unfolding

born green, tinier than a leaf
she now is becoming
a lantern of colours
a papillon of summer
to open with the breeze
unfolding to a tune
that leaps in the wind

Colours

Right now, on my desk is my nephew's Rubic's cube. I was trying to calm my mind and was absent-mindedly playing with it. The blue squares clashed with the yellow ones. The pink jostled against the white while the green revolved all around the little maps of their squared existence. Time it seemed, swirled to a stop, for a while all I could think of was how we put these beautiful colours in a cube. Those colours refuse to settle down in their cubicled existence...it is such a struggle to get all the colours in the same rows. Genuises who are in the know about these things talk about formulas for computing these colours.

And I thought again that we paint our lives with colours too. Beautiful colours. Then wonder why the colours don't match. But should they really match? Should everything in life conform to a cube we call existence? Why can't we just allow the colours to flow? To mix with other colours? Orderly it may not be but isn't chaos the catterpillar that creates butterflies? I don't know the answer to these questions. But I left the Rubic's cube unmatched. The colours clashed. Yet somehow, it seemed... to match.

Striking the web

Every morning, the spider disappears, before I have a chance to watch. One moment she'll be there, a moment later...gone. Web and all. Mind boggling, like a magician's disappearance. I patiently waited this morning, stalling longer and longer to see what becomes of the spider. I feel silly for obsessing about such a small thing, but then, it's these little moments, these little mysteries of life that offer so much joy in a world of ceaseless junk and noise.

And then, poof! She runs to a corner, her legs working like mad, and half the web collapses. She gathers the silk under her, at the bottom of the huge web, and as she moves up, the rest of the web is pulled into the little silken ball clutched under her. Up and up and up to the roof, with nothing more than a strand left. Her nights weaving a thing of the past. Gone in less than a moment.

I stare, amazed...and thrilled.

Return of the spinner

And he came back. Again and again, night after night, to weave as I wove, spinning his web as I spun mine, my own webbed story. The symbolism of the moment, so profound to me, I knew it was a sign: keep going, keep spinning....

for the first time

a line in a fortune cookie yesterday, from Christian Morgenstern:

"We often see something a hundred times, a thousand times, before we see it for real for the first time."

and i thought - this first time, that's the impulse to take a picture, to write a line; to savour this moment of discovery, this peculiarity of life in its very unique form.

Weaving a life

Spiders, to me, are amazing creatures. So varied, so adaptable, so linked with myths and fears and symbolism. I am always fascinated by them. I observe them whenever I have a safe chance to do so. Recently, I spotted one in my back yard, a golden orb spider. The southern U.S. has a large variety of large spiders, but the golden orb spider is impressive, and this one, that made its web in an opening of bushes that line the back fence, is incredibly impressive in size. I watch him from my bedroom window, immobile, perched upside down, on his massive crisscrossed web. Black and orange, he is without a doubt, a formidible sight. That no bird has the audacity to eat him illustrates that point.

But even more recently, I noticed another spider, just outside my bedroom window a few nights back, weaving an incredibly gorgeous orb web. I watched him, shining a flashlight on his body, as he swirled around, weaving, weaving, and finally resting, upside down, in the center of his web. Brillant, and large, I could not stop looking at him, his web at least three feet in diameter. And in the morning, when I woke, I was so excited to get a look at him in the light...only, he was gone, and so was the web. I was saddened. A bat must have eaten him, I thought.

Then, the following night, a bit of movement caught my eye. I shined the light, and there he was, weaving again, an amazing web. Just as big, just as perfect, just as gorgeous as the night before. I thought, Wow! He survived and came back to build again! That is tenacity and resiliance for you!
The following morning I woke, excited to get a look at him in the daylight. Gone again. I thought, oh, boy, all that work, and for what? A bird victim, maybe? But then, maybe not. And I wondered, as I looked out, seeing a few long strands of the web still left, if a bird or a bat got him, why would these very delicate strands attached to the ever growing ivy still be there?

I waited for nightfall.

The moon rose, gorgeous and full, and the obsessive weaver returned, a third night, to weave for his dinner, to weave and weave, working with a precision that is unparalleled in any seamstress shop. When he was done, the perfect web of three feet in diameter complete, he rested, still, upside down in the center.

There were so many things that crossed my mind because of this. Putting them into words seems unnecessary.

I wait to see if he will spin again tonight. I hope to see him every night, spinning, spinning...

first post... chicken salad-related

Thursday, evening: Made about a pound of chicken salad, loaded with craisins and walnuts.

Friday, 11:45: Two bites from the end of an abosultely divine sandwich. Chicken salad on rye , with carraway seeds. Slices of strawberry tomatoes. Divine.

Friday, 11:50 Bite into a bone. Spit the bite out. With a small degree of bitterness, throw the last 2 bites in the trash. I can't finish something like that.

Friday, 12:10: Realize with a little more bitterness that my particular quirks will not allow me to eat anymore of the divine chicken salad with craisins and walnuts.

Tuesday 9 p.m., lux

a string of full moons
can you hear their light whisper
under a glass sky
.

Hyderabad

I had been to this city almost 18 years back. Then, it was a sleepy old city, a charming old relic of the past with its strange mix of Hindi and Telugu. Now it is the sister city to silicon success, the emerging computer capital to compete with Bangalore. Yet, the old buildings are still there.

Somehow, there is something in that city that captured me again. Perhaps it was the last minute rush to the old Hyderabad market to buy pickles, the teeming mass of people, the lights, the noise and then the wide roads so different from Bangalore...

yes, I admit it, I liked the city.
.

song

clouds ripple beneath us
blue cast sky washing
we are angels bathing
watch fire spread on shores
night quenched
moon-dipped
dry the sands shifting
bright sphere floaters sing we
home she sifts

carrying

with the strength of the tides
the sea lifts you
carrying you like a child

there

beyong the valley of the seven mills, in Bebenhausen, a monastery. a round way connects the parts it is made of. in the centre, the church. in the back, the rooms to live. to the left, a herb garden. to the right, the cemetery.

all this, circled by three rings of wall, to keep the world at bay. still the inner yard is opening to the vastness of the sky, to the wisdom of the trees. and also to the past: even though the footprints of those who created this place have faded a long time ago, their care is still present in the symmetry of stones, in the structures of light and shade.

on the way back, a path leading along the outer wall to a fish pond. there, unfolding on the surface that reflects the sky, white water lilies.

(the monastery also has an online page with a virtual walk, you find it here, click “weiter” to get to following pages)

to feel the wind

to sip a cup of chai,
to sit by the terrace
and watch the dark clouds loom



to pen a word,
to flip pages
to hum a tune

while the winds of water
continue to breeze through

really I wish you were here
to savour the monsoon
.

what a feeling

Tickled on the inside

Like mice running up the walls

On the inside of my heart—

Little scatterings of light,

A fierce desire to shout

A change for once, of something

Coming, growing

I hear the voice inside the halls

I feel the call,

The door left wide open

heralds the start of it all.

Just something I felt I had to post.

Bubble Balls

on the way to the library, a childhood memory. same features, different name, yet the taste of those automat sweets is still there, in my memory, this mix of peppermint and strawberry in sun bleached green and pink bubble balls.

whispering clouds

their message so subtle
it would take a subtitle
to interpret them