What is happiness?

Today, the 16th of August.

Today, I was about to sit on my uncomfortable wooden chair ( I don’t want to drag my nice comfy chair from my studio to this room) in front of my lightened screen, when I saw another person is now following my blog. Fantastic and I clicked on his name and found this quote very interesting.

"The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow" Kurt Vonnegut. The cool bass player image is 28 years old...holy crap. Malcontent and gobshite. 49 years down and still struggling to find that identity and walk the right path.”

Yes man, how right you are, 40 plus years I have been travelling and promoting others in need of support like the immigrant and the Asian women in Denmark, Bradford. The youth, the children, the old, the people in the then fighting for their liberation, countries in South East Asia, Africa and elsewhere. I have done nothing then promoting, supporting and giving my time and energy and money to different causes and I am still struggling to ‘sell’ my own skills. Art, poetry, novel, photography. I have lived in this beautiful country for the past  20 years encouraging people to create art and not destruction. When I arrived in the land of the Shakespeare, Tudors, Kings, Queens and Robin Hood, great poetry, films, literature, I was simply gobsmacked. Gob is a slang for face, so to be smacked in the face, means stunned or taken aback. Flabbergasted. Surprised. Caught off guard or flat-footed. Holly Christ, Guru Nanak,  Shiva and the naughty flitter, the Lord Krishna.  I know, I know I shouldn’t drag the pious names of these ghods (god+ghost=ghod) of the past, but I have been smacked on my gob many, many times before, metaphorically and physically. I’ll tell you more about it later when it is suitable to tell! But  I was simply caught off guard when I first arrived in this country.

“Where is your ticket?” I didn’t have a clue where my bloody ticket was? I just wanted to get out and breathe, especially when I had been travelling all the way from India, Denmark, Africa and landing in the middle of a provincial town, Bradford, so cool that it was frozen in a time zone! It was September the 3rd, 1992. The crescent moon, the pendant branches of trees and the inviting hands of nocturnal sky offered a mystic, soothing glow to my inevitable destiny looming ahead as I had stepped down at the platform.

“Could I see your ticket please?” He repeated.
I looked in my big bag, then my purse. I couldn't find it. I must have used it as a bookmark.  It was snuggled up between pages 82 and 83 of my Danish novel, “Sort Te Med Tre Stykker Sukker”, the story of a Turkish immigrant woman written by Renan Demirkan.........

"A very strange place to put your ticket,” he said and looked at my heavy baggage. His broad pale West Yorkshiran face flexed with anxiety.

"Oh, yes indeed." I smiled.......

A bit more from my novel Svera Jang:

Et par ar efter modtes de ved et tilfaelde igen I spisevognen I inter city toget fra Frankfurt til Koln. Han havde………….”

“Coincidentally, they met again in the dining compartment of an inter city train from Frankfurt to Koln. He had gone to attend a seminar with some colleagues. He had lost some weight, his broad forehead had become taller and he had become round shouldered. "I have a new family now”, he said and spread some photos of his wife and children on the table. His new wife was from his birthplace in Turkey. “Are you happy now”, she asked him.
He became quiet, put his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair.

"What is happiness? I am satisfied-at least for some time”. He squeezed the tea bag, added some drops of lemon essence in his cup and smiled”.

So what is happiness, reader? The blogerr, the poet, the writer, the artist?f
Do I know what it is now? Do you?
Have you got it?
Can you let me know where to ‘get’ or ‘buy’ it?
Can I tell you how?
Who knows........ see you soon......