cuz I breathe poems and live songs

 

 

cuz i breathe poems

and

live songs

dance silently

at the oddest times

smile often

for no good reason

find rhythm

in your laughter

feel alive

when it

rains or shines

—

i am.

sand on blood, stories of Ameer & Gandhi, “I want to come home”

Animals get treated better than immigrant workers in Middle-Eastern countries, watching Al Jazeera documentary

Double-Click for Lit

I feel something, someway, and honestly, its been eating away at me, that I have read the loud proclamations of those who went before, now their words lie forgotten and yellowed on bookshelves, and its pains me to see such wonderful thoughts and unique observations cannot compete with the ease of electronic media. Will my words suffer such a fate? I shudder to think, the machine replacing well worn or crisp page, that highlighters of yellow kind will become obsolete, as Shakespeare’s Macbeth is learnt online, ‘double-click for notes’, perhaps this is the true face of progress, change in the basic routine so that our feather get ruffled at the idea, of say books losing out to the computer, authors adjusting to the net. Still, Still! I want written print to matter, for people to pick up the fruits of my labor, pore over the leaves, scribble, underline, Xerox, cover, highlight, and share, enough that when they lay my book/article/poem down it will make them say, (as I once did) “I Want To Write And Be Read!”.

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Go Into Yourself-Writing Mantra

“You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose…

“…Save yourself from general themes and seek those which your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty—describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses—would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither. Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away…” Letters to a Young Poet

::Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 Aside: I came across these magnificent passages in Yasmine’s archives, and for that I want to thank her. Thanks Yasmine! There is straight-up sense in these words, do read, absorb, apply.

differing perspectives, degas ballerinas vs van gogh’s landscapes

flowers move me

people fascinate her

landscapes capture my attention

cats lounging lazily in the sun engross her

eye saw

Out of the corner of my eye, today I saw:

a mini-jaguar looking majestic in its midnight coat that shone with each ripple of its jungle walk.

sunny icicle lights softly warming up a foggy evening drive home.

a band of close to ninety year old wandering beggars perched outside multi-kanal houses…I think I heard my heart drop then.

(a writing exercise)

i’ll never get used to it…be it death,dipper flashing, or bhatta chowk

Lesson of the day: meaning behind dipper ‘marna’/lights flashing in daylight
(and no it doesn’t mean that that the other driver thinks you are cute)
Mood of the day: reflective