Land of Dreams

People get lost in myths and from there, they get lost in the nebula of history. Countries come and go, cultures are lost, people became legends and history becomes folk tales that are not even whispered by the fire in cold nights anymore.

In an age of fingertip technology, we lost the heart of the lands we belong to. And sometimes, as the clock strikes midnight, a calling raises in the heart, a calling unheard, only felt, that one would want to understand... The call of the land and of history lost. It is the hour when the legends creep in the blood filling your heart with a longing without name.

Someone told me yesterday that no feeling is more deep then sitting down in a long forgotten place and listening to the stories the land tells. No stories that can be put in name, just Fata Morgana of dreams and half said words in languages lost.

Because like people, languages are born, evolve and die. Sometimes it is possible to hear them again out of the dusty covers of a book, but other times, no books are left. And then you can only search for a lost language in the matrices of another.

I live very far away from the land of my ancestors. And yet, with half a planet between the land and me, I can still hear the calling of a lost past. And gods without remembered myths come back, fleetingly through my blood. An intimate knowledge that is not knowledge.

Here is Bendis, the goddess adopted by Greece. A spear in one hand, a goblet of blessings in another, the eagle flying high above the white horse... So alive and yet so forgotten. High magic and the Moon, sacred unions and hunting... She whispers, but her words are unheard, only the awe remains as she passes through. I am yours, Mother, I am yours, Daughter...

Behind her, Gebeleizis follows... So young and beautiful, so handsome and so powerful is the god with golden hair! Arch and spear, eagle on the shoulder and tall on his horse, the god whispers of the connection between Sky and Earth, between war, life and death, because he is the supreme god.

Behind him yet is Derzelas, the god that talks of healing and abundance, of that which is lost only to be found again. And Istia of fire, so adopted and remembered by the Greeks! And Zamolxis, the one that taught us that to die is to be reborn again and that our very souls are immortal! And here is Apollo the Hyperborean, all sun and golden looks saying how he came to be from the Pontus Euxinus. And here is Dionysus, that who teaches Ecstasy...

But all are lost and only few remember yet after millennium and millennium. Some forgotten, some remembered by other people... They sing the song that started in the Carpathians, the song of the White Wolf, Pelasgians and Aryans, the ones that from Carpathians went to India and Greece, to Asia Minor and shook hands with the Celts. The song of the Hyperboreans from the Danube and Carpathians...

Are only dreams of a land lost in myth and legend. And in ballads sometimes, by other names and other deeds they are remembered like the sacred signs still imprinted on the gates... The people are gone, the language maybe lost, the history shrouded in myth... But the land remains, forever alive, telling stories if only one can really listen...

10 Years

Only few more hours were left out of 2011... And as my ghosts were having their own party in my home last night, making it impossible for me to sleep, I remembered...

Last time I had a party for New Years Eve was exactly 10 years ago... I spent that night in Bucharest with people I cared about, people I knew and some I did not at the time... I remember Abdul, so stable, so wise, so patient with the child I still was... I remember Nada, so beautiful and so grown up, a fresh and upbeat breeze in my so serious life... I remember the foods we all prepared in a small kitchen, the laughter and the easy camaraderie of the few girls smoking and gossiping in the kitchen... The dinner on a white tablecloth in the middle of the lounge as there were not enough seats for all of us... I remember Ahmed bringing lychees fruits who looked like hard, pink strawberries... But most off all I remember the laughter, the joy of facing a new year even though we all were away from home.

This year I did not have a big group of friends around... Just an Aussie style New Years Eve with pub hopping and a lot of drinking. The people that matter were away, scattered around the world, most of them, and the other ones all over the country...

This year there is no Latin celebration in the streets with long beeping cars and loud screams! Fireworks from University Piazza in Bucharest instead were watched by me from a bridge without a name for me, facing the Harbor Bridge in Sydney. But the sky was full of love hearts and if there was no mistletoe and no friends to easy kiss at midnight, there were phone calls to my loved ones...

One can take a Latin out of Europe, but can not take the Latin out of the person... So I screamed as I was counting the seconds, laughing like an idiot. I managed to stop short from dancing in the street... And when an unexpected friend called as the first fireworks were lighting the dark sky, I had tears in my eyes...

I walked until my feet were screaming, and Aussie enough now, folded my evening pants and took off my 6 inch stilettos. I had laughter in my voice and laughter in my heart...

Since I left my country so long ago, since I swapped cultures and continents, it was the first New Year  Eve I felt no sorrow. The longing was there as I guess it will always be, but I was happy and having fun. Most likely in the future I will be going to an organized party on a boat or in a restaurant, leaving the pub hopping to younger people. But for 2012, I know that I laughed and I sang on the music... I know that after 10 years I welcomed a new year being happy to the core.