she had all the time in the world now, and she was no longer exclusively anyones but belonged only to herself. That was the day when she realised that SHE WAS THE LOVE. That she was healed of the lack of confidence and of all that cursed lifelong pain.
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Love is patient, love is kind, love is childlike. Love does not feed the ego, but cares about the soul. Love IS. With no excuses, postponing, selfishness… It simply IS.
Do not think it, live it. In private, behind a closed door or in the open, regardless of the way how others judge you.
Love, true love, the capital “L” love, doesn’t need legal papers, money, it’s not a choice, it’s your number one priority, for if it’s true love, it fills up your soul so much that you can’t see anything and anyone else. And if you don’t feel it there, if you have to ask for it, beg for it, if you are the constant giver, if you forever need to wait for it to work, or if that love needs pretexts to be able to even start, then dear friend, keep going.
Trust me, one day you will understand what LOVE IS.
memyselfandela, 2013
memyselfandela 