How often do we catch ourselves lingering on past events with a melancholic obsession? We task ourselves with carrying the baggage of emotional hurt like an armor that only keeps us from moving forward. The way forward is lighter, freer and leaves no room for old heavy anchors.
Day 61 of 365~
Image taken in Siena, Italy of a beautiful soul who humored my experimentations with long exposure and ghosting. July 2012
We face the world day after day, week after week, we get shuffled around in lines, into cars, buses and trains, we get bombarded with information and visual stimuli; and the only thing that keeps us sane is the inner sanctum of our lives. We manage to keep parts of us hidden somewhere deep inside, guarded, protected and fortified. In public we wear our outside face, the one we save for the daily battle.
Our inner lives just wait for us to take them to a forest, a beach, a walk in nature, just to have a moment out of confinement, a break from our self-created prisons.
It only takes something like an unexpected snow fall to make at least half a city of 25 million like Shanghai smile 🙂
Does it ever happen to you that something so special joins you when you are alone; a spark of revelation; a moment of clarity; something that makes you want to jump up and down in glee, and you might even do just that? I find that when that happens, it mostly does when I walk alone. Maybe when we walk alone we invite into us what wants to give us clarity, and maybe at other times, we are too busy and crowded to hear it. As long as I can be with inspiration, boredom will never meet me, they seem to live in different essence realms.
To dance when you are so moved, to sing when you are so driven, to laugh when you are tickled, to scream if passion compels you, is to be truly free…
The towers of even the most formidable kings and queens have been known to crumble and fall when built on shaky foundations and glued with questionable principles. Life is like that. Friendships are like that too. It is in New York that I made real friends, where friendships were nurtured and grown that were able to withstand distance, time and change. It is a lucky human who can say I have people in my life that I believe in, count on, trust and can always reconnect with. It is one of life’s most precious gifts.
Speed is definitely a word I would associate with New York, sometimes to the level of being dehumanized. I remember times when I received phone calls at work and hung up 2 seconds later because I thought the person on the other line was speaking too slowly. Other times when I called more relaxed places I had to always ask if they were sick and why they spoke in such a strange way. New York can do that to you and it normally takes quite a while to slow your street walk back to match the speed of pedestrians in other cities. As for your inner peace in a whirlwind like this, it becomes a priority to achieve and to guard.
Have you ever been so in love that you wanted to shout it to the whole world and scribble it on every surface, carve it on every tree and note it in every diary? Isn’t it the greatest gift of all to feel that at least once in your life?
Bright colors and lights, they bring out the child in all of us, the child that smiles more often, worries less and is just more hopeful about life…
We live in a world where some of us need to be trained to protect the rest from each other. They are armed with weapons that could take away life or seriously injure any of us who decides to cause harm, take away another’s belongings, or threaten the peace by seriously misbehaving. It is almost like guardians in a playground for grown ups who cannot be trusted to remain civil. At what point did humans lose trust and became a danger to themselves and to each other?