Things of Life

Mi-am culcat capul în iarba, Și acum văd doar cerul; Nu ma mai sinchisesc de nimic, Nici măcar de furnicile alea roșii care pisca rău. Sunt imun la pamantul asta, Ca el m-a crescut; In el mi-am infipt gleznele adânc... Mi-am regasit vechea urma adâncită Si m-am asezat ca-ntr-un căuș, Mi-am ridicat palma în sus Si ea s-a proiectat pe cer, Asa, ca o strigare...

     It's so therapeutic to knead on a handful of sand! At one point I feel like eating it. When I was little I enjoyed tasting it once in a while. Even rocks-- I  crunched on bits of them, that years later dentists were asking me what did I do with my front teeth. Tasting the earth... We are told that we are made of earth, so it makes sense.      As my stay here is getting longer and longer I am more conscious of my own body, the matter of which is made of, its organic nature, its chemistry, what my body likes and dislikes. I am more sensitive to its needs, pains, pleasures, and I am increasingly apprehensive to put in my own body, or even close to it, something that is far from earth. If my body is wounded, healing must come from earth as well.      In time I become closer and closer to earth. I like to feel it. I touch everything that I can as far as things of the earth. I truly shun socks in the summer, or I go for vegetables with di...

I do not have a question right now-- How can I write a poem without it? My spirit is still like waveless water, Whose turmoil only would lift up verses... Thus,  I am lounging in the quietness of my soul;  I could open doors to let the winds come in, So I could write about bad weather... But no, I let the quiet sink in, And listen...

     Before I paint a landscape, I feel the landscape.      I am not a desert person, no doubt about it. However, that's on my plate right now-- sand, cacti, yellow, dry air... I would not have known what dry air is till I went beyond the end of the desert and felt the humid air. Sometimes back and forth,  comparing and contrasting, in time. I understood then why people reacted so fussily in regards to the type of air. Most of them like dry air, and loathe the humid one. But I feel that dry air is no feel at all, while it's still harsh on the skin. The sun is scorching in the desert and you miss the breath of the foliage. If the sun is not hurting you, then the dusty wind will...      Because its vegetation is scarce, the desert lets you see far and beyond. So, a perception of the vastness of the land kicks in. You feel yourself so small. This is not necessarily bad because it's true. In the desert the landscape is hazy and it helps you ...

     The orchid by the kitchen sink was limp, and its leaves were heavily wrinkled. The flower was dying. Nothing had worked: spraying, watering, sun, or shade. But I could not give up on it-- my first ever orchid in a pot...      In Florida's wild, orchids cling on trees. Knowing it, I took the flower outside to give it a last try. I fastened its roots on a small palm tree near my door, in a place where the sprinkle was reaching generously, and the tree's canopy was giving it proper shade. Soon after, I forgot about it...      One day I had a sudden recollection, and went to check on the orchid. Amazing... The flower had hugged and hugged the tree with its roots, even longer and ferm. My little clips used to keep the plant in place were no longer needed because the roots were fierily stuck in between the protrusions of  the tree trunk, as if they were part of it. The leaves bore no sign of wrinkles, and a long stem had grown from under ...

     "Are you Gypsy?"      The woman at the desk was fixating me with some sort of excitement after I mentioned my country of origin, at her request. Perhaps my very long hair at the time, loose over the shoulders, and my general informal look, combined with her newly acquired knowledge about my birth place, reminded her of romanticized images of Gypsy women.       "No...," I replied, feeling that I was about to disappoint.       Afterwards, the routine counseling at the school I was attending, transformed itself in a conversation about Gypsies. I tried my best to offer her a realistic image about this peculiar group of people as far as I was familiar with it from my native country.      But that was before I came to know that I may have Gypsy blood in my veins, indeed. It was later in life when it was revealed to me that my paternal grandmother was an adopted child, and rumor went that her biological f...

     In my fugitive journey through here, I pondered a bit on the way time perception shifts our views. We always seem to wonder what is going to happen next, or when this or that may come to be. Some things  appear harder to achieve, but if we set a generous amount of time, they become more tangible. In a huge length of time things may float neurotically,  and we might be overwhelmed and numbed; but we relax eventually at the notion that in such time the probability for them becoming reality is higher, even though we still have no clue about how would that be. For the sake of time, perhaps, we are more inclined to  accept as possibility even a strange scenario from deep past.       When I was in my early 20s, I often questioned my own life-- where was I going to be, when was I going to get married (a big one), if I would ever have kids, if I would ever see such and such place, and so on. If I would have assessed the coming year, or two,...