A piece of advice

When you are feeling down, really down, try listening to this song and taking its advice. Ambition is productive, but regret is poisonous. Failure may also teach you many things, if you realize the beauty of enjoying the ride that life has to offer. This doesn't mean not having purposes in life, it means not feeling defeated when a plan hasn't worked out the way you wanted.

Morcheeba - Enjoy The Ride

Shut the gates and sunset
After that you can't get out
You can see the bigger picture
Find out what it’s all about
You're open to the skyline
You won't want to go back home
In a garden full of angels
You will never be alone

If you close the door to your house
Don't let anybody in
It's a room that's full of nothing
No blood underneath your skin
Face against the window
You can watch it fade to grey
You will never catch the fickle wind
If you choose to stay

But oh the road is long
The stones that you are walking on
Have gone

With the moonlight to guide you
Feel the joy of being alive
The day that you stop running
Is the day that you arrive

And the night that you got locked in
Was the time to decide
Stop chasing shadows
Just enjoy the ride

Here's the video, which is one of my favorite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uMGH3kHhzM

Silent conversation

Words have been thrown away... verbal communication has long been forgotten. The conversation seems so clear... clearer than any sentence ever said. The conversation seems so natural, more natural than any dialogue ever had. Some people use to talk hours without saying anything, some people don' t utter a word, still they say and understand everything. Facts are just confirming their silent conversation that has been carried for a long time. It just feels weird how much one can say without saying nothing.
However, as true as it might be, the nonverbal communication remains an unofficial statement. It requires words to become official, otherwise, its "sound" will gradually fade away...

Nouvelle Vague - In a manner of speaking

L'autre Bout Du Monde

I have always believed that the difficulty of a problem lies in the importance we give it, and not in the nature of the problem. This is why something which seems insignificant to the others might defeat us. There are no big or small problems... there are just "our problems" and the way we perceive them.
The same thing happens with distance. Between people the distance is not measured in miles or kilometers, but in feelings. It's all about how close we feel to a person. So it might happen that you feel close to someone who is miles away and far from the one who you've just seen. Distance changes... Maybe you used to feel very close to someone, but now all that is related to that person, all the memories seem to be at the other end of the world. You talk to that person, you meet them, still, to you, they remain at the other end of the world. On the other hand, the memory and the image of the one who is away from you joins your every step.
There's no unit of measurement that can show you how far you are from someone, only you can tell whether they are at the other end of the world or not.

Emily Loizeau - L'autre Bout Du Monde

When Hope Becomes Prison

How far can hope lead someone and when does hope turn from freedom into prison? Hope gives you courage, ease, smile, joy, thrills, but what if all those turn to dust too many times in a row? Does hope still mean flying, when the facts that it nurtures all make you fall? You’re hoping for a thing that reality has many times rejected.. You are aware of the limitations and of the unfriendly situation that you have come across with. Still, you can’t go on another direction. The phrase “maybe still” stirs your mind, paralyzes all your moves, your thoughts, and your power to revolt. You become trapped in the prison named “hope”, in a dead-end situation.
When a wish is growing inside of you, when you have set your eyes on a certain point, hope gives you wings and carries you in the desired direction. But your flight to that point is threatened by the hostile reality. Real facts make you collapse. However, you rise again- your wings are hurting you, but that distant point still lures you towards it, its charm heals your wings. The question is: how many more falls will you be able to bear? Since you have fallen so many times, something is deffinetly wrong with this ecuasion. The problem is not about your wings - you are able to fly, your wings are strong, though wounded, they can still help you. And yet, you don’t manage to reach that point you’ve been struggling for. But have you thought that maybe the problem lies within the long distance that separates you from that point? Hope has made it seem much shorter and the road much easier. In a moment of sad revelation you become aware of the fact that hope has manipulated the immage of the desired thing, making it seem closer, giving you the felling that you are able to thouch it, when the path to it in fact grows longer. Because of this immage, you’ve felt unimmagined thrills of joy, graceful sweaps, shy trembles, but also biting tears and sad heartbeats. All things considered, the question remains: are you willing to continue flying in that direction, regardless of your chanses to win and letting your feeble hope subdue you?

The only possible solution is changing the direction, and if there isn’t someone else to help you, or a favourable wind to guide you, the change must come from within yourself. Your wings got used to flying in that direction and no matter how much it hurt you during your multiple falls, the pain grows stronger when you decide to take that bend. You feel that the blury point you’ve been starring is better than no point at all. However, „maybe still” must be replaced by „maybe elsewhere”. The turn makes you senseless and puzzled. When you don’t have a certain thing to worry about, it’s like everything worries you. You will be drifting for a while, all the possible directions will seem useless to you and the points around you dull. Nothing will manage to draw your attention, but at least hope hasn’t become a prison for you. Sooner or later a new desire will spring in your heart, triggered by a new shiny point ahead of you. You will then fly towards it, accompanied by the same sweet scent named hope. There will be many points and also many bends to take.

Taking that bend..."maybe elsewhere"

Erik Satie - Gymnopedie No.3

P.S: The very nice picture is not made by me. I found it on deviantart, but it was what inspired me to write this post among other facts.

The joy of coming back

There's something magical in the idea of "home". I'm sure you had that nostalgic feeling that you miss home, not because you are unhappy with your current life, or because you're feeling that you can't get by on your own. I don't wish I had remained in my town, nor do I want to turn back time to live home again. It's just that somehow in the whirlpool of my exciting new life I realized I wanted to catch a glimpse of my old life. I love it when I come back home...it's a warm and soothing feeling that recharges my batteries. So... on whichever journey you might be, follow your nostalgia and let it guide you home, because every pilgrim needs to feel the joy of coming back once in a while...
I wish you all a guarding angel in your journey and Happy Easter!

Sophie Zelmani - Going Home

In the shade of words

Words may be imagined as a bridge between people: they can bind people, they reveal, they liberate. However, they can be used as a shield, as a way to hide and to protect yourself. The verbal communication is a true and sure form of communication, since words are signs which at least theoretically have the same meaning for all the speakers. But how sincere are they actually? A weak person can easily hide in the shade of words to create themselves a certain image in the eyes of the others, dramatically different from the real one.

I am not describing the communication technique of a manipulator, who wants to induce the others a certain behavior. On the contrary, I am describing a person who wants more to protect themselves from the others, than to control them. Thank to words, a speaker or a writer may seem, for example a strong, confident and level-headed person, insensitive to the insignificant things in life and very realistic. The others didn’t manage to see that the person is in fact very diffident, dreamy, easily hurt and pessimistic. The situation represents a turn in the role of words. Instead of revealing the speaker, they isolate him, and this turn is performed by the speaker himself. Internet facilitates this turn, since many people cannot meet and know each other directly. Words are used to hide even when we communicate face to face, so imagine how easily can the public imagine be manipulated by the speaker on the internet.

Using words as a shield will sooner or later become overwhelming and the created image will become suffocating, since the speaker won’t be able to rise to the level of his prototype. Frustration will emerge, self confidence will diminish even more, so why risk choking my identity with some beautifully polished words that do not speak the truth about me.

My point is: I will not use this blog to hide in the shade of my words. I won’t express myself thoroughly, but I will write what I consider relevant to be written on a blog – and those posts will be sincere, as I would rather stay in the light of words, than in the shade of them.

The Village Soundtrack - The Vote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Greb-8mSEqI

Why?

I’ve never been able in my whole life to keep writing a diary, so why I am writing on a blog? Well it’s mostly because I sometimes feel the need to write without anyone asking me to. I have a lot of thoughts, triggered even by feeble or insignificant impulses, but sometimes small incentives may nurture big thoughts. I have always been encouraged by my Romanian teacher to write, but I’ve never believed her when she told me that I had skills and I got mad at her when she put me to go to the Olympiad. In vain did I get a good result there, I still didn’t want to write, without having to do it. During high school I constantly had to write essays for my teacher. All of them, although academic argumentative essays, were inspired by personal experience. So they were some form of impersonally written diary. Not having to write for my teacher anymore, I was surprised to realize that I felt the need to write and that I have never wrote out of constraint.

I will start this blog by writing about my world: things and activities that I like, some thoughts that I have, my dreams and maybe along the way I will cover more serious subjects. I will write about a diversity of things that get trapped into the carouselle of my life… and there you go, I’ve now explained the title of my blog:).

Ohh... and something else. My each and every post will be accompanied by a song, because music is what inspires me most. You may not find it necessarily related to the post, but for me the chords and my words do seem to bind well somehow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GFd4H-tX0w