looking back on 2010

here are some photos as i promised in the last post. while taking the bad into consideration, i also wanted to have a small collection of positive memories of the past year.

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this one here was made on June 5, when we travelled with the women's choir to give a concert at Nagyszalonta. the trip was awesome, we saw museums and wondered around the streets of a lovely small country town.

the second one is a tribute to the chicken and the garden. if you click on the photo you will be able to see the chicken yard with animals of various age, color and gender. in the background, behind the chicken yard, there is the vegetable garden. you can see the purple echinacea bordering the lines from the left and a bunch of calendulas on the right. in between the two valuable herbs, there are small bushes of tomatoes.

heavy rains resulted in a humid autumn with lots of mushrooms - the third photo was made when the family (we, as four and my husband's mother and my kids' three cousins) went on a mushroom-hunting trip to the nearby forest. the photo depicts what the kids found beside lots of mushrooms.

in november we had a kind invitation from a friend of us, who took me to the Hungarian Krishna valley. some other day i will make a short collection of the photos i made there, but now here's only one of them.

goodbye 2010....
it was nice to have you - but now, filled with the hopes and the changes inside me, i already feel much better.

a bad balance

dear all,

i feel somehow in need of retrospecting 2010.

i have to go back to a year earlier.

last december i summarized 2009.

putting all the good and bad, all the events, experiences, influences into consideration i found a somehow happy balance.

why do i write about it now?

why do i contemplate 2009, why do i do it now, a few hours before the beginning of a party that is supposed to bid farewell to 2010?

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at the first glance 2010, as a year seems to be one of the bad ones.

i know my vision is blurred by the unfortunate accident of early october...

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you know, i still can't get some of my memories i gathered that evening out of my head.

i can still recall hearing the crackling of my bones inside my skull, and can still re-live the fear i felt when i first dared to look into the mirror.

it was the inevitable turn of events that petrified me the most.

i felt that because of the unfortunate fall, my face will never look the same again.

i felt i lost something.

something that used to be me.

i know that 2 of my 4 front teeth were of irregular shape and i didn't particularly liked the way they looked.

but the moment i met my new face on the mirror, blood mixed with saliva drooling out of my mouth, splashing everywhere in the handwash basin of the bathroom - i knew this was a moment that had a 'before side' and an 'after side' and the two sides would never meet.

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perhaps i am wrong.

deep down i am well aware that it is just the physical that was changed and i am still the same.

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this year i had another unexpectedly bitter experience.

i had a highschool friend who got married.

this is great news, isn't it?

this friend has been suffering from the lack of a permanent relationship in his last 15 or so years. i knew he was suffering. he shared some of his struggles.

our lives don't really cross each other's often...

we mean a lot to each other, or so i thought...
for in march he got married and forgot to invite me. all right, it was an intimate ceremony. not a big deal.
he forgot to mention to me that he was to get married.
i had to get the information from his online diary, which makes me feel abandoned. left out.
perhaps i overestimated the importance of our friendship. i mean he was important to me, but there was not a balance. i was not as important for him as he was for me.
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and here comes a twist.
since i felt neglected i was unable to feel positive towards his new-found happyness.
and i miss it.
i think it has been rude of me to not radiate some positive thoughts, virtual or otherwise towards him and, see - it's still difficult for me to say it, for his partner, a young and lively lady (i met her in person, because he did brought her to us in the summer).
and i think my rudeness deserves some punishment.
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just lately i have been thinking about this 'need for punishment' type of thing is kind of streching my mental health.
just lately i have been gathering that there are other areas of my life.
i'm in a kind of struggle, and right now as i'm typing my heart aches.
perhaps i'm taking it too far on me, and perhaps i also should stop whining and self-pitying.
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working outside in the cold helps, playing with my kids helps, writing helps, and the list is endless.
perhaps this relationship should have ended anyway.
we might have been lovers, but as a married, and happily married woman with two kids this was not a realistic option for me, even with an exceptionally understanding husband :)
and yes, i talked about it with my husband.
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and now, some positive words about 2010.
to get any, i have to look through the photographs i made this year.
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to be continued in 2011 :)

under the snow

dear all,

i did finish NaNo, i do have that manuscript that is still being revised.

revision will surely take weeks or event months.

i have sent chapter 2 for a friend to revise and right now i am revising chapter 3.

some say we have to get to a certain distance from the text, some argue the writer should be still 'in the flow'.

i am now kind of inbetween.

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our choir has performed a modern oratorium last week.
when we started to learn the notes in May we had doubts about the overall quality of the piece, but things started to look for the better once we started to do rehearsals with the instruments. we don't usually perform with violinists, cellists, trumpets and the like, but it did help us to appreciate the piece more.
we had a full house on both evenings, and the audience seemed to have liked it.
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we are still preparing our kids to their high-school admittance exams. aged 14 on 30th december, my son is in the 8th grade, so he is to go into a 4-year school, while my daughter, aged 11 next march will enter an 8-year high school - provided they succeed at the tests.

the ratio of admittance is 1/4-1/5, which means that only every fourth or fifth kid applying can enter the school.

there are written and oral exams in January from Maths, Hungarian and English (for my son).

it's not only the points they gather at exams that count, but the marks they got at school.

i am worried because of the lack of effort from my kids' part. my husband keeps telling me the i worry too much, my kids sense my worries and think that since 'there is someone to worry' about high school, 'i (the kid) don't have to worry about it at all'.

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but it's the turn of the light, the length of the day will slowly increase, as Wass Albert has put it in 'The Funtinel witch', just by a matter of good will each day'

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it's time to make those gingerbread men :) I hope to post photos one day, but now one cable is missing, the one that connects the camera with the computer.

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whew

i won, i did finish on time, i exceeded 50,000 words.

cheers, wine and whatnot.

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yet, why do i have this little feeling creeping at the back of my mind that revision will take longer time and will be more difficult than the writing itself?

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while writing, i soothed my nerves with sayings like: 'just go ahead', and 'it's good to have a good basis so you have at least something to revise', but now, after a week's rest i think i have to return and revise.

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NaNoWriMo news

i'm sorry, but NaNo is taking my time and nerves.

my improvement, actual word count and other NaNo-related news are displayed on my second blog.

remembering Berci

yesterday Berci, our cat of 11 (or 12) years has gone away to a special place.

let there be a vast meadow for you to find grashoppers in abundant numbers, let there be large heaps and endless tunnels of mice, hamsters and rats to feast on, let there be some sandy area for you to make yourself comfortable after a large dinner, let there be large trees with lots of little birds for you to prey upon, and strong trees to sharpen your claws on.

let there be eternal sunshine so that you would be able lay lazily on your back, with your chin upwards, the way you used to lie on the sun in a hot August day.

Berci, now you have reached your cat-heaven. let there be peace for you.


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(for my kind English readers: the cat's name is to be pronounced behr-tzie, where the first wovel as the 'e' in 'let'; 'c' as the 'tz' in 'pretzel' and 'i' as the 'i' in 'English'.)

NaNoWriMo news

my improvement, actual word count and other NaNo-related news are displayed on my second blog.

for the love of justin sparrow

crossing lines
half-awaken, beside the door
through the velvet veins
i don’t see your shade anymore
so let’s throw the reins

hissing pines

cold wood
under my parched hands

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i started writing this in the fall of 2009. i added a line today and decided to post it anyway.

NaNoWriMo news

i started writing it.
the main point was to get it going.

i'm going far behind my plans for today, but i had a wonderful day travelling through the countryside, so i have no regrets.

for more information, stay tuned, i will keep you informed on my other site.

k

you may have, or have not heard about this website.
at times it is downright hilarious, and at others, highly spectacular. sometimes, at its bests, it's both.
basically, it is about wrecked cakes.
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however, this is not an advertisement.
i came accross a post.
if you have time please read it.
below is a letter i wrote to the keepers of the site, with great respect towards the jog they are doing and with great curiosity as well :)
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dear editors/moderators,
this is a private message - you don't have to actually post it. (just contemplate...)
english is not my native language, i think you got it by now :)
i had no trouble of whatsoever of finding 'spooky' where the wreckerator wrote 'spooy' instead.
i have read quite a number of comments, possibly from native speakers of english.
none of them seemed to have found the connection between spooy and spooky.
they all come up with fun explanations and suggestions.
no-one mentions 'spooky'. not ever.
please, i am seriously intrigued by now:
how come this?
why me - and no-one else?
you may leave a reply in a comment over one of my websites (BOTH are in english) for i will ask my readers, too about this strange phenomenon.
thank you for your attention and keep up the good work.

NaNoWriMo 2010

anyone participating this year too?
this November i'm aiming to do quite a progress in my novel called Copper Moon.
i don't feel obliged to die trying to write 50,000+ words, though.
i'm just trying to write.
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usually i write when i have the inspiration.
now i'm trying to get it the other way round. i'll just see how it works out.
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photos from Köln (Cologne, Germany)

this was my third time in Köln and to be honest, i feared of being bored.
to entertain myself i figured out an objective:
we received a map of the inner city on the bus. it looked like a copy from a guide-book. there were small buildings drawn onto the streets.
i looked at the map and aimed for the furthest possible sight.
i bought nothing as a memory during the 3 hours i had in Köln. that was not my purpose.
the purpose was to get to the furthest possible sight, and i made it :)))

i reached it safely and got back in time to the bus.

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and while other people wandered in small groups, i wandered alone. perhaps no one was able to keep pace, mwah-hah-hah :))
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the streets of Köln offers a galore of various food for the hungry...

anyone else fascinated by the metal structure, heh? just look at the great arch of the ceiling. and the shining. also displayed is the famous 'ice' train.
it looks like a double-decker train for me :)

uhm, some more light and metal and shiny surface. uhm, did i just say metal?

well, food again.
during the 24 h bus trip i ate nothing but fruits and drink nothing but water. i did it on purpose - uhm, well, roadside toilets are uhm, well... i didn't want to feel stuffed and not being able to get some uhm, natural relief... and also i wanted to avoid eating for boredom. so i chose not eating instead. it wasn't my first fruit-day. i do it about every month or two months.

i found that architects of Köln have a strange habit: they tend to hide nice building between modern and ugly ones. this is quite an old church, but they managed to cover it from the eager eye. more exhibits to this notion later on, when i post my photos about the dome.


this is the entrance to the same church. poetic, almost, isn't it?
over the years i have this tendency to picture doors. and windows. i think it's related to my love of translation and being (almost!!, but never perfectly!) bi-lingual.
a door, a window, that leads another side. fascinating.

ta-daaa.
THIS building was the furthest one on the map. anyone any idea about it? when and who and why?


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on the health side:
i got my set of false teeth. this is supposed to subsitute my old (natural) ones while i'm waiting for the implantation. as this is an artificial object in my mouth i keep drooling, which is dislike quite a bit.
they say the more i use it the more i will get used to it. according to hopes i will be producing less less saliva over time.

off goes 4

if you think the title of this post has no meaning then go ask me what the meaning of falling off balance to loose 4 teeth at once was.

for they once were.

in my upper jaw.

off they jumped.

or rather, broke.

and i am broken now.

for most of the part, financially.

or will be when the dentist bills me for the implants.

my smile: past tense

i can not eat properly.

i can not speak properly. i miss/mispronounce 'z', 's', 'f' - to name a few.

but for most of all, i can not attend the choir.

well, friendship is one thing, but no one really wants to see a freak opening a mouth that has a huge hiatus in it, does anyone?

so, that is the news.

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in other words, i'm looking for new jobs like crazy.

those dental replacements will cost a fortune, insurance will pay only a tiny amount of the bill.

but the math goes like this: i am 40 and i am expected to live for at least another 40.

and on the other side of the equilibrum i see a long line of simple dishes, and renovations that go even slower in the foreseeable future.

we needed a new set of tiles in the bathroom for example.

allright, the dentist will fix it into my upper jaw.

we needed a garden path (now we have only dirt road from the gate to the front door).

allright, the dentist will fix it into my upper jaw.

i think you get the idea ;)

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the photos will be up some time later on.

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cheers,

back to the routine again

i'm home, reading and writing.
i'have finished a paid job, and on my way to go for another...
i go out a lot to the garden, tend the chicken, pick up walnuts, chop firewood...
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photographical recollection of my trip will be coming soon.

arrival

this is about the time our bus arrives back to my hometown.
i am too tired to post photos about the trip right now.
i am either sleeping or having a hot shower before sleeping, or having a shower of small presents to my family :)))
my kids expect me to bring some stroepwaffels...
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cheers,
real posts will come soon - like in a couple of days... as soons as i am not sleeping anymore...
zzzzzz...

we are heading back home

all things packed back again, with my luggage being a bit heavier with some packages of stroepwaffels and vla...

(i will make photos of them)

the bus leaves....

can you see me waving goodbye to our dear hosts, to The Netherlands ... ?

friday evening

whooo-hooo.
i think at around this time we are having a great farewell party organized by the Dutch people.
it's a nice evening meal with music.
basically, an event for informal gathering.
can you see me dancing?
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special programmes

for friday, we are visiting a local school and have a meeting with the local women's organization. it was here in 2008 that i got the idea to do mosaic at all.

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reaching Amsterdam

and meeting Bart :)

last time (in 2008) he took me to a nice Buddhist temple and after that, we just strolled along the fascinating streets of the capital. since the river Amstel goes criss-cross all over the inner town, almost every street is a walk on the riverside. this structure is part artificial and was created during the late XIX., early XX. century i suppose.

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much to Bart's surprise, i was really specific about my activities in 2010 here. this is my fourth visit to the city :)

we plan tovisit some great places like the market, a museum and perhaps a little bar...

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at the evening the bust takes us back to Wageningen.

reaching Wageningen

by this time i think we have reached our main destination.

at the town center, a short meeting is organized to welcome us, and then the guests depart with their hosts to the houses of the hosts to get some rest after the looooong bus ride.

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the evening is free - we usually spend it walking in the streets, or in the forest nearby, some visit bars and restaurants, some have a quiet family dinner.

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i am staying with an extremely friendly couple. they are middle aged and have already put me up in 2006 and in 2008.

whenever i think of the little room in the attic of their house, it feels like thinking of a summer house that somehow belongs to me as well. i kind of feeling like coming home there as well.

:)))

last year, in 2009 we hosted the man of this family in our house.

reaching Köln in Germany

about this time we are supposed to have reached Köln (Cologne).
here's a link to some photos from our 2008 trip.

off to the Netherlands

dear all,
i am away for a couple of days.

when this post appears our bus is about to cross the Hungarian-Austrian border.

we are travelling north, going through Austria and Germany to reach The Netherlands after a tiresome 24-hour bus ride.

until i return the upcoming few post are scheduled.

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as i type now, the washing machine is on and i still have my clothes unpacked for the trip.

i still have lots of things to do (like writing some more pre-shceduled posts.)

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among many other stuff, i am packing my camera, a good pair of walking shoes for all occasion (be it rainy or sunny), and two books, a sleeping bag and a thick pillow for the bus, and a flower pot i decorated with mocaic. the latter item is a present for my Dutch hosts. i know they have lots of flowers so i think they'll like this hand-made surprise.

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here's a photo of the mosaiced flower pot. that is my hand to give you an impression of the size of the pot.

without further ado...

1-
this blog has reached its fifth birthday on 30 august :)))
2-
between 28 september and 3 october i'm leaving for the netherlands: wageningen again.
the trip will take us to a women's organization and we will possibly visit a school.
on one of the days we will visit amsterdam, where i am to meet bart again :))
3-
on 27 november i will attend a reading. the event will be organized by an online writers' group i joined this march. i made some new friends and i will read a poem by one of them. he is a man in his early sixties with a serious hearing loss, so he would be unable to do the recital himself.
i am still hesitating about reading one of my writings ... :)
4-
the japan institute of budapest is having a haiku contest. the deadline is 30 september and a contestant can send in as much as two haiku :)))
i have written only six :)))
but i think i will be able to select two of them.
oh, my :)))
i wish i had like a hundred....
you know what is really interesting?
this contest is a themed one - and the theme is 'summer'.
believe it or not, all my hungarian haiku, yes, all the six are about summer....
:))))
wish me luck :)
5-
vesper has finished reading halo. some of my remarks are posted here.

inspired by a photo #2

to take a look at Ewen's another inspiring photograph GO HERE
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and here's my version.
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horizons

to connect the earth and the sky
first he drew a line with a sigh
he planted hope into the earth
and let the rain weep for our birth

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if the same photo inspires you in any way, please leave a comment.
have fun!

the seventh cousin

dearest Örs Domonkos,
the smallest boy in the family,
be blessed,
let us be blessed by you,
for angels must have carried
you all the way from heavens,
for you came peaceful, quiet,
flying on puffs of feathers,
this very morning.
six brothers and sisters,
two parents, five grandparents,
two cousins, an uncle and I, your auntie
and friends
- we all have been waiting for you.

this to your long and healthy life!

socializing event

in hungary you basically will never find those no-fence, lawn-frontyard, come-to-my-house setting that are so common in certain parts of the usa. we all have tend to have high, strong fences, where most of the fences are so formed that you just can't see through them.

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for an unexperienced foreigner this expressed need for safety may seem an unfriendly, a get-outta-my-place attitude.

i know that there is alienation, but not where i live :)
where i live and in many other communities, where the original hungarian hospitality is still alive, this is just the surface.

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i have already mentioned some of the activities (like plum jam, see the post below) we, the community that has formed in our street do together.

and now, i'm going to illustrate another event: a street party.

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there is a street just one street up from ours, where people do parties every year. this year it was the 8th gathering. they set up a large tent for stage performances , they bring tables with snack food on them, they make a large pot of goulash enough for at least 40-50 people. they gather in the evening and enjoy the performances. the night ends with dancing. it is usually rock and roll, or disco-whatever.

now this year, our community was invited to take part.

we rehearsed and came up with a performance that lasted about 20 minutes. we sang three folksongs - the one we chose were funny.

after that we improvised a short folk-tale, where there were three princesses (played by three of the little girls, one of them, the biggest was my daughter), an old king (played by one of the fathers) and a dragon (*coughs*). the story was highlighted by musical performances: traditional flutes and a doromb. (i don't know if that one has an english name at all...)

we needed three boys to make all ends meet, so we borrowed them from the audience. they enjoyed their role-playing. we received lots of applause and laughter.

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after our performance we stayed to watch others. there was a trio that played classical music on instruments, a play making fun of the story of Cindarella, and various singing activities.

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we arrived as one group and left as one, too.

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this is my husband and my daughter minutes before our performance has begun. you may want to click on the photo to see her hairdo better. this hairdo is quite common for folk dancers. dh is sporting a linen shirt with a straw hat. this combo is a traditional menswear in hungary.

this is us, our family, having some fun - my son is not dancing, for he was engaged in bicycling with his friends. no, i'm not having digestive problems :) - i think we were dancing the twist. my husband and my daughther were keen on dancing. i simply got tired :)
also pictured: the other two princesses, and the stage-tent in the background.

plum jam

dear all,
we are done.
it lasted for three days.
one for travelling to the plum orchard (located at a farm), picking and collecting from under the trees.
one for pitting the crop.
one for making the jam.
three days, four families, loads of fun. tiredness.
a plum jam made the traditional way, a jam that contains nothing but the fruit. no sugar, no preservatives, nothing else, but plum. worth quite much.
will please four families throughout the winter.
sunshine bottled for the hazy days.
this to the friendship between the four families.

photos from ukraine

hey all,

my husband and my daughter has joined a group of tourists who visited southwestern ukraine in early august. for some wiki-info about the location: click here. in the meantime, my son stayed out with friends and i had the chance to polish off a job i've done in late july.

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here are some photos of the trip, enjoy.

this is the view from the room. they slept there for two nights.


they were hiking in the woods.

there were lots of blueberries within the forest, but once they got atop the mountains, they found a meadow loaded not only with flowers, but with lots of raspberries (not pictured here).

this part of ukraine is partly a mountaneous area. the slopes face south which makes the villages down at the foot of the hills able to produce various kinds of agricultural produce. i was meant to say that although the hills are high the climate is not a typical mountain one.

my daughter sitting on a moss-covered trunk. she enjoys being in a forest and has a keen eye to discover all the secrets of it. she is always to first to spot the only mushroom or strange flower in a 15 meter radius. she will either be a researcher or an artist. or both.

the river somehow slows down at the bottom.

these are the ruins of a castle of kanko, where kanko is a small village. hm, that's not very informative...

i wish i had been there, too!

cheers,

watching the water

she paints her nails, can you get used to it?
she is now your wife, can i get used to it?


the first 40 years of my life are leaving me.


a boat, loaded full is leaving the bay. some waves return, run up the shore, up to the rocks, the waves carve into the rocks and return back again to the water.

the waves are getting smaller.

the boat is getting smaller, its figure is getting harder and harder to notice in the distance.


you are on that boat.
i am on the shore.


the second 40 years of my life has just begun. and i think it's just time we talked.

bad and good

about the contest.

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the contest is over.

i have read so many great pieces. the pre-selection made judgement easier for the judges and the readers as well.

i retreated and was reluctant to read further on once i was cast out - and i know that's bordering nasty. for some of the time i don't do well in team-building.

i tend to go alone, like a lone hunter...

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but i digress.

i loved to read so many uplifting and thought-provoking pieces. i loved that there were some poetry and some of the non-poetry pieces were quite poetic as well.

i loved sometimes the warm tone, the irony and the character building in the stories i voted for.

i loved to see myths created.

there was one among the many that stood out for me.

it literally made me sick. it was ranked high.

but i'm not going to continue on this matter.

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you know... when you do something great, and you do it poorly, you are still making good. you are adding to all the good in the world.

and when you do something bad and you do it well, you are doing bad.

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but hey, i'm just an old fashioned, tradition-loving conservative who loves to believe that despite all the wrong that's been done and is being done right now as you read these lines (if you do, if anyone does, that is ;) there's love and justice after all in this world.

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about my entry in particular.

i am sorry not to have entered into the elite-club ;) but jason was right about his decision - no problems with that.

rhyming is not easy, not easy in one's mother tounge, let alone in a second language.

i tend to think the backstory of my entry was weak and i have not worked enough on it. i wanted to write a parabole (hm?) but it needs more working done.

that's all :)

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