Sylvester

The sky has been clear the whole day, the air chilly and sparkling, the winter sun shining as much as it could afford. Enough to make one regret that it's the last day of the year.

For once, a peaceful handover to the new year. No sensational discoveries, no exotic destinations, no exciting encounters.

In this hamlet on the side of a forgotten mountain in South Europe, a blood red sunset closes dramatically the show of another year in our lives. A good one or a bad one? If 2010 is the benchmark, outperforming was too easy a task. 

A number of memorable events, people and trips, sure - and a few others better to forget. Tomorrow will be a beautiful day and another opportunity for a beautiful start.

Christmas three - or four

So this is Christmas. And so it is gone.

Buying presents, visiting family, eating too much, getting a flu from one of the kids, maybe.
Same as one year ago, nothing like the years before, not sure about the next ones. Christmas in Rio next year?

I'll be gone soon. A Christmas tree too big to decorate will overstay me here.

1984

When I was a child, we used to make the Christmas tree every 8 December. We were dreaming of the day when we would have a real one and not the plastic one fitting our living room - and surviving us children's ability to raze anything within our reach.

When I was a child, you wanted to be a "Duran Duran" or a "Spandau Ballet" fan. I liked them both and then they sang together a beautiful Christmas song. In my childhood, also "We are the world" was a Christmas song. And the Gremlins were a bit scary.

Now Christmas is coming every year but at the same time it is like not coming back. Childhood, for better or for worse, will never come back. Waking up on Christmas day to open presents will not come back. Simon Le Bon and Tony Hadley will never sing together again. Parents will not come back again.

Yet, I see no reason for not making a Christmas tree every year by 8 December, and for not leaving its lights on to have them welcoming me back home in the evening. Perhaps, a good thing about childhood memories is that you can pick what you like and leave the rest in some forgotten corner of your new self.

And my 1984 Christmas can come back whenever I decide it. Here and now, for example :)

Pas de deux

Today I fulfilled one of those childhood wishes, which are rooted so deeply that they have become just another part of you. Today for the first time I watched Čajkovskij's Swan Lake.

Sure, I could have a word for the too lateral seats, the stinky neighbour, the unflattering theatre. But then the lights went off, the oboe started playing the Swan theme, the harp gently accompanied the dance and nothing else was left to feel, just the harmony of the music and the melody of the moves.

Ballerinas' tutus are one of the most beautiful human creations, the perfect body of the dancers is one of the biggest human achievements, the tense muscles are among the most elegant sources of emotion, Odette and Siegfried's pas de deux is one of the most touching representations of love.

Most amazing of all, all this was there, inside me: it had always been there, with that amazed little me who first heard the leading theme, a couple of decades ago, and remained hypnotised forever.