an Upupa came into my Qi field today

Today when I was lying in my hammock under the trees in the green garden I thought: It would be wonderful to see an upupa (hoopoe)..
last time must have been at least one year ago, by the time my father was visiting.

Then I opened my book and thought no further about it.

One hour later I can see a bird coming on to the center of the lawn, behind a flowerpot. I could not believe my eyes when I saw what kind of bird it was - an upupa!
Amazed by the power of thought, I laid comfortably in my hammock just looking at it, marveled.
I wondered what he was coming to say to me this time?
Or was he just, like me, staring at me enjoying my relaxing energy - qi - field?
I know that each and every one of us has a qi-field which goes up to twenty meters (if you are a qi gong master it can reach up to 200 meters). The upupa was standing only fifteen meters away.
I believe he was sucking up my qi, while staring at me all the time.
Or, to tell the truth, we were sucking up each others qi. And we were sucking diesel.

If one is sensitive enough to read the signs of life and to feel the messages coming, then birds can be really powerful. For me different birds have had different meanings through time. Pelicans riding the Mexican waves of the Pacifics have come to mean beauty and harmony. Owls are for me pure transformation and inner wisdom. Upupas stand for royalty and spirituality.
(see an earlier blog post of mine for full description)

What more could be the meaning of birds?

A friend of mine, a film maker, told me his story with birds. When his mother died and he returned home after the funeral, he was met by two eagles circulating above his house for a long time.
He stood there wondering, and tears came down from his cheeks. Now he knew in his heart, his mother was, and would always, watch over him.

When my father was attending my grandfather´s funeral he could hear the song of a bird coming from a branch in the tree. When he turned around he could see the Pyrrhula pyrrhula (bullfinch) sitting there with his big red breast shining midst the green lush. His thought was not logical, it was instant - and therefore more real. His heart whispered to him: there is your father giving you a red card. In fact, my grand-father used to be a soccer judge.

A few years after the funeral, I was sitting in the olive grow, when a white dough came up to me. It landed just within reach for me to touch it if I wanted. But I didn´t, I was listening to it.
My head was empty, without any thought - I was touched by what I felt. I felt my grand-father was
sitting next to me. It was his soul in that little body. And now he came back to what he had dreamed of. Once he came to visit on the hill where I live on. On that occasion he held a speech in front of my Italian family. I had to translate everything into Italian. He said "I would be really happy to come here to work for you giving a helping hand with the olive trees".
Who would suite better with olive branches than a white dough?

Those stories are all birds connected with death. Many people are being reincarnated into birds, this is my full conviction.
However, the long visit I received today was connected with life. In which way I must figure out, but I could just sense it.

I wonder if the upupa was standing there just like my horse use to: with one leg bent in a position of rest. When I let her down in the garden, there is a wide area to grass on. After a short while she gets tired of eating, then she would stand next to me, touching the hammock with her big smooth mouth. She finds it comforting to sleep next to me.
She feels my protecting, calm qi-field. And she knows that within twenty cm it is very strong. I believe she doesn´t know these numbers, but I truly believe she doesn´t need them, cause she just needs to sense it.

la cura: embracing the wonders of life

Ti proteggeró dalle paure delle ipocontrie, dai turbamenti che da oggi incontrerai per la tua via. 

Dalle ingiustizie e dagli inganni del tuo tempo, dai fallimenti che per tua natura normalmente attirerai. Ti solleverò dai dolori e dai tuoi sbalzi d'umore,
dalle ossessioni delle tue manie. Supererò le correnti gravitazionali, lo spazio e la luce per non farti invecchiare.
E guarirai da tutte le malattie, perché sei un essere speciale, ed io, avrò cura di te.

Today was the funeral of a grand man, Mr Nelson Mandela. Just as the elephant herd did in South Africa with Lawrence Anthony, a whole world is mourning in unison. Not only are we greaving the person Nelson Mandela, but also the values he embodied. He was willing to sacrifice his own life for the love and care he felt for his people. Even though Mandiba is not here anymore, physically, I strongly believe the principles he stood for will continue living. There might not ever be a man as courageous, as patient and as revolutionary as him. But we need to keep the memory of him alive for future generations. He must never be forgotten. Just as life changes with the seasons, may his spirit rejoice through our minds.

Recently, I was at a concert with cult singer Franco Battiato. When he sang a capella, one song

struck me particularly. La cura: 

I will protect you from the fears of hypochondria

from the anxiety you find on your path

from the injustice and deceit of your time

from the failures, which you, by nature, will attract

I will raise you above the pain and your mood swings

from the obsessions of your mind

I will overcome the gravitational currents

the space and the light

to prevent you from aging

And you will be cured from all the illnesses

cause you are a special human being

and I will take care of you

A few days after the concert, on the same day as my mother in law´s birthday, I found a small tiny bird on the ground. I almost stepped on it, since I did not see it sitting there. Then, surprised as I was, I spotted it: a small cute bird with red chest. He was looking up to me. I was looking down on him. I could not believe why he did not fly away. Then I felt sorry for him. I looked down and thought: maybe he need my help. It felt like he needed my help. So I took him in my hands and carried him to my house. Scared of getting him hurt by the cats I put him on a box on the table outside. Meanwhile, I was figuring out what to do. My boyfriend told me he must have blown away with the wind. Maybe he blew down from the nest, away from his mum. He said I should go look for his mum, so I did. I could not see any nest, nor mum. There were only small olive trees surrounding the spot. 

I went back to the box, looked at the tiny bird with caring eyes, and then: all of a sudden the bird took of, he flew away.

Happy of this visit, I felt my heart filled with compassion and wonder. And I thought: there must be some reason why this little tiny bird came into my life.

Two insights are embracing my life 

We all need someone who takes care of us, if only for a little while, sometimes

He who fights for peace, should indeed Rest In Peace

giraffa communication & elephant telepathy

Did you know there is a communication called the giraffa communication? It is about being an empathic listener. The name comes from the fact that the giraffa has the biggest heart of all the terrestrial animals.

I heard a story on the radio, which I wish to share. It was about a man called Lawrence Anthony. During the war he traveled from his home in South Africa to Iraq to save all the dying animals of the zoo of Bagdad. After he accomplished that, his heart felt the need of helping two herds of elephants in his area, threatened to life by the locals.

Lawrence went to the bushes close to the villages, stayed with the elephants, learnt their languages, earned their trust and started to communicate with them. He learnt that elephants can communicate even at miles apart. He could not explain how, he just knew.

One day, Lawrence sadly past away in his home by a heartattack. At the same exact instance the two herds of elephants started to walk towards his house. They walked for twelve hours, over a distance of more than twenty chilometers. I believe they must have felt his heart was not connected to theirs anymore.

They stayed outside his home mourning for two full days. I believe they felt he was a member of their herd. He was one of them.

female legs & pink flamingos - the secret behind real beauty

While I continue to hear and read about all the bad things that happen to human minds using Facebook or other social networks, I wish to put that aside for a bit here. Let me just add one detail. In some comic drawings, they illustrated Facebook as being today´s drug - worse than heroin!

I would like to write about something slightly, no...far more..no completely the opposite of the digital world today. I would like to talk about nature.

Have you ever heard of Fibonacci?
He was an Italian mathematic during 12th Century Pisa. But I would like to suggest that his knowledge went far beyond the limits of what is considered mathematics of today.

Fibonacci discovered some relations between certain numbers, of what we can call "magic numbers". This relation is an important pattern whcih many artist, architects, musicians use to achieve a work in harmony with nature. Why is that?

Yes, because the same pattern as Fibonacci found between numbers, you can find in nature. You can see it in flowers, butterflies, crystals, dolphins or trees which are some of the most preciously beautiful creations we have on earth.

Not only. World famous musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart both used the series of Fibonacci to create their music. 

So, what is my conclusion here?

What nature made is beautiful and filled with harmony. What was created this way always will be.

At the contrary, a lot of what is created today is not in harmony with natural laws. Consider modern pop music, modern art, modern buildings and cars.

During my recent trip to Rovinj, Croatia, I was wondering how some places seems so incredibly magical, while others appear to have no soul at all. I strolled around the narrow white cobblestoned streets, surrounded by the blue ocean, marveling at the pastel colored buildings created by the Venetians during the 15th-17th Centuries. I was just out of breath of all this beauty human kind was capable of.

Then, I thought through all the countries I have traveled, all the cities I have seen, all the historical buildings I kept vivid in my heart. And all the most amazing creations I have seen, made by human kind, have always been at least five hundred years old.

Take Alhambra, outside of Granada for instance. This Arabic kingdom, located in Spain, has its origins from the 13th Century and is one of the world´s masterpiece considering geometria and perfection in art.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia, is another case of human creation affined with perfection. It was also constructed around the same time, during the 12th Century.

So my theory is that people living five hundred years ago, or longer, they had an eye for building in harmony with nature and perfection. They knew what beauty was. Their only interest was to serve beauty, and no other interest which might prevail today such as economy, comfort or efficiency.

I would by this like to say that today´s crisis is not so much a crisis of economy, as it is a crisis of values, of culture and of beauty.

I wish human beings could learn from the past, rather than building stuff that they think will be enjoyable to look at in the future. In my view, Fibonacci was right all the time. We don´t need to look into the future for beauty. Real harmony can be found today, in nature.

running and running, but never leaving the Colosseum

Some people look for power
some people look for fame
some people look for prestige
to me its all the same

Some people look for love
some people look for honey
some people look for trouble
to me the problem in everybodys mind is money

Some people look for passion
some people look for travel
some people look for beauty
to me the essence of life is on another level

                                                                     Me


I have been writing on a few articles lately, not having to much spare time, nor inspiration to write
on my blog. However, I have come to the conclusion, the conclusions in my articles are always the same.

If you look at the paper I wrote on the microcosmos of bees, you will see how I through the text draw a red line comparing the bees with humans. If you look into a beehive, as you actually can do by watching a wonderful documentary called "More than bees", what you will learn is that bees have a complicated and intelligently built social pattern. They are all dependent on each other for the colony to survive. Each and every bee has a task to accomplish. The beehive survives through cooperation.
Through the documentary, it is a sad fact to see how the bees have been extinguished in certain parts of China by humans, while in the US they are being exploited and killed by millions.
While human beings are killing and extinguishing the bees, we are living in an increasingly individual society. This means we are not longer dependent on each other for survivance, and will in the end lead to a less integrated and more egoistic society. This is also a society where capitalistic powers can have a stronger control on the small individuals. Nature can therefore be less protected.
In an imaginery society where human beings would live just like a beehive, we would be dependent on each other, helping, caring and living in harmony with each other and with nature.

                                 Humans used violence against nature thousands of year ago, my question
                                            is: have we really come that far since Colosseum was the arena of violence?



Then, I also made a profound analysis of the profetia Maya. Discovering the myth behind the profetia, traveling nine hundred chilometers on Mexican territories, I found important insights behind the origins of it. Visiting Villahermosa, where the "Il Tortuguero numero 6" is located, I got a direct translation into Spanish of what was written in Mayan language thousands of years ago. What was really only the prediction of a god that would come down on earth to put some order, was by western fanatics interpreted as an apocalypse, for no real reason. There is no evidence that such a dramatic event would happen. There is, on the other hand, evidence that proves, that the world, in the eye of the Mayas, would not end. There is an inscription in the pyramids of Palenque stating a date far beyond December 23rd (not 21st!) 2012 when the apocalypse was predicted to destroy the earth.
However, what I find reasonable to believe is that the profetia only concerned the Mayan people. Many Mayan intellectuals have stated that they believe the profetia was intended for their own people. They believe their community should have some kind of compensation due to how they have been treated since the Spanish conquered their territories in the 15th Century. Many thinkers also believes the western world should learn from the Mayans: their respect for nature, their worship of mother earth, their capacity of being in harmony with the living beings.

In the end, my conclusion is always the same - human beings are threatening the survivance of mother earth and not living in harmony with her origins. Exploiting is not a long-term solution. Capitalism is destroying important balances which may never be replaced again. Humanity´s greed for more are leading us on a dangerous path, where only we, today can change its course.
We are running, and running, always looking forward. Maybe we should stop, stand still and reflect upon this: what are we running for and have we ever thought about where we are going to end up?

the face of an angel

Today I almost hit a small hedgehog with my car. It was crossing over the road in the center of Florence, in a place I was not expecting it to be. Luckily I managed to avoid it, but I am not sure the car behind me did. I feel so bad about that: If I would have stopped the car, then the car behind me would have to too. What happened to the small animal? How about my own karma?
I wish I could be a quick thinker so that I would have reacted in just a second, but I am not.

I am following a blog written by a young Swede who is dying of cancer. He has not reached his thirties yet, still he is a good journalist and his book was a bestseller in Sweden, though he is dying. He often writes about all the things he would do if he would have been healthy. He dreams about his past, about his journeys, about becoming a grand journalist in New York.
He often writes that life is so beautiful, and I wish I could appreciate it more than I do.
Is it only when we are living on the edge that we fully can worship life?
Should we take more advantage of our talents while we are still healthy and can?

Yesterday was a black day. I recieved the news that a friend who I got to know three years ago in Beijing had died. He was brutally killed in his homeland, Ecuador. He was a photo-journalist but did not die because of that. His brother is a minister so newspapers speculate whether or not this might have been the cause.
I don´t know, but what I do know is that he was a very brave good hearted soul. We spent some weeks getting acquainted, and during those moments we just shared thoughts and experiences. He had such a pure heart, he had no interest towards me, just to get to know me. After he left he sent me an email telling me he was happy that we met.
Why do many of the warmest hearted people die prematurely?
I wish this world could have more people in it like Juan Antonio, pure noble hearts.
God put angels on earth, some leave early, some stay for longer.
The face of a small hedgehog looks like the face of an angel, and who knows, maybe it is an angel?
Nobody knows how they really look like, do they?

what facebook is doing to the human eye, and why we are to blind to see it

"I wish I could have lived during the sixties"
 Me            

Jovanotti, a famous Italian singer, writes in his book "Il grande boh" that during full moon he encounters problems being creative. He usually stays up at night, since nighttime is when inspiration comes to him. During full moon he cannot focus on anything, his mind is dizzy, his body is anxious.

Sleep, I believe is something fundamental to us. Sleep, and also to let our eyes sleep at times. The modern human being is forgetting how she used to live like. She thinks that sitting in front of a computer is something normal, something sane. She never takes into consideration the fact that a hundred and fifty years ago, the human species spent their days on the land growing vegetables, or hunting or fishing in the forest.

The human eye is formed as a boiled egg, and what holds it there are six muscles that enables it to focus. When the human being used to walk in the forest, looking at birds, glazing at the horizon, she was training up the eyes´muscles. Today, sitting in front of the computer, looking at the iPhone, textmessaging, watching television our focus is still for hours. These habits are not only damaging for a day-to-day eye-sight, it causes some people having to wear eye-glasses since the eyes muscles itself are not able to change the focus. Eye-glasses are like a wheel-chair for the legs. 

A recent research at the University of Michigan, suggests that Facebook makes you unhappy. The research involved surveying 82 undergrads and showed that the more time the college students said they spent on Facebook, the more likely they were to report feeling a little less chipper, a little less satisfied with life. 

"The more people reported using Facebook, the more negative they were feeling following Facebook use," Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the University of Michigan.

Over the years, various studies have made a range of observations about our Facebook relationships: that posting photos alienates your friends, that "Liking" a post will nudge other friends who see it to do the same etc.

Here, to be complete the survey needs to differentiate between various kinds of activities on Facebook — whether the participants were simply browsing, posting public messages, or "liking" posts and photos. 

Facebook experience is influenced in no small part by "what you're doing online, and whom you're doing it with", for instance has satisfaction been a result of surveys when the undergrad students were communicating with their close friends or loved ones.

Considering human beings are complex creatures, and our online behavior reflects that too, it's perhaps not too surprising that this study shows how our actions influence our state of mind, even about the world's biggest social network.

Meanwhile the average American spends 31 minutes on Facebook each day, sleeping time has decreased to 6,5 hours per night, compared to 8 hours just one generation ago. In the last decades, sleep is increasingly considered as a waste of time: you snooze you lose. The digital culture promoves being "on", not "off". That the seemingly solitary sleep is dependent on a lived community makes the attack on the nightly rest, pictures the idea of how ​​a more cohesive society has broken down in favor of an ideology of individual success and fulfillment. Unproductiveness of sleep - the only remaining opportunity where we can neither work nor consume - is what Marx called a "natural barrier" against capitalism: that we sleep less and less is seen as an expression of the market's inherent demands for expansion.

The digital culture has effectively increased the commercialization of more and more aspects of our lives and normalized a connection 24/7 - around the clock. This has several consequences. The most obvious and often-discussed (but it seems to help) is that we make ourselves constantly exposed to intrusion and monitoring. We can say whatever we want about our abilities at ignoring ads in our Facebook feeds: no one can escape from the ongoing collection of our digital behaviors, which are then analyzed and resold.

Another consequence is how the constant readiness to perform different types of services places us in an ongoing digital training camp, where the distinctions between work and leisure, between public and private, between the living and the organization disappears. Any kind of set-up time can be filled with narcissistic self-reflection or construction of the personal brand. All occasions for real subjectivity, to free thoughts flow and daydreaming disappear.

When interpersonal contact is reduced to an interface, our responsibility for others finds itself eliminated, argue Crary, the writer of the book 24/7. Walter Benjamin noted that 18th Century people, which quickly became accustomed to the new congestion on city streets and trams, were the first generation to be systematically trained not to meet the other's gaze. Over a hundred years later, smart appliances prevent spontaneous meetings. More important still, 24/7 gives the illusion of a time without waiting and immediate gratification. As a result, patience, that is a prerequisite for any democracy is weakening: listening to others, waiting for their turn to speak.

24/7 is a time zone with no time, a world without shadows. Certainly, no one can work, shop, play, blog or do networking around the clock, but since today there is no time, place or situation in which one can not consume goods or use social networking, 24/7 infuses every aspect of our lives. But somewhere in the no man's land between society and nature, a resistance action is sleeping, which reminds us that another world is possible, and to some extent exists. A world where the earth and the sun moves and separates day from night. A world where we could relax.

Now that Facebook has entered an alliance with Ericsson and Nokia to deliver internet access to the worlds developing countries - in order to reach out to another four billion people - investing over 1 billion dollars, you do not need to be a genius to predict what is going to happen. Billions of people will see their lives changed; they will sit in front of screens, damaging their eyesight, getting bad sleep at night, feeling unhappy visiting facebook.

Why are we too blind to see what Facebook is doing to our lives, not only in terms of eyesight and sleep but also our state of mind?
Do we really need more human beings to suffer the same way as we do?