NO HURRY

'Rivers know this:

There is NO HURRY.

We all shall GET THERE som day.'

/ A. A. Milne, WInnie-the-Pooh/

~ Offline ~ ♡

Maybe...just maybe..behind all the inspiring quotations, cheerful posts, colorful pictures that we post on our Facebook timelines or in other social media platforms, there's actually a calling for a hug, a real conversation, a calling of 'I need you!', 'I need exactly you to ask me how I feel (for real)', 'I need a real tap on my shoulder and to hear that I am doing good what I'm doing, that I'm doing it great and that I can do a lot more!'; Those posts may even cry out 'I really want to do it, but I lack the courage..', 'I need a support!'.. 

'I need you!'

We need each other. For real. Not virtually.

~ Offline ~

♡

CARPE DIEM*

There I was - in between the setting Sun and the Moon, under a blooming apple tree where the petals have fallen in the grass like after some festival or ceremony (Life celebration?). Cuckoo was still singing. I didn't try to find meaning in it: the cuckoo was singing..because it simply couldn't sing in any other way..

* * *

If I hadn't gone into the meadow, I wouldn't have known what treasures it holds in itself.

If I hadn't had the right knowledge, I wouldn't have known what to pick up. If I hadn't had the right determination, I wouldn't have picked up anything..But..You only have to have the right determination and dive into the meadow with the right knowledge and, after asking the permission, pick up the right things (herbs in this case). Ask permission? To whom? Am I not the one who has created the world that surrounds me - with my thinking, with the help of my subconsciousness? And what a meadow! How did I create...Forget it! Thank God for it! I believe that we have co-created our surrounding world in that moment when in the favourable conditions, in the right time you picked yourself up and seized the just-popped-up-opportunity. And opportunities are just like in that meadow..plentiful.. Just need to go with the right knowledge, determination, senses..

* * *

When I go to some place, I wander around. To avoid conversations? Sometimes I truly think that words can ruin a lot.. Words put labels on things, give names, tones, puts vast things into narrow frames, words compare things..But everything is as it is, respectively, IT JUST IS!

* * *

I wanted some pictures there, by the pond. I had to capture the beautiful (what is beautiful to whom at what moment?..). When I went home afterwards, I heard frogs croaking behind me. They are laughing! Totally, laughing abut me! And..I must admit, it IS funny..Pictures, pictures, I needed pictures...Carpe diem! (latin).

* * *

There are days like these, when I don't even want to read certain kind of books. Remarque, apart from the half-truths that sometimes inspires me, You also inspire to take some drink, and what good use is of that?...

* * *

CARPE DIEM (latin, Seize the day!).

A NEW DAY..

ANOTHER DAY'S AN ANOTHER CHANCE TO FIND A LITTLE BIT MORE OF YOUR DIVINE SELF.

SCARECROWS. HOME. AND LARKSPURS

Nice songs playing on the radio, then suddenly- an advertisement. Well, let's turn another radio frequency..and again advertisement! Advertisements and advertisements..Brands. Enterprises. Business. Buy. Visit. Join. Be cool and stylish. Identify yourself with things. And lose yourself in them eventually.. hah.

* * *

You know what? I think I'm quite fine with my chaotic being that still hasn't really discovered what it is and that hasn't identified itself with some certain things. I even think that because of this, things in my life are more interesting, and it gives me more freedom and amplitude. EVERY THING THAT I IDENTIFY MYSELF WITH, TIES ME UP A LITTLE BIT MORE.

* * *

I love driving in a car as a passenger, so I can watch the surroundings and my thoughts either.

As I observed, the view outside the car's window on my right was like this: a vast field, further away it was full with birds, closer to me there was just a bare field, but in the middle there was a scarecrow that actually hadn't scared anything away. An unfortunate monument. A monument for the effort to scare something away in order to protect something. I was wondering, how many 'scarecrows' had I built with the same noble goal? If I ever hit on some, I will pull it out and throw it away! I don't need to scare anything away or protect, because I know that I OWN NOTHING.

A bird is sitting on the head of the scarecrow and laughing. It sounds like it's tweeting. But it's laughing..

* * *

It is the time now when bird-cherry-trees are blooming and nightingales are singing. And the weather is cold. The air is fresh and clean. I let it wash away the dusts of anxiety. If I didn't know that I have my home nearby that waits me with it's warmness, I would've definitely lost my peace while standing here, somewhere by the water on some hillock, in the cold and darkness - I would have to run and find some shelter, some food and help. Something makes me think that in the higher, spiritual level, things are quite similar...

* * *

The larkspurs that I had picked up, were giving their sweet aroma. And my fingers were so cold.. But all of this had something magical and special in it..

NO SMARTPHONE, NO WI-FI

      My smartphone broke down some time ago. "All the important data may disappear, while fixing it..". My pictures, my contacts! Oh..But on the second though..Oh, well! Those are only things; the past; forget it! Life gave me another cellphone which I use only for calls and text messages. The feelings when I left the Customer Service center was like leaving a backpack with 10 kg of sugar packages in it. You could even keep the 'sugar', I thought to myself. I will find other sweetness and in other ways.

       Few days later I logged in Facebook to check out whether there were some news or messages for me. None. Oh, what an interesting post I see: "NO-WIFI. Talk to each other. CALL MOM [..]". SO I DID. So I did. Almost immediately I took the phone and called my mom.  Now I have reached this stage in my life - when I want have some meaningful/ serious conversation with someone, I prepare myself to listen in DOUBLE: TO THE PERSON I'M GOING TO TALK WITH AND TO MYSELF. 

       I did not regret any second. We told each other what had happened to us during the time we hadn't talked. And, of course, we started to talk about job..Then in the most serious part of the conversation (where the mind had provoked my heart which was ready to weep any moment) my Mom made a joke about one of the things that was the most unpleasant in this topic.. And what happened next? We laughed for almost a minute without cease. And then? And then again. And again. But wait...was my worry really this funny after all? This laugh was like a Buddha laugh - transcendental, like expressing that all these material worries,- come on, admit it!- are so inessential (You realize it just when You reflect on things while riding the Charles's Wain). Yes, they really can ruin Your day. Probably the awareness of the suffering material things can cause is that makes You to rearrange Your life in order to gradually diminish the influence and attraction to material things hence also diminishing the suffering they can cause. 

      I think it is very essential to diminish these worries about and attachment to material things in order to find Your true self in a more higher and meaningful level..How and how intensely is up to You ..

FASCINATED BY THE MOON

      

      I just love the hour when the Sun passes the baton to the Moon or, in other words, when the Sun is just minutes away from crossing the horizon to shine over other lands, colouring the seemingly fluffy clouds in peachy tones, while the Moon is floating calmly in the yet-light-blue sky like a phosphorous buoy. In this hour I think I'm more fascinated by the Moonlight rather than the Sunlight, although, I know, I know, the Sun should be praised as it is only the reflection of it. Nevertheless, my respect for You, Moon, for being as You are, which makes the light of the Mighty Light reflect on You in a very mysterious way. The flowers from the blooming bushes and trees seemed to embody something from the white and radiant light of the Moon, as well as the Moon seemed to have the scent of these white flowers. 

       Reflecting something GREAT makes Yourself unbelievably great!

THE RIVER. THE WATERFALL. AND THE OBSEVER

      There I was again - standing on the river's shore, probably looking like a ghost, and listening to the sounds of the Nature. My eyes were observing the surroundings very calmly and I was breathing almost without any signs - maybe because my attention, that was focused on the magical surroundings, had hushed myself up completely. 

      Few hours ago I had broken one of the principles I was laughing at this week: 'to catch up with something that's still not done'. Why should someone catch up with something..And there I was in this sunny day - spending few hours to pick up herb tea that I did not manage to do last year. I had to catch up. Hahhah. Yeah..I laughed about myself..It is very often that a tiny element of the opposite breaks into my actions  - just to remind that, although things can be simple, not everything's so elementary.

     A very lazy day. So calm. Nobody wants to do anything big. And, you know what? - it is not always necessary..

     My grandma, who had finished peeling potatoes, with her eyes half-closed in the bright sunlight, was telling me another story. And I was thinking - how strange it is that people tell stories so passionately about something that has happened a very long time ago. Well, it is quite alright. But we must not forget about the current, to feel the moment, the warm sunlight and mild wind touching our skin: We. Are. Here.

- 'But how do you think, are all the people there, wandering as ghosts at the cemetary? I think that they reshape into some other form of existance..somewhere..in the Universe."

- 'Yeah, I think that's a nonsense..Those are probably the memories that are wandering there..'

Me and grandma respectively were reasoning.

     A little later in the same evening we, the three young people, were sitting on a great pile of rocks like some pigeons, and discussing the 'big things'. Hah. We were talking about dreams, subconsciousness, how mind itself is limited and that a human being is the consciousness that is conscious about all the things that are happening in his life and about all the things that mind is reasoning so reasonably or unreasonably..That the mind is just a tool, and that a human being is something greater, something much more vast..

     We finished our discussions. I took the cell phone that was dropped somewhere in the grass, and the clock was showing exactly 20:20 (I kissed the screen.. silly- right?). Then we went to enjoy this warm spring evening somehow more practically - Men went fishing. Women - playing badminton.

     Then I stood there, on the shore of the river. Again. I sat down on the half-ruined boat. I was watching the ducks rushing down from the sky into the river. The reflection of houses and trees in the water. Dogs' barking. Then I took a deeper breath after such a long period of short breaths, and then I felt the scent of spring that is so hard to describe. In front of me was that calm river that turned into a waterfall further on the right, behind the bridge. The last serious thought I thought that evening was that if I was the consciousness that is able to observe itsleft from the side, then my mind and my thoughts were like that waterfall that was falling down there, and many, many truths were falling down there, but I (the consciousness who was sitting there by the river and observing my mind - the river and the waterfall) couldn't hear all of it, just some sepparate sounds, phrases..And all that it meant, was that I needed to return into this natural observing position in order to hear more new sounds in this waterfall that maybe will be put together as a word, phrase, a sentence, a chapter, a story at some point in my life.

MORNINGS. YARDS. AND THANKS.

I woke up in the morning with bright and hot sunbeams on my face and with a little muscle pain after the yesterday's workout. Aaahh and aauuch. And 'wow!' for the vivid beauty outside my window. I feel it all so much. This means I am alive. THANKS for this day I've been given!

One of the greatest privileges during my stay at my parent's house in the countryside is the opportunity to go outside in the yard just as I roll out of my bed; if there's a colder weather, I put on someone's jacket (others' jackets - either my dad's, mom's, brothers', grandma's or friends'- are always better.. maybe this is the way we, the shy and the introvert persons, give ourselves a hug from them..or just ..just simply, without a trite explanation...), wearing some slippers or in the summer - a los pies descalzos* (barefoot), and then I take my full cup of tea/coffee and go somewhere in the yard to continue to be silent - on a rock, a log, a branch - until I'm fully aware of what I'm supposed to be aware: The Being. The Present. The Miracle.

While I'm living in the city, my balcony is my yard. And so I let the balcony to replace the function of the yard - I let it to conjure up the sweet atmosphere: a fresh air and a fleeting fragrance of the first spring flowers blossoming in the park just across the street, the sunbeams on my face and some sounds of the nature breaking through the city noise (and there's also some very nice tenor breaking through my laptop - that's Bocelli - my companion of my late-creative-evening).

I cannot express this in English..but we, Latvians have this one beautiful word that inhale and exhale makes in my mind: PALDIES (meaning: Thank you) - inhale makes 'PAL' and exhale makes 'DIES'. In English it would be like this: inhale makes 'THANK' and exhale makes 'YOU'. Of course, this works if you use your imagination, and as I have no problems with that, I choose to believe that every breath I take, sounds like Thank You. This THANK goes to the very fact of being and being here as a conscious and loving person as well as for love, beauty and miracles all around me..

Therefore, every time I remember that I'm breathing, I let the inhale and exhale sound like a silent (but in it's very essence a loud and humble) "Thank You"!

Thank you all, and may your day be full of miracles.

Author (text, picture): Kristine Lejina

STILLNESS

What's the good of a silence if your thoughts are louder than a passing train or a thunder?

What's the use of escaping to another place when you cannot be in peace with yourself?

All you gonna meet there is you. Wherever you go, you meet yourself there.

Silence is good, but stillness is what matters the most.

Author (text, photo): Kristine Lejina

DROP THE NEEDLESS. LISTEN

Sometimes things and happenings are just like these sneakers here on the ladder (or sometimes in a tree or a power cable) - they are quite useless, but they sure catch your attention.

Don't strive to squeeze out the meaning of every single thing - if it's meant to reveal itself, it sure will and it will definitely lead you a step closer to where you should be. You have this power, this feeling inside that helps you to distinguish the meaningful and the meaningless -  just find a peaceful place and you will hear it more clearly and loudly. Drop the needless. Listen..The silence speaks.

Author (text/photo): Kristine Lejina

GOOD LUCK OR JUST SHARDS?

Soon, soon I will find myself in a place that I put in one word - "countryside" (the nature there is more concentrated than in city; there are no traffic lights that sometimes gives us away of how we are rushing to something extra-urgent (or are we pretending so ably?) and there is no crowd that sometimes can drag you away with its inertia while you're standing there puzzle-headed about where to put your next step), - it is an opportunity to step back to look at myself from a distance.

I woke up from a several-weeks-long moonstruck walk, rubbed the eyes of my spirit and batted my eyelashes and then I tried to figure out what had happened during this long walk and again why everything that seemed so important in the city rush suddenly evaporated like the morning fog with the first warm sunbeams? A lot had happened..I don't think I can call myself a competent translator of the happenings: I doubt, because I am still learning, and all I can understand are just little fragments of the endless story.

I had managed to rebel. That wheel of  the"Good-and-meaningful" was rusted, and it seemed to me that I could read an inscription on it saying: "Nobody nor says a word nor does a thing? Then I'll also remain still!". To kick my leg on the ground to shake it enough to make the wheel run again, I went trough a range of emotions that I once ran trough when I was preparing for a more than 10 metres high jump in the pool, when I was jumping and when I had done it: turmoil and trouble remembering to breathe normally. The ability to distinguish which of the voices crying around "Jump!", "Don't jump!" harmonize more with the voice of my heart was of great importance. And then- the jump into the unknown and awarding feelings afterwards. TO EXTEND YOUR HORIZONS, YOU NEED TO JUMP!

A lot of dishes had been smashed. Like never before. Really, is so much good luck going to occur? All that was left to do was to gather the shards so others wouldn't crush them..crush...the good luck or the shards?

I had met so many pairs of eyes - some of them too indecent ("Why on earth such an indecent and piercing look?) and some of them seemed to be telling me: "I know something that also you should know!"..And sometimes I myself was some of these pairs of eyes trying to swim into the depths of others' eyes..

I also had experienced that someone told me that I was THE BEST when I was GENUINE AND FREE.

I had oberved that someone accross the street was rushing so vigorously, appearing so busy to and rushing to deal with some urgent matters (perhaps, perhaps..), throwing a hint that we'll talk some time later (after hundred years*..)..So urgent matters that one must cross the street while the red light is still on, so that the acquaintance, seen already a while ago, doesn't come too close. Sometimes I myself was this person rushing across the street. BUSYNESS was also one of my fig leaves that I used to cover myself with. I had several more (silence, apathy, stupidity etc.), and I was wearing them depending on the situations in which some suited more than other. Sometimes I was also crossing the street while the red traffic light was still on, and I was holding in my free hand such things as "urgent", "duty" etc., so I couldn't (or was I afraid?) give my hand to the Truth that was giving her hand to me many times before promising to wake me up from the sleepwalking and to lead me through much, much better paths..

Maybe I need to drop down all the fig leaves and trashes out of my hands and to give my hand to the things that are calling me for a long time, and maybe those things are able to teach me when shattered dishes are just shards and when they mean a good luck...

A GRAND DAY

The best way TO LIVE THE DAY GRAND and MEANINGFULLY (even without winning a medal, earning a million, climbing the mount Everest, etc.), is to live it permeated WITH LOVE: TO LOVE OTHERS (and EVERYTHING!) and, primary and essentially, TO LET YOURSELF TO BE LOVED!

Author: Kristine Lejina

THE FEATHERS OF MY COLOURFUL THOUGHT-BIRDS

My thoughts are like birds. They're flying and floating around. Some of them - nearby, some of them - far, far away. Some of these birds are colourful, splendid and beautiful, some - greyish and messy. Some's gathering nectare, but some is chasing after useless glittering trash. Some are flying long distances far away courageously and tirelessly.. but some.. some haven't learnt how to fly yet...

Author (text and painting "Feathers of My Colourful Thought-Birds"): Kristine Lejina

LOOKING FOR THE MIRACULOUS

I was looking at the sky, and just like the wind was blowing away the clouds, I was trying to chase away the feeling of TRIVIALITY. Maybe it was the fault of scientists that I was looking at the clouds as at completely explicable phenomenon. Above all, I felt that it wasn't like that..Exactly thereof, I was quietly hoping that somewhere some lump of the cloud took off and just like a cotton candy fell down smoothly and lightly on the bare tree branches like on some pikes..I was desiring to experience the inexplicable to remind me in this ordinary-daily-life and to show (maybe visible just for the-eyes-of-my-heart) that the MIRACULOUS is here with us, alongside, just like the scientifically-explicable..Maybe even MORE..Much, much more..

MORNING-MAGIC

One early morning I was literally running for the Beautiful to meet it in the middle. And I was rewarded with a spiritually enjoyable combination of the still-sleeping-city-rush, the Sunrise's colored red'n'golden surroundings, the lake whispering some secret and seagulls singing their song of freedom..

Author (text&photo): Kristine Lejina

GEOMETRICAL WORLD

I AM A LINE..

Every now and then one or another geometrical figure asks me the question of why I NEVER want to BELONG to anyone or anywhere.

So I reply with a question: "But why don't you want to be in PARALELL with me?"

I've always thought that we are two parallel lines. Besides, closer of further away. But in parallel with each other, so we don't ever intersect, WE NEVER CROSS. 

Two freedoms. Two worlds.

" I don't reject your coexistence, your adjacency, but we do not cross each other." 

TWO PARALLEL LINES.

We have our own parallel truths.

[But what if some geometrical whim suddenly takes over me, and I suddenly want to INCLINE, CROSS, CROOK...And suddenly I know the geometry no longer..]

Author (text&photo): Kristine Lejina

AWAKENING

I truly love how we, human beings, AWAKEN each other more and more [and I am not talking about the waking up in mornings/ waking up from sleeping, because my alarm clock does it, or sometimes, more rarely, my subconsciousness]. :)

Author (text/photo): Kristine Lejina

Outside..to explore

My parents have a new dog for a while now. And I took the dog out to explore the neighbourhood, to have some adventures. I took her by the river. I sat myself down on the half-destroyed boat's one side that was left outside the water, on the shore. I kept silent and pondered some deep thoughts. Even if it wasn't a dog, I wouldn't say anything to that Somebody and I wouldn't share my deep feelings and current impressions, I would rather let that Somebody to run, wade or sit; to catch Somebody's own impressions, feel Somebody's own feelings and to see the things with Somebody's own eyes as the two always felt the same place differently and in another way..

We went forward along some bare raspberry canes that were standing here alone for so long time that they catched my clothes, my gloves with their thorns, insisting me to stay here longer. I could not stay here. We walked forward along some long reeds; few steps were made in the river's water. Here I had to stoop low in order to go through the branches of a fallen tree. In fact I haven't been walking here for many years. And I felt a little uncomfortable as this edge of river, this shore belonged to somebody. But could it possibly belong to anybody? Did we create it to possess it now? ..

..We came to one big fir-tree. It's hanging branches were rustling. It was interaction. The three doesn't rustle itself. The more sharply the wind rushed through the branches, the more the three rustled. It was the interaction that makes something new. Something..

..We walked over one field through the grove of birches to another field. A solitary pond lies there. Some time ago I was standing there on the plank and staring at the greenish water, and it looked like the water was running forward. But it wasn't. It was the wind that was carrying the top layer of the water forward, but the waves were splashing against the shore and they calmed down and sank in pond's own depth, right where the waves emerged from. With a wind the waves moved, but they started in theirselves and they ended in theirselves..

..We walked and we came home.

The dog had taken me out for some adventures...

Author (text&photo): Kristine Lejina

I guess I am thinking even when asleep

     The so called doomsday was here; some sort of light was wandering around the sky and sucking in one human being after another. We were afraid, but getting ready to be the next ones, and still wondering whether and what to take with us, and would it make any sense..Someone out of the bunch said that it won't, because everything There would be much different as it is here. Fooling ourselves that it would be safer, we got closer together (although we are always by ourselves as beings; and even though connected in the very basics, two 'we' or five 'we' doesn't make anything bigger than there already is in the universe), and we waited for our turn to come. And it did. Fear was somewhere in the air..My grandma who believed in God for so many years and who has been praying for so many years, turned to me loking worried, and said that 'we are just like CUPS'; we can be FILLED with any thing that Someone wishes us to be filled with; we can be EMPTIED; we are USED, we can be be BROKEN AT ANY TIME and we can also be POLISHED..
And then we already were in the 'process' and there were some other feelings apart from the fears related with the UNKNOWN. And why were we even assuming that everything is so SAFE, GUARANTEED AND OBVIOUS in general and that something like 'This' could never happen? This was INEXPLICABLE, but so was everything else in the world, although it all seemed HABITUAL, ORDINARY...
Then everything suddenly grew bigger, the trees, the pile of stones, and Someone, looking similar to human being commanded us to JUMP down the pile. And not thinking much, pushing aside the fears, remembering that at some points in my life I already have had to 'jump', I jumped as a pure feeling of RELIANCE rushed through every cell of mine.
Then I woke up..
And as an EMPTY CUP I started to reck and feel EVERYTHING that was going to fill me up at this very moment, today and onwards..Regardless of what it was going to be, I hoped that a small part of it always would be the RELIANCE...and that I never looked at things and happenings in this world as at habitual, obvious and ordinary..

Author (text&photo): Kristine Lejina

STAY AWARE, CAPTAIN!

SO, CAPTAIN (I'M TELLING TO MYSELF), NAVIGATE YOUR SHIP AS REASONABLE AS YOU CAN, SO YOUR CONSCIENCE DOESN'T HAVE TO WALK THE PLANK AT THE END OF THE DAY!

Author (text&photo):Kristine Lejina

Latvian Beach Volleyball Players

(Author: Kristine Lejina)