stuff

I'm not at all a minimalist when it comes to architecture, home, clutter..Though I hate mess, I will constantly cultivate meaningful clutter. I GROW things around myself, I form collections out of random objects that spoke to me at one point or another. Never mind the fact that I have kept every hand-written note/letter sent to me in last 25 years AND BROUGHT IT HERE -- years, miles, oceans later. The oldest is a postcard sent to me by dad deployed in Germany when I was 2, he drew and wrote on it with a glitter pen. His works now cover  my walls,  and I can no longer imagine living without -- he gave me back the city I so love and miss..I got a pink medal "born in Leningrad" with a typo on it..Got countless love letters, hate letters, travel itineraries and sketches..You will never see a glass clown or a  fake plant here, but I am a proud owner of multiple time capsules -- a dry branch I picked up on a long walk -- it inspired many paintings once..dry leaves and pine cones and piles of pebbles my daughter brought in over last 2-3 years..I own a photo collage made by an absolutely brilliant and troubled punk An'ka who ended up in some tragic mess in NY. I got shells and nuts and weird bean pods from some exotic bush in Jamaica, got a piece of marble that chipped of a stature in Champs-Elysee's and fell right to my feet. A also have a pocket guide to Paris from 1950 from a woman who died in a nursing home, deeply demented and non-verbal, and no one claimed her things..the photo of her in her 30s was inside. Have an old black-n-white shot of my mom, young, pretty, coy, with a "beehive", pouring a glass of wine to a guy at a party..and  another one of her fiercely  piercing a shoe with a rapier while standing on a chair ON A ROOF. I can go on and on...I am a hopeless pack rat and this clutter will one day become my crypt. I only hope my daughter will save a faded picture of her loopy mom with an Angela Davis Afro at a tender age of 16 or something equally disturbing..

random city angel, this one from Prague

Sade

This Woman is one of the biggest crushes of my life. Her voice somehow became a talisman of my own luck and literally a premonition of good things to come, of hope. Sade. This country most under-rated performer. No one, no countless pounds of mass-produced auto-tuned lady gagas compare to One Diva.  Nothing is an act, nothing staged..This voice of hers, this image. So much power in a little restraint. Its so..honest. Can't categorize her, the woman is above any cliches invented for women on stage. Above and beyond. Like a breath of fresh air, like a favorite novel re-read just in time, sad, delicate, ethereal, Sade.

Nika  says this most every nite before bed, facing her pink rosarie on a giant Justin Bieber poster (her stepsister's) over her bed:
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc,
et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen.
She says she prays for me.

terms

I am acutely aware of a balance shift going on within me..amazed and amused by it. I never did have a strong sense of self, utterly dissolved in someone fascinating de jour -- they always just magically descended upon me, and I tend to go with the flow..The biggest choices I ever had to make were choices to leave. Leave a man, leave a country, leave nothing in your wake. The way to go was a way to grow..A child changed a lot of that. A hazel-eyed guardian angel carefully watching my every move -- suddenly I'm too cautions, guarded, afraid of heights. She protects me from myself. I take little steps back, every day, I'm giving up something no longer of value..Big chunks of personal freedom, vanity, drama. All that might come back and get the best of me someday, but for now I have neither energy nor desire to "be all that I can be"..to fit in, to keep up..Keep up with what ?..What does society as it is have to offer to someone like me ?..A place in a bar ?..Death by chocolate ?..Please. If it wasn't for motherhood, I'd be completely lost by now.

Veronika

granted..

Wide awake past midnight, love it.. hate it.. . Too many romantic novels on paper and screen polluting my brain lately..Makes me want to write a will. And eat it.  I want to slow down to a point of complete standstill, to a halt. Want to log off and go sit next to Byron playing harmonica mid-day. To go to the beach and lay face down, play dead. Then dig a hole in the sand and lazily watch an ant scrambling for his life. Bury the ant, with a pebble tombstone. Play God, get bored, grant Life, keep the pebble..sleep. Sleep outside, an afternoon siesta. On a luscious lawn, gleaming with pesticides and dew. Kill two hours just contemplating. Look, see. Bounce a ball off the wall with legs kicked up. Three hours till both brain and butt go numb. Easy. Done that before..why not now ?..Now is good. Just too fast . And then there's traffic. And a bored sleepy God playing games with you -- go fast...now slow...now stop..now go..balmy 98F in the shade..hot enough for ya ?..Movement and stillness of objects, time. Taken out  of context, life is fascinating again, 100 times a day, snap shots. Blessed is a random storm that grants you power outage that grants you power to walk away from your day.. 

Bride Flight

This is a hell of a film to see..Life --beautiful, brutal, subtitled. In a age driven by lower expectations and pursuit of happiness this is humbling and inspiring..Post-war Holland, three young women on a plane to New Zealand to start a new life, a young guy falls in love with one of them..another one has his son, and a third one will raise him as her own..A chance encounter will define all 4 lives and no, no happy ending, maybe some closure when they meet at his funeral years later..I life time of love, anguish, doubts, sacrifices. We don't do this anymore, its too easy to bail out of almost anything, there's no restrain..We don't ever grow up -- infantile till we're senile.. I saw myself in these three women, all three, their secret and sacred bond, I took it to heart. Say it now or forever hold your peace. Only there's no peace in denial..