Often optimistic, sometimes pessimistic, then romantic and always paradoxical!
Ultimately, it is my genius that radiates through with a diamond-like brilliance!
"Her neck, her bosom open, the snowstorm in her face!
But the storms from north cannot harm the Russian rose.
Oh how a searing kiss burns through the frost!"
9/22/14
9/18/14
Radcliffe
I'm yet to find my grandfather's voice. However, being here at Radcliffe helped me to find my own voice, voice of a generation that are still condemned to silence.
9/6/14
What I Want
I want a girl with a capacity for empathy and abstraction
I want a girl with rosy cheeks
I want her next to a fruit basket
I want her in layers, in shades of sunset:
A pale tint of orange, amber, pumpkin, tomato, tea rose
I want her to be peeling a banana, slowly
I want her on a hammock, playing the banana strings
Hairs dancing to the rhythm of the afternoon breeze
I don't want her to look at me and smile
I want her oblivious of space and time
I want her next to the palm trees
I want her in the background of deep blue seas
I want her displaced, but I want her at ease!
8/29/14
8/12/14
O Me! O Life!
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUTDJ72q9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr9ruvxA3K4
7/27/14
Living like a child
I found her in that theater
Amidst the crowd
Facing a blank screen
I found her in the middle row
In the middle of life
Such serenity, such beauty
She sneaked in
To make it all appear
To make them all disappear
I came for a scape from my litost
When I left, full moon was in the sky
And the whole universe was by my side
My senses had come to life
Every encounter is now a fresh experience, I do not remember whether I forgot, I had never experienced, or maybe given the same scenes, I can now see more, maybe I can feel more, maybe I can connect more.
Somebody took me from inside and placed me on the outside. Maybe I was on the outside all along and was staring at outside. I turned my head to the inside, just to become an observer, just to become all eyes.
She was all eyes, strong, committed to be good, committed to be kind.
7/24/14
Devil's Laughter
And the new millennium arrived and brought with itself more wars and destruction. Mr. M kept up with his rhetorics & generosity. One day around noon, he stepped up a ladder on a friend's balcony to replace a broken lamb. As he turned and twisted the rusted lamp a Gini came out, smiled at him, and kicked under his ladder. Before he knew he was flying off into the air, like a bird. The Gini grabbed him gently in the air, aligned his body perpendicular to the ground concrete, and let him go like a flying dart.
When my father arrived at the scene (he later described it as being in a battle field) later on, the police was guarding the area. He was asked to identify the person. What are we mortals to make of grey matter, blood, and grains of rocks?
When my father arrived at the scene (he later described it as being in a battle field) later on, the police was guarding the area. He was asked to identify the person. What are we mortals to make of grey matter, blood, and grains of rocks?
7/19/14
Follow your destiny
Where does the hand become the wrist?
Where does the neck become the shoulder?
21, he counted them one by one. Were they enough?
Enough to cover the line of destiny, where he finally merges
with his fate
The fate that he loved and pursued so earnestly
The fate that hated him so diligently
The galvanic response of his skin reminded him
that like anything else dying required practice.
He sat there, staring at his palm, for a minute or two,
since it was never too late to start the practice.
Above the space where they formed their blissful
constellation
All he saw were his callouses, a reminder of his daily
struggle,
Struggle to live
And now he realized that the art if dying is even so much
harder to master.
6/22/14
No plans, Only dreams!
The pond in my backyard is my canvas
Every night I paint my dreams next to moon's reflection
Every morning I watch them melting with the first appearance of the sun!
--Sisyphus, the painter
Every night I paint my dreams next to moon's reflection
Every morning I watch them melting with the first appearance of the sun!
--Sisyphus, the painter
6/1/14
What history fails to mention
What history fails to mention is
Most everybody lived their lives
With friends and children, played it cool,
Left truth & beauty to the guys
Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools. - Gary Synder
What appears as attractive, the unstable equilibrium of forces, is nothing more than a mirage created by the projection of values on the barren island of perception.
Most everybody lived their lives
With friends and children, played it cool,
Left truth & beauty to the guys
Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools. - Gary Synder
What appears as attractive, the unstable equilibrium of forces, is nothing more than a mirage created by the projection of values on the barren island of perception.
5/25/14
On Crushes and Metaphors
"There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. This is a truth chiselled indelibly into the script of life."
As maria helena used to say, only unfulfilled love can be romantic.
Once there is correspondence, it is fatal.
Have lots of crushes, and enjoy the imperfections of people.
To the dicotomy, are you a romantic or a pragmatic, we can add this concept of a romantic pessimist.
I rather embrace the romantic optimist idea though, nicely explained by Goethe
Well said!
A more "realistic" metaphor may be that of a pilot with finite fuel who not only must aim high to eventually arrive at his destination, but also has to discover his destination along the way! He may ultimately find some solace in "amor fati", since wherever he lands will be his Ithaca!
5/23/14
5/5/14
OLaLaaa
The most risqué thing I could do is to write a Nabokovian poem:
O,
when her lips took a trip to the field of budding roses,
where the honey bees suck the sweetest nectars!
La Laaa,
the tip of her tongue,
twice, tapped the arch of my universe!
And I whispered her name, till the end of aaa,
till dissipation of sound;
where words imprison passion,
in this battle of syntax and rhyme.
3/3/14
Growing Old
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.
Is it to feel our strength -
Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?
Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!
'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion -none.
It is -last stage of all -
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
Matthew Arnold
12/19/13
Is Boredom Unavoidable?
Today I chatted with Lori, a character from Matisse's painting "Luxe, Calme et Volupté", about inevitability of boredom.
She turned the canvas around and in a melancholic voice started reading:
"C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!"
12/18/13
Haiku
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
| inazuma no kaina wo karan kusamakura | lend me your arms, fast as thunderbolts, for a pillow on my journey. |
Is Boredom Unavoidable?
I just asked an Eritrean man on the plane if "Boredom was Unavoidable". He took out a poem that he yesterday wrote for his wife of 17 years, and started reading it to me. Perfect rhymes; you may notice that by noting the letters that end each verse!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)