questa sono io. this is me.

bookworm. music lover. happy. curious. sweet. introvert. strong. opportunist. cat lady. academic. educator.ॐ

[ciao-stella]

I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A colour will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away. At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I’ll hear after that will be my own breathing; and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps. The question is, what colour will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

[ciao-stella]

I Like My Body When It Is With Your

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body.  i like what it does, i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones,and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new

[ciao-stella]

[ciao-stella]

In one of those stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night. And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend...I shall not leave you.

[ciao-stella]

I am not here to fix you

Over the years I have learnt this lesson time and time again, from both failed friendships and failed relationships. Support and growth has to come equally from both sides, or nothing will last. Janne Robinson expresses it perfectly in her poem: I am not here to entertain you I am not here to fix you I am not here to rescue, heal or revive you I am not here to be talked at I am not here to give you all my energy I am not here to make your story my own I am not here to just listen I am not here to make you whole I am not here to make you happy I am not here to make it all dissipate I am not here to distract you from the tedious and mundane I am not here to mask your sadness and feed your insecure heart I am not here to hold your hand I am not here to be a band aid I am not here to give you all of me I am here to love you strongly I am here to love you equally I am here to be an addition to the joy you already have I am here to rest in, but not collapse into I am here to support you, hear you, see you I am here to make love to you I am here to love you sweetly and gently and ferociously I am here to make stories with you I am here to challenge you I am here to grow beside you

[ciao-stella]

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” ― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

[ciao-stella]

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

[ciao-stella]

There was a world apart from petty human hatreds and petty human social codes and values where the human soul roamed free in all its splendour and glory. No barriers of race or creed or tribe hindered its activity

Maru Bessie Head

[ciao-stella]

[ciao-stella]

[ciao-stella]

I got to thinking that maybe we are always changing, waking up a slightly new person everyday. And then I wondered if perhaps that was the reason I spent some days loving who I was, and the next hating my very existence. Perhaps growing up meant evolving, figuring out what pieces of me were necessary; maybe every bad day meant I was slowly becoming a person who could love myself all the time. 

[ciao-stella]

My Mission

[ciao-stella]

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.” —Osho

Artwork by Karolina Koryl

[ciao-stella]

The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could centre themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace.

Tao Te Ching - The Book of the Way: 37

[ciao-stella]

Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.

Memoirs of a Geisha

[ciao-stella]

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.”

Memoirs of a Geisha

[ciao-stella]

We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.

Memoirs of a Geisha