Village music of Bulgaria

 Bulgarian folk music, with its rich harmonies ~ a decent antidote to a desk-ridden day. Listen here.

Nostalgia for paradise

I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise.

Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.

Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound.

whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved.

I pretended to work like others from morning to evening,

but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.

For solace I escaped to city parks, there to observe

and faithfully describe flowers and trees, but they changed,

under my hand, into the gardens of Paradise.

I have not loved a woman with my five senses.

I only wanted from her my sister, from before the banishment.

And I respected religion, for on this earth of pain

it was a funereal and a propitiatory song.

-Czeslaw Milosz, Nonadaptation

Closer

Awash in the dark of night, Ioniana leaves the warm bed, garmentless, gentle tips of pale toes glide out from the safe cottage, shoreward. The cold of night, the cold of sea, erect goosebumps, impart a smile, deliver a craved aliveness. She carries questions in her chest, questions that beat against the back of the forehead when in line at the market, that drip blood as she walks a woodland trail in the late afternoon, questions that gnaw as she nods and smiles all the low-lit day through wearisome dialogues, listening to the profane but cocksure assert their truths. 

Tonight, in humility and surrender, she ambles into the black and thundering sea, this murmuration of questions having woken her: Is there anyone I can recognize myself in?! Anyone who doesn't know, yet, opposite of growing apathetic, desperately desires the knowing?! Has anyone spent years studying, listening, reading, praying to God... yet the questions go on unanswered, and they allow this without needing to fill that void with Answers That Will Do?! 

What is Ioniana to do, what are any of us to do, when we long for that highest of wisdom, access to the most crucial of truths, but remain unconvinced? We move closer to God- in prayer, in guided sleep, in devotion, in transformation of forces, in goodness and love, at least as much as we know of it. And yet...