A Paris story...

Hello, my name is Eder CZ, and I am an astronaut, yes, I travel thought ideas as each one were an infinite cosmos. In fact I believe that a single mind can provide more ideas than stars in the known universe. So I like to travel through these ideas with my own art: photography and video. That’s all I have, that and my words.

I would like to start thanking you for taking the time to read this post—for that I am infinitely thankful!
Now, I know this is a social network, but I want to make this social network the most sincere one. For me at least, I want to share with you all my travels and my photographs, I want to share my most sincere thoughts and my biggest fears.

You know how you have to write a “nice and cool” caption every time you post a photograph on Instagram or Facebook? Well I always have the worst time trying to think that caption when I post something. I try to say something deep or thoughtful, but in the end, it’s not what I felt when I took the picture. It all changes when you are looking for someone’s acceptance, or likes, if you prefer that word. So here, I want to give to all of you my true thoughts, words, and feelings every time I’ve shot that trigger.

When you capture that 200th fraction of a second, you capture a whole universe of moments happening in that single shot. It is not just one moment, it is what you where thinking, what you were living, who you were loving, and who was loving you. Where were you? Who were you? Why you were happy? Why you were sad? That street, that house, and those friends. Everything in a fraction of a second.

I want to begin here with where my biggest journey began, where everything changed: Paris, France.

I was immature, young, and in love. Combo breaker. And for so long I kept these pictures hidden in the back of my memories and my hard drive.

It was September 2015. I had no idea what I was doing, though I knew where I wanted to arrive, not as a destination, but as a state of mind. A lot of people called me crazy because of my dreams, and I’m pretty sure that I am crazy, but I love that! I truly love my craziness. So there, under the Eiffel Tower, I made a promise with someone else, a promise that was broken since we opened our eyes that same morning. But we made it anyway, and that promise is the main reason that now, in this specific moment, I am so happy and so lucky. I felt and learned how to feel again, I suffered and learned how to suffer again, I loved and learned how to love again.

Ok, so I will tell you a little more about that promise, and why after so long I’ve finally decided to release these photographs.

I left my country because my mind was so numb that I couldn't even see my own dreams or my own ambitions. I was carrying a heavy energy that blocked any good thought that could come to my mind.

I traveled for some months with my ex, and we ended our trip in Paris. There we celebrated her birthday, and I KNEW that spending her birthday in Paris was her biggest dream, so we finished there.

One day before her birthday we had a beautiful walk, and we stopped at a garden. There we were just watching the people walking by and talking about our future. I knew I was going to be living in Barcelona for a while, and she wanted to study a Master on Arts there in Barcelona too... so we were talking about all that future and how we were gonna figure it all out.

We had a plan.

The next day when we opened our eyes in our tiny apartment in the middle of Paris, we look each other and I told her..

• Happy birthday. This is gonna be the first of many here in Europe.

• Yes!! She said it with the most beautiful smile.

That was my last day in Paris and we were supposed to meet again in one month for the next adventure: Barcelona.
Under the Eiffel Tower we promised to work hard, and to be together in the dark times in Barcelona. That was the last day I saw her.

We were together for six years, and some months after we saw each other for the last time, I found out she was getting married. I thought it was going to be horrible, and I cried a lot over how that left me feeling. But after everything that happened in our trip and after everything that I went through, I learned a big big lesson:

Sometimes you have to be selfish to be happy.

I am not mad at anyone. I chose to forgive everything and keep on walking, stronger, and happier, with bigger dreams and the same crazy ambitions. Some people are to afraid to forgive, because they truly believe that forgiveness is a weakness. They prefer to live into their own prison, full of hate and regrets. Hate my friends, hate can eat you alive and provoke the most horrible pain in your body. You can feel that pain, but it is also so easy to forgive; you just have to understand something.

We all are different planets, with our own storms and desserts and our beautiful seas. Each mind is an infinite cosmos, full of dreams, fears, scars, ideas, feelings, and the most important fact of each mind is that we all perceive the world in our own way. Once you understand that nobody can actually think the same as you, then you can move to the next step:

Putting yourself into their shoes.

See, when you do that, you can understand that if their pain was your pain, your past was your past. If their level of consciousness was your level of consciousness, then you would think and act as they did. Like I said before, there are so many worlds living in our world, that it is impossible to fully understand why someone did what they did, and honestly we don't really need to know why, we just need to know that love is good, hurting hurts, giving will eventually return, and that everyone is doing the best they can with what was given to them.

And in the end we all have the same goal here in life. We all want to be happy, and we all are going to find our own way to that happiness. Who is anyone to decide who is bad and who is good, and, do you really want to spend your energy judging people’s choices? Or do you prefer to spread all that love that surrounds you, and work hard on your dreams and do everything that is in your hands to be happy?

Escape that prison, forgive them and forgive yourself, and when you escape that dark place where you were suffering, you will see that the world is the perfect place to be happy and that you are in the right place at the right time to make your dreams come true. It is our choice to fly or to stay in the ground.

Paris, I’m so sorry. I love you so much, and so much time I kept you in the dark, with fear, with pain. But we will meet again and I will share my dreams and successes with you, my always beloved, Paris.

So, right now, with my heart in my hand, I give you [Muditaa] my Paris collection.

Mudita -- sympathetic joy, being happy for others, without a trace of envy. One of the four brahma vihara.

See you soon :)
Love <3

Mudita -- sympathetic joy, being happy for others, without a trace of envy. One of the four brahma vihara.

This was the park were we talked about our future.

Paris, Je t'aime

One of her biggest dream was to get to know this place, The Palace of Versailles, and in a way I feel super lucky for making someone's big dream came true.

This is my Instagram