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Twins.Incredible, but the man with whom I spent more time and was closer to me that anyone else, and still now after we not together keeps contact with me, was one of two twins brothers, but also from the sign of Twins. Sometimes I doubt if was the same brother with me…because seemed little bit different.OHhhhh.But for sure,we had really really good time while we were together.Now he works in Nigeria. Hope he is fine there.
Hi lovely Karen,
Hope you are just dandy!!
Well, I’ll tell you what worked for me. Of course you have to join the blog, just on the right —->
then once you do, upload your picture.
and make sure the email address you are using for the comments matches the one you used to sing up with!
Hope it helps!
love!
PS. I have not had a chance to join the reading group, sounds interesting, especially talking about ‘The Pilgramage’
love!
Could someone please tell me how to get my picture to show up with my blog posts on this blog? Thanks! Cheers, Karen in Canada
Tenho me desculpado com meus leitores por nem sempre estar levando a meu blog temas agradáveis. O mais recente texto é sobre uma das grandes chagas de nós, que nos dizemos humanos e acima de outras criaturas: a pedofilia. Esta semana, uma “autoridade” renunciou a seu cargo após ter sido acusada de ter molestado uma menina desde que ela foi para sua casa com nove anos de idade.
A defesa deste homem é de que tirou esta menina de uma vida miserável para lhe dar lar e estudo. Perplexa, mas não surpresa, discorro sobre esta hipocrisia, tão comum em especial em cidades do interior do Brasil, que é a pseudo-adoção de crianças por famílias de posição e dinheiro para fazer delas empregadinhos que dormem em quartinhos sem ar e luz e comem depois que todos levantam da mesa.
Para mim, como disse no blog, pedofilia e este tipo de exploração moral de uma criança são a mesma coisa. Não só agressão sexual é abominável: a humilhação imposta pelo poder a estas almas que mal estão retomando sua caminhada na Terra é, para mim, crime tão horrendo quanto a violentação física.
O mais triste é que a maioria das pessoas prefere não ver, não ler nem se envolver nem com a maldição da pedofilia, denunciando e permitindo que ela seja punida e, quem sabe um dia, extinta. Quanto à exploração do trabalho e da dignidade de crianças por famílias sem escrúpulos, então, nem se ouve falar de alguém que se interesse pelo tema.
De todo modo, já é alguma coisa quando um poderoso tem de ser expor e abrir mão de seu cargo público porque a lei o está acossando, como o caso exposto no Clínica da Palavra e em todo o noticiário. Isso me dá um pouco de esperança. Pouco. Mas serve.
wenn mir dieser raum so offen angeboten wird…von ihnen, lieber herr paulo coelo…so nehme ich ihn dankend an :-)
ich werde ihre seite nutzen, um mein schlechtes schulenglisch wieder etwas aufzufrischen.
alles liebe ihnen und ihren lesern
christiane
Excerpts from my blog..
“…Well, this got me thinking (an unconventional thought) – why do we associate Diwali with crackers…it should be celebrated with sweets, lights and color. The very belief that firecrackers and fireworks are used to attract — or to advertise — good luck should be deleted from our mind.
A lot need to be undone to change the mindset and this should happen from home, permeate to school curriculum. …”
On hospitals, twins and the lives of men
They say that there is no time like the present, but the present is often so hard to handle.
There are many places to which we can retreat in order to avoid the present. One of the greatest accomplishments of modern society has been its ability to develop a range of synthetic ‘resting places’, sophisticated dream-factories that allow us momentarily to forget the tormenting voices of the present. But if there is one place that will rarely allow this narcotic to pass it doors, it is most certainly the hospital.
Episode 7: News
Two babies.
I could almost feel the neurons firing in my mind more quickly as I tried to assimilate this most unexpected news. But as one Nineteenth Century writer once said, there are two things in this life for which we are never fully prepared and that is twins.
My Love was the first to bring meaning to this ironical twist in the unfolding drama of our lives. I am sure that God just got fed up with us asking for a child, so he sent us two so that we stopped bothering him with our requests.
I was less philosophical. In a single moment, our ‘Game of Life’ had changed and we were back in unchartered terrain. This was neither a snake, nor a ladder. We had thrown a lucky six, had another turn, passed ‘Go’ and gone directly to ‘Jail’. And my first thought was that it was going to cost us much more than two hundred pounds to get out of this one!
Episode 8: Scan
It is said that the average heart will beat around 3,000 million times in a lifetime. It is the first sign of human life and, in a single beat, declares its end. To countless millions around me, these two additions to the chorus of humanity are nothing. Their absence would never be noted. But for me, it is so very different. As I sit in front of the ultrasound and listen to each tiny heart beat, I cannot help thinking that this is the most beautiful symphony I have ever heard.
I feel like I am falling in love. These two little angels, so fragile in their existence, are already completely captivating my attention. With each and every beat of their tiny hearts, they embrace me as a father and draw me into a relationship of love so strong that I cannot resist. And this is perhaps the greatest irony of all; for, in this single moment of connection, it seems that it is not I who loves, but them loving and accepting me for none other than who I am and who I want to be. It is the child within me – with all its anxiety and vulnerability – that rests in the sweet embrace of another.
Episode 9: Scream
I am woken at 1am and quickly realize that something is wrong. My Love is standing by the door. Frozen with panic, she tells me that she is losing blood. What have we done to deserve this? This shouldn’t be happening. Not now.
We rush to the hospital and hardly say a word. Hang in there, my little angels, I whisper. Don’t leave us now.
It doesn’t feel right being at the hospital again. It is full of too many bad memories. Lying on the bed, waiting for the doctor to arrive, My Love looks so small and fragile. I want to hold her and tell her that everything is fine. But there is just too much blood now. I say nothing.
When the doctor arrives, I feel the urge to scream and shout at him. He has an air of arrogance that I cannot stand, least of all in doctors who give every appearance of having a messiah complex. At first, he does not even look at us, preferring instead to pose his pointless questions to the wall. And while he stands there playing god, I wonder to myself where God is now. Does he really hold our tears in a bottle? Is there really a place where things like this don’t happen?
The waiting is horrible.
Finally, the scan flickers into life. Two little heartbeats still beating. Hands, feet, limbs, moving about in their personalized dream-cocoons, completely unaware of the frantic soap-opera that is unfolding around them – oblivious of the fact that their lives still hang in the balance.
Hope quickly floods back into my mind and the dream is reborn. The emotional rollercoaster is now going at full speed. And I feel every twist and turn in the pit of my stomach.
Episode 10: Men
I know that women come from Venus and men originate from a colder planet, traditionally inhabited by aliens with green heads. I much prefer, however, the way MC Solaar differentiates between the sexes: Les femmes viennent de Venus, Les hommes mangent des Mars.
I ate a lot of Mars bars those few days. Quick fixes of sugar grabbed from the hospital canteen, they were an instant way of avoiding yet another frozen meal. More importantly, though, they were instant bars of comfort – a coping mechanism, perhaps.
Men and women are different. Of that, there is no dispute. Women bring to the world a set of hermeneutic tools and narrate the story of who they are in ways that we Martians find quite ‘alien’. In our silence, they will search for words. Confronted by our attempts at being rational, they will make an emotional response. In contrast to our denial and desire not ever to show our vulnerability, they are skilled in the art of setting up personal emergency support centres. Manned by close family and friends, these guardian angels are the ones who drop everything and fly in with their listening ears, kind words and endless supplies of glossy magazines.
Back in the hospital, I understood all this, but still I wanted to stand up and shout from the rooftops that we men are men, not Martians. We are not all about hiding our emotions and being a perfect chemistry of balanced hormones. We are not walking about in bubbles of rational thought, oblivious to shit that is happening around us.
It was not my blood that flowed, not me who became a prisoner to enforced rest. Not me who had been pierced with needles, stuffed with hormones, and vomited every day for three months. Not me who developed a nose that could smell aftershave from two-hundred yards, seen my body change in all the wrong places, taken seventeen trips to the toilet in a single night, and become tired even at the thought of stepping outside the house. I will never experience this for as long as I live.
But be sure of one thing: the blood that flowed was draining the life out of me too.
*Note: This post is a continuation of the story I first published in 2006 under the title, Fragments of Hope (AWAY Magazine), which explored a father’s perspective on IVF treatment. See my blog: http://davidwillows.squarespace.com
Funerals… sad and sordid ocassions. I always wonder what goes through the mind of the dead. Are they really dead or are they silently observing us, the so-called living, pouring our hearts out in sheer torment? I wonder what happens to the spirit when the soul dies. Was I a cat the life before this one or am I just a lost sheep, wandering about and not making any sense in the process? Guess no one really knows for sure what happens when life ends but here’s one thing I definitely know for certain; that no one makes it out of this life, alive. Get it? Which is by the way, the cause of my turmoil. Death. Is it the eventuality of it that freaks me out or is it the process leading to it that propels me to become a recluse, stay home more, avoid crowds… just in case I die? I feel like I’m dead already, though I still function. Somewhat. What is death anyway? Are you there?
Apparently that is not an easy question – when we look around and listen to the media and complains of people we can think that the world is full of evil powers/negative happenings/bad people etc.
My opinion: there is definitely more good than evil. And not because I am such an optimist No. The reason is that the nature of good is constructive, the Good loves to create and to nourish. The nature of evil is to destroy. Thus, if evil would have been the dominant power, this world would be no longer there. As simple as that :)
Thank you for your comment, Alexandra, often we don’t know nothing of the realities of some countries.
I thought that the other’s eyes were mirror of his/her soul, not the ours, an inconscious way to meet the other. But maybe you’re right, a part of me is looking for something else, something that I miss. Love,
Yesterday I went to a funeral. The father of my sister in law died. The whole family was there. Wife, children, grand-children. He was from a village, near Famagusta which is still under the Turkish occupation, since 1974. In his grave his children put some soil from his village.. His desire to return home has remained unfulfilled.
In the last prayers [ Greek Orthodox Church] it is stated: .. we leave this .. false life and we go to the TRUE ONE, where there is no sadness, no sorrow… To our Father’s Home.
LOVE,
Thelma.
Juliette Greco – Les feuilles mortes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Sfx3c7fR0
I am near my” brothers ” that lives in Moldavia, over the river Prut. The dictatorial regime of the communist president had made many people revolt these days.Moldavia was part of my country, lost during the World War second.The president talks our language, but insists on calling it foreign language. Is a tool of Russians, I guess.I am against violence, but I think freedom must be always respected.There no freedom of expression.Hope things will solve for the best.
Barbara,are you trying to explain things that must remain mysterious?
A mirror, if you look in some others eyes, you see yourself.Is wonderful if you try to look in the eyes of a man in love, with you…Best mirror in that world.
“The eyes are the mirror of the soul”, but it’s true? or the great pleasure of looking the other’s eyes deeply it’s originate from the fact that you stop to watch the surface and start to listen other perception unconnetted to the mind?