His heart

His heart is what it was before;
a taste of strawberry liquor
a simple child;
moody, in silence and tears;
a fire congealed with senseless cold;
a lake of fears
a field of gold.

Text and photography by M. Bealby. All rights reserved. Title of today's picture: Xylokastro.

...The bus stop...


This morning, on the way home, I started chatting with the old lady who was sitting next to me waiting for the bus.

'Come again?!', she repeated.

Several minutes later, as our conversation was ready to come to dead end, I yelled to everyone who was at the bus stop in a very cyclothymic way :

'I wish I could speak!'

and again:

'I wish I could speak!'

Then I apologised for my funny English accent. It was a very personal thing.

Needless to say, everybody looked at me like I was mad! Except of the poor old woman who was looking... rather sad and lost in her own thoughts. She coughed a couple of times to clear her throat, then turned to me and said:

'I know how you feel, my dear. It's fine. I just really wish that I could hear!'.



Text and photography by M. Bealby. All rights reserved. Title of today's picture: Causeway House, Lichfield UK.

...Fear not!...

There must be an exit somewhere out there.
This road is broken in half.
People are thirsty for revolutions and beating.
It's called the Grand Civilised War of the Coke era.
It comes in red and white,
to treat the wounds and open thousands more.
Someone screams in the hearing of an ambulance hooter.
The radio plays loudly the noisy songs of 69.
The kids feel the glory
of being astronauts for a day
feeding the inhospitable mud
with the footsteps of their trainers
as they run to escape.
The night will come early.
Finally, the winter will sprout
like the early bulb flowers of amaryllis.
The issue is always left untouched.
Untouched as the whispers of the timids.
Fear not! No fears!
Simply our soul's bonfires and tiers.


Text and photography by Marsia Bealby. All rights reserved. Title of photograph: bikes of Amsterdam.

My little story about Sheffield...

My life is changing in such a drastic way that I run after it like a fool. Everyday is a number: yesterday it was 61, this morning it was 60. My nearest and dearest make it clear that I am not a child any more and I have a number of responsibilities. Information keeps coming to me in the form of emails and letters, but everything new - I swear - I can hardly chew and metabolise.

Sheffield was a relief. It made me discover the power of myself. In fact, I had forgotten how to process the power of myself. That conference made me open my eyes again. (Uncertainly...) was it the conference itself or the fact that I was all alone for a while? I wouldn't know. It had been ages since the last time I was all alone, in a room, talking loudly to myself and pulling my own leg.

Also, I discovered a lovely place in Sheffield city-centre. I used to spend ages there looking at the trams that come and go. People who were passing by would thing that I am a villager who had never seen such a technological miracle before: the vehicle on the tram lines moving and making noise like a modern monster, with a Cyclopean eye on the front and an antenna to support itself towards the sky... (there is no gravity on the hills of Sheffield, hahaaa).

In reality, it was not the trams I was looking at. It was the tram lines. I took a picture to show you and the moment I was taking this picture I suddenly felt like Antoine de Saint Exupéry sketching a boa that had eaten an elephant...and definitely, not another hat, not another grey hat...

This is the picture. Not a great picture, I know, but for me it is a very special one. You can clearly see my dilemma in this picture. Which way to go? Right or left? After all, life is like an Y letter. We should spell it LYFE, not life... and there are so many decisions of 'right or left' we need to take during our 0 to 130 years...



As about me, at the point I had to chose right or left, I chose to follow right. It took me to the train station. I waited and waited and waited there... until I decided to catch the train to Gainsborough. It started snowing. The snowflakes had an early April sunshine trapped inside them. One of these snowflakes was wearing a white wedding dress, moving nervously here and there, up and down...

And that was my little story about Sheffield...



Text and photography by Marsia Sfakianou. All rights reserved. Pictures taken in Sheffield.

...Atlantis...

Atlantis was a mythical place. I find it hard to believe that it ever existed somewhere in the middle of the ocean. In my dreams its location is somewhere over the clouds, not underwater. It has happened to me to see weird things over there, every time I routinely travel on the airplane.

Once I imagined the cyclopean walls of Atlantis encircling huge chimneys and rectangular buildings. One of them, possibly an altar of a mysterious fertility goddess, had set at defiance all known natural phenomena. It was an immense rhomboid construction with symbols and unknown alphabets on its external metallic walls and it was flying there, over a crown of fire, sparkling towards every direction. It took me some time to finally realize that the 'chimneys' were not chimneys but tall and impressive trees, with trunks made of various metals and branches made of big nails and screws, whereas their scant foliage was made of flags and banners.

I reckon that every building had a number; something like a code, to mark it and make it special, as all buildings were exactly the same. That number-symbol was written with light rays on the flat roof of every structure.

The king of Atlantis was a landholder, cultivating his land by giving orders to thousands of ant-formed robotic subjects. Their wages were payed in promise, little papers with prays and the head on the queen on them, reassuring the robotic creatures that the divine power is with them. But there was no hope. Because...



All things are instant, but when you add moments together you create duration. Energetic fields are nothing else but joined instant moments or particles. Moreover, everything - from chakras and states of mind to practicalities and social phenomena - has two opposite ends, two poles. Love, for example, is an instant moment of survival that can be expanded either to an eternity or to an annihilation. However, at this point I have to inform you that time in Atlantis was nonexistent. Concepts such as past and future would not mean absolutely anything, as dimension of time was infinitely small. For that reason there was not day and night in the Atlantian's mind, there was no movement in his thought, even though in reality everything in Atlantis was made of movement, light and noise. Feelings were also nonexistent, as souls were dominated by the powerful kingship.

Despite the technological progress, nurtured by the common belief to the unknown goddess, that desperation of peoples' thought lead to the death of their civilization. First the poles conspired against the center and soon the center was broken into pieces. Then, poles were desolated and perished due to self-destruction. All the tall chimney treas and the rectangular buildings were lost in the condemnation of timelessness. Atlantis was a mythical place, after all.


text and photography by Marsia Sfakianou. All rights reserved. Title of photograph: pot in gray scale and color (collection: Greece, 2007).

...Fore-tellers...

I saw them kneeling on the earth
barefoot, their mouths dry
their nudity their only clothes to wear
Prophets with long ash-grey hair
and their voice of why
spat out with their breath

Star-like dolours heart their eyes
it's time for you to compromise
regrets are flying in the air
to wash away signs of despair

Text and photograph by Marsia Sfakianou. All rights reserved
Title of photograph: grandma's house

...Bless you, mother...

I love him so deeply and purely and that I have denied the dusts of my past. Years ago, I used to sip life so typically, in a way that a nervous and anorectic girl would do, but since I met him I learned to taste every day and every little moment with the greediness not only to breath and survive, but to live; at last, to live.

I cannot face any happiness without his happiness next to me. I cannot face a second without him holding my hand. My love will last for an eternity and a day.

My new country, my paradise, has no borders but the borders of his heart. My children. . . I can see my children in his eyes, even before they get born.

I wanted to thank you, mother, because you gave birth to him; you raised him, you fed him, you stood next to him when he was ill and sad, you bought clothes for him and you sent him to school. I wanted to thank you, as you prepared him for me as the best present I could ever received. God bless you.


Text and photography by Marsia Sfakianou. All rights reserved. Title of photograph: memories of Aggistri island, Summer 2006.