DAY 365+80

backstage

Every single day of our lives we wake up thinking of achieving something. We have a clear image of what we want in our minds, ideas about what we expect, about how things should be, about what we deserve. Ideas about the final result of our actions according to our linear and logical reasoning which often forgets that change can happen 

We wake up thinking of taking a couple of photos, we plan our actions and even we anticipate how beautiful the photo will look

But life has a different plan for us. A phone call and our whole existence is suddenly in a mess. An accidental conversation brings disappointment to our heart a makes crack in an old friendship. We fix our gaze on our house, our good soul mate, our dearest books and we fall in love again and again

We start to take our photos and we change this or that. A lazy cat comes to nose about and wants to enjoy the sun ray and continue her nap

We can feel annoyed, displeased. We can fight reality, and weaken along useless battles against fate. We can get upset about the circumstances, and grumble and complain. We can embitter the mood of those who are around us, but this won´t change things a bit

Or we can deal with them, accept when possible, enjoy as much as one can. We can even see the appeal of this new situation and take advantage of the opportunity that comes our way

We can take a step back, forget expectations, look at the whole situation with new eyes, and capture it in all its splendor: 

the hard shadows, the soft tummy, the not very clean windows, the precarious balance of the cup, the notebook which shouldn´t be visible, the careless posture, the atmosphere of a simple day, the evidence of the unforeseeable nature of events... 

That´s what I did, friends, I stepped back and took pleasure in the fanciful (though wise) way that life unfolds. I stepped back and revelled in this glimpse of the rear of my life, the place where magic happens

DAY 365+79

ode to lightness

Ever heard the old trick question, "which weighs more a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"

Well, when I was a little girl a boy asked me that question while we were on the playground. The answer was supposed to be neither of them, because both would be a pound, but I was too naive and I gave him the wrong answer. I was not very clear about what a pound was, but I adored feathers (they made me feel happy inside every time I touched them) so I was pretty sure that they would weigh less

After that, many things occurred. I became a young woman and read many books about metaphysical heaviness, levity and the consequence of dealing with an ephemeral life, where experiences are fleeting and nothing lasts forever. They explained how accepting this could be negative. They claimed that I had to struggle against this lack of weight of my existence because if not I would become passive, submissive, resigned

Later on, I got in touch with persons who talked about changing reality but not about changing themselves. I read and read, and listened and listened, but I always had the feeling that those argument were deceitful so I was not able to fit in the intellectual atmosphere of those years, even when I was meant to play an intellectual role due to my professional life

As years passed, I realized that I loved the social field which I had chosen, but I was not able to be as intense as expected. I was too pragmatic, and little existentialist and a bit anarchical. I didn´t like dogmas or doctrines and was not ready to consider sacred some ideas, whether they came from one side or the other. I also experienced an inexplicable (and almost undesiderable) longing for weightlessness. I grew apart from professional community and I grew up alone

I carried my strangeness like an injury, like a gift, without knowing well what to do with it. However, when my internal unease led me to look for answers, I started a new path and got in touch with different people. I read and read, and listened and listened, and learnt to consider lightness not as a fault, but as a virtue and I learnt to cultivate it through accepting what is

I´ve learnt to cultivate clarity through letting go false expectations and lies

I´ve learnt to be graceful through letting go harshness and rigidity

I´ve learnt to be gentle through letting go acrimony

I´ve learnt to cultivate joy through letting go drama

I´ve learnt to be serene through letting go perfectionism

I´ve learnt to cultivate spiritual insights through listening my soul and the world around me

I´ve learnt to dump ballast. And I´ve come to the conclusion that I was not so mistaken when I was a child, because indeed, a pound of feathers (of kindness, of peacefulness... you name it) weighs less than a pound of gold, of sadness, of pain... and makes us feel much happier inside


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Sunday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+78

me and the birds

I went to the park the other day, still thinking about events of past week, trying to keep on slowing down my mind and recovering peace 


The afternoon was cloudy and the predicted rain seemed to be delayed, the park was lonely and quiet:

paths looked like no one had never ever walked through them,

trees were having sweet conversations by shaking their leaves,

bloomed flowers were trembling and rustling while opening their core to observers,

the wind was sighing subtlely and the world seemed to get around on tiptoe


But birds were flapping their wings, pecking about. They were twittering like there was not tomorrow:

defying silence

singing their joy

dancing their little dances

celebrating their tiny epiphanies

without paying attention to weather forecast, omitting past resentments


Life looks so perfect today, I said to myself. And then, I rectified and said, Life is perfect now, because indeed it was. And suddenly, this acknowledgement gained importance, made sense, and dealing with the hard stuff in my work seemed much easier to me


Life can be not that that perfect every day and we don´t have to feign such thing, we just have to stay with it a big longer every time. This is the training we need to appreciate the sweet moments that everydayness always brings and to be able to recognize (and enjoy!) the perfect days which come to meet us

If we persist in doing that, when those moments and days will arrive we ´ll not waste our time having regrets, longing for what we have had and we have lost or dreaming of the bright days to come, on the contrary:

we´ll be able to sing our joy,

dance our little dances

and celebrate our tiny epiphanies

DAY 365+77

the practice

"If you remember nothing else, always remember this one great secret of spiritual practice: we don't have to feel any particular way. We don't have to have special experiences, nor do we have to be any particular way. With whatever arises, whether it's pleasing or not, try to remember that all we can do is experience and work with whatever our life is right now. No matter what life is and no matter how we feel about it, all that matters in practice is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on, and then stay present with the physical experience of that moment."


Ezra Bayda

DAY 365+76

this place

So here I am again, in this same place , after a busy, exhausting and stormy week 

Here I am, alone, trying to clear my mind and bring back some peace to my heart, to soften the ridges of my thoughts that are revolving the same issues, trying to calm down my anger, to let go my disappointments... and to recover serenity

Here I am, alone, in this same place metaphorically (and literally) speaking

Here I am, alone, in this place of inner bewilderment. I would have said -just a week ago- that I am too old already to feel perplex, maybe not too old to feel wounded, but too old to feel puzzled. I would have said that nothing about human behavior could take me by surprise after all the things I have lived myself, after all the things I have read and listened. Oh, how naive!. Indeed, after a week of meetings with my co-workers aimed at arrange next academic course, I am totally amazed (and believe me, not in the best sense of the word) 

I am also annoyed and a bit distressed. This is not so strange; those meetings usually have that effect on my mood. But this huge astonishment is new, maybe because we have reached new (and unbelievable) levels of verbal and psychological aggression

Here I am, trying to find out the reasons why we have reached that point. Trying to persuade myself to keep the faith in what I do (in teaching) regardless those battles... but is not easy

Here I am, alone, in this place of self-purification. Trying to cleanse my soul, trying to purge the ire, to filter the waste of acrimony that past week has left inside me. Here I am, in this place of self-acknowledgement. Trying to pull out by the roots the "should" and the "could", even when a little voice inside me is wondering how I am going to survive and keep my professional dignity without them

Here I am, alone, in this place of self-confession. Trying to figure out how I am going to deal with these new evidences of indifference and where is the subtle distinction between acceptance and becoming myself an indifferent person

Here I am, inhaling peace, exhaling sadness; inhaling hope, exhaling failed expectations; inhaling clarity, exhaling frustration

Finally, answers come: 

If you are not doing (or experiencing) what you want, then learn to want what you´re doing (or experiencing) and all the things this involves, except when by trying this your essence ends up damaged, when this causes your soul pain. You don´t need to want what breaks your wings and ruins your gifts. You don´t need to want what scares away your bliss

Loving what is really means get real about life and yourself, means learning the lessons and trying to get ahead if necessary, it doesn´t mean delighting in suffering or coming to a standstill because of your (often justified) expectations. You must let the world and people be as they are and act accordingly 

I inhale and exhale once more time

Maybe is time to turn this page. Maybe is time to move on. Again

DAY 365+75

undisguised truth

"Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity."

Lao Tzu

DAY 365+74

life is fragile and unpredictable 
and things can change from one moment to another: 

You go to bed being a child and you awake having grown up 
You wake up smiling and go to bed sobbing 
You go to bed trusting someone and wake up disappointed 
You wake up frustrated and go to bed thrilled 
You wake up being strong and go to bed feeling helpless 
You go to bed in love and wake up alone 
You wake up with no hopes and go to bed trusting the future 
You go to bed fascinated and awake disconcerted 
You go to bed joyful and wake up in pain 
You wake up hating and go to bed forgiving 

And vice versa. Because life is fragile and unpredictable and things can change from one moment to another. Whether if we like it or not

Even when we want to fool ourselves,  we end up learning that this is the only truth we know for sure. No matter if this  sounds paradoxical and contradicts the previous assertion  

This used to scare me very much.  I felt victim of chance. I felt swindled because nothing would last forever, because nothing would be as I expected, because nothing would be constant 

And this continued to happen till I started to understand that maybe this could be an odd blessing which could be meant to create awareness and mindfulness. A gift in disguise that could make feasible to see tragedies coming to an end and suffering giving way to peace 

Till I started to understand that (just like fear does, just like ache does) hope and bliss also come from change


...till I finally understood that all this forms the obverse and reverse of existence

DAY 365+73

"Don't fight a fact, deal with it." 

Hugh Prather


Please follow this link to read my contribution to Vison and Verb past Sunday

Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+72

budding calm

This is my April´s contribution to Photo-Heart Connection. I was almost sure that this photo would be my choice when I edited it a few weeks ago, and today, while I was looking over my files, I felt irreversibly attracted to it again

There is something about its composition that makes me think of my love for painting, which date back to my early childhood and has accompanied me since then. It reminds me the blissful amazement that I´ve experienced looking at the artwork of great impressionism masters, maybe because it captures the effect of light at a particular time of the day or maybe because the background shows what seems quick brushstrokes of color...

But there is also a story behind it:

Every single time I go to the park next to my house I visit the rose garden. Somehow, that is a tribute to my mother who has always wanted to have a garden (and has never accomplished her dream) and adores flowers, in particular roses, so I go there and take a few photos. Most of the times I don´t publish or even edit them, I simply keep them. In my mind I am creating a rose garden for my mother, but I still am not clear about how it is going to be materialized, so I continue taking photos, trying to let the hurry aside and enjoy this dream, the dream I have inherited from her

A month before this photo was taken, I went to the rose garden a I found it totally lopped off. The stalks were so short that I had the feeling that the little garden wouldn´t be the same ever again. The place looked sad, I felt totally disheartened and the critic that lives inside me started to say me that time was not by my side (my mom will be 89 next November) and also, that I had been little diligent in carrying out that project. That´s what the inner critic does, you know: makes the most of emotional vulnerability, and causes you to feel shame

I felt a bit annoyed, even when I have become aware long ago of the true nature of this project, which is not only about my mother´s dream, but also about my need to reconnect with earth with my story and to heal transgerational traumas

The day I took this photo, I was reluctant to go outside with the camera. I was tired and it was too late, but finally I decided to do it. I went to the park, thinking that I could only walk, and headed towards the rose garden which were beautifully illuminated by the last sun rays. To my surprise, it was in bloom. Big roses and little buds were sharing the same space; color and fragrance were awesome and beauty was reigning everywhere

I was thrilled. Life seemed to be promising again. I thought of the old dream of my mother and wondered if someday (some way or another) it could come true. I breathed the scented air and I realized that I was not so interested in the answer. I looked at the roses that were not there only a few weeks ago and thought that life is sweet, yet unpredictable. And I felt that maybe (only, maybe) I was ready to deal with this: with unattainable dreams and pending projects; with intangible goals and pruned aspirations; with lessening opportunities and unexpected gifts and miracles. With life, disenchantment and hope

Today, I breathe in and I feel how the garden is flowering inside me. My inner critic remains silent