Fridays

He said to her “Fridays are dead without you”.
I wondered what it meant.
Why did he miss her so on Fridays?
It tormented my soul.
I cried, while I felt something slipping thru my fingers.
I struggled to hold on to it, but it managed to escape me.
I heard it smash on the cold cement floor.
Have I lost my sanity?

Remember how I said that sometimes I am looking and sometimes I am not looking for a job. Well, yesterday was one of those days when I went looking for one. I had a job interview, which I am not sure I want after all. But then again I do not know if the guy would actually hire me after openly admitting that I was a registered democrat, and worst of all that I was an intern for the Howard Dean presidential campaign (the problem here was that he was a registered republican).

The interview was typical, why should we hire you, what are your strongest assets, what are your weaknesses, what are your salary requirements, and so on. What wasn’t usual, and very random was the one hour conversation after the interview. The guy was sharp. He understood me. He quickly became aware of my confusion, and all of my apprehensions for my future. So he said to me: you never know what God’s plans are for you! And then he began to tell me his life story how he had always had an aptitude for science and math, how his dad and grandfather had been doctors and he was expected to do be one as well. He never got into a medical school, but he did get admittance to a law school, so he became a lawyer even thought he hated reading and writing. I guess he told me all this in a unobtrusive manner, so he could pass the message: don’t worry!

We then spoke about American attitudes when traveling abroad, we spoke about Paris, we spoke about Mexico, we spoke about politics, Iraq, Bush, Condalisa Rice, and Bill Nelson. At the end of the day I didn’t know what to make of this all. I don’t think the guy will hire me but I might get a call from him sometimes to go out to lunch and talk…

I don’t know what it is about me but somehow I must be a good listener, and especially for the people that I work for. My former boss came to speak to me about his love life. He spoke to me about his troubles with his mom, her over-protectiveness and need for control, and the blind dates that she set up for him with the daughter’s of her Greek friends. He spoke to me about his future business plans, and his growing troubles with his business partner. I always listened, and then game him me two cents on the issue. Sometimes I got so tired of his complaining, his desperation, and I couldn’t imagine how a successful attorney could be so lonely and distressed. One day after he heard me speaking to G on the phone, he confessed to me that “in a good way, he was envious of what we had”. And I looked at him first not knowing what to say, pleased by his revelation but also feeling bitter for him, and then I said: “I’m sure that something like what G and I have is waiting for you somewhere”. Money was not a worry for this guy, he had friends, he had family, but what he was hungry for was to love and be loved. So when The Beatles tell you that “all you need is loves”, listen to them, they are right.

Love cooking, not baking...

The other night something happened that might discourage me from ever going on a baking mission again. For the first time in my life I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. No, I didn’t make them from scratch, as I am horrible with measurements and probably would have ended with terribly flat and hard as rock cookies. I bought the mixture from my groceries store, and made them easily by following the instructions on the box. Everything was going swell. I made sure that the cookies were perfectly baked, and not burned. I had placed them in a platter and was waiting for them to cool down when I unknowingly pressed my body against the blazing tray that had just come out of the oven. As if I wasn’t tall enough, I was trying to stretch upwards to reach some high cabinets, during which time my shirt went up and the skin two inches under my belly-bottom laid on the burning tray. I swear I heard a kshhhh sound, just like when you first throw eggs in a heated pan. Apparently I was so preoccupied with the cookies not getting burned, that I completely ignored my surroundings and ended up getting a burn in my own belly. It hurt as hell (the skin in that area is very sensitive, trust me), but what ticked me off the most was the line across my stomach about two inches long. At the moment it looks like a strange, purposeless tattoo. If I pull the two ends of the burn upward it will take the shape of a smiley face. I imagine that after the burned skin will fall out of days it will look like an incision from an operation. No more baking for me. I love cooking but apparently baking is just not cut out for a girl like me.
I think it’s time to buy a one piece bathing suit (for the first time in my adult life)…

P.S. If you want to know about the cookies they came out quite nice, chewy and everything. It was just difficult enjoying them...

I am back.

I am all crunched in my seat reading Delta’s Sky Magazine, while listening to my tunes. I had planned to read a book during the flight, but apparently I forgot it in the car that dropped me off at the airport during the rush of double checking my purse to make sure that I was not taking any prohibited items on the plane. I guess it is better that I forgot the book, instead of something like my ID or wallet (though that would have not been a huge surprise for someone like me).

So as I sit here reading Sky Magazine and among the numerous travel articles, which make me lust for a vacation under the Tuscan sun or the Turkish white beaches, I found a friend. His name was Gavin Pretor Pinney, who get this: wrote a book about clouds, titled The Cloudspotter’s Guide. He was also the co-founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. As silly as this may sound, he is my kind of friend. Rock on brother!
I would love to meet this guy and talk to him about our uncommon, common interest.
As I wrote this (on a delta napkin, due to the fact that I was lacking paper to write on) I was surrounded by clouds….
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I am back from the Big Apple, which was grand as always.
I had a horrifying dream last nigh. My father, who is a man powerless of hurting a bee, let alone a human, in my dream had killed two men and had taken a huge sum of money from them.
Silly dream had me wake up early today…I guess it wasn't so bad, I got to live the early morning sun without getting exhausted from the heat.

My mailman etc.

This morning I was watering my plants and hosing down the whole front yard when the mailman pulled up to deliver today’s mail. I was surprised; he usually comes around 4-5 o’clock in the afternoon, so I asked why so early and he simply said, why not early miss? I had no objection to that. For as long as I remember I have lived in places where the mail always came late in the afternoon, so I wasn’t going to complain about it arriving early. I have a thing about the mail; I love to run down my driveway and pick up it up. Most of the time it is because I anticipate books that I have purchased online to arrive. What I don’t like is the same credit card offers that come in every single day. I am amazed at how much time, effort and money is put into these offers. Haven’t they realized that they have been sending me the same piece of mail for the last couple of months and not once have I replied. I bet they are just waiting for me to finally break down and activate one of their credit cards. No mate, I shall not give them that pleasure! And then I think about all the paper wasted for this lost cause, and I cannot help but recycle and recycle.

My mailman is the nosiest person I have ever known. He knows everything about everyone in the neighborhood, provided that he has been driving the same route for the last fifteen years or so. He is quite a character; I also think he wears a wig. In fact I am almost positive about this, but it’s just that .0001% possibility that it might just be a bad hair style.

When we first moved in he told me that the previous owners of the house were from Haiti. I already knew that, but what I didn’t know was that the husband was not in Haiti on business as the wife had informed us during the purchase of our home, but instead in jail. According to my mailman he was a notorious serial killer. It was eerie knowing that this killer had once lived in my home.

On another occasion the mailman told me that my next door neighbor was the city manager, supposedly a big shot in local politics and so on. The city manager is strange too. He always leaves on a lamp by the window of one of his second floor rooms, regardless if he is in or not, or if it’s day or night (but I won’t get into that right now). The mailman also told me that the family of a local professor, who has been incarcerated on terrorism charges, lived just about three houses from me. What was I to do with all this information?Iit was useless. I could not help but think that if God-forbid I were to ever get into trouble, the whole neighborhood would know. I am sure the mailman would love to tell them all.

Today, apart from all the junk mail I also received another
SARK book. By now it has become a ritual. I order the book, wait for it to arrive, and then I put a kettle of tea on the stove and start reading the book immediately. When I finish it I am full of energy.

Finally a good movie.

We entered Blockbuster, walked around and selected a movie. We then headed to the check out lane and waited in line for our turn. As the employee at the register greeted us “good evening”, we looked at each other and simultaneously said “not this movie”. We returned to the shelves and took our first choice. A decision made in a split second changed our evening and allowed us to enjoy one of the best movies we had seen in a long time. Decisions like this change your life too, not just an evening. Instead of going to a football game, he had come to meet with me.

Getting back to the movie, I do not care what the critics say about it (I read some very discouraging reviews,) Lost City was well done by Andy Garcia, depicting a dramatic and historical romantic tribute to pre-revolutionary Cuba. The movie evokes memories from a world long ago; it is poetic, nostalgic, possess texture with vivid images and it is drenched in magical music. Yes, the movie does have some historical flaws and incoherencies, but nonetheless it is powerful. Perhaps I also relate to it on a different level when seeing the sense of loss, and changes associated with a person who leaves his/her home country and for a certain period of time is left stateless, with identities that have roots somewhere in the middle of both worlds.

I enjoyed it; it gave me the gift of a pleasant evening, no matter how “lost” critics have acclaimed it to be.

Jose Marti poems incorporated into the movie.
I could have found them in English, but they would loose their essence.

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma,
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma.

Yo vengo de todas partes,
Y hacia todas partes voy:
Arte soy entre las artes,
En los montes, monte soy.
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Cultivo una rosa blanca
en junio como enero
para el amigo sincero
que me da su mano franca.

Y para el cruel que me arranca
el corazón con que vivo,
cardo ni ortiga cultivo;
cultivo la rosa blanca.

Who are you? (edited)

By nature I am curious.
I enjoy people and getting to know them.
If you are reading/visiting this site let me know who you are.
If you would like to remain anonymous,
you can still write something and remain a mystery.

I am...
a student, a pseudo-writer, an even worse amateur photographer, a thinker, and a lover.
A lover of the arts, people, books, music, conversations, life, flowers, the sky, the ocean and all the rest in between. I prefer to believe that each person as a result of being human has a portion in their heart, mind and spirit dedicated to humanity.

I look at my hand and I find that my fingers are identical to those of my father’s; my palms identical to my mother’s. I cannot separate myself from them; they are the roots to my tree of life. I look into my sister’s eyes and I see me, I look into her mind and we think alike, yet we are so different from each other. I look at my brother, he is a man, we were in the same womb, we have the same blood. I look at my lover’s eyes; they are not the same as mine. I enjoy our diversity; our bodies unite; we are one.
In the end, I am a tea drinker, a wine sipper, a dreamer, a dancer, a wonderer, daughter, a sister, a friend, a non-smoker, in love, often (very) confused, constantly grateful, inspired, sorry that a day has only 24 hours, and a traveler. I am human. Who are you...?

In the mean time:
Exploring www.aisforapple.net
Enjoying www.nouvellesvagues.com

p.s. you can either leave a comment here or write to edipojani@yahoo.com
p.s.s pardon my ignorance of html codes

Bits and pieces.

I am currently unemployed; sometimes looking, sometimes not looking for a job.

I am trying to revive within me the desire to write.

I am in the process of figuring my life out: my options, my intentions, my desires, my needs, and necessities. Sometimes I do not know where it is all going…

I am in love with him. Sometimes we argue, sometimes we don’t, but most of the time we love. He sustains me.

I am sentimental to the point where I can cry and laugh at the same time, feeling both happy and sad at the same time. I don’t know if this is a curse or a blessing. Life is about emotions, and being able to experience them intensely and profoundly is living. Sometimes I feel for others, I cry, I become sad, I live with their problems.

I have a problem saying no to people. Even when I cannot afford to say yes, even when it is impossible to say yes, even when I do not want to say yes, I say yes. This is one of my many weaknesses. Some manage to abuse it shamelessly.

I often have dreams about being at an airport, getting on a plane, and realizing that I have left my luggage behind, or that I am wearing no shoes, or that I am still wearing my pajamas. I think this dream shows my great desire to travel, and then another negative quality about being anxious at times, fearing that I am never prepared for something, panicking. I think this is the meaning that I give to this dream knowing myself; perhaps someone else would interpret it differently.

I have a great need to be creative but I am still exploring the channels thru which I can express my creativity.

I dream about having a house by the ocean. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a small tiny house by the ocean where every morning I can wake up and smell the scent of the waves, and every evening I can bear witness to the sun setting and maybe once in a while even sleep on the sand.

I would love to have a perfect little garden. I have planted some roses, and am still working on some other plants. Gardening for me is hard since I am clumsy and I do not know much about gardening to begin with.

Sometimes I feel like I am walking backwards in stead of forwards. I feel like I am wasting time, I feel like I am losing time. Sometimes I wish that I were just having a bad summer, like those times in high school when it is ok to have a bad, unproductive summer because you know that when August comes around you will be back in school and productive again. August is here and strangely I miss school.

Sometimes all is good. I think to myself that I am still young. I can still attend law school next year. I can even settle for that shitty school in Jacksonville, the only problem is that I would really hate moving there.

I am alive, I am here, I am on line,-this thing that is called the internet, which has made my generation so much more different from my grandparent’s generation. Yuhuuuuuuuu....can anybody hear me?

Life is good.

"Develop interest in life as you see it;
in people, things, literature, music -
the world is so rich,
simply throbbing with rich treasures,
beautiful souls and interesting people.
Forget yourself".
---Henry Miller

Dreaming.

My father’s aunt, who died in 1994, and her husband came to visit me in my dreams. She had been a beautiful lady all her life, with a great sense of self-confidence which reflected a grand presence whenever she was present in a room. Her husband had died years before I was born, but I had heard from my own aunt and my father that he was quite an exquisite human being, with an old gentleman charm, a world of knowledge and intellect, and a fine taste for good books and furniture. In my dream they had died and somehow they had been reborn again. They were on holiday and were staying in a condo somewhere by the beach. When I met them in my dream I was astonished to see them. The husband pulled me aside and said: do not say anything about our death; she doesn’t know that we have died once and then come back to life; it will ruin our vacation if you say something. I didn’t say anything. I admired them in my dream as they had always been admired by others when they had been alive.

It was strange. Why would they appear in my dream when one of them I had never met and the other died years ago? I had not even thought of them lately. Why at this point in my life they came to me?
I woke up and called my mother. I told her about the dream, and she told me that it meant that they had given me many blessings of good health and happiness. Perhaps it was like she said. Perhaps they came in my dream to show me that after so many years of separation they were together again, or even in an attempt to convince me that there was some sort of “being” after death.
Whatever the case is, they were happy and they appeared more alive then ever.

Poetry Thursday again.

It has been such a long time since I have writen a poem.
I don't know if this one is much of a poem, but I decided to write it since this weeks topic defines an important part of my life.

Finding the Lost Tune

I had a lost melody in my mind
which had tormented me for quite a long time.
I only knew the melody,
didn’t know any of the words,
didn't know who wrote it,
who sang it,
where and when had I heard it.

At times it was a tune so distant,
like it had carried over from another world,
at other times it was so present,
so relevant to this world
that I truly believed that one day
I would solve the puzzle,
and find out what song it was.

That day came when I was walking down the ocean,
because everything great happens by the ocean.
I was walking with a man who
I didn’t know would grow to mean so much to me.
I was humming my puzzle tune.

Soon he started humming it,
Soon he started singing it,
Soon I found out what song it was.

I never knew it was as simple as this:
“Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence”.

I had found the lost tune.

He told me...

He told me that I should stop blaming others,
stop blaming him,
and start blaming myself more about my unhappiness.
He told me that I was weak,
he told me that I had to start fighting my own battles,
he told me that all I had was questions but what I needed were answers.

It was difficult to hear all this.
Difficult not because they weren’t true,
but because I couldn’t even dispute any of it with him;
because everything was true.

He told me I have an awful habit of not sharing my concerns with him.
He told me that if there was any way which would allow him to travel in my mind and read all my thoughts he would.
Such a way didn’t exist, so he told me that I needed to speak to him about my concerns. He told me that there are times when he feels like he doesn’t know me.
This hurt me the most.
Inside of me I was speaking to him.
I was in fact screaming for help, so loudly and so clearly that I nearly thought that the whole town had awaken from my soundless screams.

Maybe the reason why I do not speak to him about my worries is because I am scared that if I give him the key into my world of insecurities, apprehensions and fears, he would love me less. Or perhaps it is all because I am so much like my dad…this sounds as a better option, blaming it all on my father’s genes which have been transmitted into me so meticulously as to not allow any traits of his to escape me. This is certainly not a bad thing, I used to and still adore being so similar to my father. It makes the blood connection so much stronger, and you understand better where you came from. But with all of his good traits came his bad ones, like being silent when really I should speak up and share with others my feelings. I have many times tried to challenge this side of me which restricts itself into its own shell, puts down the shades, locks all the doors and hides. So far I have not managed to control it; it is a wild beast on its own.

Time has come to let go:
I am scared!
I have many fears of wasting my life away.
I am weak!
I have numerous desires/projects/plans in my mind, but so far I have not managed to get on board with any of them because of a certain fear of failing.
I am a coward!
I cannot even share everything with the person that I love.

I am praying to God, I am asking him to give me a sign, I am asking him to show me my path…

Perhaps this is merely a passive crisis, a dilemma soon to be solved, a minute problem which I am making into a huge concern. I hate drama queens, but if I were to judge myself as an outsider right this moment, I would in all probability label myself as a drama queen. Sometimes things are easier when you are not wearing a certain person’s shoes, and my shoes right now are hurting me regardless of how small the flaw with the shoes is, they hurt badly…

I am trying to see everything with a positive attitude; I am trying to change…