Reading

I have a habit of reading in my bathtub. If you are imagining me naked, submerged in water full of foam, then I hate to spoil it for you. I read in my bathtub with my clothes on and no water in it, that's probably why everyone finds it strange. I have been doing this since I was little.
Just two days ago I started reading "The Places In Between" by Rory Stewart. I cannot put it down. Don't you love it when that happens?

Where do you read?

Passage from the book:
"I sat down and wrote a letter to my parents, in case I was killed. In the past sixteen months I had bribed, flattered, pried, bullied, begged, and wheedled in order to continue my walk. I was more of a tramp than a mystic, but as i wrote I felt at peace. I described to my parents the moments on the way that seemed to have a deep, unified relation to my past. I wondered if walking was not a form of dancing. I was happy then and I slept well".

Hidden down here, you will find my secret...

Now, you hear me, and you hear me well. This is my secret:
I choose to no longer allow it to remain a secret because of its enormous burden, the weight of which my back can no longer afford to maintain. I am letting you know about it so that maybe you could understand the pain that I have so far endured. I am letting you know about it because I can no longer tolerate silence.
Seek out a quiet place where to sit and listen. The words that I am about to say, deepening on your soul, might affect you in a very direct way. I am about to pass my weight on to you, thus you will need a place where to sit because the weight is so massive that only by sitting down will you be able to support it, unless you have superpowers… and if you do, you could save me from my pain. After hearing of my secret you might experience an urgent need to label me naïve and childish, and that I am, but I can not help the way in which I feel.
I hope that you can find the power to understand. This is my secret: I fear this world…

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-every three seconds a child dies because of extreme poverty
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…there is no reason in the world for a child to die
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(I could go on and on with similar heart breaking facts, but I will spare you their redundant rawness, because all you need to know is that every three seconds a child dies as a result of extreme poverty…for the rest I will allow you to do your own Google searches.)

What does one do, when the weight of terrible things that routinely occur uninterrupted around the world, catches up with your spirit? When I say that, imagine for only a moment being surrounded by pointy arrows aimed towards your body. The room in which you breathe gradually becomes smaller and smaller, until you start feeling the pain of the arrows before they even rupture thru into your bare flesh. Then, the blood flows outlining the silhouette of your body until it reaches the soil and turns it red.

So much destruction, so much pain, so much suffering, so much darkness, so much death. The more you breathe, the less oxygen there is around for you to inhale during the next interval of breathing…so you reach a point where you feel like a lost soul stranded on ice: the coldness has taken over the core of your essence. You have surrendered to the cold because it's easier that way. It’s easier to let the cold in, to close your eyes, to sleep for eternity.

And here I got again at it:
But what does one do, when the weight of these problems is so unbearable for one person to feel?
What does one do, when one does not know where to start?
What does one do, when one does not know what to do?
Could it be possible to be aware of so much but still sit idle, conquered by pure apathy?

I had a bad day.

"If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern."
-Ursula K. Le Guin

I had a bad day today.
I got mad at him for wearing the wrong pants and the wrong shirt.
I got mad at him for forgetting his lunch home.
I got mad at my dinner.
Small things.
Useless things.
I got mad and had a bad day.

the ring

I had my mind set on a one carat diamond ring. Then, I watched the movie Blood Diamonds and I hated myself for having wanted such a thing. I even took off my other ring, the one which I never take off, the ring which I was planning to substitute with the one carat ring. That ring I was going to take to a jeweler to buff it and polish it, and then put it away somewhere safe so that maybe one day I could give it to my daughter. I felt strange without my ring, naked, changed, and different. Throughout the day I experienced brief moments of loss, instantly looking at my finger to check for the ring which I felt wasn’t there, only to realize that I had not lost it and it was sitting on my night stand. I kept trying to force it within me that I did not need a ring to make me feel complete. Perhaps I needed time to get used to it. My mom always tells me that for something to become a ritual in your life, it needs about twelve days of constant repetition. I could have tried her philosophy, but instead I picked up the ring and put it on my finger again. That ring was purchased years ago; whatever I did with it now didn’t matter. The only thing I could do was to forbid myself from buying the new ring, the one carat one. This is life in the west, and even if you try to make conscious decisions and lead a life which will not violate the dignity of any other human beings around the world, sometimes it’s just hard. Sometimes you forget, and some other times you just don’t realize that whatever product you are buying, consuming or enjoying has cost a lot more to someone else than the money that you paid for it. As the French would say c’est la vie, but it’s a sad one my friends.

Criminalization of Homelessness

As I stopped outside of my grocery store to take this picture, a cop cars pulled up. Two officers got out and approached a seemingly homeless person, which I had already encountered on my way in to the store. They questioned her: what are you doing here, are you waiting for a ride, who is coming to pick you up, do you have any ID on you?

I put away my camera, and paused for a moment. I was standing parallel to this sick looking, thin lady who was sitting on the floor, with her knees to her chin, and her back against the wall. In between us there was a telephone stand, so I could only see her toes which were dirty and long, but yet proportional to her frame. I thought to myself: I am standing here with my back against the wall just like her. My wallet is full of many things but no picture ID, yet they only approached her and not me. Did I look more “civilized/normal” to them? I don’t know if the city I live in has any ordinances against the homeless, but I know that the US in general is characterized by a trend towards the criminalization of homelessness. And I wonder, why????, when the government itself doesn’t offer many alternatives for this group of people. But that is not even the point here. Let’s say that one morning I wake up and decide to become homeless by choice, do they have a right to determine my lifestyle? Perhaps the lady wasn’t even homeless after all. Maybe she just liked to dress in rags, maybe she was really waiting for a ride, maybe she was just resting, maybe she just liked the shade that the grocery store provided for her, maybe she was simply standing there for no reason at all………

The rose.

The beauty of growing roses in your garden
is during those mornings when you wake up
and a find a rose next to your nightstand,
and you realize he left it there for you.

I feel reborn this January morning (nothing to do with the rose).

Back Again.

I am still alive and breathing.
Something happened...I got married :P

I apologize for the long silence.