Rites of Marriage - learnings of a made, a bride a wife (part 1)

Marriage, such an arquetipal thing.
As I've been preparing for my, I've been realizing how much evergy it holds. And that not only have to do with the bride and the groom but with the whole system in which we are inserted. So much that comes about when this word in put on the table. And it being a bi-national wedding makes it even more interesting and intense to be part of...

That is really when many of the difference comes about, the different ways to which cultures, families and each one of us relate to love, commitment and ceremonies.

All we want is to celebrate Love. To celebrate the fact of having found each other in one corner of the world. Having had the guts to say yes, to stay even in the times when we wanted to leave and go back to the constant search for who we are. Having had the courage to be two when it can be so much easier to just be one. Having had the honesty to understand that it is in relationship that I am me.

To celebrate the many lives that we have lived until now and that we are ought to live in the years to come. To being strong to holding eachother and encouraging to move forward towards becoming more of ourselves. Yet the transactions behind the fact, and the fragmented perception of our world makes it sound just to difficult and complicated. Something to be scared of or to take as a given institution that cannot and should not be changed.

In our marriage, I have learned that it takes a lot of courage and conversation to make the common ground where we stand clear and tangible, not to anybody outside of us, but to our own selves. From that place only we can decide and make it be - both in the formalities, as in the everyday life - a true reflection of our commitment. It is an evolving thing. And I am happy we have been taking it process by process.

The process of getting married in Holland was an eye opener to the different ways marriage can be conceived. Whereas in Brazil the first reaction from people is to celebrate, hug and congratulate you for the exciting new step, in The Netherlands my experience was that people reacted through their minds. They would ask us "Why?" "Why do you want to marry?", and then giving us rational reasons why marriage could be a choice that makes life more practical: like buying a house, having kids, sorting out visa issues. In our case, non of that applied! And we were mesmerized by the feeling and the fact that we had to explain we were marrying because we love each other and we wanted to commit, with all the things that it entails, to this choice of loving and building a life together.

I would get offended and feel hurt at every occasion (with friends and family) when this question would come up. it felt like an offense to my "right" to simply love and to feel that this is the man I want to build a life with, because often the questions felt so charged with other unspoken assumptions that have to do with fear, distrust and scarcity. All of those characteristics that are not embraced by love and its pure definition. The questions "why?" felt to me as questions about whether or not I was after his money and inheritance? Whether or not I had a secret plan to marry so I could have a Dutch/EU passport? Whether or not he had had enough time to meet me, my family and to know I/we were trustworthy and wealthy? How much did we really know about each other if we had only been together for so little time? Completely did not take into account the fact that we probably had spent more time together and gone through harder decisions than an average couple does in 3 years of relationship.

(to be continued)...

There is a silent (re)volution happening

There is a silent re-evolution happening
Just here, in front of my eyes
When we come together, in kindness, to be,
listening to music,
This temple of Life
Lyrics flowing as our conversations are glowing

We come in silence to hear,... the voice of our hearts is pulsing together
For no reason we know of
For no explanation the mind can give
Just the simple desire to gather
To join "both hands, both hands"

Music,
This temple of Life
where Love finds its ground,
a fertile place to grow.

Around a cup of coffee.
Maybe...
Or maybe just an excuse to come closer,
come closer to our communities,
To our friends,
friends we have lost somewhere - where the streets have no name

Here. At Voorstraat they gain meaning
Where friends are realizing dreams
and dreams into ideas
"To make it happen, right now, and change the world"

Een cup of thee, maybe...
verse munt thee or Earl Grey.
We all have a choice.
Which pick to take?
Which sidewalk to walk?
Albert Heijn or SoEco?
Puha Shop or H&M?
Village Coffee or Coffee Company?

We can go for chains...
Afterall we all come from a long lineage of one: The Homo Sapiens

We can go for individuals
The people behind the balcony who is one of your kind.

We can go for streams.
Between main and live,
I choose for LifeStream
Surround acoustic and
Gezellig atmosphere

In or out,
here, there and everywhere
Partying

We are all a part of it.

Main or live, the stream is the same...
One of a kind: from the lineage of Sapiens
That perfect blend which given a twist, poured over with some good hot water can awaken the world.

To take away or to stay
It's just a matter of perpective
The blend comes along, it is all in the grains.

Muffins, to sweeten the taste of that bitter bite, of a broken heart, or a missed job interview.

Some go for berries, others go for fudge.

Whatever your choice,
Be natural
Be mellow
Be sweet
Be there!

Poem written by Valentine Giraud during the concert of Ryan Adams @ The Village Coffee & Music in Utrecht, Holland on 13 October 2011

Blossoming of the Flowers

There is silent revolution happening
I can feel it clearer now
The gentle flowers are blossoming
Violets
Elder flowers
Beautiful grasses that have stayed on their feet for so long
Grasses that have been under our feet

I have found home
Home has found me
I've always knew that would be so
In the days of sadness
There was always a voice that said
to keep on walking
In the Art of Living

It is time for the artist in me
To be
No fear
No more repression

There is a silent revolution happening

It has all been part of the preparation
The elimination, the discrimination
So I could remember
To not forget
So I could remember to not let it melt
To remember
The Netherlands, the land of white light
that has been made dorment, by the black
Those black priests and priestesses who thought they knew
By bringing the pain they made me awake
I shall not ever die
The land of light, where there are blue skies, love and life

The dark days are gone
With no pretention
With no adaptation

Parakalo!
We are alchemy of it all
Alchemy of the soul
Divine and loving

We love
We laugh
We cry

We all like to kiss and hug
The sky is in fireworks
like the blossoming flowers
on the freshly melted Earth

We've reached just exactly where we needed to be
Our teachers - the real ones
have never left you
They knew exactly where you needed to be
They have been giving you space to walk your path freely
Who could try to cage a bird?!
Only the fools and ignorants
Do not let yourself fall

They will come to help you
We all want to kiss and hug
Keep sharing your stories
Go back to the initial plan
The greater story can only but evolve and move on
Keep sharing your stories
Keep weaving the stories
The plan is at work anyways

I am falling in love again

Returning from Lithuania- email originally sent to my co-hosting team

It has been a crazy, soft landing here in the dutchlands...yesterday we went and saw the band Counting Crows playing.

You know, I've been a fan o them for years and years... And this was the first time I went to their gig. The crazy thing is that they are still playing together after all this time, they have grown into their music and each other. They still play the same "classics" of when they were 20's - and used to come to Amsterdam to get stoned - but every so often they are re- arranging them. Because I am the kind of fan who is not on top of any new album - cause I simply like the one I used to listen when me and my girlfriends were getting dressed to go to parties - it was rather weird to be in their gig yesterday, I could not sing the songs they have been paying for so long. They have grown with each other, but I haven't. Their music is and will still be the one I used to listen to when I was starting to date, when my friends and I would go partying together. It turned out that their music is no longer theirs, but minet too. I share with them the ownership of it - in a way... Cause wasn't for me, along with all the others thousands of fan, they would not still be able to be on that stage performing their old classics remixed and their new inventions...Which probably attract a whole bunch of new fans nowadays.

Yesterday though, I had this double feeling of being a part of it as much as not. I was eager to sing and dance with them (like we do in a gig), but their songs have become so different, without me having followed their changes, that we could almost not say one phrase together. I could know what were the classics, but something in me wasn't as touched as it used to, simply because they have changed, as much as I...I wish only they had sang 1 or 2 like they used to. And truly believe they would have had the audience going crazy!

The whole experience is now making me think about us - 15 years from now... 10 years... 5 years... 1 year.... 1 week... 1day... Where do I want to be? It made me re-member that a vision is a setting point in space which can be happening now if I let go of controlling time...And just live the time of my life, every second, every day!

You have made me free again, your invitation has awaken in me the magic I had been longing for in this long long winter... Your ability to keep sharing and sharing the love, the fire, the crazyness, the seriousness, the subtle, the fear, the trembling, has trembled in me the last cover of thin ice...

(to continue click on each blue buttom at a time)

And now I am listening to the Old Counting Crows knowing that I am no longer that girl, but the dreams she had when she would listen to their stories. I've become it.

I am becoming my dream.... "with a little help from my friends"...

And now, just now, time has become time for some new beginning....

I am taking a "creative holiday" to Lithuania

Cause, once again, I am accidentally in love

Re-becoming

This has always been the most sacred place for me to share the depths of my ever changing process of becoming. I still remember when I started this blog at the beginning of 2009, as the year of great changes began, and my flying life of a sparrow would reach places that I could not yet preview then. Now, almost 4 years ago, I am sitting in Lithuania and actively deciding to keep on sharing and weaving the stories, the stories of others with my own story of becoming. Sitting in Lithuania, out of all places, the place that 2 weeks ago has awaken in me a forgotten part of myself: the artist. Another place that has become my home, my refuge and place of sourcing. The following blogs are about that finding, that re-membering with the parts of myself I had left dorment, and that had made dorment by the paths I have chosen to live in this past years. 'Cause after all, there is nothing like more human than choosing and by choosing learning, that all paths are paths and that they lead to one, same and single one, which is LIFE.

the epic story

So it now feels I am in entering an epic story, a story of struggle and love, frustration and appreciation, openess and closeness. Me and the educational system for integration in Holland. And for that I literally mean the course given by the government for foreigners willing to learn dutch to be able to integrate in the culture, the life, the land that they chose to live, be it for whatever reasons Life has made them choose.

And the reason why I say an epic is because it ain't a small story. It's the story of my life, the story of Holland at this time and age, the story of other men and women, of each and every one us, who are constantly sttrugling to find our place in the world. Moving from here to there, in the inside or the outside. It is the story of both the dutchies who have egone to discover the new world, trading merchandises, values and cultures on their big sailing ships, and whom for long in history have been out there, while been in here, making it all possible to survive and to stay in a land that used to be see. Traveling and staying has been always inheritent to these people, to the landscape of this land. It has shaped culture and behaviours in the binnenland and in the bouten land.

It is also and the story of those who have come brought by the ships, brought by their hearts, their future husbands or wives to be, the kids to be born, or/and the hard reality which they were victims or witnesses in their landa of origin (Kurdistan)

It's been frustrating, good, empowering, challenging and deep.


For long I have felt connected to the people who have left and the people who have come. It is difficult to say when did it begin... maybe at the beginning of times, my times on this Earth, my time on this existence. Since young the lyrics of Bob Marley "Oh pirats yes they robbed I, sold I to the merchant ships, minutes after they took from the bottomless pit. ... Bbut my hand was stronwant to hear to sing, these songs of freedom" Or the Brazilian song (that has become my favorite over the years): Foram me chamar, eu estou aqui o que eh ha. Eu vi de la eu vim de la pequeneninha, mas eu vim de la pequeneninha, alguem me avisou para pisar nesse chao devagarinho" The lyrics of bith songs have always spoke deeply to me... Somehting down the soul.

Between Walls and Windows

And so I sit here now in front of our yellow wall, overlooking the boxes packed and wrapped in front of me, thinking how interesting it is to realize that when this wall was painted we were 2 months to go to Brazil and South America. On my longing for sun and light to the dark and short days of Autumn I decided to paint it yellow so to make it lighter to withstand the cold and the lonely I somewhat felt within.

The yellow brought in light, it expanded the room and helped relaxing the mind, taking us to a place far away. A place where all is possible, where there is no limitations. No irony that it happened just before we set off to our journey in South America. It surely helped preparing the body, mind and spirit for the endevour ahead of us...

Now sitting with it on my back, feeling held and supported by this wall which has held us with a safe and sacred space to leave from and to come back to, I look over the big windows to the multiple options life again is offering us. The sun rising there... behind the buildings, on the left side of the street, illuminating the alley through which we go to Puha and Ah. Slowly slowly wakening up and bringing its rays to the silent sleepy neighborhood, that awakens from the misty night where Droemenland is. In front lies the future, still to be known, felt, lived, tasted to its entire existence. Hints of it we might already have and grab, the rest will come as it turns into present, on the moment by moment unwrapping of the gift of Life.

What to do now, but to trust and be grateful for the windows and walls that exist in our lives. Without one the other is not. Without the other the one is not. Walls and windows, my house, my home.


With love,
Valentine