Tweaking Twigs...

I love twigs.

I think they’re the most beautiful part of a tree/plant. I love them in all their forms, and at all times. The ones that lie at my feet whenever I go for my morning walks (and which later end up on the dashboard of my car), ones that often give me painful scratches on my arm whenever I park my car too close to them in a corner lot of my office carpark (which is surrounded by plants of all sorts), and that which I find still attached to trees in all their splendour :)

Though I must admit – I do practise a little favouritism where twigs are concerned - I have a weakness for the dark, coffee-brown-coloured ones :)

Reading Walt Whitman At An Ungodly Hour...

...results in a sweeping madness that envelops me, the reader, and forces me to post all these right away, for reasons I know nothing of. Has Uncle Walt entered my mind and soul...? (this being the ungodly hour afterall)

I stand corrected.
How could The Madman re-enter that which he never exited in the first place...?


AN EXCERPT - SONG OF MYSELF (PART 2)

The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! What have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?


FULL OF LIFE NOW

Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)


ARE YOU THE NEW PERSON DRAWN TO ME?

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?


O ME! O LIFE!

O me! O 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.


STRONGER LESSONS

Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you?
Or who treat you with contempt,or dispute the passage with you?


LINGERING LAST DROPS

And whence and why come you?
We know not whence, (was the answer,)
We only know that we drift here with the rest,
That we linger'd and lagg'd - but were wafted at last, and are now here,
To make the passing shower's concluding drops.


GOOD-BYE MY FANCY (I)

Good-bye my fancy - (I had a word to say,
But 'tis not quite the time - The best of any man's word or say,
Is when its proper place arrives - and for its meaning,
I keep mine till the last.)


GOOD-BYE MY FANCY (II)

Good-bye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I'm going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy.
Now for my last - let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.
Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together;
Delightful!--now separation - Good-bye my Fancy.
Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something,
May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning - so now finally,
Good-bye - and hail! my Fancy.

What Stranger Miracles Are There...?

I wonder if I am becoming obsessed with photography because it offers me a much easier world than writing. In the midst of all that wondering, I find my mind wandering to wonder if...I wonder too much! Go figure...

The twigs on a tree at my workplace that was sprouting with shoots just two days ago...enticed me towards them yet once again this evening. What a magnificent sight it was! Just last week, we thought its' end had come. And that thought made us sigh - why, we can't even save our trees, let alone people! And what do you know - being the insightful tree that it was, it decided that it was not going to make us heave another sigh of frustration...:)

...no, sir, not the people who love me enough to watch me in admiration day in day out...I wouldn't let those poor souls down. What would they look out to every morning while stirring their hot coffee if I decide to die? What would soothe them whenever they felt claustrophobic inside their rooms and came out for a breath of fresh air? And how would they live without me when I am obviously the apple of their eyes - not a day passes when they don't watch me in awe and pride because they are the few in town who have me to call their own.

I wouldn't let those poor souls down. I'll survive...if not for me, for those souls out there who think the world of me...

...and with those thoughts within its every branch, twig, leaf, roots...our dear old tree decided that it was not going to die. Bless its good old soul.

Watching their "tree friend's" fighting spirit made the fellow inhabitants of the garden rejoice like never before. Ahh..the joy of living together...

Some reached out to offer their congratulations to their tree friend...

Some stood in awe (complete with outstretched petals) at their friend's strong will to go on...

And yet some - with overflowing tears of joy - showered all those who came their way...

The Universe Speaks...

There are a few websites that I keep going back to - some for reasons I know clearly, and yet some, almost subconsciously, that I can't even figure out why. But visit them regularly I do - just like how one would visit their non-virtual, real friends to keep in touch.

Here's an excerpt from a site I visit regularly whenever I am in my "fully-conscious" state :) where the Universe "speaks" (yeap, I said it) to you everyday...

Please excuse me while I deviate a bit. It just occurred to me that I know someone who's really well connected to the "Universe", a KEY player who can really get things done - POWERFUL would be an understatement. This is the kind of person we'd all like to have on our team, a person who can get virtually ANYTHING done once their mind is made up, and definitely the kind of person (if you'd care to listen to them) who could help you answer your toughest questions, and who could even get you going living the life of your dreams. I'm not sure if they've written any books or made any recordings that you could get a hold of... but that doesn't matter, you know what they say, "it's not WHAT you know, but WHO you know" (what a ridiculous concept, but just this once it's true). This person goes by many names, but, well, it's you. Yeah, I'm talking about you. Just thought I'd help hook you up with a BEING OF LIGHT who's touched many lives. Good "luck", and tallyho!

Friends from a Garden Speak...

Look at me, the unopened bud,
Standing singularly in my colourless state,
Amidst all that richness around me.
Bloom I will not to merely fit in.
And so, I choose to remain firmly shut –
Undaunted by what the naked eye sees as big and beautiful.

But in me too lies a little prayer –
that I am soon plucked by someone, anyone.
Even while I stand in this form -
unopened, singular and colourless.
So that even as I wither away -
I remain to the naked eye the bud that I now am.

Shoots sprouting from twigs - ever seen them?

Bowing towards earth in humble obeisance :)

Celebrating Michael Jackson & the NOWs of our Lives...

I was listening to a Michael Jackson collection this morning as I was driving to work. And, in it was Ben, a song he recorded when he was about 14. I have heard it many times before, and have always been moved by the divine innocence and sweetness of his 14-year old voice.

But today, it somehow created a deeper impact on me, and made me ponder on a great many things that our lives revolve around...

I remember the “series of monosyllabic retorts” that took place between me and my CEO when I suggested that we used MJ’s Man in the Mirror as the background music for an upcoming presentation. To his rather exhaustive list of accusatory nouns for MJ, I found myself responding with a limited one – GENIUS. That was all I kept saying till he (my CEO) gave up in exhaustion (of his list, and of arguing with his most persistent yet monosyllabically-limited subordinate). That was all I said because because that’s what I have always believed in, and seen MJ as – right from the time when he was this megastar who swept 8 Grammy awards in 1984, and I, the admiring teenager who watched in amazement at his sheer genius of a voice and dance moves.

And this morning as I heard his voice once again, I wondered why do we, as human beings, often fail miserably when it comes to dividing our experiences into a series of nows.

Lost me there, eh? :) Stay with me, and I will try and get the message across, somehow :).

How often do we find ourselves replacing a view we had of someone or something – one we had religiously held on to for years – just because of one negative incident about that person or thing that we come to know about? And yet, how many times have we been saddened when the one mistake we ourselves make overshadows the 10 good things that we probably had done before that. The question is – as saddened as we often become of our own situations – do we give others an equally fair share of sensitivity when we are no longer the one wallowing in self-pity?

One blackmark is all a person needs (unless he is a close friend or a loved one) for us to put the “give the dog a bad name and hang him” maxim to practice. All else he had done that we probably raved over before gets erased in an instant – just like that. (Great advertising people we'd make, won't we - being so effective at "branding" things around us :) ).

Isn't that a little sad - this state of our human mind?

Emily Dickinson, the reclusive American poet, once said “Forever is composed of nows”. Which brings me to my earlier statement about dividing our experiences into a series of nows.

I wonder if we have the maturity to divide our lives into nows and live each one of them in its absolute singularity, unswayed by all that has happened, or will happen outside its circle. Will we have the sensibility to celebrate each now (even the flawed ones, and not let them cringe into shame, and eventually disappear into exile?)

Our lives hardly ever remain the same – experiences vary even for the most predictable of people – are we then going to demean one experience in comparison to another? Should it not be given the respect it deserves – having been a "a part" of our lives at some point of time? Even if it had been a nasty experience, surely there must have been some good that came out of it. There must be. There always is.

And so, I don’t think I'm ever going to stop loving that part of Michael Jackson that many of us raved over just about two decades ago. Not even if he is slammed with another lawsuit. Not even if he decides to get himself any more bleached that he already is. Not even when he decides to get a further reconstructive surgery done on his face - bringing him one step closer to the skeletal look that he has already almost achieved.

Micheal Jackson, to me, will always remain the 14 year old who sang a song for a pet rat with powerful emotions of love that spoke a language of its own through his voice. And at other times, as the one who moonwalked his way 24 years ago into a magical, attack-proof world that I had created for him in my life.

Wacko Jacko he may be to many, but a genius he remains to me – as monosyllabically boring as that may sound.


Ben (A song written for a 1972 movie about a young boy who befriends a rat)

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We've both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend will see
You've got a friend in me.

Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's something you should know
You've got a place to go
I used to say "I and me" now it's "us" now it's "we".

Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben.

Treachery Within...

Try as I might to place you on a pedestal,
To make you stand strong,
In all your weakness and sneakiness,
You escape my guard
To seek mundane little delights.

Oh treacherous heart of mine
When will you ever learn – that
It is I alone you can trust
And I alone you must love.

Have I not been telling you,
for as long as we have been together – that
Intoxication (of emotions) is bad for the soul,
both, yours and mine.

But do you listen to me, ever?
Instead - you sneak away from me,
Despite all the little reminders I feed you with,
You sneak out to seek silly little pleasures
And come back with a prick here, a bruise there.

How will I ever make you see?
What should I do to put some sense into you?
Aren’t the scars you see in you lessons enough?
Don’t the scars smart still when you expose them again and again -
To the sickly delights that you keep running to.

When will you ever learn to stop?
When I rip you off me,
And bury you into deep slumber?
Will you then stop, O silly, treacherous heart of mine.
Will you then learn your lesson?

Or -
will you push your way through the wet earth,
And go seek your mundane delights in the world of the dead
In the world of dead hearts…

Writer Unknown

Sign of Madness, or...?

For the first time yesterday, since I started driving 13 years ago, I found myself sitting in my car, (which was first in line) staring blankly into space while the traffic light turned from red to green to yellow and back to red. Drivers and passengers coming from the opposite direction gave me mocking smiles as they passed me.

First time in 13 years.
First time for a woman who is known for her vroomings the moment the light turns green - every time without fail for the past 13 years.

Yesterday however, she was no longer the woman she had been for the past 13 years.

What's happening to her, I wonder...

An Excerpt from SONG OF MYSELF, Walt Whitman

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Is she celebrating herself like Whitman did?
Is she assuming what he assumed?
Is she living in the "now" that he claimed was perfection in its most perfect form?
Or has she gone into a mad state otherwise known as ...?

I wonder, yet again.

Mahakavi Bharathiyar on Who's a Poet & Who Isn't...

கவிதை எழுதுபவன் கவியன்று.
கவிதையே வாழ்க்கையாக உடையோன்,
வாழ்க்கையே கவிதையாகச் செய்தோன்,
அவனே கவி!

He who writes poetry is a poet not!
He who embraces poetry as life -
and who lives his life as if it were poetry,
He alone is a poet!

Music in Me...

I don’t know if there is music in me,
Perhaps – there is
Perhaps –
I don’t even know what it means –
To have music in a person.

As a baby sleeping in a makeshift cradle,
I must have heard my father sing.
As a foetus growing in my mother’s womb,
I must have felt - that part of him in me -
singing his soothing lullabies in a soundless voice.

I was said to have sung,
even when I was a baby,
Humming along as my father practised ragas after ragas
In-between his rocking of my cradle.

They say children’s memories don’t withstand the years,
But I can still see flashed in front of my mind’s eye -
The days when I sang.

No more than four,
Seated cross-legged at the verandah of my childhood home,
Singing into the tin-can telephone my brothers had made for me –
singing as though the whole world sat at my feet listening
Into the ears of little boys listening in rapture and pride -
admiring the little singing star they believed they had helped create.

But you see – even then,
I didn’t know if there was music in me.
Perhaps – it was
Perhaps –
I was too young to even know what it meant –
to have music in a person...

But sing I did...
With no sense of musical notes,
No regard for diction,
No knowledge of what I sang.

Even now,
I still don’t know what it means -
to have music in a person.
And perhaps that’s why –
I sing no more into anyone’s ears
Except, that of mine.

But there is one thing I do know...

Even in the absence of this physical body -
this 'me' that I am known to be today,
this 'me' that I once was - the 3 year old singing star of her family

Even in the absence of it all,
The music within, and without me - will continue

Even if it was, or could be sung -
...only in a soundless voice.

Among the Multitude...

Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled - but that one is not - that one knows me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

The Madman Speaks...

TO A STRANGER...

Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you - your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass - you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you - I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait - I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Powerful Sparks from Mahakavi Bharathiyar

தேடிச் சோறு நிதந்தின்று- பல

சின்னஞ்சிறு கதைகள் பேசி- பிறர்

வாடப் பலசெயல்கள் செய்து- மனம்

வாடித் துன்பமிக உழன்று- நரை

கூடிக் கிழப்பருவம் எய்தி - கொடுங்

கூற்றுக் கிரையெனப்பின் மாயும்- பல

வேடிக்கை மனிதரைப் போலே- நான்

வீழ்வேனென்று நினைத்தாயோ



Thedi choru nithamthinru - pala

Chinnanchiru kathaigal pesi - pirar

Vaada pala seyalgal seythu - manam

Vaadi thunbam miga uzhanru - narai

Koodi kizhapparuvam eithi - kodung

Kootrukku iraiyena pin maayum - pala

Vedikkai mainitharai pole - naan

Veezhvenenru ninaiththaayo

The One Without a Filter Between His Brain and His Mouth...

Can one be so evil and yet so adorably cute? Only if he goes by the name of Calvin, and has an imaginary tiger named Hobbes! :)

The Genius of MS Subbulakshmi

Breathtaking Divinity...

Mihintale Buddha, Sri Lanka