I feel a crater inside me, a big void all over my chest.
Every time I get hurt, because I let it happen, or get disappointed, again because of me, it seems to get bigger and bigger.
I have a feeling that there is no way I can fill it.
I have to stop letting people let my defenses down, I have to stop trying to get them into me.
The result doesn't change, they disappear, I stay, they are happy, I am sad, they win, I lose. I lose pieces of myself, and if I don't stop the pieces will end and so I won't be able to put on my armor anymore. Only the cold armor would remain with nothing to protect inside.
So I have to stop trying to get attached to people.
The war in Ukraine further exposed the problem of big “charitable” organizations – especially the International Red Cross – and charity in general on the part of Western countries. Expired medicines meager portions of humanitarian aid, corruption – all this existed before this year. It’s just that Ukrainians have more opportunities to record what is happening than people in African countries with less access to the Internet. But the question of the right to existence of charity as such also appears. As today’s events show, it’s needed at critical moments (war, natural disasters, the spread of dangerous diseases), but when you have organizations with nice offices and expensive cars that have been sending humanitarian mineral water to children in Africa for decades – maybe it needs something to do with poverty rather than donate money to bureaucrats?
I don't want to be strong
I want the world to be nice to me.
Why does everybody tell me I'm strong like it's some kind of consolation?
How if it was worth it, the pain?
I don't want to die for this.
the world only knows how to break me
to say make me stronger.
because we all want to achieve strength
like it's not going numb?
become the pain instead of enduring it.
I'm growing in pain, but you call it strength.
you say I'm strong, that I can do it.
but i just want the world to be nice to me
even if it makes me weak.
Events and encounters are not ballast or alleys whose exit is unknown,
but rather mirrors: small, large, convex, concave, wavy, deforming, splintering,
obscured ans capable in any case, with their reflection,
of letting us know an as yet unknown part of ourselves.
Sometimes I wonder what is at the end of this maze of mirrors.
What will become of me.. Of my self-awareness.
I have a very private private life, hidden,
like a private life in every shadow of part of a fragment of my private life.
A real mess, a labyrinth with several floors, perhaps dimensions.
Under a secret, other secrets, under these other little things hidden.
So deeper and deeper... where there is the truth,
the absolute one, the one even purer than me.
The one I don't even know I know.
There, I live.
I feed on emotions, which, filtered by my tangled life,
seem increasingly dim and light and are no longer enough for me...
they are never enough for me.
I created mazes for us
inadvertently
I left traps
scattered around the garden.
I have carved statues
around our bodies
and perhaps I will have a Virgil
and who knows if it will help anything
maybe I'll have a Montegue
that cradles me in the evening
and the next day it flies away.
Where am I going?
I only see "blind spots"
and false leads to follow.
Rough paths
messed up by mistake.
Labyrinths where I get lost,
no way out.
I feel like I'm going in circles. Is it the circle of karma or an unexplored time circle?
I stay here
surrounded by doubts
that plow my way.
Uncertainty upon uncertainty
I get further and further away
by myself.
A king went to a Zen Master to learn gardening. The Master instructed him for three years.
The king had a large and beautiful garden, in which many gardeners were employed, and whatever the Master said the king did. At the end of the three years, the garden was finished and the king invited the Master to visit it.
The king was very apprehensive, because that Master was severe, inflexible: would he have appreciated it? Would he have said, “Yes, you understood my teaching”? It was a sort of exam… every care was taken to ensure that the garden was completed, that nothing was left unfinished. And only then did the king bring the Master to come.
But immediately the Master was saddened. He looked around, went from one side of the garden to the other, and his face became more and more serious. The king was frightened: he had never seen the Master so serious: “Why was he so gloomy? Did I make such a serious mistake?”. The Master shook his head all the time and said no to himself; finally, the king could not help asking: “What is wrong, Master? Why don't you say anything? How come you frown so, and shake your head in denial? This garden is the fruit of your teachings”.
And the Master said, “This garden is too finished, it is so complete that it is a dead thing. Where are the dry leaves? I don't see a single dry leaf!" All the dry leaves had been removed, there was not a single yellow leaf on the trees, not a fallen leaf on the paths.
The king said: "I have instructed my gardeners to remove every imperfection, so that the garden would be perfect!".
“That is why it is so devoid of life,” replied the Master, “because it is absolutely artificial, it is the work of man: the things of God are never accomplished, they are always incomplete.”
Outside the garden all the dry leaves were piled up. The Master ran out, fetched a bucket of dry leaves and scattered them in the wind. The wind took them, began to play with them, the leaves rolled on the path. The Master was thrilled. He said: “Look now how alive this garden is!”. With the dry leaves a sound had entered the garden, the song, the music of the leaves blown by the wind. Now, the garden had a whisper; before, it was dead and silent as a graveyard.
I believe that a dress can be used for many years because if it is washed at a cold temperature the fabric does not wear out and therefore will keep for a long time.
I think that always buying new clothes can contribute to a disproportionate use of water but many people don't know it. Also after so many years sometimes certain styles come back into fashion.
I have some of my mother's dresses from the 70s and 80s that have come back into fashion and this has made them very current. But you have to wash in the washing machine at a cold temperature to preserve the colors and also the quality of the fabric.
Groups of people can also be created, on social networks, in which to offer their own clothes, to be exchanged or given to those who can transform them into something new, such as bags, jewels, puppets, etc... It is nice to also have a reason to meet, to share the clothes that you may not be able to keep in the closet anymore because they have become too many. I believe that you can have creative and interesting meetings with people who do creative recycling and can help you give away your used clothes, if you really want to throw them away. So if any of you are on social media you can launch this initiative which I believe could help many people.
These are some exemples for recycling jeans:
If some of you are good at sewing, creating objects with fabric, if someone wants to offer to receive clothes to transform them, create groups to create new things using recycled fabrics, I'm happy if you meet to create these things. Know that this initiative is very important and you will help save a lot of water, which is used to create new clothes.
If there are people who do DIY with fabrics we can send them our clothes and they can create new things and thus we avoid creating other waste but they will use the clothes that you no longer wear to create beautiful objects.
Declining our life in obedience to the game of opposites seems to give us a true destiny and therefore a broad freedom but it is precisely this obedience that makes us deluded souls wandering in the world in search of a goal that does not know how to exist because it cannot be a product of dance of opposites.
Friendship and enmity come from judgments we make on the real according to our advantage but is our advantage a truthful messenger from the front or does it have deeper layers where strange utilities flock to tell us their secret gaze on the things of the world?
I remember the Buddha's statement: affection is a vice.
causes attachment. attachment generates rights over the other rights over the other impose boundaries, they take their breath away and shortness of breath makes the quality of life poor.
Everyone wishes to have a friend, as in a pact of love, for better or for worse.
A friendship begins for a reason, for a context, for an emotion, and these will be the coordinates in which you will find it.
Is a friend a place in the world or a time to express yourself?
A friend becomes an enemy when his dreams are forgotten.
The enemy will still give you a place in the world and allow you to express yourself.
Enemy and friend will both give you the illusion of freedom.
We have called "time" the fact that we see things changing in only one direction. If you take an egg and crack it to make an omelet, it won't come back no matter what you do. Everything in the universe started from a single point of energy where every single thing that exists now existed, and it started to expand, this led to more and more change of this kind (called entropy) where we go from very ordered systems (see a point) towards messy systems (a cracked egg). In the case of the universe, it will lead to a universe with only atoms scattered around.
The other thing we see is the arrow of time, and the fact that everything goes towards what we have called the "future". Nothing can ever ever ever go back.
What humans have invented are systems to measure all of this and concepts to define them.
No, time doesn't always flow the same way, there are days that are so thoughtful, but so heavy that you carry them on even when they're gone. That time keeps flowing inside you even if it doesn't flow outside anymore.
I think it happens even to the best to crumple their life as if it were an old sheet of paper, a bad copy of something we consider important, words that are sought to describe the beauty of an emotion, but too ephemeral to reveal the perfection of a concept.
It happened to me too.
I lost control of myself relating to others. I lost it slowly, like when we let go of a rope because we can't handle the weight of our fears. I've lost it every time I've been disappointed, hurt, abandoned by who I thought was my "forever". I lost it and never looked for it again. For a long time. I just let it go. I let it go and sat at the bottom of the abyss becoming someone I hated.
Then I took several planes to random destinations: Venice, Milan, Amsterdam, London, Paris. And everywhere I let go of feelings I was tired of feeling. I abandoned my bad days, long faces, meaningless nervousness and even apathy. And even though I didn't realize it, I found it. It was hidden in every spontaneous laugh, in every heartbeat that got a little more intense, in every drop of rain that fell on my face, in the grains of sand that slipped from my hands, in a sincere hug that I wore like a blanket. He was there staring at me and I didn't recognize him. My ego has become a silent travel companion and can't wait to be reunited with me.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 