I listened to many hours of music this weekend and I enjoyed myself immensely.
I am aware, Spotify is not kind to musicians and artists. Not at all. But it is convenient. Unfortunately, yes. I am one of those people. Please enjoy the music too.
Caged Butterflies
Ce silence étendu qui pèse sur les papillons dans la neige
Enrobés de glaciers,
menottés à des millions d’étincelles qui brûlent derrière des yeux fermés.
Il est où, ce phare sauveur ?
Il est où, le jour qui chatouille le soleil ?
S’ils pouvaient seulement s’envoler,
semer des étoiles dans des vagues de nuages.
Mais le silence est une cage fermée à double clé.
On n’y peut jamais échapper.
###
(Translation)
This long silence settles on the butterflies in the snow,
wrapped in glaciers,
handcuffed to millions of sparks burning behind closed eyes.
Where is that saving lighthouse?
Where is the day that tickles the sun?
If only they could fly away,
scattering stars into waves of clouds.
But silence is a cage that no key can open.
There is never a way out.
Dreamwalker
In Schichten flieg ich durch die Welt
Verlassene Türen
Zertrümmerte Dörfer
Meine Tränen bringen keinen Frieden
Könnte ich doch nur aus der Welt treten
Und mit mir nehmen alles ohne Sinn
Es einschliessen in mein Gefieder.
Nur Illusionen bleiben heil.
Ich sinke durch Stunden
Schwimme durch unendliche Nacht
Könnte ich mich nur in deinem Schatten wiegen
Und rubinrote Straßen
Rufen meinen Namen
In ihren Augen ist kein Leuchten mehr
Ich vergesse einen Flügelschlag
Und ertrinke alles Leid unter goldenen Steinen.
###
(Translation)
In layers I drift through the world
Abandoned doors
Shattered villages
My tears bring no peace.
If only I could step out of the world
And take with me everything that’s meaningless;
Lock it into my feathers.
Only illusions stay alive.
I sink through hours,
Swim through endless nights.
If only I could rest inside your shadow.
While ruby-red streets
Call my name.
There is no light left in their eyes.
And I forget to breathe
Before I drown all sorrows beneath golden stones.
Checkmate (new poem)
The world tilts
to see if I’ll slip off its ledge.
I don’t.
I never do.
I am outrunning my shadow,
drowning it on the moon.
Floating on feathers,
I bend the rainbows
to outgrow the grays.
I fit in your pocket
with my fingertip stars.
I could be taller than the crumbling mountains
but choose to be sand in your pants.
A strange choice,
mine. And it is fine.
Dancing waves in the ocean
run towards the shore.
Fire and glass
grow underneath my feet,
and I wonder
where the ghost of me has gone.
Did my soul
swallow it whole?
If you blink the flies away too many nights
I will disappear.
Whispers crawl up the raindrops of my thoughts,
a spider’s net hunting them all.
I am sleeping
on checkered emotions
with colours sewn onto me.
Checkmated. Checkmate.
Forget me not
Forget me
That’s what you need to do
Forget my touch,
my presence,
the essence of me.
Forget me
That’s what you need to do
Forget my scent,
my voice,
every thought that’s left of me.
Forget me
That’s what you need to do
Forget my eyes,
my silence,
and all the broken pieces of me.
Forget me
That’s what you need to do.
Forget you
That’s what I will never do.
International Children’s Day
I almost forgot that today is International Children’s Day. The date shifts from country to country, which probably explains why it often goes unnoticed. But for me, its meaning sits close.
I work with children every day. I guide them, comfort them, laugh with them, and watch them grow into themselves. And every day, I see something I once needed. Something I did not always receive. I was a child who learned to be careful. A child who held too much. A child who adapted to adults instead of being allowed to be small.
Now I stand on the other side. I get to offer what I once missed. Patience. Warmth. Safety. A bit of softness when the world feels too loud. I get to kneel down to eye level and really listen. I get to honour the small, invisible moments that shape a child more than we think. Moments that stay.
That is why I love my job as an educator and preschool teacher. It sounds stupid but it is more vocation than work.
I know how deeply it matters when a child feels seen.
I know how fragile trust is when you are young.
I know how long certain words stay.
I know the difference one adult can make.
Childhood is not preparation for life. It is life. It leaves traces. Some are gentle. Some stay for years.
And talking about children is deeply personal. Having children is personal. Some people choose not to. Others wish they could but cannot. This day is not a manifesto for parenthood. It is not a judgement, not a rule, not an expectation. It is simply about those who already exist, who breathe, who grow, who feel. They deserve safety. They deserve space. They deserve the best we can give.
And while we speak about children, we also speak about women. I believe in choice. I believe no woman should be criminalised for ending a pregnancy. Autonomy matters. Safety matters. Nothing about caring for children should erase the reality that not everyone can or wants to become a parent. Both truths can exist at the same time.
International Children’s Day asks something small and human of us. To look honestly at who we once were. To understand what shaped us. To offer presence instead of perfection.
Children are not only the future. They are the present. They are forming their world right now. We walk beside them only for a short time, but what we do during that time matters.
And today carries another weight for me. It has been seventeen years since my mother-in-law passed away. She was the woman who showed me what motherhood could look like in its simplest, most present form. She taught me the value of time given freely to your children, the kind of time that feels warm and unhurried. I adored her from the moment I met her, and I believe she liked me too. She was one of a kind. Her quiet way of caring still lives in the way I move through my own family.
Two days after she died, Giulia was born. Seventeen years ago, grief and celebration sat side by side. One life ending, another beginning, both held in the same tender space. I remember the contrast so clearly. The ache of loss. The softness of new life. It shaped the way I look at family, at time, at everything we carry forward without even noticing.
And maybe that is the truest link to International Children’s Day. Life never pauses for the perfect moment. It continues in all directions at once. Children arrive in the middle of joy and chaos, in the shadow of loss or in the brightness of hope. They grow through whatever the world gives them. And it is on us, in whatever small ways we can, to offer presence, safety, and softness while they are here with us.
moments in time
I have been thinking about the way time moves. Not with nostalgia, just with the awareness that life goes faster than we expect. We look back and realise whole years passed quietly while we were busy with something else. Ten years can feel long while we live them, then shrink the moment we glance behind us.
Some moments stay.
Others disappear without warning.
I have been longer with my husband than without him. 25 years. (Married 18) It is a simple fact, but it shows how much life shifts without us noticing. There were many versions of me before this one. All of them led here. And here feels right.
People often treat short moments as unimportant, yet they shape us more than we admit. A sentence someone said. A wound that formed in seconds but stayed for years. A quick decision that changed direction. Time gathers everything, even the fragments we barely registered.
For a long time, amor fati was a quiet philosophy I carried with me. Not loudly, but as a way of looking at my life. Amor fati means “love of fate,” the idea that everything that happens, welcome or unwelcome, belongs to the path that leads to now. It is not about calling every moment good. It is about recognising that every moment is part of the whole.
At some point, without realising it, I drifted away from it. Life grew busy and loud, and the things that usually keep me centred slipped out of focus. But recently, amor fati returned. Not as a rule, not as a performance, but as a calm way of standing in my own story. A reminder that nothing in my past needs correcting. A steady place to return to when the days get difficult. It feels like my baseline now. And I like that. It feels true.
And with that clarity, I still do not regret anything.
Not the missed chances.
Not the unclear choices.
Not the mistakes.
Regret tries to rewrite what cannot change. But nothing in my life would look the same if even one moment had shifted. Every turn, hesitation, and leap shaped this present.
To love fate is not to pretend everything was pleasant. It is to accept that everything belongs. To see the past as something complete, not something waiting for repair. Decisions made sense in their moment, and even the hard ones carried us forward.
There were things I did not do.
Words I did not say.
Possibilities that dissolved before becoming real.
But regret does not help. The past stands as it is. What remains is how we see it. And when I look at mine directly, I see movement, growth, and lessons that would not exist without the difficult parts.
We cannot waste what was never ours.
We cannot lose chances that were never meant to stay.
We cannot undo what formed us.
So I choose acceptance over regret.
Clarity over longing.
And amor fati as a steady way of living.
Time moves. Moments slip through our hands.
But every one of them brought me here.
Everything we do leaves a trace. 💜❤️
###
PS
By the way, 32 years ago Nirvana’s unplugged album was recorded, released a year later in late 1994, mere months after Kurt Cobain’s passing at 27 years old. That album is older than Kurt ever was. And his legacy moves on. Let that sink in.
The poem
I move through the world
quiet enough to be overlooked,
present enough to be seen.
I take space without asking,
and when I leave,
something in the air lingers.
I am the weight of barely enough,
the pressure of far too much.
A step back when I meant to stay,
opening my eyes when I should have hidden.
I fade for a moment,
then reappear
with an uninvited breath.
Places I swore to avoid
still find me on their ledge.
I keep silent until it turns heavy.
Thoughts live on my tongue
and never find a way out.
Light thins
when I move through it,
leaving imprints on unthought thoughts.
Rooms are bathed in shadows
if I stay.
I am the dream that wakes you at night.
A whisper and a scream.
Invisible, then blinding.
I am everything you need
and never can have.
The poem behind your thoughts,
the words that vanish
the moment you blink.
Don’t go away (old poem)
i like this one, how it was written and what it said. It is unmistakably my voice, but I am more restraint now. The musicality is strong in this piece too.
if you don’t like clicking linke to read, here is the complete old poem:
I am between flying and sinking
Between dreaming and thinking
There are a million reasons to be
Endless new days to see.
And all I want is to be with you;
To be awake in your thoughts too.
If you could hold my hand
You would feel and understand.
There are too many words to say,
Plead with you and beg: don’t go away.
what do you think?
Throwback Post
To be honest, I was looking for something to repost, something worth your while. And I stumbled across this particular post from November 2024.
The post is an archive of sorts. I did well with those posts, but only a year later I had already forgotten they existed. Good thing I go down the archives once in a while to be reminded of little gems.
Another piece worth revisiting from November 2024 is this one:
It’s the musical/spoken version of a poem called Threads that I wrote. The words and the voice are mine; the music and production are Daniel Cavanagh / Weather Systems. His music elevated my words into a different sphere.
The piece is about feeling a presence; something universal, something constant yet impossible to explain. It drifted into a more spiritual space than I normally write in, but it felt right. It isn’t about romantic love; it reaches deeper.
And, as always with poetry, it remains open to your own interpretation.
https://on.soundcloud.com/qDWJGHn7Qfd52eV6ba
Thank you for being here and seeing me. It matters.
You see, I had a couple of not so great days. Two days ago everything happened at once: losing my keys, my diary, my necklace, breaking my favourite pair of boots because I fell up the stairs (the sole came off). It was also the birthday of my father in law and of a woman who is very dear to my heart, and in all the chaos I forgot to wish her a happy birthday. And it was the anniversary of my grandma’s passing.
The entire day was simply too much and resulted in anxiety. I overreacted, but that happens after a night of no sleep and overstimulation. By the way, I found everything again.
Then yesterday started well, until suddenly during class in the morning my head began hurting. It was dull at first, until it developed into a migraine not thirty minutes later. I took some meds, but they did not kick in. In the meantime my eye began watering and my head felt like it was about to split in two.
My colleagues urged me to go home, which I did, skipping a team meeting. Once home, nausea was added to the mix and the headache became much worse. It became so bad that I called into work and said I would not be in today. I do not do that lightly. It feels like failure, like letting everyone down. But I needed it.
There is still a dull ache behind my left eye.
Maybe you are wondering why I am sharing all this here. It is easy. It is something I noticed in myself. I am the one who carries everyone through storms, but when I am in need of a lighthouse it seems as if they are out of lighting bulbs.
This blog is an emotional home where I do not need to carry everything by myself internally. I know the way the blog is conceived means it does not invite comments or likes. It feels too intrusive, does it not? But that is alright.
One truth remains. If you are here, reading or maybe even clicking the links, you are part of the journey. You are invited to witness the tiny pieces of myself that I reveal. Apparently I reveal everything and nothing at all. I like that idea.
Goodnight, sleep tight.
two frequencies
She is a rainbow
He, a monochrome arc.
She breaks light open,
he carries its edges.
She follows storms,
he rests in calm.
She moves in certainty,
the promise after thunder.
He lingers in shades
where colour dares not bloom.
Yet somehow
they meet
where the sky forgets itself.
She glows,
he holds.
Two frequencies,
one horizon.
Different worlds,
same gravity.
She reaches through silence,
he answers without sound.
Their orbits collide
for a heartbeat,
then drift to distance.
She dreams in colour,
he sleeps in grey.
Each night
they find each other
in the space
between dark and day.
###
For my calm and constant. For the one who steadies my light. ❤️
ghost in the machine (song review)
I was listening to a lot of music today and as I am writing this, there is still music playing in the background.
I listened to artists like Soen and Agent Fresco, but also Weather Systems. In September 2024 they released their debut album “Ocean Without a Shore”. I listened a lot to it for a while, but in the last six months, I only listened to the song Synaesthesia. Until today. I was in the mood to hear the entire album and so I pulled the beautiful vinyl (it’s blue with black swirls) out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable. Volume up. And off we went. I listened to the songs on vinyl, playing mindlessly on my phone. Until…
Until Ghost in the Machine came on. The song is built around a steady guitar riff that gives it forward momentum. The repetition works well here. It gives the track direction and a clear emotional line. The percussion provides the structure underneath without drawing attention away from the melody. It keeps the tempo and the shape of the song consistent.
The vocal work is one of the strengths. Daniel Cavanagh carries the main vocal line and Soraia Silva’s voice comes in at selected points, not to soften the sound but to expand it. Their voices blend into one atmosphere rather than forming a lead and backing contrast. It gives the song a unified emotional tone.
I knew the song before, of course I did, and I remember that I mentioned it in the album review I wrote as a standout song, but there was something about it that made me pause today, that grabbed my attention differently. There is no dramatic peak. The song does not build toward release. Instead, it fades gradually. A few piano notes close the track and lead directly into Are You There Pt. 2. The transition is subtle and fits the pacing of the album as a whole.
I like when music is layered. It often changes with every listen and also with our moods, I guess. And that is why we can listen to a song 50 times and think we already know it, and then on the 51st listen, it suddenly sounds new.
My song of the day for sure. What do you think? How do you like the song?
I added this video because I mentioned Daniel Cardoso’s drumming and here he plays the full song through.
Brace for war
Brace for war
We never really saw
We never really saw
Tumbling down the clouds
Crumbling in our doubts
Dance
Dance
DANCE
We don’t know
We don’t know
Flowers on our graves
Cold shoulders without grace
Brace for war
The sky is losing a star
The sky is losing a star
All the love we lost
Fading into dust
Dance
Dance
DANCE
We don’t
Know
Never
Know
untitled_20251109
If my moon is calling your waves
and my colours awaken your soul,
then my walls need to crumble.
My reflection shivers in your window
when the sun rises at midnight.
Ride with me on our last breath.
We will meet again
in sandcastles built on clouds.
Because we are soap bubbles,
a blink of an eye.
Born of stardust,
drowning in the sky.
a small update
I spent a bit of time with the blog today, just quietly rearranging things. Nothing dramatic. But the menu at the top makes a bit more sense now.
You’ll find poetry, writing, spoken pieces, music reviews, and the stream of consciousness posts in clearer sections. It’s still the same space, just a little easier to navigate.
This blog has been here for more than a decade and, as you probably know, the archives are… a lot. I didn’t always tag things consistently, and I rarely thought about how someone else might try to find something later. I wrote and posted and moved on.
So now I’m trying to make the older work more available, instead of letting it drown under the newer pieces. There is good writing in those early years too, if you find it, lol. Even now, there is still a lot hidden underneath the surface.
I’ll keep slowly sorting, re-tagging, and making the paths through this place a little clearer. I also noticed links that aren’t working anymore or photos and videos that aren’t loading. I’ll sort it out slowly.
If you feel like wandering, wander. You will notice there aren’t many likes or comments. But I guess that’s because of the tone and voice of the blog. Don’t be shy. If you encounter something and want to say something, do. I am quite available (even if I don’t look like it.)
There is no right order, no recommended starting point. Just follow whatever title feels like it speaks to you. Or don’t. The space is here either way.
Just a small change.
But it feels good to have touched the roots again.
reflections of an unquiet mind 