Crowds

   No, I’m not weird… I just like to watch people. The crowd has so many faces and so many different stories to tell. All you have to know is how to listen. Very few people know how to do that. Most are so caught up in their own little miserable existence that they forget how to see or hear… or even feel.

   I see a girl walking down the street – head held high, but her eyes are looking down – eyes filled with so much disappointment and anger it can make your soul weep. She looks almost as she has lost her way, as if her world crumbled in a blink of an eye. No one sees her, no one is looking. Only me. Then for a second she raises her head and looks around – probably just to remember where she’s going. Though it feels like she is reaching out for someone who isn’t really there. Can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking… I bet she has so much love to give…

   On the other side of the same street there is a boy. Walking like he doesn’t have a care in the world, staring everyone straight in the eyes as he passes by, like he is searching for something he doesn’t really need. He laughs and whispers something to his friend. As he turns, his eyes stop on the girl. He keeps them there for a second longer than needed and then looks away, smiling as if he’s mocking her. Yeah, that’s probably the guy who broke her heart. No one notices but me...

   Switch their places and you’ll have a different story, from another place or time. It could be yours, mine or nobody’s - doesn’t really matter. For most people all it will ever be is a tale about two faces in the crowd…

  As I sit there I'm looking at all the people passing by – everyone in his own little space and time, just like me. All of them are afraid to look at each other as if they’re scared of what they might see. Maybe they are afraid they’ll recognize themselves in other people’s stories.

  Crowds – painted in gray, but at the same time so diverse and full of memoirs, waiting to be written. Chronicles of life so mysterious and yet so fragile. We are all part of a crowd – friends, families or just the people walking on the same street as us. You only have to remember that those crowds are made of individuals and if you'd stop and stare, you’ll see that behind that gray curtain there are stories, so colorful and anxious to be told.

“A Journey to the west” or why I chose this title…

   For most people “West” is only one of the four cardinal directions on the map. But that simple word can mean so much more – a journey one starts when he opens his eyes for the first time. In many different cultures, divided by miles and miles of water and earth, that place where the sun sets is so sacred and desired.

   In Chinese Buddhism, the West represents movement toward the Buddha or enlightenment (like in Masters Wu’s “Journey to the West”). The ancient Aztecs believed that the West was the sanctuary of the great goddess of water, mist, and maize. In Ancient Egypt, the West was considered to be the portal to the netherworld, and is the cardinal direction regarded in connection with death, though not always with a negative meaning. Ancient Egyptians believed that the Goddess Amunet was a personification of the West. The Celts believed that beyond the western sea ,off the edges of all maps, lay the Otherworld, also known as Afterlife. In “The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, moving West has sometimes symbolized gaining freedom, as with the settling of the Old West.

   Some may not find this interesting. Others will say that this is a useless heritage of a lost and even forbidden symbolism. But this is not about religion (really!!!) – it’s about a phrase that I think gives a simple, yet true representation of life. Isn’t a child’s first breath like the sunrise in the East and isn’t a person’s death as painful as the sunset in the West? At the end of that day, all that matters is how you’ve lived, what you’ve learned, who you’ve become and most importantly – what will you leave behind when your star sets in the horizon of your own journey to the West…