One thing leads to another.

Yesterday I went to a poetry class to rave and rant over Yeats' poem "A Prayer for my Daughter".
Somehow Thomas Hardy's poem "The Darkling Thrush" came up in the discussion.
At dinner, while devouring a plate of spaghetti bolognaise, I wrote a haiku on birds.
After dinner, I went home and wrote it up on my blog, then thought I ought to read The Darkling Thrush first.
I googled The Darkling Thrush, and found it, along with a review.
I posted the link.
I went back to read the review in full.
I noticed it had been written by a contemporary poet.
Her name is A.E. Stallings.
I googled her.
And found this.
Enjoy.

necessary evils?

The dogs howled last night.

Maybe they mourn in advance

for culling to come.

written when corporation got into the stray dog business ..

DEAR ME: "Fools and puppets ..

Here's another poem I wrote around 1993 .. though I keep using the word "you" I suspect it was really addressed to myself. This was around when I started getting jaded with all the glamour and fun of the advertising world, perhaps when the seed was sown for me to get out of that career and into the life I lead now?

Fools and puppets,
junkies and whores,
peddling your souls away
on oil-soaked shores.

There's more to life than what you think.
There's more to life than 'me'.
There's more than what's between your legs,
but it's nothing you'd care to see.

One day your bank account will close.
Someone else will be sleeping in your bed.
One day it will all have meant nothing
and all you will be is dead.

There's a love you would never have dreamed of.
There's a kindness you never may show.
There's strength for your fears and peace for your pain.
There's a man on the cross makes it so.

(written in 1993)

I wonder if that last verse should just be a separate poem.

Japanese landscape ..

(everything is a poem to someone)

.. milky tea simmers.

This evening was the first session of Lit For Life III, a wonderful 12-week workshop that my friend Wendy holds from time to time. I had attended the first workshop, on poetry, but missed the second, on T.S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party.

Beauty

This poem is how I wanted to be.


Beauty without function is not beauty.

Her mouth is beautiful when she smiles at a child
and speaks tenderly to an old man.

Her hands are beautiful when she touches souls.

Her eyes are beautiful.

With them she sees each shade of a sunset
and the perfect symmetry of a flower at the roadside.

Her eyes are beautiful when she cries someone else's tears.

Her ears are beautiful.

With them she hears symphonies in the wind,
and music in a wristful of bangles.

Her ears are beautiful when she stops to listen
to what no one else wants to hear.

Her body is beautiful
when she forgets
that it is so.

(written in 1991? 1992?)

Reading this today, I think, just maybe, I turned out beautiful after all.

grass haiku

Grass could be humble,

patient, accepting, or just

resigned to its fate.

ONCE UPON The Count of Ten

Once upon the count of ten, I found out what I was here for. I was on the edge of a new millennium, and I was searching. When I heard that a hypnotherapist was visiting Bahrain, and would be holding past-life regression workshops, I felt the need to see him.

I find that odd now, looking back, because at that point of my life, I had never before turned to the past for answers. The past, for me, had always been a collection of anecdotes and photographs given to me by others, and the collage I pieced together had created a pleasant enough picture, of a past I could not actually remember. Besides this, I did not - and am still unsure if I do - believe in past lives. I told myself I was going for fun. For a lark, and to be able to say that I had done that. To add a quirky anecdote to the old collage.

Now I know that some part of me knew I needed to take this step, that dominoed into step after step, little painful falls towards healing. That first hypnosis session was followed by five or six more, each one opening a fictional and yet more real past than I had ever known. But that first session - well, it was the first. Every step I've taken ever since has been a result of that first visit into my subconscious.

And so, with a count of ten, I was standing before a tower, on my way to meet an inner guide. The gentleman who had hypnotised me, Lee Stone, told me that this inner guide would answer questions, show me ways, and take me on journeys.

"Ask him," Lee said. "Ask him what your role here is."

So I asked, "What is my role here?"

And I got the answer: Just to be.

Just to be. What kind of role is that? In my mind, “to be” meant “nothing”. I defined life by doing, not being. If I am to be, rather than to do, then I am wasted, inanimate, useless, pointless. Actions, accomplishments, awards. Roles, diplomas, milestones, items ticked off on a list of errands. You don’t get gold stars for doing nothing.

Just to be. Those three words still waft about me today. For a very long time, I found them hard to accept, or even understand. I am only just beginning to understand. What kind of things just “be”? The answer took seven years to come to me: nature. Nature just is. There is no conscious will or decision-making. Nature just is, and somehow by its being, exerts its influence on those of us who think we are the masters of this planet.

We, the people, "do". We do lots of things. Lots and lots. We always have done, and will continue to do. And searching for answers is just one little thing in all those thousands of millions of things that we do. We do, we die, we search, we go on trying, year into century into aeon and we are still searching and doing and dying.

I will never know if those past lives I saw under hypnosis all those years ago were real, or beautifully creative visualisations. But now, knowing what little I do know, I think I have an idea of whose example to follow, and what to aspire to, should there be a life after this one I'm living now. Trees.

When you look at them, they don’t seem to be doing anything. They’re not visibly active, although in some passive unseen way, they are wildly and widely awake. There is photosynthesis, and osmosis, and all sorts of interestingly-named processes going on. They’re producing oxygen, carbon dioxide. They’re filtering toxins. They’re cooling the air. They’re housing birds and insects and animals. They’re sheltering smaller plants. They’re even growing anthuriums at their feet, in the rotting mulch that was once branches or fruit or bark or leaves. And under it all, their roots are holding the earth together. Effortlessly. Just by being.

A lesson in self esteem!

And this lesson comes to us from a tiny cabbage-coloured bird - my pet budgie Gobi (which is Urdu for "cabbage", by the way). She is about four inches long, and stands about three inches high. She knows what she likes, and what she dislikes. She hates being cuddled, but loves sitting on my shoulder and stretching out to touch her beak to my nose (er .. we call it "nosies") while I mumble sweet nothings to her.

Today my dad decided to record her usual array of non-stop twitter-chirp-whistle, and when I listened to the recording this evening I discovered that she's obviously being paying attention to what I say, because in the middle of all the jibberish she suddenly says, quite clear, "Gobi such a sweet bird!"

I think it's amazing, and extra lovely that she chose what she must have felt was the best thing to echo! Obviously, she doesn't speak English .. but I'm assuming she has picked up on the tone or emotion of my voice and decided that these are the words that make her feel most loved.

My niece Reshma was so impressed that she has decided to follow in Gobi's footsteps (clawhops, actually) and I think that's an excellent idea for us all. It's quite easy. Tomorrow morning when you get up, go to the bathroom mirror, smile at yourself and say, "(insert your name here) such a sweet bird!"

What a wonderful way to start the day. Let me know how it goes!

HAIKU NOODLE: Perhaps this is what courage is supposed to be.

Always so afraid,
I thought myself a coward.
(But no one else knew).

Fear is a big part of my life. Anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, phobias - the lot. And also the not-so-dramatically expressed fears that seem to have gone with me wherever I go, ever since childhood.

I've been thinking about fear a lot this year. Been through a lot of stress and nearly had a nervous breakdown. Once, many years ago, my friend Pervin told me how inspired she was by my courage and strength. I've always wondered what she meant. Didn't she know what a coward I was? Couldn't she see how scared I was of life? Apparently not.

I read a quotation a few days ago, "Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid". That's what inspired today's haiku. But I do see that courage is not just about hiding one's fear. It's not about being brash, or reckless. It's really about going on in spite of the fear.

I don't think I'm all that courageous, because at times it is so very hard to go on, that I don't just hide my fear, I hide from life too. But I shan't negate that I have survived this far. That is something. I may not do all that I want or hope to do, but I am still here.

Maybe that is enough, maybe that is something worth celebrating. And now I feel that perhaps it is okay - perhaps it is courageous - to let the world know:

I am scared.

The little specials of life.

This is no ordinary cup of coffee. In fact, it's not a cup of coffee at all, it's the DREGS of what was once a cup of coffee. And this cup was made for me by Mrs. Seshadri, my history teacher back in school, whom I'd not met in years - decades even - but was reunited with just last month. I had such a lovely inspiring morning with her, and when she made me a cup of coffee, I just had to take a picture of it! We were all so in awe of her back in school, and the idea that I had just drunk my very first cup of coffee MADE BY MRS. SESHADRI!! was too momentous not to immortalise on film!