Spring is here

Just my small contribution to the general Springy atmosphere.... Rabbits and eggs, chicks and greenery, a lot of it.., everywhere.
While the sun shines and the mood is uplifted as we reaching the end of the long winter and breath in the air the close promise of Summer. But we have to account for Spring in between: time to reassess our lives, clean up house both figuratively and physically and tied up lose ends. Time to embrace forgotten dreams and renew them in the replenish pool of our spirits full of hope and refreshed by the slumber induce by the winter season.
Although Winter has taken its usual toll: the extra pounds showing, tiredness, slackness, bad skin and bad hair, we know that a good scrub will make it all vanish and we will be all ready to bend to the diktat of this eve of the summer season: Lose weight, become irresistible to the other sex (or the same) with any mean possible, cheat on your age, your status, your appearance....But not now. Now is the time to simply enjoy a ray of sunshine on however tired face, and just relax, waiting to blossom. A simple lesson from Mother Nature: Take your time, a season for everything, and all shall be renewed in due time.Even your credit rating...you'll see...

Cheating time....

Summer time...This odd habit of changing the hour when Spring arrives for a reason that seems lost, but we all go through it anyway, knowing that It will screw up your mind and body every time, and all that for what....? Our kids are tired and obliged to go to bed while it is still daylight (explain that to a 3 years old!) and makes you become paranoid about that hour that might or might not have been changed on the numerous clocks of the house! Nature knows what time it is for itself and it is not up to us to tell the sun when to rise or to set, so why are we attempting to fool ourselves?. Time will pass us by, even with our ridiculous attempt to control it. When it comes to energy savings, I will try my chances with being careful to switch off all apparatus in the house and office when I am not using it, recycling as much as could and keep on walking (which I have to do, since according to universal criteria I am far to dope to learn how to drive!) But anyway, will try to do my best in my own way, and I do not impose it to anybody else.
But as usual we will adjust.
Oh, I wish I can bend time for my own purpose too, shall I start picking out hours from my life, even days or months. Turning back time, saving time, wasting time...Never enough time for us although there is plenty of it.
Here for reflection an extract of "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran:
"You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing." This time......

Here comes Skippy

How wonderful it is to see the sudden light illuminating a child's face at a totally improbable present. That's how we have been introduced to a new character in our mist tonight. The improbable Skippy the kangaroo.
A totally crazy inflatable beast with a sweet face that made the child shriek with delight.
A simple apparatus can suddenly change your world, turning it upside down and make you rejoice. An emotion so pure because new. Why, as adult, do we lost this simple ability to marvel and find happiness in the inflatable Kangaroos of our world?.
Maybe the problem comes from this loss of innocence, the loss of our childhood dreams that sustained us, help us wake up in the morning and gave us hope. Sometimes reality is so far from what we dreamed for ourselves, that we had to give up our dreams and fresh innocence to fit in, to catch up.
But not tonight, tonight Skippy the improbable inflatable kangaroo came into my life, and with the eyes of a child, I understood that life can always be renewed, forgotten dreams remembered, hope replenished....and that our flat is too small for that giant beast somehow!

Beginning....

A beginning is always a precious moment. All things, then, are possible, just waiting to be shaped and created.
A bit like a recipe, I am sure I need to follow some rules: A catching story line revealing a vibrant and fertile personality, then add colours and text to transform thoughts into readable material.
I guess I have used the chinese curse "May you live in interesting time" very inappropriatedly, but hey...I have shaped my life in a way that I am more like the James Thurber character "The secret life of Walter Mitty" than a real person!
My imagination have an annoying tendency to take over my own reality and make it extremely interesting.

My faith in people is so strong, tht I just could not fathom what happen when ill befell me.
I had my bag stolen in London last month, and instead or running screaming and cursing and crying, like anybody else would have done, I started roaming the street like some superheroe that could save the day, trying to find my thief.
In the process, I connected with more people than I ever would have on a simple saturday shopping spree in the city.
Nevertheless the trauma was there, I had to deal with the loss. Silly how I kept my entire life in a simple wallet, a simple bag. This bag turned into a nagging monster in my dreams...
Had to deal, so I wrote a short story about it.
I imagine the situation, the main character there, is not the victim, but the thief. I had to give him/her a shape, a personality, flesh it up. Then make it human and not evil.
I try to imagine the circumstances of that person that I have never seen. To add to the twist, this thief, masculine in my story to introduce a balance with the female victim I could relate to, starts to be deeply involved with the things he stole: her purse, her photos, the scrap of her life scattered in a simple wallet.
The fascination goes deeper, and the character, although hateable and hated at the beginning, becomes likeable. In the meanwhile, the victim, already unhappy with her life and not dealing well with the sudden loss of materials things that were part of her, is turning more and more nasty, withdrawn, abandonning family and friends...and faith. It is at the end , the reunion of these two characters, that everything separate, that should have never met, that made sense to me.
Because it was about me, and my only way to restore my faith in human nature, however ugly at time.

I live in my own world, full of quotes that I have gathered in my "memory bank". From films, books, song lyrics and the like.

These lines may never been read by anyone but myself, but I guess I did not create this for the benefit of others. In my life, professional or personal, I have always be turn to the outside world, trying to make it better within the limits of my own power.

This is my world, take it or leave it, as long as you do it peacefully and take something with you. Never make the trip for nothing!