What is love? Can it be defined? Is love abstract? Is it personal? Is it easy? Is it hard? Is it just one kind of love or there are more? Does love make the world spin around? Do animals feel love? Do plants feel love? Is love energy? Is it chemistry? Is it something beyond us? Should we abandon ourselves to it? Should we resist it?
I don’t know a definite answer to any of these questions. But I know that sometimes, Love is just about abandoning yourself in your love one’s arms and watch the stars sprinkled on the dark, infinite sky. Feel the energy of the moment, feel the warm body near you, feel the night breeze playing with your hair, hear the chirp of the crickets, smell your love one’s fragrance, feel the miracle of life. Because it really is a miracle to be here, in this moment, with the person you choose to walk the path of life on this Earth.
Thank you for stopping by and… LOVE be all around you!
I’ve always thought my tenth wedding anniversary would be a special one, but I’ve never expected this! For the last 5 years my hubby had spent many hours a day working in our huge barn on a secret project that I wasn’t allowed to see until it was done. I was patient but curious, nonetheless. Today, the day of our tenth anniversary, the big mystery was going to be revealed. The waiting was over! I woke up in the morning happy and in a celebration mood. My hubby was already awake, extremely excited. I could feel his energy in the air. He took my hand and guided me outside. The notes of our song were coming from the barn. He told me to close my eyes. I did. He removed the walls of the barn and told me I could watch. At first, I didn’t realize what I was looking at. I had never seen such a thing all my life. A huge hearth shape machine on three legs with some dragon-like wings, a hammock in the top of it and all kind of other weird stuff coming out of it. I still couldn’t imagine what that big machinery was but, I was in awe, anyway. My husband led me inside. An anniversary meal was set up on a lovely wooden table. We sat down and had our special day’s breakfast. While we were sipping our tea, the big machinery started moving through our yard. The tug made me spill some tea on my dress, but it didn’t matter. I felt like dreaming. We were having breakfast in a huge walking heart shape machine. I couldn’t stop thinking of Howl’s Moving Castle. And when I thought I couldn’t ask for more, the machine detached from the ground and rose up in the air. That was beyond anything I had ever lived before! We spent our entire day wander-flying above the clouds. This weird flying machinery was the wedding anniversary that my hubby secretly worked on in our barn for years. He must really love me! And when I think that I bought him a comic book… One of his favorites, but still…
Thank you for stopping in my dreamy world! Have a full of love day!
Many, ohhh, so many, springs ago, the bees from the Bee Land were at the brink of extinction. The flowers they used to visit for pollen perished due to an unknown disease and the bees were not able to feed themselves anymore. They had few days left. They were hungry and weak. But when someone is in danger, everybody else tries to help.
A magical lady had been living for centuries in a secluded forest. She had cherry tree branches full of endless cherry blossoms growing from her head. In those times of trouble she thought to use her gift to feed the bees in need. She started wandering through the Bee Land calling the bees to come and feed themselves from her cherry flowers. And they came. How could they not? That blossoming lady was so tempting! Soon, some of the bees, got really fond of their benefactor. They felt so protected, safe and loved that they started building a honeycomb among the branches raising from the lady’s head, to be around her always. In several years, flowers started blossoming again in the Bee Land and the magical lady thought it was time to go home, to her secluded forest where she continue to live among the bees that made their home in her head. She fed them cherry blossom pollen, they gave her honey. They were happy together. Loved and safe. And for those days on, she was known as the Bee Lady.
The bees had other helping friends, too. The bears of the world started to bring all kind of flowers from far lands to the hungry bees. They fed them for days that become months that become years, until the flowers started to grow up again in the bee land. And when that happened, the bees felt so grateful that, as a thank you, they offered the bears honeycombs full of the sweetest juice. And ohhh, it was so yum! That was the moment when the bears discovered and fell in love with honey. It is a misconception that the bears steal the bees’ honey. The truth is totally different. Actually, the bees are still grateful to the bears for saving their species in those far tough times and, since then, they continue to give them honey from time to time. Especially when the bears’ food is scarce. And today bears still bring flowers to the bees in exchange for the honey they get.
Thank you for stopping by. Have a lovely happy sweet day!
Somewhere on this big, beautiful, mysterious planet, there is a secluded city, abandoned by people long long ago. One day, an adventurer sloth had found it and fell in love with it outright. He brought his family to live there. Soon, many other sloths, young and old, followed. The city was again teeming with life… a slow life, but vibrant, nonetheless. The biggest adventure for the city sloths was the local library. That was the magical place where they encountered new fascinated unknown-till-then worlds. That was the place where they learned so many new things, things lost in time but engraved in books for eternity. One sloth found his idol in one of those books. He fell in love with Che Guevara and started dressing and acting like El Che. He even wanted to start a revolution against his parents who didn’t let him smoke Cuban cigars, like Che did. But sloths are lazy and this one was no exception, so his revolutionary movement didn’t last more than several minutes. Then he went to sleep and forgot all about his fight for his rights. It was way more comfortable to lay in the sun with or without a Cuban cigar. A cute lady sloth had founded a feminist club in the city where females gathered to talk about the hardships of their life and the possible solutions. But they had soon realized that they didn’t have what to talk about or what to fix. They were so pleased with their leisure lives that they wouldn’t change a thing. But they still gathered now and then to talk about whatever crossed their minds or just sit together in silence, as speaking took too much effort. Some of the sloths remained fond of nature and they were wandering all day long through the forest nearby, some others had replaced trees with telegraph poles and enjoyed the tickles in their arms and legs while hanging on the wires. At night and whenever the rain fell, they were sleeping inside the abandoned houses. It was for the first time in their lives that they had a roof above their heads and they felt protected and blessed. The city was a godsend to them and they cherished it deeply. They still do. I cannot tell you where this city is. The sloths made me swear not to tell anyone about it, as too many people would like to see it and their visits would only break the sloths’ peacefulness. But I leave you some paintings I’ve made there so you can make an idea of it.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed the paintings, the story or both 🙂
Sloth – a cute face with an everlasting smile. But his smile isn’t a proof of happiness or contentment as one might think. It is actually due to sloths’ lack of facial muscles. They are “doomed” to have a huge smile on their face no matter what their feelings are. I can’t imagine how would it be to have a happy face even when I’m dying inside. No one would know that something is wrong with me, everyone would think that everything is fine. That could be very frustrating. But, actually, people often choose to wear masks, happy ones, to hide their true feelings, to look tough and in control, to fit in, to be accepted, because who like a sad, depressed face, isn’t it? But, unlike sloths, they do this voluntarily. They have a choice. So, when you see a happy sloth, think twice: maybe he’s terrified, angry, in pain, or depressed. Don’t let their smile fool you. Look into their eyes. There, if you are empathetic enough, you might see what they really feel. And it is the same with humans.
And, since I’ve talked about smiles, I leave you a link to a dear song of mine:
There are many things that impress me deeply but one in particular comes to my mind today due to a discussion I had last week with some friends; and that is: seeing an old person, having a hard time walking (maybe leaning on a stick), feeding pigeons in the park (or wherever). I know that there are disputes regarding this kind of activity and that feeding birds had been prohibited lately in many cities due to the diseases they spread, the mess they do, the damages they bring to the historical buildings, etc but still… I cannot remain untouched when I see elders feeding pigeons. This image always melts my heart while many thoughts cross my mind. I cannot stop thinking of the old age and the very few things that brings people joy in their later years, I think of the loneliness of old people (and not only) and the need to love and to be loved, the need to feel that somebody still needs you, the need to be taken care of and to take care of someone, being that a person or the birds of the sky… Some elders face fines for feeding the birds, but some of them don’t stop, regardless. For them feeding the birds might be one of their last available pleasures in life, the little thing they still can do to feel they matter, to feel they contribute with something to this world. And maybe the birds that rest on their shoulder, their arms, their laps are the only beings with whom they interact to all day long, maybe they have nobody else, maybe the love they get from the pigeons is the only drop of love they get in this world. Who knows what story lies behind their refusal to stop feeding the birds…
Thank you for stopping by. Have a lovely, happy day, full of love and lots of friends.
Love, marriage, trust, betrayal, deception, suffering, and finally, death. This is the story of Cho Cho San. Many know her as Madame Butterfly (cho cho means butterfly in Japanese).
She put her trust in a man, the man of her life, the one who promised to cherish her forever. She gave him all her love, she abandoned her religion only to be with him. But for him, everything was a game. He soon left over the ocean, promising he’ll be back soon. He lied. He remarried. She waited for him on the shore for years. She had his son who waited together with his mother on the shore for his father’s clipper to return. But when his father returned, his new wife was on his arm.
This is the story of so many of us. We think we walk the same path, we think we look in the same direction only to find out that our partner had always wanted something else. In the end, he/she walks away, leaving behind broken souls, shattered dreams, crushed lives. One may wonder if love is worth all the trouble. It seems that the answer is always “yes”. People need love and they are willing to take their chances over and over again, always believing, always hoping.
I leave you a link to the Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Full Opera):
Nobody knows why the giraffe has such a long neck and legs. There are lots of theories, but the real answer is buried back in a forgotten time, a time when the giraffes were the link between earth and sky, where the spirits lived. Back then, when a man from Earth wanted to speak with the soul of a dear one, he had to whisper the message into a giraffe’s ear and then she raised her head up to the stars, getting the man’s message to the soul it was intended for and she always brought back an answer. But, in time, there were more and more men wanting to talk with the departed ones and the giraffes couldn’t handle the job anymore. They were tired and had less and less time to live their own lives, to take care of their own kind. That was the time when the God of the Giraffes, wanting to ease their lives, gave birth to a big giraffe island in the middle of the ocean. Since that day, any man who wanted to speak with the soul of a dear one that had left the Earth climbed on the Giraffe Island’s neck up to the spirits’ realm. ( The giraffes went back to their tranquil lives but kept their long legs and neck as they got fond of them. )
Thank you for taking the time to read. I hope you enjoy it! Have a lovely day!
Nobody knows how to get to The Wolf Island. Few know of its existence and even these few people think of it more as a mythical island rather than a real one.
But she knows. She goes there every full moon. It is her favorite place on Earth: the place where the spirits of all the wolves that once lived on Earth gather and speak to her, telling their stories from the beginning till present. She learned about their ways, about their families, their pack hunting, their love stories, their friendships, their fears, their losses, their desires, their joys, their turbulent relation with humans along the history. She learned how her kind had hunted wolves to the brink of extinction many times throughout history without realizing that wolves are of utmost importance in keeping the balance of the ecosystem and that by exterminating them there will be devastating consequences to nature. Realizing that, humans stopped the hunting for a while, allowing the wolf population to regrow. But then… they forgot and… the history had repeated itself over and over again. People have short term memory and it seems that they are not capable of learning from their past mistakes once and for all. Maybe this is their curse.
But let’s leave these for now and, since it’s a full moon, let’s hear Lobo’s story: He lived a happy but hard life in Currumpaw, New Mexico, together with his life-mate, Blanca, and his fearless pack. In a time when the wolves had been deprived of their natural prey such as bison, elk and pronghorn by settlers, they had to convert their ways to the new reality in order to survive and so they started to prey on the settlers’ livestock. Lobo became the “King of Currumpaw”, the leader of a cattle-killing wolves. He had to learn all the humans’s ways of killing wolves in order to elude them. He and his pack escaped traps, poison, riffles, dogs for years, becoming a terror for the ranchers of that area. A bounty was put on his head and many bounty hunters tried to catch him without any luck. He always outsmart them. At their wits end, the farmers hired Ernest Thompson Seton a naturalist as well as a professional animal trapper to kill him. Seton tried unsuccessfully to catch him for more than 4 months. The mating season began and, therefore, he and Blanca were inseparable. And this was his doom. Seton, a wise and determined man, changed his tactics and lured Blanca, the love of his life, whom he finally caught and killed. Life became pointless for Lobo. He howl-mourned her for two days, trying every minute to catch a last glimpse-sniff of her love through the ranch’s windows. All he wanted was to see her one last time, to lay beside her and die. Finally, seeing no other way to be together with Blanca for one more time, he let himself caught in 4 traps around the house where Blanca was taken in and … that was it. Hurt, he was carried by Seton inside, he took a last glimpse of his Blanca who was lying dead on the floor and then… he let himself die. Their spirits united in the Great Beyond and since then they wander happily, always together, inseparable, through the stars, through multiverses, through space and time. Now and then, they come to the Wolf Island, the meeting place of the spirits of all the wolves that once lived on Earth and tell their story to whoever listens.
As for his Nemesis, Seton, his encounter with Lobo changed him forever: an immense respect for the wolves and for the entire nature grew inside him. He returned east and found new purpose in speaking out against the destruction of America’s wilderness. He lobbied for the creation of new national parks, and fought for protections for wildlife.
For Seton, it wasn’t just a question of saving the wilderness. He believed that people had to experience nature in order to care about it — that it should be a part of everyone’s upbringing. He wrote a book Wild Animals I Have Known, where he called himself the villain and Lobo a hero. The book became a worldwide success and turned Seton into a major celebrity.
This image and the story attached to it was inspired by the true story of Lobo – The Wolf That Changed America (as they called him).
Paula Belle Flores 