Happy New Year Kas,
Christmas Eve is one of those special nights when the air is full of hope, wishes, and exuberance. In such nights people often abandon the routines and conventional ways that navigate their lives, and embark on a journey into a less trivial and predictable state of mind, where magic dwells. Magic may be just seeing the world with different eyes or being enchanted by a poem. In such moments we feel so intimately connected to life that it’s sexy – our eyes sparkle, our skin shines, we feel like dancing, and the universe becomes the size of a song (1; 2) or a painting.
I’ve spent years exploring this magical dimension through books, arts, philosophy, and personal interactions, and I’ve found a short cut to it - laughter. Laughter is spontaneous and authentic; it transforms the moment and transcends reality to a surreal state (where a professor can start feeling uncomfortable 
Laughter is sophisticated like tango, it’s full of sexuality but nothing there is about sex. It interrupts causality carrying you on like a flying carpet; and you can’t get off, especially you, Kas. I liked the way you couldn’t stop laughing. There was freedom in that laughter. And I tend to notice people who can go beyond the habitual ways of the everyday world. You know, laughter tells the essence of a person, you can’t lie there. Your laughter was so dense that I touched you through it. It took me on a trip to your inner corridors, where I saw art on the walls, sophisticated ceilings, and large rooms covered with seductive carpets. I looked through windows that came up to be paintings and followed down stairs that took me up, I submerged myself in suddenly appearing little streets that led my feet to experiencing the pleasure of details, each of them like a taste of champagne.
I even saw you present there and that’s a rare event, most people live in external stuff (in possessions or even worse – in shopping). You looked like this .
There was plenty of room to play there so I decided to visit occasionally. There are three paths I can follow to meet you there. Each them has its advantages and each of them is beautiful. Sometimes, very rarely, they can be combined together. I’ll take you out dancing when you come back and we’ll see which path is best to follow. Here they are, hidden in three poems.
Be ever drunk - that’s the truth.
If you don’t want to carry the burden
Of time
That crushes you down -
Be ever drunk.
With what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue -
All the same.
And if you ever wake up
On the stairways of the palace,
Or in the loneliness of your room
And the drunkenness’s gone,
Ask the wind, the wave, the bird, the star, the clock,
Ask that, which flies and breathes,
Which sings, and sways, and speaks,
Ask ‘What is the time?’
And the wind, the wave, the star, the clock
Will answer -
The time of drunkenness.
Be ever drunk - not slave of days and minutes -
With wine, poetry, or virtue -
All the same.
- Charles Baudelaire (my translation so excuse the imperfections)
Expect nothing
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
- Alice Walker
Twenty-nine stones in my garden
Twenty-nine silent voices
Beneath dark maple trees
Each stone - a glowing flower
White flames for petals
Redolent fire
Twenty-nine stones in my garden
Pulsate ablaze with élan
When the Moon rises full
Of desire
When the stars are naked-beautiful
Twenty-nine stones in my garden
Beneath dark maple trees
If you come to my garden barefoot
And the Moon is your soul’s sister
Twenty-nine embers in flower
Will make you a nestinar
Either way it is not the form but the essence of the interplay that matters. In a good day it is something like this
or this
or this
or this (in the sense that every true human interaction is synergistic and turns people into something larger)
Download Ashes and Snow from this site, find a silent place without distracters and submerge entirely in the experience of it. Also, take a look at the web site. That essence is my gift for you :))
navigo