tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64290255407447442202024-03-14T21:28:21.550+05:30While there is still time".....We should be careful
of each other, we should be kind,
while there is still time."
Philip LarkinUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1913125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-17695782813605650072024-03-14T21:27:00.003+05:302024-03-14T21:27:32.399+05:30I felt in need of a great pilgrimage I felt in need of a
great pilgrimage.
So I sat still for
three days
and God came to me.
Kabir, in 'Love Poems from God, Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West'Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-44976888025542597212024-03-06T19:18:00.000+05:302024-03-06T19:18:01.784+05:30Belonging The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac (Part 3)I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you're in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-45749043250168221912023-12-06T21:23:00.005+05:302023-12-06T21:23:45.365+05:30Love I want so badly some daysto be the kind of person who keeps a gratitude journaland believes in manifestations, who believesthat if I throw myself on the mercy of the universethe universe will be merciful, that happiness is as simpleas mirror work, which people tell me is not easy,because who can look in the mirror for three minutesand say I love you, I love you, I love youwithout bursting Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-2491735514508405102023-10-30T19:33:00.000+05:302023-10-30T19:33:03.313+05:30The Cat's SongMine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.
<!--[endif]-->
Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.
<!--[endif]--Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-83706101327466310132023-06-14T07:08:00.003+05:302023-06-14T07:18:25.226+05:30A Gift The middle of June, and I awaketo rain - gentle, persistent, enoughto soak the
ground and clear the air. Isn't this the best kind of surprise-the thing you wanted but couldn't getfor yourself and didn't knowthat you could have? Alreadythe frogs are singing and the grassstretches its roots in rejoicing. And here am I, with my damp hairand empty hands, and nothing to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-26087591243145710012023-03-30T20:26:00.004+05:302023-03-30T20:26:38.278+05:30Joy is not made to be a crumb Don’t HesitateIf you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plentyof lives and whole towns destroyed or aboutto be. We are not wise, and not very oftenkind. And much can never be redeemed.Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps thisis its way of fighting back, that sometimessomething happens better than all the richesor power in the world. It Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-61064251064887319582023-03-30T20:21:00.001+05:302023-03-30T20:21:20.837+05:30The Mahabharata"The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction.It is much greater. It is a work of art.It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral. It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men. Not animals, not gods. It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. ItUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-3809118960205194802023-03-10T08:27:00.003+05:302023-03-10T08:27:40.404+05:30LivingWhat a beautifully written piece! Shared by a dear friend. And it was such a wonderful surprise to see Pico Iyer also in there! I missed Kurosawa's Ikuru - need to find it. "Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, has been nominated for the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for Living" - which is based on Kurasowa's "Ikiru". "One of the things about the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-34957741570644685572022-10-05T10:31:00.002+05:302022-10-05T10:47:18.660+05:30I am part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking'Thinking like a mountain' was one of the books recommended by Malvika Solanki during an amazing permaculture course I did with her in June, a birthday gift to myself. From philosophy to science to ecology to poetry - increasingly all my reading is resulting in a blurring of the lines, the understanding of how we need to see everything as a whole, whether it be our own bodies, or our existence inUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-82233206203128027072022-09-27T08:53:00.000+05:302022-09-27T08:53:12.183+05:30The Smell of a Good StewI started reading the 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series many years ago, after I read a recommendation - and have been hooked on it since. 😊 Such pleasant delightful light reading! A great introduction to another culture and landscape, though maybe a partial view. Indians can relate to the values of Botswana, as described in here. Alexander McCall Smith is Scottish, by the way. He also has a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-79218869555173824472022-07-02T15:52:00.005+05:302022-07-02T15:52:32.290+05:30Ethiopian Sacred Forests James Godfrey-Faussett:"100 years ago Ethiopia was blanketed by 45% forest and now that figure is down to just 5%. Part of the surviving remnants are over 1000 ‘sacred forests’ found protecting Ethiopia’s orthodox churches, that act as living stands of biodiversity amongst the brown overgrazed farmlands.These small clusters of ancient trees, each about 2km away from the next, ensure that Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-38491834444646120972021-11-13T20:04:00.004+05:302021-11-13T20:12:11.553+05:30MercyWhen I was a child, every monsoon season, I spent a lot of time rescuing small insects drowning in pools of rain water in the hilly green area where we lived. I walked around after the rain, looking out for them. And for those that could not be reached with twigs, I made small paper boats and pushed them in their direction. When they clambered on to the boat, I would breath again. I can Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-51645029063427396852021-10-30T08:40:00.001+05:302021-10-30T08:40:11.187+05:30A Conscious Return to Simplicity"Speaking as a Chinese, I do not think any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life's tragedy and then Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-18932128506513382222021-10-30T08:37:00.007+05:302021-10-30T08:37:51.735+05:30 Imagination"..The greater the imaginative power of a man, the more perpetually he is dissatisfied. That is why an imaginative child is always a more difficult child; he is more often sad and morose like a monkey, than happy and contented like a cow. Also divorce must necessarily be more common among the idealists and the more imaginative people than among the unimaginative. The vision of an ideal life Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-65032629608643012432021-06-26T20:57:00.001+05:302021-06-26T20:57:24.329+05:30GraceAnne Lamott wrote this in June 2018, but so relevant to the present!"The world can feel like an alcoholic father sitting in the living room in his vile underwear, tranced out or abusive; and the world can feel like your favorite auntie who thinks you are just great, still likes to hike, always brings trail mix, and knows her wildflowers. These are excruciating times, and this is the kingdom.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-59351222350381780312021-05-27T11:29:00.002+05:302021-05-27T11:29:39.899+05:30Predicting the Rain Amazing facts shared by my farmer friend Madhu Reddy, from an article in Down to Earth: "The Baiga are an ethnic group found in central India primarily in the state of Madhya Pradesh, and in smaller numbers in the surrounding states of Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The name Baiga means "sorcerer- medicine man".Baiga Weather Science"Baiga tribals have quite a well-developedUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-73458678814225689742021-04-25T11:29:00.005+05:302021-04-25T11:34:41.701+05:30Walking AheadAm I walking a little ahead of you so that no snake will biteyour sandalled foot? John BergerPage 44, 'And our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos', Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-58013606231303340002020-12-16T09:26:00.003+05:302020-12-16T09:26:24.657+05:30 You swell into survivalOver And Over Tune You could grow into it,that sense of living like a dog,loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin,able to exist only for the sake of existing. Nothing inside your head lasting long enough for you to hold onto,you watch your own thoughts leap across your own synapses and disappear --small boats in a wind,fliers in all that blue,the swish of an arm backed with Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-70538374630255953682020-10-25T10:27:00.000+05:302020-10-25T10:27:12.893+05:30Joy is a function of FocusChoose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-24592989539998878112020-09-17T09:15:00.001+05:302020-09-17T09:15:20.967+05:30I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angryI’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry.Anger seems reasonable. But perhapswe will do what I’ve heard the Inuit do—spend the emotion on walking, walk a lineuntil all the anger has left our bodies.The moment the Inuit notice the anger is gone,replaced, perhaps, by sadness or fear,compassion or just a quietness,they mark that spot with an objectto show the extent of their anger.And perhaps, if we’re Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-13714881124717240062020-08-09T20:13:00.000+05:302020-08-09T20:13:28.971+05:30The best is not destroyed, although forever threatened The GoodThe good are vulnerableAs any bird in flight,They do not think of safety,Are blind to possible extinctionAnd when most vulnerableAre most themselves.The good are real as the sun,Are best perceived through cloudsOf casual corruptionThat cannot kill the luminous sufficiencyThat shines on city, sea and wilderness,Fastidiously revealingOne man to another,Who yet will not Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-10204443276348665192020-07-22T09:06:00.000+05:302020-07-22T09:06:22.774+05:30You must be the thing you see
After the red Gulmohars of summer, the pink/purple/violet Bauhinias are here, announcing August.
To Look at Any Thing
To look at any thing,If you would know that thing,You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,"I have seen spring in theseWoods," will not do - you mustBe the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes ofStems and ferny plumes of leaves,You must Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-80944937509191073292020-06-08T12:07:00.001+05:302020-06-08T12:07:43.183+05:30I must be the sun
SolarOn a gray day, when the sunhas been abducted, and it’s chillend-of-the-world weather,I must be the sun.
I must be the oneto encourage the youngsidetracked physicistworking his father’s cash registerto come up with a law of naturethat says brain waves can changethe dismal sky. I must be the one
to remind the ginger plantnot to rest on the reputationof its pungent Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-15905160345187833062020-05-20T20:46:00.000+05:302020-05-20T20:46:38.525+05:30But some bonuses, like morning
Yes
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
William Stafford, 'The Way It Is'
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6429025540744744220.post-35824931902924293252020-04-26T21:01:00.003+05:302020-04-26T21:01:59.379+05:30Every town our home town
Every town our home townKaniyan Poongunranar [Sangam Period, 3rd century BC to 4th century AD]
"Every town our home townevery man, a kinsmanGood and evil do not come from othersPain and relief of pain come of themselves
Dying is nothing newWe do not rejoice that life is sweetnor in angercall it bitter
Our lives, however dear,follow their own course,rafts driftingin the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0