All posts by vica

Magic of science, dresses and cakes

January 13, 2015Books I readvica

“One proton of faith, three electrons of humility, a neutron of compassion and a bond of honesty. … that … is the molecular structure of love.”
Menna van Praag “The Dress Shop of Dreams”

As that of a physicist and especially as a solid-state physicist, who has ponded upon and worked a lot with atomic structure, my heart melted when I read this in the latest book by my dear friend and writing teacher, Menna van Praag.

I fell in love with her writing before meeting her personally and then this feeling appeared also toward her when I got to know her as a friend and my writing mentor.

What I loved about this book is how magical everything appears in this book, especially those things that many would not think magical, as numbers, molecules, and labs. Even if the latter have been seemingly portrayed as clean and too well organized as in the protagonist’s life, there is quite a lot of magic in many of these scenes, especially with her scientist parents.

The actual magic, which we don’t meet in our daily lives, like 3D-movies of books when somebody reads them to us, or the dresses performing magic, becomes a very organic part of the whole world in this book, and actually as I write these words now I start to believe that with a little bit of faith the 3D-book-movies and magical dresses could be possible in our world too.

This is what I like about Menna’s books: they show us human fears and very different ways they take us, but they show us also that we have all the ability we need to find our magical ways. And whatever the chapter of the book, whether it is a love scene or a suspense piece or a slice of mystery, all of them wrapped me up in a feeling of warmth and pleasure. And utter curiosity what would happen next.

I am very much glad that there are more books to come from this wonderful writer’s pen.

More on the author and the book can be found at:

Just a boy

January 7, 2015Books I read, Books I write, Discoveriesvica

As the work on my first novel progresses (I will work with a professional editor on it in February) I feel closer to my father, than I ever did since he died. But maybe also since I have ever consciously known him. I was only ten when he died, so I never got to know him in my adolescent or adult years.

I am very grateful to having been inspired to write this book. At the beginning I thought that it was too sad or too heavy of a topic. And then somewhere (I don’t remember exactly where, maybe in “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott) I read the following advice (reproduced with my own words): “If there is something you fear most or are most uncomfortable with, write about it”.

So this is what I did and as already said, I am very thankful and glad about it. During this process, I discovered many beautiful and joyful pieces in my father’s story.

Although many gaps between true events are filled in with my imagination, or maybe because of it, I felt often as though my father was present, when I wrote this book.

I always idolized my father. I guess this feeling grew stronger after he passed away. Most people start appreciating something or someone when they are not there anymore. And this appreciation is sometimes distorted by imagining them being ideal or even close to divine. This ideal picture of those who passed make them even farther away than they already are.

We all thrive for divinity but we feel the closest to all human.

And this what happened when I researched about my father and wrote the book. I started to see him more and more human with his possible flaws and fears. And with this, his picture, memories of him became vivid and alive.

One of the sweet discoveries about my father was that he was just a boy when he was young. You might smile about this discovery and ask “Who else could he be?” So let me explain.

Having grown up in an orphanage, my father didn’t know his exact date and place of birth. So he chose both deliberately. For his birth date he chose January 10^th, the birthday of Alexei Tolstoy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Nikolayevich_Tolstoy). As many of those who grew up in Soviet Union, I knew of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy mostly because of Buratino, his version of Pinocchio. But the bulk of his work was science fiction and fantasy. As soon as I read about this, I knew that my father must have enjoyed science fiction as many children and teenagers, especially boys, do. This discovery made me smile and think: “He was just a boy”.

Fueled by the discovery of my father’s favorite author, I am now reading the English translation of “Count Cagliostro” and I simply love it. The subtle humor, the seeming simplicity but at the same time beauty of descriptions (“The wet grass in the garden looked silver in those places where the light from the windows fell upon it. The air smelled of dampness and flowers.”), as well as briefness and precise strokes on dialogues are very capturing and intriguing.

See for example the following definition of magic uttered by the Count Phoenix, also known as Count Cagliostro: “There are no miracles. There is merely the knowledge of nature’s elemental powers, namely fire, water, earth and air; the states of the substances, namely solid, liquid, soft and gaseous; the forces of nature – attraction, repulsion, motion and rest; the elements of which there are thirty-six and finally of nature’s energies: electric, magnetic, light and sensual. All this is subject to three fundamentals: knowledge, logic and will …”

But isn’t the ability to write something like this with such simple words and with subtle reflection of the world as a wonder, a miracle in itself?

Picture: my father in his young years.

Which way to go?

December 30, 2014Contemplations, Favorite quotesvica

We often hear: “Follow your heart!” or “Listen to your heart!” and “This is the clue to a happy life.”

But how does one’s heart sound? How do I recognize that I follow my heart?

Yesterday I discovered a quote that gave me a clue:

“Welch eine himmlische Empfindung ist es, seinem Herzen zu folgen.“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Interpretation:

„What a heavenly feeling to follow one‘s own heart.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

So this is how it is! Following my heart is not the condition for me to be happy. It is rather vice versa: when I feel happy, satisfied, blissful, when I am in the moment and enjoy my life, then I truly follow my heart.

This seemingly minor change, just change of sequence within a sentence, brings another interesting perspective. If the well-being is the indicator for following one’s heart, then it becomes clear that following one’s heart is not the same as following one’s dream. We often mistakenly attribute following one’s dream to following one’s heart. Dream is something in the future we hope to achieve. And we do have many happy moments before we achieve this far away dream.

Just a few days ago, I felt tired and considered all I did during that day as something that I thought I didn’t want to do. As a result a thought kept coming: “I am not following my dream. I did nothing for my dream today!” The dream being to be a published novelist. But the fact is that these thoughts were not true. I did do something for this dream that day, by editing some of the chapters of my novel. And I did also many other things, including for a dream that already came true: having a family.

It is quite funny how easy we can forget the dreams, which already came true. They fall out of our focus line. But weren’t they supposed to make us happy in the first place? Why do they fail doing so?

Or was it just my inability in that moment to look around and see the beauty of what is already there that made me unhappy? Oh, now I SEE! This is where my heart is! It is right here, right now. I don’t have to go anywhere, if I want to follow it! If I want to follow my heart, then I just have to be here with all which makes part of me, including my eyes, my ears, my brain, my thoughts, me.

Happy New Year 2015, dear readers, dear friends! Happy Being!

Picture: Our surroundings are a great teachers of being. They don’t hurry anywhere, they just are. I like the expression: “this is where the heart of things lies (or is)”. We never say, that it is going somewhere, the heart of things just is. The picture shows a beautiful park just a few minutes from where we live.

Thank you!

December 22, 2014Contemplations, Favorite quotesvica

One year ago I have written about Christmas trees and Christmas traditions I learned over the years (/born-in-a-forest/).

New Year’s Eve in Soviet times and later Christmas in Moldova can be described as a combination of a family gathering, Christmas and Thanksgiving, all in one.

And this is how I feel shortly before Christmas this year. I would like to say: Thank you!

Thank you to all readers of this blog. Thank you to all who commented and liked various posts here and on Facebook.

Thank you to all the dear friends for support and encouragement, especially to those who read all or parts of my first novel. Your cheerleading and sincere critique are simply invaluable!

And the biggest thank you goes to my family, embracing my husband, my two sweet children, our children’s grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, …! For absolutely everything!

I would like to wish all wonderful and magical Christmas holidays and all the best for the coming year!

And I would like to finish this post with a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert from “Eat, Pray, Love”:

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely for as long as we have voices.”

Pictures: our little, cute Christmas tree this year, and the most wonderful Christmas gift in my life: my little, sweet Emma.

Lessons taught by a newborn

December 17, 2014A mother's diary, Contemplations, Discoveries, Favorite quotesvica

To my birthday this week I got many wonderful presents. One of them was a notebook for my writing, given to me by one of my dearest friends, my mother-in-law. It contains the following quote on its cover:

“Das Glück ist ein Schmetterling. Jag ihm nach, und er entwischt dir.
Setz dich hin, und er lässt sich auf deiner Schulter nieder.“
Anthony de Mello

Interpretation:

„Happiness is a butterfly. Try to catch it, and it escapes.
Sit down, and it settles on your shoulder.”
Anthony de Mello

Going to the hospital for a planned C-Section meant a lot of sitting and lying down for me. Physically. My thoughts were racing. At least part of the time. During the other part, I was discovering people and surroundings around me, and my own experiences. And during this other part was when I felt most satisfied and happy. And excited about what I was discovering.

Did you know that when you haven’t eaten and drunk anything for some time, you first become hungry and only after that thirsty? And that when you become really thirsty, the feeling of hunger goes away or at least steps into the background? I might have read or heard about this before, but this time while waiting for a planned surgery, first surgery in my life, I experienced this as something completely new to me.

I had many discoveries and realizations during this stay at the hospital. The largest share of them, which was also the most beautiful, was after Emma’s birth and made together with her.

One of the most impressive experiences was the realization that Emma could teach me how to be present, to be in the moment and to be led by one’s instincts. Because they, the instincts, rule her life now, and not any, even the slightest of thoughts. Emma sleeps when she is tired, cries when hungry or needs a diaper to be changed, or simply unsecure and needs protection and being held in her father’s or my arms.

She is like a beautiful flower, robust and fragile at the same time, depending on the strength of the winds blowing at her. Like a flower, she is fully unaware of her beauty and her innocent wisdom.

This impressive experience mentioned above contained a sweet and wise behaviour on Emma’s side, which I was lucky to observe. After a meal and with clean, dry and warm diaper and clothes Emma lied contented in my arms and watched me. On that day I changed the hospital robes to my private clothes. I had a white and navy striped shirt on with a navy cardigan on top of it. At some point I noticed, how my daughter was looking at my shirt, at my cardigan and finally at the white wall behind me, then back again. She did this many times in various combinations of these three points of her interest. I realized that she was observing the contrasts in front of her. Since the hospital clothes where all white, these contrasts were new to her. So she took a long and good look examining them again and again.

In her comment to my previous blog post /true-wealth/, my dear friend Marcy has referred to the advice her doctor gave her one day:

“Stop, and smell the roses!”

What a wonderful advice!

And my sweet little daughter added another by her ability to be curious about something and study it thoroughly. This is how I imagine Emma formulating her advice:

“Go back and smell the roses again!”

Picture: the most beautiful flower in the world. My sweet Emma.