Who knew the mysteries of those soft falls of the leaves, that subtle noise, when one leaf collided with another already fallen and dried up from the previous day, those movements and changes could not be appreciated by the woman, despite the nature of her intentness. Nature did not yield her to those sounds, neither made them for her ears. – “Sometimes, I search and search around me trying to find what I long for, the missing piece of my puzzle, being as if we were born incomplete and it was a vital necessity to rebuild ourselves throughout the days. Where to search? How?” -. We do not search only through the weakness of our feeble will. If we consider unfulfilled desires or aspirations, it would be a complete ruin, a disaster for our spirit... I couldn’t for my soul know how. Let’s our consciousness wander and discard disappointments. It could pass for having a high tolerance for frustration. When what we don't like is accepted, we are capable of moving to a higher state of mental improvement and have the most passionate devotion to life.

There were fewer leaves left to fall, but she didn't hear them fall... she enjoyed herself with the colours, colours pleased her greatly, so much beauty in those lights and so much perfection in those substances of the leaves, the floor as a carpet of tufted gold. There was she, delighting herself with many existences in the material world around her. Those noises were made for the cat's ears. He could, the cat was capable. He enjoyed every quick and almost imperceptible change; it was an enjoyment to see the play of his ears according to the direction each sound came from, he was possessed with a passion to discover. The feline was in his realm, his vital splendour. Controlling the ground around even with every nut that it occasionally hit as it fell and was playful rolling between his paws.

- “When you break through the barrier of frustration, a serene moment arrives and the path to spirituality begins”-. Haven't you wondered why in so many old portraits the portraited have their eyes turned up? They don't look ahead or at the ground, they look up. Many would say it is simply a question of religiosity, maybe yes or maybe not, but the demeanour of the person is shown there. Those eyes! Those large, those divine orbs! A strange serenity that I have felt in the glances of unusually emotionally aged people.

- “The point is about overcoming the material barrier that ties us to the earth, to everyday life, to everyday problems, to pain, to physical or mental exhaustion”-. She couldn't hear the same as her cat did, but she was able to withdraw consciousness from her mind, to float on a level of rest and emptiness. Her mind stopped working and gave way to spirituality, approaching the full knowledge of her existence.

Every day people are losing unworldliness, tolerance for loneliness, the ability to stop for a moment or live slowly. Shall these things be undeviatingly so? I mean to say if she couldn't hear the leaves fall, she was going to be with them in suspense, in presence, in length of time and her subsequent reflection.

- “Release the demon in you, take off your shoes and sit down to rest”-.

 Rest... that is the great meaning of life experience. Without any rest, there is no awareness of your life. Stop and look without looking. Look inside with your mental eyes. It's not your hair, it's not your skin... the great treasure is your interior. Your will therein lies, which dies not.

And those beautiful blue eyes invite you to stay here... and peer into his large eyes.

That the cat loved me I should not have doubt it. The wild eyes – of my love.

Certainly, it’s difficult for others to know for sure what is going through our heads. Sometimes we try to explain ourselves, to feel a connection with the other person, but despite the effort, everything falls on deaf ears. In her case that day, she chose the option of avoiding her thoughts, that state where there is no wear and tear, or effort to try to make others understand us. Efforts would be among considerations beyond our depth.

A cool air played with her web-like softness hair, caressing her shoulders and the nape of her neck. That part, the nape of her neck, the main stimulus for her thought. On that afternoon in the autumn of the year, where clouds hung oppressively low, the heat of the eggs was present. It was a warm sweetness stretched out in her lap…she could almost feel her going through the basket. It was very recently that she had collected them in the nest. The afternoon was cool, the only heat radiating from the basket and from her very being. She had tried to herd the chickens, but they were unruly, they had their temper, and it was crazy and a real challenge to regroup them. Still, she liked to watch as they chewed through the fresh grass and scratched up the dirt in search of worms. How could these little birds contain so much gesture of arrogance?

Dusk was falling, light was running out. Back home, she decided to rest a bit on the stone seat, it was cold and that caused a shiver to run through her body.

The terrain was the same, but everything had changed a lot. She was glad that some structures had remained standing, at least to give animals a roof.

She didn't like changes, nor big news. Over time, she had become a person of habit.

That day her choice was abstraction, introspection... in truth, she didn't have the strength to make her day-to-day to be understood, if she didn't even understand it herself. She did not let go of the basket at any time, as if it were her precious talisman that protected her.

On her shoulders, on her neck... she felt the breathing of the fresh air and also an enormous heaviness. That weight, that worry that clearly stunned her, came undoubtfully from the old house. That decayed building was the cause of her dreariness of thought.

A rural house that once was new and beautiful, as everything is at the beginning. When we meet something for the first time, we feel that it is magnificent, fresh and ingenious... then deterioration comes, without mercy, without pity. Abuse and neglect. The house, once a home, now ruins, was falling by itself but it didn't do it in silence. Even portions of masonry had fallen, displaying in a sad spectacle.

The cracks made noises, the wind moaned, like a singular voice, running fast and eager through holes and cracks. The crumbling walls spoke of better days. Shutters were falling or just banging furiously. Noises had the power of affecting her.

Noticing those things, she listened. She was not impervious to the moment, nor to the noises.

She would like to sit on the portal of the house and listen, saying to herself: -"What do you want, what do you want from me?”-.

She felt like closing her eyes and using her ears to understand the groans, the creaks of the singular battlements, which had undoubtedly defended that home, that property and the livelihood of the family. Do those who defended on the battlements moan? Are they still prisoners there in their pain? With their wounds or fear?

-"I'd like to sit and listen"- the woman said to herself.

She liked silence very much, silence was wiser, broken only by the wind and the creaks of inexorable decay, of irredeemable gloom.

-"I would like to stop time; I would just like to feel and not to gaze"-.

There were no words out of place that afternoon, no distractions. There was only the groan of that forgotten house as the sunset of life, in confrontation with the warmth of the heat in the eggs, in her hands. The origin of life. The beginning and the end.

She was static in front of the extremes.

-"I would like to just feel. I would like to just think and spend those moments in silence". Quiet and resting, the fall of the afternoon surprised her. Without speaking she began the return.

No sooner had those moans were left behind than the shades of the evening drew on.

That beautiful moment where the most different coloured leaves fall...

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

[…] Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown. (John Keats)

Have you thought why people have always been so attracted to birds? why? Birds and their songs have given rise to a lot of literature, poetry where people have felt identified with them. Being these verses part of one of my favourite poems, Ode to a nightingale, by John Keats.

I ask myself and it’s to wonder why these small animals, apparently so weak and so beautiful, why do they have such a power of attraction?

It could be because in reality, they are a means, a boat, a way of transportation, to get to another place, to be able to leave this world as we know it, maybe when we don't like it or when we want to escape from problems of everyday life. There are always these little animals that without thinking or realizing it, attract us.

Actually, we don't think we’re going to sit down and listen to birds and hen we’re going to escape with them, no.

In my opinion they are something else, they are like those in charge of remembering and helping people to transport themselves, where? I do not know. According to my current consciousness, they help us to want or to be able or to wish to pass to another dimension, that is however more desired, even than anything else, such as certain substances, pleasures or foods. In front of anything else there are always these little animals that are actually demigods.

Little gods.

The woman hears the golden oriole singing, beautiful and slippery as they are. That's where her name comes from, from gold, oriolus. She, without even thinking about it neither wanting it, hears its song and feels transported in a limited way. Birds help and have some function that we do not know and it is up to us to discover it.

Discover how they interact with people and what they are, the beautiful birds that attract us and that remain and will always remain as much or longer than us.

Cold light of twilight or dimly warm light of sunset, it doesn't matter… stones are not supposed to speak, neither are lights. In her mind she ruminated on the idea of ​​how many times she had crossed that threshold, that gate of her home, and not so much how many times, but rather at what moments.

Who is able to quantify the times we cross the entrance of our home? Even more difficult, not only to quantify, with a simple counter it could be possible, it is about qualifying, taken into account that… each step under those arches, doors, porticos... beautiful jambs, are bearers of special moments of our existence and do we even realize?

Hesitant and at the same time determined, she wanted to go through the entrance of what had been her home again and it was no longer. The great pain, the great doubt came to ask if that physical place could be something more than that, a mere handful of materials, arranged according to people's preferences.

In the surroundings all was silence, broken by the sound of a bird singing or the familiar cock-a-doodle-doo of a rooster. Stopped in those lights, if she could hear a rooster, that shows us that at that moment what was happening, was that those dark and cold lights of dusk gave way to a new day.

Everything has changed a lot, we want to be modern, turn to the rhythm of a world in constant change, but we lose humanity, we leave our most human and natural essence in it. What is the point now that men wake up with the first crowing of rooster? Then women wake up with the second crowing of rooster and finally children open their eyes to the new day with the braying of donkeys. What's the point? Natural lights matter little, she already moves in a world illuminated at will.

I’m disoriented, she’s disoriented… we go crazy in these unknown lights. Even disoriented we have sought certainty and comfort and progress throughout life. To go from being covered by the beautiful celestial vault, to being protected by the roof of a great cavern. More concrete with time, each one is protected by the jambs and the entrance of their own home.

Illusory to think that everything is nonsense, a game of the mind, that idle does not know where to work. It's not trivial. It is so important in our lives to be covered with a roof over us that even in our eternal appreciation we decorated it with paintings, we painted the stone or we studied the stars... now we settle down and settle for a porch, also decorated as we pleased.

Ninth hour, prime hour... what difference does it make! it doesn't matter!... the summary of life that passed under that threshold, that entrance, does matter.

Now, think about your entry and you will have a summary of your own life.

Your wandering around the world is marked by transcendental moments, framed at the entrance of your home. Imagine standing under your entrance, in the current or previous ones of your life. Around those pillars your existence is summarized. If you have to remember many entries, it is also a reflection of a restless life. If you have no door to remember, the answer to your continual restlessness or restlessness or detachment may be found there. Are we beings attached to material things? yes, without any doubt because we are ephemeral. We have to associate ourselves with something to try to frame our existence.

With a certain sadness, even besides those jambs… one comes out lying down in the final sleep. Or you enter with a baby in your arms. How many memories do those doors give you? Many, few… are there too many doors? I don't even consider there to be an entry of mine, think about!

Why is a front door so important? Because we have always looked for a roof, where to find our place in contrast to the infinite open sky.

She thinks of the door of her home, of some entrances and… memories run like shivers down her spine... she knows she is not alone, for now she crosses the threshold, one day she will be in eternal sleep, without stepping, others will step for her, helping her on the final journey.

Let your entries tell you about your life, let them fill your mind and mood with memories. The entrances speak a lot, because a large part of your life wandered under them, under their gaze... perhaps you are always in a hurry and you have not realized.

Every time you walk under them, they hug you!

In another place, in another way of measuring time… the woman rested, not feeling enslaved to anything, not even to that specific moment, as if that instant perhaps had a physical dimension. That beach, that little corner of the Earth had no temporary structure, neither measurable nor tangible. No one could catch the woman, subject to the conditioning of a “here and now”. There was no now, but the beach did exist.

Every day we feel how the passage of time is taking its toll on our body, on our power, on our capacity, not only physical but also intellectual, and that can sometimes be depressing to a certain extent, and on that occasion, she managed to sit still, contented, lying in a very special place where she is not reached by any of these coordinates that condition people so much.

It could be incredible, but she managed time as she wanted, since it seemed that it hadn’t got a physical dimension and she grabs it with her hands and stopped it or simply put it under the sand, symbolized in a clock, a structure capable of measuring something that really seems tangible. Out of sight, she stayed in a stunning mimicry with the landscape, with the rocks where it would seem that everything is made of the same material, as if it were been taken from the landscape and there, she looked at you, enjoying that moment and perhaps thinking that maybe she would manage to stay there forever or escape from this day to day, measured and made for people, for all of us.

Day-to-day tasks that can be magnificent, can be an opportunity to make great achievements, shine, stand out, but always subject to that physical dimension of time that destroys us so much or undermines us. The ideal would be to find a place where there is only “a so-called space” with a beach and a short moment where her thoughts, sweetness, sleep, laughter, waiting for love and many other good sensations could pass.

Who grabs time with his hand and stops it or manages it in his favour?

In truth we cannot, but that is what Art is for… to make something that can remain in some way: timeless, stopped and taken out of that inescapable and physical dimension and to which we are subjected. Art is timeless.

She will be resting, smiling, waiting and shining forever at that moment, in that other place and also with the advantage of always looking at the amazing sea.

The moment on the sand is stopped, suspended and will shine forever as a forgotten moment.

Thou! who jump through the grass, who show yourself far down the road, precious blackbird, who don't see you… is because they don't want to. You give yourself between the leaves full of raindrops, rub yourself, you are simply too joyful. Seen here and there, oh merla! always with me.

I know that I cannot imitate your flight on a swing, but feeling the air that hits my face, the small drops of fine rain and the movement of the swing… look at it! … they bring me closer to you, to your freedom, so that I can touch it with my hands, with the tips of the toes and in the swing the feet point high, as high as your flight. Each rocking and pushing of the body forward act as a gentle feeling of detachment, of release. How impressive it must be to fly in the sky, above everything and everyone, among clouds, feeling fine rain and cold air!

Thou were always there from the beginning, like a premonition, a good expectation, always by my side. Curious is your song in the middle of the night or in the busy afternoon. The city is in too much of a hurry and is immersed in exaggerated activities, which take up people's time, everything is programmed in excess, more tasks than can be assumed in the hours of a day. There is no time to stop to look at you, singing blackbird! king of the orchards. Black dot that at the same time flies that walks between plants in the “huertas”.

Maybe you're black to go unnoticed in a world where you don't fit. Neither you nor anyone.

Your black colour does not imply rejection, it leads to my curiosity. As in free flight, as in deciding to be unrestricted, one makes one's way through darkness. You are darkness and you are salvation.

You can't imagine how much I love you “merla”, you've been there from the beginning of everything!

I keep hearing you sing at night and I know you will always be with me.

Thank you for teaching me to fly, thank you for teaching me to pay attention to freedom.

Always next to the Mediterranean Sea...

She could sense that the sailboat was behind her, out of her sight, there on the horizon, just where the sky meets the Earth, and she felt it because she had truly seen it before that day, had walked along its deck, had entered its rooms, she had had a look at the sails, how they filled with pride when receiving the blow of the wind. The woman had planned that trip, she had thought of it, she had dreamed of it, and yet now she was nowhere in sight of it. She knew better than anyone the noise of its engine or, if necessary, the lurching of the sails as they filled with air.

That day she was sitting on the rock, on that beautiful beach. The scarf was the only link between the sailboat and the woman. It could be said that the blue scarf was the only link that united or connected them, if there were any traces of any relationship or connection.

Let’s analyse, the sailboat represents a dream and a dream where she does not sail, but nevertheless she knows it well because she has seen it, she has felt it, she has walked on its deck, worked for its guidelines, for the project. She has helped to prepare what is necessary so that somehow that trip was possible, in which she saw herself included, but strangely she is on land, sitting on the rock, listening to the sea, the breaking of the waves. These sounds, for good, are reassuring, and even the short sharp screech of seagulls could be said to reassure her. Facing her dreams, with her back to her dreams, she feels somehow amazingly grounded in reality.

The sailboat means "what was thought", "what was imagined". Sailboats are dreams and the beach, the sand, the hard rock means true reality. Let’s imagine how many times our mind and ourselves embark on lots of dreams or specific illusions, that even, we know how to think to see ourselves embarked.

Paradoxically, we prepare them or we are participants in their beginning, in their set-up, for the start of it, and yet afterwards we do not go in them, we are not part of these dreams. Facing our own dreams. Strangers’ dreams?

Sailboats were never ours and in truth the error or the failure is in our specific mind and in our way of being, that, instead of simply doing things with our own lives, creating projects and embarking on ideas, on the contrary, we create depending on others or with other people, and what’s more important, in dreams never dreamed by other people.

In the end, our spirit and our desire are the only world that has really thought and organized all that experience and we really don't realize it until… it happens to us. Until you see yourself on land, you feel that the sailboat is leaving and then you realize that this was not your dream that you thought you had been a part of, well, honestly, it was not.

Really, the day we learn to only create things that are safe for us, projects where it really only involves or involves a large part of our purpose and not that of others, only then, will we be able to do more, create more, we will become happier and will be able to have a greater mental balance and greater happiness.

Let sailboats sail, let dreams be dreamed and really think about what is yours, your nature and what you are really embarked on with commitment and the less you depend on others... the better.

That is a nature that many people handle, or a way of being and it is to make plans where we even participate, but then at the moment of truth they are nothing of ours.

So, let the sailboat sail, follow its course and while let the wind play with the handkerchief and caress her hand and her back.

The seagull is the only witness of so many dreams that did not come true and that it is it, the seagull, who wakes us up to reality. The reality is the sand and the breaking of the waves. The only certain thing: the noise and the sound of waves.

The beauty of the sea.

(Laura Marco)

***

Surely this path was familiar, this pathway that led alongside the hidden stream. A difficult section had to be walked before arriving at the place; narrow and full of bushes, with a certain slope, which made slipping easy. Everywhere, nature claimed its place, did not let any path remain drawn, did not give up its ground. The teaching was: if we don't often walk that distance, we will already know that it will be erased, it will disappear.

Careful not to slip, she reached the water's edge. It was pleasant, really refreshing… inspirational was the water and so was the silence. That silence that relaxed her mood.

Sometimes the fact of not hearing anything can be a gift. Exposed as we are during the day to so many sounds that we do not choose to hear, every so often, annoying. It is a gift not to hear more than the crystalline flow of the water, which follows its course, oblivious to the hustle and bustle of people.

She was sitting there, and while cooling her feet, she was not aware of any danger, or was she? Perhaps she did know that there was a danger really close to her, but she was simply calm, without further ado, doing what she had come to do. Overcoming her rejection or her dislike. The thinking was that: if we are able to sit down, next to what we don't like, to accept it... we have gained a lot. We have accepted reality with its pros and cons. If we become familiar with adversity and accept it, our path and our day to day will be easier.

How can we sit quietly, be next to danger? … how can we sit quietly next to our fears or the projected fears of others, next to all that adversity?

It is not in another way, that… with receptivity and acceptance, that we are next to what we do not like every day and we come out victorious. It doesn't matter how she does it, but sooner or later, she will go by the little stream, happier or less happy, but calm, looking at the streamside as it was.

Acknowledging that we have a negative and sinister side is a step forward to reach the cooling stream and rest. Besides, knowing that we also suffer from that negative side of others, is to be taken into account. It works in both directions.

Life could be a succession of action and acceptance, and then again, action and acceptance... until reaching the end of the days. Until reaching rest.

She would not want to spoil anything in the enchanting place, not even that because of her fault, her smell, her changing movements, animals stopped coming to drink water, to purge or to clean themselves. She would like to be part of the place, but she felt like a guest; a place which she can enjoy for a few moments.

Later, when lights go down and began to get dark, she would return to her home and she knew that fears and demons were loose and roam by our side… anywhere, even in a quiet stream and that they travel with us also. The ideal is to become familiar with them, understand that they are part of our human nature.

What if when those demons appear, bad mood... we just put them to rest and cool off by the stream?

So many things can be done.

Because many times we perceive through lights and shadows

So many times, we sail in calm and turbulent waters.

If we know how to live with what is evident and with what is uncertain

If we don't stop walking no matter if there is light or darkness

This wandering through life will be a smooth journey

or at least everything will be an achievement.

Success is simple: today there is light and tomorrow there will be shadow,

but there will always be… a day after tomorrow.

When she woke up in the morning, still asleep and with an almost repetitive, cyclical thought that would not let her wake up, as if she had come from a long dream that she never came out of, as if she repeated herself and fell into the same trap and returned to falling with that heavy thought… she finally got up and started her day.

With her body and mind a little asleep, she also begins a ritual of cleansing, personal hygiene, slow breathing, a ritual that can be extended in a much broader or more precise sense.

The day begins and the morning opens its doors so she wakes up and knows that she would always do and follow her responsibilities.

The morning is starting and her muscles and her mind too, and it is time to change, to change everything that is happening to us: everything that we don't like or appreciate what we like.

Familiar things: the jug, the mirror, bathroom utensils, all that is well-known and is what pleases us, but when we wake up and we have to think about where we are, where we have been walking, where are we now. Reflect upon.

The day is crowned by heavy, leaden clouds, above our heads that we could almost catch, an air perhaps oppressive. Immediately one realizes that this dull, somewhat greyish luminosity, in reality only highlights the beauty of the things around us, the beauty and richness of the earth and makes it shine, a lot of light and sparks that awaken our mind and our senses.

A rooster can be heard crowing in the distance, which could be like a modern alarm clock, but it is not, it is something primitive, it is something wonderful, cyclical, circadian, that every day if you attend to it… it will call you and it will call you at the same time, when you wake up, when you get up early, at the beginning of everything, at the beginning of that day and it will invite you to move and walk through some lights in early morning very beautiful and that are worth living and admiring totally.

She is waking up little by little and does not want to miss the magic of life that awakens outside.

Crystal clear water can be heard through the window, outside, it is a jet of water that crosses a small bridge, exuberant with vegetation and she hears the water and visualizes in her mind the small current, she thinks that life runs like the very fast water perhaps and she also believes that if she doesn't like her moment, she should change it... Uplift her spirit.

Make room for the new day and open your arms to so many experiences that each day brings and that call and call in the sound of that water running outside. Of that precious liquid, she has a little in that jug for cleaning, her jug, her jug ​​filled with cold water that awakens her senses and helps her get where she always wanted to be or find her place, who knows?

The lights wake up out there. It’s time!

Resting on that wheat spike bed, so soft and comfortable, she was not entirely aware of the great watchful eye that was surveying at her from the end of the field. A huge cut trunk, with rings that clearly showed the passage of time, with each ring one year passed and that also reflected the time that she had been there expecting and caring or thinking about that surveillance.

Her feeling was like hiding, got hidden from the gaze of that dark iris and that black pupil that was staring at her and it was something that had been repeating monotonously throughout her life.When she was a child, she had hidden herself from the eyes of others. Maybe from her parents at first, who are the ones who say what good and evil are. It seems that we hide to do all the actions that build our personality and guide our path.

Then, it continues to be the same over time, when we already have our own life, then it seems that we need to hide from others so that our own space and our own way of acting and interpreting life will succeed and get through.

In the end, we came to the conclusion that an isolated corner is necessary, a thick veil or a shell around which we can protect ourselves at all times and that gives some space for privacy, but really that giant external eye does not exist and has always been a product of our imagination. Perhaps no one watches over us, or what we do in our lives… Instead, we are we, ourselves, the great guardians of our live, our actions and our desires.

That big pupil from which the woman seems to hide or protect herself or on the contrary is totally aware, that big hesitant eye, all of that is a product of ourselves and of our wandering through life. In the end, what we do or not, will be the result of our own vigilance and care about ourselves, that is not really attributable to anyone else.

In that softness, in that rest, in that becoming where all the wheat spikes come together at gaze, there is really no difference between the eye and the beginning, the foreground and the background, between where we come from and where we are going to, is all the same and is the result of our life and directly an output of our passage through time.

Here I leave her, at calm or fearful of something that only exists in her imagination and with the passage of time, she will come to be next to that eye, sat beside those great watchers, who are actually… “her mind and her heart”.

And finally… the bells ring in her heart. Each tap on the metal, one after another, reaches the soul like one key after another sounding on a piano, the music of semitones. Gently moving the bells, she appreciates how in the end, she got to sit in front of the landscape, of the infinite sky, climbed on the works that she has been accumulating throughout her life. There, almost puzzled she contemplates the endless plain, where its end is not in sight.

And how sweet the bells ring in her heart. On the horizon, the antennas are the reflection of the communication attempt between us, but… what about our surroundings, with all that unseen powerful force that surrounds us? Full of secrets, that wake up if we want to listen to them.  - Gently chime a bell and wait for the answer in your heart... it will come, with each blow, with each sound, an answer will come, friendly and close as a semitone. There will be a long conversation -.

We are so little and we are so much. We last so little and we can eternalize ourselves to infinity. With soul and heart. The best and the essences are within us, they never left, they never will.

It is not an easy task to listen to your heart, to listen to infinity and to life. You just have to find a special time, that is just for yourselves. It is not easy to find a balance, each bell is different, we are different, but we can do the same, create the same beauty if we put our minds to it. So, it's time... it's time to sit down and balance soul, the bells, harmonize their sounds, fill the heart with harmony.

How will you know you have found the way? Easy, when it's hard to express what you feel, but you feel so strong that your chest hurts. In that way, get in touch and bring your sound, little by little, your brilliant semitones help you walk, small steps towards eternity.

The bells are already ringing, seeking their balance and making the woman walk. At last, the earth was united with the sky in unparalleled harmony.

Horseshoes… and what value would they have for those people? horseshoes, either stuck in the lime of the wall or inside walls themselves. There they are; lost, forgotten, still in time, where their owners left them and not because they were dropped or lost by an animal. The use was for their home itself, there those people made their lives and followed proper dreams. At that moment, that afternoon she thought about, she wandered... how many gazes would have followed the lovely sunset from that window, with their eyes fixed, dumbfounded for a moment, leaving their tasks? a hypnotizing sun, either in cold winter, seeing in the sun a relief of comfortable warmth, or also appreciating in that golden sphere, the force that ripened ears of wheat, olives or carob trees. Probably, there would be a crystal, and a crystal was a luxury, a simple sheet of glass that trembled in the slot.

She was amazed when she found a horseshoe inside a double partition, hidden by its owners, something at once worthless and on the contrary full of strength and desires, full of that what is the most expensive in this world: time. Crammed with time.

However, make no mistake, those people did not put all their hope in horseshoes. They value their future in their effort and own work, in their desire to excel, in their desire to live. In love to land, to animals. Owners of a beautiful balance that mankind has managed to maintain for many years.

She touched the old horseshoe, slid her hand over the rust, being careful not to injure with some of the forge nails that still remain, and gently removed traces of lime, which had been deposited when making the second wall closure. How beautiful! How strange! Its rusty texture, its wear over time.

She wondered if by rubbing her fingertips, her palms across the horseshoe, she could feel something. She found herself looking for answers, indeed she was looking for communication… - “What are you doing there? Tell me, who put you there and why? -.

When looking at the sunset, she was looking for answers as well. She followed with her eyes the same rays that other generations had followed, their strength was still intact there, in the little piece of land that was part of their life.

She felt the need to improve, certainly the answers were there… the intensity was still there, in the details around. One just had to be interested enough to look for it, be sufficiently receptive and perceive it.

- “I have seen your secret, after more than a century, their desire and your commitment. Your love of life”-.

Nothing and no one are left behind, we are all… we are in the details and in the energy and in the cycle of days, imbued in repetitive tasks, in the same needs and desires. Can you feel?

Implacable time does not stop, and continues without halting its march... How to stop for a moment? If we are a breath in existence.

Sometimes I have really liked using photo sessions without any previously thought theme such as could be nature or a more spiritual subject, in order to think about. I just enjoy to work on lights and colours. They are indeed interesting photos and I’m sure that over the years I will like to look at them again.

In relation to photography, one need to take care of oneself physically, take care of the body to achieve the effects, we are looking for and the truth is that I am very happy because I have always tried to practice sports to keep myself well.

In fact, I believe that the best investment that can be made over the years and over time, regardless of age, is to invest in sports, in physical activity, in being an active person, giving work to muscles that, inevitably, by moving them, will also keep our nervous system healthy.

I started doing yoga months ago and I am constant, I do it every day... I recommend a book, "My yoga diary" by Xuan Lan, I am devouring it avidly, I read it, reread it, and I practice everything... It is good not only for the body but also for the mind.

Now that I have almost overcome having an injury from a nerve, kind of neuropathy, that of course it also affects muscles. All that is going very well, thanks to practicing sports and especially swimming.

I go swimming two hours a week and it's wonderful for me. The style that I like the most is the front crawl. What happens is that if I always swim in that style, in the end my shoulders end up hurting and that's why I really like to combine it with the breaststroke style that there is opposed to the work of the shoulders, the work of the pectorals of the chest and I also have other muscles that I really like to work, which are the quadriceps.

So, this style with a powerful quadriceps kick and working on muscles opposite to the shoulders, really relaxes a lot. We can compensate and it is very fun to control the movements that when the arms are used the legs are not and vice versa etc.

I actually had an injury and I think it was caused by a sedentary lifestyle due to poor posture from sitting for many hours on the computer crossing my legs and all of that has led to a fairly serious injury and I have had to wait more than a year for the pain, which I still have, not going away, if not so that it becomes bearable.

To people suffering from nerve injury I recommend, of course, under medical supervision but do not forget fats because fatty acids are essential for the health of the nerves and a nerve injury where a nerve is damaged cannot be recovered but it depends on the injury because if it is like when a cable is peeled and there is some damage to the layer that covers it in, the myelin it is composed mainly of fatty acids and it is very good to eat healthy fats such as avocado eat, yolk of the eggs and I have also vitamins type b and some supplement like phosphatidylserine etc. all that can help a lot.

I hope you like this work and I wish you all, above all, a lot of health and also happiness and that the time you have that you invest in physical activity is the greatest treasure that you can have to have health in your body.

I would like to share with you my impressions about this image, so… I like rural life, I like my customs, I am not a person of much technology, I was happier when mobile was used only to call. I like scents, changing colors in sky and these days I’m hearing blackbirds singing at dawn, a beautiful melody that doesn't bother if they wake us up. I'm not fond of plasma, concrete, nor modernity. I embrace modernity in relation to health and I like social networks to be able to present my artwork. It’s sure that I would have been happy to do the same I’m doing with oil paintings, but we should always have a good master by our side, to guide us along the way, even if we learn by ourself, based on trying and falling, and getting up and based on being pushed by your illusion and will. In this sense, the conclusion is that we don't need technology to make art either.

Be sure that they were delicious, the partridges, I didn't buy them, they were a gift and they were hunted. Hunt, today… what a sin! I dedicated part of a quiet morning to weeding and removing the feathers and preparing them to be cooked, I let meat rest in the fridge for one day and then I prepared them in a stew with beans.

Since governments began to say (not doctors, but just politicians) that eating meat causes cancer, that we can't eat meat... I have more desire for meat! Yeah! “You can't eat meat”, I start to think about steak, steaks back and forth on the fire, my mouth is watering.

In fact, since they want to reduce their consumption, I personally eat more quantity of it. Haven’t you heard about "don't do this" and you're looking forward to it. Like in many cases, the most classic one: Lot's wife in the bible turns into a pillar of salt by looking back... don't look back!

In the same way, I also drink more wine because I have read that in news, it is also going to be labeled as a cancer-causing drink. And I think… oh my God! How many abnormal people are on the loose! The more we are in this world, the happier we will be! The more we can help each other and conquer. They only talk about death, sustainability implying death... but they don't talk about brotherhood and conquest and overcoming. They don't want us to eat anything, ummmmm? we better cover our nose and mouth and go four meters below the ground. It’s going to be… no!

She feels the shivers that run down her back and an inevitable gesture makes her touch the skin of her neck, as if to safeguard our most vital part, half as a way of survival to breathe, half as a way of wanting to find that beautiful place that sometimes hurts and that…we call it…sweetly…Soul.

Sitting in the middle of nowhere, in a lost place, a little confused, with mixed feelings, she feels her heartbeat speeding up. The little leaves ring like bells in her ears, and the place is revealed to be full of life, a sweet life, running its course slowly and silently.

Lost, she tries to find her place, her home. And she finds only doubts. Where is her place? Where does her heart fit in, her way of doing things, her way of being? ... and in that uncertainty and search, she fills her suitcase with some clothes, some dear things to take with her.

After wandering around for a while, she arrived at that beautiful place, which seemed to inevitably attract her with incredible force. Sitting there in her suitcase, felt how her environment communicated with her, how was it communicating? Neither physics nor chemistry were going to explain it. It was a very close and vital union, which had always existed, between that incredible nature and people.

There, leaves sang, chimed, and the robust tree hugged her, not letting her escape being confused. The wall stopped her crazy wandering too. In that place, she realized that our being, our home, our essence goes with ourselves, we don't need suitcases, or places to get to.

“The best is within us”, stored preciously as bees would store their jelly or honey. Day after day, year after year… as long as we are alive in this beautiful Earth, “we are a treasure”. The suitcase is within us, our history too, our treasure.

At that moment she realized that she only needed to breathe, fill her lungs and her body with the essence of that place and she knew that she would leave without any suitcase. She didn't need it at all. We're leaving without any luggage.

The best was already inside her.

“The best is what we are, how we love ourselves and others and what we think of ourselves”. There in that place she woke up her heart.

What would happen, if the warmth she was looking for, had already been found? In that sweetness and softness of air and life around her. She sat down and for a long time stopped looking for dry branches to light the fire, although she didn't need the warmth of the flames. She already carried the warmth inside of her, the sweet feeling of many days behind that she had walked in her life. Each time, life was more beautiful, fuller of meaning. It could be that one looks so much outside and the way to go has been inside us.

However, those were her paths, hers, for a short time if we compare it to the future of the universe, of history, a trace so small but it will nevertheless remain there.

It’s not scary to look forward on the path, it feels worse when looking back, that path that one will never step on again.

She carried dry pieces of firewood, appropriate to light the fire, because she likes to cook on the fire, in the flames. Her cheeks burn with heat, the body relaxes and, in that moment, one becomes aware how dependent on food we are to continue living. The most basic, food… and heat entangling and dancing at its whim. Life offers us everything we need while days go by, and paths are walked over and over again...

And there, she noticed the warmth in the air, in her shawl, as if it were early spring. She forgot about the dry branches, just... she feels happy.

May be pleasant to enjoy the tinkling of the water and the distant sound of that tapping of drops, of undulating curls of the liquid element that dances to delight our minds and ears. Relaxing our mood totally. This is how this torrent is born ... in the distance, in an intimate and discreet way, it comes out ready to be part of life. Fortunately, this stream does not stop running incessantly, with crystalline sound, one ripple after another, a clean and pure sound. Who does not want to have a quiet moment, a moment of peace? To sit and have the sound of water close by, water as a basic element, something agreeable that serves at the same time as a messenger that transports fluidly, without difficulty.

In this vision, it is the torrent of water that transports the woman's thoughts, the one that manages and extends the threads of life and that afternoon she sat there, caressing the flowers, playing to throw them in that sea of ​​water, in that plain of curly water, that runs, that is never still. Dreaming that maybe it will take those flowers to a better place.

She gives water her dreams, her thoughts and the flow of her life.

Can be observed how the current is born rabid, noisy between the rocks and runs to finally widen into an immense cosmos. In a universe made of stars is where that current ends and there life also arrives, rather life does not end, life reaches that cosmos, that huge floating space where it remains in another dimension that we still cannot understand well, but that we lovely intuit.

And the woman sends flowers towards the end, towards the cosmos, flowers that are carried away by the water, that are carried away by sound and her memories are also carried away, getting farther away people, experiences, situations, small moments. Her mind makes a reflection and remembers all the people she has met up to this moment in her life, who have somehow formed part of her and how they all flow in a fluid way, without any drama, without any pain… in that current of life.

Just as she moves in the same stream of other people.

That noisy torrent carries the memories, love, moments, joys, emotions, lived intensities, sweetnesses, everything is taken on the way to the stars and to that enormous and cosmic remoteness that human beings still cannot understand and of which we are part. The great traveller is the sound of the water, which is sweet and calm and could be as calm as the sound of a human voice when speaking, sweet and transporting, capable of leading to many precious places.

Perhaps at this moment we are together at the same point of the current and perhaps later we will separate, some of us will stay, others will move in a live and vibrant flow that never ceases, life, the current of oblivion.

Perhaps today the current of change or the current of life.

Grooving on dreams or... Dreaming on grooves. Who knows?

The intention is to illuminate, but at first glance it could seem an external attempt, to illuminate an appearance. On the contrary, the emphasis is on illuminating thoughts, clarifying the way ideas and thoughts flow and work within us.

Maybe it's all about looking at how we are ourselves and ordering our interior. Stop looking for faults and defects in others ... when they may not even exist. It's just a way to justify our behaviour or our limitations.

The passage of time is positive concerning the accumulation of experience, very valuable, which cannot be bought, it is only acquired. At the beginning, everything is very confusing and develops very fast. We are even guided by fear. The passage of time is a puzzle that orders all the pieces of our life, time is the path that is illuminating us. Our thinking is more lucid and consistent with ourselves in further steps of life. We are going to enlighten ourselves inside and, in this way, grow.

Just as light is very important in photography, which is "drawing with light", so this light directed towards us is necessary. Find faults in ourselves, not in others and in by doing that, we’ll manage to improve and be better.

In a secluded and lonely place, she contemplates ... thinking about the cold days to come. She notices how time passes slowly and quietly, but relentlessly. She has already collected a good string of chicharras (red peppers) and ties them together, one after the other, as a beautiful necklace. They will adorn the walls of her home. All around bathed in the heat of the fireplace, the smell of freshly cooked food ... those red peppers will see days go by until they serve as food, until with their strong flavour, well dried, they will be a unique spice and a different touch, so familiar.

She is calm, because she has managed to do her work and even, she has a little time to stop to look at that landscape so dear and well known. Some walls that time corrodes, rain breaks and air erodes. Ruins that still stand proud in the distance. Many people know the place, how many did they stop to look at it? To feel the life that is still there. How bad is oblivion! We must never forget.

She picks up the chicharras and arranges them, like she usually arranges her thoughts or orders everything in her life, to have certainty, to be in peace. The sun bathes everywhere with its last rays and says goodbye ... and so does she because she returns to the warmth of her home.

The truth is that it’s very pleasant to play again with face expressions, different colours ... without any doubt I’m enjoying creating again. To dream once more hand in hand with photography, after having to put it aside for several months, because I have been struggling with a health problem, mainly a problem of the locomotor system, which compromises muscles and nerves, quite painful. Nevertheless, I’m already feeling much better and my improvement is accompanied by the enjoyment that it gives me to play with light, colour, textures, details ... in the different artistic works.

I have called this image "Introspection", a look inside, because I’m a very introspective person, one of those people who observe a lot and analyse their own thoughts or feelings. Physically I'm staring straight ahead, but my mind wanders inside most of the time. Between my dedication to photography and the electric bass, I spend my days lovingly dedicating the time that I’m able, I wish it could be so much more. Hugs!

Pomona lived isolated from everyone in her particular world ... she was in charge of protecting fruits and fruit trees, as well as gardens and orchards.

Those polytheistic cultures, perhaps have the charm of having a god or character for every aspect of life, as delicate or unimportant as it may seem to us. 

Although for the Romans, pomegranate is identified with the goddess Juno, goddess of fertility, due to the large number of grains that it possesses, like authentic ovules, Pomona is also represented with a pomegranate in her beautiful hand.

Autumn and pomegranates, almost mythological fruits.

The sun is almost about to lose itself behind the mountains, to disappear, leaving only for a moment that soft luminosity and those colours so sweet and warm that surround everything in certainty, for a moment but for a vague moment because soon darkness will reign.

The woman looks at the sunset in a certain way incredulously, in a way with somehow pity because she knows how quickly that moment is looming, that will be total uncertainty, total darkness. It will be the beginning of the unknown and less pleasant part, where nothing is certain, where despair and doubt sometimes reign. That cycle, that time interval is a part of the life cycle, a daily rhythm that clearly represents the contrast between light and darkness, certainty and anguish.

With the light we are happy, we are calm because we know and we know how to do things, everything is so familiar, these ones are daily actions, so in what is known there is a certain ease and a certain happiness.

However, in the darkness everything is unknown and it is the other side of the coin, we do not know what we will be able to find, maybe it will be what we do not like, such as abandonment, contemptuousness, pain, facing pain of loss.

In each day, with the path the sun travels when it illuminates us and when it stops illuminating us, there is a lot of similarity to the cycles of our lives. We like light, which could well mean joy, we like it a lot because we have experienced darkness, which means the opposite, what we do not like so much or that scares us or that intrigues us or what we will have to face.

In that sense, the woman looks at the sun with some sorrow because she knows that it will plunge back into a moment of darkness, where nothing will be certain, nothing will be known and perhaps it has its burden of suffering and in that way, it will have to be remembered with a good taste all the happy moments that had a more positive charge, a charge of light.

And there... we leave her, looking at how certainty is going to be lost, how she’s entering that different moment, in that critical moment of doubt, in that crepuscular moment, in that moment of pain, maybe of ignorance, but there remains the great hope of know that... that sun will rise again and that beautiful and bright light that illuminates every day and fills us with happiness from head to toe will return, it will return, like the cycles of life itself and we value those cycles precisely because we know theirs antagonists and we know to appreciate exactly what each one is and means for us and for humanity and for life in general.

So she remains, with the last lights of certainty, easy paths being erased, waiting to return to that familiar path again, that surely when the first rays return, she will find the path easily and will walk again, to find that way to follow again.The illuminated way of life.

Comme peut être dur ton regard

Mais semble douce ta poitrine !

Ton corps, si vivant

Opulent et riche,

Se bonifie avec le temps,

Et ton image me fascine

Et m'inspire, belle espagnole

 

(Richard Radan)

***

After spending some weeks without being able to start working on photography, able to enjoy composition, colours, theme and everything that this art implies ... I have decided to title the image REBIRTH, as something like re-emerging, to be again, to recreate, to return from distant silence.

I hope to get again into a rhythm and enjoy making artistic compositions. I keep my fingers crossed.

When I observed this photo of the woman, I found a certain resemblance to another image of a well-known artwork, it is not the same evidently, because obviously I have done a "recreation", but there are many elements: water, the shell, air, flowers. .. could be..., why not?

I appreciated the tranquillity that the scene conveys, a lot of calmness and as a kind of timelessness too.

(Laura Marco)

Who has not drawn in the sand sitting by the sea? Who has not arranged seashells in a capricious way? Or a seagull feather poked in the sand. A thousand and one ideas trying to unleash desires and suddenly that furious wave arrives and sweeps everything away. In the middle of the act of writing in the sand, it mercilessly disfigures everything.

At first it seems fun, then it creates great frustration because we realize that it is a reflection of life itself.

We spend a lot of time arranging and saying how we want things to be, how we would like things to be around us, but if we realize it ... everything falls apart as if by the charm of a wave, one after another blurring the idea that we carry in mind or the end or the way towards which we want to walk.

What if we just sit looking at the sea? Without wishing for anything, without drawing anything ... contemplating it as it is.

Would be a way to achieve harmony with everything that surrounds us.

The woman has already realized that it is useless to draw and wish in the sand when wave after wave will sweep away all her effort.

Anyway, being the best to accept life as it is, as it introduces itself. Do not try to change anything, do not plan excessively.

Just enjoy, breathe, feel the breeze in peace. As the woman lies relaxed, listening to the sea, smelling the salty aromas, without drawing anything and from time to time instead of creating in the sand, letting the force of the wave play with her hand.

When I created the artistic image:  "Where are you Clyde?" (c) 2014 it was just when I was beginning with artistic photography, it was actually in 2013 when I began. As I visualized the scene, it would include a large bag of money and some jewels, all came into action, holding a gun, even some injury and the fear of the shadows of those who walked nearby and would also have a certain interest in that bag. Years passed and I have used the theme of action again, being moved by adrenaline, but I realize that as time goes by I become simpler, I do not need so many elements to visualize the action ... maybe now it is simply ... “caution, adrenaline and wait until one has it... within shot.

The wheels moved through the mixture of ground and pebbles, crazy and blissful, blissful as the thought of a child. Self-governing and cheerful, she moved on wheels that although they were small and only covered short distances, for the innocence of a child it meant marching towards freedom itself, breaking the limits, feeling the air on her face and the power to guide the direction wherever she wanted .

Sometimes it was painful to keep so firm that iron of the handlebar, so much responsibility in a bar, the going and becoming, the do and the undoing of life.

That tricycle was not lost, perhaps materially it has been lost years ago, but not inside her, in that case full of memories that we always carry within us, so full, so heavy and so light at the same time. What a paradox! Is there something so light that it offers so much and that it weights so little? Thought.

The woman remained still for a moment, remembering, abstracted beside the door, her eyes did not look at anything in particular, nor at what was in front of her because she was already walking through that time corridor, through those doors that move us and guide us in our experiences, that take us from a door to another with just our thinking.

And there she was... riding that tricycle, with the soft rattle of the road and the relief of not having so much responsibility, just the duty of a child, growing up and being happy ... which most of us then left behind ... and little by little the cadence was faster, the small feet turned and turned, faster and faster and there was only one concern ... that it didn’t lack a way to go, or happiness to feel.

How many times do we go back? If the rush of day to day allows us, we should walk that corridor of time, where everything was expected and desired, with a meaning of life.

She felt the soft grass at her feet, everything warm, no weariness, just the life energy of a child.

A happy one.

And the doors were closed ... an apathy enveloped everything she did, just the actions to pass the time and time was stopped in simple things, in slow and very tangible moments, wrapped in torpor. Anyone would say that she had smelled a potent potion, a few drops of some elixir of nature that numbed her senses.

And she played with the plants, holding softly among her fingers, enjoying their simple beauty, their basic colours and their strange shapes. There were three keys that used to unlock her life. One for the heart, one for thought and one for actions, but they were forgotten, lying on the ground apparently without any use.

In that warmth, that sweet and still air ... she was aware of the keys and looked at them from time to time, without much decision to actually take them.

It was easier to stay still in the daze of days, spending time without thinking too much.

Yes ... she wondered why she felt that apathy, that sloppiness, even the very cords that tied the keys gave the sensation of greater entanglement between them, she did not know which one to take, or if she would entangle one with the other .

In those lights that closed the day, in that calm afternoon, she knew that she would return to take and use each key ... as she always did. She trying to open the way, taking care of her heart, rethinking moments, making those little insights that could lead to much more important paths and above all waking up from that strange and overcome torpor.

That sweet and dangerous passivity that surrounds her every day. She would like to wake up and grab those keys and open those doors.

As she always did.

I start with the artwork, “Primping her Hair”, this new artistic gallery 2021, my great purpose for this new year is to enjoy photography.

Taking care of composition, final fixing and the way in which artistic image reveals attractive to those who look at it and enjoy it, being aware of lights and colors.

Above all, I hope that it will be a very creative year and with enough time to create artworks that express my illusion for artistic photography, showing my filter of reality, my environment and dreams and illusions that can be brought to the eyes of others .

Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation, because as I always say: "Each image is a little piece of me".