Random Thoughts On a Wednesday Morning

It is a gloomy Wednesday morning in the city of skyscrapers I call my home. The sun is invisible, hidden under extensive sheets of cloud that shapelessly and starkly embroider the firmament. Seeing it now you would not even guess its watchet past, its wooly cloud infested corpus stretched taut over a happy looking green earth.

I have often found myself gloating on the atmosphere and the colors of the day: the greens unleash creative thoughts, the blue vintage memoirs; I find brown sanctimonious and grey difficult to interpret. A cool breeze playing on my face during an evening walk makes me stop and savor the sweetness of those balmy fingertips. As I abstract myself from virtual reality and delve into the indwelling actuality of the world, I feel more real myself. There is no cooked-up happy thought to allay my disturbed senses; when pain comes I must accept it as frequently occurring episode. For days I have been following the news of the great deluge that unleashed havoc in Uttarkhand. Having once visited the shrine myself as a young lady, I feel the mayhem of nature as something too emotionally disturbing  to handle. The sight of the corpses inside the peaceful temple, the sight of death in such close conjunction with impressive natural beauty, surprised me. I still remember how apprehensive I was of climbing the steep terrain that led me to Kedarnath, for the road is unpropitious and even dangerous. I can still see the silvery river snaking at the foot of the hill, the same river otherwise calm that has burst into deathly activity like some dormant volcano coming to life. Maybe nature too has a breaking point; may be it too reaches that stage when the elastic band gives out and there is a tear. The country steeped in corruption and crime, the environment reaped off its milk and rendered scarred and marred by human hands may have caused even the gentle sleeping god to awake and dance his dance of death and destruction. This is a purely romantic view, I know, but not being an atheist or an agnostic, I am prepared to consider all possibilities—logical and illogical.

The video footage flashing on television news channels of two-storied buildings crumbling like a house of cards remind of Dan Brown’s Inferno, a text I just finished reading. The antihero of the piece is bent on relieving the earth of its surplus population. But we don’t approve of such arbitrary excision, such amputation of human life on a massive scale. I wish we could communicate with the supramundane agency and ask it to rear life not unleash death and suffering. 

My readings of Renaissance literature have made me regard, though momentarily, Sir. Thomas More’s Utopia as a thing possible; who knows, I say myself, in some future time may be we can have a perfect country with a benevolent government unheeding to discrimination. But Utopia means nowhere; and discrimination is all we see nowadays—Paula Deen’s racist ideology is a living proof of that. I never believed that Mrs. Deen, whose cooking show I so enjoyed, would turn out to be a racist Southerner. The mask of forced pleasantry being pulled off, I now see her as an ugly white lady devoid of compassion. I always think literature makes you compassionate and in this world where disillusionment is inevitable, literature (fiction) gives us a temporary womb to rest before we are thrown out into the horrible real world, so to speak.

As we dwell this morning in my random thoughts un-clocked by the grey looking sky and these tall buildings with tapering heads reaching for it like the leafless emaciated fingers of branch reaching up in desperation. The daily thousand-word routine being the first thing I tackle every morning, I get to see the myriad emotions of the mind lying bare every day. On some mornings, gaiety is profound, and on certain days all I discern is despondency.

As I vacillate between the extremes, I see the virtual papyrus slowly getting populated with words, one word after another forming a sentence, one sentence after another leading to a paragraph, and so on. And however much incoherent and meaningless the word-structure strikes, I am never induced to erase them. I feel close to these words, a sort of invisible umbilical attachment connects me to them that prevent me from destroying them. In my own little world of words I act like a minor goddess refusing to accept the truth of death and deletion.

Reading my random free-written thoughts one may laugh and doubt my sanity, but I wonder if not sanity is overestimated. Come to think of it, are we all sane? A deconstruction of the term sanity will lead us to a labyrinth of significations none of them correct in totality, and finally, to a den of aimlessness when we must give up our quest altogether. Such heavy thought on a breakfast bereft stomach is painful for me. I must get back to contemplation after the nourishment of the day is partaken. I totally believe in Virginia Woolf’s words that one “cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” The intellectual Woolf must have got this right, she being a great cook herself. I remember reading an article somewhere about Woolf’s cooking and how wielding the skillet made her happy. We all have our little pleasures, those activities that give us incessant happiness and make us forget all that’s wrong and ugly in the world. Call it escapism, but it surely has its merit. For me this little activity of free-writing every morning, gardening and decorating my home form a triad of happy exercises  Reading and cooking are extended arms of this triad that help too.

I look at the clock and see my hour of writing is slowly reaching its finale. The day stretches before me like the desert with things-to-do rippling before my eyes like the illusory vision of an oasis. So, I bid you all adieu and hope you all have a good day! Here is one of my favorite poems for you to enjoy:

Welcome Morning

by Anne Sexton

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry "hello there, Anne"

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

New Publication in Mused-- Bella Online Literary Review

Read my latest publication in the esteemed literary journal, Mused Bella Online Literary Review:
http://www.bellaonline.com/review/issues/summer2013/

A spot of philosophy is something we all hate to digest. It strikes us as medicine fit to be discarded; or, like old, yellowed linen meant to be stuffed in those boxes hidden in cupboards that never see the sun. Nevertheless, self-made philosophical thoughts, those nuggets of pure, unadulterated wisdom that come to you on certain contemplative mornings/nights when the earth with all its noises seems to be far behind, are little gems we all cherish. Tonight is one such contemplative nighttime for me.

Tonight, as I sit in my bed listening to the three-speared ceiling fan make its customary din, I feel relieved. Having switched off all the devices, websites and applications that grab my attention for good (except for the laptop and the virtual papyrus I now use), I concentrate on the real world surrounding me and dedicate my undivided attention to its silent syncopation.

The night outside is still; the house noiseless. I close my eyes and listen to my  breath and smell the curry-infused odor of my home. A little quote I read in the Paris Review has got me thinking once again about home. “Do buildings,” it asks “absorb traces of their inhabitants? Can yesterday’s private joys and pains retire—like stale nicotine—into the walls?”

With the advent of the virtual-world with all its mind-boggling applications and time-passing devices, we hear the rumbling noise of time’s “winged chariot hurrying near” with such swiftness that we can hardly keep pace with its contrapuntal rhythm. Oftentimes, it feels we are walking away from the quintessential joys of old-world life, the kind we experienced as we grew up. Home, as we now see it, has changed its form too: the open-spaced two-storied structures of youth have taken on the form of sky-scraping apartment buildings. Still, despite the transmogrification, we always regard home as a beloved space of comfort and joy.

I look at my own little house: the lemon yellow walls, the antiques I gathered painstakingly, the family heirlooms I restored, the flowers I planted, the furniture I organized, the pictures I hung, and come to the conclusion that this eclectic bunch tells a story— a story about me. My house makes me feel special; it’s my own creative space where freedom of mind reigns supreme.

The house is my ubiquitous friend who knows me well having seen me laugh and fight, fail and achieve, sleep and dream; I have nothing to hide from this beloved space. I don’t have to change for the house; I can change the house if I wish. Nonetheless, behind all the changes, all the alterations, I see myself change as well. If you are sensitive enough you too can experience this brilliant sensation of silently acquiescing to the unsaid wish of a brick-and-mortar structure of being good to it, and everything that surrounds it.

Being an enthusiastic interior decorator, I have experimented with several décor techniques in my home. The crafty little home that bears the fruits of my limitless experimentation is no olla podrida, but my dreamscape surrounded by things I love and cherish. It is those sweet nothings that together give me the peace and comfort I need when the world outside seems too demanding and un-creative. Like a child returning to a beloved grandparent, I return to my house to be mollified.

Sometimes, on lonely afternoons when faint rays of sunshine make their way into my room, I feel that anybody who came to my house will sense a great deal of love in its atmosphere. The thought is usually followed with the trepidation as to what might happen if I have to leave this house and move into another. If such be the case then maybe I will recreate another haven of joy and comfort and move on, so to speak.  But will this house ever forget me and my love for it? Will not the walls hold in its womb the invisible, yet colorful imprints of my palm? May be it will; and maybe someday somebody sensitive enough to imbibe the unforgettable echoes of past will listen to them and contemplate if the houses that build us remember or forget us when we move out of their comforting crevasses.    

On Translation: a Poem

Of late I have been thinking a lot about the process of translation. And this morning as I deliberated more and more on the topic, this particular poem came to my mind.

On Translation: a poem

It feels like the warmth of May—

the page of roses with their beaming soul,

their thorns being ideas frozen in time,

like barefaced thin rods sticking out of unbaked buildings.

Their sepia-tinted eyes with pupils dilated

stare at me with unbecoming haste,

inviting me with their animated glance

to savor the mirage those frozen ideas create.

I see the wonder-worker work in haste

and tear away the page into defaced strips.

He then gathers the bits on his palm

and lets the east-wind have its way.

                          Away they fly like chirruping birds                                                                                                 

cloistered till now in some rusty cage

of stagnant time, living and feeding

from a painted trough with seeds

for alphabets and letters language bound.

I walk away from his shadowy form and behold

the constellation of dried paper animating

the sky of my local hemisphere.

Their myriad hues, their bewitching charm

weave tenebrous waves on the vault abaft.

And there I stand under this illuminated map

of tessellated paper with foreign letters,

imbibing the Pierian tune of re-creation

now in  my native tongue.

Many of the red petals fall on the grounds,

and some are stamped on by the populace.

But as I walk away, I perceive those same sepia-tinted eyes

half-smiling at me from the  renewed spectral-shape. 

Blogging from A-Z: Z for Zilch

Z for Zilch

Image from the web

Everything that starts must come to an end, everything that begins shall encounter a finale. We start our journey full with aspirations and desires and then enter the hemisphere of zilch, the ending, the nothingness. Nevertheless, the aftertaste of fatigue and exhaustion of our journey is often accompanied by a feeling of bliss and satisfaction that generally qualifies the ending.

 In the middle of the nil of the null and the void of the virtual world, we have been exploring our creative talents for a period of thirty days. Here, for the last month, we have been posting our daily compositions of a myriad nature thereby proving that even virtual zilch is not devoid of merit and emotion. Our journey together testifies to the fact that despite the strictures of form and aspect we have been taught to attribute to any writing activity of a formal, and even in many cases informal, writing, the proper usages we must remember, the clichés we must never use, we ultimately learn that what matters is the development of one’s own style, one’s own comfort zone within oneself as one writes and nothing else. This is the truth that I gathered from my month long activity of writing from A-Z.

 Over the month, I have read blog posts on fictional characters and books, on herbs and cooking, on philosophy and daily ruminations, and they not only proved to me that all it matters is the task of putting pen to paper or more exactly, typing words and letters in a virtual papyrus, but also that in most cases, all it needs to begin a writing activity is as simple a prompt as a word beginning with one particular letter or the other.  I am at awe with the immense capability of the human mind, the talents it possesses, and its intrinsic philosophy only ready to pour down with a tilt of the beaker that sustains it. One letter, one simple letter led each of us to consider so many things: places, characters in novels, recipes, décor, etc, and still we are not satiated. The jorum still holds more ideas that will bloom in the course of the future life.

I stand under the hallowed portals of nothingness with a mind not empty, but rather full to the brim with happy experiences of writing. I agree I have taken a lot of liberties with the creative challenge of blogging from the first to the last letter of the English alphabetical series, but in the end as I check the posts submitted and posted in my blogger page, I am satisfied. I indeed have written on each and every letter, and in the process have discovered a fresh knack for writing poetry again. The escapades into the past also offered me immense satisfaction and joy as well the suspense of thinking about a word/idea to write daily. 

 I know that even though we are not to type any post tomorrow, that we will have zilch at hand tomorrow concerning this writing challenge, I will find myself happily dwelling on the fulsome experience I gathered from my own writing and from the others’ I read.  In the zilch and negativity of the world, tonight I wish to depart with a happy note of a fulsome tomorrow.