LA BELLA VITA

This world is filled with greyness, negativity, war, tears, sadness, people who try to bring you down just because. With break ups and heartaches, also with first kisses. But you can always stray from it, refuse to dwell on the negative and choose to look at positive, choose HAPPY each morning, and SERENITY each evening. You can decide what mood you want to be because you are in charge of your feelings and those who try to mess with you, walk out of the room. Choose to Love and Respect yourself above all else. Smile and laugh whenever possible. Wear colour and glitter dresses, wear what makes you happy. Commit to live up to the spirit that is you. You do not need money, you don't need another, just you! The beautiful, MEGA amazing and glorious you.

Here are some things you can write down and remind yourself that this wonderful blue planet is full or little wonders and that there is beauty everywhere if you want to see it and acknowledge it. There is so much to celebrate and be happy about. Magic is all around, embrace it!

Girls that laugh are the prettiest * Be silly, be honest, be kind * I am SO happy * I am the luckiest girl in the world * Live * Love * Laugh * Sing * And be Happy * Have strength, dignity and laugh * You are worth it! * Each day its a new opportunity, fresh start, brand new 24h to do exactly what you please * Remind yourself daily that you are absolutely, completely & totally perfect * Remember that Monday means MY DAY-indulge in it * Make pretty things and get enough sleep * Never stop dreaming and plan for a miracle * On Wednesdays wear pink * Do more of what makes you happy * Always wear your invisible crown * What goes around comes around * Sea, Air & Sun * Fight boredom with creativity * Daydream * Look out for the colour not only at down and twilight *Go to a Luna Park and win yourself a unicorn * Every girl is a super hero sometimes * Anchor yourself to something special * Decide once and for all to have an extraordinary life * Wake up and live * Make your own kind of happiness * Nothing is wrong if it feels good * Draw * Being free has nothing to do with being alone * Ask FATE to dance * Eat well & travel often * Make pancakes & bake cupcakes for no reason * Today be excited about everything * Indulge your imagination * Hold yourself to the standard of grace not perfection *  Give thanks * Celebrate everything * Have a Disneyland in your heart * If today goes well go and get some ice-cream

S - set small goals that are leading up to a big one
E - exercise your creativity
L- love yourself because you're worth it
F - face your fears

R - rest. relax & reward yourself
E - eat right, your body deserves it
S - smile & laugh whenever you can
P - practise patience & compassion
E - enjoy the little things
C - create something you're proud of
T - tell yourself you are strong because you can make through this.

DOES YOUR HEART NEED HOLDING?

Does your heart need holding? I stretch my arms. My hands are soft in all the right places. My fingers can hold and protect your heart better than your crushable ribcage. You can trust me. I can love you endlessly.

If you ask me what 'Love' is, I might use tiny words to describe it like 'Me', 'You', 'Forever' and I will always fail. But you can lend me your heart to hold it up to the stream of light and let it warm you up whole. If you ask me Love, I'll answer Love.

If you need a shoulder to cry onto, I will offer you all my body. If you need your waves to crush, I will be your proud Lighthouse. Still and quite, hard-headed, lighting the way for all your ships carrying hope to come safe into the harbour, to home. I can be your beach with soft send where you can fall from the far above when you look into the mirror reflection of my eyes, the abyss of the dark rooms behind those eyes calling your soul. The hypnotised effect of my stare from the admiration for you.

If you need ideas, I'll spread my thoughts out to sun, and walk you through each one of them. If you need a house, we have four hands together. If you need life, I have a womb. If you need a magic word, there isn't one. But there is will and no ego, and there are tears of honesty, and gold of the laughter, and pictures of memories.

If you need a direction, I'll point you to your feet. Look at what your body had made. Look at your hands, look at me now standing naked and humble before you, but never look back. Because we only have this moment. And now and now and now.

Just tell me you need me and I'll stay and fight.

THE BOOK THIEF

I stole a book called 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak, oh the irony. Although I had to return it, next time I found it lying on the same surface, calling to me. It bore my name. This time, the book was addressed to me. It didn't feel as satisfying as the first time when putting it in my bag. However, book is now mine.

It's about colours, death, words. It's about me, at least I'd like to think that.

From another book 'The Gordian Knot', I read the closing paragraph only. It's about the Gordian knot and that every knot tied can also be untied. But can everything that is done be undone? I don't think so. When I think of untieing  and undoing the only sober solution is of actual dealing with the problem. Not my or Alexander's the Great way of cutting the knot with the sword, suffering consequences that catch up with you, they always do, dying somewhere in Asia.

(Over)thinking (never leads to anything good or positive) of the knot makes me be OK with feeling blue. Letting me miss him. Also, I know that I cannot allow loneliness (if that is what is troubling me) drive me back to bad company. Yet, this is only fair, as I deleted the knot completely  my tragedy is to now dwell on the emptiness. If I just knew what am I willing to sacrifice!

When I think of him, I ask myself 'Can another person make you happy? Can I make somebody happy?'. And the answer is again, I don't think so. It has to come from within, from the self. Who am I to blame now?!

When I am with my books, I don't go to bed alone, I've got many lives, I've got everything. Today, I need a hug.I mustn't wish for the things but only be patient, wait out the days and grasp new memories for survival.

I'd steal any book and cut all the knots.

JANE AUSTEN'S GUIDE TO ALMOST EVERYTHING

Yep. Got Jane Austen's guide to almost everything. Not that I read any of her books (embarrassment) , and I've got them all, duplicates. Although, watched some of the movies, except Emma. Watched 'Jane Austen Book Club' movie too. But I've got a 'Jane Austen's guide to Good Manners', 'Jane Austen's guide to Romance'. And since yesterday 'The Jane Austen Marriage Manual'.

The last book, no comment, most probably will never ever read it, but had to purchase it for the collection. Not a fan of chick-lit novels, whatever the mood. Anyhow, had a pick through the pages, obviously!

Under each chapter's name, Kim Izzo, the author, had introduced a quote from Jane's books. So I decided to make a literary confession and share. Enjoy, you Austen people who actually honoured her and read a book or all of them.

'Happiness in a marriage is entirely a matter of chance' - Pride and Prejudice

'There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom  I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it...' - Pride and Prejudice

'One half of the world cannot understand the pleasure of the other'- Emma

'There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit...I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.' - Mansfield Park

'What wild imagination one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken.' - Persuasion

'Be honest and poor, by all means- but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.' - Mansfield Park

'One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.' - Persuasion

'There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.' - Emma

'I am only resolved to act in that matter, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness...' - Pride and Prejudice

'My conduct shall speak of me; absence, distance, time shall speak for me.' - Mansfield Park

'She must escape...as soon as possible, and find consolation in fortune and consequences, bustle and the world, for a wounded spirit. Her mind was quite determined, and varied not.' - Mansfield Park

'I doubt that I will ever have to make a choice between marrying for love and marrying for more material considerations.' - Pride and Prejudice

'A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.' - Mansfield Park

'Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.' - Mansfield Park

'But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.' - Mansfield Park

'My good opinion once lost is lost forever.' - Pride and Prejudice

'We all have a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.' - Mansfield Park

'No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not posses a certain something in the air, and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions.' - Pride and Prejudice

'In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels...he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.' - Pride and Prejudice

'I'm not a romantic, you know. I never was. I ask only for a comfortable home.' - Pride and Prejudice

'How despicably have I acted! I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities!' - Pride and Prejudice

'And I have nothing to regret...nothing but my own folly.' - Sense and Sensibility

'But when a young lady is a heroine...Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.' - Northanger Abbey

'It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.' - Sense and Sensibility

COURENTLY

• Going to sleep pretty. Red lipstick
• Punishing myself with no afternoon naps. Makes me happier and more accomplished.
• Enjoying Black Ambrosia.
• Not letting mercury drops leave my tear duct. Sadness department avoided at all time. 
• Not wanting to deal with 'what just happened'
• Must find my horizon to be the centre of something...anything. Solipsism is not the answer, however unfair to the rest of you my darling projections.
• Every knot we tied it, even the Gordian's knot therefore every knot can be untied. 
• Will have an amazing Sunday afternoon, its confirmed
• Hearing of being in someone's dream, a very-good-sex-dream, is almost as hearing the 'I love you'.
• Thinking BIG ideas
• Being very creative
• Its harder when feelings are involved
• 'What's cooler than being cool?' 'Ice cool'. 
• Goldkind is the only kind
• Things I wish I never knew
• Ordinary is an insult, extraordinary is what we all should strive for. 
• I want to have secrets so no one could take it away from me. 
• READING LOAAADS
• Summers on!
• Wearing only what makes me happy! 

TODAY'S LEVITATION

A blank page full of opportunities. Lies there. It is just there, quite and inviting. An infinitive space for secrets and truth to withhold and keep. A place for every thought to expand and form. Official now for eternity. Can't go back, can't erase it, can't make it disappear or pretend it never occurred. But there is always another page, even more promising, like a tomorrow.

A love song, a broken prose? A journal log telling of the colours of the sky of that Tuesday? Or a box where all he wrote is. Asking to save him, to come back for him. Forgive me.

It is not that there is not anything for me to speak of, it is the fear of what I might tell. I'm alone? How broken I am and naked in your arms? A letter bagging you to stay? Or how strong I am,  fighting the dark? But what's the use, you won't be honest with me.

When I was a child I always knew why, I knew what to write, no prejudice of what is real. No pain. Every day then was something new and exciting, while now I am documenting the patterns of my behaviour, trying to chart it in order not to fall in a well of desperation again. Now for the love of God, it's sunny outside!

Damn you!

Oh, why is it more natural to feel this way and write of this stuff, why is it harder to write when high on dopamine? Damn me!

All that will make me better it is on my disposal, I am only in my twenties sucking on the resources of the world not paying taxes, but I just want to stay in my bed, hungry. I don't want to feel better, I do not deserve it, not yet anyhow.

I know I need to suffer, I need to know I have to pay, also I know I am going places. It is all leather and rust. Ageless and old.

LOLITA

Vladmir wrote a book. But its done, it's written, it's sold, it's gaining more yesterdays by each day and by each tomorrow. The poetic first half of the book still rings in my ears, wishing you were writing one about me. Oh darling, it would be a marvellous piece. With us, nothing is done. Without us, nothing is complete. Ever collecting material.

Because I can see your eyes on me, watching every sign of my character, trying not to miss one of my gesticulations and my flight of hands. Lingering onto my every word, rethinking it. Asking me what I meant and why I said it. No matter how young I am, with your eyes on me, and your hands around me, you never failed to make me feel like a woman, your woman.

I can feel you thinking of me, because I think about you too. When I go quite, I talk to you, trying to make you see through my eyes. Show you all the colours that surround me. Then I smile and I calm down. We are dancing in the rain. It is almost real.

It is not living a lie, it is letting your projection play in front of my eyes as long as I can concentrate on your silhouette and try remember the smells. They are fading. Making me nostalgic. And if everyone leaves me,and even if you don't want me any more, I know I'll always exist in your head, be safe there. Are your hands itching? Can you feel me? Never stop.

Is it fair? I don't care.

I'll always represent sins to you.

I'll always be your Lolita.

H2O

I am water. I have depth that is dark and delicious. Places I am sceptic to dive into, afraid to explore, trying hard to hide them and let them be, be wild and quite.When I am mad, I explode. Then I am heavy and blind, not scared and I swipe everything in front of me, like a tsunami. When you are nice to me, I am clear and kind, peaceful like lagoon waters. I sit in the corner and lick my wounds as a smitten kitten.

I have a secret life inside of me, exotic, scary and poisonous. Don't ever underestimate me, I can take any fire and make it die out.

I reflect off of you. I am what your attitude is towards me. Some days I can be a Paradise Island surrounded by tirquise waters with white sends of my skin, or polluted Themes, my eyes blurry, muddy green and narrow from all your bullshit.

I am easy going, I am the flow. The tides are my moods. I depend on the Moon.

I can fill all the blanks and surround you the way you thought no body would fit into the spoon of your body when you are sleeping and when you can't know. But I too get scared. I may flow away, get swollen by a bigger river or eaten by a whole ocean. Be my land.

You can trust me because you can see through me on a sunny day. I can wash away all your fears and sins.

I can be rough and mad. But I can kiss you like the ocean kisses the shore line and refuses to ever stop.

I can with hold like its going out of style. All the rocks you throw at me, will just sink and lay deep down on the bed of my heart, next to the other rocks. If you are cold towards me, I can freeze and stay dormant this way until you apologize and show me you didn't mean it. I am water, I come in all three shapes. I can be fresh and ,much enjoyed as a morning shower, cold as ice berg that broke Titanic, or I can be worm as the breath you exhale, disappearing into the atmosphere, floating there, waiting, for another man to breath me in. Where in his chest I'll make my new home. Leave my mark on him too.

Whatever you need, I've got it babes. I'll support your ship. Do not disrespect my waters and I wont sink you, I wont drawn you. I promise I'll try. 

OLD BOOK SMELL

Lignin is deprived from the Latin word lignum, meaning wood. Lignin is found in all vascular plants, mostly between the cells, but also within the cells, and in the cell walls. It makes vegetables firm and crunchy, and gives us what we call "fiber" in our food. It functions to regulate the transport of liquid in the living plant, and it enables trees to grow taller and compete for sunshine.

Due to lignin presence in paper, it yellows over time. 

Vanillin is the primary component of the extract of the vanilla bean. Synthetic vanillin, instead of natural vanilla extract, is sometimes used as a flavoring agent in foods, beverages, and pharmaceuticals. 


Making of synthetic vanillin was based on lignin wastes. Lignin-based artificial vanilla flavouring is alleged to have a richer flavour profile. 


And that is why books of yesterday smell of vanilla. 


'Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting a weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminallym stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us'
Perfumes: the guide. 

LOG OF A LEFT-HANDED GIRL

No place can be small, only your head can be small and your horizons short. No place can be boring, there are only boring people. There is always something new and exciting, even in the routine, where the human spirits is slowly dying. That is why there are picnics, cinema, walks in the park and Gala dinners to break daily life. There is always something to be learned from someone only if you are enough open to let that someone teach you. Change and enrich your view or opinion. If that is not the case, is it a perfect place for discussion and sharing of experience and in a small (it can never be small) way you tell your life story in pieces to try and explain how you came to be of that opinion. If that is not case, it is a perfect timing to agree to disagree. When sitting for a dinning table, share some of the table manners, like the one of you learned in Hong Kong, like lowering your glass when toasting to a person that is celebrating the evening, showing respect.

The way your eyes travel and not let miss a gesticulation, a way person's mouth make a curve when smiling or making a sarcastic comment or his/ hers flight of hands when explaining something they are so confident of, when meet a new person. That is how last night I learned that I was born left-handed. When I took up my fork and knife and was about to dig in, James claimed he could swear I was left-handed. How?! Why?! Apparently, the way I clap, hold my glass and reach for food and the way I cross my hands told him I was. And I am.

When was five years old, I used to take up newspapers, a notebook, scissors and a pan, go to my parents bedroom and sit underneath the roof window. My favourite kind of window on a lowered ceiling, badeing  a room in morning light and a window to a star filled night sky. I used to sit underneath it, cut out all the headlines that were in red print and than big black ones. When my right hand used to tire under the weight of scissors I just transfer them into my left hand and keep going. When finally happy with the amount of cut outs, I'd spread them before me and copy them into my notebook. Start with my right-hand, when tire, transfer the pencil into my left. And that how I went around my 5 years old business. Until school, where you are thought to pick up a pencil with your right hand. First time I have got a watch, I copied my parents and with my teeth and much exercise tried putting it on my left wrist. So, I was right-handed. Although had a great advantage when was playing volleyball. I could do the same with my left arm, just had to position my body differently.

Last night I also learned by what saying China got Hong Kong back from England. 'If you, English, still want Hong Kong to be English, your 7 million English people will starve to death in dark.' China had enough of feeding and supplying energy to a small peninsula that was not theirs. And that is how in 1997 China got the city back.

What I am trying to say, this island may be small in its square kilometars but its rich in the people who choose to make a life here, permanently or temporarily. I would never trade my knowledge of the English language and all the people I have come to encounter and befriend here.

I have no money in my account, I am not rich.But I have a lots of friends coming from all imaginable countries, backgrounds, carrying different traditions and experiences, cultures. I AM RICH, THE RICHEST!

DEAR SCOTT,

Letters of Note: Hemingway to Fitzgerald, 1934

Key West
28 May 1934

Dear Scott:

I liked it and I didn’t. It started off with that marvelous description of Sara and Gerald (goddamn it Dos took it with him so I can’t refer to it. So if I make any mistakes—). Then you started fooling with them, making them come from things they didn’t come from, changing them into other people and you can’t do that, Scott. If you take real people and write about them you cannot give them other parents than they have (they are made by their parents and what happens to them) you cannot make them do anything they would not do. You can take you or me or Zelda or Pauline or Hadley or Sara or Gerald but you have to keep them the same and you can only make them do what they would do. You can’t make one be another. Invention is the finest thing but you cannot invent anything that would not actually happen.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best—make it all up—but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples’ pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. You, who can write better than anybody can, who are so lousy with talent that you have to—the hell with it. Scott for gods sake write and write truly no matter who or what it hurts but to do not make these silly compromises. You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any feeling, except passing, if it were true.

There were wonderful places and nobody else nor none of the boys can write a good one half as good reading as one that doesn’t come out by you, but you cheated too damned much in this one. And you don’t need to.

In the first place I’ve always claimed that you can’t think. All right, we’ll admit you can think. But say you couldn’t think; then you ought to write, invent, out of what you know and keep the people’s antecedants straight. Second place, a long time ago you stopped listening except to the answers to your own questions. You had good stuff in too that it didn’t need. That’s what dries a writer up (we all dry up. That’s no insult to you in person) not listening. That is where it all comes from. Seeing, listening. You see well enough. But you stop listening.

It’s a lot better than I say. But it’s not as good as you can do. 

You can study Clausewitz in the field and economics and psychology and nothing else will do you any bloody good once you are writing. We are like lousy damned acrobats but we make some mighty fine jumps, bo, and they have all these other acrobats that won’t jump.

For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket. You feel you have to publish crap to make money to live and let live. All write but if you write enough and as well as you can there will be the same amount of masterpiece material (as we say at Yale). You can’t think well enough to sit down and write a deliberate masterpiece and if you could get rid of Seldes and those guys that nearly ruined you and turn them out as well as you can and let the spectators yell when it is good and hoot when it is not you would be all right.

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you. 

About this time I wouldn’t blame you if you gave me a burst. Jesus it’s marvellous to tell other people how to write, live, die etc.

I’d like to see you and talk about things with you sober. You were so damned stinking in N.Y. we didn’t get anywhere. You see, Bo, you’re not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write. Of all people on earth you needed discipline in your work and instead you marry someone who is jealous of your work, wants to compete with you and ruins you. It’s not as simple as that and I thought Zelda was crazy the first time I met her and you complicated it even more by being in love with her and, of course you’re a rummy. But you’re no more of a rummy than Joyce is and most good writers are. But Scott, good writers always come back. Always. You are twice as good now as you were at the time you think you were so marvellous. You know I never thought so much of Gatsby at the time. You can write twice as well now as you ever could. All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.

Go on and write.

Anyway I’m damned fond of you and I’d like to have a chance to talk sometimes. We had good times talking. Remember that guy we went out to see dying in Neuilly? He was down here this winter. Damned nice guy Canby Chambers. Saw a lot of Dos. He’s in good shape now and he was plenty sick this time last year. How is Scotty and Zelda? Pauline sends her love. We’re all fine. She’s going up to Piggott for a couple of weeks with Patrick. Then bring Bumby back. We have a fine boat. Am going good on a very long story. Hard one to write.

Always your friend

Ernest

WHY DO KIDS DRAW MONSTERS AND ADULTS DON'T?

This is not based on any truth of any kind, backed by no research, supported by no facts.

I've just came across the above title that most probably, hopefully, is complimented with an article that is backed by scientific facts and actual proof (whatever I mean by 'actual proof'). But this is my theory that answers this inquiry. My process of thought.

A kid draws monsters as they have no knowledge or previous experience of consequences. Yet the basic awareness of such is present. The worst thing imaginable that can happen to a kid is to be abducted by or eaten by monsters if misbehaved.With no insight into the 'real' world, this is the only world possible to them. Monsters are their ultimate suffering, a hell designed for children.

Since the child could distinguish colour and recognize the voice of its mother reading at bed-time, more often than not they are fed on stories where Good fights Evil. So, from the very first understanding of the world, children are equipped with knowing of the existence of good and bad. A sensible parent would not introduce the bad of the world by stating (here to say, everything a parent speaks it is the only truth), there are some bad people, which look and behave as mummy and daddy do, but by introducing fairy-tale monsters. They differ from people, they might be bigger in size, definitely uglier and most scary. Hence, the first child's fear it is the fear of monsters.

As every fear is there to control the scared, parents (all parents at some point in time) do manipulate it to their advantage. To get their kid to calm down, go to sleep, not wonder off and much more. Sometimes, to protect them too. Since I can remember, I was mortified by the idea of bugs. During the thunder-storm, I would jump in lap of mum, dad, grandmother, whoever was the closest and to calm me down, they used to say, 'There is nothing to be scared of, nothing will happen to you, to us. That noise are just bugs riding their mopeds to work. Yes, they are driving too fast, they must be late.' And it did used to calm me down, I wasn't scared of thunder-storm any longer. But, most certainly, the mental images of bugs on mopeds, and what kind of jobs they had were storming my brain.

I believe, if I had to draw a 'not so nice weather', the master piece would depict large bugs on even larger mopeds flying above and sideways around my house. Maybe, even if the appointed subject was not 'not so nice weather'. I (a kid) would still choose to draw this picture. This would be something I'd vividly remember.

For a child the only happiness is in its family and home. The togetherness, safety and too much love. Monsters are the only ones who could take that away from the child or remove the child from it.

Since the beginning of time, there always was something designed or created to be feared above ourselves, something/someone bigger, mightier, something we can not control. Religion is one such invention. A need to believe into that something bigger, try and trust that things do happen for reason due to Him, Her, It acting in mysterious ways. If religion or anything of that calibre was not invented, we would only be left to fear ourselves, our own kind which would lead to self-destruction.