THE INVITATION

'It doesn't interest me what you do for living. I want to know what you ache for, and you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. i want to know if you will risk looking a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squiring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow, if you have been opened by the life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even if it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its present.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes!'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, form the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly love the company you keep in the empty moments. '

-Oriah-

Pavli Style :: pavli style : lookbook.nu :

Pavli Style :: pavli style : lookbook.nu :

I JUST HAVEN'T MET YOU YET

If I’ll fall into the water, I’ll feel free, but I respect the sea. Once I believed that the beauty is goodness, not anymore. I’m beautiful and flawed. When I walked away I turned and looked, that made me human, you loved me for it.

Sometimes I look, sometimes I don’t care.

What I don’t know it doesn’t hurt me. What I don’t see, it doesn’t exist. If I close my eyes, I’m invisible. When I see for the first time, it is new to me. If I love, I’m in love. No body can make me put on my cloths. Don’t ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. If I write it down, I’ll remember. But sometimes even if I am reminded I do not want to remember. I wish I didn’t remember the first time we kissed. I made a pact with the devil, first time you touched me.

Now there is me and my body. My body still belongs to you. Some other man is touching it now, and I’m letting him.

I watched you fly away. With your beautiful wings you shielded the sun, leaving behind only golden dust settle around me. Now you, let me wonder.

Let me be perfect for somebody else.

CURRENTLY

• Concerned over my bitchiness- lately, and here to say, involuntarily, showing off emotion in front of another breathing creature. Fading into caring, good, sincere, patient, nice friend, therefore vulnerable. Boring!
• Partying too much, well, taking in the last of the summer
• While we are there, can't believe summer is almost over!
• Spending my days converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. Jealous?
• Pretending to work full time for PavliStyle :)
• About to start reading 'Northern Clemancy' by Philip Hensher
• Playing a medium in the family drama. Tired.
• Love life- not boring
• Lied naked under the stars
• Listening to Florence + Machine 'What water gave me' and 'Sophia' by Laura Marling
• Waiting to wake up and decide
• Finally left my past in the past, ready to move on. Baby steps
• Honesty
• Learned that emotional pain lasts only 12 minutes, the time after it, is only self pity- works!
• Know what I want and out there to get it
• Seriously considering quitting cigarettes. First, need to find a buddy, stronger than me, physically too, and who can stand me when the crazy starts
• Harry Potter series is over. Nooooooooooooooooooo

SHE COULD TELL BY THE WAY HE WAS STANDING

‘How’d you do‘…he took off his hat in respect of her presents. ‘Won’t you dance with me little stranger?’ Extending his arm in her direction.

Why was she scared?

Because he was beautiful, tall and handsome. He was smart, witty and had a good sense of humour. She didn’t know anything about his past, but his eyes…flame in his heart, she could feel it. He had the moves of a playboy and knew what to say when. She also knew he was capable of breaking her heart. And why did this excite her?

She wasn’t algophobic, she knew that, but the silence echoed. On the contrary, she was an optimist and was sure of what she wanted, yet, the chair was holding her back. The ghost of her past relationship, reminded her of the exquisite pain, that aroused her.

She was sure that she will fall fast and hard, like she always did for someone that was nice to her. Giving up her morals to take up him. Why didn’t she believe in herself? She knew she wanted to love. But he didn’t know.

He walked away. He wasn't romantic. He didn't know how

THE UNIVERSE IS INDIFFERENT

Awfully true statement. A wake up call to rearrange my prejudice and update my fairytale.

A fairytale in where I believed that the clouds do come in with silver lining and there was a subtext in between lines, and where chocolate is good for you. But now, I am finding that only in the books is true magic left. A ticket to escape. A flight from tomorrow.

Where the universe is indifferent, my karma has no meaning. In what shall I believe?

I want to believe so that I could do. Oh, water me so I don’t die! Bade me in affection. So I can let myself trust that there is a Sun, a tomorrow and a love.

I want to claim my humanity so I don’t become a statistic. I want to love right now. Loneliness.

I’m in an emotional straight jacket. Collect me and carry me to bed. And don’t worry, my mind has fucked me over more times than any men should ever know. Now, step away from me, I need shine.

Pavli Style :: love &s : the fear of happiness :

Pavli Style :: love &s : the fear of happiness :

ART WAS DIFFICULT

Mid evil period, shows us the God. The unworthiness of a human and the power of church. Evil times. Renaissance, some call it the rebirth- I’d like to say to the mid evil creatures ‘sorry my karma ran over your dogma’. A movement where the man became the center of the universe and stayed there since. Shift of humanity, pushing the movement. From then onward, the rest is history.

Now, we live in an abstract (or I haven’t been lately to the gallery?). The most authentic, I’ll give us that. Lines leading nowhere in various colours with few splashed dots in the left corner on a multicoloured background is what exactly? Expressing a mass of today. A confusion and hurry of a 21st century man. And when you move further away from the painting you come to see the same as if you were standing on a busy pavement-expressionlessness. Too many ideas, too many options and choices leaving us paralysed.

But then, there is that painting of a huge blue circle on a white canvas (not in ‘I heart Japan’ theme). A contradiction. There is six billion of us walking and sleeping, yet somehow you feel alone. A dot representing ‘a must’ choose, specialise, do something therefore become that in order for people to label you and categorize you. We ask ‘what do you do?’ answer satisfying us and leading us to think we figured out the stranger.

Looking through the passage of time, modernly, we can understand the civilisations before us looking through their art. The yearns, the believes, the philosophy of the everyday life.

What will the future generation know about us if they look at us through our art?

I EAT CAVIAR AND CRIED

I eat caviar and cried.

I eat caviar and cried. Shall I go on, or you know where this is heading.

Weekend plans: depression ahead.

I eat caviar and cried. I will repeat the sentence until I find out what was it I cried over. Was it maybe that I have been sleeping alone for too long?

Chapter one: A man loved me. A beautiful, gorges man fell in love with me. Generous man who loved me unconditionally. So kind and thoughtful and so good it almost hurt. He had light around him, a halo if you will that was illuminating, and a cute giggly smile. And he was my best friend. He was my first, he was all my firsts. He was my life, the air I breath, the food for my cells. I loved what he liked, I supported his football team, I listened to his music, I dressed for him. And then…I grew up and we grew apart. You see here, I am talking about him in past tense. Easier to pretend he died than crashing down the image of a perfect husband and father of my children. I still love him, I do, and he still loves me, yet now, we are different people, looking for the same thing.

Chapter two: After chapter one, the day after tomorrow followed. I didn’t have energy to get up out of bed, didn’t want to shower and lost all hope of ever smiling again, let along being happy, I didn’t wonna love again. Until a gal found a job. Renaissance. When least expected, and from last person on Earth that he would, he kissed me. I though it was just sex, that’s all I needed, that’s all I wanted. And it was good sex. Until, he invited me to dinner. ’I’m walking down this narrow road, the cross road is ahead, wind is blowing in my back, and if it blows in the left direction, I go left’, he said to me. The naïve little me, I asked the things he had seen. We spent our time and our short romance on a tiny island, it felt as if he showed me the world. I became somebody else. Maybe I loved him, he didn’t love me.

Chapter three: I eat caviar and cried. I am still lost between two worlds, no no, not between these two great men in my life, but the worlds.

I am an honest person. Too honest for a first date. My best friend told me that she admired me for being so open. I guess, I tell my flows before somebody can point them out for me. But man don’t like the open cards on the table, they like mystery and game. Competitive is me, mysterious, not. She is opposite of me and she’s got a man to fall asleep and wake up with.

I am eating caviar and crying.

CLOSE EYES TO EXIT

I spent Sunday with my good friend Aurora. We talked a lot. We talked about change, change and growth of character, a shift of a view point, of the opportunity to see the world through eyes of a three-year old, again.

She says how easy is for her to pack up and leave. Further more, she needs to do it. When she was twenty she left to Egypt, after it, she came to Malta, made a little break at London. For, she being a creature of the sea, had to come back to the island. The tickling feeling that starts in the stomach, slowly but surly reaching the throat, until it starts chocking her informs her that is time to change, to move. And she’s going to, in September.

I could totally relate to what she was on about. Once you move, start your life from a suitcase, buy again your first spoon and fork, make friends, you can do it all over again, countless times. And it becomes easier each time around.

That chocking feeling is giving me two more minutes until I slip into seven minutes coma. In other words, I’m feeling restless.

I do not know whether I made myself hope, or just needed to put an artificial light at the end of my tunnel. Made up urge in hopes to save me. But I strongly believe that South America has an answer for me. While not knowing what the question is exactly.

Setting off into unknown makes you taste the freedom, by each step discovering the strengths and balls one didn’t even dream of heaving. Aurora said how she doesn’t recognizes herself from the first time she had lipped. I want to come to that conclusion.

Many people are her, live that way. Maybe I am a gypsy too. Maybe I have to get lost in order to find myself. Going in search of who I am and for solitude, where I can write and write and write. Search for my Utopia, my Nirvana.

If this makes sense to you, or you pity me, do donate few euros so I can buy a ticket :)

WHAT IS NORMAL?

Mum just finished reading ‘Veronica decides to die’ by Paulo Coelho. The book rises a question of what is normal, so she asked for my opinion. My initial answer was ’Go ask Alice’, but then I started thinking.

Since medicine became commercialised, our emotions became medicalised. A boy shyness became Social phobia. Only in last decade or two you hear people being anxious or depressed. If the child is eccentric or slow, parents assume he/she is dyslectic, when only, child is stupid and lazy. Is naming or putting a label to a feeling gives closer? Is every feeling a symptom?

Coelho rises an inquiry whether a psychiatric patients and geniuses are normal. Or are ’we’ normal? Mozart, Van Gogh, Galileo were looked as social outcasts at the time. A life driven by the passion to answer one question, an obsession over the muse and a life of unfulfilled romantic love sculptured these people. And yet we still believe that there is a thin line between a genius and a mad man. What if we divorce ourselves from everything we know, from every thought told by our parents, school, everything media fed us and look at the world with new eyes, take in the account that those people are actually normal, what world would that make? If the genius and ’mentally ill’ people made the bigger percentage of the population? More fun!

Ok, this was more of a who’s normal. Lets talk of what is normal? Lets take homosexuality as a paradigm here. Thirty years ago this choice of a lifestyle was considered abnormal, against the moral law. Now it is normal and we are accepted to see it that way, against all our better judgement. But why is it not normal? We are told that we are animals and our ultimate purpose is to mate and reproduce. By this, male and female institution is to believed customary. Two individuals of the same sex is abnormal. Love is normal and healthy and uncontrollable. Two individual of the same sex in love is what?

People attracted to the opposite sex having an opinion are now Homophobes. Now more than ever we are open about our likes and dislikes, our passions, love and fantasies, open to experiments. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

Or is this jus the challenge for the human race? Adam and Eve were perfectly happy, living in a harmony in paradise of Garden of Eden, until one day an apple showed up, symboling a challenge. A guy named Jesus was sent on Earth to clean up after those two. But what was it exactly they did,? Why was it so wrong? And if it was such a big No No, why was there an apple in the first place. So Jesus is here, to make it better. What happens to the pure guy? Gets killed. He came and Christianity took off. What would be the worst thing to happen if he didn’t come down? Eve still made Adam eat the fruit and we would all be Muslim. Would that be so unimaginably bad?

A person to be considered normal is expected of to behave ought to a standard, regularity, ordinarily… does this make it really normalitive?

If you believe it, then it must be true, and normal.

What do you think?

YOU MAY BE BATMEN, BUT I AM SCANNER

Long time ago I thought myself not to take in the account the decisions and ideas that pop up letter than 2am. Enthusiasm depriving my sleep. Waking up with the biggest smile and determination on the choice I made prior that night. Only to discover, again and again, that my consistency and follow up have the same life expectancy as milk in my fridge. Here to say, I don't drink milk.

This conviction made me doubt and judge myself terribly. Every idea facing the jury of my fears of just Mom. Winning every case, however, no execution in sight. Questioning in-depth my interest go. Leaving me frustrated and deluded.

Lifestyle ideas, ideas of what I might like to study or pursue, deciding to exercise or jog, vowing to wake up early, write everyday, to have an organizer filled with social events, to get and just do, ideas for a magazine or new Blog...fade as easily and randomly as they come.

Are you as chaotic as me? Trying to do it all?

Well, I've got great news. We are not sick! We are 'scanners'!

Barbara Sher, speaker, career/lifestyle coach and an author of seven bestselling books, 'coined' this term. She says, 'Scanners learn fast and need to move their passions onwards.' Sher, also suggested to focus less on analyzing the idea but to play it out, start doing it, not finish it, have fun with it. This sound very appealing to a scanner like me.

But we all have deadlines, job that have to be done, thesis to be written and dogs to be walked.

To keep our heads free cluttered of all the great ideas, Sher suggests to scanners, to us, to take up a 'scanner daybook'. A little notepad to input all the ideas, decisions and interest, details and fabric colors for the dress or paint color testers for the walls in hopes of re-decorating your living room. One day we may get back to these and FINISH THEM.

I've already got me a 'scanner daybook' and feeling optimistic. This is probably the best advice I've read in my life.

I'VE GOT MAIL

Waking up in the morning, and going to your letter box… those were the days.

Remember those things, paper that is filled by someone’s handwriting, folded nicely in the envelope. I think it was called a letter. We used to get mail. Remember?

Well, I’ve got mail yesterday!

Now, we check e-mail inboxes, letters starting with something like ‘To whom it may concern’- very personal. Apart from this fact and many postmen losing their jobs, the Internet era gave us the opportunity to realize that there are people with similar, if not, the same interests and tastes like us. Those ‘Yeah, me too!’ when reading an article or scrolling down somebody’s Blog. As well, the realization, that one person lives in freaking Narnia!

This beautiful girl, now my pan pal, Elle came to the wonderful idea of starting the ‘Letterbox Project’. I subscribed immediately. In matter of days I have received mail from Singapore! A letter!

A thought that somebody actually, out there, took few minutes of their day, set down with me in mind and wrote me a page or two. Handwritten. Went through the trouble of licking the envelope and having that awful glue taste in their mouth whole day long. Getting up and going to the post office, they still exist, and mailed it to Malta. Made me very happy. She enclosed a poem too. It is beautiful!

Since I learned how to write and since Mum thought me on which side of the envelope goes receivers address and on which mine, I was corresponding with various victims. At one point, just before personalized computers and lap tops, that was my hobby. Mind you, I am not that old, just my country used to be a bit backwards in westernised technology mainstream.

It passed almost 7/8 years since I have received a letter or have written one. So Elle made my day, my month!

For me letters mean a lot, they have a soul and a story. A short story, that has structure, style and authority. It gives me an opportunity to be honest and creative. Appreciating the authenticity of each letter and curves the ‘g‘ and ‘y‘ make. Leaving me in anticipation.

PUPPY LOVE

Sleep was no friend last night, so I was cranky, as expected. There is always that moment at around 5.54 of hesitation, whether to sleep, as now you are dead, or to get up and have a beautiful, sunny, quite August morning to yourself.

While deciding today's destiny my baby jumped on my bed 'you're up, let's play'. So, I went for the option two. Yeah, I surprised myself too.

I got up, started dressing and he just lie down, sad, knowing I was about to leave the house and he would stay alone looking for shoes to eat. When I was on the door I took his leash, he lifted his head and started uncontrollably moving his tale. Hesitant, util I called 'Blacky'. Happy cow :)

We went for a walk along the sea strand. It was so peaceful. Smell of sea and the sun wasn't too strong yet. The sound of freedom in the morning made me listen to my eyes. I took him to the mall at St. Julians and he swam. Sniffed every stone and little rock and swam again. I just set there, smiling. He was so happy.

A perfect morning. I am definitely going to do this more often. I feel good and he's asleep. Smiles and vitamin D, is there a better way to start a day?

HELLO, MY NAME IS...

Hello, my name is Teodora. My friends call me Thea, Tea, Tele. My family calls me Doja. I am Dora.

That adventurous little cartoon girl, with a map and a plan, that has cool parents who let her wonder around and about, find answers on her own. But, she needs help from her friend Boots.

Thandie Newton spoke on TED. She suggested her theory of self renaissance. How when one gets destroyed, lost, shattered into pieces, the new self is reborn and adapted.

I do not agree.

Myself is Dora. The little girl is always inside me, waiting to be let out, wonder and be the kid she actually is. Sometimes she shies away, sometimes she gets embarrassed, hurt, sometimes she misses her ego, her Boots.

I believe that only imaginary synonym for consciousness that can be lost, humiliated and destroyed is an ego.

The self is something that we cherish, nurture. Something that feeds on values and principles we learned in our childhood. A one word that defines us and makes us different, makes us who we are, our own individual. A little voice that we gave name intuition. Our own Justitia. Aristotle argued that the self is a soul.

Whereas, an ego feeds on confidence. And it is a bigger baby than self. It has to be continuously reassured, complimented and taken care off. It acts like an armor to self.

Once an ego is lost, we become vulnerable, intimate, beautiful.