It’s weird how it is in times like this – like the pandemic we’re all in, as a planet, going through it all without knowing what awaits us – that we realize we can’t, ever, know what awaits us. With or without any pandemic whatsoever. In the past, we used to plan. I mean, maybe you did. I haven’t really done much of that and I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it got me to who I am today. I learned the hard way, however, that having a plan, some sort of plan, gets you to live stuff on a bigger scale. Sometimes. Just as sometimes, the greatest things happen without any planning whatsoever.

It’s when my awe grows stronger and everything feels like a drive on the Malibu coast in the morning, around 10, let’s say, and you’re wearing an off white, the soft cotton kind, a bit wrinkled, it’s the cotton the wrinkles look best on t-shirt that floats around my body and my favourite blue jeans. I’m excited to be inside them and excited at the thought of my next favourite pair of jeans. I’m curious what they’ll be like. These – we can’t, really, consider as – thoughts ride for a couple of seconds, for fractions of a couple of seconds, through my mind as I’m absorbing every bit of my ride on the coast. I haven’t, yet, been to Malibu.

Just when you think you’ve got it, life laughs and another season begins. It changes you, makes you who you are, but, first, it makes you go Maaan. It might get rough, at times, but you know what Gloria Steinem said: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. And then, one day, something happens, it always connects to everything you’d been doing in the meantime, and you feel you’re back on the Malibu coast. Or in a completely different place. When you get to a completely different place, that’s when you know you are on a completely different journey, you fasten your seatbelt and set yourself to give your best. To live as much as you can while feeling the breeze, every now and then. 

When I got two tickets to a U2 concert in Manchester, two years ago, for my brother and I – a bunch of twos here – as a surprise, I thought I got it all under control. It was only natural that I thought I had had. You can’t go to a concert, somewhere on the planet, without any planning, without any planning in advance and starting to adjust the course of your life around the freshly constructed situation. Or can you? Especially when you don’t live in Manchester. England, even. It is, however, one of the nicest thoughts riding through your mind while you’re riding on the coast. A concert. For those previously mentioned fractions of a couple of seconds. You might call it control, I call it plan. For now. But, then, everything that happened around that specific U2 concert, eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE, was so out of any plans I could’ve imagined that everything that happened around that specific U2 concert was only meant to end up as a story and stories is what our lives are made of. And then you get it. Are mesmerized by it. In awe.

It feels like falling in love, although we know that nothing feels like falling in love. I hope you know what I mean. Wait. I think it, really, feels like falling in love. Because it is with life that you, actually, fall in love with. And I don’t mean it only in the fairytale way, but in the hardcore, straight to the centre of you kind of way, the kind of love that changes you. The love that’s gotten you so deep into you that you had to change. Grow. Any other kind is just too dull and we only have one life. This is not a dress rehearsal, as Bill Murray would say.

When I said around the concert, I meant it. Because I’d expected for the concert to be everything that U2 is. It was more and we relished in it from the best seats on the Arena. I might have been lied to for the entire half a year prior to the concert, as I’d bought false tickets, only to, magically, find the best two seats on the Arena, right at the ticket office, within an hour prior to the concert. The metaphors here would get us to a different chapter, but you can imagine the thrill I’d been through. With my brother. It was a huge lesson on trust and I was blown away – again! – by just how far people would plan to go by lying. I can’t lie. I lied to myself, a few times in life, and it felt horrible when I realized I’d been lying to myself, so I would never choose to lie to anyone, so I, at times, forget it is even possible. And I can – acutely – sense a lie from a distance, but hey, we’re only human, or are we? It always comes out anyway, people, relax.

A lesson on trust or, more romantically, on the easiness the Universe surrounds us with. Surprise!

And when you capture this feeling and you do something about it, you get to a peaceful place. Now, you know. Now, you know better and can’t even be mad at it. I’m so lucky to be aware of all the magnificent things I feel when I’m happy. From simple to grand. But what is simple and what is grand? When it’s intense, it’s intense. Full stop.

It’s the truth. It felt like we grabbed each other’s naked hearts with our bare hands in public is a note in my phone and the picture of it, on my mind, has stood with me ever since.

Raw.

When you are no longer in any sort of control. You don’t, even, know the word anymore. And the ocean is on my side. Or Tour Eiffel. Or my mom and have the most incredible talk. Or when your eyes turn into cherries because you’re wearing a pink jacket you adore or into hearts because you’re eating watermelon. Chocolate.

Stories connect people. A cool lady just sent me this, the other day. This is the original. Out of the blue.

My dear, I feel the need to write to you, although I have felt pretty embarrassed, until now, to do so. I, absolutely, wanted to tell you that you have super inspired me and made me try to change (for the better) things in my life, or better said, the way I see them. With some simple stories, that was it. Today was the first day I applied it and I feel great, thank you!

Who doesn’t love compliments? Only this isn’t a compliment. This is her telling me, without even realizing, her story. I was so happy because I felt her courage to tell the story herself first. Her story. Through a message to me. We are more of strangers than acquaintances to each other and this is where I feel, for a brief moment, that my heart skips a bit. For someone else falling in love. With themselves first. It’s called acceptance, evolution and it’s a choice.

The things we’re experiencing are related to the times we’re living. A grand thing. They, obviously, do, but! This is, also, a time when things start to surface the shallow. If you let them. Choose to. There’s a kind of story, intimacy, we could share with the people we interact with, every day and here comes the component that holds all of the stories, all the time, in one place. Yourself. You get to be intimate with yourself first. You can’t have the grand thing without the simple thing first. Yourself.

Raw.

It very much depends on, of course, what is grand to you, but you only get to know what grand is to you when you get to you. Me. Us. 

I don’t know when, but I must’ve made the decision to live every second, it just feels so natural to me. It feels good to me. The idea of it being a grand thing didn’t cross my mind, so I didn’t put it into words. Or did I? I believed everyone lived every second. Better said, enjoyed every second. It was tough, at times, for me, too, but I’m not talking about those times. There. With everything happening, hooray, we, collectively, slowly but surely, were forced to commit to the decision to live every second. Consciously. No one had planned for it, but here you go. Simple. Surprise!

The year 2020 brought the word presence in front of us all. Diving into something entirely is what makes me feel alive, makes me connect to who I’m sharing the dive with. It would be wonderful to do so with every person I meet (imagine!), but I learned that it’s ok to choose not to if it doesn’t feel right. It made me sad too many times, so I’m pretty much editing life as we speak. I now, fearlessly, shut the door to something that is not me anymore, just as I, fiercely, open myself up to let’s see. You can’t let anyone steal moments away from you, not even the voices in your head. Real people are not anyone, anyway, hooray. Real people would never want to steal anything from you, anyway. Thankfully, self-preservation comes in and I wish I didn’t have any reason to use it. For it feels fantastic when I don’t and I ride, we ride, on the coast of Malibu. For more than fractions of a couple of seconds. For days. Months. Years. I can, almost, smell the ocean.

Nobody said it was easy is what they say. It’s only the Universe that surprises us with easiness. It can get pretty hardcore, it takes discipline, but it can be done and there’s nothing like it. Like easiness. Yum.

This timeframe has been my longest thus far with that many sleepless nights in a row or nights when I slept, but didn’t feel, at all, like sleeping. Luckily, with just as many mornings that I found the power to not give it too much thought, not feel tired, but feel everything I’d felt during the hours I just couldn’t sleep. And thrive on it. A small gather together with friends, at home, until five in the morning, sometimes, helps. To not sleep. But not to be able to fall asleep even then, at five in the morning?!

The picture above was taken after one of these zero sleep nights, at a friend’s wedding. A different kind of ride. Still, a ride. It is, sometimes, on this kind of rides that I thrive. It rhymed way too nicely with ride to not use, one more time, thrive. It’s the times when I write a lot in my head, on the ceiling. When I’m not daydreaming. Although writing feels like daydreaming to me. I write about the truth and what could be done, in the hours when we’re all awake, to appreciate this world for what it is. A miraculous place.

Also known as love, you know. Also known as life.

I befriended even two ladies doing surveys, over the phone, these days, jees.

My brother used to get in trouble, a lot, as a teenager. For partying too hard. I was always there to witness it and, then, try to cover it up, so I must’ve made the decision to not want to cause trouble. Surprisingly, haha, however, I ended up partying harder than my brother (without causing any trouble, haha) and, just as surprisingly (and beautifully), he ended up being one of the best surgeons in the world. I don’t know if surprisingly or whatly, but extremely luckily, I am here and I salute you. I love the feeling of not being able to hide something I love making. I don’t really have brakes, maybe that’s why. I’m a tight hugger. When I’m into something or the time spent with someone or, rarely but surely, when I’m into someone, and always in a friendship, I just don’t stop (until you show one aspect of ugly personality and it’s over for you somewhere deep in my heart I kept on saying to myself until I finally got it). Loyalty is like that and let’s not put any pressure on just doing the right thing. You just do the right thing. Easy. No pressure. Easy. Yes, twice.

Where is this going? I don’t know, but a lot of the people I’ve been talking to, lately, don’t know what they’re doing on New Year’s Eve, either, and it marks the end of the year 2020. I believe this pandemic is only the beginning. Things were bound to happen and get out of control. Some things, apparently, should be kept under control. Our planet seemed to have needed to self-preserve from us all for a bit, don’t you think? Following rules that inspire respect, gratitude and love is, definitely, just as fabulous as breaking the rule of never wearing pink and orange together. And red. And sequins.

Is Let it be a synonym for Let go? Beatles, music and this is how I got to a very fun friend of mine who sent me this

and I absorbed it. It’s the friend I made a sex mix CD for a.k.a. the friend who made me a sex mix CD, many years ago.