Spring is in the air. Don’t you think?

Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty

Flowers. Books. A cup of coffee. Maira Kalman is that special artists I keep returning to for elevation, for awe, for reinforcing the hope in all there is. All there is available right now to us, in front of our eyes. All there is available to us in the near future, without us even anticipating it. All there is left behind with love, tenderness and a wounded yearning. All there is and that means belonging.

I love to pick one of her books early on a Sunday morning and float in her world, in her observations of the people and dogs and parks and all there is really that she passes by or she remembers. I aim to become this observant and more day by day. To enhance my glance, to deepen my sight and moreover my insights, to absorb and retell the stories. The stories unfolding right in front of me. The stories filtered through the unlimited crystal prism of my heart, my senses, my mind. I still keep somewhere in my dreams the possibility that one day a photograph can bring a particular smell back to me - the smell of the ivy flowers, the smell of freesia in the spring, the smell of a natural soap that connected me with the oceans, the smell of a breeze by the sea, blending me so many nuances and enchanting my senses even just for one minute.

And people returned, hope undiminished.they returned, so elegant and purposeful to the BOOKS.[…]

Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and NOT thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.

Maira Kalman, the text from the above photograph.

I return to art, I return to paintings, I return to unspoken words, I return to written words, I return to dogs, or the idea of dogs as I yet have to find myself one little pet friend. I return to the earth, grounding myself and feeding my calm with the quiet pulse of the soil in the park. I return.

A status of floating in between two worlds still, at least the ones I can sense as immediate now. A status of yearning to brew coffee for my mum in the mornings during my holidays and a status of brewing a coffee for myself in my home far-away-from-original-home. Both worlds are running and pulsating through my veins. Both worlds, while never stable, untouched by change, anchor me. The space in between them, freshly returned from a Christmas holiday, is too hard to describe in my own words. I can only observe from a distance and watch myself coming back here, watch myself returning to my friends, to the altitude and latitude of the specific location I am today. I can only speak for today really. I can only speak for this morning really.

When floating in between the original-home and the chosen-home spaces, uprooted from one, returning to the second, the anchors float as well. They sort of gently dance in front of me, begging to stop and work with one of them at least. I chose the grass yesterday, I chose a park, sunshine, I chose to loose myself in the flowers and the immense blue sky yet, that is only the beginning of anchoring. It filled me with gratitude and it filled me with colours of hope. It filled me with love and acceptance.

The feelings I am humbly trying to understand are even harder to describe and interpret into words. What we carry in our heart when we come back from our childhood home, year after year, trip after trip, turns into a snowball. It starts as a small snow flake, we are always eager to see again. With each new snow of the season, we fill renewed , we feel purified, we fill our memories settling. With the first snowball we make, we see the changing nature of the material at hand. Sometimes, the flakes are so fresh and dry, they do not even want to hold together. Sometimes, only few hours later, once the colder temperatures hits in, they suddenly become heavies, and now glue tight to each other, forming a firm material to work with and build a bigger snowball, a snowman even. The changes in the chemistry are noticeable to anyone who had the pleasure of playing with the snow. We want to hold so much on the pure fresh snow despite that our hands are freezing soon and become first pink, then red, then blue from way too cold. We warm ourselves up from few minutes and we go back. We know that this purity is temporary, and is rare. We stubbornly want to conserve it and keep this memory of playing in the park, in another season of another continent, fresh for ever, while here back to my chosen-home, is spring and many flowers are in bloom all around the year even.

What we carry with us however, is the heaviness of this purity. Of the magic moment that we know it will not return to us the same way. We feel validated by the snow’s pure white colour and freshness for all the magic moments we created spontaneously, simply by going with the flow and being present as much as possible. Not by forcing and enforcing presence, more like a balanced “I am here” moment. “I am here for you” moment, less the words. Physical presence.

I often wonder how is our heart making up for all there is to witness, to say hello to, to say good bye too. The eagerness to say hello after a long absence in someone’s life. The sadness, deep deep unseen embroidered sadness on our hearts when let go, say good bye, and leave dear ones behind.

It might feel at first that our hearts break into pieces, some parts staying with all the people we love. “A fragmented heart” as someone whispered to me. It came to me as a sudden realisation that my heart was in fact not fragmented. My heart turned into this gigantic bell, which material I am still free to chose and to recreate almost as a sculptor. A heart-bell that keeps growing, not always in a physical size, but in its reverberations, in its resonance. Every time I play the bell, every time I touch the bell, the sounds surprise me. Every time I come even near to the bell to tune in, I know that somewhere, the songs hidden deeply in the glued snowflakes of my heart, can reach out and resonate further, The sound can travel, the frequencies of my feelings can be heard to other hearts trembling and yearning for their love to be anchored.

This bell sang for me yesterday stronger than any bells ever did. The science behind building even a bell became suddenly fascinating to me. The acoustics, the form, the materials all blending in together, the height of positioning it, the people trained to master it, there are so many changing variables allowing the masters building it to create something unique every time.

The sound of this bell formed suddenly a MULTIPLYING heart into space, a pulsating heart ,a song ,a frequency that I would like to tune in at any time and send it over across oceans and lands to reach the ones I care for so much. To reach out to the ones near and far equally. The moment a person comes to my mind, I am ringing this bell so loud that they will feel it instantly.

To open our hearts more fully to love’s power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice.We must face the confusion and disappointment that much of what we were taught about the nature of love makes no sense when applied to real life. Contemplating the practice of love in everyday life, thinking about how we love and what is needed for ours to become a culture where love’s sacred presence can be felt everywhere,I wrote this meditation.

All About Love:New Vision - bell hooks

This is all I can continue to do. Dive deeper and enhance these frequencies of love for its vibration to reverberate with me and multiply ad infinitum.

The bell of love.