My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.
Last week we were driving from Ciutadella to Cala en Porter when I saw these formations of clouds. They were so low you can almost touch them. Beautiful they were it was almost unreal I can’t help but taking series of shots, even though it is always a tricky thing taking pictures from a moving vehicle. I managed to capture some decent ones with my mobile phone camera. Here’s a couple of them. Enjoy…
I consider myself a traveler than a tourist, more interested in culture and locals than sightseeing. I can never hang out by the pool lying whole day doing nothing. I seek the beaten tracks and less populated areas, virgin beaches and hard to reach villages. I hike, take buses, rent a bike or a small car to go around. I buy food from the market, eat in the park sitting on a bench watching life unfold or in a small roadside cafe soaking the atmosphere and listening to people. I rather be part of a local celebration, a fiesta than sampling the nightlife in discotheque drinking myself to oblivion. There are two quotes I’ve read that stay with me wherever I go:
“Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.”
“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
The next time you travel, try to venture on the road less taken. I guarantee you, you’re in for a hell of a different adventure. Just keep an open mind and let life surprise you. We can’t plan the course of things anyway. Just enjoy the ride, including the less glamorous side of it.
I was grocery shopping yesterday evening and about to approach the butcher stand in the supermarket when a man approached me from behind. He said: “You walk like Aborigines.” And he went on demonstrating how I walked. I said to him: “Because maybe I am.” He said: “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure you’re a Filipino.” “How can you be sure?” I asked. He told me it’s the strong contours of my face that betrayed my ethnic origin. Okay then I said and walked away.
He approached me again at the vegetables stand asking how long I’ve been living in the country. I said to him almost thirty years. He (deliberately) misheard what I said to maybe prolong the conversation. Thirteen? He asked. No, I said. I live here 29 years. “Then you must be fully integrated and established already.” “Yes I am.” I confirmed and left.
I thought that was the end of it but he kept following me around. At the dairy aisle D. noticed him looking at me like (his own words) he is raping and ravishing me in his mind. I had no choice but to relate to D. what had occurred at the butcher counter and to my surprise D. reacted quite the opposite of what I used to expect from him. He was furious! And started walking towards the guy who seemed to be waiting for just that to happen. I grabbed D.s arm in time and marched him to the opposite direction away from the man but he kept struggling out my grip saying he just wanted to talk to the guy, ask him what’s wrong. I said to D. Not all war is worth fighting for. He has to learn to recognize a hopeless situation when he sees one. I told him to look at that person and say to me honestly if he’s really worth the trouble.
The guy must be around forty, overweight, wearing a 3/4th and a t-shirt which is too small for his size, and clogs on his feet. He can use a shower too. And to top it all he was shopping with his mother. By the look of it, he still living at home. Plus he can beat D. to a pulp in a second. His forearm is the size of D’s leg. I don’t see any use of getting in a row with this type of people. Avoiding them (until you can’t anymore) is the best thing to do. I can imagine he is frustrated with his life and looking for some diversion and I happened to be in his path and think I was an easy prey. He must have watched some of those documentaries about us and believe them with all his heart. He reminds me of a woman I encountered by the pool last week in Menorca. She said her son is thirty five years old, single and still living at home. She wants to send him to my country so he can fetch a wife in no time. I didn’t correct her misplaced (insulting and generalized) assumption because trying to educate one track narrow minded stupid people is a losing battle. It is a waste of time and energy.
I managed to keep D away from the guy and bought him some sweet pastry to calm his nerves (joke) and came home without nasty incidents. I have no idea what prompted the guy to approach me and what was the reason behind his actions. All I know is that episode added to my long list of reasons why I want to be an island. Away from everyone. Self- sufficient and free.
By Bethany Rose
I went through a phase of doing things on Facebook so that my ex could see that I was having fun.
Living life for an imagined reaction of someone who used to make me feel like the sun is the most messed up thing I’ve ever done.
However, I don’t think that it is possible these days to enjoy doing anything without being seen.
The kids I teach take selfies of themselves doing normal stuff like drinking a cup of tea, buying a bus ticket, doing a wee – because nothing counts these days any more unless your saying ‘look at me’- unless you are turning the mundane into celebrity. Unless you’re creating distance between imagined pixels and what you wish was reality.
Nowadays people write online that their dad has died.
People also click LIKE and then write ‘RIP hunny’ (insert emoji that looks sad).
My Dad has carried me on his shoulders for 28 years, and his hand makes mine feel lightning wrapped in skin. Our eyes are both green with bits of orange in, and I know I’m his best thing because he sees myself in him.
And if, when he dies, they click like, because they don’t have any kind of adequate cognitive apparatus, I am going to let pieces of me dissolve inside, and blame myself for writing a complex human tragedy into a simple Facebook status. And I’m sorry. But I don’t want to know what you’ve had for your tea. But I want you to know what you’ve had for mine.
So I’ll click like so that you click like and then we can all pretend that we are having a good time and a good life.
And this has become what we call evolution. We’ll sign a petition about Cecil the lion and share a photo of that dentist for lying and laugh at his demise.
But we don’t talk about the things that matter, because we are all signing a petition to get class C drugs legalised, demonise the immigrants, dehumanise the refugees, don’t forget to vote Tory, change your profile to a rainbow so that you can write yourself into someone else oppressive story, and at the same time that 12 people were shot in Paris, 500 girls went missing in Nigeria but that wasn’t on the BBC news page.
So we all said JE SUIS Charlie, and felt proud it was our profile picture for a couple of days.
And I am guilty too of all this mass nonsense. If you looked at my Facebook you would think I had the most wonderful life with the biggest smile.
I’m not going to post a picture of myself when I am eating cheese straight from the packet and watching Jeremy Kyle.
Don’t like it – PUT A FILTER ON IT. Turn up the saturation and instagram the hurt out of it – nobody needs to know do they?
They don’t need to know that all I have done today is felt my insides dissipate and slide away, so I will post a picture from another occasion.
But lately there is too much discrepancy between what is my real life and what I post about it online.
I have forgotten about how to be joyful about the things that aren’t mine where someone hasn’t clicked like.
I miss being bored. Like when you are a kid and you play games like how many times you can flip the tab on a coke can, and how long you can hold your breath for, and who can see the ten green cars first on the motorway.
Having nothing to do makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.
I licked my cuts because my blood tasted good, like a coin, metallic, and true, and counted how many seconds I could sit next to you before you moved.
And I guess I am still bored but I am bored by other people, and maybe I just miss being bored of my own doing, of my own self, my own skin.
Maybe I miss knowing the map of my insides like it was an atlas of stars and planets I could grow old in.
Maybe I miss being me. And in my body there is no evolution, because I am too busy looking at what everyone is doing and yet still I do not leave. I do not grow. I do not stop going online even though I know it’s wrong.
I admit: I only do things so they look good online – I go to a museum and post a picture of a picture and wait for people to click like, so that my need to explore myself artistically is abated. I need people to know I’m pursuing culture to make me feel validated.
And if there’s no likes? Then maybe I think that museums and art aren’t for me.
I don’t know how to make my own happiness a private pursuit for me, so I go to bed and cry myself to sleep.
But not before I check in first – it’s easier to tag myself in bed than it is to tell people the monsters have crawled out underneath and into my mind.
Eventually, when I die people will say ‘her Facebook presence- what a homage’, and they won’t know it was a lie, a fake, a tell tale, a mirage.
That I was friends with you even though we had nothing in common and we disagree politically, but when we were fifteen you made me laugh and your mum always made me my best tea.
My mind is governed by emotions and it leans towards the nostalgic-
I don’t know you any more. And you don’t know me. But you remind me of being home and feeling safe and that means that I can’t cut you out, you see.
I’m friends with people for what they were, not for who they are.
And I’m about as far from happiness as I could ever be.
Until you click like and I feel your love coming back to me.
Until you click so I can be free.
My life is a capitalist tragedy of throwback Thursday’s and flashback Friday’s and happy humpdays.
I’m just lost looking for a way to tell you that I’m lonely.
That’s why I love other people – because I live my life through them instead of living from within.
I don’t know how to form into a better version of myself- I don’t know how to improve.
I’m the curator of a gallery of my life that’s the opposite of truth – and I post these pictures and I write these statuses to create distance between the fact that all I ever really think about is you – you.
You.
You.
You can read the original article here
By Ironatmosphere
The grass is soft and green
But never green enough
Sitting by the fence
I am telling you
It is just
An optical
Illusion…
Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.
– Brigitte Bardot
Can a woman still find love in her fifties or sixties? Does age determine what path shall we take in our lives or is it as said just a number? Should women fear the menopause or should they on the contrary embrace it? When do you think life ends, when you stop breathing or when you stop having a dream for which you would long to breathe?
All these questions and more cross my mind almost daily and I know that their answers differ from one woman to another, certainly that’s what I see at least from women I encounter, and I as well see how women’s lives change majorly from one to another according to those beliefs and from the different experiences one have seen I’ve managed to compose my own answers that led me to one thing, we, women, should never fear menopause, at least don’t give it more than it deserves. Read the rest of the article here.
Here is another helpful article on beating menopausal weight gain. I like how the author make the topic short, simple and relatable.
When you’re stressed, you release the stress hormone cortisol, which puts the body into an emergency mode and it holds onto fat for dear life!
Do check it out. It is worthy of your time.
Art: Svyatogor_Masha-04
I landed at 15 minutes past eleven this morning. It was twelve thirty when I arrived home and one o’clock before I managed to open the front door because I spent quite sometimes inspecting the damage in my garden. Bag in hand, luggage by the front door, I started pulling weeds between my flowers. Tons to do! I saw that my house plants died despite of putting them in the sink half full of water. I didn’t realize Impatiens (Busy Lizzie) needs so much amount of liquid. Well, I will buy new ones. They are not expensive.
Then I drove to the shop to have something to eat this weekend. I will do proper grocery shopping next week.
Laundry have to wait. I took at least 3,000 pictures (and they are all worth the bother. I didn’t realize how crystal clear the water is in Menorca) and they have to be uploaded, sort out and one by one adjusted. The next coming weeks will be busy, busy, busy.
Writing this, I feel like passing out of hunger and fatigue. I will share some of my photos in the next coming days and talk about my three weeks holiday. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will crawl to the kitchen and gulp anything in sight.
It’s good to be back guys!
I don’t get this whole super-skinny obsession. A woman is supposed to have curves like an old Bentley, not like some old bike. A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles. In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves. How great would it be if we could just see souls instead of bodies? To see love and compassion instead of curves.
Everyday, it strikes me as miraculous that people find each other. They could start their journeys on opposite ends of the earth, having no idea where they’re headed, and yet still make it to each other’s arms. And yes, sometimes people slip each other by–they get lost or give up too soon. But sometimes they find each other, and it’s magnificent. Because we are so small, and the world is so big, and it seems impossible that two people could ever stumble into each other’s grasp and know that they were meant to hold on. But they do, and I swear, it’s a miracle if I ever saw one.
— d.e.m.
Never ever compromise. People settle for people who make them miserable in the long run because they become impatient, or because there’s a fiery passion at first. But passion fades. Trust me your stomach wont tie in knots forever. Don’t look for someone who makes you blush, find someone who empowers you, and helps you grow and respects your process. A partner. And hey if they make you blush and tingle inside, that’s a good plus to have.
— Diana Ozoria
Take a journal, online, physical, whatever, go to a clean page and make a list of every single thing you want in an ideal partner.
Order it by most important. The must haves, and the would be nice to have. Make a column for characteristics you find important, another one for the way you’d like for them to treat you, and one for aesthetic preferences (these are nice to haves). Whenever someone tries pulling up in your life, go back to y…our list and check it. If they don’t meet your must haves, don’t waste your time. Like cool, they’re cute, but are they kind? Do they read? Are they philanthropic? Do their social, political, cultural, philosophical and religious views align with yours? If not, do they respect yours? What’s important to you and do they meet it? If not, don’t waste your time. Never ever compromise. People settle for people who make them miserable in the long run because they become impatient, or because there’s a fiery passion at first. But passion fades. Trust me your stomach wont tie in knots forever. Don’t look for someone who makes you blush, find someone who empowers you, and helps you grow and respects your process. A partner. And hey if they make you blush and tingle inside, that’s a good plus to have. And don’t let the loneliness get to you. Work on elevating yourself in the meantime. The higher you become, the higher quality people you attract.
If you apply to a job, no hiring manager will ever hire you if you don’t meet the minimum qualifications, because you won’t be able to do the job. And if they were you hire you, you’d require intense training, and that’s a risky long term investment. So why not set standards for the person you want to build a life with? Because if that’s not your goal, then why are you in a committed relationship? Why then settle for anything less than your ideal? No one is perfect, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t compromise on the things that are fundamental to you because I promise you, you’ll be miserable. Find someone who will compliment your growth, not someone you’ll have to fight every step of the way with, even if they look pretty to hold. That’s what I call a distraction, and ain’t nobody got time for those. Not when you’re trying to build an empire.
“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love…the love that speaks the Language of the World.”
—
Diana Ozoria began writing short stories and poetry at the age of twelve as a cathartic outlet. She is now twenty three years old, and has found her voice and her peace as a brown feminist who is unapologetically comfortable in her own skin. Born to immigrant Dominican parents, Diana was raised in the hyphenated limbo space that lies between the other and the “American,” ni de aqui, ni de allá, never belonging here nor there. As the oldest in a family of five living under the poverty line, moving from one relative’s basement to another’s empty bedroom, privacy was impossible growing up. She escaped into the realms offered to her by books, and created her own reality in her writing. There, no borders, no limits, no ceilings existed. She saw a door in every character she befriended. She was her own heroine in every story she wrote. Her inspiration sprouts from love, trauma, culture, sociopolitical ideals, the intersections between gender and race, and the relentless human struggle to define our identity and purpose. Twitter: @papercutblisss
Check out this chilling illustrations of… Karma? Foolish fantasies? A joke? (I’m not laughing) propaganda? Tell me.
Here is another bonus article for bonus.
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO 
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