Celebrating Life

This morning my granny died at age 96. She was at the hospital and I made her promise me that she would be there (hopefully not at the hospital) to spend her 97th birthday with me in the beginning of this year. She first said yes, then she stopped and looked up saying, "It depends on the one who's up there...He's the only one who knows when our time is up!" She had such a peaceful smile, she was so lucid her whole life through. Portuguese-born, and very proud indeed of her roots, she chose though Brazil as her primary home, and she wouldn't change her life for nothing. A tremendous pianist and needlewoman (she made the most beautiful cloths and garments in crochet and tricot for my sister and I during our childhood), she just so lived her life so fully, and she did not only teach her sons and daughter piano lessons but most appropriately she chose to leave a legacy about love for we could see the reflection of all that affection on the way they treated her. Or she wouldn't have survived for that long, with not for the loving care they gave back to her. Such a celebration of life, she was still weaving and knitting and teaching. Her last pupil was my mother who just told me, "And I didn't show the towel I just finished for her." The afternoons I spent at her house, all the conversations we had about deep meanings, about life, about relationships, about love, ABOUT RESPECT. But most importantly it was when I held her hand at the hospital and kissed it for the first time that I could realize how much she meant to me and above all of the big lessons she taught without even saying a word. For it was in that moment that I saw that no matter what we do in our lives, in the end it is love that is basically left to us. What makes our life worth living are those cherishing moments, they stay forever, more than words, they are the actions, a simple gesture that is so meaningful and filled with symbolic healing. I write these words with my eyes half-covered in tears, for I know I'm more useful when I pour my emotions down with no restrain, while still able to discern what I am saying. She has always brought me a smile, and I will treasure the moments we spent together forever in my heart. Her sweet laughter and Portuguese accent, something that she never lost over the years, will remain in my memories, as much as her devoted soul. She was the one who stayed there with me all so vigilant and waiting patiently for my recovery when I was at the hospital on my sweet sixteen battling between life and death. Although she never mentioned that, her indeniable love and sacrifices towards me were so uplifting and moving that there were never enough words to describe what she meant to me. So we simply smiled at each other like two complacent souls.

I don't even need to mention what we so commonly wish for a soul who just departed! "Rest In Peace" or to write an anacronysm such as "RIP", for I know she's been resting in peace her whole life through by the way she lived in peace in spite of any turmoil that would rise around her. And I will take her forever with me, for she was the one carrying me around when I was the one who could not walk then. She showed me the way with gestures, not only words. And I'm the one following her steps in heavenly garments. I will always remember her sweetest laughter when on the phone each time I called her and by every year on her birthday, and her tender smile will be engraved in my heart for good.

I love you,
Granny!

Sunrise over Andes

Heaven is thine
Embrace what's mine
As I cannot give a flower
Vividly there to shine.
Entice the kiss as shadows of a bliss
Never ending the sunshine of ours.

Love frees us of all pain,
Or that one may restrain.
Vicious circle that ever widens without end.
Essentially a glorious manifestation we befriend.

Love with no boundaries and no restraint,
Or it makes one saint, or the other faint;
Vows the sweetest face, the tenderest embrace,
Each bringing the sun to place in such grace.

Sometimes the snow comes down in June again.
Or also it's the sun that goes round a blue mountain.
Under the sun nature comes to life this very morning
Little birds sing, busy bees and drivers are horning.

The sun rising over the Andes makes me meditate
Over the place we are, in our Earth current state.
On how we can create more harmony with violet light
Letting Love vibration surround us into a deep insight.

HEAVEN LOVE, LOVE: SOUL TOOL - Acrostic by Ana Claudia nTunes

101 Post

I just read my new book which arrived in the mail >"One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count" in One Hundred One Whole Minutes.
Holding my new born baby, the book >"One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count" now available on Amazon and other major retailers worldwide. Getting ready to make a public reading... just getting readY
"One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count" in One Hundred One Whole Minutes are stories from all over the world told in exactly one hundred one words at least in Windows (and by that I mean your computer not in your house) using ms word (forget about word perfect, for this is not a perfect world.) And that's this book is all about. About the world as we see, a quick, fast-paced, crashed into many broken pieces, that in the end turns out to be all related into one. Like the number itself reveals 101: One to one and the world (as a circle) in the middle. It is not a nouvelle, although it could be converted as a sketch to many series, not even a short-story anthology, or flash-fictions, for they are real events, although sometimes quite surreal. I defined it as humour, for it is considered to be the biggest challenge for all writers around the world, to summarize a long story in a small space, which demands attention on the details, balance in the exposition of the story, and suspense in all tales, of a much higher impact than a whole novel. It's thin, it's economical, it's ecological, echoed and logical, and it's time saving as much as paper, for it doesn't require too many pages. It does speak from (and for) the heart as a way of manifesting all the joy, anger, troublesome, anguish, mixed emotions that make us all so human after all. I wish anyone who read this book will crack out loud to their top (literally, as an open mind) and have a blast, for each one hundred one a thousand smiles. Wondering why Buda is represented by a monk showing off that bloated belly (his center filled with powerful energy) and laughing??
A real wasted day, the one to pass without,
is the one you didn't spend laughing about. Ana C. Antunes

>"One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count" in One Hundred One Whole Minutes...
I know I cannot stop repeating that enough... It's like a MANTRA, although I think that I might be already sounding like a Brazilian parrot myself...lol... (but, that's my way, maybe repeating that a thousand times to myself and to the world, I would actually believe I published it!! I did, I surely did it!!:) soon to post the Amazon (not the green parrot but the retailer) link to my book.

101 represents
The Beginning is the End.
Alpha and Omega,
a palindrome.
It's Home
the manifestation
And what is on:
The One.

So how long it took me from start to finish or finish to start? If you consider that the title of my book has a palindrome, a number, represented by The Beggining is the End" meaning the "alpha and omega" symbol (101) well, then, that's a tough question. I mean, there were some stories inside other stories, they were haunting me since high school, others were just delivered as a way to take them out of my back (or chest). You know, they are all about real life events, so it took quite a while to expose them all right and really feel that it did fit with the ensemble. I wrote each story in exactly one hundred one words so they were also under microscopic lens. And you know the toughest part for a writer is to really cut to the essential, and if for that you mean in basically small words that's a record to play. Hope I didn´t sound too much like a parrot here, for editing that message it would take me a couple of more years... Cheers!

Ocean: The Book of Life

Love lives beyond time and space in grace,
Incessantly breathing in a vast embrace.
Like the fifth element, and as ethereal
It inhabits our souls everlasting, immaterial.
The ocean can not be contained in a bowl.
Hence it can only be viewed as sole whole. Ana Bowlova

Better stranger than fiction

Principe e princesa e diretor da realeza na passarela chilena:

Prince and Princess and Hollywood director all here in Chile in less than a week. I just wrote a poem about a Francis Ford Coppola's movie and here he was, dear Francis in person, in Zapallar, a place I almost went last Sunday (a day before he arrived there). I decided for a more cultural entertainment and went to Santo Domingo instead to see a Mesolithic monument, "la Piedra del Sol" an heritage from the giants who lived in Patagonia, and mostly decimated by a cataclysm. As I am fascinated with history in general, especially when I can witness rocks that were once carved by ancient civilizations, I am dazzled to find so many fables. But all those stories were only able to survive throughout thousands of years by word of mouth. Hopefully that same force might protect them from the peril of an environmental destruction. Don't let me even start by saying that a Darwin frog only found in Chile and Argentina are an endangered species already.

While I typed my words on Bram Stocker's Dracula, "The Count", the movie director was here, so near, having lunch in Valparaiso, and touring around the Chilean winery "Casablanca" (nothing to do with the film, to be clear) which we passed on our way to San Antonio and with the name on the top of the mountain slightly resembling the Hollywood sign. And as I think about submitting my novel "The Royal Diary" there it comes the Royal Norwegian Couple to spend a day in Isla Negra, the place I went just last Sunday, and where the writer Pablo Neruda spent his last days. Besides his strange house, there he still lies, beside his wife, in a bedside (well, that phrase sounded accurate though quite odd). Actually there it lies a tomb with the couple, in a romantic view of the Pacific Ocean. Isn't that true that life is so much more impacting and exciting than any fiction? (A story that no television drama could surpass, or only a very skilled and imaginative writer's mind would ever be able to come up with: "Close Encounter of the First Kind") So let's open a bottle of a Chilean wine to celebrate life:

Cheers!

A Total Eclipse of the Art!

As in a week
I will fly away
over LA.

Yet I am still breathing a brief moment of contentment for I just spent my b'day on my birthplace with my family. And I just came back from a short trip to Brazil... 'twas an exhilarating time on the shores of the Atlantic island, in a deep meditative state in a month of introspection and retrospective. There will be a total lunar eclipse early in the morning. And Saturn transits through the last degree of Leo during this eclipse. That's co(S)mically said, it is advisable to check out the results of our decisions over the past two-and-a-half years of our lives. I have nothing to complain from those last couple of years. My books have been sold like fresh bread and I just signed a contract with a Canadian publisher. How about that for a starter? Am I ready to get down to start a new chapter? Oh yeah, I am ready! I'll roll up my sleeves and get ahead with some new work. I will just have to clean up a little to get started with a fresh and bright perspective. I also decided to recycle everything that comes up in my mind and hands, so I take all the trash and, without wasting it, I transform whatever doesn't serve any more to something useful and colorful. I've been using watercolour, brushes and pencil, and not only the pen and, with no pain, I paint and create new things to decorate the lives of those who love and enjoy artistic objects/subjects. I make things in a personal style so no one will achieve the same thing twice, so much for the handicraft style. What's Art anyway? Isn't that something you can feel pleasure about, or something that touches you in a unique way, even if you don't like it, you can still be absorbed by its own beauty? That's something to ponder about. I promise to get back from my tiny little cruise throughout California with 'tides and bites' and lots of mov~i~es to share.
"I have my head set to California..."
And I've got to warn you... I'll be back, baby!

P.S. Just in case I miss the eclipse of the moon, I will still have the stars to count on. And I have my fingers crossed, and my eyes wide open lurking, looking for a star there, in California bay areas, BABY!!! I will have my cellular and video cam ready to roll... a pen would be nice too, for an autograph, or even to take note over a phone number(??) You know, I threw away the numbers I had... (giggles) Silly me!!