Talk to me, friend

Maybe it's time for some news. Talk to me, friend. I long for your ponderate words about being afraid of trying, about our great need of resistance, about the beauty in the unexpected things and sites of life.
Off the beaten track you go! It's very long since I made a serious effort to see beyond my own fence, beyond this sort of border of welfare. There's no regrets, dear fellow.
Here inside is like a John Lennon's song that flows smoothly into minds and hearts. So I can talk about that and other stuff with no trouble of finding myself lost.
Do I want to be rich? Well, I do want not to fear for material things. It's not that I long for consuming expensive clothes, houses or cars. I do not want to travel the whole world. I will be very glad to stay where I am, if I can. Here is the place where I chose to be, so it's the best for me.
I work not just for paying bills, that would be a poor excuse for so much sacrifice. I work for a dream I had long ago and now it looks quite old, though.
Many people in my family went for a military career, mostly in the navy. I craved for a position in the navy, as an officer, of course. My father didn't agree with me. He always tried to protect me from a life far from our kind. Sometimes I think he may suffer more than anybody for the choices I made. Well, I meant no harm. He knows I am a quite decent and respectable fellow, so I don't feel very bad about it.
I long for a day when all the blood and sweat will make sense. I'm not talking just about myself ( I do think my life carries purpose, though it is a little changeable!).
Think about all the sort of crazy things people do. The vandals who dirturb other people's sleep screaming in the streets, or poluting the walls with graffiti, or destroying themselves with alcohol and drugs, poisoning their own minds with depressing thoughts of State opression and the imperialism of the corporations... what a bunch of lies and excuses for running from some serious work!
Think about families nowadays. Future parents my have a sexual life, but they are not married... ok, don't do that just because others expect you to do so, but do it to show your commitment with your partner. They raise children as if TV and computer games care about something else then profit and buy whatever is necessary not to give true love through a proper and not always easy education which requires meaningful talks, time and setting the best example.
Think about the government, composed by these sad clowns who pretend to care about people's interests, but do anything it takes to win elections, including favouring party members with "special gifts" and lying to everybody most of the time.
It is not a hopeless world, though. Here and there good people work seriously for the beauty in the little things and places.
Talk to me, friend. Show you care. Spend longer with your beloved ones. Do the right thing.

Steadiness on a rare wave

My dear fella Daniel once showed me one of his poems that had, more than nice rhymes or lyricism, a stunning title. Translated into English it would be something like "steadiness on a rare wave" what jolted my thoughts to that dear image of the impossible condition that can not be kept and which lasts for the fad moment poetry smiles and comes inside our soul.
In actual fact, I have been deeply in love with this idea, this balmy condition that carries my dreams along and sparkes lethal splinters of gold in its way through life.
Early on, I would masquerade as the wisiest young man in my borough, not to pretend I was better than what I really was but just to convey my beloved certainties and principles more effectively. Now I am able to stick together for the same reasons, but in a different perspective. It would cost me my life giving in my faith in the mercy of God, my love to my city and country, the company of my girl and brothers.
By way of going through the dark shadows of the unknown, I got some treasure troves hidden from the ones whose eyes were too busy watching the wheels of the cars and hearts held in anguish for their short time for their crucial tasks. I left in the same shadows, however, the stale flags of cruelty to the evil and intolerance. I don't need to fight them anymore, not in the fields of my own moral consciousness. It is worthier to concentrate energy on love.
In the quietness of the night, for that short time enough to turn it into poetry, it is possible to see starts shining for that in some way: their light come to our sight even tough the distance and darkness of time. It was their bright gleam that arrived after the long journey in spite of all the hurdles it came across in its way.

A tired winter

We all need our cardigans and coats during the winter and we do need our scarves for the windy mornings when losing heating from the exposed skin gives the impression of a even lower temperature.

Once I heard the oriental people have that specific shape of the eyes because of the reflected light of sun on the sun, which along many centuries made them look as being squinting all the time. Here we had no snow this winter, so no worries about becoming a Chinese-looking-like, but now snowman or uncomprehensible anouncements on the tube: "customers are asked not to bring snow to the station".

Maybe London is becoming warmer. There is a new exhibition in the Museum of London about this matter, it is called "Weather Permiting" and there is a picture of fair winter scene: boys throwing snow on each other nearby Buckingham Palace and a snowy Queen Vicotoria monument were quite intriguing if we look at our typical winther in the last decade: no trace of snow at all, if there was some in London last year it was twice or thrice.

Our last summer were pretty wet, with just a few really hot days which really deserved to be called "summer day" and now the winter, though expected to be rigorous, had just a few days in December and February cold enough to freeze the balls off the brass monkey: throughout the season we had nice sunny days with mild temperatures.

All winter days were perfect for a cup of tea as I reckon the spring and summer days will also be, it is the wonderful English effusion love, as it is definitively not a matter of how cold it is.

I do love the winter mornings, almost always dry and inspiring, so beautiful that any of my occasional sorrows could resist to a deep first breath of its thin and delicated air.

Again the trees have leaves and the long days are coming back, slowly the hibernating time that is winter gives place to the hope and brightness spring conveys in its flourishing power.

A young begger

What for this happy looking, this magical smile? It is almost funny to especulate what may have prompted him to smile so broadly, showing his decayed teeth.

He came to me in a slow Saturday afternoon in duty in the Museum of London.

As we share this same mysterious assertive looking, I will always smile back to him.

Around South Molton Street

The new year had not yet arrived when I decided to take Fernanda, one of my housemates, for a walk around central London. I needed to buy some fancy dress costume or at least some fake fangs to play a stylised vampire at my club's new year party and it seemed to be a good time to go around with this girl who really needed to go out to wander and eat some roasted chestnuts at street and help me with the vampire accessories.

As far as I came to know, she had got into some trouble the night before in a pub when an English girl became really angry with her because my housemate was insistently staring at her. Staring at people you don't know is certainly impolite but it is no reason for that. They were arguing and almost fighting when friends of both came up to calm them down, but just after that, Fernanda run away from the pub weeping.

After walking a few minutes with any sense of where she was going, a guy in a car, completely strange to her, asked why she was crying and after that they spent the night together talking about existential issues and the meaning of life and similar matters. She came to know that the man was a psichologist, he tried to help my confused and homesick friend with some supportive talking and a lift home when the sun was to rise. In the next morning she as feeling still worse for getting inside a strange's car and opening her heart to him. Just too guilty to enjoy life.

I took the girl with me so going to central London with someone is funnier and it would be nice to be useful to someone who needs some attention and fun.

We took the "pick-pocket" bus, the one you don't need to touch your travel card to have access and is usually appreciated for subburban pick-pocket criminals. After half hour we were at Oxford Street and went for the souvenir shops, where I had seen some vampire stuff a couple of times before, however not for a cheap price!

Many of these shops had just British related souvenirs (including some funny Scotish flag stamped pants) but no vampire stuff and I was getting a bit worried as the party would be the next day and I needed to work the next day so I probably wouldn't have time enough to keep looking for it.

Fortunately we saw some rubber vampire teeth through a window and the problem was finally solved.... well, at least untill a certain point because these teeth were just horrible! I looked as a really uggly vampire who should find a dentist urgently! Fernanda loved it and laughed out of loud every time I tried the fake rubber teeth. Nice fun but I was £3.00 poorer and looking really stupid but not whithout hope: we still needed to find some make up to complete the vampire style of being: pale and with deep black eyes and of course some blood coming out of the sides of the mouth.

Going up at Oxford Street, Fernanda, now more relaxed and a bit hungry, went for some Belgium wafles, which I got a bite, before continuing. She told me then about last night and what happened. I said she had her lesson and shouldn't take more lifts with strangers, above all, it would help a lot if she stopped thinking about Brazil and her family and friends and everything she left because if you leave your home country for longer than a couple of months, you really need to get involved with the things of your new country and it includes making local friends and having a social life there. "Well, this is food for thought", she said.

Further towards Marble Arch, we saw at our left a beutiful street, still decorated for Christimas with giant angels made with little lights: this was South Molton Street. We didn't resist to take a look and right inside I could see a quite remarkable house: "Here lived the poet William Blake - 1757-1827" says the old board attached on the wall. She likes Blake's poetry so do I and that was enough to start talking about him: Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity - it is my favorite Blake's quotation and conveys his rebellious spirit. Imaging the poet walking around that place, going for an ale and coming back late at night to write made my night: finding the vampire stuff for the party wasn't anymore important.

Even though we had gone for the make up, I was already happy with our going out.

Back home Fernanda was smiling and talking about new year's evening and although I was not yet a decent vampire, I could feel poetry flowing in the heart and ready to enjoy the arriving of a new year here in my sweet old England.

Begging love and kindness

Near the Parliament Brigde there's a begger who talked to me eventually when I used to go there feed the pingeons. Taking the risk of being arrested once it is illegal, this dare act of spreading some bread for those starving creatures, suddenly I was surprised at the vision of a drawing made on the pavement by this begger, whose name is Johnathan. It was a beautiful pink heart with the cheerful words surrounding: "Please fill my heart with love and kindness", besides I could reach: "if you can't spare a cigarette money will do". It was clear for me I couldn’t leave without a picture of that ouvre d'art and as just I took my camera Johnathan looked in my eyes begging for some love and kindness, so I filled his heart with my shiny 50 pences coin and he smiled, it's amazing how a bit of love for us can mean lots of love for other people.
People is often afraid of giving love as if it could cost their life-time economies or even more while love is free, at least it is supposed to be. I am sure that Johnatan is not afraid about these matters since people who has less are the ones with the greatest hearts and still because misery makes emerge in the human soul the noble feelings of compassion and symphaty to other people whose suffering and grief makes sense and it was not necessary any religious doctrine of love for our neighbors, but in fact it is precisely love God himself when you love people for any special reasons than simple love.
I was taught by experience that being afraid of showing your love is worse than when there's no love at all, because in this situation all is clear, no embarassement, no tricky chats, just the truth: "there's no love for you here, go away to fish." When you love and don't say, not just with words, but specially with acts, something bad flows with the wind and from a minute to another it seems normal begging love and kindness sarcasticly just because anybody seems to care honestly.
However, it is also possible people do care about love and kindness and are just afraid of exposing something they want to give their love and kindness for free, just because it is far from being unvalueable, it’s in fact the most precious thing a person can own.
At this pace it is perfectly understandable the Johnathan's heart being filled by the people who tryed to escape to the Thames shore to feed the pingeons and give some of ther hidden feelings to strangers and beggers.