Ipe Tree near my house. Sep 2010

This post is supposed to be the first in a series o bilingual posts (English and Portuguese).
I really hope my friends cannot find new excuses to be silent.
So, please, leave a comment. It will make a certain Aline VERY HAPPY!

MY FRIENDS ARE THE LEAVES OF MY TREE!

There are people who make us happy simply because they crossed our path.

Some travel by our side, watching many moons passing by, but others only are only seen now and then. All of them call friend.

There are several types of friends. Perhaps each leaf on a tree can be one of them.

The first bud is the friend- father and mother. They show us what life is like.

Then comes the friend- brother, with whom we share our space for him to flourish as we do.

But fate has other friends in store for us, who we did not know were going to cross our path. Many of these are designated best friends.
They are sincere, true. We know when they’re not well, they know what makes us happy …

Sometimes one of these friends lights a sparkle in our heart and is then called a boyfriend. They make our eyes shine, bring music to our lips, leaping to our feet, but there are also those friends for a while, maybe during a vacation, or even a day or an hour. These tend to put smiles on our face, so long as we’re around.

Speaking distance, we can not forget the distant friends, who are on the tips of branches, but when the wind blows, they appear again among the leaves.

Time passes, the summer is gone, autumn is approaching, and we lose some of our leaves. Some are born in another summer and others remain for many seasons.
But what makes us happy is that we can feel they are around…somehow, enriching the roots of our tree

Memories of wonderful times.
Wishing you…. leaf from my tree, Peace, Health, Love, Success, Prosperity and more …

Today and always .. . Simply because: Each person in our life is unique. They always leave a bit of themselves and take a little of us. And this is the greatest proof that two souls do not meet by chance.

THANK YOU DEAR FRIENDS.

Aline Martins

How makes me suffer, your words with no sound
They do not come from your mouth, but from the heart
My thoughts make me blind, give me pain
I feel the anger of hypocrisy, love is lost
Storm of consciousness, see the hunger vanish
Confused feelings, see the hunger pray
We should face the cruelty
Hold hands, dig, dig and sow
Yes, sow bread plant love
Facing the selfishness to stop the pain
Telling to the winds of lies – that keep on destroying the truth-

You! Selfishness, go find something else to do!

Let the love come and the truth emerge
Do not let shadows be your life
Nor the joy of life be lost
Let out aloud, what is in your mind
Scream and say
Life without life is a punishment
If you dare receive my kiss

See! Humanity embracing love!
Then we would never hear soundless screams
I wonder
Have you ever heard a lost cry flying?

by Aline Martins

Can you hear that wonderful sound?
Believe, it’s me, dreaming
of you holding in your hands, the harp of life
The strings are vibrating with a passion, with the love

If the sound had smell, it would be the smell of love
the scent of a rose, which comes from you
in the garden of life
where you are the most beautiful flower

Do not deny you love me, I can feel it
in the tenderness of your hands
In your body, like the sound of the harp playing
Sweetness, is to be embraced in your burning kisses
Listening to the harp and your poetry under the moonlight
The day will have more light, I see it eventually (in my dreams)

Listen to the strings vibrating, shaking the body as it comes and goes
As the bee and flower, honey sucking the sweetness the garden possesses.

My Tattoo

Aline Martins

Synopsis: Where do dreams go?

Jenny is still upset about loosing the best storyteller she ever met, her grandma.
To make things even more difficult, they are moving to her Grandma’s old house, at least -she thinks – she might find someone to tell her grandma’s stories.
But she has no idea what kind of friends are waiting for her in a house where the doors are as huge as giants and the rooms always lead to magical places.

And for my curious friends!

Excerpt

When she got the key, she looked around, and the only thing she thought about was picking inside the room once more. “One more time” she thought “just one more time”.
And she opened the door.

“Granny?” Jenny murmured, taking in shallow grasps of the cold air.

“Do you want to play with Granny?” A said a soft voice with glee.

Jenny stepped inside the room, closing the door slowly at her back. “I won’t take long, and nothing can happen” she thought.

Suddenly, other voices joined the first one, all of them whispering at the same time,
“Jenny, we know you are here, we know you are here”.

“Who are you?” asked Jenny choking, this couldn’t be a joke.

“Jenny, my darling” said a very familiar voice.

“Granny?” asked Jenny.

“Did you come to hear new stories Jenny?” the other voices joined what seemed to be her grandmother’s voice.

Terrified, she tried to run away, but she tripped over something and fell to her knees.
“You’ll never get out of here Jenny,” said one of the voices.

“This is where they send you when they don’t need you anymore” another voice said.

“You don’t want us anymore Jenny, you put us here to forget us, but we want you”, they said in unison.

Jenny thought she could feel cold hands around her wrists, holding her, while she could hear her granny’s voice behind all the others, and it said “be careful, my dear, you should not enter the fairyland without following the instructions”.

The other voices were still around her saying “We want to play, we want to play”.
“Granny?” Jenny shook all over trying to get rid of the cold and the fear that was making her choke as if all the objects in the room had their hands and fingers on her.

But, just when Jenny became convinced life was over, and there was nothing else she could do, a whirlwind escalated and suddenly disappeared.

Jenny was confused, she could not figure out where she was, or if she was standing, floating or lying on the floor, all she could feel were the cold and the weight of the silver key on her hand. She closed her eyes for a while, trying to forget, only listening to the sound of her heart.

When she opened her eyes and looked around, she was not in the attic anymore, but in her bedroom, lying on her bed, holding something so tightly in her hand,something that was hurting her. The key.

by Aline Martins

Today I am sovereignty,
I am Morrighan, Bouddica, Macha … I am woman
in my body, is the ancestral blood
In my mind, the ultimate inspiration
in my soul, the energy of all those who marched my breeding ground, and walked not in vain

Today I am woman,
I am the one who collects the spoils of battle, who fertilizes the earth, who curses the unworthy … I am Sovereignty
in my body, the smell of lust
In my mind, memories of dancing moments
in my soul, a mixture of energy, light, passion

Today I am a druid,
I am the one who walks among the cries of war, amidst ancient forests, between worlds … I am inspiration
in my body, seeds of creation
In my mind, the light of Awen
in my soul, magic, strength, gratitude

Today I AM….

Aline Martins

From which races, I am, was and will be?
Which colors and creeds, which luck?
How many lives lived and will live?
Died and will die of how many deaths?

How many loves and dreams and hopes
How much faith, how much pain
was I Mom or Dad, of how many children?
how many torments, and horrors?

How many children have I cried, in so many wars?
How many children have I raised and was happy?
How many bodies, how many waters, how many lands
did I touch, kissed, love and was root?

And how many times yet, to give me?
How many lives still to be reborn?
How many mouths, yet to be kissed?
How many deaths, yet to die?

Yet, conformed, I sing the song
The march, the mission, the pain that screams
And I got butterflies by my side
Made, like me, of Love and Land! …

Aline Martins

If you want to read my Nano Story, please leave a comment, I will need some beta readers for December.
Aline

This is the kind of thing that inspires me more and more.
Bellow is Neil Gaiman’s pep talk to all the WriMos!

(for those who want to read what I am writing, please send me a message)

I’ll leave you with Neil Gaiman now,
Aline

Originally Posted by: Chris Baty on 11/18/2007 at http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1065561

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

By now you’re probably ready to give up. You’re past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You’re not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You’re in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more—and that even when they do you’re preoccupied and no fun. You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

That’s how novels get written.

You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interlocking stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It’s a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn’t build it it won’t be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”

I was shocked. “You mean I’ve done this before?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.”

I didn’t even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it.

So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Pretty soon you’ll be on the downward slide, and it’s not impossible that soon you’ll be at the end. Good luck…

Neil Gaiman