Monday, July 25

dolphin


You are an open window
You are a breath of fresh air
You are a hope for happiness
A hope for fulfillment.
If you are lost
And if the hope dies
My home with its people will feel like noise.
I will have to bear.
I will have to endure.
I know that you might be lost,
I know that hope may die.
I stand at the edge of a cliff,
And I will watch it falling.
If it does, I will endure, I will bear.


Elena, Helen and Eleni


‘You’
‘Me?’
‘You’
‘What? Me?’
‘You’

Frossa put down the shirt she was holding – she had taken it off together with the scarf because it had gotten rather warm – and went over to the young woman that was calling her. The woman sat on a tree branch, almost three meters off the ground, and was half hidden by the leaves around her. Her face was in full view though, and she looked strait over at Frossa. Frossa stood near the base of the tree and looked up. The sunlight blinded her a little and she squinted to see, but what was clear was the full broad teasing smile across the woman’s face. A smile that looked like a laugh.

‘Hey you’, the woman said more kindly this time. She wasn’t meaning to stop Frossa in her tracks and pull her over, as she had before. Since Frossa had come over, the woman’s voice became now rather welcoming. And you might say she sounded a bit cheery that her call had actually worked out.

‘Hello’, Frossa returned the friendly intent. In the young woman’s voice Frossa could hear, toned down, the happy surprise of a child, when an uncle does agree to their plea to go for icecream. Also, in her nibble movements, and in the playful way her gaze engaged you immediately into a personal engagement, Frossa thought she saw evidence of lineage from the Goat People. She stood a bit back to see better.

The woman swiftly switched her position and came over to the right of the tree, where the sun would not be behind her, and on to a branch that was about a meter lower. She dropped her self into a sitting position in the middle of the branch, just about at the point after which it wouldn’t have held up her weight. Her feet hung down and swung freely. She had a big scruffy head of hair, some blue trousers that looked as if they lived on her, and a white top.

Noticing that the woman had no intention of coming down Frossa looked at the tree to figure how easy it would be to climb up. It wouldn’t be easy. Feeling uncertain about if it was worth hanging about, Frossa looked up at the woman – whom as you looked at looked more and more like a girl – and with a slight tilt of the head gestured that she had her attention, and that she ought to say whatever it was that she wanted.

The woman just beamed her wide grin and her smiling eyes. You would have thought that she was happy just for her and Frossa to look at one another, as if that was engaging enough. Frossa relaxed and put her little annoyance away. I suppose it was enough, she noticed.

‘Come down from there’, she said, in agreeable response to the woman’s obvious request to be friends, and the woman – the child – hopped to the ground, put her one arm around Frossa in a hug, and they walked like that, side by side, away from the tree.

‘You look rather serious’, she said.
‘I am rather serious’, Frossa answered, ‘what is wrong with that?’
‘What is wrong with playing?’ she answered.
‘I play’, Frossa answered
‘You don’t play’, she said
‘I have fun with serious things’, Frossa answered. ‘I have fun with them’.
‘Do you know what a game is?’, she said
‘I know what a game is’, Frossa answered
‘Do you?’, she responded. ‘Do you know what a game is’, she teased.
‘A game is an activity where the formal outcome has no moral relevance’, Frossa answered.
‘Life is a game’, she said.
‘No its not’, Frosso answered. ‘Life is not a game.’
‘Play a little’, she said
‘I can’t play with my life’, said Frossa
‘Play with me a little’, she said

‘What do you want to play?’ Frossa asked.

Hearing the acceptance of the challenge in Frossa’s tone, the girl yupied around a bit. But she didn’t know yet what it was she wanted to play.     



‘My name is Eleni, but it is Elena too, but it may well be Helen of Troy.’
‘Tell me,’ she said ‘I saw you come, this way from far away. I saw you turn around the bend the way this road is turning. Did you pass by the village that sleeps at the forest’s feet?’
‘I did’.
‘And tell me, who was there and what do they do, did you find them or did they find you?’
‘My memory fades the further I walk, what I have left from there are their gifts, close to my heart, that I hold.’
‘Did you see a river, did you see any fish?’

‘I read about it’, she went on to say. That there is a river and creatures too, and if you speak to them from the bank they will carry messages for you. They can travel to any house, to any person you seek, and that without words, to him, your message they speak.’

Frossa considered this. ‘No,’ she said ‘I really don’t think so.’ ‘But why would I want that? Why would we need such a thing?’. ‘Messages are not secret in our world, they are not hidden. Anyone who wants to know a thing, can look and find it out. If I wanted to say something to any one, why wouldn’t I say it to them myself directly. I lift up my heart, I open my arms, and I speak what I want, where I am. One can lift up their hearts, they can open their arms, they can listen out loud, and can hear it.’

‘And besides’, Frossa added, ‘I don’t seek anyone. I long for them, and I wait. Sometimes I look up and I call to them, I yell out to them, and I wait.’  

Maybe as Frossa spoke, her tone had been antagonistic, because Helen withdrew a bit, and as her happiness had shone on her face as uninhibited as a child’s, now her mood changed to an easy complaint.

‘Why do you speak so quickly,’ she asked, ‘why do you say only so little.’ ‘Why do you tell me what you think, and not what you saw’.
‘My life is my own,’ Frosso said, ‘and only I can live it. Ideas, they are for everyone. As they were given to me, so I also can pass them.’
‘You needn’t be so cryptic’ the girl said. ‘You see those tall cherry trees?’ she asked, ‘I live there.’ ‘From the people who pass by here, who walk, with stories, I walk with them.’
Frossa was silent and she thought. ‘I am sorry, she answered, I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

Tuesday, July 5

Dawn

Oh morning light of dawn, how I love the colors you give,
the cold still in my back, the scent of God as clear as the day, the first sounds morning.
Morning light,
you can only be the work of love,
only the kindest embrace. 

strength

God, your hand is so soft, so kind, so steady
that it can only be strong, stronger than the strongest strength.
So certain, so gentle is it, that it can only be Yours.

peace


quiet the noise in my heart that I may hear You pass
silence the noise in my heart that I may hear Your footsteps.
For a moment, my heart will have peace.

Monday, July 4

The perfect woman is like a lamborghini

If you don't know how to drive it,
then it's just an over-priced car.
But if you do,
it's a lamborghini