Tuesday, October 26, 2021

I am still here...


OMG! 5 years! 

Everything takes hard work, including... getting back to what you love best.

After taking a break for many years... I decided to be back again...

If you followed me in the past... I apologize for making you wait for so long for another post. For personal reasons that are hard to explain in a few words I stopped publishing on the blog or anywhere else. I didn't stop writing, I just stopped making my work public. People kept asking - when the new post will come - but... Over, the years, I think a lot of followers accepted my abandon. And I hope that one day, when I will be able to open up and explain, they will forgive me.

If you are new here, welcome! I'm new too... to this platform and to being public again.

And I have no idea what I am doing, so please BE PATIENT! I'm still learning... It's like learning how to bike, but then not doing it for years - it is there - but not up to date. Actually, joke aside - that is a true story - I learned how to bike as a child and I only biked for a couple of summers on my cousin's bike when I was visiting my grandparents. And then... never again until I was thirty. I badly wanted a bike in my twenties, but I didn't get one, so, when my husband got me a bike, we realized that I had forgotten how to bike and I had to restart from zero. But, I did re-learn and I love biking. So, I hope that the same thing will happen with the blog - I just need some practice :) 

The focus of my blog has always been words - articles on different subjects, self-improvement, and once in a while an insight into my creative world of writing and arts. They are just words... about everything! Some different ideas to make people reflect more on the subject.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Are you in an Emotional Affair? - A few words on Emotional Cheating

 
I've been reflecting for a while on something...emotional cheating. It is not as much talked about as the physical cheating because it is harder to be identified and yet according to psychology an emotional affair is as hurting and as draining as a physical affair.  What is an emotional affair?
 
I will start with two real life examples. For the sake of privacy, I will not share names or point fingers.
 
First example:
 
A and D are childhood friends. At some point during their life they even considered being together, but somehow things didn't happen.
Later in life they were still very good friends, both in different serious relations. 
Also, the boundaries between A and D were clear, it was many times that while talking with him, A felt she wasn't fair to her partner. She asked herself - Should I share this with him or should I share it with my significant other? If I want my lover to be also my friend, well, I should switch gears.
With hard work A managed to create a certain complicity between her and her partner and got over the feeling of guilt.
At some point D started having trouble in his relation and started confiding in A about all their problems. It doesn't matter how his partner found out, but she did and she clearly wasn't very happy. It was their breaking point. Also, A knew for sure she wasn't the cause of their separation or the base of the problem, she felt pretty bad about it. After a clarifying discussion with D, she told him to put himself in his partner's shoes... How would you feel if...?
After a lot of discussions D managed to get back to his partner and they solved their relational conflicts.

Also, A and D are still friends, that was the moment when they detached themselves from their emotional connection.
 Second example:
N and V got divorced. A few other things contributed to their divorce, but emotional cheating was one of them.
You know that moment when you find your husband being cheesy with someone on the internet in a way that he has never talked to you? And I was ready to get over it..., even over their affair, but in a couple of years he got back in touch with her and things broke again between us.
He did cheat, not only emotionally, which evolved in a physical affair and he promised that he will stop...and it stopped, but only the physical...
These are examples, so that we are clear on what we are talking about...


How do you know that you are having an emotional affair or your significant other is having one?

Secretiveness - It's clear that if you are not sure how your partner will react or you will feel a little guilty - you will try to hide things. In this DNA age and with all the technology, things become pretty easy. This means ... you may take your phone everywhere with you and not allow your partner to sneak a peak for whatever. You may change phone and computer passwords and/ or delete message, emails, phone call history to hide whatever is going on in the background. If you are innocent, you shouldn't fear hiding anything from your partner that you cherish and love.

Disconnecting - No matter how strong your relation is, if you find that there are things that you can't share with your partner - there is a disconnection. Even more, if you used to share certain things with your partner and now you are sharing it with this person. Do you find that you and your significant other talk less and less about dreams, life, hobbies, even problems? When this disconnection evolves it gets to a point when you will also become more detached from your partner also at the physical level because somewhere deep down in you, also you don't want to admit it, you know the other person has become also an imagined sexual partner and intimacy with your partner feels like an emotional betrayal to your friend.

Emotional energy - Also, it doesn't seem obvious, but you think a lot about this person when you are not connected with them. You look forward for that moment when you will be again in touch with them, be it in person or via internet or via phone. You make sure that you spend time together no matter what and that time becomes very important to you. You slowly become dependent on this emotional connection and spend more and more time with this person and/or more frequently.

Guiltiness - You feel guilty if your partner saw you together or caught you talking, texting, writing to this person. You say things to this person that you would never share with your partner and you fear your partner's reaction. You keep a secret the amount of time you are spending with this person (not necessarily face to face, but emailing, texting, chatting etc.). Your friend or you may cross the line of friendship and you encourage the behaviour and try to hide that. Accidently, you may bring this person into conversation, by sharing their view when it comes to general things and you don't want to make your partner aware of how much you know about this person. You feel the need to give explanations or invent things to get you out of these situations.

Criticism - A certain frustration starts to build in you when you are with your partner. It may seem to you that his/ her demands, needs are unfounded. You have a feeling that your partner is demanding too much of you and you start being defensive - about your time, about your work, about your personal time and you start being critic. You may lash out at her/ him for minor things or become very defensive if your partner is questioning your relation with your friend or is making any negative comment on them.

Virtual interest - Also, this may also not be very obvious (depending on previous behaviour) - you spend more time with your phone or computer. You may check your feeds way too often, text when in a social gathering and glance at your phone when driving. Being online under different form your relation and your addiction to this relation may be easier to hide and maintain. After all, it's just a colleague, a business partner, a friend on social media.

Breaking point - Trust your gut, you will certainly feel when something is not exactly right in your relation. From there, you don't have many options.
  • You either choose to go on with the object of your fantasy and break things with your partner OR
  • You break things with your friend and give another chance to your relation.

These affairs are as hard to stop as they are hard to acknowledge.

Next step: Figure out what made you create this connection in the first place. Is it something that is not working in your relation? Is this something fixable? Do you see in that person something that you lost in your partner? Are you looking to this person because you see in this person something that your partner is lacking? Are you attached to them because you missed the chance to be with them at some point in your life? Do you still want to be with them or do you still care and love your partner?  What does this say about you? Be ready to give up on one or the other. No matter what you choose, you will be hurt and you will hurt - you are breaking a relation. This situation that is going on it is not fair to anyone, not to you, not to your partner, not to your friend. The earliest you decide to deal with this problem, the better - you still have a chance to come out clean in both directions no matter what you choose.
 

I am broken

 I'm broken
 
I've written this verses as a reflection on Emotional Cheating - on which you can read more - here.




Just breath...
Words roll out in my head
I know what you said
I know what I've said
I know how you feel
I know how I feel
And yet, I am broken...



I believed and I trusted
And yet my mind refuses to rest
This is for all sleepless nights
Tonight I choose to be broken.



I've bled long ago for a wound
You inflicted...
I thought it was healed
with no scars
But, there is a sign in my heart
And tonight it is again, bleeding.

I sneaked to your side of the bed
To give you dreamy hugs
and kisses
And your phone was alive
With her image.

I know you are not with her
History deleted...
And yet, tonight
I choose to be bleeding.




It hurts
That you gave her
The world in your eyes
The colors that we once shared
This is...
how we met...
A shopping list,
 it's all that's left...
Yes, tonight I am broken.

It hurts, the time
that we no longer spend
It hurts, the words
that we no longer share
The things I thought
were only mine
Are now shared...

I'm broken.
Just breath!
It will end...
in a way or another...
And then you can rest.


Photo sources: Google Images, except the last one.















Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Let it snow...upwards

Have you ever seen snowflakes dancing? No, dancing is the inappropriate word. Have you ever seen snowflakes flying in reverse, from downward to upward? I know how this sounds...and no it's not a snowstorm.

As my eyes shifted from my screen to the screen of life, the music drifting and enveloping the atmosphere from the background, I saw, as mirrored in the window the tiny dots of cotton playing outside. For a split second, I thought I was dreaming. I've left myself fall into the pace of timelessness harmony. The cotton balls hit the window leaving droplets on the glass. Like the sigh of a child I cut the air voiceless, my eyes barely open to make sure that I am still alive and awake. The music conducts without an established choreography the lost agitated snowflakes. I close my eyes and open them again to the same window of time filled with snowflakes going upward as if the earth had been delivering them and sending them into space. The sound of the violin is still dripping in my ears.

Snowflakes, snowflakes...will the sky become white from so many snowflakes? Will my dreams dive at night into the snow leaving traces of color, shame or joy, same as my feet have once left on the ground? Will my thoughts squeak on the snow of the sky as my boots on the white ground? Will the snow of the sky be fluffy and wet? Will it be crunchy and cold? I just have to wait for it to settle down...and for the night to come, so I can fly high and test the snow of the sky. I'll be like a child trying a slide for the first time. Let it snow, let it all be mine...in the land of dreams where the snow comes from the Earth and settles over the sky, where I can't feel the cold, where I can breathe the air without having a tube inserted in my nose, where snowflakes are not just a memory, but I can catch them in my palm.
Let it snow, let it snow today and tonight, taking my soul from the hospital bed to the peaceful dream of the winter above.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

A quiet love

Ice flowers painting the windows
Piano music flowing in my ears
A fictional glass of wine
This is all that today, I have
A little angel sleeping in my arms.

Ice fractals creating beauty
When I hear her quiet breathing
I know why I fell in love,
It is the sound of music
Like a brush, painting a canvas.


A frozen butterfly on the glass,
Wings of hope melting time,
It can't be only you and me
Love...is the peace I have inside
While chanting this life.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The last of us

One of my sleepless nights... Last year I had the unfortunate chance of hearing about some couples that broke apart after many, many years together...No matter their reasons, it made me aware of how easily we take love for granted, when it's so simple to drift away and lose that common ground. To all of you with broken hearts, I hope you find your peace and you will not stop to fight and love. 

The last of us

I've dreamed of you last night
And you were young and beautiful
And we were drinking coffee
And chatting like never before.
When I looked into your eyes
I knew we were perfect.

But, that was just a dream
Of a time that never came.
We heard the words of the world
They made our skin bleed
And we turned our heads
And run, run far away.






I still remember how you used to call me
It was a game they didn't understand
There was no need for promises
I knew you used to love me
Your eyes gave you away
I’ve sent the same message backwards.

I don't know why we died
But, it doesn't matter anymore
Now, if I look into your eyes
They are empty, gorgeous and blind
You treat me with a fake smile
I treat you with a fake coffee.


It was just a dream of us
A dream that never made it too far
Two friends in the night alienated by life
Two strangers in the night
Reunited under the moonlight...

So easily passing by,
So simply saying
              Goodbye!!!


Image Sources: Google Images

Monday, November 2, 2015

On politics and the power of people

Good governance depends on the people that are in power, but you cannot be in power without the power of your people.                                

How can a handful of people control millions? Because the masses are ignorant, because they act like a flock of sheeps that needs a shepherd to find the best pastures. And until the sheeps become smart enough to choose the best shepherd they will always be attacked by predators, they will be milked, sold and killed by the shepherd for his own profit, no matter how many pastures he destroys or how many generations of sheeps are passing by in his lifetime.
                                                    
 But, we humans we have a brain, a different brain than a sheep, and still, we kneel and follow with the same ignorance until we bleed and die. From two evils we pick the lesser evil and we hope that the worse will not happen to us, that we will not be the sheep that has to die tonight to feed the shepherd. And sometimes this is how some get by, their entire life, sometimes  the entire flock becomes a casualty in "the greater good" for the perpetuation of a social pattern.

The history has shown us that when human masses had enough, they trampled their leaders. That is called a revolution. But think about it - after how many generations of sacrificed sheeps?

Let's stop being sheeps when it comes to politics that dictate our future.
Nelson Mandela said, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”


Even if you don't like to admit it, even if you are afraid, even if don't like the stress of leadership, YOU are critical to the global movement of change.
When we understand that this is how it works, we will have found the beginning of a solution to our problems. And then...it comes the action! You are no longer one, you are many. And only after we can say - We have made history.
Don't let others dictate your own history. Get involved...today!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Can you break free from your own destiny?


Last night I had a chat with a friend of mine about things that happened in her life. She was saying that we are all puppets in the hands of destiny. I asked her:
Can you break your own destiny?

She told me she thinks differently. She believes that we can’t change our own destiny and all we have to do is to accept it. We don’t have to force it. We have to reconcile with ourselves and continue on our way. But we cannot befriend it because the evil never sleeps and it’s on the same way as we are. We can only keep a fair distance from our own destiny to keep out of trouble.
I told her I don’t want to believe that.
She told me that I was young, with age I would believe the same thing. She said that actually believing this is more relaxing and lets you breath easily.
Maybe this is why sometimes I have trouble breathing – hahaha.

I noticed then that there is a contradiction in myself – From experience, I wanted to believe her, but that would have meant I wasn’t truthful to my spirit. I always fought my own destiny because I always believed that you create your own destiny. Happiness starts with yourself.
Today I shared with her a quote: (Indian saying) No matter who you meet, he is the right person. No matter what happens, it is the only thing that would happen. No matter what time things started, all for the moment. Has ended, is over.

She replied to me with this: “c'est la destinée” (It’s destiny.)
I repeated myself saying that I don’t like this destiny business. I refuse.
She looked at me as if I was an innocent child not knowing what he is saying.
I told her I am worrier and that I want to stay that way.

 Fate vs destiny
While writing this I also realized something – that we often don’t make a distinction between fate and destiny, just because they are synonyms. In reality, there is a slight difference.

Fate is something predetermined that will happen no matter what, in spite of any of your actions. Destiny is a set of predetermined events within your life that you take an active course in shaping.
I tend to believe that we have sort of a fate that is given to us at birth through the circumstances: our genes, our environment, our economic and social status. I mean when you are born you have let’s say, millions of possibilities. From the first decision that was taken for us, probably taken by our parents, we start shaping our future. We pick a direction each time and with each direction we reduce a little, almost imperceptibly the chances we were given at birth.
To give you a more concrete example:
I was born in a different country, that at some point in my life I chose to leave. Most surely, at birth I was given the option to live and have a life there. The moment I left I changed my destiny. I could go back, there is no question about it, but it will never be the same as if I would have stayed in the first place. Fate may still be there, but destiny has changed.

I think that once in a while we all need to reboot because the system gets too clogged. No matter what life brings our way, we have to try again and again. And hopefully next time after a restart, it will work better. 

When I was young, a scryer looked at my palm and said to me:
“You girl, you have gone ahead of your destiny.”
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
She replied: “You will never know if you keep challenging your own path.” She had another look at my palm and said: “There are many good and bad things coming your way. Too many…Is like you never like to rest and you want to experience everything.”
I didn’t ask her again if that was good or bad. To tell the truth, I prefer not to know. Not in this way. If I glance to the future I prefer it to be in my own way.

I totally forgot about this until now…when I am in one of the rebooting phases of my life and it happened I had this discussion. For a couple of years now, I didn’t challenge my destiny – I let it play its cards and this game had become boring and cruel in the same time. Once in a while I still take a different plane than the one I am supposed to. It brings a momentary smile on my face. Is like I played a trick on the destiny (one drop in the blue ocean compared to the waves it brings to us). But is not that, destiny, as well? Just a different option.

So, yes, I truly, truly believe you can break your own destiny…just one step at a time or through the craziness of the moment. That way you will never know if what you did was good or bad compared with something else. If it’s good, better for you; if it’s bad, just another line in your palm. You can’t just sit and wait. It’s boring. And more than boring is time consuming, and time is life. Your life.
And if the destiny challenges yourself, play back with your own cards.
Last summer destiny played a really bad joke on me. I was really angry and sad. I knew I couldn’t change that situation, it was simply not in my power, but even if it was something negative I wanted to play my best card and make a “good” memory out of it. Now, if I think back at it and even shed a tear, there is a resigned smile on my face, because I know I fought with all my might. I made a good sad memory out of it, a powerful memory. 
Take each moment as it comes, cry if you have to cry, scream and yell, laugh and dance if that's the case, but let it go once is gone. 

We are never truly the winners, but we can’t accept to be defeated, either. After all, it’s your happiness on the line. At the end of the road you’ll have a smile or a tear; you will not receive neither a medal neither a kick in the ass, you’ll end the same way as everybody else – dust. Be a freaking smiling dust! (This is a strange expression, but I hope you understand the meaning).
Not because it will count anymore for you…Just for the universe. Be positive.

You don’t have to have necessarily a good relation with your destiny. You are just two old pals sometimes getting along, sometimes fighting, and sometimes pretending you don’t care. From time to time you need to have a face to face chat.
Enough is enough.

If you want to find out about a few tips on how to change things in your life, like bad habits follow this link.

The mocking moon


In the night a beam of light
Sneaked on my pillow
Strangely enough, it was
A thief with a golden sword
Trying to pull out my eyes.
A thief with a golden sword?
That was when I realized
It was a dream.
In a heartbeat, I woke up
And as my eyelids opened
The moon, startled me
With a silly laugh...
From behind the curtains
Of my window.
Now, I totally need a hug
To hide my face
From the mocking spy.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Project Plan?

Found this poem in an old notebook from around 2010 or 2011. Work obsessed ? Nein, nein...just playing...

Look into the blue part
1011
Prime script for two months

Who is going to write that stuff?

Do the migration
To prove the process

It will all work for the pilot
After the pilot is complete

We will estimate 10% vibration
Send that data to us
We would have access to the source files?
What integration for the support and maintenance?
Six months before production
If you do the math
That is nine per month
Look into the damn blue part. 

Friday, January 24, 2014

The eyes of the abyss

Remembering Caraz Cesui with Anaiss Nomara
Did it happen to you that someone had a huge impact on you with you not really acknowledging it? And when they were gone from your life, you missed them until also that feeling disappeared and then the time passed and you have forgotten everything until one day something small, ridiculous triggers those feelings back in your head and brings that person back in your life.

For about a year now, I remembered him…“the man with the eyes of the abyss”. That’s how I used to call him. And the spark was not coming from a madeleine displaying his eyes, ha ha ha or simply me looking at those eyes, but something he had written. Do you know how many times I had seen those eyes after that period and I haven’t thought of them as abyss? I tried very hard to remember why I used to call him that and what made me stop…because I knew I was never really in love with him and he was not even a close friend. There was something mysterious that was hidden in the boxes of memories of my head, like a story, a fantastic story from a different world. The other day I remembered it again accidentally listening to a song that he also liked. The man with the eyes of the abyss came back for a second knocking at the doors of my soul, leaving a strange heartbeat behind before disappearing into oblivion again. I had to find out who was that man and what he had represented in my life back then.

And believe me, I’ve laughed very hard when I found out from an old notebook containing messages dedicated to him. The man with the eyes of the abyss, not my ex, not my friend, a stranger,… my muse. Yap. You guys, have girls for muses, why can’t we girls have guys? Well, as crazy as it seemed I had a half notebook full of written things dedicated to him, not out of love, well simply because he was my inspiration. It was enough to see him and my mind drifted away opening into a different universe where he was the king of fantasy. Love? I wasn’t actually fantasizing about my love and his, but I still called it love, because I was fascinated by his being, by his soul. 
And all I wanted was his soul. That desire was expressed actually quite poetically at the end of some of the verses or short stories. Now, that made me laugh again so hard that this morning I wanted to ask him if someone before has requested his soul. This sounds so malefic. It still amuses me. “Gimme, your soul! Right now!” Oh, and I also had to stare at his picture for about five minutes to find the abyss that I kept talking about. With a little effort…and a little help from a mysterious girl, I forgot about, Anaiss…let’s see who was or is the man with the eyes of the abyss.

It was during university years and three quarters of the female race had a crush on this tall guy from the Literature department with curly light brown hair and celestial blue eyes, a sensual full mouth, high cheek bones and a romantic air, like Byron and of course, a poet. I still make a face of aversion that after all this time I remember his traits or almost and I try to display them as lyrically as they were seen. What can I say, a beauty? No matter how ironic, I’m trying to be, I have to recognize, he was quite beautiful, he just didn’t appeal to my senses in any way. My friends were hysterical when he was passing by, the female race was falling at his knees and they thronged to see him. I was disgusted. My friends dragged me to the hallway because the beauty king was passing by and they were trying to convince me of his qualities. And while I was barely fitting in a doorway, totally bored and listening to their rattle, I saw him – the man with the eyes of the abyss. A smile appeared on my face as if I had discovered the mystery of the world. 
Those eyes were infinite in blackness, immeasurable, the entire universe fitting in those black eyes, a profound pit, a hole with no bottom, in space and time. I thought for a moment that he smiled back to me, but I probably imagined it or I was wrong, with all that femininity display around me.

“His friend is totally cool,” I mumbled to my friends. “Poet? Look at those black eyes…”
“His friend is our colleague, you idiot!” one of my friends replied to me ignoring the rest of my comment.
Yap, I must have looked like an idiot not to recognize one of my colleagues, but that was the moment when I actually first acknowledged him. And I don’t know if it was his white shirt, and his oily raven hair, or his face, with pretty normal traits, but those eyes touched something so frail in my soul, that I couldn’t stop wondering about them.

Of course, my friends finding out about my new interest, started to give me inputs about him: who he was, what he did, what school he was coming from etc. etc. But I didn’t care, all I wanted was to see his eyes and find out what it was beyond those eyes, what was behind that gate in a different universe. And each time I saw him after that, I discovered a different universe. I was already writing about the countless worlds behind those eyes. I was fascinated, not by the man, but by what he could have been.
One day, when we found out that my cousin had been their classmate, my friends asked him so many questions about the two men that my head hurt. I forgot instantly almost everything I was told. When we were left alone, my cousin looked me in the eyes and asked me the question that I refused to ask myself.
“So, you like him, ah?”
“Like?” the words paused on my lips for long and I didn’t know what to reply. “I don’t know if I can say that I like him…” I replied uncertain. And because I was pounding too long, my cousin continued.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t think he is your type and clearly you are not his type.”
And then it clicked.
“No,” I jumped. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him in that way. I don’t know him to like him. I actually don’t care,” I replied laughing. “I just think he is a smart guy that I would like to know a little better or maybe not...I don’t know. I am not interested in him as a man. Leave it... it’s not what you think it is.”
And that where it was left and everybody else decided to leave me alone, with my weird single sided platonic love, if it could be even named that, maybe better phantasmagoric love.

I didn’t care who he was in reality, but the man with the eyes of the abyss was everything else in the universe that I was seeing behind his eyes. He was an immortal wall of time in the building of space, and one little window wanted to be protected, but he couldn’t protect only her from the bad weather, because he was too busy with all the other windows. He had become shriveled and the little window felt pity for him because they were both dirty and forgotten by the human race. In a poem Cleopatra was mourning his death and in another he was the light of the stars in a pitch black night with no name. He was the absence of time and the time itself. He had built himself from the sand of time grain by grain, he had felt love and hate and pain, he had felt joy and shame, he forgave and was forgotten, he blanked out his infinite past choosing to live a simple human life and with each missed memory a grain was dropping from his body. The infinite time was dying unconsciously, forgetting who he was. With each written line, I was reminding him indirectly, knowing that he would never discover that I knew his secret. He was not human, not in my mind…he was the immortal time, the man with the eyes of the abyss.

One day someone had mistaken my rhymes for love, again. In my try to defend myself, I ceased to write, about the “beautiful child with infinite eyes” and I only seen him for what he was in other people's eyes, a merely human being, one of my classmates. But, somewhere in my heart remained that feeling that somewhere in my life, I’ve met, the time itself. 

The time

To Caraz Cesui by Anaiss Nomara

Stranger, with hourglass eyes
I’m waiting for you in the night
The liquid moon is filtering the light
Into my teary eyes
Come, stranger, with hourglass eyes
And let me glance at your eternity
I promise I will respect the sand
Hidden in your eyes
I will treasure each grain
Full of your love.



(Image reflecting a dying star)

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Abyssal eyes


To Caraz Cesui by Anaiss Nomara



In your abyssal eyes
I wish to lose myself
And in the desolation of the sea
I want to call your name
From the forgotten history
Your name resonates stormy
It’s you…
It’s you…
Beautiful and rebellious
Ancestral child of the immortal facts
I’m calling you…
I’m calling you…


(image edited by Scutu Mix)