So... this is it. After some thought I came to the conclusion that it is time for me to leave this account. I have not been much around... I have not had any quality time with my computer in a long time... And the reasons that made this account something special for me no longer exist.

Soooooooooooooo, time to go.

I thank all of you guys who commented on my work and gave me incentive. You guys are awesome! I will, as frequently as I can, show up and comment on your work. I will keep my s on so I can keep my eye on you.

If I decide showing up around again, I will let you know what my new alias is!


Love
Maria Cecilia

Meditating has been always a liberating practice for me. Whenever my life was unbalanced, meditation has been the right medicine to put me back in my center. For a while now I have been having problems with Fear. Mostly fear of death.
It is funny, because in my teenage years I would even write poems about death. I feared life a lot more than I feared death.
These past couple of months have been a constant struggle with my inner fears and with the reality around me. And only meditating and facing all that I fear has been giving me a bit of peace of mind.
While reading a book I found these two quotes that made me think about life and death a bit more.
Fearing death is indeed a prison. It transforms us in hostages of our own life. It makes us fear living and it robs us of exactly what we were supposed to be doing... enjoying life and learning.

There is so much beauty in death as there is in life. There is beauty in everything.

In my opinion, we fear death because we don't know how to live...




"There is no place on Earth where death cannot find us - even if we constantly twist our heads about in all directions as in a dubious and suspect land... If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows - I am not the man to recoil from it... But it is madness to think that you can succeed...
Men come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come - to them, their wives, their children, their friends - catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!...
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave."


"A human being is part of a whole. called by us the "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prision for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our taks must be to free ouselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Since always I remember music being part of my life. In one way or another it has been there, as a constant companion. I played the piano, I sang along, I just listened to it, I cried and I laughed. I found love and I found hatred. Every single important moment in my life has a song attached to it. The soundtrack of my memories.

In the same fashion, writting and reading because part of me. I wrote dozens of juvenile poems full of hope and dispair. I wrote editorials that only I would read, I wrote letters, long stories, make believe trip journals, real trip journals, short stories... And then I read... I read and read and read. Oh, how much I read. I cannot begin to count the number of exams I did not study to because I was reading a book and could not leave it.

I still love music and I still hear it playing inside my head. I still read quite a lot. But I rarely write or play my piano nowadays... I needed something to fill up that void!

I am learning photography (ok, let's be honest: "to take pictures"). And it is so overwhelming, so much fun, so inspiring! It is like music, it is like prose and poetry... But it is all that in an image.

I know this might sound ridiculous... Images were always important to me... However, I saw them more often inside my head than out of it. I imagined them more often than really saw what was around me.

Phography has been giving me a new layer, a new "sense". I am not thinking of becoming a professional, of being amazinly good as a lot of people around me here... or anyting other than what I am... An apreciator! I do it because it gives me pleasure. I do it because I makes me happy. I do it because it teaches me about myself and about the world. I do it... most of all because I can hear music when I take a picture.

And that is why I know photography will always be special for me. It is music without words...

I need to go traveling again...

Sorry... I cannot play with Deviantart right now.

I started playing Legos with my son and got a bit carried away... I am somewhat obsessed right now... I am going to built some more... I'll be back when I have urbanized the place...