Monthly Archives: December 2008

Innocense Lost

Dry November leaves blanketed the walkway.

She shuffled through, the way children often do —

the last of the morning stragglers, trying to get

to class before the final bell.

She hesitated for several seconds,

then reluctantly climbed the stairs —

her expression one of defiance.

As I reached out, tears filled her eyes —

thin, wiry arms held me tightly —

her hard exterior now broken.

Glancing up at a gray, pre-winter sky,

I fought back tears of my own —

mouthed an inaudible prayer to an all knowing God

then watched as she entered the building —

tough expression back in place as she readied herself

for the painful games of adolescence.

I WRITE TO YOU

I WRITE TO YOU

I don’t understand….

On the lachrymose memories
of the path,
the dark shadows of a night
flow uninterrupted.

I don’t know you still.
Something remained
like the golden freezing drops
that woke in the eyes of the
twin leaves, someday,
after a heart wrenching rain.

Now only the salt remains,
melting slowly,
on my quivering lips.
The smoky light,
and of course,
a sea.

Turbulent, restless,
piercing the shore
of my soul….

A sea….

There

There’s always been

that unnamable but familiar

something within you

that I knew was mine.

It stirs interstitially

within my being,

whirling and pulsating

between my tissues,

radiating outward –

magnetically searching

to connect with that part of itself

residing in you.

It seeks completeness

– potentiality fulfilled –

and when you’re too far away

it retreats into the ground of me

patiently waiting to reemerge

in the spring of you.

Now, with your return,

it cautiously but enthusiastically

seeks the surface

responding to warmth of

an unexplainable kinship –

budding ethereally,

burgeoning in its essence,

absorbing all it had missed,

finding wholeness

in you.

© 2008

Warrior of Light – Issue no. 186 – Dieting Already

One of Brazil’s great philosophers, Tim Maia, once said: “I decided to go on a strict diet. I cut out alcohol, all fats and sugar. In two weeks I lost 14 days”.

For 28 years I have been living with a marvelous woman who now and again loses her temper and her usual good humor because she feels that she has put on a couple of kilos. I wonder if maybe we are exaggerating a little. One thing is obesity, another is trying to stop the time and normal evolution of our organism.

The worst of it all is that at each and every moment there appears a new way to lose weight: eating calories, then not eating calories, compulsively consuming fats, then avoiding fats at any price. We step inside a pharmacy and are visually assaulted by all sorts of miraculous products that promise to do away with our desire to eat, with our fat tissue, with our belly, and so on.

We have survived all these millennia because we could eat. And nowadays this seems to have turned into a curse. Why is that? What makes us try at the age of 40 to keep the same body we had when we were young? Will it ever be at all possible to stop this dimension of time?

Of course not. And so why do we need to be slim?

We don’t. We buy books, go to the gym, devote a great deal of our concentration trying to stop time, when we ought to be celebrating the miracle of living in this world. Instead of wondering how to live better, we are obsessed with how much we weigh.

Let’s forget all that; you can read all the books you want, do all the exercise you want, suffer all the punishment you decide to inflict on yourself, and you will have only two choices — you either stop living, or else you will get fat.

It is obvious that you have to eat moderately, but above all you have to take pleasure in eating. Jesus Christ said that: “evil is not what goes into man’s mouth, but rather what comes out of it”.

The other day I was in a Lebanese restaurant with an Irish friend, and we were talking about salads. With all due respect to vegetarians and the fundamentalists of food, for me, salad is just something to decorate a dish. We cannot live without it, but on the other hand we cannot consider it as the center of our gastronomic attention. Every day the newspapers publish stories of young people looking for fame on the catwalk who end up dying because of this obsession with weight.

Remember that for thousands of years we fought to avoid being hungry. Who invented this story that we have to spend our whole life being slim?

Let me give you the answer: the vampires of the soul, who think that it is possible to stop the wheel of time. It is not possible. Use the energy and the effort of a diet to feed yourself with the bread of the spirit, and go on enjoying (moderately, let me repeat) the pleasures of good eating. Last year I wrote a series of columns on the capital sins, and greed was one of them. But what exactly is greed? An obsession.

The same goes for diets. And this is where the two extremes meet and become harmful to our health. While millions of people the world over are hungry, we see people provoking this other obsession because at some moment or other somebody decides that being slim is the only option for regaining youth and beauty.

Instead of artificially burning those calories, we should try to turn them into the energy we need to fight for our dreams; no-one has ever stayed slim for long just by following a diet.

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/warrioroflight
http://www.warriorofthelight.com/

Musa

I.

it is in distance i come
very close to her,
the guilt more real
and unforgiving —
a moment quivering
with so much nearness.
her breath hot on my face,
scent caressing my lips,
the magic of the reach
between us haunts this hour
when sins are too holy
for their meanings,
too pure for the dark.
she is a miracle, a vocabulary
born of the wind.

II.

it’s already night,
the tired body wanting
to feel the dreams on the bed,
the arms longing to embrace
the language of pillows.
but, here i am with pen in one hand
and paper in the other
with thoughts of the muse
flowing from the liquid wind.

she was there beside me,
skin to skin, separated only
by the games of names.
our silence was melody
still playing, searching
for the lyrics.

but, i can only fill
the page with distances
toward the next music,
toward a landmark planted
with another song.

III.

have you seen her? she was here a while ago, connecting the telling universe
to the page, some love electric, the planets, suns and stars
revolving, gliding in a quickened sleep into the dream on paper.
the tongued storm with voice of all eyes, with the rhythm of entire
petal force empirely spinning in one gentle touch. and touch
of hair is flowing ocean to the depths of its engulfing mystery, the waves
connecting shores, glowing darkly with the moon on her flowering
wingertips, dancing at the heart of the hurricane; while the unicorn
swiftly to the target of its rare eyes — all blooming
universes a giant rose opening its palms to the God
of the atom and to the Lord of the shading suns. there
into the sex of the night the cities wood the gentle kiss.
love of all love is a woman mystery, who accompanies
one sip of coffee with her Genesis smile, simply the heart
is pure to love, too pure to sin, too, such pureness
here touching the face, till summer storm wipes
tears from the skies. have i told you before there is so much
to tell in the wide-eyed loneliness of her arrival?
i shall meet her, oh i shall meet her and whistle
a happy tune, lovely melody of our oneness. why oh why
you should ask. i shall tell you about the lingering
scent, the traces of her perfume on my skin, and my eyes —
there she is, the dream imprinted in my eyes, oh and to touch
her is like strumming the bent night for melodious wind. and you
say I’m clever, clever for loving her, loving her.

have you not seen her? what of miracle and song when
she walks, the road palms of winged angels,
deeply thirsting as every fleeting step performs heavenly music.
i sing about her. my soul sings about her.

IV.

she feels good about herself.
she’s all natural, all beautiful inside-out.
her smile plucks stars from orbit.
like a whisper, her eyes hourless but momentful
in her free-verse walk.

there’s her heart, ageless youth,
words gently, easy-speak in her eyes,
divine is her voice
kind is her skin to touch.

thoughts caressing in their free time,
surfing on the surge of life,
playing in the balance
when truth edges to wound
but fails because it simply
cannot be so true.

in her free-verse walk,
like a whisper, her eyes hourless but momentful.
her smile plucks stars from orbit.
she’s all natural, all beautiful inside-out,
she feels good about herself.

Copyright (C) 2008, Edwin M. Cordevilla