That’s how they talk....when they talk!

A: How boring this life?

B: You over with it?

Who knows what tomorrow might bring. ‘Yo No Sé Mañana’(‘I Do Not Know Tomorrow’) is how it goes....

A: No, but still...nothing new...doing the same things over and over

B: Oho!

after a pause ~

B: You eat three square meals a day, everyday?

A: Yes...sometimes four

B: And you don’t think that is a boring thing to do over and over again? 

A: But that is how it is....I can’t stay hungry....and then we don’t eat the same thing over and over again

B: Yeah that is what it is...There are many ways of doing the same thing...try a different way.

A: Like?

B: There are many ways to cook chicken...try an other way; there are many ways to the same destination...try an other route....'A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.' ~ someone said so.


A: Okay, Okay....got it.

But, not in a mood to experiment...tell me something else

B: Watch a  movie?

A: heck of a bore-a-thon....and, who can sit for three long hours

B: then?

A: that’s what I am asking you?

B: Want to go for a ride?

A: No!

B: Well then...Climb the tallest coconut tree in the yard.

A: how does that help? for a tender coconut?

B: No, climb to the top and then leave your hands!

A: (seems stuck elsewhere) How does THAT help?

B: Well, doesn’t help either....but then you won’t have to think of boredom there after. 
('climb a coconut tree and leave the hands' is what some say when one complains about boredom)

B then sums up, the big moral: Life is what it is. Accept it and Live! 

The ups and downs... the crescendo and decrescendo.... dal niente and al niente....the notes rising out of silence...and fading into silence...it keeps shifting....coming and going...Until the music itself, the heart-beats, stop.

And if life seems to give you a chance – don't forget to make something good of it. Or do something you enjoy doing. It gives you only one chance...for you to be you, live as you. One life, this life. 

A: (looking for excitement in life doing nothing) : hmmm...

Anyway...as they end their conversation, 

I am taking leave..Will be away for a month long vacation starting mid next week. 

See you when I’ll be back. 

Be Well, Happy Blogging & Blog Good! :)

regards,

devika

Photo: Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://animalphotos.info/a/topics/animals/mammals/rodents/squirrel/page/2/ 

'Boring life' seem to the catch phrase of the times despite the profusion of technology promising 'entertainment' 24x7. Perils of advancement, may be?

Mother - A Story - (line)

renegade son

the mother sums up:

Love’s Labour's Lost

She sat gazing at the faraway sky. Disappointed.

But....but, mothers don’t give up on their children, I said trying to...

She looks into my eyes, blankly:

Yes, possibly. And for that, you need to believe in something, strongly...believe strongly.  God, maybe, she muttered...  her eyes rising to the sky, again.

PS: The widowed mother, a  retired teacher known to me, wanted me to write. In the strongest possible way, she said, because he - the son- represents a good chunk of our youth today. She may be a little less than my mother’s age. But, we share a lot of commonalities in beliefs, perceptions and perspectives.  And I definitely feel for her... Each story is different, each unique in its own way...and needs to be written, perhaps... I may write some day.  

And meantime wishing, may ‘Love’s Labour’s Won’  be the end of the story for every mother’s love... .

Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://www.bergoiata.org/fe/sun-sky/25.htm

In response.... to a request for a poem

think of it

I can fill my old pen

from the well of experience

turn and twist

the way I need, churn words 

to goad a furore,

an emotional roller-coaster,

a faux pas

or even stir up love poems

but, after the light

of love, giving words to it

is senseless, worthless

or maybe not

love needs to be embellished

with whispers, kisses and roses

lovers say,

an art I’m not good at

but come to think of it

again, it is simply that

I wouldn't want to spoil

a nice piece of white paper,

fresh out of the quire

an angel in its own right

I would rather fold it

into a rocket

and fly it to the moon

or into a paper boat

and float it through

the ocean of perception

to the shore of understanding

if at all.

~~~~

for heaven sake

and your own,

do not ask me to write

when i am not of a mind

or, you will be served with such

crap!

~~~~~~~~~~

PS.  That is self explanatory. Someone – a friend of a friend, so to say, asked for a poem- and possibly a ‘love’ poem. Sounded  what they call 'the joke of the century,’ and had to laugh. Anyway....  It is good to have friends, and friends of friends, who call you a poet, when you yourself aren't sure, or you don't consider yourself one. And, ‘the pen’ ~ no, the fingers ~ tapped these on the keyboard later.

II.

poets must be visionaries
dreamers, lovers, 
wordsmiths playing with words

yet, to not pollute love

rhyming it with owe

is not a vision

but a simple truth.

pure love owes nothing

and, there are no battles 

to be fought for love

come to think of it

every battle fought

becomes a worthless feat

even those fought for love

pure love knows no fight

III,

they, some new-found friends -

friends of friends,

and hence friends, they say -

called me a poet,

I ascertain - I haven’t written

much….not as much

if I were a poet,

living my life as a poet

I am just a woman taken to

the simple joys of a routine life,

some dreams, all things nature,

and a pen that writes itself

of the finer

and the not-so-finer

things

that it comes across

IV.

after dictating

a three line poem
the other night,

the muse said a secret,

hush!

call the poem your own,

if you may,

and earn the prize

but do not try to own the muse

you will have to pay for it,

a price you simply cannot afford.

and then, she  left

in a hurry

leaving the door open.

Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://www.scenicreflections.com/download/224740/The_paper_boat_____Wallpaper/ 

Sense! Out of all Non-sense

you say, ‘Nonsense!’ all too often

but, most of what you say

makes sense to me, she said.

the 'why' still stuck in her eyes.

look, the world is full of nonsense

all too common...

people say things they don’t mean 

and mean things they don’t say 

about anything and everything:


they know it, or not -

to reach some point of sense

one has to begin with ‘nonsense’

and then remove the ‘non’ out of it

and not vice-versa:

to start with ‘sense’ 


and to have to add the 'non’ later,

to make a non-sense of it all-

a spiritual journey is always subtraction,

not addition

makes sense?

so you on a spiritual journey?

Sense!

But then who said, nothing is as interesting as nonsense, as it wakes up obsolete brain cells...and that pure love produces pure nonsense...yeah, some 'sensible' souls have said so...One look at the world and one has to doubt if it's God's pure love!?


Now, to conclude with Frost's words:


'Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,

And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.'
~Robert Frost, 'Cluster of Faith,' 

PS: A 'Common Nonsense' amid the Break, with a friend of mine. With her, I can say....well, whatever I  feel like! 

And she wants it posted here....so here it goes, a break into posting amid the break  away from it....

Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/common-nonsense/id378430867

Break

I will be gone for a while, possibly a long while, again. -  some projects, besides my regular work; a vacation in March; some family needs etc, etc…Short poems or verse, whatever happens will be posted at Abstract Deductions blog, whenever it happens. 

My other blogs will mostly be off this year, Possibly I will close down two & keep just two. Time long due for a revamp...But that will be later.

Anyway, thank you for reading, 

& Happy Blogging, will always be looking forward to read,

regards, 

devika

Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://www.wallpapersland.net/2011/03/20/lake-at-dusk/

Life - happiness from suffering or vice versa?

I look at the opal moon,

again, as if for the first time

after many years,

many moons, many breaths

many deaths,

as the eight year old

who stood in quiet wonder

of the source of its white light

unawares. no more a wonder,

but still in awe: the silver splendour

in a sapphire sea

calm and quiet,

so detached from the sky and earth

and the assembly of stars,

watching upon the world

lost in a world of itself

I  see them too

the wayfarers, returning home

their lives returning

from the pain, the suffering

of living – to loving, happiness

and of death, I too have forgotten
for a time, for a moment

as moonlight presses upon the dark

range of trees lining the city’s sky- 

the life, the love that breathes within,

without

Again, it all began with the ideas of love, life and Buddhist thought: ‘The essence of life is suffering,’  and the root delusions: attachment, anger and ignorance. Perhaps, the sky that night was lit by the moon and stars… it went that way, though it was with my mother that I was talking. She is very devout, very perceptive, a very ardent lover of life, and a fine connoisseur of literature and poetry…and more taken to religious texts now . So our talks often border these areas and it would go on and on and on….and on. Not really. It stops when we have had enough. 

For the love of quotes and the way thinkers weave their thoughts in words: & especially for the inherent contrast in ideas of love, life, suffering and happiness, I love this one by Woody Allen:

~ ‘To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.’


live and let live
love and let love be ~ 
a way to live, 
a way to happiness, 
suffering from it even

On a different note, from the Buddhist perspective: isn’t it strange that man is drawn to the sufferings of cyclic existence, when actually he must be striving to free himself from that? Or is it the perceived  pleasure in that suffering, as W. Allen said?

Funny are the ways of the world!?

All said and done…to think that one may have to leave this world once forever. Saddening. But then, ‘Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.’ Norman Cousins said that. He must have been my cousin in some life - for, I hold the same belief.

   

Photo courtesy: Dennis from Atlanta, Dennis Matheson

as per original copyright at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennis_matheson/3270263570/

Cooking Poetry On a Cold Morning

in poetry

as in cooking soup

cook in soothing slow-fire
simulate the flame

to seethe through

the contents

strew the words

with intervals of

s i l e n c e,  

the salt of the matter

strewn with pepper

check the rhythm 
the viscosity of flow

sense the taste

to be good on the nostrils

before the tongue

taken in like

hot soup 

on a cold winter morning

in one gulp,

to let it digest

within

'Poetry is the only art people haven't yet learnt to consume like soup.’ W.H. Auden

PS: Sure, very sure, I need to work on this....as I need to work on poetry. Cooking soup seems easier...and consuming poetry!  :)

As to writing, my present state of mind is as what George Bernard Shaw said, when he was tasked by his biographer with writing plays without genius: 

'I do not waste my time writing pot-boilers: the pot must be boiled, and even my pot au feu has some chunks of fresh meat in it. ...I have no time to boil myself down; and anyhow I could not do so and preserve all the necessary nutriment and the flavoring on which the digestibility depends.'

A little too much to equate with GB Shaw's words?....Yeah;Yes, but what else to say when that's how one feels! :)

Photo courtesy: as per original copyright at:

http://www.adm.heacademy.ac.uk/networks/networks-summer-2011/features/2018what2019s-the-environment-got-to-do-with-media-studies-2019-exploring-the-possibilities-and-challenges-for-curriculum-development-in-higher-education