Spirit of the River

When I still lived in New Zealand, and also during my first year in the UK, I often dreamed dreams that included Lucy Lawless. Not Xena, but the actress herself. Last night, I had a dream that surprised me because I thought my years of dreams about Lucy Lawless were over because the last dream I had about her felt like the end of a series. The dreams were telling me a lot about my life, especially now that I am looking back at them. It once more makes me wonder whether our dreams are more than just random images and stories that come to us at night.  In the beginning: Lucy Lawless as an unapproachable, distant star My dreams in the beginning were usually set during conventions or shows, e.g. concerts during which Lucy was the singer. I was always only part of the audience, and as much as I wanted to talk to Lucy, and ask her questions about life, I never had the chance to get anywhere close to her. I was simply a powerless spectator who wanted something she cou...

Seeing that many people are going on about dates these days, and because my last article was about imaginary relationships, I thought I'd follow it up with my list of dream dates (and I felt like treating myself to browsing through nice photos!). If these people did really exist, then I'd definitely like to meet them! I restricted the list to ten people - after all, there are quite a few lovely fictional characters out there. This list is in no particular order. Aragorn (Lord of the Rings) : preferably the Strider version because he's far too clean and tidy when he's king. I liked him when he was still a bit rough around the edges, and still was full of doubts.  Bard (The Hobbit) : I think this needs no explanation. Most of you know what I like about him. Faramir (Lord of the Rings) : Here I prefer the book version because they changed his initial motivation quite a bit in the movies. I think he is a very sweet character. Auron from Final Fantasy X: D...

Sometimes, you need the help of a wise friend. A discussion on Facebook gave me the idea to write about imaginary relationships (which includes friendships, too, it's not all about love). Most of us had such a relationship at some stage in our life, some of us had a more detailed one, and others just had thoughts like "What if...?" Some kids had imaginary friends, other kids didn't. An imaginary friendship is defined by the fact that the person you day-dream about either doesn't exist or has no interest in the kind of relationship you are interested in. In many cases, the person of desire is a famous person or a fictional character that simply is too good to really exist in life. And this is what I am writing about here: I am not going into imaginary relationships with people you actually know - because I think that can be quite a dangerous topic, and it can also create problems in relationships as they actually are in reality. But what about your daydre...

While this is not really a love letter (which would be privately addressed and for the eyes of one person only), it is a blog post about why English means so much to me. People often ask me whether I ever plan on going back to Germany, and when I say no, hardly anybody understands. And I usually don't explain because I know that only very few people would truly listen and understand my reasons. In this blog, I do not explain why I do not want to live in Germany, but I will explain why I want to live in a country where people speak English (and basically, Germany's not one of those countries).  It has nothing to do with English being one of the most influential languages in the world. It has nothing to do with English being more beautiful than other languages (though to me it is). My reason for loving English is because to me it is the language of life. The language that gave me hope when there was none in my life. It is the language of the people who taught me mor...

After I decided to continue using this blog instead of my WordPress blog, I had a look at my old posts, and decided to write a follow-up article to one of my most popular posts: about being like Xena. I am not sure whether it is the images or the actual text that attracted visitors, but no matter what the reason is, it has turned into one of the most visited posts on this blog. When I wrote the older post, I was still living in New Zealand, and in a way, I was stuck in a rut. Only now that I am looking back at what I was doing (virtually just being stuck in a daily routine), do I realize that I wasn't getting very close to being like Xena. Yes, I was tough, I was the one people turned to when they needed advice or help, and I dealt with my problems on my own.  But I was not very proactive when it came to changing my life. I was letting other people just treat me the way they wanted to treat me. I accepted negativity, I accepted people taking advantage of me. All because I th...

To Lucy Lawless:  Thank you for all the work you have done and everything you will still do in the future - on the screen and off the screen. Thank you for inspiring people all over the world and thank you for being a positive influence in my life. The background for this post: I was just reading a list about 100 things to do when you are sad and one of the points was to reach out to the people who inspire you but do not know that you exist. For me, blogging seems the only way to reach out in some way - in a way that the people who inspire me might not know about either even if I tried to get the link to my blog to them. If you aren't really lucky, it is hard to tell people how they inspire you in a way that they actually get to see. If I was a rich person, I could try to do some research about where my special people are at a certain time, hire a plane or a big advertisement space in a city and put a message on an "ad" or let a plane pull a message behind it. Bu...