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GRAB A CHAIR, LET'S TALK

Everyday we are faced with thousands of thoughts . We wake up with ideas already formed, and often we get up already knowing what we are going to do. We wake up already thinking, thinking…
Walking from bed to shower, or even from the shower until we leave the house, how many thoughts run through our head! Thoughts of work, family, personal, feelings of love, longing, joy or sorrow, all in a lightening minute.

The other day I was reading an article that said humans have approximately 60,000 thoughts per day, and that 48% of those thoughts are negative. I was impressed with it, and how this can affect our day to day.
Nobody is perfect, I know. Often it’s difficult to avoid negative thoughts before a situation. But the more you think negatively, the more we’ll have bad influence in our own thoughts and things will become worse than they really are.



On my nightstand I have a little calendar from the cult Seicho-no-Ie, given to me by my sister. There is a good thought and positive phrase to be read everyday. When I awake, I turn to my little calendar, sometimes still half asleep, and I read the daily message. It’s very important to put good thoughts inside of us.
Everyday, when I’m going to brush my teeth I smile at the mirror. It’s a habit I’ve had all my life. Even when I wake up not feeling well, or with a headache, or discouraged, or bored with something, I smile at the mirror. It’s amazing how a simple gesture like this can makes us feel better. A smile, as well as a simple thought , has a great impact in our mind and body.



And to notice how our body responds to our thoughts, the same way its responds to our emotions.
I’ve also read something interesting that said: “Think of something you love. How do you feel? Now think of something you hate. Next , think again what you love. How do you feel? Your whole body feels the changes depending on what you’re thinking”.

We often see people who think negatively all the time. You certainly have a friend that have negative thoughts all the time, or a person with whom you work, who always thinks negatively. Have you noticed that almost everything in that person’s life is complicated?
It’s as if there were maze of thoughts and situations inside of her. And she doesn’t know how to untie it.

There was a person with whom I worked here that was this way. He always arrived complaining of the traffic, the weather, work, phone calls, wages, wife and his children. When I saw Joe, I know I had to have an “extra positive vibration” to greet him. He was always somewhat a bit annoyed with my joy. Like he was asking himself “why are you so happy”?

I’m grateful, very grateful with all the things God gave me. In these years of my life, (that are not few) I went through difficult situations, very difficult…. But I always tried to have in front of me a picture with a beautiful landscape. I always have had in my car a CD with my favorite songs. A book on my bedside table. Flowers on in my vase. A canary to be dedicated to. A neighbor to talk to. A friend to call or write to. A hug to give (or to ask for).



And Jesus in my car, on the seat besides me. It’s true. I arrive in 10 minutes to my morning work because it’s so close to home. In these 10 minutes I put Jesus on my side, and talk to Him. Thanking Him, telling Him the news, and sometimes even getting irritated with Him (LOL). I quarrel and say: “Look Jesus, it’s not working”!.

In all the difficult moments I went through I tried very hard to not let negative thoughts dominate me.

I remember a book I read: “Pollyanna” by Eleanor H. Porter. This book tells a story about a young girl who, after the death of her parents went to live with her aunt. Pollyanna is not an ordinary child, she is an “extraordinary” child, with a bewildering joy of living!
She radically changes the lives of an entire city.

I always identify myself with the joy of that character. I have great zest for life, and my love for life supersedes any suffering. The certainty that God is always with me wherever I go, helps me deal with everything.

Sometimes I have negative thoughts, of course. But I brushed them away quickly, doing something that I like, or concentrating in something positive.
I always try to say what I feel. When one speaks from the heart, it’s difficult to do anything wrong.

As Pollyanna, I take THE BEST OF LIFE, the suite juice of all the moments, that I keep carefully within me, as a sacred safe. The sad moments I try not to remember and only leave them buried in the past, as a lesson to improve something in my present.



Everyday when I arrive at my job, I arrive happy. Happy to be arriving, to have a job. For being healthy, to be able to walk, see and feel.
We are in this life for a little while, so it’s best to spend this time in a positive way. The truth is that positive thoughts have positive results. Negative ones wears out terribly.

Something interesting I read and, a since then started doing also: a short diary of good thoughts. To sit for 5 minutes each day and write everything good that happened to me that day. It doesn’t need to be long, only concise. Something I like to remember. As I love to write, for me is easy (and I also like to reread).

I know it’s not easy to have good thoughts when something happens that takes us away from our axis. I remember once, on a hard rainy day, my daughter had gone out with a girlfriend. Suddenly my cell phone rang and it was her. She was screaming but the connection was dropped. And I was petrified…. And she kept saying: “An accident with my car, I’m in the highway…” and she crying screamed – and the connection dropped again. I called my husband, who is super calm and he said: “Mary, calm down, we don’t know what happened, don’t anticipate bad thoughts”.

I drove completely controlled, (I was surprised with reaction) and in the way there (?) I was praying and asking God to take me wherever she was (I didn’t even know where I was going). And I started forcing myself to have good thoughts, saying to myself: “Nothing happened, she is alright””. I slowly calm down, driving through the rain and could barely see. I was taking route after route, as if being driven (today I know it was true!). Everything was fine. And I realize how I felt triumphant for having controlled myself with good thoughts and not lost it.
Here are some thoughts that I like:

"Positive thinking may come naturally to some, but also can be learned and cultivated, change your thoughts and change your world”
Norman Vicent Peale

"True freedom is a pure interior act, as the true loneliness: we must learn to feel free even in prison, and to be alone in the crowd.”
Massimo Bontempelli

"Imagination is like an extra arm, with which you can grab things that otherwise would not be within your reach”
Sartre.

"I learned through bitter experience a supreme lesson: to control my anger and make it as a heat to be converted into energy” Our controlled anger can be a converted into a force capable of moving the world”.
Mahatma Gandhi

"The best and most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen, even touched. They must be felt with the heart”.
Hellen Keller

Besides the good words, always remember that the heart’s power is as big as the brain power. It depends of which we use most. This thought is Mary Fioratti’ s thoughts!

They say the heart beats 40 million time a year.
I believe mine beats much, much more. (so much emotion!).

And I finish with a thought that I apply everyday of my life:
"If you want to be happy tomorrow, try today.” Liang Tzu




Mary Fioratti

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I WANT TO ALWAYS LEAVE A SMILE ON MY PATH

Life is made of so many difficult moments. Many times we think we are going through a not so easy situation. Or even questioning if we “deserve” it or not.

Sickness, unforeseen situations, either at the job or at home, or in the streets. Situations with people that betray us, with ungrateful offspring, with someone we thought were our friend…..

What is life if not a Great Learning?

So many times we repeat “I don’t deserve it…” Of course we deserve it. God puts situations in our hands so we can learn to deal with them. So many times they are difficult, and appear to be “almost impossible” , but we circumvent until we are able to overcome it.

Is there any better sensation in the whole world than to overcome a problem? To feel that we grew and learned? We feel superior and capable.

As a teenager, I was a girl with so many fears. My fears were so big it dominated me, absolutely. A fear I had since childhood: to be separated from my mother. If I was in the street with her, and didn’t see her for one second, I panicked. And this panic followed me in life, in relation to my husband and my daughter. Or…if someone was late and didn’t arrive on the predicted time, I started feeling that panic inside me, like something terrible happened.

How are those thoughts built inside of us? Simple facts that leave us completely out of balance?

Time, patiently teach us to overcome traumas, things we brought from our childhood. I don’t believe it’s our parents, or some one else’s fault. But our own fault, the way we were shapped, the involvement we have with others, and the fight with our “ghosts”…
Everyone is different.

Many times we think we are not capable to withstand pain. And we observe and learn to deal and overcome it.

Do you know how to solve this equation?: 1/3 + 3/4 + 4/6 = ?

So we need to find a common denominator, to know the rules for adding, division, multiplication to solve find the answer to the equation.

Our life is this way. Day by day we learn to grow. At the grocery store, or at the doctor’s waiting room, at a traffic crossing, meeting a neighbor or a child. God is walking by and placing equations in front of us to solve, like tests in school…

Do you still remember the satisfaction in solving a math problem? To reach a conclusion that was just like the teacher’s answer?

Or the happiness of had done well in a test?

That’s the way we feel in “life’s equations”. And the “common denominator” has to be the good sense. Why wanting to win all the time? Why not accept the loss and live with it?

So many times winning doesn’t bring as much satisfaction as loosing. Because through loosing we reach our inner most self. We feel stricken, sad, but suddenly we surface from the bottom, knowing a lot of things that we didn't know before.

The satisfaction may not be quick to come, but it will come with time.
After the crises, clarification will come and we’ll understand everything so well, like it was written right in front of us.

Things we think we “don’t deserve”, in truth, the merit make us find it. So we can grow spiritually.

When God takes away from our paths things that we assume are indispensable, He is showing us that we need to work to understand what is really dispensable.

I know that, with all of this, I appear to be a conformist. But I’m not. I’m always searching to understand all the messages God send us. To read through the facts. And sometimes I rebel also. But I always end up learning.

I’ve been asked before: “Are you always this happy?”. No, I’m not always happy. I try to convey to people the best of myself, and of everything I see. But, yes, I do have my sad and thouthful days. I have my deceptions and insecurities.
And I try to work hard on it.

And the essential is “the way” you deal with it.

And fore mostly, I learned something, that for me, is my motto:

"Leave a sign of joy where you pass" (Chico Xavier)



That’s the way I am and I try to always leave a smile…

(Besides, have you ever seen me serious in any picture?)


Mary Fioratti

SMILE YOU ARE BEING FILMED

When the plane is about to land I feel that “thing” inside of my heart. I can see the sun through the small and limited peephole near my seat. I follow the landing with emotion!



I can’t explain…my heart beats fast…something warms my soul right now.

Getting off the plane and gliding down the aisle and hearing: “Welcome to Brasil”, something agitates inside of me, a desire to smile nonstop.

I got in the Brazilian Only check line, proud to be in that queue. I show my passport and I’m motioned to go. That gives me the right to step in my Country’s soil. Blessed passport! I look for my bags, bumping into people and even saying “sorry” instead of “desculpa”.

The greatest happiness is, after going through Custumes, to go to the first bar to get a Guarana. I can’t relinquish this! I sip slowly this taste of Brazil. It goes down my throat, this familiar taste of my childhood, family and friends.

This time I’ve discovered that there is a bus that leaves Guarulhos airport directly to Sao Jose dos Campos. No one was waiting for me. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming, but my two siblings. I handed my bags to the driver and was about to get in the bus when he asked: “Lady, can you please write your name in the ticket”? This was new to me. I did it, got in the bus and to my seat.

From the window I kept savoring the landscape, every bit of it. So many memories from Sao Paulo, streets, sky that has a beauty you can’t compare, I don’t know but the Brazilian motion is different. A hubbub…a different buzz. An energy that rises like a little smoke.

I rest my head on the seat staring melancholic out the window. A mix of joy and sadness. Sadness to live away from my country…joy to be back.

The bus stopped to pickup passengers. Everyone that got in had something different to say to the driver and this made me think and compare how different things are here from the United States. Formality reigns in the States where in Brazil prevails a spontaneity that captivates me.
- “Sir, thanks for stopping! I thought I would never get a bus today.”
- “Good morning and thank you. What time we arrive in Sao Jose”?
- “Would you please stop quickly at Frango Assado”?
I closed my eyes concentrating in that language so familiar to me. There I was just like everyone in the bus. Nothing different from them. Same communion of feelings.

And the bus went through that so known landscape. Parts that I’ve never forgoten, was running through my head like an old movie.
Frango Assado and it’s delicious bread.

Kodak on the right. Johnson&Johnson on the left. Restaurante da Gruta and those divine salami and melted cheese sandwiches.

I stepped in my sister’s house and right away changed to my jeans and t-shirts. Barefoot reached into my bag for my flip-flops. There! The world could end because I was already happy.

And the days went by cheerful, soft, sunny.

The family gathers for a Sunday lunch. Hugs, joy, guitar music, singing, happiness.





Laughter, conversations, hugging and a delicious meal prepared by my dear Mada!







A lunch filled with warmth, genuine laughter and yearning.

Next day I left early morning for a walk down the street. What a pleasure walking on the sidewalk feeling the warm sun. Cars passing by, horns… the corner bakery, where I bought soda water. Went back to walk breathing all that energy.

Every day I was there, I tried all kinds of food from places that sell them by the weight. I can’t say which one was the best.



I ate “coxinha”…. too many times to remember.



Went to a farmers market, killing the nostalgia of that sight of stalls full of fruits.





Meeting my mother’s side family in Marilia city, where I was born.

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Meeting my friends, the hugs, the emotion!





Such is my Brazil, full of energy at every corner. Can’t help but notice the rhythms of the Brazilian heart, because it beats hard. Stop! On the streets people mingle, the joy is contagious.

My Brazil, how I love you, with all the letters!

After I returned to the US, I became depressed for two weeks. I missed the streets, sidewalks, that blue sky, the heat in the streets, the freedom. The bodies seems to move in rhythm, there is no barrier. When I talk to people, the language comes from my heart to my mouth. I don’t need to think. Only to talk. Just let that magnetic wave to invade me.

I hug the street with my eyes, wrap all that green in my soul.
The agony inside of me knowing that my world is divided, and I’ll never be the same again.

But you, my Brazil, will always thrill me. In soccer, or carnival. Or in cyber cafés, in food, at the malls full of life. At the sidewalks, in the bus…tasting the most delicious coffee in the world, attesting life at every corner.

In the gaze, in the smile. In a hug.



Smile, you’re being filmed. You are in Brazil!




Mary Fioratti

SENSATIONS

There was a silence
that cut the night
in a soft melody of goodbye
magnetized bodies
seeking only
the longing for pleasure

There was a kiss
wet, half-broken
that rubbed on the lips
the uncontrollable fear
in the acid saliva
hiding the senses

There was a word
hanging in the air
between parted lips
and the surprised expression
between the delirium of nothing
in the connected sweaty hands

There was desperation
in mismatched gestures
in the eagerness of search
shattering truths
naked bodies in bed
depleted of emotions

There was a semblance of hope
in that sideway smile
that expression of love
forgotten in the face
that appeared by chance
in the dark room


Mary Fioratti

THE REASON AND THE HEART

This morning
when the silence wraps me
I seek rational answers for this feeling….
and I think why reasoning
if in the silence of the night
we only hear our hearts?
you leave and I hug your absence
your body tepid with desire like mine
At this moment
I want to forget the anguish
and make you understand only
that the moment our lifes crossed
something happened
it doesn’t matter the differences
while the mind thinks
the body feels
do not put your thoughts
on a clipboard
do not delay in life’s equations
adding or subtracting
our differences
do not be lost studying
our bodies biology
when the chemistry
surpass any argument
dive today in this intense feeling
of trembling bodies
and stuttering emotion
be aware of this joyous moment
when the heart beats
oh! What love is this? that thumps in my ears
with its whispers
and brings this desire so big
of making you happy
now lay your head on my shoulders
free your dreams
leave your heart in my arms
if our paths crossed
if our eyes met at this so far
it’s because
there was a reason


Mary Fioratti

WHEN I THINK OF YOU

When I think of you
I feel like a mild chill
making a pathway
on my back
and comes to die
on the smile of my lips
my eyes become serene
as if staring at a cloud
hanging in the sky
it seems I see you coming smiling
with open arms and right steps
taking me in your arms
kissing my mouth
looking at me without promises
When I think of you
stars fall as soft rain
on the sidewalk of my heart
Then the sun comes out
and shines almost golden
behind that enchanted mountain
where my loneliness lives
there is an intertwine of fingers
touches of caresses
and mischievous kisses
of bodies seeking sensations
When I think of you
my soul starts singing softly
And I get this look
this ethereal expression
of someone who forgot everything
and only remembers to dream

Mary Fioratti

DISGUISE

tear that insists in
balancing on the eyes
and stunts
back to its origin
and when the throat
swallows dry
and the heart
is pained in a spasm
it comes back
flooding the iris
and stays strongly secure
priceless and absolute
to the world’s invisible eye
tear that insists
to be shown
emotion reluctant
to be exposed
words almost written
but deleted
and the tear
persists flickering
insecure
painful
waiting
.
.
.
for the pain to go away
but in an innocent oversight
stumbles in my sobs
and rolls
down in my face




Mary Fioratti