It's raining steadily outside. You're in front of a window, sitting on pillows and looking at the puddles that are just forming bellow you, on the pavement.
You breathe in, and when you exhale, the glass in front of you becomes foggy and the view blurrier. You start drawing patterns with your forefinger on the cold window. A raindrop touches that exact spot on the other side of the glass, where your finger is. It's cold. You can feel it, the difference in temperatures. Outside and inside. It's cold, it's soothing, just like kissing cold wet lips when you are a little bit too warm. It calms you down, it eases your senses. Your finger gets a kiss from a raindrop. Then the gravitational forces start kicking in and it starts to fall, to slide down the glass, until in reaches the wooden frame. You feel the need to trace it down, to prolong the feeling, but you know you can't, it would ruin the pattern on the window. So you let it fall.
Outside of you, of your room, of your building, it's still raining, the water is still gathering bellow. Your forehead is touching the glass window and you close your eyes. It's still cold and you can still feel it, nothing has changed. You breathe in deep and with your right hand you wipe the drawing from the window. It's just a name, as once it belonged to a face, just another face; and the clock keeps ticking and the time keeps flying by...

[photo: www.picasaweb.google.com/bowlerportraits/Illustrations#5133227264484009410 ]

William Shakespeare once said that "Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable."
My desire to be extraordinary has always haunted me and made me feel inferior to all the rest. I presume that this is one of my sins: to continuously try to prove myself and to constantly fail miserably.
I have done many mistakes in my life, and I am conscious of the fact that I will be making many more before my time is up; but this side of me, this need of mine to be better than the rest, at least in their eyes, no matter how much I try to bury it deep inside, it resurfaces again and again tormenting me and making me feel despicable.
On the other hand, if you are smart enough to be aware of this unwritten rule, and start acting similarly to all the rest, then you are doing it precisely to prove to everyone that you are special, as if you try so hard to fit in with the other people, but because of your superiority, you can never quite accomplish it. This, of course, is hypocritical of you. Only a truly modest person can fit in such a small patern, that of a remarkable being, and can actually be extraordinary, because he is not aware of it and at the same time he doesn't want it, or need it ar brags about it.
I am everyone and no one in particular because I am a human being and at the same time I am unique because I have a conscious with which I rationalize differently from all the rest.

[photo: www.designfederation.net/interviews/interview-with-jordan-clarke/]

Lying awake in my bed at my grandmother's house, I was hit (quite painfully actually) with the feeling that I was no longer a child, that I am twenty years old, with a very foggy future and a strong sense of uncertainty creeping up my spine. All that's left of my infancy are smells, noises and images. All mingled and tangled as cause of the years that passed and buried them under layers and layers of dust and forgetfulness.
If you close your eyes, can you remember how your childhood smelled like? I can: of fresh air, home baked bread, of flour and spices, of vegetables and fruits, of wild flowers and grass. I remember the scent of burned dry leaves and the mixture of gas and ashes with which my grandmother would light the fire.
I recall faint noises: the dogs barking, the cat purring, the old radio playing music in the background, the sound of my grandmother's spindle, the cracking of the fire in the old glazed stove.
Behind my eyelids I can see piles and piles of white snow, a black dog trying hard to push me in the biggest one of them, a dusty attic filled with bottles of all shapes and sizes, my favorite hiding place, right in the middle of the living room, under chairs and blankets; the exact spot between the bed and the stove where I would play with my dolls and everything seemed possible.
What do you remember?

I have an obsession with the 5^th of May. I haven’t got the faintest idea why, I just do. I can’t even remember when it all started. Nothing extraordinary has ever happened on this day, nobody was born and nobody died. I didn’t get my first kiss then and hopefully I won’t get my last in the years to come on this day. It’s simply a day marked in my calendar to celebrate it the best I can, for no specific reason.
May is the fifth month of the year and the third month of spring. The trees aren’t bare, because it isn’t too cold outside for the leaves to grow, the grass is not burned by the scorching sun, because it is not summer yet and the landscape is not overwhelmed with an infusion of yellow and red and orange, because autumn is still so far away. When you look outside your window, you can see the perfect scenery: nature is alive, noisy and fun, filled with the most beautiful green, it’s fresh and raindrops are shining from the grass blades like small diamonds in the gentle sun. The birds are back, they’re colorful and animated. They’re chirping all day, from dawn to dusk, flying in all directions, making you dizzy just watching them. The bees are buzzing from flower to flower. The air is filled with the sweetest smells, a mixture of lime-trees and tulips, of poppies and other wild flowers.
So how can you not feel alive on a day like this? When everything around you is full of energy and color? How can you not smile when the tree in front of your window is in bloom again? When the view from your balcony is improving, there are no neighbors with long ugly faces, just trees and flowers, as far as the eye can see.

[photo: www.cssaddict.com/downloads/desktop-calendar-for-may-08/]

Have you ever felt like you were walking a predetermined path? As if every single step you made was on someone else's footprints? More like your bare feet were touching the exact spaces they were meant to, not one centimeter out of place? If this is true, then where is our free will, the power of our own choices?
When I was just a baby, my fairy godmother wove my path in life, and I, while growing up, never disappointed here by straying off of it. This is a fairytale like scenario that in real life would be just a disillusion. Where is the joy, the accomplishment, the pride in doing exactly what you are supposed to?
Carrying on this sort of existence would only lead to catastrophe. If you take away our freedom to choose between good and bad, between light and darkness, you take away the very thing that defines us as humans. Maybe the choices that we make are just delusions, given by our subconscious minds, because without them, we would stop existing, but in the end, isn't this what makes reality that much sweeter?
Could you live in a world without options? Could you go down this road, knowing that it is the only one you can walk on? Would you be able to exist without alternatives?
I don't know...It would be liberating, but at the same time, I would feel trapped in a cage of my own creation. The choices made in advance would be the bars keeping me inside, and the will to escape, the wings that will help me fly.

[photo: www.pinkdogdesigs.com/painting.html ]

I am weary and I am happy. For no specific reason, I just feel content with everything and everyone. I suspect that in a way I am tired of fighting, of looking for the bad side of things, or maybe my eyes are burning too hard to allow for more tears to follow the last ones.
You reach a moment in your short pitiful life when you are under the impression that you can see a glimpse of light in the darkness that is lying ahead of you in your path, and then you smile. Maybe that is where I am right now, with a few moments before the light blows out, or exactly before you realize it was just an illusion. Honestly, I don't know and truthfully, I don't want to know. Life is all a big mess, so what is my excuse for trying to find a meaning to it?!
I laugh, I smile and I try to prolong this feeling, because who knows when we might meet again?
I don't and I am content...

[photo: www.rebeccapeedartplay.blogspot.com/ ]