Bye bye beautiful

Another year went by. It has been a painful, beautiful, full year, filled with laughs and tears and thoughts. The last year of the third decade of my life. A lot of reflections about who I am, who I was and who I want to be. In this year I tried to come to terms with the fact the the dream I have been chasing for 10 years will not come true. It has been hard, but now I feel like I finally let it go. It belongs to the past. This has left me wandering in my own life somehow. You have a target, a goal. You know what are you aiming to. But when you deliberately close that door you find yourself walking along a very long corridor filled with doors and you're not sure which one you should open ( or want to open ). So I decided that with the beginning of this fourth decade I will go back to square one. My first passions: drawing, writing and taking pictures. Not because I decided to become a writer or a painter or a photographer. Or maybe because I decided to become either a writer AND a painter AND a photographer. Or because I want to lit the flame of passion again. I Know 40 will be a great age: my older children have become such great friends, with whom I love to laugh and talk and learn, and my little one keep me young, letting me see the reality with his pure and joyful eyes, and my age set me free from the stress of pleasing other no matter what. I have the luxury to be myself, no competition with my fellow human beings. I feel so blessed. So what I am doing this year is to sign in for an online class (illustration and mixed media art ), writing few short novels and maybe entering some literary contest for beginners, taking more pictures. AND keeping a written nature journal and journaling more. AND reading a lot of books. Oh and eating healthy and living and vegan as much as possible. It seems that 2016 will be full of interesting things. So bye bye 2015, bye bye beautiful, you've been a good teacher, but now I need to move on. With Love, Flavia.

The last pictures for this year, nature and family and Christmas. So much joy. 

Happy New Year !

Merry Christmas

Christmas has arrived. It is knocking on the door of my heart. I want to wish to all my friends and relatives, closer and far away the most peaceful and joyful Christmas day. May this special day fill you up with happiness to last until the next one. For my Christians friends ( as me ) this is such a very special day, in which we celebrate the birth of our very special friend and the wisest and most loving teacher, Jesus.
Here few pictures from my house, mostly the lights, colourful and so necessary in the darkness of this month.

Merry Christmas !!!

Happy Solstice !

So here we are. The darker moment of the year is here, but this mean that the light is about to come back. In two days the hours of daylight will be longer and longer. I love this moment of the year, as it reminds me that in life we have darkness and light, and even if darkness can be scaring and depressing and sad, it is the prelude to light. A light much more sweeter and bright just because of the previous darkness.
I took these pictures of the sky at 15:00 (3 pm ) just when the sun was about to set. In few months at 3 am we will have much more light than this.
  I love the Creation we're living in.

 Happy solstice to everybody !

Today's details:

Sunrise at 9:23

Sunst at 15:07

Daylight: 5h44min

Morning frost

This is a very strange season. Somehow out of pace. Calendar says december, Christmas, winter solstice, but the sky whisper maybe autumn... we still have mostly plus temperatures and rain. The annoying grey foggy rain you'd expect from an autumn day. Almost everybody I meet ( ok not so many people since my life here is quite secluded ) is desperately waiting for snow and we make no exception. After the glorious one-day-of-snow it all melted away and it has been dark and muddy ever since. So, few mornings ago, once the light finally made its appearence and showed the world, I was very happy to notice the thin layer of glittering white cover the reality and I had to grab my camera and capture some of that beauty.

Few details from today:

sunrise at 9:21

sunset at 15:06

hours of light : 5 hours 45 minutes

Have a lovely weekend !

Sunrise

Only few days until the solstice. I'm litterally in love with the magic and mystic that happens during the solstices. The shorter and the longer days in the year. The sun making a leap from darkness to light and vice versa. Of course the winter solstice is the most exciting, after so much darkness, knowing that finally the light is about to shine again it is so comforting. No wonder Jesus was born around this period. He is so comforting too.
This morning I took a picture outside around noon. The sun is under the top of the trees at the horizon. It not even arrives at west to set, so short its path nowadays.

Today's details:

Sunrise at  9:17 am

Sunset at 15:06 pm

daylight 5 hours 49 minutes

Have a nice week !

The dark side of the earth

At the moment my adoptive country belongs to the dark side of the earth. Even if I live on the south, several hundred kilometres from the Arctic Circle ( where the sun never rise above the horizon in this half of the year and never sets in the next half ), the differences light-wise between summer and winter are truly dramatic. If during the summer months we enjoy countless hours of direct sunlight and we never experience the night ( the only down side : no stars ) in this period at 16:00 is already pitch dark and in the morning before 9:00 the light is so dim. The official sunrise is at 8:47 and the sunset is at 15:27, giving us 6 hours and 40 minutes of daylight ( and it's going to get shorter until the solstice ). So in this period light, or the lack of it, it's something really important to everybody living at these latitudes. Houses and towns start glowing of many white lights, most of them on the windowsill or hanging over the windows or on the front porch. Candles are lit in many gardens and on the tables and sunny days and snow (which brings a great deal of light ) are celebrates with cheers and smiles and gratefulness. This makes me think that today for my American friends is Thanksgiving, the '' giving thanks'' day. What a beautiful tradition my friends. Let me borrow this celebration for a moment . I'm so very grateful for the four seasons we enjoy every year, because each of them makes us appreciate different aspects of the glorious creation we live in. And at the moment I'm especially thankful for the gift of light in all its magical, poetical and joyous aspects.

A sunny snowy day is worth a celebration in this season.

 

My neighbour's garden. Magical.

 

A few of the lights on our windows

First snow

Tonight the magic happened again. The water turned into snow and sugar coated the world. May the miracle of snow bring peace to our lives, as we slow down our pace to wonder, nose up to the sky, if the white falling might really be the feathers of angel's wings, as we used to believe as children....

Have a peaceful and happy sunday dear ones !

Blowin in the wind

Yesterday it has been a very special day for my family. A first time kind of day. My youngest doughter went to her first live concert ( Nightwish in Espoo, Finland). She is only 11, but she has loved Nightwish for some years now. My husband and I have been probably more excited than her and kept texting '' Is she happy ?'' all the time they were gone. At home me and the four siblings left had an evening of junk snacks, pizza and movies waiting for daddy and sister to come back and tell the tale.
They came back around 1:30 am, happy and excited, sporting a new t-shirt and booklet.
Before collapsing in bed my husband checked his e-mail and got a glimpse of the news. Came in bed with a puzzled look '' Something very serious is happening in Paris ''.
This morning I got up earlier than everybody else as usual, but instead of crocheting or drawing I switched on my computer ( breaking my own rule of no computer during the day ). I read about Paris. I read about people going to a concert, to a football match ... and I didn't read but KNEW about families left home, partying and waiting eating pizza to hear the exciting evening of their loved ones. My heart skipped few beats thinking that Paris could have been Espoo, or Rome, where the rest of my family lives. And then came the prayers, and the questions. How can a human being do such things ? What will happen now ?... My family started to wake up, we started talking, grieving the death of our fellow human beings, and then went on with our day. And like most of our days with a deep sense of un-ease I witnessed to the fights, lack of patience, lack of compassion, lack of empathy that happen daily in my family. And I felt guilty. And humbled. I am wondering how a human being can commit such atrocities and all of a sudden I realize that so often we treat even those who we love the most in such bad way. I let anger rule, I feed my greed, I don't show enough care or love for my own family. So it came to my mind my french teacher in high school. She never did any strike or demostration. She was teased for this reason. But she kept saying that her way to protest was doing her job and living her life the best she could. At that time I thought that she was too lazy or afraid and I have fattened the group of the teaser. But today I got a grip of the real meaning of her words. Peace comes from every single peaceful action we do in our days. A better world can come out only if we build it a brick at a time. Love can spread only if WE love and spread the love around. Pointing finger to each other, hating each other, let anger rule ... those are the seeds of evil. To honour the death of yesterday's victims I want to live my life better, love more, be more patient, be mindful and caring.

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind...

(Bob Dylan) 

Be-Longing

One of my sons love old movies. You know those classic italian movies, those that made the history of italian movie making itself. I've never been a great fan of these kind of things, but now we spend a lot of our evenings just watching one of these black and white productions ( btw many thanks to my brother in law, who sent us few more movies to add to our collection ). Being in a rather emotional mood lately, these movies trigger always all kind of feelings. The word that crosses my mind more often in my thoughts is belonging. Yep. I realized that I long to belong. For many different reasons, for my past experiences, for the path I have followed in my life, I've very often felt the sting of loneliness. And the feeling of being 'scattered'. I try to stretch in every possible direction, doing everything doable in order to find my right cozy spot in this universe and life. And I just came to realize that I have become a real control freak lately. I can forgive others 'mistakes' but I can't forgive mine, because each of them makes me feel like it's just because of it that my longing to belong can't be fullfilled. Anyway, those old movies make me long and cry for those time in which life was simpler. Simpler, not easier, I'm not that naive. Simpler, made of few smaller things but real life interactions. Evening spent with family and friends laughing and talking. Visiting for no reason, without the need of calling in advance or texting. Children and grown ups from different generations sharing life together and creating everlasting bonds. Oh my oh my too much thinking and controlling and longing and ... just need to relax and give up and let be and let flow ...a few pics from this morning frost ...