JB's Exclusive A to Z of 2009

A - Ace - Numero Uno - Me.
B - My Buddha - my Mom - she is the real deal.
C - My Castles - my space, and my food for thought.

D - The Dees - my most precious assets.

E - Emotional Baggage - learning to let it all go - usually failing miserably.

F - My Faith - kept most of me together thru all the chaos...

G - Good Deeds - one done every single month :D *yess!*

H - Hugs - they fixed everything that went wrong. Instantly.

I - Ib - who taught me the joys of Ben Ten and many other things in 2009

J - Jumping to assumptions, and getting hurt.

K - Kisses - all kinds ;)

L - Love - my battle continues.

M - Mars - who reminded me how important I am, every single time we met.

N - My Nimbus - the shining cloud - that helped me float thru some really bad days.

O - Oz - a person who can dive with turtles - can make you feel special when you need to most.

P - Promises - a season, a reason, a lifetime...

Q - Question Marks - a few still left for 2010

R - Rasna II - my brand-spankin' new car - *grinning*

S - Smile Therapy - more than I could've, should've, would've...

T - Tequila - at times when life gave me lemons.

U - Understanding - the difference, and myself, some more.

V - Vendetta - Revenge was best - served cold.

W - for Whining, Winning, and Wine-ing!

X - Xanthippe - I was, some days...

Y - Yo-Yos - The Crazy Ones - who made 2009 pretty darn challenging and fun.

Z - Zen - and my Art of Fairytale Maintenance.

Here's to 2010 - Let us Live, Laugh, Love... some more.

Cheers!

- JB

Heaven Can Wait.

Usually we’re just alone, we spend a great part of our life alone; we like to pretend we aren’t alone, but we are... don't let it kill you.

Life is a car you’re driving. You choose how you drive it. It’s your car. You are in control.

Learn how to drive it without fear before you kill your dreams.

Sometimes you’re taking it slow, or going faster than you should. Sometimes you just want to run away from those headlights you see behind you, you want to run and hide away from it all, or maybe just drive as fast as you can to get to the other side… You go as fast as you can, afraid, alone, tired of the drive already, you keep pressing on the gas trying to get out of it – knowing in some little corner of your heart that you will make it through somehow, some day, somewhere…

Sometimes you take a wrong turn, or you get into the wrong lane; and before you know it, you’re doing 100km/hr in the wrong lane – with no one there, no co-pilot, just you – in auto-pilot mode, looking but not seeing, hurting and trying not to feel. You keep going on – knowing this’ll all end, and it will all be set right eventually.

You believe you'll make it, take a right turn somewhere, find your way, find your place, your path, where you are supposed to be - exactly when you are supposed to get there. You’ll make it out okay – you believe that – no matter what - because you’ve got your seatbelt on, you kept your faith with you the whole time.

Faith is the Seatbelt when you’re driving Life – Your seatbelt that holds you. That saves you - when you need to be saved and nothing else can save you.

Someday when you’re taking a drive in the car of your dreams, living the life of your dreams, you’ll look back on that terrifying time when you’d gotten lost on the way to get to here; when it was dark, you drove through the Hell really fast, just because you had enough faith in yourself, in your future. You remember that light you'd seen then at the end of the darkness surrounding your car – that light was what you were headed towards – that light was YOU, that was the light of your dreams coming alive, that is the place you drove yourself to be.

Keep the Faith. Don't let the drive kill you. Heaven will wait.

-JB

just 4 random thoughts together...

Choose - Your Soul is the spark... It lights the path of your Life - the path you walk on, the walk you go through; it leads you into the light, or into darkness. When something good or bad touches you, it is your soul that takes on the light of that very glow and leads you to the next place and time. Look into your heart and you know - see - the light you are following, the light that is guiding you - the light that you are becoming; You can be the sunshine - or you can be the darkness - choose - for yourself.

Control - Wear your shoes, but don't forget the ground beneath them, the surface that you exist upon. Shoes may be there to protect you from the thorns, the rocks in your path; but they will also never let you feel the springy grass beneath your soles on the sunny happier days - so let there be days when you let your soles go, and let your soul get drenched in the rain and the sunshine!

Believe - Some days are just plain painful - It's almost as if life is purposely removing the props you intricately arranged around yourself, the very things that made-up your comfort zone. Life will upset you. Life will provoke you. Just let the spark be. Leave that light on - let it guide you, love you, hide you, thrill you, hold you, help you.

Reversal - About getting breaks in Life - Some of us may see them as break-downs, when in reality they may be the break-throughs that you needed most...

- JB

Risk Factors –

To eat an egg, you must break the shell.
~Jamaican Proverb

I don't want to be the one who changes, or makes a change, just for the sake of change.

Neither do I want to be the one who watches life pass by - simply because one’s grown comfortable and complacent. With these thoughts in my mind, I recently questioned the cause and effects of taking a risk...

Why do we take a risk? Why do we call it a ‘chance’? - Because it’s a chance to become, BE, something more, to go beyond... A risk is taken to gain something; for something we believe in – even if we know there is a 50% chance that we may not get our dream. When we fight against reason, society, logic, ethics, norms, rational thought – just to fulfill a dream, our goal, we do it to make our dream a reality. But what are we doing/ thinking if we are taking a risk without a purpose, nothing to gain from it - What is the return on the investment of all the pains, tears, fears, blood, and toil? Does it please you, pleasure you in the end? – should we take a risk that will lead us no-where?

I believe the point of taking a risk is to feel good, great, happy… Feel alive.
So much so, that when you make it through to the other side you feel a sense of pride, joy, immense peace; You feel complete; resolved – Like, you want to scream from the highest mountain-top, you want to jump from the tallest waterfall knowing you can land safely – because you took that one risk; you gained so much freedom of spirit, your passion doubled – You reaffirmed your value in your own eyes, in the eyes of those who matter, and earn the highest sense of respect and belief in your Self.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I think… If one is not happy taking the risk – it defeats the purpose of the risk – there is no cause, and so, no effect. There is literally no reason for one to take such a risk!

What’s in it for You?

I see people around me who have passionately pursued their dreams and failed at them. The silver lining - They are the ones who have lived a complete, much more fulfilling life. Compare them to the ones who shelved their dreams – They were so afraid to be laughed at, the thought of failure made them anxious. They have no passion for life left in them, simply because they never took a chance, a risk that meant something to them; something that would complete them.

Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking. ~Tim McMahon

Life is a synonym for Adventure. Take a chance to Live.
~Jane Bravo

A Poison to Love.

There are Poisons in this life that go beyond the realm of our supposed reality.

Life will offer them to you. And you will accept them for the headiness they bring to your body, and for how they make your heart beat faster. The vessel that holds them is mesmerizing too, and the scent so passionate that you can’t get enough of it in fast enough. You’re afraid. You hold yourself back as long as you can...

Till the day you yearn for it so badly that you can bear the wanting no more, making you dive like the lost girl who wanted to go to the bottom of the sea to find what was reflecting on the glittering surface of it in the dark. She didn’t know it was a mirage. It was just the moonlight playing tricks, teasing her, daring her… come closer...

As you raise the poison to your lips and sip it, you’re scared; you drink it in a little at a time. You feel like everything's under control; that’s when you impatiently gulp it down – like a big bite that chokes you, which you can’t chew, nor swallow.

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the Point of No-Return - When you take that leap, it slides into your life, Life as you remember it changes; in every way...

It gets into your system so fast, you hardly feel it seeping in. It’s only a matter of time before you realize it; it's too late to rectify now. These are strange poisons, like magical spells that can not be undone. It won't instantly kill you, it'll live within you. The minute you try to drain it out, you will die. It’s deep in your blood, gotten into your heart. It’s in You. It becomes You, and You become it. It controls you. You live for it, it feeds on you to live. You become something else. Someone you don’t know about, someone you don’t really want to be, someone you don't know how to be... yet, you are this mutant thing fallen from grace for the sake of Love. Neither dead nor alive, like a stone, with just this poison gushing in your veins taking you through each day, your senses heightened, the pleasure, the pain like multiple waves, hitting against you on the inside one after the other... You live from then on with the knowledge that letting the poison out will turn you to dust. You will be nothing but smoke as it rises and blends into the air…

“I know about the antidote that will free me of my pain,
But I cannot owe indebtedness to the one who breaks the chain…”

- JB

Who is John Galt? Is Jane Bravo a little bit like him? She likes to think so…

I speak my mind; Because I know what I feel, when I feel it, how I feel it.

Don’t let my words hurt you; know that they are only my opinions and my thoughts. And that I offer them when you ask me, ‘What do you think?’
I can’t not-say what I am feeling!

That would be disrespecting myself and also disrespecting who I am saying it to.

How can that be a good thing? Is it not better then, to speak your mind!? Isn’t that what ‘free will’ is all about. To know who you are, and know exactly what you mean when you say it. Why sugar-coat things? Why lie? Why should one say things that one does not feel, does not own -things that one does not mean. Such meaningless things are of no significance. They are unimportant.

Why not tell it like it is – my perception of it?
I will speak my mind. Understand that.

If you don’t like me - I won’t say things to make you like me. Because then I am not being me, and you are reinforcing that you don’t/wont/cant like the REAL me.
I believe – and I have proof (proof is important, it leaves no room for doubts) - the people who matter to me, and who I matter to: will love me/ like me/ need me/ want me - for who I AM, and for the way I am. Just as I love them back. I never expect anyone to change their nature; they never expect me to change mine. My true loves and deepest friendships are based on this mechanism. My tribe (my people, those who own me, those who are mine) is my proof - for me to know this system works in my world.
The people who don’t get me and my words – I am not trying to insult you. If you ask me a question you should be prepared to hear what I feel – simply because when you ask me ‘What do you think?’ - I will tell you precisely that!

I’m a bitter pill to swallow, but I am the better drug – I never give you a fake high. Like a circle in the sand – never-ending. I am what I say am, I am what I do, I am what I see, what I paint, what I write, I am what I love – and it’s all real, it’s all the real ME.

So next time you want the whole truth and nothing but the truth – ask me.
If you can’t handle my version of the truth – it’s ok, but don’t expect me to lie. Accept this.

Coming back to my concept of Free Will – Ayn Rand said it exactly the way I embrace it - “That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.”

Happy Independence Day!
May you all be emancipated ;)

-JB

One Art - by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I absolutely LOVED this poem.

We can accept losing things - sometimes we are meant to lose.

Accept it, and don't let it feel like a disaster, even though that is what it feels like - we all lose our place, and the people we love sometimes - but, the 'art of losing isn't too hard to master'...

Sometimes pain is inevitable - but suffering is optional...

I hope you learnt to master the One Art... I'm still practicing - losing, and 'losing farther, losing faster' and not letting it seem like disaster...

- JB

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful, you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

This is a poem by E.E. Cummings...
*sigh* just sharing...

How lovely is the portrayal of Love.

-JB

Smoke has Substance as it rises from a Fire, just before it blends into the Air…

She begins… then understands that her finishing lines for every race are her starting points.
She walks down the roads of her life, meets different circumstances that enhance her beliefs, teaching her new things about herself.
She evolves.
She grows.
It is not a process, it is a journey. Like a nightmare that becomes a sweet dream, and then a nightmare again. She wanted to find easier paths – without the rocks that gave her blisters, but this is what the universe had planned for her - for her to BE this way, and this way alone.
As she met so many stories along the way she kept the tune in her heart playing and her mind danced to it. She can be so many things – a mother, a daughter, a teacher, a child, a girl, a woman; she can be a war, she can find peace; she likes to remember, she cannot forget; she plays a relay race with herself – running back and forth between dreams, realities, ideas, and needs…
She owns the paints, holds the brush, and the canvas belongs to her too. She will show you how she sees the perfect. Pay attention - you'll see all her colours in black and white.

- JB

Random Poem at Midnight...

As I sit alone on this solitary night
Another day gone by, another solo flight…

I’ve dreamed too much in this existence
Through all my tears, I’ve been consistent.

I’ve willed good things in to my Life
Through each back-stabbing, cruel knife.

As I sit alone on this solitary night
Another day gone by, another solo flight…

I wonder where real Beauty lies,
Why is this place full of merely ugly lies?

I yearn that the Truth be spoken!
I yearn for Love, and bonds unbroken.

As I sit alone on this solitary night
Another day gone by, another solo flight…

I hope for simple Joys and inner Peace.
I am in pain, I’m feeling incomplete.

I long to find my other Soul -
Bound to me, making me whole.

As I sit alone on this solitary night
Another day gone by, another solo flight…

I wish only pure things for my World -
And this is how my Earth shall turn -

With dreams of Truth and Peace and Love,
I own my Faith in the Heavens above.

-JB

just a little bit of pixie dust...

I like how children can make-believe...

It is a trick we forget as we grow older - how to make ‘believe’.

Why do we lose that super power as we grow?

When do we stop ‘believing’?

And why?

...how the socks that came alive as hand-puppets, are just socks now – not lions and tigers and bears as I once imagined. The coloured glitter powder is just that – not magical pixie dust that can make me fly. The pasta necklace is ivory-coloured, hard, hollow pasta – not elephant tusk from the jungles of Africa. Wearing Mama’s high heels and red boa will never turn me into a Rockstar... that was a long, long time ago, but I can still remember...

It was so easy to make magic before I learnt that it was all in my childish mind.

Not fair that the child in you dies so soon. And as you grow up, grow old, you forget the magic of being a child.

I wish I was ten again...

-JB

L to the O to the V to the E?

I reflected much on LOVE this Valentine’s Day.
I reflect on love most days anyway – regardless of V-day! And I realized I really wanted to BE in Love.
The last time that I fell in Love - it was a beautiful heady feeling… That soon came crashing down! Why? Well, because I wasn’t in love with a person. I was in love with the ‘love potential’ I saw in him. The actual character was one I could not love. And with time, could not stand for extended periods of time.

Most Women make this mistake all the time. Men make it too. But the ‘love’ continues because an ordinary person will ‘mould’ him/her self for the person he/she believes he/she loves or wants to be loved by. Guess, I don’t want the ordinary… And so my ‘love connection’ did not last…

I want the REAL DEAL. Not something imaginary. I want ferocious. I want passionate. I want heart-warming and soul-forming. Not the kind of love one has to work to make and keep going. A love that is deep-rooted.

A love based on love, not based on friendship or blood relativity - A love between two different people, who love with an identical intensity.

I want to be loved, I want to love. I want my happy ending... And I want it soon… yes, like a fool rushing in… I want that magic, I want that beauty. I want the hugs, and the kisses, and the holding-hands. I want to feel warm feet under the covers, I want to dance to slow music, and I want flowers, and romantic weekends away from the usual weeks.

I want to have all that. I don’t need it. I want it.

It's not that I don't value my independence. I do, very much. And yet as I grow older I realise, it’s no fun being all alone all the time. It’s great to be with my friends, it’s wonderful to enjoy my space, and do what I want to do, when I want to do it; but at the end of every day I want to come home to a man who loves me, adores me, treats me like a goddess. And yes, I am a goddess. I wasn’t always a goddess. I became one over time. So, please deal with it. I am a goddess – the gorgeous sort of goddess who can make anyone go weak in the knees – this has been tried on men, women and children. ( I seem to have derailed from the topic at hand… as always...!)

Beethoven wrote a love letter to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ – I want this kind of feeling –

“My thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved. I can live only holy with you, or not at all. Become my life, my all. Only by calm consideration of our existence can we continue to achieve our purpose to live together.
Oh, continue to love me.
Never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
Ever mine.
Ever thine.
Ever ours.”

To all those lovely couples out there – keep the love alive.
For all the singles out there - keep searching... it's out there.

Life is all about learning to love and learning to be loved.
To romance, and warm feet under the covers…

-JB

Here I am - once again!?

2008 seems to have gone by at lightning speed.

My 2008 List – What I did, got, earned, found, met, learnt… all good things don’t come to an end!

Got my Flat
Got my laptop
Fell in love – with my job
Evolved some more as a person
Lost some weight
Lost (a lot of) emotional baggage
Found some wonderful people, who became amazing friends
Learnt how to blow dry my hair to perfection (2009 will be a Good Hair Year – Oh yeah!)
Danced every chance I got – sometimes in the privacy of my own lounge ;)
Got Tablaas (!)
Dived into a Volcano – and lived to tell…
Tried Sushi
Took a camel ride - in the moonlight - on the beach – with a cute stranger
Finished a painting – The Magic Crystal
Read a lot of great books
Watched some really good movies
Ate plenty of fruits and veggies
Had a supernatural experience
Became a Facebook addict
Did not quit smoking
Made a modeling portfolio
Did two live radio shows
Attended two award show ceremonies
Sang at The Second Floor
Watched a play
Watched my babies grow…
Strengthened my Faith
Did good deeds just for the heck of doing good deeds
Found that Good Karma is not just a theory

Went to Sunday Bazar – once
Met my estranged aunt after 15 years

2009 is here – This too shall pass? And it shall be fantastic :)
Let it not pass you by quietly – let it shake you, move you, change you - make it special, make it happy, make it a life worth living! And a life worth loving…

-JB