I’ve just heard that Ra got fired. That son of a bitch still owes me a summer. Now, you’d think the Sun god should be someone reliable, I mean, it’s not that he’s ever overslept or anything like that. But think about it, for how long that lazy bastard hid behind the lunar calendar. (...)

for the full version of the tale please go to:
http://sooner-or-latte.blogspot.com/

a2na "the gift" Trusting - 16 years, 4 months, 8 days ago

Once I knew that girl who was a kite. It wasn’t easy to notice at first, I mean people adapt so well that certain things are difficult to spot if you don’t know what to look for.

Seeing her could make you think she sort of attracts wind. Strands of hair flying around and across the pale face, the dress ballooned from the waist to the brim (...)

for the full version of the tale please go to:
http://sooner-or-latte.blogspot.com/2008/07/once-i-knew-that-girl-who-was-kite. html


a2na "the gift" Trusting - 16 years, 5 months, 4 days ago

When I was six my grandmother was a school principal. I was in the grade A and she was the empress. I would visit her office to say hello during breaks and see teachers being granted or refused access to the room. She was the strongest person I knew.

Reading was easy. It was the skill I hadn’t even remember learning. Writing was difficult. Fingers hurt from squeezing the pen. The notebook lines would escape or get in the way of the flow of my writing. A ‘d’ would mysteriously change in to a ‘g’. The word endings would lie forgotten behind the line of the margin. And the pen would always land in my left hand. The empress would look at that and I could tell she was not happy. And then it was decided. It was the left hand’s fault. From that moment on I would practice the writing with the right one.

Writing with the right hand was almost impossible. The letters took me over completely, taking the shapes and sizes they wanted. Sentences laughed at me and hid their sense and reason behind the sweaty scribbles followed by a desperate point. The left hand was pressing the page so that it would not twine and move under the desperate efforts of the panicked right. I couldn’t let the empress down. So I finished my first right-hand homework.

When the papers with marks were handed down to children, the teacher leaned towards my desk and said: “Your grandmother had told me you have been practicing the right-hand writing so I understand why this looks this way. You get a B for your writing, way to go.” I nodded and stared at the B-marked page. The teacher started writing round perfect letters on the blackboard and all the heads in the classroom bent over the notebooks to copy. I looked at the pen, and took it with my right hand. I lowered the tip to the paper. And then my left hand grabbed the pen and my right hand fell on the desktop with gratitude and relief.

Very soon after it was decided that because of the teachers and other children I would not visit my grandmother’s office during breaks. And the empress never mentioned right-hand writing again.
a2na "the gift" Trusting - 16 years, 5 months, 15 days ago

Even though the Dutch have excellent quality seniors' homes, everyone had rather admired it from the afar of his or her own youth and stamina. All the heads turn as the noise goes off -- an older man rushed out the door and his security bracelet turned on the alarm. We rush through the quiet corridors of the hotel-like ward where, as our guide explains, the more agile elders live in separate rooms with their own kitchens, bathrooms and washing machines. Curious, dark eyes of the inhabitants, their fragile frames often supported with canes and walking aids.

We are invited into one of the small apartments, where two sisters live. We enter a living room and the Indonesian women rise from their armchairs, eyes sparkling up at the sight of the visitors. Our guide points at the three of us and explains in Dutch "these girls came for a study visit from Poland". Brown eyes widen with genuine astonishment and the women utter high-pitched questions in their language bubbling with laughter underneath the bird-trill melody. Yes, yes, we respond in English, we came all the way from Poland to see you.
a2na "the gift" Trusting - 16 years, 7 months, 11 days ago

If I was to name the greatest joy of spending the time on one's own it would be reading. Not only the mere fact of experiencing other people’s lives and realities through the looking glass the letters form for the eyes of a reader. Not even the pleasure one takes from the beauty of a language. Every avid reader will admit that it is the very process of reading a good book and the work of mind over its matter, plot and psychology that makes us read a lot. The process of reading elevates us to the higher level of wellbeing, induces harmony of the mind and senses that are involved in exercising all their skills while having the code of letters as the only guidance and the murmur of turning pages as the only companion.

Only a passionate reader can understand and watch patiently another one of the kind who approaches a bookshelf and turns into an eight-arm Siva, pulling the volumes out and turning hundreds of pages in search of an enchanting paragraph, a meaningful dialog, a style sharp and witty or mellow and intricate. Maybe in search of that understanding, so many of us are especially captivated by descriptions of love of reading and the importance of the very existence of books. I guess, as in any other addiction, we are not original – we believe that there are books worth dying for.

In my dream that keeps coming back to me, I am in the huge bookstore in my home town. But it is the bookstore of my childhood – with worn out shelves and wooden stairs that lifted so many feet the steps are bowl-shaped. The women in washed-out uniforms turn their heads and look at me as if they all knew what I came for. There are people walking around, standing by the bookshelves, paying at the old-fashioned cash register with the loud mechanism releasing the money trey. I am directed to the stairs and as I climb up all the noises of the ground floor seem to die out. I reach the next floor, where dust dances in the rays of sun and a few clients walk in silence and bend over the book covers with ultimate concentration. I have no idea if this is where I should get to but my hesitation does not last long. In the corner below the rising stair flight, from behind a huge old wooden desk from which books, new and old, tiny and obese, beautiful and ugly are spilling over, a short, round and elderly woman rises and locks her eyes with mine. She nods her head, looks at a wooden pillar supporting the ancient construction, and I follow her silent indication placing myself in its shadow. She moves from behind the desk and approaches the customers one by one, rising on her toes and whispering into their ears. The customers reluctantly let go of their findings and walk towards the stairs without noticing me. As the echo of their thumping quiets down, the old clerk looks at me and rises her arm, pointing at the massive desk. As I approach, I notice that what seemed to be a rubble of volumes put together out of the lack of a better idea what to do with the surplus is really a precise system. The books placed with their backs up are organized so that their titles form whole logical sentences changing their meaning depending from which side one starts reading, and that the names of the authors rhyme with wit and rhythm that brings smile on the face of a reader reciting the order aloud. I look into the whole construction amazed, trying to scoop out a book I seem to come for. The clerk observes me patiently. But the letters and colors are dancing in front of my eyes and I cannot stop forming sentences out of the titles I see. Suddenly I gasp at a sight of a book the title of I cannot read as it is placed too far from me. “Yes.” the clerk whispers seeing my hesitation and I rest one hand on the backs close to me for support, bend over the desk and reach out for the volume, trying to grab hold of it sitting tight between bigger ones. I sigh and pull it out. But before I can see the title I always wake up.

So if you see me reading titles and flipping pages in any of the bookstores, that will be a clear sign that I haven’t found the book from my dream yet.
a2na "the gift" Trusting - 16 years, 7 months, 25 days ago