Erik Pevernagie

When one has come to explore the ' instant moment ' and one has chosen to savor the delights of life, which are hidden behind the curtain of haste and superficiality, then ' mental time ' is replacing ' sequential time '. So ' here ' and ' now ' are keeping hustle and impatience in check. (" Just for a moment ")

When love becomes a play of squirming mindgames or a tinderbox of mental conflicts, emotional benchmarks need an unremitting reset. ("Another empty room")

Once the dust of volcanic love has settled and the harshness of a new reality has become oppressive, disillusionment may have to be mended, wounds to be healed and emotional fallouts to be taken care of, mindfully ( "Is that all there is ?")

We are sometimes astounded by the behavior of emotional outlaws, as they act in line with their own standards, but proceed like bulls-in-a-china-shop, create one heck of a mess in their living environment and bring about shocking disturbing dissensions, ever since their inner construction clashes with our emotional architecture. (__isruption_)

Emotional illiterates, who don__ recognize the sound of a broken heart, will never be able to hear the subtle vibrations of love reverberating through the rustling flora of life. ("Love as dizzy as a cathedral_)

Between shortage and absolute poverty an ocean of shades and gradations do emerge on the scale of deficiency. Be that as it may, each stage must find a mode to leave a door ajar for the sun to peer in and human warmth to radiate. ( " Homeless down in the corner")

By confusing strategy with tactics and mixing up __hat_ and __ow_, we may have a hard time staying on point. __hat_ we want, on the one hand, and __ow_ we want to achieve it, on the other, needs a careful reading and a singular approach. (__hen the bar is set too high_)

When some claim demarcation and __egulation_, others fancy __eregulation_, preferring foxes guarding the henhouse or chicken yards with free chickens and free foxes. Friend or foe, hen or fox, anyone can have a go. (__his far_)

Jealousy appears to be a redoubtable pitfall for love, on the toll road of self-absorption and unshareability. When love has to remain cloistered and ostentatiously exclusionary, envy may show its pernicious power, cause wounding harms and unchain emotional twisters. ("Why has Shé got stars in the sky?")

We can give happiness a chance: happiness is learnable. Life is a choice and happiness is a question of focusing, hearing and seeing the right things behind the appearances. It is a matter of finding out, differencing worthiness and irrelevance, connectedness and distantness, warmth and aloofness, brightness and dimness. Happiness is the lucky potential to steer friskily along the cliffs of the unknown avoiding the obstacles of narcissism and conceit. ( " Happiness blowing in the wind. " )

Love assumes expectation and hope. All actors of the hazardous pursuit of love eagerly look forward to passing a significant cape without injuries or aching scratches: "the Cape of good Hope". ( " Those journeys of love" )

Life can be generous, but leaves us with a trilemma: How can we reconcile three diverse features: ___, 'me' and the 'others'. Since the ___ entails what I want; the __e_ what others expect of me and the __thers_ what others themselves want. The bridges between "individuality", __urroundings_ and "otherness" can be abysmal and very often waiting to be restored. (__ am on my own side, but I can listen _ )

For some, life may be a playground to undermine the brainwaves of others or simply a vainglorious game with an armory of theatrics, illustrating only bleak self-deception, haughty narcissism and dim deficiency in empathy. ("Another empty room")

Postmen have a legendary aura. A ring at the doorbell may inflame a sense of expectation, suspense, secrecy, hazard or even intrigue. Ringing twice may imply a warning that trouble is on the way or an appeal to make the coast clear. Not all mailmen, though, will ring twice and await an eye-catching Lana Turner, whom they can whisper: "With my brains and your looks, we could go places._ ("The postman always rings twice")

Love is illiterate. Whether we write it big or small, we cannot read it. We might only guess. ( "I seek you" )

Love can crystallize things. When love is in the air, distressing rain can become a wonderful avalanche of shimmering diamonds. Raindrops are transformed into a flood of sparkling crystal pearls. The power of love can convert rain into a multitude of glittering prisms. The mental seduction of love and a boundless illusion, inflamed by a profound uprising emotion, can change any ordinary incident into a radiant, luminous voyage. ( "Crystallization under an umbrella" )

While many find the new clothes of the emperor magnificent, some dare to say out loud, he is simply naked. If the clear sighted are constrained by the credulous and when the __ollowers_ are browbeating the "knowers", the cat is among the pigeons and the age of obscuration is under way. Obviously "something wicked this way comes_" ("His master's voice" )

Regret and remorse_ is a dialectic issue about what has been done, about what should have been done and about what should not have been done. ( __sland of regret. Island of remorse_ )