world Archives - Page 5 of 6

My favorite letter is a sky… which is yours?

My favorite letter is not in the Latin alphabet, and as much as I adore the Arabic painterly abjad, it is the roots of the Chinese calligraphy that won over my heart. That letter means sky, but also many other things, and perhaps it is that flexibility what fascinates me about the Chinese characters (called hanzi in China). I love that one symbol means so much, an entire universe. Timeless language transcends borders.

Baroque ceiling in the sky

天 encompasses day dimmed at night

天 is God and heavens

天 wakes nature up and puts most to sleep

天 can be bright blue, cloudy or sparkling with stars like a night dress

天 is nature herself, moody as the weather

A letter that is a word and so mightily broad. Endless, universal. Only the spiritually blind cannot grasp the expansive meaning in its lines. Like a teepee spiking and centred high, the Chinese have captured the ideogram brilliantly from its ancient pictorial art from which their contemporary calligraphy evolved.

Free space is the sky

天 ( tiān )

A sky is a nest

Belonging to all

Connecting us from East to West

Deity and the universe

Elastic space

Far and near

Grounded bellow, yet

High above

Incandescent delight

Janus’s door

Keen on mystery

Limitless potential

Marvellous sight

Never ending

Open day and night

Peace and war

Quantum field

Roaming free

Sky stirs wonder

Tramping stars on

Unknown paths

Vast and wide

Wandering far

Xanadu of the kings

Yellow sash like suns

Zodiac’s belt of passing time

~RB~

The poem above is 天 tiān from my East-meets-West perspective. I lived in Asia for many years and annually revisit China and Japan, but my roots are European. Janus mentioned in my poem was a two-faced Roman gatekeeper of the door to heaven. At his temple in Rome these were symbolically left open in time of war and closed in peace.

My poetic expression will always balance with an integrity in the past that formed my present. All I write is a blend of experience, conversations, what I read and how I played creatively with meaning and words. There is often music in my mind and it chimes words as its guiding notes.

I took a Chinese calligraphy lesson with a master in Beijing, visited the Southern regions where its predecessor, a pictorial alphabet is still being sporadically used, and further learned how simplified a Japanese kanji is during a temple calligraphy lesson in Kyoto. Those experiences culminated in my fascination with my favorite letter, the 天. These four strokes have the same meaning in China, Japan and Korea, thus culturally unifying these now again diverse countries.

Reflecting on my history with 天, why do you think that your favorite letter is what it is?

Letters are revered in Japan, where each year they select a favourite kanji that later is painted by a famous calligrapher or an artist. The kanji of the year is then exhibited at the Kanji Museum in Kyoto.

Kanji of the Year Japanese alphabet

I employed a poetic method called Abecedarian, which is a poem where the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet. Contemporary poets who used the abecedarian across entire published collections include Mary Jo Bang in The Bride of E, and Harryette Mullen in her fifth book Sleeping with the Dictionary.

On the notes of tiān, my favorite letter is also the name of one my most beloved vegetarian restaurants — Tian in Vienna. Sometimes meaning stretches into unexpected lengths. C.G. Jung captured that in his term synchronicity, which can eerily seem almost magical.

Hunter and the bull

historic hotels

I play with the hunter and the bull between the red flame

This is the voice of something that wakes me in the darkest hour of a starry night. There is light in darkness in the universe, always. Even the dark holes are finite, believe. Follows my minds’ play on hide and seek between the hunter and the bull.

Radka Slovackova

Hope builds the strongest belief

Dogma promises invincible truth

While possibility welcomes faith

Into my longing arms with a relief

Conviction rules out fear

As the only way to get near.

Expectation follows a principle

While dreams free from reality’s tentacle

So chase the dreams as lovers do early on

Such limitless mind is perfect

For in the wings of a prospect

The air becomes thin, and hold on —

See the opportunity on the horizon

~ Joy

shades of red

While this is an abstract poem, the meaning between a prospect and a belief is yours. It can also be a split mind within one person. The psyche’s wicked games that complicate life, uninvited into our jolly days.

You can wear red to attract the bull. Most days I prefer black and white though, so I seem to prefer being overlooked by the fierce bull. I recently re-visited my beloved Arles in the South of France, where bulls entered my subconscious mind. I even ingested one prepared delightfully by a two Michelin 19 GM-point local chef at L’Atelier. A bit later on my Euro-trip, the hunter sculpture in the park of Schloss Mohnstein in Salzburg fascinated me.

In dreams our daily encounters shuffle with fantasy as something entirely new lands on your bed sheets. Some seek the meaning of the symbols randomly on the internet, but I prefer to connect the dots and play with my own poetic voice. We all have it if we try hard enough and find the flow.

Sound, a comforting poem on vibrations

I wrote a few poems on slow life, mindful encounters with the everyday, and touched on the emotional challenges of relationships and being with others socializing. Our world has reversed for some weeks now as social distancing became the new habitat for the human form in this pandemic.

We have an opportunity now to go deeper inside, to organise our lives and to accept this challenge of staying at home for a long time.

@Salvador Dali

Even though silence is important for our wellbeing, we naturally crave direct encounters with other human beings. For now, live internet Zooms, Face Time and other video chats can supplement hanging out with your family or friends, but do not get too distracted by this. There is a room for your own existence in space. Aware of the gentlest nuances of life geared into slow pace, we become richer than when speeding through the traffic to meet someone or to and from work. I wonder how many of you miss that, often stressful, commute? Perhaps you just miss the habit, that sense of communal sharing, rather than the moving yourself in either a crowded or boring (in a car) transport from home to elsewhere.

sound sheep on pasture

Sound, the pleasant form of it, has always been a great comfort to me. Whether deepening and enlivening my solitude, lifting me above the motorised city noise, injecting my run with energy and zest, or helping me to focus when reading or working, sound shifts my mood. The vibrations are so powerful that chanting, gong, and other resonating instruments of beautiful sound were invented to focus and calm our mind.

Professor Michael Trimble explains how chanting benefits your health. It can change the rhythm of your heart, your emotional response, and more.

I offer a poem on sound that I wrote as this winter shifted to spring. I hope, it will show you a new angle. These new horizons of sound can help you navigate this anxious times more pleasantly. At least they did it for me. If you want, play this healing music on Youtube while reading my poem.

Sound waving though my soul

vibrates calm strands of peace

Weaving the gentle ease

of my thoughts, heart beating slow

Sound healing an injured soul

An ancient remedy of malice

spinning away worry, prejudice

immersed in this song that penetrates all

Sound filling my lungs full

with nourishing nectar of dance

its wholesome breath lifts me to trance

Life silenced would be dull

Sound touching my time in full

sets me entirely in its presence

minutes penetrate my skull

As I embrace this lively essence

Sound living in all, and not at all

Revealed to those patient for its resonance

sharing its secrets with nature’s nuance —

you feel life’s richness through its call

∼

There is a shift in my mind that I feel when listening to calming sound. I hope that tranquil emotions penetrate from the lyrics of my poem to your heart and mind. Savour the slower pace of life that we were given in these challenging times. I always try to see the good in the dark.

Full Moon Alive

A sleepless night during my second full moon quarantined on Miami Beach, stirred this poetic outpour. My bedroom has a panoramic view of the Atlantic ocean (I’m blessed and grateful), which every morning treats me with the only live public spectacle now allowed to me here to see safely – the sunrise. The open sky is too close to the city so I cannot glimpse any stars, save for the largest one to our Earthly eyes — the moon.

full moon

That night gusts of open ocean winds flagged my silk nightgown in a coup de force of enthralment. I was standing on the terrace, magnetised by the giant lightbulb of the moon glaring full or in some gasp of the changing moment, partly shaded by the fast paced clouds. In that moment I knew I would not sleep easily if I do not chanel some of that energy speaking to me in its commanding voice.

Reading for hours, midnight approaching. I was still afflush with vitality, and I was glad that the usual cradle of the book did not tame my sprinting mind. Lifting my gaze up to the moon, the whispering potency of the night, suddenly, I had to grab paper and pen. On my night table, aside other piled up literature, set face up a small collection of brief poems by the female Pakistani artist Noor Unnahar. Its moon-gray cover titled YESTERDAY I WAS THE MOON nodded to the occasion. It was not about the moon light though.

Miami skyline Pink moon Mysterious moon female poet

Now I am the morning

Yesterday I was the moon

Sleepless

My soul glaring

A fool

I did not know who I was

Back then, but now I know

A reflection is not a unique creation

Never say “but”, she said

The past is over, yet

Deep down I knew that

Strength

was a posture covering doubts

Eloquence

overshadowed innate sensuality

Speed

floundered calm mind

Carelessness

veiled a deep concern

Still, I surprise myself — will I?

Some day get to know

Who I am

Despite these flops of mind

Being alive, sensing

Perhaps I shall

Dwell

In a faraway cave

To be pure me

Not a doll

To be played with

But longing to fully be

Yesterday I was the moon

— But now I am the morning

~ Joy

stunning sunrise Steinway piano

Whatever happened in the past, yesterday does not define who you are today. It only says what you decided, experienced, felt. The past mistakes are not finite dead holes. Deep down, if you connect with yourself is the true you — in the past, present and future — become love. This authentic you can resolve to come back to the purest self, unhinged yet still kind, the balancing scale of inter-human co-existence.

I thought, as most of us did when I was in my late teens, early 20s even, that I totally expressed who I am, independent, unconventional, but I did not know in spite of my authenticity. There are so many layers to peel off, I wrote a poem on this in my late 30s (will certainly publish it in my adventuresome memoir one day).

I learned that I can only glimpse into my own self when I totally shut down emotions as in a deep meditation, when totally giving myself to nature, or when I allow them out off my chest. The wild beasts bursting into the open space are tamed by being let free from the inner cage I put them into. By recognising that these emotions are just a human part of me that passes soon, I feel more alive! And, the full moon reminded me.

romantic moon

This poem by Noor Unnahar resonates:

do not worry

about people

they’re wearing the same flesh

breathing the same chemicals

walking on the same solid earth

as you

so why should it matter

when

you are them and they are you

This empowers me, gives me courage to go forward without being burdened by others’ opinions. I purely am and create what I love. While I hope it connects, inspires and elevates others, I am not attached to my writing work. I hope you are empowered or more connected through our liberal female voices.

What we are other than one human race. We are animals profiting from the bounty of this Earth co-existing with plants in a reciprocal ecosystem conditioned by natural laws we cannot easily change. If you want to get more, you’ll have to give more. This is sustainability, but that goes far beyond the above poems, and I address this need for mutual thriving elsewhere here on La Muse Blue.

NOTE: There is no mutual agreement or online support exchange between Noor and myself. I purely chose to highlight her work because I bought her poetry book and like it. I prefer to support other creative people in an organic way. No push, but pure admiration and sharing what I feel we need more of either though collaboration or by recommending their creations.

Lumine in two poems

Lumine is a poem about inner light, shadows and the uncontrollable forces of death and life. In two poems born from different sources of incandescence. A candle and a fireplace lit in an Austrian mountain chalet sparked connection, while an early sun casting its rays from behind a cloud, restlessly flicking on the vast water surface of the Pacific ocean, stirred powerful emotions of chaotic uncertainty needed for creativity in that very focused moment during the budding pandemic.

St Moritz lake

Lumine is beyond heat, you see it when cold and it comes from the inside

Luminescence is “the emission of light not caused by incandescence and occurring at a temperature below that of incandescent bodies“. Candle or the sun are incandescent bodies. Since in our mind anything is possible, these poems illustrate the power of imagination. From a heat source of light can spark the bright luminescence of human creativity (our bodies’ temperature is well below the visible ignition point). As in music, that spark lights up emotions. In poetry, the soul of the poet is transcribed into words, in painting the visual energy of colours and shades, or in the shapes and materials used to form a sculpture, there is luminescence.

Fireplace in the Alps

LUMINE OF TRUTH

Fear, like an ocean stream

Floods the shores of my heart

My throat tightens in your gripping zeal

Paralysing emotions, an ordeal

Stamped on all human lies

The sunlight walking on the water

Illuminates days with honesty and hope

Only moving clouds cover its warming love

Their shield like night protects from naivety

For a dead, drenched stomp is nothing but a piety

—

Yet, sometimes a good lie

has the power to heal,

if you believe in it.

~Joy

Mediterranean

Such moments of engagement in a temporary enlightenment stirred by light transcend the invisible, unconscious in incandescence to luminescence. There is a potential to transcend darkness. One’s awareness of such a fleeting, visual treasure as the shape of light, changing within seconds in the measure of time, charms the mind with simple beauty of existence while tapping on the reality of change.

Our perception of natural change is palpable only because we live. In a few moments it is gone.

The momentous reality of a lifespan – shorter for some species like flies, longer for humans and even more expansive for trees – shall erase our modern focus on future. We must plan and be responsible by saving resources for more restraining times that surely will come, yet we must find joy here and now. Nothing else matters, as Hans Ulrich signs with his Danish band Metallica.

Illuminating art at Thielska Gallery in Stockholm

LUMINE OF AWARENESS

The candle light in my room

Is my mind in a flowing bloom

Focused, steady fire of existence

Yet, it moves

Like the mind shifting its cadence

Letting in the wind of ignorance

The candle light in my room

The knot goes on, a burning doom

The wax of thoughts

Even the presence moves

My upper chamber of distracting moods

The monkey is restless — questioning odds

Until its mind lasts and then rots

The candle light in my room

My will is stronger

The spark of inner light

Learning of my own melting anger

Its energy depleted, me fully living

I know that my strength is not to be a tool

—

Liberated from the chains of my emotions,

I am a luminous beetle at night.

~Joy

lumine

Lumine: life connected with and enjoyed mindfully

Feel the candle, a fire or the sun’s rays warming your skin, savour the pleasant moment that only you can continue or stop. Now you have the choice to make. The candle in the night is your calm state of mind that you can create by will to let go of anything you do not need. The emotions burdening you deep within can be brought to awareness and like the smoke from the candle rise up.

Imagine that you walk on the light reflecting on the sea or the floor in front of you. Stride on the lake’s surface, dip your toes into the light. Almost — like the desire of experiencing something magical, the proximity of that achievement in itself feels wonderful. Although we cannot realistically reach this mirage of light in flight, and it does not matter, we can create a moment with our own imagination that feels luminously great. Listen to what it says and then act, to clear that karma in the dark nest of your consciousness. We all accumulate it. One can deny it even through a smile. What looks like a bubbly, happy person, may well be a troubled being.

modern gas fire

The only forces that stop this fleeting creation walking away from us are the restless mind and time. The later, flowing away with the day is something we cannot change, but accept. Yes, we can. Dip the mind into restful, mindful presence.

If you want to channel out your fire energy, I recommend to listen to Lumine, a powerful song composed by Barry Richard Goldstein. It stirred these poems in me.

I also mused about the power of light in our everyday life and art, and published a poem on light earlier. Both were inspired by the current urgent need for positive energy. We live in a strange time, airlines grounded, theatres and restaurants closed, beaches sealed off, concerts cancelled and any group gatherings discouraged. Social isolation may feel dark, even depressive for some vulnerable individuals. Wine does not plaster over the feeling for a long time, beware.

Globally, we need the spark from human creativity now more than ever since the gloom of the World Wars. And worse may yet to come. Hope and connecting with others intimately make reality easier to bear.

LETTING JOY IN

This poem was subconsciously in creation phase of my mind for years, perhaps decades. Then, one winter morning as the sunlight entered my Mediterranean bedroom, I gasped and grasped a pen in LETTING JOY IN. The mirage of light was trespassing through the double glass of my windows and was further filtered by pure linen curtains, and I was smitten. That wholesome moment of awe poets feel so intimately nurtures curiosity and joy.

My soul was connected to the source of this marvellous incandescence, but the LETTING JOY IN poem did not feel complete, not yet.

I abandoned it for a few weeks. The vicious Covid19 virus spreading, ousted me from Europe and aerial hopping Southwest to the hyper-charged Miami Beach, creatively blocked me. While I am a well-heeled vagabond, the stunting boulders of fear and that utterly discomforting feeling of not knowing what will happen next, uprooted my mind. Almost a week had passed until I reconciled with this potent and disruptive energy. Aware that mindfulness is a mighty cure for a distracted spirit, deep meditations above my emotions settled the chaos, I was mentally flowing again.

Then, one ocean-front morning the light came back to me, LETTING JOY IN, knocking on my creative consciousness and teasing my mind to imagination. Again it appeared with the dawn of a new day. It was back, on a different twilight, continent and room. The rays sneaked through the gap of the curtains, letting the Atlantic briskness in and onto the surreal, moon-like, rugged surface of my room’s ceiling. Fascinating, this theatre of light was a Sunday morning brightened by its starry presence. The poem in waiting was ready for its completion.

LETTING JOY IN

When today’s light crosses the porous borders of my room

Beyond the walls nature enters my conscious zoom

I impart the vast horizon, we merge

Two lovers united in a lustful surge

Drawn inside the geometric art

Part by Part

— Until —

Nothingness becomes whole

Abstracted entirely from all

Yet concrete like the sun, touched

Traveling into my arms, kissed

Allow whispers not halted by walls

Seduce me to answer his soulful calls

Gasping in ecstasy, eternity in contemporary art

A few moments bathing in that magic light

The presence in moving, metasensual canvases behind

Illuminating openness to awareness roaring in my mind

Create, become the light, he said, for it is me and we are one.

Light poem light in poetry

The geometric quality of light was observed not just by the astronomers or physicists, quantified by mathematicians, but also in art. As much as my Light poem, its visual shape inspired the flow of creative imagination.

Kandinsky wrote that with the emergence of the “structural treatment of nature, representation disappears. Starting from a single natural object, Picasso and the Cubists produce lines and project angles till their canvases are covered with intricate and often very beautiful series of balanced lines and curves. They persist, however, in giving them picture titles which recall the natural object from which their minds first took flight”. Read his famous essay Concerning the Spiritual in Art to learn more.

LETTING JOY IN awakened some old memories of meaningful journeys taken, deep feelings lived out and an adult’s imagination stirred. Focus is a spotlight and mine has shifted from the catwalk and the photographers’ object into the solitary backstage of a journalist, later a creative writer and poet. My life has become a vast source of light in my work by seeking beauty in the mundane. I am aware that change abound, darkness can dim our character with disruptive chaos in uncertain times. Light cannot be taken for granted, but you and me through our can do attitude and behaviour can be the source of hope. Read my recent musing on light to understand better.

Natural Clock: a poem on aging, pain and mindset

Minutes go by the clock counting age

Aware of their sonorous passage

My joints conduct the cracking message

Biologically confused, not a rock

My body is in the hands of a clock

Or not, I own my flesh and can decide

Worn out from the daily transformation

My mind ages desiring regeneration

Thoughts, like the sun’s burning rays

The messengers of passing days

Penetrate the epidermis

Like cancerous cells

Into the brain — decay, thought

It ought to manifest, that thought

Charged with energy that fills atoms

Thinking nectar enlivens or poisons organs,

The nerves and ligaments that conduct aches

But remembering that this space is all mine

An opportunity, emptiness to be filled,I own time

Positive and negative still ticking without a lock

I know now that I can wind the natural clock

Tic-tac, I changed the sound

So the clock goes by me

~ Joy

Natural Clock is a poem on aging, pain and the power of the mindset.

I mused on time already, so read more if you are intrigued.

I was inspired by reading The Divided Mind by Dr. John E. Sarno on body-mind relationship. Together with his medical colleagues, they healed over many decades patients with chronic pain, GIT inflammation and autoimmune diseases, all with scientifically unproven, unexplained cause. Their approach was formed through experience with their patients, not through the known scientific methods of testing objectively. The later in the case of belief and self-reported emotions are difficult to measure, simply for their subjective nature. Even neuroscience cannot grasp the full scale of the mechanisms involved in such self-healing.

Another Western source catching up with the millennia of developed Eastern thought, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, whose research on trauma yielded clinically proven conclusions knocked on my consciousness. Emotions can be stored in the body and called to the awareness years later. The accompanied tension is not just from the wrong movement or too much sitting, but also from emotional baggage. Over time, the accumulated tension grows into pain.

self-help literature

Natural Clock of Awareness

A chronic tension in my neck and shoulders brought me to a renown, experienced myofascial release therapist. Each time before he set his healing hands on me, we discussed health, pain, psychology and happiness. Upon each treatment I released all my tension, while guiding my breath freely through the body and meditating. No need for massage, muscle-relaxants or pain medication.

I had further experiences with the mind-body connection that manifested as unbearable pain, and it was just mind-boggling how easily that thorn in my being just walked away from me after certain emotional realisations. It was not easy to get there, I had to try all the medical ways, until, my meditation rose my awareness above the clouds of ignorance. There is so much information, also in the form of emotions deep within our bodies and minds, that we need to puzzle out. Mindfulness, reflection and meditation are like spiritual contemplation the free for all tools for self-healing more efficient than most other, physically-oriented, not holistic therapies.

BIO HACKING: WIND UP YOUR NATURAL CLOCK

Recently, after a thorough health check up, my doctor, one of the best in Switzerland, announced that my biological age is 16 years less than my birth age! Just days after a major milestone celebration calculated by the number of sunrises and sunsets, I could not feel more ecstatic. Some health and ageing factors are genetic, but most can be “hacked” though our own effort. Where we live, the pollution, noise, what we eat, how safe is the water, how we think and move on daily basis, are scientifically proven movers and shakers of our health and the speed of our physical ageing. I would add our connection with nature since she balances my emotional self.

The circulatory system, the heart, athletes’ pulse, liver and kidney function (detox), a good immune response as much as the strength of your bones, muscle distribution to keep you balanced, visceral fat, these all determine your biological age. Training but not taxing your body and mind. Balanced score.

Most pills are accompanied by numerous side effects, some potentially more harmful than the problem we used the medicine for. Patience pays off, and indeed for long-lasting results on human health it cannot be more true. Attitude and awareness count. Knowing what to do in the moment and that the positive mindset has a considerable power over our health set us for action.

I was curious if others could switch their attitudes and modes to healing from the quick fix to such accessible alternative solutions. Focused purely on the symptoms, most pills are not the cure, but a temporary relief of inflammation and pain. Time chimes differently for each of us, and the problem can resurface at any time.

I know from studying pharmacology, that the scientifically recognised placebo effect can be as potent as the medicine used to cure. Belief is a powerful tool that the human mind was blessed with. And we can use it for our benefit. Psychologists are puzzled by this phenomena since we do not have a proper method to measure the mechanism of beliefs.

contemporary art

Tick-tock, tic-tac, tic-toc, … experience time’s movement

I am not a voracious self-help, magic promises, bestselling (mostly American) books consumer, yet when a personal experience agreed with what a growing number of very experienced health practitioners empirically observe, my curiosity was teased to investigate.

A documentary on Netflix, titled Heal, further opened this theme for me. The timing for watching this open-minded, case-driven, alternative approaches supporting production was ripe. About in the middle of the streaming, someone I know wrote me out of the blue about her husband’s diagnosis with cancer. In such a dire situation one needs more than hope. Belief in recovery is at least as essential next to all the necessary and tested medical therapy. I hope that this poem inspires your everyday mindset as it shifted mine.

I still wonder. For most of known history, we counted time through the moving light of the sun as our planet turns from the cycle of a day into the night. The sun-dial was visually more aligned with the astrological origin of our time awareness. Don’t you think? Einstein certainly understood the relativity of space and time.

Somehow technology is shrinking our perception of space.

I feel that before our digital time counting, even the predecessor of the winding clock, the bell, allowed for more free space between the anchors of Earthly time. Thus our perception of time between the hours rather than the minutes and seconds announcing clock, watch and now mainly digital devices like our smart phones was more special. Perhaps, that is why we are so rushed, fast-paced and can hardly rest today. We feel the squeeze of the clock acutely in our daily experience.

Liberty: indulgence and illusion of a bohemian mind

Poets and philosophers, the deep free souls of myriad kingdoms, republics, commonwealths and other forms of geographical identities, wrote about the desire for liberty. Politicians entered the quest, playing with the allure of freedom, and women only recently punched their rights further to an equal deal. Emancipation and doing what you love – shedding fear, obsolete and oppressive social rules, is only the first step emboldening us to pursue liberty as the ultimate life’s goal. For as R.M. Rilke poetically expressed, freedom is true love. Ever since the liberal spirit of poetry had opened my soul to a deeper, most authentic form of literary expression, I intended to write a poem on freedom.

Beyond battles and revolutions look inside for lasting liberty

Seeking liberty must be innate to all human beings. Something animal in us roars for attention. Our entire history was a battle for space, independence, freedom and support. Security, being yet another human need though, brought more conflict in our lives as one must trade it with a sliver of personal liberty. Not all of us can be the warrior chiefs fending off danger, and no general has the freedom to roam independently as he is responsible for his troops. This outward freedom of movement, speech et al. misses the inner, inherently responsible freedom that we must nurture in ourselves.

Liberty as an indulgence and illusion

Being free, like a wild beast in nature, is an indulgent act. If that is to be sustainable in a world of almost nine billion of people to survive, responsibility must kick into the liberated mind. Revolutions were stirred by the hunger for liberty. Entire countries were created based on the illusion of freedom. While, the unburdened citizens gained at least a temporary release from the former establishment, eventually, as with any taxing state, the populace silently lost much of it.
Outward anarchy is the only free society, but chaos is frightening and stability desired, so we think we must compromise. Yet, freedom does not rule well without responsibility — that resides inside us, and not in some moral codes imposed by the society. Western and eastern ethicists, as well as the most impactful Indian sages like Krishnamurti agree on that:

It appears one always seeks freedom on the surface, the right to go from here to there, to think what one likes, to do what one likes, to choose, and to seek wider experiences. Surely this is a rather limited freedom, involving a great deal of conflict, wars and violence.
Inner freedom is something entirely different. When there is deep, fundamental freedom, which has its roots not in the idea of freedom but in the reality of freedom, then that freedom covers all movement, all the endeavours of man. Without this freedom, life will always be an activity within the limited circle of time and conflict.

Only you own your liberty

Liberty resides in your head, literally, you can only be free if you decide to be so. Unattached to anything (even time) and anyone, inventive in the day-to-day life, guarding your own space and unrestricted by one’s own thoughts. A flexible, yet authentic attitude is one way out of the prison of life. Even more radical, perhaps more ancient solution, is not thinking. Taking breaks from ruminating, doubt, analysing, evaluating, judging et al. seems balancing. Meditation as the tool to liberation of the mind. Pure presence is weightless, not a luxury, but the freedom itself.
Not planning much frees you from self-judgement, the fear of missing out (as you are here and now), the nagging schedule in your mind and the preoccupations with strives of the daily life. That is holidays, and such rest we all need between our necessarily regimented working days.

Poem on Liberty

There were a few poems in which I mused on the wilderness deep in our soul. Each strikingly different, relating to a distinct niche in the mind. Some observed nature, others were inspired by philosophy, religion, but mainly they reflected my perception in a specific moment. Always in a place that released my creative STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
This poem was born one early autumn morning when a sonorous church bell and merry-making birds woke me up at a former Abbey in Provence. I lodged in a room where Charles de Gaulle wrote a part of his memoir. The Frenchman, a general and the President of the country, familiar with the revolutionary spirit of his countrymen, certainly pondered liberté in that room as much as I did. The countryside calm and clarity unburdened my creative energy typing the letters of the following poetic liberty.

Liberty is a room on your own

Blank page to draw a tale of the soul

Open field to roam or a window

The wild bird that does not follow

Flies when and where it wants

Liberty alone is fragile

Others and you cut her wings

Usurp the last drops of water

Suck clean air from your lungs

But en masse freedom becomes strong

Still, life by its nature takes it away

Death destined to all flesh once born

Yet before, wine sets me free, you say

Drunk Illusion fills you day by day

I sing and grow feathers from my arms

The bird welcomes every day with joy

The streams roam with lively waters

And you realise that you have a choice

With seasons changing you can flow

Or freeze the moment to slow down

Such fortune endowed to all liberated minds

Who enslaved cattle, dogs, our fellow humans

Bound up foreigners from far-flung lands,

But strangely, think of it, not cats

So are we savvy creatures or cowards?

Doctrines, kings and chiefs cling to power

In fear they deceive our heart and mind,

Shading reality is best for the beast

While, post-mortum liberty is an illusion

The vile create to keep us tame.

Let’s play to blow away the clouds

Freedom is born from each game

Creative self uncaged in the wild

Mirror the kids that reek with joy

The innocent know without claiming how to live!

Pure — not tinted by artifice

Authenticity cannot be barred by lies

A true you expresses what it wants

But, let’s not forget:

Love gives, possessive it takes

Your space becomes my space owned

— instead

Become a mountain greeting nearby summits

Free within the dream realm of their own

Give freedom to all, including yourself

— for eternity

~ Joy

On creativity and freedom

Artists become enraged, passionate, so consumed by liberty that while it may benefit their creative work, it wounds the people close to them. Gauguin left his wife for Tahiti to indulge himself with the local ladies, Rimbaud renounced his family in order to live and later leave Verlaine — there were and are endless victims of creativity. While curiosity expands boundaries, its hunger can carry you away too far from a sustainable, long-living equilibrium. Dr. Sacks wrote a mind-broadening book on creativity and freedom seeing as the pure flow of consciousness. Back to the mind. All talent dwells inside.

These words flagging freedom are being spun in the net of my mind:

unattached, liberal, independent, unstitched, loose, relieved, potential, undirected, inventive, playful, wild, opportunity, choice, may be disorganised, co-evolution, space, all-directions, unrestricted, disobeying, bohemian, true, authentic, …

I am sure, you will find plenty more expressions flashing out what it means not to be a slave, but that is not enough.

Millennia of wisdom: No freedom is good without responsibility and awareness

Freedom can be dangerous, humans are just evolved animals after all. It has been always curbed by those aware of its harmful potential for humanity. For millennia, various cultures, religions and philosophies have been seeking liberation from others, the harsh life, even the mind. The true yogis, zen masters, sufis and hassids, focused all their efforts on freeing the mind from ego. Further, for over a century, psychology has been dissecting and studying this self-defeating phenomenon scientifically (such as Freud’s id x ego x superego).
A recent accident enlightened my overindulgent free-self when riding a bicycle. Swishing downhill, wind chisels my brazen face, effortless, so free, I thought. An illusion! Fun does not entirely free you from responsibility. Drunken with joy, pulling out my phone to check the time, … (you know the ending). I crashed, bleeding all over, my bike rolling-free in the roadside. I laughed it off, thanking the great force (within my control if I were mindful and focused on that risky task) for the lesson. A painful one! Attention and awareness can save us in every minute of our fragile life.

Clarifying the mystery of the mind may be beyond our capabilities. Unless, we dedicate a substantial energy to an increased awareness. Mindfulness practice like meditation gained popularity in our overtasked millennium, but it is not just a tool for a better focus or to calm stress. By wiping out anxious thoughts — penetrating deep into the mind, you learn about yourself, and can better observe your actions. Be impartial towards your thoughts, and above all, free yourself from the detrimental whispers of the ego, then you flow happily within yourself.

Over a coffee on Place des Vosges in Paris, an old friend told me: “Everything happens for a reason. Do not reason about it though because there is some energy we cannot explain.” He reads, thinks, discourses, relaxes and composes wonderful music. La vie Parisienne seemingly effortless with awareness gushing from his mind.

I publish plenty of poetry on freedom in her various coats. To flow through every day effortlessly, a nudge, a short form of inspiration and perhaps stimulation to shift something in you and me right now − in this moment, when we read that outpour of words, we connect with the soul of another human being.

The best wine lists in the world for La Muse Blue

The best wine lists for me offer plenty of aged bottles ready or peaking to drink (ideally featured on a highlighted page), less known local gems, good value finds from established producers, visibly marked biodynamic and organic wines and at least ten diverse wines by the glass. In the age of sophisticated preserving technology from pumps pulling out oxygen to the haute gamme of Coravin the customer can savour a broader opportunity to explore, learn and to drink moderately if not sharing a bottle is preferred.

Still, a great wine list is not a win-win and technology cannot answer more personal preferences and questions, so a knowledgeable sommelier is a welcome bonus.

The wine expert must be sensitive to your budget, taste, occasion and experience. A good sommelier listens to his customer and advises a short selection of bottles that make your choice easier. The process should not be intimidating. Good hospitality sheds the weight from your decision making, while not pushing you too high. Wine is about pleasure, sharing, socialising and letting go a hard day. So where can you get the best wine service?

In London, Hide Above and Bellow is hard to beat for its wine menu. One of the best cellars in the wine savvy metropolis – Hedonism Wines supplies the bottles. The pairing flights are fun and flexible. If you do not want a sweet wine the team of sommeliers happily suggests a replacement. I prefer the pace and the more satisfying food at Hide Below as opposed to the lengthy fine dining Above. Classic, Discovery and Hedonistic wine pairings offer very different experiences for your mood. Trust your gut.

Also in London, the Pall Mall 67, a private members club for the wine trade naturally hives in amazing bottles, but you must know someone from the vinous business to be allowed to sample some of their savvy selections. The passionate, multi-sommelier team are open to discussion and pleasant to talk anything wine related.

Most restaurants in Paris offer French-only or Francophile selections.While I prefer to drink as local as possible, I can include only three venues in the French capital in my best, most interesting wine lists selection. La Tour d’Argent, Le Bristol and Les 110 de Taillevent, a wine-centric bar by the gastronomic stalwart Le Taillevent, offer some depth, but only the later has also a good breadth beyond the French borders, now also serving at its branch in London. I find most of the natural wine focused bistros in the French capital rather limiting in their offer.

Probably the rarest wine tasting menu at a public restaurant

Italy does better. The legendary Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence is known for its superb wine list and it delivers well beyond the Italian borders. Here I saw the most exclusive by the glass program ever at a restaurant. The rarest and most prestigious wines sparkled in the Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Lafite, Latour, Petrus, Rayas as well as Henri Jayer’s praised Burgundies company. Conterno, Gaja, Tenuta San Guido et al. in the Italian stable (photo bellow). Still, only for the billionaires – almost €6.000 for six small glasses while a minimum of two drinkers must participate (each has to pay, not splitting). We splurged within our limits on a vintage against a vintage comparative tasting of Burgundy vs. Italy. The best wine lists should look like this.

In Spain, El Celler de Can Roca offered the best wine list to us. The female sommelier was patient and sniffing our interest, she added some of the wine flight glasses to our two bottles of tiny production Spanish reds. The best cavas we tried, incredible white from Penedes (some 800 bottles produced, photo bellow), plus great values, a rare pleasure at a three Michelin restaurant, bravo! The service as well as the list itself were incomparable with Monvínic in Barcelona, where a couple of birthdays back and a post-dinner cuppa another time I was not impressed with what many say is the best wine restaurant in the Catalan metropolis.

In New York, the Chef’s Table at the Brooklyn Fare now relocated to Midtown Manhattan ticks all of my above criteria with a helpful hand of the sommeliers. For a specialised wine list, the Hearth in East Village pleases particularly the Riesling fandom. From Austria, Germany, France, Finger Lakes to Oregon, the age-worthy expressive white varietal is celebrated intercontinentally. Apples, green vegetables, even petroleum and mineral expression of its terroir Riesling rules. Wines from the Middle East show a savvy palate of the wine director at Hearth.

In Macau, Joël Robuchon au Dôme disappointed me with the food, but the double-bible list is exceptional. The gamblers have it easy to spend their fortune on celebratory bottles from the rarest vintages. Verticals (an uninterrupted row of vintages of the same wine) and global choices impress. Where do you see Madeiras and Ports from early 1800s?

If you are a well-travelled wine expert or connoisseur and know some other extraordinary wine lists, please, share them! Let’s enjoy the bounty of the human interaction with nature sipped from the best wine lists, santé!

DISCLAIMER: Apologies for not including some special, small wine treasuries that shall remain secret as I promised to dear friends sharing in person, gracias, grazie, amori!

Beyond sound

Sound is everything on Earth. Our breath, heartbeat, thoughts are waves – living is sound and it can be perceived through ears, skin, sometimes even through eyes and taste buds. Putting your ear on a thin person’s belly you can hear the heart, well I feel mine bouncing even without my ear on my own belly. Defy the cravings of science for supersonic speed by focusing on the opposite: close your eyes and listen to the auditory vibrations of your own breath. Our humanness has evolved to capture the limits of sound, yet we also invented tools of artificial intelligence conquering its speed. Technology is the human capabilities extending assistant, which invites a question – are we challenging ourselves by trying to surpass ourselves?

The atmosphere allows for vibrations to form and travel through the air so we can hear sound. The space is deaf, soundless. Imagine a creature living in the deep Universe, probably it is earless. For what would this human utilitarian sense organ serve if not listening and reacting upon the shape of sound – the hums, screams, words, sentences? Are there vibrations somewhere in the Universe? Maybe, but this is the puzzle for the astrologists and physicists to play with. A friend, well-read in neuroscience wrote me: “Even though the centuries of theories turned out to be flawed, it led us closer to the truth”.

We can also hear some reverberations under the water, the waves of ripples? Fire, one of the most essential acquisitions of men also cracks and rumbles. There is so much to be discussed and questioned about sound. Fascinating.

WHAT IS SOUND FOR

To musicians sound is a tool to express themselves, their creativity, mood, emotions, what moves their bodies and their minds. It feeds their indulgent cravings. We would suffer from Dionysian malnutrition if we did not invite joy frequently, so easily injected through music into our lives.

Silence has been used as a torture tool. Those unlucky chosen spending prolonged time in an absolute soundless environment express manic craziness, they often talk to themselves or create some noise. My French musician friend wrote me “In the anechoic, real silence, environment, you can only hear your heartbeat and will quickly have a vertigo”. Such a visceral experience sounds scary to me. It can also be depressing. Another friend, an accomplished and hardworking woman living in London shared “Every evening I would come home and basically have complete silence. I felt I needed that to balance the crazy noisiness of work to restore my inner peace. Then I started switching on the jazz radio, and only then I realised how much the silence had been part of my feeling down.” She also included an important point. “I guess, I don’t like silence so much anymore if silence means the absence of noise. But if silence means being with someone and not speaking, like listening to jazz together, I find the idea of that peaceful.” Urban dwellers can perceive silence as “a luxury”, as another friend based in New York confessed. Nature can seem silent compared to the city’s jerking aloud.

Another friend in LA nods to my own natural longings: “If I’m just in a very quiet place like a national park then it’s peaceful.” I suspect that aside to the green pastures, blue sea, glistening mountains and the fragrant meadows solitude and silence lure us out from the cities.

To many indigenous cultures sound is sacred. The Indian ragas were composed to accompany the day. “As the earth rotates, the music harmonises with changes in light and mood, potentially transforming the listener’s consciousness”, I learned at the Ragas Live Festival organised by the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. Co-running with an aural exhibition titled The World is Sound the visitors can dive deep into the potential of sound. You can experience the annual festival on the podcast by NYC Radio Live. Explore how the ragas feel as I did, it is transforming.

In Africa, ritual dance is accompanied with acoustic rhythms composed to lead the body and the spirit in the right, ‘divine’ direction. The Indians in the remote Andes but also the Native Americans, the Celts and countless island tribes globally explored and used sound for centuries, even millennia.

Sound could have had teased out our evolution. Animals are responsive to sound. Dogs are aurally superior to humans. Yet our abilities with sound – the sophisticated human communication beyond words (93% of personal communication is nonverbal including voice, tone, and body language) and creative expression through sound – is what differentiated us from the rest of the living force on Earth. We spurred the evolution of cars to be more quiet, in harmony with their environment and ecologically sound. Constantly, we progress and with it the sound around us changes.

AUDITORY SENSITIVITY & POTENTIAL

I am sharp-eared. If you chew loudly, I will notice and be annoyed. If the air-conditioner hums in full speed, as if I were in a car factory I reach for earplugs. If my stomach rumbles, only my body knows why, I am urged to outsmart it by reaching for a snack or cup of tea to quiet it. I need the right music to tune my mind to writing. How comes that our focus can be so easily thrown into rippling waters if the noise around is uncomfortable?

These trained in mindfulness meditation can resist the outer as well as the inner ramblings of consciousness. There is sound even there where we are not aware of it. Our subconscious mind spins its own mantras liberally. Independent on our will, such sound can rule over our experience as it manifests in our attitudes. Luckily, we have choices, mostly. Playing music that is in tune with your yearning or immersing yourself into the meditative sound bath of the vibrations cascading from the Tibetan singing bowls enlightens and heals. Once I succumbed to the healing power of the steady smoothness of sound emitted by tapping the metal vessels I wanted more. The bowls are not to be filled with anything but will sate you fully. Many spas and spiritual centres now offer the sound bathing meditation. In New York Naturopathica and Bhagavat Life centre, in Marbella the Buchinger Wilhelmi wellness hotel, Ayurvedic spa in the Maldives, the Inner Space centre in London, BeLife in Zurich and many others elsewhere.

Do you play an instrument? Perhaps you understand the feeling of sound better than most of us who do not. I took a couple of piano lessons in New York and after about the third one I composed noteless song to a poem I wrote, it is the musicality I connected with, but do not ask me to play it again! I recored myself though. I can feel music, and if I move along or meditate over its meaning I know what makes me feel happy, sad, what calms me, or what sounds irritate me in the momental infatuation. I can also enjoy the tapping of a typewriter, it makes me feel productive. Snoring certainly is not a sonata for a pleasant moment to me. Embrace listening to a personally attractive sound and feel the liberty through music.

Cross-sense sound shapes our existence. Some innovative chefs have experimented asking – does food taste better with certain music? Heston Blumenthal in England, Albert Adria in Spain, and other renowned chefs went beyond the background music or silence dilemma of restaurants, proving that food can taste different depending on the sound the diner is immersed in.

Ludovico Einaudi brought me to heaven and hell multiple times during his nonstop 140 minutes lasting concert twice within a year, and I could go to his show monthly or weekly even if I could. The septuagenarian Italian maestro spells magic on the audience during his live marathons. Walks in his native Piedmontese landscape inspired an album where I feel the nature of this familiar place to me.

Tune your mind to different states of consciousness and creativity through sound

Our thoughts are not silent, we perceive them even when not emitting any noise. Therefore, we can say they function as sound and can inspire or distract. “That which is empty, everything is possible.” wrote Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese philosopher resonant in the West and the author of Silence: The power of quiet in a world full of noise. Writers like Dan Brown were inspired by music (his latest book ‘Origin’ was spurred by his brother’s composition), poets create rhythmic sounds of verses, movie directors like Woody Allen ventilate their creative zeal through the music channel too (the octogenarian still plays clarinet in his jazz band), while the stroke of a brush, stencil or any other medium of a painter is in harmony with their inner sounds. They listen and recreate, pour it out! Crafts express sound in their distinct form – through story telling, lyrical or physical acts.

Our sense of hearing has a purpose beyond pure survival. Reducing everything that human body was equipped with to the savage fight or flight mode, evolutional purpose, does not tell the holistic story of sound, I think. Some animals are quick-eared and it assists them to find food or avoid being the prey, yet audition also awakens the left brain by ear-reach. Sound art goes beyond music in contemporary understanding. From MOMA in New York, through Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris to the progressive art galleries in Shanghai sound accompanies the visual exhibitions. The artists express human experience contingent on all of our senses.

The composer of her signature long duration sound known as drone, Eliane Radigue was one of the pioneers in creating site-specific sound installations. Now you can challenge our tendency to left to right hearing and perceive it from above and below as you walk the Rubin Museum’s spiral staircase sextet listening to her work Le corps sonore. Conceived in collaboration with other two sound artists awakens your sonic perception to the exhibition titled The World is Sound. I also joined the Museum’s recent listening challenge, and over seven days broadened my relationship with sound. Music producers like Moby contributed with insight, expertise and soundbites. I realised that sound is an invisible flow of pure reality. Any force is a mass of empowered vibration.

Our savvy ancestors knew that sound can serve as a tool to spiritual influence and practice. Religions use chants and instrumental music to convey the wisdom of enlightened sages and saints. Buddhism uses sound mantras to empower the individual consciousness to liberation from the suffering cycle of rebirths. The Christian choirs move our attention away from the worrisome daily life, while the Islamic muezzins alert regularly the muslim followers to stop working and spiritually pause in the moment of prayer. Sound is powerful.

DEMOCRATISING JOY THROUGH SOUND

ACOUSTIC joy is witnessed without judgement and through personal engagement with the specific sound. Allowing yourself the pleasure from a beautiful sound is free to everyone who is able to listen regardless of their background, class, race. Music is one of the most democratic tools that exists. Unless the listener deprives (but also spares as we all do not like the same music) the audience of the music by using earphones, the sound’s vibrations cannot be stopped outdoors. Anyone within the earshot can take pleasure in the tunes.

Yet, perhaps because we are constantly exposed to noise, silence can be discomforting. Running minds, the Vata types in Ayurveda, and hyperactive personas, are more sensitive to quietude than the contemplators (Kapha). Ceasar reportedly said: “Human mind is disturbed the most by that what is not seen.” Thoughts, the inner resonances, affect us all, unless we do not cling to them.

Sound, like visual moments, can be captured more objectively through various devices that the intrepid minds invented. Before that, sound was just the fleeting expression of the moment. Once more rare, transient in its nature, than even the most precious stone on the planet, sound became a commodity with the invention of recording. Now, it’s mostly free online. Ironically, this reality illustrates how change is permanent. Nothing stays the same or is valued as such. Markets change their prices, daily reflecting on the human manipulation of reality. Technology spoiled the objective potential of recordings, we can alter them as easily as we can edit digital photos.

AURAL THERAPY

Sound vibrations affect our body. Centring your thoughts through simply focusing on your breadth is a mindfulness practice. The sound of your breadth steadily flowing in and forcefully being flushed out by your involuntary bodily mechanisms can save money for psychotherapy. Stress-relieving, hormone balancing and neural system soothing, neuroscience is knocking sound potential.

LIKE THE MANTRAS AND THE OM of the Buddhist and yogic chants, the vibrations of the sound that we either create through our body or externally change something. The experience of sound dissolving into silence like a gong is meditative, relieves anxiety, dissolves fear, releases bodily and mind’s tensions and directs focus to the pure being. This can feel liberating for most of us, who are entangled in the maze of thoughts, self-doubts, criticisms of others, and other venomous whispers biting in our conscience.

Sound reflects the present moment. If we focus on the sound of our body we can localise pain and weakness. Carl Gustav Jung wrote: “Just as the founder wounds himself, so the healer heals himself.” Our auditory sense distracts us, informs, warns or conducts pleasure from the harmony of the audible sound.

Auditory modality or the perception, memory, and sensation of sound significantly affects our experience. The auditory learners like to hear information in order to memorise it best. The VARK model supports this through research, but there is more. Keeping the past sound for the future recall through notes has for centuries served to recreate sounds and transmit wisdom via musical instruments or chants. There also exist repetitive sounds in nature and in almost any activity on the earth that invade the silence of nothingness.

The enlightening experience that our senses and curiosity explore enriches our lives. The way we are, the pure being of the world, the miracle of spiritual connection with the environment, the whole existence is augmented by or concealed by sound. Being aware of how our perception of sound alters our lives can make everything different. Only a deaf person can describe the difference between the silent existence and life experienced through sounds. I wonder, but I am afraid to learn it myself directly – how would it feel? How would my daily experience change if silence ruled over others pain, if the urban life switched off its decibels, if lovers could not voice their passion and love? Leonardo daVinci cultivated his sensory awareness and in so elevated his experience and creative work above the average person. A good motivation to include listening into your mindful contemplations.

I have included sound in your reading experience on La Muse Blue, my talented friend and pianist Thomas Zaruba composed a song that you can play on the poetry page (click play >) when lingering on the page, slow down. As I wrote in the introduction to his debut vinyl album “In the right proportion silence brings introspection, and sadness is replaced by joy”.

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