Wise tree

If silence was a card, the note on the windowsill read, it would be the joker, for it is like a blank page, always deriving its meaning from the context.

The problem with silences, thought the old crow sitting on a tree branch across the window, is that they always seem to have at least two meanings: One is bestowed upon them by those who remain silent, another one by whomever vainly attempts to interpret or, even worse, to break the silence.

The wind carried the note away, the crow moved on, she whom the words were meant for woke up to an emty windowsill and he who wrote them was long gone. As for the tree, it had always favoured silence, anyway.

Of fear and longing: Chapter 236

Something old comes to a final and irreversilble end, just as something new is beginning. Such are the simple and immensely complicated ways of life- and who are we to disagree?

When we speak of fear, what is hidden behind our confessions? Is it truly and purely the uncontainable need to reveal ourselves completely? Or are we driven by the undying hope for reassurance, the mad desire to see an equal quantity of panic and longing reflected in the other person's eyes?

To fall in love is to gaze into a mirror of your own fashioning. Beware what you find inside.

Been a long time. They tried to silence us, but they could not. Censorship comes in different guises. Sometimes it's your enemies; sometimes it's the ones you trust.

Inner strength or self-expression have little to do with the loudness of our voices. We are driven by this aching need to rid ourselves of all that keeps us down, to slowly unpeel the countless layers of grief, disappointment and fear.

The caring strangers we meet along the way may pretend to listen, but they rarely grasp the truth hidden behind our rivers of words. Still, the night is long; to give up all hope is to sink like a stone in the velvet depths of sorrow.

Did you really think it was going to end so smoothly and painlessly? We are back at this dark familiar place where dreams come to die and hearts give up all hope of mending.

Then, after several weeks, or months, of bitter tears and angry vows and self-pitiful melodrama, the cycle is more or less complete: You are ready to fall again. And to fall well, you must first climb as high as you can.

Sometimes you begin to believe that you have been cursed. Other times, you assume that you’re just irresistibly lured by paths leading to emotional dead-ends.

And, once in a while, you wonder if maybe this is what it’s all about: Life was never meant to be sweet or easy, and the amount of disappointment you end up experiencing is directly proportional to the size of your expectations.

So is this what we asked for? Isn't it frightening, when dreams seem to be coming true? All these years, all these perpetual disappointments, we have become accustomed to dreaming but not to living. Would you dare to fly, if you were almost certain you'd fall?

The fragile promise of something new, yet again, just as you were starting to believe that the game was already over for you. Nothing ever ends, you're never too old to feel young again as you're never too young for suffering- just don't expect anyone else to understand your passion for self inflicted pain.

One life, one body, one chance to break free of all that holds you down. Call it love, or call it inspiration; it is the eternal need to express what lies buried and inexpressible inside you. To truly share a moment, or even two.

Can you grasp the hope, and the agony? Or am I risking to irreversibly injure my soul in my futile struggle to break invisible walls separating me from willing, albeit imaginary strangers?

Of dreams and waking No3

She'd have her periods of freedom and lust and total randomness, when she'd hide her sorrow behind a porcelane mask, until she'd almost come to regard that smiling face in the mirror as her one and only self- the flawless illusion disrupted only in rare moments of doubt and existential agony.

Then she'd fall in love and eagerly erase all trace of past frustration from memory; everything else receding in the background to make space for her one and only current obsession.

And when love began to fade, she'd refuse to acknowledge the fact- as you ignore an alarm clock sounding early in the morning, hiding your head under the pillows and struggling to pretend that the noise isn't there, you're still deeply asleep and lost in the sweetest of dreams. But the dream has already ended; it ended the moment you started to pretend.

She'd wake up, at last, wishing she was a ghost, longing for death or at least a deep dreamless sleep. Eventually she'd once again summon the strength needed to immerse herself into a life of quiet evenings and unexpected encounters and drunken late-night confessions and a consciousness, which requires no other half to feel complete.

So the cycle went on and on and on, solitude turning into loneliness, then back to solitude again...

Common tragedies in the age of perpetual repetition

Sometimes I wish I was stronger- strong enough to walk away, without ever turning back. Sometimes I wish I was weaker- weak enough to stay without thinking of the consequences. Instead, I'm just stuck in between, struggling to fight back the tears, straining to keep the anger at bay.

They offer you a fragile promise of affection; you call it love, you follow it on wind-beaten mountain peaks and icy winter seas.Then it is spent, all hopes for resurrection fading. You stumble back to the beginning, daring to dream you might one day be granted another fleeting illusion of eternity.

The past is not ours to re-live, the future is not ours to shape and the present, I fear it's sinking fast. No time for tragedy here, no space for mourners in the vastness of mortality.

Of cities and ghosts: Chapter 387

What difference does it make, she wondered. Another hurriedly consumed coffee; a few random pieces of information exchanged; an hour-long escape from reality. Words uttered were, again, only the tip of the iceberg.

She was here, he was there, and that was all there was to it. This kind of distance could not be measured in kilometers. Dreams, goals and attachments had gradually filled up the gaps, which once might still have been called bridgeable.

It felt as if something had been left unfinished, or maybe that was merely the fantasy she needed to keep her going. She didn’t even rely so much on it anymore. Desire fading as memories grew old. Blood going stale in the veins of aging Hope.

No more whys or what ifs. No tears, no poetry, no expectations. She never had a big role in this play, anyway- a fact she had come to accept as such. All she could do was watch, and nod, and smile in recognition, awed with the subtlety, the ingenuity and irony of it.

Of mutuality and compromise

Is there such a thing as love that does not care for reciprocation? I'll never try to hold you back, we say, but do we really mean it? What if the freedom we'd so eagerly grant is merely a figure of speech?

Sometimes devotion feels almost like a kind of self-sacrifice. Sometimes we seem to give up all our needs, desires and personal traits, desperately hoping it will make us worthy of another person's attention.

But after you've surrendered all you believed in, after you've wiped off all the characteristics that made you yourself just to fit in someone else's ideal, will you still be able to recognize the stranger in the mirror, and will the object of your admiration ever come to truly love this shallow reflection you've become?

So this is it. You're running away one more time. And yet you're still here. It feels like walking on melting snow. You think you're moving further, but you' re only sinking deeper.

Do you still dream of love, when you speak of freedom? Do you weep behind your seemingly careless smiles? Do you hide your weaknesses behind an iron mask of strength?

Who are you? How did they entrap you inside this mirror and why are you always starring at me?

Does every ending mark a new beginning? Do all roads lead to some sort of destination? When a door is shut, does another one open?

To live is to laugh in the face of death. To love is to embrace your innermost fears. To leave is to accept nothing lasts for ever.

Would you weep, if tears could melt the ice surrounding you? Would you smile, if they told you that truth is only a mirage?

Walk until your legs collapse under your weight. Breathe as if the room was running out of air.

Silence won't betray you. Your own voice might.

Of dreams and waking No2

When you're dreaming, don't you sometimes remember things very clearly; past events, people you've met before, places you've seen? But when you wake up, it seems that even your most vivid memories were simply a dream-construction, a special addition designed to make your dream-experience more realistic.

Where do dream-memories come from? Where are they stored? Are they totally arbitrary, built anew every time you begin to dream? Is there a memory pool that has already been created for every possible identity you might assume while asleep?

Or is it possible that all these seemingly unconnected images spring out of dreams we've had before? What if nothing is truly forgotten, even if our waking consciousness has wiped all recollections off?

What if, in our dreams, we remember everything we've ever dreamed of, so that, in a sense, we may live a million lives in one single lifetime? What if real life only happens in dreams, and what we call "reality" is nothing more than a dull, repetitive, predictable intermission?

Of dreams and waking...

Have you ever wondered when dreams are created? Are they more like movies which have already been recorded before you even begin to watch? Or are they open-ended, taking shape only as they unfold?

Is there such a thing as chance in dreams? Do we make choices and decisions according to some kind of dreaming conscience? Or is everything predetermined- every step we take, every word we utter, every person we meet?

In dreams, just like in life, we walk around believing that we are free, autonomous beings. But when we wake up, we realize that we are not who we thought we were only a few seconds ago and that all we considered real was merely the projection of an overactive subconscious.

Don't get me wrong here; I'm not saying I believe in destiny. Yet sometimes, when returning home after an intricately-woven and hardly interpretable dream, I cannot help but doubt my ability to influence what is happening around me, regardless of whether I'm asleep or not.

And on certain days, my mind may drift away while I'm engaged in what you'd describe as daily activities, and suddenly I can no longer tell if I am awake or dreaming, suddenly I do not know who I am anymore.

On certain days, this unsettling suspicion begins to creep inside my head: that maybe there is no such thing as chance in this dream, that maybe everything has been predetermined,every step I take, every word I utter, every person I meet...