Hello God!
Thank You for today’s smiles around I am going to enjoy. Today is amazing day. I have met the smile man in the morning and I am in hurry to share with you his story and smile.
This movie is wonderful and definitely worth 9 minutes of your life. Please enjoy!
Have a nice day!
Hello God!
Thank You for the questions we are not able to find an answer at this very moment of our personal development. My question is “What If something had never happened?” Today I am thinking about “What If the World War II had never happened?”
I am from Belarus. My country was suffered by World War II badly. It is hard to imagine but “in total, Belarus lost a quarter of its population in World War II including practically all its intellectual elite. About 9 200 villages and 1.2 million houses were destroyed”. Every Belorussian family has a member – participant of this war.
The portrait of Hitler in my educational background was definite and unequivocal as monster tyrant and embodiment of all possible evil. I am stumbled and dumbfounded by Hitler’s paintings I did not know about.
Before he waged war on the world, Adolf Hitler was an upcoming and unsuccessful artist. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907-1908), because of his “unfitness for painting”.
After the rejections from the Academy of Fine Arts, he was recommended to study architecture. Following this recommendation, he intended to pursue architectural studies, yet he lacked the academic credentials required for architecture school.
Hitler wrote in his diary: “In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy’s architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.”
Hitler’s personality is complicated. Everybody knows that he was a military tyrant and a murderer, not that he actually had great potential.
Hitler did not create all horror of the war by his own. Unfathomable myriad of factors, like the circumstances of the time, people thoughts, fears and hopes created the reality where Hitler was possible.
We are creating the reality where we are possible as individuals realizing unique potential to knit our every next moment. We have to be responsible for every thoughts and decision and always remember about Butterfly effect.
Could the professor of the Academy of Fine Art imagine the consequences of his decision to reject Hitler on the exam?
It seems I have found the answer on my question I was thinking about today. What If the World War II had never happened? If Adolf Hitler had been attended to the Academy, if the World War II had never happened, my life was not possible, I had never had a chance to write this words and meet you.
I am grateful for this possibility to live and your being with me now. Thank you!
Hello God!
Thank You for Your Inspiration to invent and create an ice cream which is the life saver in hot weather. I am a troubadour today and my ballad is devoted to the Prince Ice Cream. Oh, Tram-param-ram-ram:
The loving child of King Ice
And Queen Milk
The Price Ice Cream is
Charming Dream.
He is blessed by Sugar and Vanilla.
Banana, Strawberries and Cherry
Always smile with Him in pleasure.
Romantic Flavor tickles
All hearts in happy dance of
Strings in Rainbow’s Harp.
He is young as April’s wind
Blowing and dispensing
Happiness around.
Thank you for this pleasure to share with you a cone of delicious ice creme in our happy summer today!
Hello God!
Thank You for the sky where stars twinkle all the time of our being. We are under Viennese sky again. I love bright and pulsing light of Elfriede Jelinek‘s Star Genius.
She is genius in her fragility beauty and intellect.
I think Elfriede Jelinek is the only woman who is gifted to open with pianist’s sensitivity complicated puzzled and mystique universe of Woman. To emphasize a fragility and beauty of woman let me accompany this post by nice paintings of the pianist (La Pianiste in French). She does not afraid to tell the truth about the banal and domestic horror of everyday life where woman can live and just how pathetic and awful we can be. Her “Women as lovers” is picturesque, I recommend to read the novel. Perhaps because “Very few women wait for Mr. Right. Most women take the first and worst Mr. Wrong,” Elfriede Jelinek explains in “The Piano Teacher”.
Her intellect is confirmed by The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004 “for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power”.
Jelinek studied music intensively from an early age. She graduated from the Vienna Conservatory and studied theater and art history at the University of Vienna. In a 2004 interview Jelinek explained, “My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.”
Francis Day “The Piano Lesson” (1895)
“I have a feeling that you despise your body and that you only value art, you only value your argent needs, but eating and sleeping aren’t enough. You believe that your appearance is your enemy, and the only friend you have is music. Why look just in the mirror, look at your reflection, you’ll never find a better friend that yourself,” Elfriede advises in “The Piano Teacher”.
Pianist by John Michael Carter
I am listening miraculous music in her language: “When discussing Bach’s six Brandenburg concertos, the artistically aware person usually states, among other things, that when these masterpieces were composed, the stars were dancing in heavens. God and his dwelling place are always involved whenever these people talk about Bach.”
By the way “The Piano Teacher” was made into a feature film in 2001. This movie is unforgettable.
At the piano by Frederick Childe Hassam
“The world would be a lot better off if it paid more attention to its philosophers and artists than to its own tiny egotistic spirit, which lacks an overview. People should place their belief in Beethoven and Socrates”, Elfriede writes in “Wonderful, Wonderful Times”
Marguerite Gachet At The Piano by Vincent Van Gogh (1890)
Thank you very much for our walking under Viennese sky. Our hearts are beating in unison because from now, from this very moment, we place our belief in Beethoven and Socrates to make our world better.
Hello God!
Thank You for my dreams I see every night. I love to laugh in my dreams. Last night I saw wonderful and happy dream. I had met on the sofa, oh la la, with enigmatic Mr. F. We were laughing aloud until I had awoken and opened my eyes. Funny Mr. F. makes my happy today. Ha-ha-ha, it seems the dream have predicted that I am going to read the article “Playfulness and Humor in the Psychoanalytic Relationship”.
“In 2001, Time Magazine referred to Mr.F. as one of the most important thinkers of the last century. And in 2006 Newsweek article called him “history’s most debunked doctor” I am surprised by so ambivalent approach. Could you guess who is funny Mr. F.?
My previous posts were about Vienna and you know to think and write about this legendary city is impossible without light of its intellectual stars. The brightest from them is “father of psychoanalysis“, everybody guesses, Sigmund Freud.
“Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love,” Sigmund writes about his brain child.
The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e. make the unconscious conscious. He believes that nothing you do occurs by chance; every action and thought is motivated by your unconscious at some level.
A Freud slip is defined as a written or spoken mistake that brings insight to one’s unconscious desires, idea, and drive.
I have seen this wonderful design of chairs in Austria. What is your “free association” about the photo below? I associate the picture with a place of meeting of fishes from different seas like important diplomatic mission or group therapy as in “Finding Nemo” cartoon.
Sigmund Freud developed the use of “Talk Therapy”.
In psychoanalysis, the patient typically comes four times a week, lies on a couch, and attempts to communicate as openly and freely as possible, saying whatever comes to mind.
I love this joke:
Neurotics build castles in the sky.
Psychotics live in them.
Psychiatrists collect the rent.
Freud Sofa is below.
“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?'” Freud puzzled.
Prada, Prada knows the answer, dear funny Mr. F.
Thank you for your smile and happy mold (oh, Freud slip, I mean “mood”) :-)! I keep my happy mold (mood) because of you.
Hello God!
Thank You for my sophisticated tongue which is able to feel chocolate symphony by my whole existence. When I think about chocolate I can create a joyful poem devoted to your smile.
Pleasure lives
Where Sugar is loved.
Chocolate orchestra plays
When soul is full…
I am a conductor of
This Symphony.
It seems we are going to spend our weekend in the legendary city of pleasure. Vienna as unthinkable without music as unimaginable without its famous desserts.
Franz Landtmann opened Vienna’s most elegant Café in 1873.
Landtmann Cafe is known for many meetings of leading industrialists and politicians in Austria, and the preferred coffee house of, such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Peter Altenberg, Felix Salten, Emmerich Kálmán.
It is wonderful experience to listen and try conducting the symphony of desserts in Landtmann Cafe. I recommend.
And now, Ta Dam! Ta Dam! we are close to the culmination of Chocolate symphony: Zaher cake!
Sachertorte or Zaher (photo) cake is a specific type of chocolate cake, or torte, invented by Austrian Franz Sacher in 1832 for Prince Wenzel von Metternich in Vienna. The Prince have declared, “Let there be no shame on me tonight!” The torte created by Sacher have delighted Metternich’s guests, and the dessert received further attention.
I am reading the recipe as music scores for orchestra. Oh, I see the theme: chocolate, than crescendo Chocolate, than fortissimo CHOCOlate! I love that: “a layered chocolate cake filled with apricot jam is coated in Chocolate ganache and finished with a CHOCOlate glaze.”
Applauses and ovations to the orchestra and conductor are from grateful audience. Thank You for coming in my concert hall. I am grateful and happy to see you.
Hello God!
Thank You for Friday. Today is going to be your happy Friday because we will immerse in the city of pleasure. This is Vienna. I have been in Vienna and I must say this city is the hymn to pleasure and “the only city in the world which would have been unthinkable without music”.
Tram-pa-pa Tram-pa-pa, of course, we are feeling the rhythm and joyful motive of Waltz. And I am sure in 99% we are singing some melodies from Johann Strauss II masterpieces. Strauss wrote over 400 waltzes, one of them mirrors the mood of Vienna: “Wine, Women and Song”!
“Wine, Women and Song” is a hendiatris that endorses hedonistic lifestyles or behaviors. In modern times, it is usually seen in the form “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.” (Hendiatris is a figure of speech used for emphasis, in which three words are used to express one idea. (from wikipedia)
The Waltz King Johann Strauss II was born in Vienna, the son of Johann Strauss I, another composer of dance music. His father did not wish him to become a composer, but rather a banker. Nevertheless, Strauss Junior studied the violin secretly as a child. Vital force and Inspiration are stronger than parent’s will and, fortunately, we have a happy chance to listen and sing the wonderful and light motives from Johann Strauss the Son now.
Vienna’s centrally located Stadtpark features a prominent golden statue of Strauss playing the violin. Everywhere there is song and sound.
“It was the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; of Brahms and Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. From it had emanated the Strauss waltzes which flowed around the world, everywhere preaching the gospel of life’s enjoyment in three-quarter time,” Max Graf writes in “Legend of a Musical City”.
And, as in all fairy-tales, life there is easier, more brilliant and more exciting than anywhere else.
The waltzes Johann wrote for Vienna’s glittering balls, or for its charming cafes and gardens, made the waltz the world’s favorite dance, and made Vienna itself the most romantic of cities in the eyes and ears of the rest of the world. Vienna is the city of pleasure we are immersed now.
I do hope your today’s Friday is happy because the waltz’s motive in your head. My today’s Friday is happy because of the hymn of pleasure I am singing now. Thank You!
“Who does not Love Wine Wife & Song will be a Fool for his Lifelong!”
Hello God!
Thank You for our perfect antenna to receive and send a signals to the Universe. Once by the signal I had recognized my personal place of power. I am lucky to send my signal to you to empower your life and thoughts now. So we are here. We are in Linderhof, Bavaria.
This magic place is one of three castles of the King Ludvig II. We have met him in his Neuschwanstein castle already. Today we are sharing pulsating fibers of Power of this place in the moment of “now” in whole its essence. We have to be frozen for a while to feel the sharpness of our Personal Power.
The Great German philosopher Goethe says that architecture is frozen music. What’s a magic sounds we are listening now!
Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti said that the same characteristics that please the eye also please the ear.
Musical terms such as rhythm, texture, harmony, proportion, dynamics, and articulation refer both to architecture and to music.
Rhythm in music is patterns of sounds in relation to a beat; repetition of elements – openings, shapes, structural bays- establish regular or irregular rhythm in architecture.
Musical texture refers to layers of sounds and rhythms produced by different instruments. Architectural texture appears in different materials.
Harmony is balance of sound or composition and balance of parts together. Proportion is relationship between parts; in music it is distance between notes or intervals.
Dynamics is the quality of action in music or in a building’s facade or mass.
The French Sun-King Louis XIV was an idol for Ludwig. Linderhof was built by inspiration of Versailles.
The symbol of the sun can be found everywhere. Sun is golden. We all are the Kings and Queens of own monarchy. For Ludwig French notion of absolutism was the perfect incorporation of his ideal of a God-given monarchy with total royal power.
Our Total Royal Power, as music and architecture, demands rhythm, texture, harmony, proportion, dynamics, and articulation. Our heart’s beating is rhythm. Full accepting of life in its diversity is texture. Feeling beauty around by every cells is harmony. Keeping the balance is proportion. Moving toward dream is dynamics. Manifesting our unique ways is articulation.
Yes, I am feeling my Total Royal Power.
I was so frozen with you for a moment later that I have forgotten about my coffee. Now it is cold, and it does not matter. I am empowered now without usual dose of caffeine, because of you.
Thank You for your Power to change me and the Universe and make us better and better every moment of our heart’s beating.
Hello God!
Thank You for a wonderful time we are spending our lives in. We live in fantastic time when we have a possibility to learn Renaissance, to walk in Florence and to share our impressions worldwide immediately. We are lucky to live now.
“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves,” Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince”. “It’s a handbook for gangsters.” Francis Bacon said about Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
The Lion’s side of Machiavelli is well known. But what about fox’s side?
Fifteenth-century Florence was an exciting place to be. Renaissance is blooming and beauty is the ruler. Nicollo Machiavelli is a student of human nature, “a witty man and a very ordinary husband and father who enjoyed love affairs and filles de joie,” Miles Unger writes in “Machiavelli: A biography”.
O,la,la it seems we see a fox’s side in him!
Everyone knows Niccolo Machiavelli’s status as a great politician, but few are also aware that he was a first-rate playwright and satirist.
His play Mandragola (probably written around 1519) is one of the outstanding comedies of the Italian Renaissance stage.
The plot centers around a wealthy doctor of law, Nicia, and his beautiful wife Lucrezia. Callimaco, a young man, hears about Lucrezia’s beauty, and decides that he wants to become her lover. He learns of the couple’s inability to produce a child, so (with the help of his servant Ligurio), he disguises himself as a doctor and informs Nicia that he can produce a potion from the mandrake plant that, if taken by Lucrezia, will enable her to conceive. However, as Callimaco warns Nicia, the first man to have sexual intercourse with her will die from the effects of the potion. Luckily, Callimaco knows a man who will consent to have sex with her and bear the punishment of death. Nicia consents, and (along with Frate Timoteo) persuades Lucrezia to do the same. Callimaco disguises himself yet again, and is able to have his way with her.
The play is a brilliant comedy. It is also amazing to learn that it was performed successfully in 1520 before Pope Leo X in Rome. The fact that the play celebrated sex and seduction, and totally ridiculed the clergy as frauds, bothered him not at all. In fact, the Pope liked it so much that he asked Cardinal Giulio de Medici to award Machiavelli a commission as a writer.
For a good summer night I would like to recommend the movie “La mandragola” (1965) by Albertto Lattuada. The film quite deservedly was Oscar nominated for Costume Design but also deserved a nod for its excellent cinematography. You will enjoy it, I promise!
Thank you for living your moment with me now.
Hello God!
Thank You for a beautiful meetings with a beautiful people on my Way. Today is a wonderful day because I have met and inspired by a French Woman. “Like a rose, a woman is a woman is a woman. And the French woman enjoys being just that,” said Veronique Vienne.
All my mornings are magic. As usual after my morning piano class and before my first cup of coffee I read something like “365 interesting facts”. I was stumbled by the fact of today: Jeanne Calment acted in a film at the age of 114 and gave up smoking at the age of 117!!!
“Jeanne est jeune” in French I named this post means “Jeanne is young”. I think Jeanne Calment as a truly French woman would love the compliment I said. By the way at age 121, she released her two CDs, one in French and another in English titled, Maitresse du Temps (Time’s Mistress).
What’s a pleasure to immerse in French charm, elegance, vividness, and share with you my mood by accompaniment of beautiful photos by John French!
What did Ms. Calment do, that you and I can duplicate for health and longevity? “She never did anything special to stay in good health,” said French researcher Jean-Marie Robine. Calment herself credited an occasional glass of Port vine, diet rich in olive oil and chocolate.
She also recommended laughter as a recipe for longevity and jokes that “God must have forgotten me.” ( L’Oubliee de Dieu?). “I’ve only got one wrinkle and I’m sitting on it”. (Je n’ai jamai eu qu’une seule ride et je suis assise dessus.)
For skin care, she recommends olive oil and a dab of make-up. “All my life I’ve put olive oil on my skin and then just a puff of powder. I could never wear mascara, I cried too often when I laughed.”
Internationally, researchers are fascinated with Calment for both her longevity and her vitality. They attribute her longevity to her immunity to stress. She once said “ If you can’t do anything about it, don’t worry about it.”.
She took up fencing lessons at 85 and rode bicycle until 100.
She quit smoking only at 119, but her doctor said her abstinence was due to pride rather than health — she was too blind to light up herself, and hated asking someone to do it for her.
The next story I am amazed by is fascinating and charming, only French woman is able to do it. “In life, people sometimes make rotten deals,” said Jeanne about this deal.
Mrs. Calment left no heirs. She also outlived Andre-Francois Raffray, a lawyer who 32 years ago, when she was merely 90, bought the apartment she used to live in on a contingency contract. He would pay her 2,500 francs (now about $400) a month until she died, and then the apartment would become his.
Mr. Raffray died a year ago at 77, after paying Mrs. Calment more than $180,000, better than double the apartment’s market value. His family was still paying when she died.
Quote on her 120th birthday: I took pleasure when I could. I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I’m very lucky. I am happy to share with you this light touching of Jeanne’s life. Thank You for your smile.
Photographer John French
Glorialana Magazine 