Ordinary Wishes and Ordinary Things

I want two things to happen -ceteris paribus- before I can contentedly go off to sleep. Both of them are very small wishes, if seen in perspective. Well, for one I want to have a patch up conversation with my brother before I sleep. The other thing is somewhat of the same magnitude, but I shall not mention it just to keep the mystery quotient about this blog alive.

I would have ended the last paragraph with a smiley (to fortify my smart ass comment about mystery quotients) but I guess it is not a smiley mode tonight. As I write this I have come to realize that my wishes are not going to be granted, so will probably have to make do with some comfort food. At this point, I don't want anything so bad but these small wishes. If God decides to appear at this moment, I know what I want. Forget all the big stuff about happy lives, and accomplishments and other bloated desires. I don't want any of them ( I mean I want them too intrinsically), but just these two things. Funny, how you feel so differently at the end of the day. Had this been a morning, I would have craved for the world.

But a consolation did come before the night ended. A small one, that eased the frown from my forehead and took me into another frame of mind. It is just that different train of thought that you need to board sometimes and enjoy the ride. A friend shared a blog that had this poem. I am posting it here.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.

Liberation

Do you see the Red Cross message to the right of this text?
I am not a person who can ask people to donate. I am scared that I am entering very personal premises of the other person by telling him/her what they "should" or "could" do. Nevertheless, it feels liberating that I allowed this widget to show.

Have you plugged your headphones and turned the volume to the highest, while You Tube/I tunes/others plays a song?
Did it right now. In a few moments took it out thinking that my sleeping roommate had something to say, which I would miss hearing since my ears are overly occupied. A few seconds pass. I put the headphones back. It is liberating to do something just for ears. Others can wait.
Recommended: "That's All- Genesis. They say:

"Just as I thought it was going alright
I find out I'm wrong, when I thought I was right..."

Have you abandoned a number puzzle for a blog?
Did that too, right now :) Liberated from proving to myself each time that I am not so dumb.

But still captive... expections that make me peer into other windows, waiting for the sun to shine, silly day dreams that I wish came true. Unanswered questions, an unexplained game.

"I could leave but I won't go
It'd be easier I know"

That's All.

New Post

New Post for the sake of a New Post,

However preposterous it may seem.

Postpone for the sake of More Time,

Posterity will fulfill the dream.

I hate that I do not know what will life be after an year. Another Job? Another lease? Another set of people that I live with ? Or alone? My Dad retired. A different address in India. More white hair. More unrest? Or some peace? Another country? Another activity? Other problems? More confident? Car?
No one knows, you 'd argue. I do not know my trajectory yet. I can't even set a plot for a dream. For a dream of five years hence. Or even imagine life a year or two down the line.
For one thing I know that I am walking like a acrobat on a tight thin rope...with something just balancing me. I wonder if that balance fails some day , or if the rope is not taut anymore...I would fall in a deep dark..Don't-Know-Where-To-Go ( as Arundhati Roy would have described if this were an excerpt from The God of Small Things).

A Dog's Life

Two posts in one night, that is some speed. After all the months of hiatus. As I told a friend over chat just now:
me: too much overflow of stuff in the head but the real stuff does not come out so I empty the rest to make space for the real stuff...

Here I am , emptying it up. But now you know that this is not the real stuff. Do you still want to read further?

And for those of you who did read further...here is the reward...a piece of my newfound enlightenment. As children to our parents, most of us will never get them the true unadulterated happiness that we have the best intentions of giving them. I have seen my parents most happy with what my dog does. I stand no chance, until God sends me as my parents' pet the next time around. It is probably going to be a long wait :)

Power!

It is so difficult to write sometimes. Not because you are out of ideas...there are just too many of them and you want each of them to get a blog to themselves. Not happening. I started a new blog entry for marathon running but it never got a post to it. Actually, I did not feel anything magical either...I did not even finish with a smile. Once I was done, I was thinking when and how to do the next one. Was it so difficult...the five months of training pass in front of my eyes in a flash...and I come to a conclusion that it was not so bad, not so tough. Given the pain, the time invested, the uncertainty of keeping a commitment, the fear of giving up, the implications(on some nameless lives) of giving up...injuries both mental and physical.

I guess that is where the magic is. That human spirit ( which is also within me) to make a difficult task easy and to keep looking for more. If anything, the experience has been humbling because I proved it to myself that a human being can achieve feats. It makes me respect people even more because they are capable of great deeds: running triathlons, biking across a continent, climbing Mt Everest, building dams singlehandedly, establishing schools, changing ideologies, taking bullets to save lives...the list goes on. It just takes some faith, some of your own and some of the people that matter to you.

And even greater respect for those who know that they could be heros but decided to stand and cheer, those who were gracious enough to let others carry the batons. probably such people are very much at peace with themselves, one with God. As an Indian ad ( Mahindra Rodeo) so wisely says:" ...because when you have real power, you don't need to show it" ;)

Un-holi

Sometimes the urge to write should start out on the back of a telephone bill. Less to do with Gandhian philosophy of saving paper and more to do with fighting the procrastination that comes with waiting for a keyboard. Anyway...

Holi came but did not colo(u)rize our American lives this time.

Holi. Iloh... Just an urge. Egru.
Back to the subject, lost the point above. I lost the nostalgia. Lost the urge. Did I?I did.

I am smiling. It's just trivial happiness. But mine. enim.

So, back to the subject. Is it a subject? No. It is a festival. A highly environmentally hostile one. You throw colors which contain harmful chemicals and then you waste a couple of hundred liters of water per coloured person in trying to get it off your body. you rub and you scrub and you drain that pink water to flow down your sewer into the lake, into the river. Not that the pink shows against the black background that it floats along with.

And the carbon emissions that you add to the atmosphere, driving your car to your second cousin's sister-in-law's place to throw colour on more people...who cares if you remotely know them...knowing is enough. Add to that the bane of calories that are loaded into gujias and the inebriation of the bhang. the opportunity cost of the time spent in doing and undoing the holi. The opportunity cost of writing this piece.

Did you even for a single second think of the money we lost that we could have earned, the water that could have helped the drought prone regions of Orissa or Bihar, the anti-allergy and skin medications that could have been avoided. DId you ever think of th trauma of the would-be bride who inadvertently landed at the last moment with a permanent green dye in her hair parting that was meant for the sindoor.

there is too much chaos out there. Ban Holi. Iloh nab. Ban Diwali. too much pollution, too many hazards. Ban rakshabandhan. too much blocked blood circulation of the wrist. Ban Dusshera. Poor Ravan. Ban all the festivals in between. Strange concepts, hackneyed ides that are outliving their immortality.

Ban life. Ban happiness. Ban laughter. Ban Culture. ban bonhomie. Ban me. em nab.

Ban reason.