I am not a gift...I am a surprise :)

Really Beautiful!

Beautyfull....

Happy holloween..

What the amazing pictures with the water.Anusual is this shapes of this water and colour of this in this picture.Wonderful.
loves nora
Happy halloween.

They are extremely wonderful,especially this one with the flower and the last one looks very tasty.

It is exactly an egg. Yulenka, are you at home now? Maybe we will meet together by the fireplace drinking coffee.??

Maybe it will be an occasion to drink coffee together by the fireplace. I have dreamt of having balcony and fireplace at home but have never had them.My home is very small without balcony and a chimney so I can't have a fireplace only central heating and not good too because when it is frost it is nearly cold in winter. I would like to have the fireplace then..

water flowers

If you will have too cold in your country house I have hot tea for you.

My dear Yulenka.One day it will be an occasion to drink good tea together.Now, we can drink in such the way.It is pleasure too.We always can meet without an occasion.

I always feel the same meeting you.
loves nora

Я в душе йестем ребёнком и Я люблю цветной мир и сказки тоже, потому Я всегда имею что- то сказочного .То выдаваетъ меня , что мир ист оченъ цветной каждого дня.Мало Я вижу эти серые дни.
Толъко посмотри.Разве то не йест красивый?

Спасиба.Я оченъ рада что Я могу читатъ по Руске и что Я понимаю что ты пищу.Спокойной ночи Уленка

Добрый вечер Уленка. Чтоб Твоё желания исполнялись каждего дня и чтоб бы каждый твой день был полон успехов тоже, но помний тоже об отдыхе потому что от этого зависит здорове. Я имею надежду, что однако Ты находишь немного времени на отдых и только тогда каждый твой день будет радостный и .Тэго удачны.Етот Я Тебе желаю..Теперъ Я могу упражнять мой рыский язык.Как ты думаешь ? Кое-как мне идёт?Спасиба моя дорогая Уленка.Много объятие.

We close our eyes to much of the beauty in this world, because we do not know how to digest it, where to store it, what to make of it. Much ugliness goes unseen for the same reason -- information overload. To digest this world and appreciate it, we must approach it with our feelings, not with our eyes. It is not what the droplets look like that matters: It is what they feel like. Imagine you ARE that droplet, transformed, refracted, reborn -- then you can understand WHY the droplet holds beauty.

If this comment is helpful, perhaps we can talk further someday. I visited the Soviet Union way back in 1982, and fell in love with it -- especially with Moscow and Kiev (now Ukraine). I meant to return, but never did. I visited because I wanted to do something to resist the madness of war-making. I continue to view the Soviet Union as a land of the heart, but I've also learned that there are some things that the heart doesn't see.

Thank you, yulenka -- or should I call you Yulia? Cpaciba! Zdstravuitza! I haven't used these Russian words in 27 years. Can you feel the time? It is a curse, but it feels like a miracle, because it connects me to a distant lost world. Time divides us, but it also bridges a chasm and makes me one with a person I now hardly recognize. Can you imagine a bridge 25 or 27 years long? -- what a wonder!

Yes, I am thrilled by your response. Suddenly, your web page has become three-dimensional. The butterfly leaps off the page, and it is no longer "just" a butterfly.

One of my mentors taught me that the world was not made BY god: It is made OF god. And so the living things on your page are pieces of god, pieces of the divine.

But as I suggested in my first message, there can be too much beauty, too much of a good thing. We need ugliness too, to keep us grounded -- it is the contrast that enables us to appreciate beauty and find a place for it. We cannot see the mountains, unless we are also willing to see and love the valleys.

Is your city Moscow? I remember fondly VDNK and the Ostankino tower and the wide boulevards -- Mir Prospekt -- the sweeping vistas. It was like being on another planet -- a much larger planet, Jupiter perhaps. There was grandeur, and also dignity. Coming from America, I was not expecting to see this. It was not something I could imagine. There was the fantastic love of culture -- there was a statue of Pushkin, for example. There were the gorgeous subways, more like churches or cathedrals.

There were the weddings at the war memorial -- the war that claimed 20 MILLION lives or more, the war that reduced a third of the country to rubble. It is the Soviet Union that defeated Nazi Germany. The U.S. then took the credit, and most Americans today know nothing about this war. This obliteration of TRUTH is one of the many heart-breaking things to be endured here. Of course, truth also suffered greatly in the Soviet Union, but at least you KNEW you were being lied to: Here we swallow the poison without a second thought. Yes, there was the war -- the wound still wide open, forty years after the fact. I was touched -- EVERYTHING was touched by it. The word mir (peace) was everywhere. This is what Americans were taught to fear, night and day.

This place that I saw was a fairy-tale land. Thinking of it now brings tears to my eyes. This is the horror of time: It devours whole worlds. So much life, buried and forgotten, hidden yet still alive. No: immortal. Just pull back the curtain on the past, and suddenly: We are THERE! It is still THERE!

I think we have a lot to talk about. What do you think? Please feel free to visit my blog and comment. Tell me everything.

Thank you for your invitation, Yulia. And thank you for giving me a chance to tell my 1982 story. I fear the memories will someday be lost. I'm glad I could share them and thus return a little of what the Soviet Union has given me.

Yes, I did get to visit St. Petersburg, but only briefly. It was at the end of our trip, and I was not able to judge the city fairly. That's why I did not mention it.

Here, I will call the city "Leningrad", because that is what it called itself both in 1941-1944 and in 1982, the year I visited. In my possibly faulty impression, Leningrad seemed much too "Westernized" -- too much traffic, too much commercialism, too much punk rebellion. Because the government of the Soviet Union was corrupt and oppressive, people in the Soviet republics naively idolized "The West". And Leningrad seemed to be leading this "Western" rebellion.

I live in the "West". I KNOW that the streets are not paved with gold here. If we continue to sacrifice our infrastructure, soon they will not be paved at all. I understood the need for an alternative to Brezhnev, but I also saw much of value in the Soviet Union. It seemed to me that the rebellious people of Leningrad were eager to throw out everything -- the baby and the bathwater. That is one of the problems with rebellion and revolution: We reduce the world to black and white. Here in the U.S., it is "Us and Them", "We" being the "Good Guys". In Leningrad, I felt a similar "Us and Them" outlook.

Again, Soviet people had good reason to be cynical -- but there can be too much cynicism. It is naive to think that the world is nothing but roses, but it is equally naive to think that it is nothing but thorns.

Leningrad, I thought, was moving too fast. The heart moves more slowly. That's why I preferred Moscow and Kiev. Do you see any soul in Moscow? Today, perhaps not: Perhaps everything is now commercial!

Your message, however, enables me to recall a different side of Leningrad. Your description makes me think of Boston, where I once lived. I used to walk along the Charles River and revel in the copper sunlight glinting on the water. There were graceful stone arch bridges. There were picnics in the grass.

For me, yes, there can be too much beauty also. When there is too much of something, it loses its value. It overwhelms us. We choke.

I love sensitive music, but I seldom listen to it -- because it is too powerful, too moving. I want the music to stay fresh.

"Here I am!" -- I like the way you say that. The morning and you seem to belong together. I too love the company. I feel like an astronaut exploring a new world, or returning at last to my homeworld. Yes, company exists! Here we are!

+( I was in Kiev...and I can say that it is really one of Russian cities! It has its soul...and its soul is really Russian soul,not the soul of my city. The soul of Petersburg is not Russian...it is German,Holand... )+

You are absolutely right. Petersburg does feel much like Germany and the Netherlands! Our first stop in Europe was the Amsterdam airport. What struck me was the cosmopolitan flavor -- e.g., the announcements in three different languages. Leningrad had the same flavor. And I see the German character too, in the buildings, and in the attitudes -- the curtness, the intensity. Now I can begin to see why you love the city.

So it seems that we are BOTH looking at Russia from afar.

Kiev is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. Chernobyl was a crushing blow, and still is.

About Moscow, we disagree. I love grandeur! -- that is where the soul of Moscow lies. It seems to me that the Germans and the Dutch do not have such a fondness for grandeur. They live on a smaller scale, and they are practical people. I am not! At heart, I remain a romantic, a dreamer!

I think the poverty of Russia was worst under Yeltsin. That's when the Oligarchs were stealing everything. No wonder the "West" loved Yeltsin so much!

Thank you for listing other posts that may interest me.

A great set of Pict