The sledgehammer of my realness feels wonderfully hefty in my hands.
I swing high,
With a great tinkling of glass,
the mirrors vaporize at my sudden assault.
And I see my face, centered, crisp, and alive,
in the gentle river of my own true identity...
at last....
The overcast sky merges with evening; it is soon dark. I lie on my bed '._ eating monaco biscuits with some jam& some dried rasins.
It's about all I can keep down in this thin air. Altitude always sends your appetite haywire.
The silence of the night is shattered hourly by the long cries of another gust of wind. It shrieks as it rages across this high desert and then it hits my flimsy tent. For now the guy ropes hold (barely).
This high desert amplifies each mournful Sound and entwines it with the weak threads of my own thought.
Normally I enjoy solitude, but tonight my aloneness oppresses me like the magnified sound of blood beating in my ears. Nothing brings it home more than this rugged desolate plain which stretches out before me
I seem to equate my life with the landscape before me.
Rock, Rock, Desert, Ashen mountain scapes covered with a fine silt of dust which were once rocks but have been rendered thus by the jealous love of the north wind..
The wind loves the rock just so...
I fall asleep only towards dawn. Across the road an Army Depot where I hope to buy fuel in the morn.
Across the treeless street
A moist breeze blows.
I re-arrange my sheet,
Wiggle my cold toes,
Stare at the sky, and toss,
---------------Insomniac.
The wind comes like a freight train
Screaming through wide plains
Alongside, the scent of distant rain.
I am too tired tonight
To sleep. I lie Companion less.
The white Clouds gut the sky.
Orion, Pleiades, Plough,
All signs and certainties
Are lost to vision now.
The Army trucks come Unload.
The loaded trucks move on.
This is the great depot
Where nothing stays.
The hours move towards light.
Sleep: in the tall-skied days
You will forget me tonight.
Wide plains draw
Rays down from wider skies.
The daylight, rising higher,
Burns through thin air to grass;
At night globes of green fire
Float on the pastured pass.
Cold, shivering like a duck
I watch the Eastern sky:
A shooting star brings luck;
A satellite swims by.
The Silver River flows
Event less, through the night.
The moon against the snows
Shines insular and bright.
Here we three, each, alone,
Me, Myself & I
At last we’re almost in touch with our range.
So onwards and upwards with porters galore,
Towards Denga and Shakti and even Maraur.
On their arms and their legs and even their dicks.
At Parkachi Thach we settled the mule train
But the afternoon was spoiled by a misty rain.
Don’t worry my friends,
I am in top form,
‘The weather will clear with a really good storm.’
The cook gives us chai each morning at seven,
This isn’t a trek, it’s much more like heaven.
I’m getting twitchy to get at a peak,
So up to Camp 1, an objective to seek.
To recce we set out in three separate ways,
And agreed on a summit to fill the next phase.
The weather’s not perfect but still, off we set,
And it’s not very long ‘fore it’s hailing and wet.
But I am still hopeful and true to form:
‘The weather will clear with a really good storm’
And, oh no, some people are starting to flag
A couple and I set off in a bit of a hurry,
While the rest of them wait trying hard not to worry
When we return safely, much to their relief,
With a point on the ridge successfully reached.
Back down to Shakti to get some food
Some of the porters are beginning to brood.
Slogging up and then down, we carry on through,
Dhel was so pleasant we stayed there two nights,
And then towards Ghumtarao we turned our sights.
Should we go this way, or should we go that?
In the end we went 'that' way and what a descent.
I'll swear that my knees are now permanently bent.
To even things up we climbed at such length,
By the end of next day I'd used up all my strength,
You know the saying, 'What goes up must come down,'
Well, the descent to Tirthan just went on and on.
Just a short day to Gushaini should hold no fears,
And the sooner we get there, the sooner there's beers.
Of mountains and gorges and torrents and bridges,
Of singing and laughter and new people I’ve met,
T’was a trip that will prove hard to forget.
in the mist
lost in the mountains
temple bells die out
their faint echo remains
the wind
gives prayers
wings...
I can sometimes hear her whispering my name .. The Call of the North Wind as it whistles through the Valley... The Misty Mountains are beckoning..
The present is a luminous ball.
Behind it - the past; in front of it - the future.
The whole soars in total darkness and reels to and fro, now gently, now vigorously.
Below there is an abyss, above vapor, It is pitch dark.
Either the ball crashes, then all is lost or it glides into the future and renews hope.
Which way is it going? I for one am totally helpless and can't seem to influence which way the twin headed hammer of time will fall and what will be the result.
Sometimes I feel that I am suspended between 2 worlds the one that I see and perceive and another which keeps on eluding me.
It's no idle boast when I say that through the ages men & women both lusted for me
Some people would go to any lengths to possess me, some even died for me.
and some wept openly begging me to be theirs forever
Small wonder that whenever someone utters my name, fierce emotions are aroused
I still feel the power of my passing, because in me resides the fate of billions.
Oh! you think I am just bragging, but nay I do not boast, I merely state facts
no matter how distasteful it is to for you to hear.
The passions that I aroused are still topics of long discussions & one can still find
many a tome larded with scholarly erudition & some with idle political kant.
Like Helen of Troy epic wars have been fought over me,
And like The Great Caesar himself, I Came, I Saw & I Conquered
Not that I am a mighty Warlord or despotic King, Nor am I filled up with too much hubris.
I never desired for people to exalt me to such a godlike pedestal
It just came naturally to my legions of followers and lovers.
It just is.. and there is nothing that I can do about it.
Before you jump to any rash conclusions just bear with me while I tell you my tale,
I leave the decision to your own sense of fairness to judge my guilt or innocence
----------
Oh those were heady times
Well do I remember that hour of my coming
I was clad in spotless whites fashioned by mother Change herself,
As I entered the clock in the room struck the hours of midnight.
The hall went quiet as they saw my approach to the Dais,
A dapper white clad man with smart black shoes with a rose buttoned on his lapel approached the mike no doubt to address the gathering & say a few words in my welcome,
A deep hush fell on all who were present for it was an important day, for most of them who had gathered there from all corners filling that small but ornate hall,with a high ceiling and slowly circulating fans.
All eyes were riveted on him as I stood at his elbow and whispered into his ear.
He well knew the significance of my words and so did the others who were met there in that hall.
In loud assured tones, of fluent English with a slight trace of an Indian Accent, and a definite stamp of a British Public School Education the man started to speak
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes
when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure,
but very substantially.
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world
sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history,
when we step out from the old to the new,
when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long
suppressed, finds utterance.{+}
You can smile at your reflection in a window or a spoon and I'll smile at you.
Your eyes are pretty, flat on the underside and curved above like cathedral windows, and they look like they've seen too much and may be the color of jade but aren't jaded.
You struggle with the notion of forgiveness for those who have hurt you. Most of those lines are from wicked crooked grins and a quick wit.
You thought for sure you were bound for hell and bravely bared your teeth until you learned "sin" comes from the Greek word meaning "missed the mark," and that nobody else could tell you the destination of your soul.
The way you smell reminds me of winter, kind of musty and black leather and old patched coats. Residual camphor and cedar of dark old closets. Constant dark burgundy lipstick, a wild mane of dark black hair, and a butterfly tattoo on your shoulder. Black clothes, always.
You say it hides stains best
Getting up in my bed
now empty of your presence
I find evidence
Of the most intimate kind
That says that you were here...
She stands apart from all the rest of her kind.
A bit aloof, not snotty but just a bit imperious...
She is a shy woman..
She preserves her modesty always,
clothing herself in layers of white petticoats
like a greedy bride..
A thin VEIL shrouds her face but
Now and then she gives you an intoxicating glimpse
through a momentary shift and a flank is revealed.
Pristine, smooth as silk, almost flawless....
I try to picture her whole
from the fragments that I see revealed.
She towers above all the rest
one can easily spot her in a crowd.
She is definitely attractive & she holds me enthralled,
I want to explore her body
Discover her deepest darkest secrets
which she clasps so tightly to her bosom..
She is moody....
Sometimes she cries
and her white tears dot her pristine form,
Rivulets run down her body
it saddens me to see her so..
She is temperamental, & somewhat prone to melodrama
this makes it difficult for one to know
where one stands with her...
Keeps me on my toes...
When aroused she is frightful to behold.
She whips up a mighty tempest
shedding some layer of white clothes in rapid succession
& off they come sliding off her body
But for all that passion
she is a distinctly cold woman
One ought to be wary of treading too close
for she is possessive and a jealous lover..
if she catches you dreaming
she will keep you enslaved in her various folds.....
But then I was always attracted to such devious females....
yes...she is definitely my type ....
she is my ICE MAIDEN....
and she cometh....
{Kanchanjunga as seen from Dzongri, Sikkim} Kanchangjunga is the third highest mountain in the world after Everest & K2
I'm in a daze, no more a fog which seems to make everything so surreal to my eyes and brain right now.. It has a dreamlike quality about it..
There is no recall as such when I try to remember what I did the whole day today or yesterday night both of which have decided to entwine themselves within each other, clasped together into one entity engaged in blissful copulation. Lost in each other, engrossed in each other..
(Poe's " Dream Within A Dream" comes to mind, but of course I can't remember it fully)
I'm on a plane ... I can't complain (Nirvana).
To keep my mind from wandering off into Lulu land, & trying not to drift into a Wonderland of Hallucinations, I have been playing games with myself. Yes playing Little Games
In this strange place I am at present, between inertia and vibrancy, I’m torn between the abandoned and amusing – well, it amuses me – this limbo that I am currently in, all I can do is muse and enjoy this fantasy fueled lethargy..
I have few words right now; this is my way, to grasp with intuition rather than intellectuality until the sediment has completely settled and formed crystals of the senses to be recorded at the peak of their ripeness.
I am in the Parvati Valley of Himachal Pradesh, another week before I am back.
Till Then I will watch this Rock Growing inside the split oak tree.
Why: such an eternal and often unanswerable word that operates also as a question.
It implies a meaning and an intent, a cause and reaction, a chain of events.
It is basic and elemental.
Some words are laden, heavy, weighted with meaning. Some words once meant deeper things, but the meaning has since been lost, like those words absorbed by the English language beginning with "wr" that indicate a twisting motion, or misdirection.
The word writing itself describes a twisting motion of the wrist (which turns and twists to drag the utensil across the surface).
Such meanings have since become wraiths, the lost haunting shadows of words.
We type but we call it writing. The physical act described means we're doing something else when we sit at a keyboard and tap away at the keys.
What, exactly, are we doing, and why are we doing it?
With the dazzling glory of the sun
Today, after many days, she came.
All calm and patience did I lose
Not all her shyness did she restrain
Yes, My love, you may be
sure
Even when parted I will think often
of you
of the life we shared here
when you seemed
the Goddess incarnate
to me and your singing
pleased me best
Now among other women you
in turn still stand first
as the red - fingered moon
at sunset takes
precedence over the stars around her
her light spreads equally
on the salt sea and fields
thick with bloom
Delicious dew pours down to freshen
roses, delicate thyme
and blossoming sweet clover,
she wanders
aimlessly, thinking of her gentle
lover, her heart singing
heavy with longing in her little breast
She shouts aloud: Come we know it;
thousand - eared night repeats that cry
across the seas shining between us
- During Dinner her feet dance under the table. Creeping snakes!!
Looking intently at her plate she devours her food, the picture of innocence.. not responsible
for the footwork going on under the table ! like nooses her legs get hooked. Here and there.
- I take her for a ride on my bike, a long way from home.
Her hair always in my face.
I feel Time enveloping me, taking me back to a place where it stood still unwilling to leave...
There is a haunting quality to the landscape. The Road through the passes is dotted by chortens and sometimes you see by the roadside the Speaking Stones of Spiti . Small Villages & Thousand year old Monastery Towns , or past stony clapboard cottages boarded up awaiting visitors that will never come
In the distance perched on a hill another monastery with stupendous views across the valley floor.
All of them keep their memories to themselves, as you whiz past. Here they have stood long before you and will remain but you will pass away. The air laced with wood smoke, and small butter lamps lit in small houses. I breathe it all in, savour it and hide it in my memory so I can come back whenever I wish.
Atop on my Aerie I pan my vision to the valley below...Far below, the valley spans out in a sweep across the plain below here and there filled with flowers, the wind wafts up to me & pulls the heavy scent of Azalea's into the air, the fragrance drowns, sweet purple, in piercing blue.The sweetness drowns with a sound of the river beyond.
The river modest knife of history, carving its blade deeper into the earth, rusty blood seeping through the cracked face of the landscape. A fine mesh of colors. Ocher Lichen, Rust, Grays and the awesome vaulted dome above.
On the Way to Manirang Lahul Valley
Nay I can't ask for more.....Its perfection & it leaves me spellbound, Ecstatic.
The leaves of the trees , a million hands exuding energy,The cold room, the smell of wooden sills and floors slowly being heated in a tepid sun as they have done for centuries in this place.
Looking out at the dry hills so bright, the eye manufactures shadows. Gradations of shades, ice topped hills surround fresh water lakes which reflect shades of turquoise and vivid blues and totally astound . The water reflects the sky and one can forget which side is up and down, the horizion on the sky melt into each other.
If I could draw, I'd hold a square of paper up to this view from yonder window and let the landscape burn into it.
Seep into it like a grasp leaving its stain...Photosensitive paper turning dark with desire for a place no one will ever apprehend except you & me..
For the past couple of weeks I have missed you..... I wish you were alongside me here . This place has a rugged beauty not unlike Ladakh nowhere else do mountains attain different shades according to the light of the day. I could watch such mountains forever as they dress themselves up in a panoply of vivid hues.
I am sure you would have soaked in the experience as I have.
As I leave I take away the smell of the room again fated to be long closed, the hills and monasteries, the people and the places are all in me. The hills dissolve as I look back ; From the open door, the wafting fumes of scorched grass which is not unlike the acrid smell of all my burned poetry for you.... but the loss I feel is that of one who has already passed the point of apprehension.
Like writing to a man who no longer wishes to be found.
So its sayonara for now, look not for me ....Until the plums bending that branch, the weight of the shadow separating one leaf from another, presses that place into you.
- Until the hills burns your eyes, until you give in.
- Until a seam of density that that separates leaf from air/ is not a gap but a seal.
- A seal to my solitude in this vast expanse.
- Until the beautiful buzzing of the bees wakes me.
Seldom do you visit places which seem to feel like home, places which appeal to your soul and the desire is almost overwhelming to remain forever. This is one such place cut off from the whole world, one of the most sparsely populated region in our overfilled country, which exists out of time and bereft of reason. A place I could easily call home. But for now the road beckons to other places but where shall I find such splendor & such a feeling of peace I don't know.
(Fugaku sanjurokkei: Kanagawaoki namiura).
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
Woodblock print from Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Fuji, Edo period.
I can look and stare at this particular wave for hours together (in fact I have done so many a time) but it is a curious fact that I always end up thinking of the fate of the fishermen & their boats in the aftermath of the wave.... Their end is almost assured.. It fills me with meloncholy just gazing at death like that. How utterly poweless human beings are against the power of Nature when it unleashes its force.
Everytime I look at this print of this amazing wood block, I half expect the wave to crash down in all its maelovalent fury and swamp the 3 boats floundering in the raging sea.
The wave looks almost alive to me full of the untold power , you can almost see the latent energy captured in the frothing wavelets their edges poised like talons just waiting to engulf the helpless fishermen & their boats. . The wave looks looks all the more ferocious as it dwarfs Fuji - San (Mt. Fuji) reducing it to a mere hill.
I am as always in awe of this moment of arrested motion that the artist has succeeded in communicating through his work. The fall of the swamping wave looks inevitable . A brief moment in time captured beautifully poised as it seems on the edge of disaster.
Hokusai was a master of the "ukiyo - e" (pictures of the floating world) and left a formidable legacy of more than 30,000 examples of his works. Among them his 13 volume sketchbook MANGA (Random Sketches) as well as the series of block prints colectively known as THE THIRTY VIEWS OF Mt. FUJI from which series this print is taken.
Hokusai's over 30,000 works, including silk paintings, woodblock prints, picture books, manga, travel illustrations, erotic illustrations, paintings, and sketches. Some of his paintings were public spectacles which measured over 200 sq. meters (2,000 sq. feet.) He didn't care much for being sensible or social respect; he signed one of his last works as "The Art-Crazy Old Man". In his 89 years, Hokusai changed his name some thirty times (Hokusai wasn't his real name) and lived in at least ninety homes.
His work deeply impressed even Western Impressionists like Van Gogh, Degas, Monet among others he was one oriental artist who bridged the gap to western artists...
Hokusai must be imagined as a person who was completely obsessed by producing ukiyo-e prints. He lived for nothing else. He usually got up early in the morning and worked until after sunset. The art name Gakyo-rojin, which he used from 1834-1849 means old man mad with painting.
And this is what he wrote about himself in his autobiography. It is the quintessence of his art philosophy:
"From the age of five I have had a mania for sketching the forms of things. From about the age of fifty I produced a number of designs, yet of all I drew prior to the age of seventy there is truly nothing of great note. At the age of seventy-two I finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fish and of the vital nature of grasses and trees. Therefore, at eighty I shall have made some progress, at ninety I shall have penetrated even further the deeper meaning of things, at one hundred I shall have become truly marvelous, and at one hundred and ten, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own. I only beg that gentlemen of sufficiently long life take care to note the truth of my words."
Fruity- sweet and sticky - Thin bare twigs tangled amind the bluest sky - The jerky pain of hair caught too tight - A tiny bird with stilled wings glued to the tendrils of a webby cloud - A huge lump of packed down exultation, struggling to be born, then suddenly soaring free, free - Oh! so free and in such ecatacy!!
They lay together on their clothes for hours. keeping each other warm, with skin against skin, smiling foolishly at each other amazed at finding each other, innocent of transgression, enmeshed in the deliciousness of all kinds of discoveries..
