Painting of you

(POEM)

They call you muse in Greek mythology
And a heart’s fall in the contemporary world
I call you wonder and put my faith to work
On your canvas with my art
Where clouds acquire hues of dawn
Affectionately oranged, blued in hope
And detailed by passion dots into a portrait
Rediscovered there, on the grass of life
Where I wait for you to be reborn
Out-caged by your doubts and ghosts
Inside my prison of freedom
Made out of smooth and wild accents in each brush tip
Or emotional imprints
I couldn’t convey more than with my own words
I couldn’t reveal better than with your traits
Which my being recreated
For us both
To never forget while riding the trivial boat
The colours which nourish
Esse quam videri
Within reality.

(Soar, April, 2013, www.soaring-words.com. No liability over the picture. Picture credits: Monet, Impression Sunrise, wikipedia.com)

Colours of Love

(POEM)

I was lying between heart paces
On the maze of sonic memories
When your eyes up close rendered sublime my senses
Like perfumes of blossoms over butterfly wings
And then, I followed.

Where to start, should I utter any sound?
Did it ever stop, your projection on my heart?
You’re here as if you were never gone
And it’s still running…Hollywood.

I was once on your big screen
Your unrelenting right-hand spotlight
Cosy and warm to touch
Passion-red in heart
Like in a purple prose of life

Now I’m still your right hand beam
Only the light turned blue
Behind the meddling curtain of trust
True and deeper than a reverie

It plays the same enticing notes
The music that your soul reverberates
The show and public always change
Like foils who fancy their hero’s traits
Escaping your essence – the one I save

You, like a close-up of my blueprint
Holding my chroma in your own film
Searching for orange imprints on the stage
Where the lights turn into purple-grey and fade

The show endorses lights and fumes
Hues blend in surreal flashes of fame
Your demeanour acts in the given game
While I praise the tainted canvas of blue-red
For your clef?feels the same

Beyond a conundrum setting of cinema and truth
You reign where the sun kisses the rain
Showing my eyes alone the rainbow of why
I paint in love your portrait.

(Soar, January, 2013, ? www.soaring-words.com. No liability over the picture. Picture credits: www.rassouli.com/).

Remember

(POEM)

Will you forget about me
When newcomers taste desire from your lips
And past sweethearts arouse your senses
With leftovers of bitter-sweet reminiscences?

Will you remember my eyes
In nights with only truth and spirits beside
Trying to grasp the future while running from its sight
In a cajoling present of fleeing faces and dupe smiles?

And will I still mean something
When, maybe, you are mentioned in a melody
While you remained a hero in my poetry
Close within and far beyond reality?

I was the one to redefine honey from forgotten recipes
The only depth to trust and see yourself through me
For I bowed to your soul with my heart’s legacy
And changed the course of life – if only for your beauty

You were my strength of arms
The wisdom to win when reason would lose ground
My favourite song to hear, my best-seller to write
My peace of heart, or what home feels like

It’s not the same old lang syne
Nor just a story to put down or raise up in rhyme
It’s always now and what we’ve been about
In the same visions of love, life, art

Don’t fear the seasons, it cannot snow before it starts to rain
Don’t question fate moving for us people, spaces and time
Breathe gentle out of the memories into my sun
For ghosts of past can’t beat a faithful heart alive

Like nature has to obey sometimes the intemperances
So that she can regenerate through her own grace
I recreate myself from the array of feelings
Like love, still putting flowers at the sill of your meaning.

(Soar, January 2013. ? www.soaring-words.com)

Chess

(POEM)

My breath
And you again, lying beside me
Sharing a bed of sins, without sinning
In an indulgent silence choking smiles and sighs
So strong as the embrace pacifying days and nights
I speak with my hand holding yours close
I love like the last time and the next one to come
We pace ourselves like in a game of chess
With onuses engraved upon a board?s length
Playing with white faith against dark fates.

There, the queen initiates small steps
Of greater length within the realms
While you, the knight, respectful ally
Knocking at my door to shatter the night
When only tears are up
Defend in voiceless fight
The purpose of what we are about
As though the universe had made a pact
On the chessboard and in life
That we remain beside, for the sake of black and white.

How long, how much cannot be quantified
As we shelter in freedom our tide
With wings of hope for reveries
And earthly carpets for the incongruities
The queen will be the last to ever quit
Her passion and trust from the challenge field
For “your love is king”
From their dusk into my dawn
If only for the loyalty and truth
Your essence proves.

We struggle, retreat, continue
Moving in squares to destiny?s rules
Bound to feel more than we can speak
Resting from the pawns of hardships
Displayed mosaically like multi-faced hypocrites
Wherever reality patches dreams.
Tomorrow at dawn we start anew
“It’s just another day”, you say
“It’s a new hope for your smile”,
I think to myself.

And then we part
To battle together on the same side
Same values veiled by different names
Same night above life?s game
Same universe
Which I thank with every move on the chessboard I make
With every spring I bloom and winter I bow to
For giving me the best ally I?ve ever had
My counterpart, my peace, my sense –
Your breath.

(Soar, January 2013. ? www.soaring-words.com, No liability over the picture. Picture credits: 123rtf.com)

Of Freedom

I am freeing you, my love, from the dew of eyes
While I relinquish to future accolades my smiles
And hold you with my being reverberating feelings
Like the air that pampers wings
Soaring above my fall
There, on the carpet you prepared
Carefully for my soul
On the earth, with walls shadowing struggling beams
So that I live
In the endearment of your scenery
Among those who won’t perceive
The rainbows of a sun flowing for your sky
Nor the dreams that are evinced
In art, Indias or crowns.
You’re free
And I remain to wait
For you to see, without stumbling in symbologies,
Without needed wands or wars,
The trail to one word
We’re both afraid of,
The sense of its practice
We desire so,
The perdurance of its secret
No one knows.
Tread softly on the path
Where I laid flowers on the side
For you to rest your course, already long,
Smell my heart spreading love
And find what I have lost in you
To bring it back and to release me, too
With your own key
And with the truth of what we’ve built
So that we finally live
What we started, maybe in another universe
And found anew in this space
For another chance
Of a too wondrous pureness
Fading into deepness.
My love,
The word that unbinds and entwines –
You and I –
We’ve carried it together all along
Under the shroud of little things
Of greater meanings
Who play hide-and-seek
With our whys and wows
And begot a one-of-a-kind growth
From a palette of
Care, smiles, fish and sun
Beyond the sea, by your horizon
Arrows, sneakers, mousse and faith –
Of life, as diverse wholeness
Respect, togetherness, hope –
Of Happiness.

(Soar, November-December 2012, www.soaring-words.com).

Can we rehearse love…on the stage of life?
——————————————————————————————-

Love unrehearsed

I am the voice of your heart’s silence
Which beats and speaks with passion red your black
Backstage, in the prompt corner of your theatre
Refilled with seats, depleted of devoted audience
For they will soon change glamour to entertain their whims.

Before past ghosts and show mannequins
Amid abundant sceneries and props of noisy nuances
I am the demure protagonist of your unfinished script
Ardently rehearsing the lines of past and of horizon
As I forget the controversial plot and its intrigues.

I missed some quotes a couple of times
And was dismissed in the green room, with faux thespians around
To start anew the role of my existence, still undone,
Watered by your weaknesses, dried with your melody,
While hope would whisper every night your chance will come.

The curtains rise…my turn on stage is still delayed
For you’re concerned with intermissions and new seasons
And cut back the scenes before their time to live.
Yet, I remain, as foil in the soft spot of your trust
With time watching you cast the unpredictable acts.

To spare the story, or just us, you’d rather never see me play
But keep me safe in your reminiscence
A pure endearment, not to adapt in exposed films,
Incepted only for your senses, called on stage by all your fantasies
Hiding away from me realities of cruel scenes.

I reconcile, forgive and grasp your core
Hoping the curtains never fall, before my bloom into your world
My poetry, your song – framings of our embrace
Already run in the cinema of fate, augured by space-and-time’s dice
Which had been cast by life, with the result of us.

And like a loyal purple shade of your own shape
I wish to come to life in the spotlight to say
That I’m no actor, but know like none your breathings’ lines
That on the stage of care, true feelings need no parts
And that my love only recites the home chapter of your heart.

(Soar, December, 7, 2012, ? www.soaring-words.com. No liability over the picture. Picture credits: Theatre Drapery Detail, by http://locationcreator.deviantart.com/).

(ARTICLE)

What a bold endeavour to write such an article, out of already more than a thousand written ones, 90% of which have the same antagonistic titles and takes on the legendary or the historical aspects of a unique character: “Vlad the Impaler” or “Vlad Dracul”. Hmmm, “bloody subject”, as the Irish would say:-)

My purpose in choosing this subject as an absolute non-fan of horror movies, nor of bloodshed, ruffian stories, is to reply once and for all to the question I’ve always been asked every time I mention my origin: “so,? you come from the land of Dracula?!”; and also to take a bite of this appetising “cookie”, built up over centuries by so many curious or superstitious minds, craving for this particular myth. Sorry readers, but the gloomy-phantagoric-foggy-like whipping cream doesn?t stand a chance?.over the cookie, in my article.

The cookie myth?.

Everybody knows already about Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897). I was probably the last Romanian to watch its ecranisation, mostly because everybody was talking about it. But what does the Irish writer have to do with Romanian folklore, myths and history?
Stoker did have a few resources from where to learn about the historically named “Vlad III”, prince of Wallachia, also called “Dracul” or “The Impaler”. The London Royal Library contains William Wilkinson’s work called “Principalities of Wallachia and Moldova” (1820), as well as Saxons engravings of Vlad being presented as a monster and as a “vampire drinking human blood”. A university professor in Budapest is also alleged to have been a good source of information to endorse Stoker’s curiosity in Vlad. These are said to have been the reasons why the Irishman chose a Romanian prince as a model for his fictional character, Dracula.

The name analogy with the “devil” was an easy task, since one meaning of the word “drac” is “devil” in modern Romanian; only Stoker purposely avoided the two other meanings of the word: “dragon” (from the Order of Dragon of which Vlad and his father were a part) and “dro-kila” (a word of geto-dacic origin, meaning a healing plant to our ancestors and also “three entities, three peaks or highnesses”, which Vlad wanted to be as leader of army, judge and ruler of the people).

A little history, folklore, many personal experiences, readings and a lot of fantasy intermingled to create a complex vitriolic character, in an eerie plot, very much astray from the real Prince of Wallachia, but at least?in a Romanian setting:-) Still an interesting choice, especially coming from a land full of mysteries and ancient myths like Ireland itself.

Stoker’s fiction takes place in both Transylvania and Anglia in the 19th century.
The plot is about a lawyer who travels to Transylvania to Count Dracula’s castle to settle the purchase of some territory. His wife’s friend is one of Count Dracula’s victims who is trying to escape from him. The bedevilled count sails to Yorkshire, but once in England, the lawyer and a professor expert in vampires try very hard and succeed in saving the lawyer’s wife from the count’s claws. The story concludes with the death of the vampire, stabbed by the lawyer and a friend both in the heart and throat…leaving only ashes behind.

But Dracula’s myth is not only in a book, or in a movie. Vlad Dracul had faced tremendous negative “publicity” from the adverse “social media” of the time (chronicles, pamphlets, letters, stories, etc.), intended to denigrate him from the outset, in the 15th century. Whether he wanted it or not, he was transformed into a legend of cruelty and blood-shedding tyranny, by his own enemies and later by the opinionated historians of conjunctural times.
Dissatisfied by the lack of commercial facilities and bound by other political allegiances, the Saxons from Transylvania had supported other pretenders to the throne and subsequently contrived and denigrated his image as an important ruler of the time with stories of cruelty and immorality. After his death, his deeds were reported in German popular pamphlets of macabre taste and also in Tsarist Russia. However, the latter took a milder approach to his life and ascertained his merits as a great soldier and ruler, justifying the atrocities for a righteous cause.

Another systematic denigration of a more political aspect came from Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary at that time. The King had received money from the Pope to engage in battles against the Ottomans, yet he could never defeat them; historians claimed that he encouraged the negative Saxon propaganda and participated in the intrigues and humbug against Vlad to excuse his failures and the expenditure of money.

However, it should be noted that none of the Russian or German gruesome stories or chronicles depict Vlad as an enraged maniac, vampire or as a poltergeist. These words and their meanings remain purely fictional, best suited for phantasmagorical representations alone.
At least we know from which artery all this “bloody” myth comes from.

?crumbles on history.

Entered in history in a troubled time, between the wane of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman one, yet being “the right ruler at the right time” (S. Andreescu), Vlad Tepes had a legendary image from the start, if only for the political and economical aspects of which he managed to change the course.
He was born in Sighisoara, Romania in 1431, was married twice, was the father of five children and three-time ruler of Wallachia, at that time a principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The ruling principle in Wallachia, as compared to other states, was hereditary-elective, which led to much bloodshed and actions of high treason to gain access to the throne.

Vlad’s childhood was an extremely unhappy one. For political reasons, at the age of six, he and his brother were pledged as warrantee of allegiance by his father, Vlad Dracul II, Prince of Wallachia towards the Ottomans; and they were sent as hostages for six years. It was there where he saw many atrocities, witnessed punishment by impalement, experienced what fear for an absolute ruler meant, and it was also there where he garnered his hatred for anything that wasn’t right in his mind and heart, amid his enemies, away from his own home.
He was released when his father died, killed by a rival, and that’s when he also found out about the death of his older brother, of how he was tortured and buried alive by the boyards. That’s how he made his way back in his homeland, to grieve the dead and to settle his own justice among the living.

His first reign was too short and in the hands of the constant conflict between the Hungarians and the Ottomans. When the boyards rebelled against his father and killed him and his brother, the Ottomans wanted to prevent a Hungarian extension and designated him, as Vlad III, to the throne; yet it didn’t last long until the boyards invaded Wallachia again and restored their own ally to power. Vlad flew to Moldavia to live under the protection of his uncle, Bogdan, until the latter was killed as well, and Vlad had to flee to Hungary this time. The Hungarian regent was impressed by his vast knowledge of the Ottoman military techniques and inner secrets as well by his hatred towards the Ottomans, accumulated in his childhood years, and helped him regain his reign over Wallachia for a second time now, from 1456 to 1462.

Once in power, his first act of vengeance was against the boyards responsible for the death of his father and brother. He impaled them and subsequently took away the commercial privileges from the Saxons in Transylvania. His aim was to strengthen his principality economically and militarily against new pretenders to the throne and against economical dependence on other regions. While restricting foreign trade, he helped the peasants, built villages, improved agriculture and the Wallachian trade.
The most commonly circulated legend about how he imposed justice by inducing fear refers to a cup of gold he would place in the main square of Targoviste to quench the thirst of travellers and which no one ever dared to steal.
Politically, in order to secure his safety, he removed all the rich nobles from the Council and appointed unknown persons who would be loyal to him alone. For other roles he would appoint knights and free peasants, removing the deceptive boyards from any political role and influence. He strengthened his army and relied mainly on mercenaries, peasants, his “militia”, and his strategic mind.

And he started his own conspicuous crusades against the Ottomans.
Although the regent of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, had been helped with money and support by the Pope in the crusades against the Ottomans, he failed in the shadows of Vlad who didn’t receive such help, but rather intrigues and bad reputation, purposely made by his so-called “ally” to cover up his failures in the battles against the Turks.
The official “declaration of war” started when Vlad refused to pay tribute to the Ottomans and killed the Sultan’s envoys, legend has it by nailing to the head their turbans for not having taken them off in front of the Wallachian sovereign. The Ottomans tried to attack him from the South but they were defeated by Vlad’s ambushes. In the following years Vlad invaded the Bulgarian territory and, using the tricks he had learned while living with his enemy, managed to destroy the Ottoman camps, killing over 20,000 Turks, as he would officially dispatch the news to the world himself. The infuriated Sultan raised a greater army of over 60,000 people to eliminate him. The year 1462 will have a crucial meaning due to the large scale of the campaign, which was won by Vlad with small attacks, ambushes and military intelligence. By July of the same year, the chronicles report Vlad III victorious over the Sultan who had to retreat, in embarrassment, to Adrianopolis.
Vlad ‘s victory was celebrated by the cities of Transylvania, the Italian states and the Pope.
However, this situation was not convenient in the long run for the Saxons who wanted to regain their commercial prerogatives, or for the Hungarian regent, who tried to integrate himself in the victory, where he was of no help. Vienna didn’t trust Hungary’s political and military intentions too much, but they needed an alliance with Hungary for better stability against the Turks so they accepted Matthias’ excuses and forged letters intended to denigrate Vlad. Besides, Hungary was of greater importance than Wallachia and Matthias was Catholic, which to the Pope, made him the only accepted ruler in the crusades.
At that time, Vlad’s other brother, the new Ottoman-driven “puppet” was helped by both the Ottomans and by the boyards who wanted to regain their privileges to invade Vlad’s castle in the same year. Vlad escaped and went to Matthias to ask for support, but instead he was imprisoned for 10 years. Historians say that Matthias forged a letter from Vlad to the Ottomans, in which he proposed a truce; again to Matthias another alibi in front of the Pope.
Not to take away Blake’s literary merits, but that would have been a very appealing intricate novel to write about too, albeit with less fantasy.

The third and last reign of Vlad was after his brother’s sudden death and it lasted less than two months before he was killed. His head was sent to the Turks as a trophy and his body was buried without ceremony in a monastery, still unknown to this date, but supposedly the Monastery of Comana. That was the downfall of a great ruler who managed to achieve an incredible exclusive fame, from his time up to the present day, when his life is still entwined with mysteries, legends, stories and curiosities.

As for his education, as much as the literature of those times and the subsequent ones wanted to present him as a wild beast, thirsty for blood and killing, Vlad could speak several languages fluently and was a cultivated person. He would sign his name in Latin as: Wladislaus Dragwlya, vaivoda partium Transalpinarum.

Eating the cookie?still.

Octavian Paler, Romanian journalist and politician, stated that Dracula was never a Romanian myth but rather an “imposed myth” from the outside into our own land, more or less like a Trojan horse.
As history has proven, “publicity” and “social media” of any time and of any type are the best means to at least attract the world’s core attention, even while sitting on the radius. In our “bloody” case, especially the negative propaganda and iniquitous reputation of our Romanian Prince have brought some advantage to our land, and Blake is considered to be the best “tourism agent” Romania has ever had. In the Ceausescu era, the Tihuta hotel-castle was built between Transylvania and Bucovina for “Vladoholics”, which together with the historical Bran castle are well-known attractions for an immersion in the “Dracula world”.

As much as Romanians are per se traditional and superstitious, for them Vlad Tepes, together with Stephan the Great (Prince of Moldavia, 1457 – 1504), will remain one of the paramount historical heroes who confronted and defeated repeatedly with small armies but great spirit the most feared power after the fall of Constantinople: the Ottoman Empire.
Some historians like Ioan Bogdan don’t justify all his severe punishments, declaring him a “fierce tyrant and a monster of humanity”. Others consider him just to have cut off the boyards anarchy in a world where the principle of “diversity of opinions” was not yet born, and in a time when cruelties were commonplace (see the Inquisition ?poque). That his main purpose was to defend the poor, punish the renegade and establish order in a chaotic land; and that his punishments were “rigorous and rightful…managing, through terror, to establish morality and public security.” (I.H. Radulescu).
In his “raw” but original language, Petre Tutea, Romanian philosopher, economist and journalist concluded: “Vlad Tepes has the merit of having put on the Moldavian throne one of the greatest Romanian voivodes, Stephan the Great. With weapons! He has the merit of bringing down the complete morality through kicking butts with stakes at absolute level. You would sleep with your gold purse at your head and you would be afraid to steal it from yourself. This is an absolute voivode, Vald Tepes. Well, without him, Romanian history would be just a meadow with lambs.” (322 Memorable Words of Petre Tutea, Ed Humanitas, 1997)

As for the world, Dracula will remain the most intriguing enigma to still explore, discover and crave for in all its ways from the unknown, small-scaled Romanian folklore or rituals up to the worldwide HD-screen of Hollywood. Not to forget that CNN was headlining in 2004 a possible blood relation between Bush and Dracula, while in 1998 BBC sustained that Prince Charles of Great Britain is genealogically related to our Romanian Prince, confirmed by the Prince himself in 2011. Politics and economics?again.

I paid my respects, learned the history, read the books and visited his residence, even bought cheap souvenirs to support Romanian trade:-), but I can’t be a fan of stereotypes, tall tales or convenient stands. It is important to know all the facets to be able to decide which one is closer to the truth. And then you know what to retort when you are asked “so,?you come from the land of Dracula?!”.

Happy Anniversary Romania!

(Soar, 1st December 2012. Picture credits: Wikipedia.org. Recommended reading: http://www.historia.ro/. Recommended film: “Vlad Tepes”, 1979, directed by Doru Năstase)

If poetry
were love, fallen for you,
In life’s forms of imperfections and prose
Consumed by probabilities and procrastinations
It would create a plain language up close
To beat reality
And tell you candidly
About the practice of dreams
Or how to safeguard feelings
If only you would?
Let love breathe
Without getting conceited by its atmosphere
Fear not the core of what it bespeaks
Nor stake it at the roulette of fate
For the glimmer of a dime in your hidden sleeve
Let it live
Give chance a chance
Be true to the gift with you as addressee
Say nothing, hold on to its hand
Don’t confer promises, make your word esteemed
Care for it, as if it were innocence
As if it were your vision on happiness
Appreciate the truth of its nakedness
Adore the passion it regales you
Like spring.
And if you still don’t know
Amid deceptive mazes of your years
Between chaotic abysses or perfectionist hills
Beyond dogmas and contriving promiscuities
The better smell or taste
For you to contemplate
If you forgot, lost into spaces and stances
Or are unsure whether you ever met
Love with no pride, attired in respect
Dazzling for you alone
Pause your heart a while, stop wearing out smiles
Bestowed to cajoling butterflies
Which fly with the winds of spotlights and whims
And leave you with “hi’s” of void friendships.
Enrich your senses, unravel yourself
Like the flower
There for you, out of nowhere, yet meant to
For it engendered your meaning
With unconditional beauty
And multiplied your delight
Putting heart in every petal
Blooming to balm the scars of your experience
With its shadows and lost clearances
To bring back to life the hopes
Your nights always dreamed of
To look like your craving thoughts
To smell to your heart like?home
Or her spring into your room.
Let love love you
If only unpoetically
For you already are
Poetry!

(Soar, “Unpoetically”, November 2012, ? www.soaring-words.com. No liability over the picture. Picture credits: White rose, A. Spargo, www.alexandraspargo.com.au/).

(ARTICLE)

This is not about a tattoo to be exposed in a delicate or extravagant place, the first match that would appear if you enter this phrase in your search engine. Neither is it about the inevitable, always implied yin-yang philosophy of the dark-and-light balance of all world creatures and their exchange of energies encompassed by the universe.
It is about a message as old as humanity in the guise of ?masks and the dilemmatic attitudes derived thereof, to guess and to accept with their oxymoronic tendencies: from a remote time to the present day, this message has made its way to the ascertainment of future.
Amazing how just a few words can shape a life, a public or a society, under the cloak of wisdom, as if it were a life-secret aphorism. Yet, where was the wisdom, again?

History
Back in time before Christianity, when love had the same heartbeats, but different emotional mists, the Greeks would bestow their talents, endowments and the expression thereof on two muses, Melpomene and Thalia, the comic and the tragic shapes of art. Thus, joy and sorrow were the emotions of the human condition and the Greek theater would use two masks, made of clay or wood, to best depict these traits: the laughter and the cry. Actors would use them to emphasize the change of emotions, to project the echo of their voices and also to suggest the change of characters, in a time when artistic expressions and claptrap features were reduced to essential means. Back then the celebrations in honor of Dionysius, the god of wine and revelry, were the peak of all events and the two masks referred to the effects of joy and despair that wine would induce on people.
Wine must have been the best sinew of love to imbue hearts with in the emotional crusade. Maybe it is?still.

As time went on, the modest theater turned into great spectacles of splendor in the sumptuous courts of Europe, which included masks in their notorious balls; this time to hide identities and not to show emotional traits. The humbug notes, the anonymity and the licentious outrages led to the King of England banning the masks in the 16th century and proclaiming the wearing of them to be crime or a high misdemeanor.
So much for unrestrained feelings….when love needed morality.

Contemporary
Art. Free style. Symbolism. Oxymoronism and Yin-Yang-ism. Kaleidoscopic tendencies. The laugh now, cry later masks have managed to remain an enchanting enticing present dichotomy.
Although pass? in today?s theaters, the symbols of these two masks have returned to render a personal touch, whether it is about live theater, a singular actor or just a passionate individual. Under the array of the variations in shape and colors, one can find them anywhere printed, labeled or suggested to mark the idiosyncrasy of love, art, life or all of them together.
From Mexico to Japan, Bali or America, cultures still use masks in their ritual and traditional manifestations, religious representations or festivals, to add a dramatic effect to the millenary cultural heritage.
The emotional heartbeats?.garnered in the form of edutainment, with no Bordeaux or Chianti needed.

On an individual level, the laugh now, cry later masks have become a mark for artists or art aficionados, from subtle or pure representations to complicated mystical tattooed symbols of their praising. Without apathetic or iniquitous turnings, they have almost become the fashion-statement of an artistic reminiscence in a complex lifestyle, free to interpretations, from double entendre to bipolarism.
Love?both ambiguous and conspicuous.

Eros or Thanatos?
We’ve seen the masks, we’ve heard the heartbeats. What about the words, what about the purport? Goodbye Picasso, welcome Dali! For it gets more intriguing.

“Laugh now, cry later” can be perceived as an assertion, remark, advice or warning with at least three meanings in one simple read. The most common interpretation of a carefree, fatalist spirit would be “enjoy life while you can, worry about problems later”; like a King Log* sort of world in which rules have no chance to survive in the rationale. Another idealistic, yet semi-determinist view would be “put on a front to the world, you can cry/face your weaknesses at home behind closed doors”. Finally, the warning connotation, with a strong realistic approach marks the conscientious acknowledgement of all dues to pay in life: “if you are careless now, you?ll be sure to pay your dues later”. A bitter touch of life, not for the faint-of-heart.

Yet, the heart is the thespian of all these interpretations, for it?s about joy, as a manifestation of happiness facing its own counterparts, in a conundrum universe where both King Log and King Stork* rule over our minds until we no longer know which side of the saying to take for granted to fit the medal side of truth in ourselves.

In a quagmire of noisy breathings of too much spirits and too many aphorisms, where wisdom still walks in disguise and love is unsure of perdurance beside delusive mimic faces, the better choice is?to free the heartbeats for a truthful rhythm. To subtly veil, yet never feign. To buy up past’s wisdom, yet never sell off future’s feelings. To acknowledge and respect the presence of abyss and to love unconditionally to its utmost brinks, with the most passionate discipline.

For to withstand the nothing, it really takes everything.
But it can also take just one thing: a heartbeat in truth beside you?when the mask has been removed.

(Soar, October 2012, ? www.soaring-words.com. No liability over the picture. Picture credits: irepart.deviantart.com).
(*Note: King Log and King Stork are the kings referred to in the Aesop’s fables, alluding to quietism or an energetic ruling policy.)