Dear followers (and Santa Claus)...

I´ve been a bad girl this year, in some ways, and a GREAT girl in so many other ways.

It is true that I didn´t give as much attention as I used to give to my blogs and video´s sharing but I surely am excused for those faults.

It was a HARD, INCREDIBLE year. Like a turning point on every level.

All of me changed, all of my Egypt changed, all of my concept of DANCE-ART-LIFE changed and my focus was on the writting of my own book, born in the right time, when it is supposed to be born.

Like a pregnant woman, I waited until the baby-book was totally shaped and formed inside me and I recognized when my waters broke, right by the side of the Egyptian Revolution that was also an internal revolution of mine.

2011 was the year of personal growth, of personal deep disappointments and a pain so big that no understanding could process it, only the heart could deal with it by accepting human being´s fragilities and dark sides.

This was the year of some very incredible professional trips around the world and the time when I lost important people in my LIFE and gained better, more honest and loving people who took their place in my heart with immense tenderness.

2011 was the turning point for me, both personal and professionally, and the turning point for Egypt. We are both on the same boat, it seems.

Lots of amazing, serious work is on my hands till the end of December and then I know I will face more GROWTH, more challenges, MORE of all the colours LIFE has to offer.

My soul has been fed with the wisdom to turn sadness into true, unconditional JOY and I see myself flying higher and HIGHER as an ARTIST. Very blessed and grateful for that.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas time with LOVE in their hearts and COURAGE to be unique, honest and live their BEST LIFE!

Amen.

The people we meet on the way...

No doubt about it: what defines the quality of a trip is the people you meet on the way.

Landscapes, monuments and history is great and surely a source of education that no universities can provide yet I find the direct human contact with people from different countries the most enriching experience of all. The royal school, I may say.

If I teach and perform for audiences, other dancers and students then I must stress the fact that they teach me back so much. I ve always been a good student and a wise one because I don´t pretend to know it all. In fact, I teach and perform as someone who knows nothing and therefore, is continuously, searching. Searching should be my middle name.

When I hear smart dancers and friends who really wish me good commenting how I should make myself a little bit of a "diva" to be taken seriously in this business I cannot stop laughing and considering myself a lost case. I don´t know how to sell myself as something I am not.

I am not a diva, although so many people call me that. Not even a star, even if so many other people consider me as one with such tenderness and appreciation.

I am just a person and an ARTIST who continuously strives to GROW. That´s who I am and that state of BEING does not require me to treat others as less than me or to put on the "DIVA character" to impress potencial clients. It is just not who I AM.

During my professional trips in Spain I was lucky to meet incredible and not so incredible people who taught me so much. They may consider me an inspiration and a teacher but I consider THEM likewise.

To see all the images taken in Spain during my tour, please check the album "Spain tour 2011" on my Facebook.

Feel welcome to add yourself to "Joana Saahirah II" and my "Joana Saahirah Fan Page".

Now it´s time for more work. My evasion, pleasure, salvation, blessing, mission in LIFE...

Grateful for all the gifts in the form of beautiful human beings I meet on the ways and also in the form of evil which adds strenght, compassion and understanding to my heart.

It is ALL good. ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL good!

tabla solo Spain

"Recuerdos" from Spain...

Improvizing on a solo tabla in Barcelona.Dancing without my orchestra still is my most difficult challenge to face. Dancing with my musicians give me all the things I need to deliver a performance that is a proper mix of entertainment and ART. Dancing with cd is almost like moving within a cold, silenced bubble where I can hardly feel what I am doing BUT I always do my best.
If I have to dance in the most total silence, in the middle of the desert, I will. And I will do it with TOTAL presence and PASSION. No doubt about it.

"Recuerdos" from my Spanish Tour (Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga) and NEW directions...

Just arrived to Portugal after two weeks of tour in Spain, a country which runs in my blood.

One of the best things about being an Artist and a teacher is the luxury to travel and meet new people, places, cultures, mentalities while I work. In fact, I´ve said it plenty of times: an ARTIST is fed by his/her own LIFE. The richer my LIFE is, the richer my artistic work will get. They mirror each other.

From Barcelona, Madrid and Malaga I must admit that my heart goes to Andaluzia (Malaga) for so many reasons but, mostly, because it is the kind of place where a gipsy like me feels "at home".

I can only THANK the empathy, respect, appreciation, love and presence of all the organizers, dancers, students and audiences that made this tour possible. It is just the first of many other tours in Spain, Inshah Allah!

Although 2011 was the worst year of my Life, on so many levels, I must admit the immense BEAUTIES and GIFTS that it also brought me.

Spain reignites the FIRE that is already so alive inside me. Spanish always know how to TASTE and FEEL things to the maximum and I see myself in that character. The spanish side of me (the other side is portuguese and egyptian and indian and egyptian...and...and...and...and...the list would hardly end) rejoiced in every city I taught and-or performed in.

I also learn as much as I teach or more...but that s an ability of the few who have their eyes wide open and an endless curiosity for the WORLD and HUMANITY.

Time is short and there´s a LOT of work on my hands till the end of December so I ask my blog´s followers to forgive any physical absence of my part. I really only have two hands and my day only has 24 hours like the days of eveybody else.

Leaving the promise to dedicate myself with body and soul to updating my blogs (also check portuguese blog: www.joanamagica.blogspot.com where you have available translations to different languages) as soon as I finish my book and return to Egypt where a brand new country and CHALLENGES await me.

Keep updated about my events through the Facebook (feel welcome to join my second profile "Joana Saahirah II") and Youtube for video watching.

Wishing you all a HAPPY Christmas time, no matter what religion you profess, no matter if you don´t profess any religion in particular but believe in the religion of LOVE (like me!).

On tour in Spain!

Lord, I Love travelling...and seeing the great and the worst in people, places, mentalities.
This is the biggest school, right after LIFE or even confused with it: travelling... with wide open eyes.

Barcelona performance and workshops were great and a day of Barcelona city watching made me feel why you could fall in love with it. Each city has an "aura" of itself, a kind of specific colour in the air...It's so wonderful to taste these differences like distinct kinds of honey melting in my mouth.LOVE it.

Now I m in Madrid with more workshops to share and some nostalgia trips to do (I lived in Madrid for about one year while I was studying Acting with a scholarship in the Conservatoire of Spain). Ah! Also chasing flamenco shows, not the touristic ones, the REAL ones. Hope to catch one of them.

Next will be Malaga and then PORTUGAL with more events in different cities and lots of writing with a deadline over "the rainbow". MY rainbow.
All I can say is Ole!Ole! or Yalla" Yalla! which are one and the same.

Los Tarantos (1963) - Carmen Amaya, buleria

One more "souvenir" from Spain...GENIUS stuff from a PURE water gipsy dancer....Carmen Amaya!

Flamenco : Carmen Amaya - Parte 1

Saludos from Spain.

Barcelona s performance and workshop were AMAZING!!!

Madrid and Malaga are next.

Then Portugal and back to Egypt.

Lots of WORK, LOVE and PASSION.

Amen.

Next STOP: BARCELONA!

Performance and workshops. It will be AMAZING.:)

After Barcelona, Madrid will follow with more workshops and after that I will be heading to Malaga...ahh....BEAUTIFUL.

PORTUGAL will follow with Lisbon Workshops, Figueira da Foz and Oporto.

Dear Lord, I LOVE my life and feel grateful for so many blessings, my health and borrowed talents, my immense energy to CREATE and use obstacles and negative experiences as LEARNING tools and added STRENGHT. May more of these blessings shake hands with me always. NOW.

Amen.

Writing like a mad woman in airports, hotels and the air...It will be quite a RIDE!

Wish me all luck and see you around here, in my blogs and Facebook, as soon as I can manage to sit down and dedicate some extra time to cybernetic pleasures.

Sending LOVE and INSPIRATION to everyone and wishing to see you in one of my upcoming events!

What DA F..........................!!!

Daily life in a country shaped - even legally wise- by some strange (at my eyes) interpretation of the "Coran" is, not only bearable, but even interesting while you are allowed not to be immersed and brainwashed by it in a way that runs into de clinical madness marathon.


I observe egyptians are, in general, very fond of following rules, laws and traditions directly connected to their religion (may that be muslim religion or other) and yet they are flexible and seem to accept, to a certain point, other religions and individuals who don t follow the rituals they do.

Egyptians are social beings with a great sense of humour and a light heart. Usually, they will accept the differences you may find in a country like Egypt, with so many foreigners living, working, taking vacations, investing in this country.

It is all very interesting and challenging till the point when you feel that your own right to think and live with your born freedom is being taken away from you and that phenomenon takes charge of your life in the subtlest, more wicked details.
On a trip to the biggest shopping mall in Egypt, I caught myself inside of a mosque (nobody asked me if I was interested in going to a mosque or even invited me there!) listening to the preach of a "sheikh alongside my cup of cappuccino and club sandwich.

I was used to the mosques INSIDE of these public places and I accept them because everyone is free to use them or not and they don t interfere with my own freedom BUT paying good money to have some relaxing time with a friend over coffee and, suddenly, seeing myself in the middle of an enraged religious discourse was too much. Instead of the chill out music of the "Beano's Cafe" I listened to a sheikh for one whole hour, trying to convince me God knows of what with that hangry/hungry voice that only demons have.

Then I returned home and tried to speak on the phone with a friend from Portugal, barely listening to her, because the taxi driver had the "muezzin" call to prayer blasting at full power from the radio.

This morning at the gym, I was stopped from going into the "steam/kind of turkish hammam" because I didn t wear a full swimsuit.
What?!
Let s see...I am in a sexually segregated gym, meaning that ONLY women are allowed there.
I am ALSO inside the locker area (destined to showers and dressing up) and I will be the only one using the small "steam room".
YET I cannot go into the steam without a full swimm suit.
I am wearing underwear AND a towell wraped around my body BUT the danger, oh the dancer!, of having some parts of my body disclosed to the microbes present in the steam room is against the good morals of the Gym's administration.

WTF?!!!!!!

Of course I refused to obbey this crazy order, I enjoyed my steam time and complained about this episode to the girls in the entrance desk who could not explain to me why I HAVE to cover my body to be alone in a small room which is inside a locker space which is also inside an exclusively feminine gym.
I've seen A LOT in this life time. I also have an, often, inconveniently fertile imagination YET, YET, YET I cannot imagine what those dirty heads are thinking to make such a law.
What would I do in the steam room in the company of very sexy microbes?!
Any suggestions???

Am I the only one who thinks this is getting wayyyyyyyyy too much?!

Lovely Friday...(miraculous daily bits that turn reality into JOY)...

Going to the gym in the morning and teaching a bit of portuguese language to the nice, old taxi driver that takes me there. Laughing with him, repeating some portuguese words with me, like a happy, childish sing-along and listening to him thanking me: "Obrigada!" with that smile that always takes me by surprise (how can an old egyptian, poor man who has, for sure, struggled all his life in many difficulties, can STILL have the smile of a child?!).

Arriving home and feeling the smell of fresh "boukhour" (incense) specially burnt on fridays, before and after the main muslim prayer of the week around 12.00h.
The whole building smelling like the best quality saudi arabian incense...and me, being taken by that undescribable pleasure, breathing in, slowly and deeply, sighing in pure happiness.

So much of these small pleasures it is what makes LIFE in this crazy city of CAIRO so special.

My next TOUR

*(Spain and Portugal and, eventually, the Moon are on my map and then back to Egypt for shows and my new Group "Women's Empowerment through Dance").

The next 30 days of my life will be incredibly busy, exciting and challenging for reasons I can confess and reasons I cannot confess over here 'cause a girl needs to keep "something" for herself. Already expose myself 100% in my work and opinions so...keeping a very private side of my LIFE only for me and my loved ones is nothing but a mental sanity tool.

The deadline for my book's deliver to the published is getting closer and closer and there is still a LOT, and I mean A LOT of work to be done. Gladily done, for sure. But it s still hard work that consumes my time, my insides, my brain and senses, my emotions, all I have...

I will be travelling around Spain and Portugal with my laptop on my back, writing on airports, hotels, trains, coffee shops of different cities, you name it...it will be WILD (hopefully, also wonderful)!

Here are the next dates of EVENTS:

SPAIN:

* 19,20th November - Performance and Workshop in Barcelona;

* 26th November - Workshops in Madrid;

*27th November- Workshops in Malaga.

PORTUGAL:

*3,4th December - Workshops in Lisbon;

*9th December - Workshops in Figueira da Foz;

*10th December - Workshop in Oporto.

INFOS and DETAILS about all the events are AVAILABLE at the Facebook's events.

You can also find me at my second profile of the Facebook (Joana Saahirah II) and on Youtube.

To contact me directly, please send an email to dancemagica@gmail.com or to the inbox of one of my Facebook accounts.

Interview!

Follow this link to check one of my interviews about my path in Dance:

http://http//www.bellydancefinder.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90&catid=36&Itemid=1

Olé!

Spain, here I come...

First stop: BARCELONA (show and workshop).

Very happy to meet Barcelona dancers and see their way of moving, giving them my dance, world, sensibility, ALL of ME...

It is an honour, for me, to be able to share my work with the world and learn from these experiences. I agree with the saying: "You teach what you have to learn for yourself."

So it's only natural that I teach and learn at the same time. Always.

Spanish dancers, you have no idea of what/who's coming your way......:)))

LOVE to u all and Welcome to the event!

So I've said.

If you're a weak human being, your ART - whatever shape it may take - will reflect your weakness.
If you have no true JOY, LOVE, PASSION in your LIFE, then your ART will be empty of those.
I've met a few assholes who were very talented in their art (yes, there are people who are ugly human beings but manage to be beautiful in their artistic work...go figure how!???) but, somehow, that low character they are so proud of in their private lives always end up showing in their work.

For me, the connection has always been clear and DIRECT: I dance, choreograph, teach, write as a MIRROR of who I am and how I LIVE. If there is a predominance of JOY in my LIFE, then my work will reflect that. If I am going through hard times, then I will turn them into ART and produce the alchemic job of a magician, turning sadness and fear into happiness and FREEDOM. I grab my LIFE with my own hands and shape it into ART.
For that, I need my LIFE to be FULL of REAL stuff: REAL me, REAL love in all forms, REAL friends (even if the REAL ones are very few), REAL work of quality (even if I m punished for not surrendering to the dirty system that asks me to sell my body and soul to the devils), REAL tenderness, even REAL anger and sadness...

The acting does NOT substitute the REAL thing in DANCING. Many dancers ACT on stage and are convinced the trick will do. I m not so sure about that. For me, there are NO tricks, no acting while on stage. Or you open yourself and show your LIFE to your audience, or you will only be a fake, weak approximation of a dancer.

Being vulnerable is the quality of the STRONG. Having a QUALITY LIFE to share with your audiences is the quality of the RARE human beings.
Strong individuals, as strong artists.
For me, they are the same.

"The dance class"

by french painter, sculptor Edgar Degas

Shadows of my childhood following my every step, covering all my steps with the original ground I never really left behind.

My classical ballet dance shoes are still, religiously, kept in boxes at home in Portugal.

I carry with me, wherever I go, a little classical ballet shoe and some aromatic herbs one of my best friends gave me many years ago. I also take close to my heart a religious piece my grandmother offered me and a black Madonna my mum brought me from Brazil. What make these objects so special and powerful is the LOVE intentions behind them, the energy of what they simbolize for me, the wish of beloved people in my LIFE to protect me, follow me even from an enormous geographical distance.

From many years of Classical ballet studying, I kept different treasures:

1.Discipline and sense of sacrifice/hard work in order to SERVE my talents and develop them to their best potential.

2. Knowledge of my body, muscles and bones, feelings and soul.

3. The concept that DANCE is a on going work in progress and that a REAL DANCER never is satisfied with the current discoveries but keeps on moving, moving, SEARCHING deeper and higher in order to DISCOVER and RE-discover the MEANING of dance, LIFE, art.

4. What defines an ARTIST is the insatiable curiosity that propells him/her to SEARCH and never set for what's already done.

The best of egyptian hospitality.

Spending the first day of the muslim "Aid" with a friend and her family warmed me from inside. Egyptian hospitality at its best and some quality time at home, lots of food (yammiiii...."mahshy" is my favourite) and love.

This felt like Christmas in my homeland.

The beautiful aunt of my friend made sure that everybody had their plates full of egyptian food and our glasses filled with deep red, sweet "carcade". An empty spot on the plate meant a new dose of "maccarona bechamel", rice with nuts and dried grapes or any other of the many delicacies layed upon the table, cooked with her own hands and heart.

Being received with truly felt smiles, tenderness and generosity is STILL a treat of REAL EGYPTIANS. I guess it is in their nature and what a lovely side of it!

Disliked the skin and blood of killed animals exposed with pride all over the streets of Cairo.Yuck. Plus: savage, savage, savage.

A few more days to go with the "Aid", several shops are closed, lots of people on vacation out of Cairo and me WORKING, WORKING, WORKING. :) Thanks God.

And that's what I say to my baby, my mum and dad, my best friends, all my Oriental Dance students, even strangers with their hearts in their own hands ready to be delivered, myself...
Meet me in the pouring rain and...DANCE 'cause Life is way too short. Why wait for the sun to come out? Let's LIVE in the rain and, sure enough, a sunny day crowned with a rainbow will follow.:)

"As good as it gets!"

Being a professional Oriental Dancer means building my mind, body, emotional and spiritual re-actions as totally autonomous and only depending on the music and myself.

That's why it has been so wonderful and challenging to dance Tango, attend some milongas (not learning from classes but from dancing with different partners) and see myself progressing, widening my dance/life understanding through the argentinian dance.

Dancing with my favourite Tango partner is another story altogether. It is HEAVEN. It is something I wish every person could experience, at least ONCE in their life time.
As it happens in all genres of dance, there are talented and not so talented people. We all can do it till a certain extent but GENIUS dance is allowed only to a few.

And yeah, GENIUS can be defined by several ways.
My own definition goes through the ability to RE-CREATE the dance, READ the music in a personal, original way, always new and fresh depending on the mood of the moment and SHARE emotions with your partner, besides that SPIRITUAL connection that is so rarely achieved between two tango partners.
Also there are the SILENCES, often forgotten by dancers. How important it is to be able to STOP and enjoy a good, meaningful PAUSE where the imobility says more than a thousand movements?!
Emotion, silences, musicality, technique that you feel like words and not like a dry imposition on your body, etc, etc...the list is endless. When a man and woman can reach this kind of mutual quality in Tango something not short of miraculous happens.
That connection just looks sexy, warm (should I say HOT?! Yes, I should...:), tremendously physical AND spiritual at the same time.

I love my favourite partner for that.
"Fly me to the moon and let me stay among the stars...let me see what Spring is like or Jupiter and Mars..." Indeed he does. And, from the top of my most exaggerated idealism, I want to believe that is TANGO.

The remains of (the old?!) days...

Third world countries tend to be organized by a very simplistic, unfair pair of cathegories:

From one side, the rulers/bosses/masters and, from the other side, the ruled/employees, servants.

Egypt, in concrete, it 's still divided into the ones who have money, power and the social status that goes with it and the servants who tend to, blindly, obey and serve with no sight of their own dignity and rights as HUMAN BEINGS.

We all hope the Egyptian Revolution will change this reality but, so far, it still the landscape we're living in. Signs of this fact are everywhere...

Today in the morning, while preparing to go into the "turkish hammam" in my gym, I found myself surrounded by three girls, cleaning ladies of the place, ready to assist me in this, apparently, complicated task of "getting in the hammam".

One of them wanted to undress me, the other wished to hold my cloths while I closed my bags, the other one was staring at me, just observing my every move and waiting for a whim, a wish, an order to use her services.

I looked around and felt trapped. Not only invaded in my personal space but put under pressure to fit the role of the MASTER using the services of the servants.

I am not comfortable in that position.

I grew up educated in a mentality that told me we re all EQUALS and I must respect EVERYBODY, independently of their social status or any other label. I also had a mum who refused to spoil me to the extent that I had to learn how to bath, dress myself, clean my room and even bake myself a cake if I wanted one. My mum often told me: I will not do it for you because you have a functional brain and body BUT I will teach you HOW to do it yourself."

Thanks to my hard loving mum, I am now able to cook, clean, iron, embroider (yes, mams!), work for my subsistance, fix electrical devices at home, even do some small carpenter tasks, if needed. I am fully trained to take care of myself as an ADULT and I feel truly shy if others treat me like a doll who cannot bath herself. It is an infantilization of women...ridiculous at my eyes.

Serving others is beautiful but behaving like a SERVANT is something else. I asked, with a much inevitable irritant manner, that all of them would leave because I could undress myself and open the door of the "hammam". I didn t have need of a maid taking care of my every step, combing my hair and guessing how hot I wish my shower water to be.

The girls took it as an aggression, only acceptable because I am still a foreigner in egyptian land so my status allows me a good part of extravagant behaviour.

For me, it was just another side of the coin. I make a point of thanking everybody for their kind services everywhere and treating every single human being I encounter with the same respect BUT I refuse to be surrounded by servile, down headed individuals who want to treat me as their master. This has never been an honour to me but a sign of decadence.

The three girls waited outside the "hammam", clearly annoyed at my attitude, hoping the heat would change my mind and turn me into the "PRINCESS" they think they have to serve at any cost. It didn t happen. I try to make sure that it never will.

"Aid mubarak" to all my muslim (and other) friends.



I am prone to appreciate every person and occasion that brings people together for a good cause. In this case, it s the muslim Aid that, not by coincidence, opens the doors to the cold season.

Don t appreciate the crying of the animals which will be killed and eaten all over Egypt. I could dispense that detail yet the family and friends gatherings are wonderful and the good wishes everyone delivers you pretty much everywhere are also a nice thing to have. Wish it could "Aid" like that all the year round...



To all my muslim friends, in particular, for whom this Feast has a religious meaning (o.k, not every "muslim" knows about his/her own religion but let's NOT go into that cause I have enough enemies who hate me for speaking the truth and I don 't need to gather a few more!):

Wish you all a HAPPY and PEACEFUL time with your families and may this be a season of REBIRTH for us and for our beloved Egypt.

Flying high up in the skies, dancing, loving, teaching and learning what I teach, writing, singing in the shower (quite a concert, I may say!), having some fun 'cause a girl has to evade herself once in a while.

My Capricorn ascendant being put to good use now that I have to sit hours and hours by the computer focusing on my book. Persistance, the confidence in my writting which I do not always possess, stamina to strive and push my borders to the endless sea of CREATION.

God KNOWS what He does.;)

Letting myself go with the flow and guessing GREAT events knocking at my doors.

Amen!

Going...

Isn't it (just) lovely?

To wake up and teach a group of students that come from Japan at my own home.
We drink tea, work on our dance, share laughs (laugh is one of my most essencial compulsions) and emotions (because dance, without emotion, is NOT dance for me).
I look out of the window and see birds coming to visit my cats , singing for them. All is fine, no matter how many difficulties I face, all is PERFECT as it is.
Realizing this brings me an added jewel made of PEACE.

Having lunch with a dear friend in a gorgeous "vintage" coffee shop that opened across the street from my home. The smell of the cappuccinos, milk, pastry freshly baked, the humming of people coming and going, telling each other about their lives, the walls of this magnificent place covered with old photos of times that are not any more but still cling to us in their beauty.

Playing with the baby cats and their mom (whom I feed every day at the door of my appartment). Going mad with pleasure with their sweetness and perfection.

Performing at night with my men (orchestra) or going for a tango (or salsa) night with a selected group of friends, being protected by their true friendship and DANCING, DANCING, DANCING...
Working, believing all is possible, learning how to LOVE despite so many disappointments, rediscovering what it means to DANCE (which is also what it means "to LIVE") and, therefore, be sure I know very close to nothing...I think, no matter what, "what a beautiful world this is, indeed!".

Oh yeah!

If this self-image distortion is true all around the world, then you should check it in the Arab world and in Egypt. Men are educated as kings of their own homes and grow up to believe they follow the visual and emotional footsteps of Don Juan de Marco.

Women are, usually, insecure with their bodies and extremely self-critical as a contrast to the dellusional way men tend to grow up with in this side of the world.

Big part of the reason why egyptian/arab men will not understand WHY (oh, why???) a woman may not be interested in them. If women have an expiry date (like yoghurts) and are required to be clones of Barbie (with plastic surgery to go with it), men see themselves, no matter how umpleasant to the eyes they may be or how stupid or how boring "or, or, or..." as the most handsome, irresistible creatures of the whole world.

"Houston, we certainly have a problem!!

Dear Lord, how many times did I think to myself: "You re so out of my league that we even play a different sport!" but found an enormous and fierce resistance to my lack of interest in them.

To my lack of interest in most men that approach me presuming I will fall on their feet, I found curious reactions:

1. They persist on their "agenda" and keep on trying, by 1000 different games, to CATCH me (the meat they have sworn to haunt, often in front of their pals who make bets with them: "Oh, no...do you think you 're really gonna haunt this one down?!!).

No matter how many times I say "no". No matter how many boyfriends they see me with.

No matter if I tell them on their face "Not interested, thank you!". They persist and persist and persist having this crazy idea that, one day (one day!) I will wake up and REALLY smell the coffee (AKA fall on their laps).

2. I am plainly called frigid, unbalanced (what kind of real woman would reject "ME", they think?!), hermaphrodite, alien from Mars and a lesbian. I 've heard them all. :)

They find no other explanation for my rejection. (duh?!)

Damn, it's funny! But it is also worrying.

When will WOMEN start to trust and LOVE themselves and when will "some" MEN believe that not all women are interested in the first pair of trousers that appears in front of them?

When will WOMEN set their standards high and when will MEN believe that they're not a copy of Paul Newman or anything like it and that many women may not be interested AT ALL in their endless charms?

I've already had a lot of good laughs on this subject.:)

Recent discovery.

It s known I have a television which never works because:

1. I don t have time to work, keep my daily chores update, go to the gym, do my yoga, go out with friends and read (as a way of relaxing but always as a way of continually educating myself);

2. The contents of current television channels *(with rare exceptions like Discovery, History, Cinema channels, OWN by Oprah...) are, in my eyes, targeted for the mental retarded. And I mean no disrespect in this comment. I am not even referring to the so called mental retarded who are cathalogued by society and doctors like that. I am talking about the also so called "normal people" who watch garbadge on television and get addicted to it.

Recently found out a PRECIOUS site (www.topdocumentaryfilms.com) where you can find INTERESTING television products that respect and stimulate your intelligence.
Great videos of a varied array of sujects...between these videos I found one that caught my attention :" The perfect vagina", about women's newest obsession with plastic cirurgy.
It was not enough to feed women's insecurities about the bits of their bodies that can be seen by everybody but NOW there are VAGINA "improvement" operations and it seems women are running to these smart ass doctors, delivering themselves to excruciating pain in order to fit the mold they imagine is BEAUTIFUL regarding their vaginas.

Is it me or the world is going nuts?! I mean...even nuttier than it already has been for the last thousands of years?
I am in shock with this documentary and its meaning.
Women! Women! WOMEN! What the F......... are you doing to yourselves????

Oh, yeah!

"Ni Santas/Neither saints,

ni putas/ Neither whores,

solo mujeres/only women."

Arvo Pärt - Alina!

Thanks, my dear little bird (Sarita!).
If we could wrap a yogic experience, a peaceful hug from a loved one, a moment of SILENCE that reconstructs our own SELF this would be its soundtrack.
Friends are, indeed, a GIFT of heaven, specially the ones who are connected with us beyond time and space (like you, Sara).
Me and my friend Sara are very different from each other and have always disagreed on much.
We're like water and wine (yes, Sara, you may be the wine!:) and we love each other, feed other with our own - apparently - opposite worlds.

From all the blessings of our friendship (resisting time and geographic distances), this one is, particularly, SPECIAL to me.
Music, as close to silence as possible. An open heart operation where each string of the piano is, in FACT, a vein of pulsating human blood.
I sigh...breath in..............................and out................................and return to that sacred part of MYSELF where nothing is missing, no wounds have been inflicted, no past, present or future.

Just ME, a baby portion of dust floating in the Universe.
No greater gift than this one.