If you have love in your heart, let it show

People walk by. They pass in front of you. They approach your eyes but never look at them. They run, they stumble, they fall, they wait. They leave or they come back. People are moving. Sometimes it takes more than a moment to realize that there are actual people around you. People are in a rush. So, they do not pay that much of attention. People are not looking. They are not observing what goes around them. Unless its too sad or too nice. So, people are also selfish. They care for the bad and the good things of their own interest and that's when they turn around. That's when we turn around. 

So, again, of you have love in your heart, let it just show.

It does not matter where you 'll show it. You just have to spread it around and people will admire your bravery. Because it takes a lot of courage to demonstrate your feelings. That is why people tend to lock love inside. Sometimes behind two sad eyes, a wounded soul or memories that have gone bad.

It does not matter where you 'll show your love. It only matters who will be willing to turn around and look at it, who will feel it. As far as i know, no love at all feels that bad to be hidden.

Milano; the necessary stop

I always have to visit Italy. Sooner or later, I do believe that this country will offer me a warm home and a lovely life into one of its amazing cities. This time I had the chance to spend a few days (4 actually) in Milan. The capital of fashion. My arrival there has been a bit unpredictable since I was initially on my way home for Christmas. This means that I was carrying 40kg of luggage and had to stroll around the city like a nomad. Fortunately, people were extremely friendly to help me with the weight, especially when there were no lifts or electric stairs around. 

I do not know why, but this time Milan was extremely sunny. Maybe I was in desperate need of sun. I walked around Navigli and let the sun kiss me for so many hours that I almost got lost. But a great espresso can wake up even the most disoriented person. Yes, i was disoriented by the beauty of this city, by the smells and the tastes around, by the smiles of the locals who were spreading "buongiornos" around! The luxurious via Montenapoleone was crowded. From the China town neighborhood until the corso Como I found amazing little stores providing flavors to the curious visitors and cocktails with style. I had one or two. ;)

It might not be a city famous for its art and architecture but its an italian city. Every single one has its own artistic identity. And with all those parks breathing around, the city creates a mixture of environments where one can find it all. At least I did.   

This has been a perfect ending to a strange 2015. The year was just a huge disappointment until the moment I moved to France, early in August. I had the chance to travel around, more than usually. Met some amazing people and counted down numbers of new experiences. For 2016 I have a huge list of things I feel I own to myself. I will share many of these with you, some of them with my closest friends and some will be my personal projects. The last ones will be dreams coming true. And I cannot wait to live them. In fact, i had postponed them for so long. Now its just the time to go wild for a while. Or more...    

Which kind of Love is the higher law?

It is a well known song but I hadn't listen to music for long time. At least the music that cures the soul. One morning it just hit me and now it simply cannot find its way out of my mind. Through the messy, stressful and abstract ideas that I have gathered inside my head during the last days this song is just the solution. It truly is. Because I had plans and life turned them upside down. But its ok, cause there are people that had worst experiences recently. And I respect that, I feel grateful for still having the ability to make plans, as much as i feel sorry for the human beings that have never felt love and those that have never understood it.
Then I thought of all the time I have spent trying to explain love, to rationalize it, to make it work. Instead I realized how much love I had coming my way but I was too busy chasing reasons and weak excuses and then I felt that I had to love myself again. My plans were forced to change but still I had the need to make a long list, with the things I haven't done for a long time now, with the places I wanted to be, with the priorities I had to set, with needs and obligations. No sentiments included, no feelings, no emotions. A long, cold list of duties. But I thought again. When you are forced to change your life all over again and you feel no pain or sadness for that, are you really ok? How many changes are enough to make you focus on a plan based on a long list?
What if you had a rebellion against your own self? What if you had no plans and just lived tomorrow as it comes? What if you just gave yourself the present of life in its most primitive form? The present of setting everything back for a while in order to hunt adventures and possibilities you have never thought of? Yep, possibilities. Like the possibility to laugh, to cry, to get disappointed, to get lost, to get stronger. And all of these amazing possibilities might happen in places where the rain never stops to soak your skin, where the sun kidnaps you on a lonely beach, with people you have never talked to before or with others that you had forgotten you knew once.. Like an old and beloved song. Cause there are people like that. People that can cure the bleeding soul of yours. You just have to explore the possibilities of meeting them, again or for the very first time.
And then you will have the greatest adventure of life. The adventure of Love; Of that one, valuable and difficult, fucken love for yourself. -myself..  







https://youtu.be/ZpDQJnI4OhU

Let me tell you, how houses get haunted..

 Do you know the feeling when you rent your very first apartment? That's a unique moment, a moment you feel strong enough to pull it through life and responsibilities, a moment you feel so sure about your decisions or a moment you just can't help yourself but find a beautiful place to settle.

It's a place where you love to be, a space you decorate over and over again in your mind and it ends up to be better than you imagined it cause probably it is already filled with the prettiest things you have. Or human beings. Or animals.

It is a place you will always remember. Sometimes more than it's socially or sentimentally accepted. Other times you will search for a similar place to live but nothing will fulfill your expectations. Nothing will be as equal as the first place you have chosen to mark you as an adult, a place in which you loved and laughed, a place where you've cried and a place in which you grew wiser. 

Eventually, you will move on. You will have more than one places and maybe some of them will make you feel better than the very first one. In few cases though, some hearts are left behind. To the place they felt happy. There's nothing wrong with that. A heart can always have its own place to live.

Maybe that's why houses get haunted. Because a heart has been left there on purpose.

A.

The Love Speech

This week I had the chance to attend an interesting and almost "strange" two-days, international conference. The major discussion was about the hate speech and the liberty of expression. I enjoyed the sessions even though this is neither my field of studies nor my professional background. But since social media have intervened so much into our lifestyle, i suppose that this is nowadays everyone's field and background. You see, there is no one around us without a single social media account. I have almost 30 and I am using them depending on my mood. If i assume that everyone else is doing the same, i expect to detect some hate speech and too much liberty of expression. 

Considering that our world has become more advanced and globalized hate of speech seems to be more of a left over. But no. This is not the case. Hate speech is everywhere around us. In our everyday life, shopping or hopping on a bus, watching a tv show or reading a newspaper, talking to a stranger or talking to a loved one. But i started wondering...Where has the love speech gone?

Are we really so busy of finding some minutes to express ourselves or we have just forgotten how to talk to each other? Are we incapable of talking with kindness to other human beings or it is just a phase where symbols and emoticons do the job? Why did we became so vulgar?What changes so significantly within us that we cannot talk freely to the people we used to share our deepest thoughts with? Is it the perception we have about them or the perception they have about us that shifts our speech from the one side to the other? And if it is none of the above, will we ever be able to speak to each other freely again? 

Mind the gaps: liberty of expression does not mean absolute truth or honesty. Love speech is not always based on feelings of love too.   

A.

A place in the sun...

Who doesn't know and who doesn't like Morrissey? Haven't met yet a person that didn't whispered a few lyrics once in a while. So do I. 

A place in the sun is all one should ask for. And this is not because I was born Greek and was used to have an endless sun on my face. It is mostly because of the sun that will warm our souls. The sun that will come into our life and there will be no more darkness, no more shadows. A sun that will make everything brighter, even if it is not supposed to be. Happiness again, it always comes down to this particular pursue. The pointless need to identify the things around us as good or bad, happy or miserable, needs and musts. A list that can fill pages with its contrasts and its different elements. 

But once again c'est la vie.

The sun. The warmth that cures it all. A little sentiment that brings along memories of summers in love, lunches with friends next to the sea, walking at the pier watching couples sharing hugs or fights of jealousy, opening the curtains and having a home full of its light, drinking a coffee and thinking nothing at all, or walking to the office for a stressful day and thinking what if you skipped that meeting...

Or simply a sun that we carry within us. One little star full of warmth and light that can brighten someone's life. The happiness we look for maybe is the one we carry inside our heart and it just waits for the right persons to find it. And then we can become their place in the sun. 

But once again that's life, sun will come and go. 

So do people.

A.

https://youtu.be/QZEGkhzvZRY

People with dreams are scary.

It has been a full week for me. Full of sentiments, changes and obligations. Usually this type of week is never a good period for thinking. But still, the human brain is so multitasking that fits it all inside. And that is so annoying. Especially when all you want to do is close your eyes and dream. 

Dreams, a favorite habit. Most people do that but the ones that are seriously dreaming are the scariest people alive. It must be the easiness with which they plan everything or the ability to walk through nightmares totally safe and sound. These little scenes of imagination are a piece of personal confessions never said and never written. Silent needs that demand their realization and we try so hard to make them go away, so hard that we make ourselves wake up in the middle of the night. That's why most of the dreams never have an ending, eternally hanging on to be continued during the next sleep or remaining a faint memory that no one can list in the real life or the subconscious part of us.  

People with dreams are not worried. They can see their dreams falling apart and at the same time they can make them work again or create new ones from scratch. They can share their dreams, they can mingle them, they can change them or they can offer them to someone who needs it more. In any case they are creating their own world and they settle inside until the real one is safe for them. People with dreams are afraid to meet the truth. They dare to jump in fiction and walk through streets of the unknown but they are threatened by the darkness of the world. The darkness that fills the human brain, that multitasking brain that never stops finding ways to ruin a dream. People with dreams are afraid that they might lose their ability to dream. Too much blood comes out of the great dreams that died.

People with dreams, glorious and amazing dreams are usually the ones to be laughed at. People with dreams are the ones that still search for the perfect piece that will fill their puzzled life and make everything work out magically. People with dreams do not need to close their eyes, they do not feel sorry for missing something ordinary, they do not hesitate. People with dreams chase the things that we cannot imagine. They are the people that we are feeling jealous of and yet we do not applause them because it is too romantic, to vain, to pointless to dream in a world like ours. 

People with dreams are never alone. They have friends in their little universe, friends that are caring and are always present. They have perfect houses and huge families. They have careers and they have "eaten" the world. Many things to do in the everyday life and no hurt feelings at all. 

The people that have dreams have also happiness. Lot of happiness. Because they know that they have something to search for. They know that they have still something to hope for. They have still faith in life. People with dreams are never alone. 

But that's the scariest thing about them; Happiness is always pending.

A.