Te regalo...

Y casi me vuelvo loco

Pensando en que darte

Para poder probarte

Lo que estoy sintiendo

Regalarte la luna

Con gusto lo haría

Y de soledad

El sol lloraría

Pondría los mares

Frente a tus dos pies

Los peces y corales

Traería después

Adornaría tu almohada

Con aves más de una

Que susurrarían en tu sueño

La mejor canción de cuna

Peinaría tu cabello

Con la brisa del viento

Y acariciaría tus labios

Con mi mismo aliento

Y te daría el espacio

Si de todo fuese dueño

Aunque para tí aún eso

Sería muy pequeño

Por tanto te dedico

Lo único que tengo

Mi alma y corazón

Y mi pensamiento

Y casi me vuelvo loco

Pensando en que darte

Para poder probarte

Lo que estoy sintiendo

Sin todo...

Un día más sin algarabía

Con mis sueños vacíos

En mi cielo sin nubes

Sobre un mar sin peces

Un segundo sin tiempo

En las playas sin palmas

Como ríos sin cauce

O animales sin cría

Cual bebés sin aliento

Viene viento sin fuerza

Cazador sin presa

Un león sin rugido

Discurso sin oído

Canción sin letra

O represa sin agua

Lucha sin enemigo

Actor sin fama

Fuego sin llama

Sangre sin herida

O la muerte sin vida

Así sin sentido

Con nada y sin todo

Cual mi isla sin coquí

Son mis días sin tí

Assistance needed...

'When the going gets tough...some people run like crazy chickens'

-The Puppet Master

Do you know a person who you feel is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong towards their own doom? Have you been able to picture a very probable future where that someone has ended up colliding against a wall that is most immovable, only to end up bleeding, crying, if still alive at all? If you have, you surely have felt pity, sadness.

Have you done anything about it?

Knowledge of the outcome is not enough. Being able to point a finger and recognize the problem isn’t either. They are part of the solution, sure. The true solution lies in our lending a hand, not in our pointing a finger at the victim sinking in their own inner maelstrom, for that is more the job of modern religious figures.

By lending a hand I don’t mean ‘get so involved that you’ll be immersed in the problem’. I don’t mean ‘solve their problem’ either. Each to its own, each person must learn from their own hardships. Each one should grow like a cactus, through the desert on its own little piece of dirt.

Even though it is not your job, you sometimes will still go out of your own way to extend some help to a doomed character in the film you’re currently living through.
You will many times lend a hand to someone in need who will not only ignore it, but maybe even scorn it, or even bite it. I know that as a fact, I lived through it myself.
You know what you have to do then?

Guess what!

Nothing…


Lesson’s learned: Don’t get in someone else’s shoes, walk with them, and let them go the way they choose.

Celebrating celebrities...

‘Elvis has left the building!’
-Unknown

Do you have a picture of yourself with a celebrity? If so, where is that picture? Is it on a high place in your house for everyone to notice? Is it close to your bed?

Who’s your favorite celebrity? What’s his (or her) real name? What movies or songs can you name where your favorite celebrity was involved?

Can you see yourself running inside a mall (or at least rushing) just so that you can get a glimpse of that one celebrity you heard was buying there? Have you done it?

Why?

What is a celebrity but a person who is just recognized and followed by a bunch of people almost blindly?

What is a celebrity but someone who, by their own effort, fate, luck, or backstabbing of others has reached the floors where the spotlight of the world awaits for their entrance to the stage?

You never know when you’ll meet one of them, and when you do it is all a big event…

So, a piece of advice I give to you. Buy yourself a really good camera. The best you can, and get ready to photograph the greatest celebrity of all, yourself.

You have lived through a lot, enough for many movies and even sequels. Enough for books to be written, yet you have dedicated yourself to praise and recognize other people’s success. Just as true celebrities, perhaps you don’t see yourself as such. They run away from paparazzi, while you hide away from your own recognition.

In reality these so called ‘celebrities’ would run towards you to get pictures taken with you if they knew what you know about yourself. They would perhaps see more in you than you do, for that is exactly what we do with them.

Lesson learned: Smile, you are the best of actors in the best of films, My Life…all Oscars are yours!

Finders keepers...

‘I remember when you asked me for a cigarette, then cast it to the ground and stomped on it. I remember you saying “it’s kidding, give me another one” and did the same thing again. I remember your reply to me when I asked you: man, I just care for you enough to want to keep you from smoking, even if it makes you angry. You were the only one who seemed to care about me back then, thank you’
-Xavi



Where is your best friend now? Where is the one who you dared call ‘best’ at one time? Where is that person whose very name, when mentioned, still brings you back memories that draw a smile on your face? That being whose name you will never forget, for it was a person you loved…

Is your friend close to you? Is he/she far? Is that person even alive? Have you abandoned ‘that special someone’ because ‘life is way too busy so we went our own ways’?
If so, I can’t help but wonder…if he was the best of friends, why would I repay him with just relegating that person to a second tier in the ladder of my existence?

A friendship is defined as ‘a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection. Friends will welcome each other’s company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism.’

Altruism by itself is the selfless concern for the welfare of another. Even Jesus Christ(is said to have) declared “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.

So, if this is said about friends, imagine what could be said about the BEST of friends.

If that someone’s love kept you going at one time, if that person’s smile gave you strength, or if the mere company of that person made you grow up, even when your own immaturity may have separated you in the past, that person ought to know. Maybe he’s going through hard times and we, in our own ‘being too busy’ have forgotten to repay the greatest favor of all: WE WERE LOVED.

Don’t be ungrateful, make all the phone calls you need to, check the internet, write a letter and find out about your friend (with the same eagerness as you would find out about that very special Christmas’ gift you badly wanted) and say, in addition to whatever you need to say: ‘Thanks for being there for me, and thanks for being part of me, I love you, my best of friends’



Lesson Learned: Friends are friends forever, despite all wrong.

Unexpected flowers...

‘Light a candle in someone’s heart and you will illuminate the world’

-The Puppet Master

Coming back home from another day at volleyball I would laugh at the many jokes my friends and I told. As I stepped out of the elevator a most surprising event unfolded. A flower arrangement sat right in front of the doorway to my apartment. Pink, green, yellow and orange…if I’d only known anything about flowers!

My soul trembled in wonder, who could’ve sent flowers to me? Or, more than who could have, who would have? Whoever did has not only changed my day but also perhaps influenced the course of my life’s river.

Why would a single flower cause an earthquake of emotions that would shake the very foundations of our existence? Why would colorful petals mesmerize me like the best poem ever written would do to a poet?

Know that it is not just the action itself, but the fact that it was performed by a stranger that gives it strength. It would be easily expected to receive anything on a holiday, but just on a simple, regular day?

If you want to change the World, if you truly want to leave a mark behind for your children and their own children to see you don’t have to write a book, sculpt a masterpiece or paint marvelously well. You can just give a flower to a stranger or if you’re too shy, just leave it dedicated to a total stranger and perhaps they will do the same.

Lesson learned: Don’t underestimate your power to change the course of history with but a single, simple action.

Media luna...

Y se detuvo el tiempo
Y se detuvo mi alma
Y aún el palpitar agitado interno
Ante el reflejo de esos ojos
Que me inundaron de memorias
Y decidí ahogarme un segundo
Muriendo preso del embrujo
De tu sonrisa traviesa
Las estrellas
La laguna
La voz
La media luna
Fue testigo del regreso
Fue espía del suceso
Del evento
De un mismo aliento
Del cálido contacto
De tu abrazo tímido
Que desapareció
Ante la fuerza del deseo
Y mecidos bajo el viento
Entre la inmensa oscuridad
Y la mirada de Marte
Y bendición de Orión
Desaparecieron cual fantasmas
Las inhibiciones
Del pasado incierto

Del misterio temido

Vencido por atrevimiento
Dejando todo a un lado
Ante la orquesta de grillos
De coquíes y del viento
Bajo la media luna
Y su mitad escondida
Juntamos por primera vez
Los cálidos labios
Para darme vida
Para quedar encantado
Y grabé tu risa
Dibujé tu mirada
Para llevarme la memoria
Del eco del momento
Y se detuvo el tiempo
Y se detuvo mi alma
Y aún el palpitar agitado interno
Ante el reflejo de tus ojos

Everlasting peace...

“Tread lightly with the gift of another’s heart … treat it with the utmost care, for there is nothing in this world more precious and fragile”
-Whitten Hall



Get a blank piece of paper and a pen.

Who is the person that means the most to you right now? Write the name down.
At least, what is the first name that comes to your mind?

Think about what you would say to that person today, right now, if you somehow knew that person would pass away tonight. Express yourself fully.

When those close to us pass away some part of us dies with them. A silent void gapes open inside our very hearts and minds, and our days feel as passing slowly. Pain rears its ugly head and crushes us with its unmerciful grip as we fade into the unconsciousness and darkness of oblivion.

Our brain moves back in time from the warm summer we live in to the spring we lived through and created together. Memories bloom like flowers and color our existence. We laughed together at silly things, cried watching a stupid film, argued about things that don’t really matter, painted a house, drove to the theatre, baked a cake, bought gifts, fed the cat…we did it all, and yet we didn’t do enough, for it is never enough when you love someone.

Destiny’s cruel hand, in the flicker of a candle light transports some of us to the cold winter that separated us. The darkest recesses of that deep dungeon in that same so-capable-of-loving heart release the monsters of our putrid past like creatures in a gladiatorial arena. We fight to remember the good things, versus the bad.

The real danger comes when fall arrives, for even though the landscape seems so beautiful everything is dying around us and we may get caught, and trapped, in this deathly illusion. And so we are filled with quiescence, solitude, emptiness, sadness, depression…

Those who pass away cannot express themselves anymore. One way or another they have already left their mark. Time passes by, and we carry the legacy of that someone engraved in our beings. How will we live from now on that they’re missing?
Much like our friends around the corner and those who moved to different places they are not missing, they are missed…but still there.

Know that, for one thing, they are at peace. So don’t drown yourself in an ocean of memories that’s quiet, that’s so calm…


Lesson learned: It is up to us to choose the season we will live in. It will not change their past, but it will change our future.

Who rules...

'He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.'

-John Milton(1608-1674)

Have you wondered why you don’t succeed at a particular endeavor? Have you ever felt as if after all the hardships and struggling to find your way you end up at the shore of a stormy sea and there’s nothing you can do about it?

If you have felt that way, if you have lost all hope let me tell you one thing: you are just focusing on the wrong obstacle. We as humans can overcome anything, with the right tools, and with our mind set to it.

David(in the Bible) defeated Goliath, the giant, with a slingstone to his forehead. He was small, he was weak, but he was brave and strong-willed.

Now, we all have our giants, each to its own.

What is your giant? Is it drugs taking control over your life?

Is it alcohol not allowing you to be happy without it?

Is it risk behavior and the thrill of it being the only thing filling you?

Does your giant have a name?

Is it a sick partner?

Is it depression?

How many times have you said ‘this is the last time’ and failed? You are saying that to yourself, no one really cares.

Identify your giant, decide once and for all to use all your might and your sling to finish its curse in your life…or see your life waste away. It will be hard, I know. It will feel as if you lose your life when you lift this curse, but you will actually be regaining the reins of your own destiny.

You think you can take control of your life? If so, then too bad.

You shouldn’t think you can, you have to be sure. Doubt breeds inaction.

To all of you who are brave enough to evolve and become a better person I say ‘hail’, to all those who don’t I say ‘good luck’ for only luck will allow you be happy.

Lesson learned: Despite what anyone can say or think I AM TAKING control of my life.

Recognizing recognition…

‘Man, I have never loved like this, it feels good to know you are in my life’
-Andrej(1974-1994)

‘Life has no boundaries. The only boundaries it has are the ones you create….’
-Wes Pine in Living a dream

Have you ever felt everything around you ceasing to exist as time stops? Your life feels like a movie where everything gets distorted except for the focus of your newly caught attention. The only thing you can see and hear is moving right in front of you and you can say 'recognition'.

And what is this recognition? I define it as the moment and event when the soul of a person recognizes another as a mate, as a friend, as someone that could be(and will be, in most cases) close enough to touch the vibrating essence of our hearts, close enough to play the strings of our harps and emit a new melody that will reverberate and echo throughout eternity.

It is not love, but the truest of lovers can feel it, their feelings potentiated and strengthened by this strangest of events.
It is not friendship, but could help develop the greatest friendships and alliances that could change the course of history someday.
It is not passion, but it could cause a conflagration that would dwarf passion’s own flame.

We come to envy children in movies who are closer than brothers, who laugh together, cry together and fall in innocent, true love with one another. I’m not talking love as in relationships. I’m referring to love in its purest of forms.

Some of us have never felt this in our lives. Some of us have and we can, despite the time, silence, distance, or death itself smile at the mere fleeting memory of that soul mate that still lives within us.

Don’t isolate yourself in the desert of your depression. There’s someone else out there somewhere who’s an oasis to your life.

Lesson learned: If you think the movie of your life may be almost over and you can already see the credits then search for the sequel.