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
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
Tea
She had not written for many days, weeks, months, it felt rather like eons. Struck by a fierce silence, she didn’t find the words any more. Painful silence, coming from deeper than the words can say. From deep within where thoughts do not have time or do not dare to descend in normal days that gallop worst than wild horses. Life seems to have stopped and unfolded in front of her eyes with a sort of cruelty that she did not know how to swallow. Cruelty or acute sarcasm. As if life itself would have smiled at her with half a face and smashed her badly with a slap coming from the opposite side.
Yes, life is sarcastic and unfair. Who told you that there are happy ending stories? There may be many fairy tales, but not many real happy endings. She did her best to make things happen but at some point she understood that she has no power over life itself, that life is a far bigger force than she can even understand with her mind and that all she can do is to accept with humiliation that in some ways she has lost the battles long before they have even begun.
Shredded often between her beautiful imagination and the cruel reality, she had learned that the most powerful thing one can do in this life is to survive. And the most crazy to dream. She has never dared to lay on paper all her thoughts, out of fear that if she would have done so, maybe the whole reality would have cracked over her. Yet in moments when nobody noticed her, she has dared to close her eyes and without a word to imagine a parallel world where everything was different than in this one.
There was in the end no lesson she could have cascaded on others. No great wisdom and no big prise. She had only learned that she knew nothing and as such, she stopped talking about life. She stopped complaining and equally she stopped rejoicing. She had reached a state of acceptance that was similar to the shell of a tortoise, trying to keep the very core of her far away, deeply hidden from any pain.
In an untold resilience her spirit has lost many other souls, even the ones she has loved the most. Their voice has faded just as sudden as it has made itself heard. Their presence has stopped shining a warmth of goodness and joy in her existence. Yet she was adamant she did not lose them completely and she will once again have the blessing of meeting them all. In her fantasy at least.
On the corner of a little table hidden in a tea room where nobody stopped today because of the horrible weather, she broke her silence, but allowed the secrets to remain in the deep hidden corners of her soul, brewing there, unknown to others, yet ready to emerge one day, truly full of magic.
500 words, memyselfandela, November 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.
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
the light
days of silence will follow
and nights of sadness
and dreams of agony
but remember, always:
do not lose hope
there’s a light that never dies.
Megaherz – Herz aus Stein / Heart of Stone
“the fire was there
but now it is out
too many tears
too little applause
the damp ashes
stick there still
and where earlier hope was
is now nothing more
still only dirty snow
from yesterday
if i look in the mirror
i become sick
for my face
is so hard, is so cold
i wantto be victorious
want to be great
my feelings
i want to be rid of
and now here i stand
and am alone
i have a heart of stone
a mega heart of stone
nothing goes out of it
and nothing fits in
i have a heart of stone
a mega heart of stone
for me it is too large
and for you it is too small
the fire was there
yet now it is out
too many tears
too little applause
i was excessive
but i have lived
when i have finally
before passion trembled
extravagant and arrogant
i ran off myself
i do not believe it
yet your face
is so hard, is so old
i wanted to be victorious
wanted to be great
my feelings
i want ot be rid of
and now i stand here
and am alone
i have a heart of stone
a mega heart of stone
nothing goes out
and it lets nothing in
i have a heart of stone
a mega heart of stone
for me it is too large
for you it is too small”
memyselfandela 