Joy
It may sound like a cliche that one should live life as if every day was the last one, but I think we all go through life wasting time, money, wisdom and mostly lots of possibilities to learn and enjoy who we are and what we do. We often forget to be grateful for what was given to us and choose to see what we don’t have, and so life goes by in stress, bitterness, sadness or denial.
I used to deeply mourn the passing of my father and for many years I remembered the pain, loss and anxiety related to that particular moment in time. Each one of us has experienced concentrating on the wrong things I guess, it’s part of the journey. But the other part for me was understanding that a life is not measured in its loss, but in its love and the way it has touched others. It’s not measured in tombstones but in the memories. How we touch others has nothing to do with the length of our physical existence. Nobody disappears, we are all part of the same fabric of time and universe as we know it and as we cannot even fathom it.
I used to feel so sad on this day but in recent years my heart is filled with a very serene peace. This morning the sun woke me up with a surreal shine and I have genuinely felt my father is here, with me, always. I am grateful for his life and love and he is with me in my heart, in my blood, in my soul and in the memories.
Have you lost a beloved one? No, you have not really lost them. Their life is a gift and blessing, rejoice in knowing they are with you, always!
For my dear father Ioan Galasiu with love.
300 words and photos Adela Galasiu, December 22nd 2018
Moment
Motto: “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start…
It’s the only good fight there is.” Charles Bukowski
Today is a gift. I am grateful to be here, feeling alive. I breathe in. I listen to a ring-dove singing in the tree next to me. I take in the air, the light, the smell of yesterday’s rain. Bumblebees come out sleepy trying to make up for the food they could not collect yesterday, hovering over lavender bushes and peppermint flowers that wave gently in the breeze. God smiles over us. The sun shines through the branches of the chestnut tree, my flowers bloom in the garden, their colours vibrating live a song in my eyes. Maybe they are, just like me, a part of God’s dream. Or maybe they are just a form of different frequency than the one of my soul. Maybe they are just strings that God plays with , like one plays a harp. It all makes sense, even though often my mind cannot even grasp the beauty of it all.
I drink a glass of water and contemplate life, like I do every once in a while, like we probably all do. Some people think that knowing that time is precious can make you lead a better life. What would I tell you if this would be my last day?
I’d say I’ve lost many things in this life, and sometimes it has felt like I’ve lost it all. Friends, time, love, children, relatives, sometimes even my mind. I’ve eaten too much or nothing for days. I’ve eaten my own bitterness and I drank the poison of my own ink-black thoughts. I’ve been freezing in train stations and on park benches thinking of why certain things happened in my life, feeling sorry for myself. I thought I was sometimes carrying too much luggage, but I think that was more the burden of my own life. Yet I have found out later that many of those things I’ve never really had, that they were never meant for me.
I have seen derision. And it was not the one coming from strangers that has hurt the most, but the one seen in the eyes of people I have helped out of their own ditch and considered friends. They say in my language that “the ones you don’t let die, will not let you live”. It was painful to find out what character some people really had. it has been gutting at times. Now it does not hurt any more, I have come to terms with all my experience. I have become older and hopefully wiser. I have learned not to regret things and I am mostly good at it, even though I can still catch myself doing it sometimes. I’ve often done my best and I know now that what people give is certainly what people will receive later in life.
Isolation? It is not a monkey thing. It feels sweet. It is not for everybody, I know it can be torture for others. But solitude is my gift. After all the pain induced by many things coming from the outside, my isolation meant discovering myself and finding peace, listening to my own soul tuning in with the one of the universe. And that is bliss.
Rejection? Yes, I felt plenty of that. I was one of those people that can feel like outsiders. Until I realised that I would have never belonged in certain circles of people or in the toxic environment that comes with them. So actually this was not a rejection, it was a discovery. It took me years to see that God had better plans for me , that He was opening me the right doors while I was trying like a stubborn child to open the wrong ones, again and again.
This is my path and you all have your own. Life is a journey. Some people learn from it, others get to the end of it not understanding anything, feeling bitter and angry. It may not be easy to walk on your own path, but it’s your quest. It all depends on how much you want it. And if you want it truly it will be better than anything you have ever imagined. It will equal conquering all your fears, it will mean finding your true self and facing God at the same time. Your days may be hard, but your heart will flame with the fire of all the passion you have in you. It will not be life that breaks you, but it will be you riding your own life.
I am only a tiny soul in an immense ocean of souls. All different, yet all the same. When I think of this I imagine a sky full of stars. The universe is immense, but we all have our own space, our own inner light and our own trajectory. I am trying to grasp what this life experience is all about, maybe just like you all. I’ve seen a lot and I still know almost nothing. But one of the few things I know now is that we should not be afraid, we should not let worry dry out our soul. Life is joy and we should experience the joy of being alive, the experience of our soul having a material body and interacting with others.
There’s no path, make your own. Be bold, be strong, be yourself. Try it, go all the way, it’s the best thing of all.
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900 words, memyselandela, August 2015
Photo: Lavender, Adela Galasiu, August 2015
Black & White Happiness
Who said that people were completely unhappy in Victorian times?
I have done a bit of research and here is the result of it. I invite you to have a look at moments in their life.
Isn’t it amazing that no matter how hard life might be the human soul finds ways to rise above it and be happy?
Photos: Photobucket
Memyselfandela – Adela Galasiu, August 2015
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
Life on a platform
I live waiting on the platform for my destined train. Sometimes I overslept in the waiting room and missed it, but most of the times I was here on the platform when it arrived. I have travelled for a while, I have learned new things but when I got off the train I have realized it has brought me back to this station with a name that I am still trying to decipher.
It’s just a normal train station like all others. With a huge clock, with huge windows, with many people carrying around small and big luggages and baggages stuffed with their own existence. Many run after trains they almost miss, others wait a bit restless for their journey, but the most rare kind of passengers are the ones that radiate happiness when they see their train arriving. Not many smile as they step in their train.
Above my head, on a wall, is scribbled Paler’s Decalogue, for some a blasphemy, for some food for thought:
“1.Wait, no matter how long.
2. Wait, no matter for what.
3. Don’t remember quite anything instead. The only good memories are the ones that allow you to live in the present.
4. Do not count the days.
5. Do not forget that any waiting time is temporary, even if it lasts for a lifetime.
6. Repeat yourself that there is no such thing as a desert. There is only our incapacity to fill the void in which we are living.
7. Do not put in the same pot both the prayer and God. Prayer is sometimes a form of hope of the one that does not dare to hope on his own.
8. If this thought helps, do not seek to admit that you hope because you don’t have something better to do or even in order to prevent the outcomes of doing nothing.
9. Bless the opportunity of completely belonging to yourself. Solitude is a whore that doesn’t blame you for being selfish.
10. Remember that Paradise was , most certainly, in a grotto.”
No days or nights are the same. They are all different and this is a blessing in itself.
Sometimes moths circle around the glowing beauty of a single light in the night, in a dance that fascinates me so much that I forget how much I still have to wait to see my train coming. Their mesmerizing dance takes me out of my world for a while.
Sometimes the dirty light reveals the faces of all the unknown people still waiting by my side, some worried, some cheerful, same frowning, some left with only few more drops of life.
Life goes on on the platform. The days grow, the nights slowly fade, the time sometimes pauses. The most beautiful light of all is the sunrise invading like molten gold the quiet platform, flowing between trains and passengers, flooding the huge waiting room in which some just enter and some still wait for an eternity to finally get born.
500 words, memyselfandela January 2014
Photo: Photobucket
a 100 times you
you, my bohemian dream, my beautiful paradise
who entered like a bomb in my life
you install yourself in my heart, taking every bit of me
shaking my whole existence like a storm
you, with this light in your eyes, with this joy upon your face
with your burning fingers on my neck, setting me on fire
you, so strong and so delicate at the same time
holding my heart in your childlike world to grow it in your love garden
you, making us explode with your grain of craziness
you alone make time an eternity and life worth living
(100 words)
The tamed fox story
There was once a little fox that got rescued from a fur farm…
Little scared soul with red fur and a fast beating heart…
She grew up being loved and she became playful like a cat…
Vixey is a beauty… Her wonderful fur , her tenderness and the way she plays make her adoptive family very happy…
This is one of the very rare real happy-end stories. 🙂
Risks
Don’t be afraid to take risks in life.
If you win, you will be happy.
If you lose, you will be wiser.
Gershwin plays Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
One of my absolute favourite tunes of all times is “Rhapsody in Blue”. Unexplainable, whenever I am in a very low mood and I accidentally stumble upon this musical piece, my mood shifts to happiness within seconds… It has happened so many times…. I wonder why? Must be some spark of miracle in it….
First presented on February 12, 1924, in a concert billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music,” composer George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra won both critical and public acclaim for elevating American jazz to a new form of symphonic invention. The quintessentially American character of the piece has since garnered it a position of popularity practically unmatched by any other work of a native composer, and has found the success of its premiere often referred to as “one of the great nights in American music.”
While many viewed Rhapsody in Blue as a stark departure from Gershwin’s more established career as popular songwriter and Broadway composer, it in fact reaffirmed his continuing involvement in the world of classical music. Some twelve-years earlier, a fourteen-year-old George Gershwin could be found refining his gifts at the piano by performing works by Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy, and his studies of harmony, orchestration, and counterpoint would also continue for years to follow. His first classical piece, entitled Lullaby, was composed as early as 1919, and had been written for string quartet. As a clear example of the diversity and depth of his musical talent, in the following year, George Gershwin would also pen the wildly successful song Swanee, for singer Al Jolson.
When once discussing the overwhelming misperception regarding “the limitations of jazz,” by both the classical music world and the broader public, Gershwin stated that he had “resolved to kill the misconception with one sturdy blow,” through his composing of Rhapsody in Blue.
Originally intending to call his new work American Rhapsody, it was George Gershwin’s brother and long-time songwriting partner Ira who would finally suggest its name, inspired by the paintings Harmony in Gray and Green and Nocturne in Blue and Green by American painter James Whistler. In the years to come, following the unparalleled success of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin would also begin dedicating much more of his time toward his own, personal interest in drawing and the visual arts, while continuing to compose for the increasingly popular field of moving pictures.
George Gershwin’s achievement in the creation of Rhapsody in Blue would not only bring together two musical worlds previously thought of as separate, by transforming the perception of both popular music and symphonic tradition, but would also lay the foundation for an equally important place in American musical history, some ten years later, with his groundbreaking work combining African-American folk tradition and classical opera in Porgy and Bess.
And now I get back to my feeling as I listen to Gershwin’s Rhapsody… Try it too… I am sure you will at least smile. 🙂
Cookie of the day
“Life is perphas after all simply this thing and then the next. We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction. We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is perculiar and inexplicable. We are constanly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy, but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once- and we have to start over again, feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.”
― Anne Giardini, The Sad Truth About Happiness
Invention of Love (2010) – Animated Short Film
A love story from the world of gears and bolts.
Animated short 2010.
Inspired by Lotte Reiniger works and Antony Lucas’s Jasper Morello film.
Written & Directed by Andrey Shushkov
http://a-shushkof.livejournal.com/
Original Music and Sound: Polina Sizova, Anton Melnikov.
Violin perfomed by Anna Gudkova
Not original music part: Chopin
Animation, Design, Compositing, Editing: Andrey Shushkov
Ode on Solitude, Alexander Pope
“How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breathes his native air,
In his own grounds.
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 unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix’d; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.”
Wish you all a fabulous day!!!!!!!!!
My coffee, myself and I wish you all a fabulous day.
The three of us will snap some photos in London today… 🙂
Kisses
Ela.
the sandal poem
agitated life, hectic every day
fast love, fast food, no dreams…
it was love at first sight
when she first laid her eyes on them…
she waited and waited to order them
but then fear took over her
that they might sell out …
today she finally bought them.
they remind her of
that rock candy she used to eat when she was a child…
she visualizes them with a vintage sweater
and tattered denim…
such a pretty shoe,
the crystal embellished sandals
filling her mind with sweet memories…
she’s head over heels for them!
the mess
can’t live like this
yet we insanely do it
we hate each other
though completely in love
cannot connect but
we are one
lose me in the morning
I’ll win you in the evening
oh what an incongruence
such a fight
what a fine mess
Memyselfandela, 2012
memyselfandela 