Soliloquy

The sun comes out from beyond, scratches itself a bit and extends its warmth & glory to the multitude. And with this, finally, a moving finger writes. To live spherically in many directions, as Frances Mayes says.
And so you wake, amongst the four walls that protects you, the dreamer. Thoughts of the green monsters under your bed melting in the light. You've had nightmares. You live to see another day on the land you were born, where you loved, you lost, you won, you wept. You learned to walk, to laugh like a Kookabura, to return to that childish innocence that you so believe in. To believe that you'll be alright. And when early one morning you hear a peacock sing for the first time, you don't realise that you have learned to smile again. You are breathing.
These days, you are something of a loner. Between the pages of a Buddhist monastery, you think of lands far away. Of colours that are new. And just like that one day, between sips of Hazelnut latte, he quietly slides in, to put his hand on your shoulder. Those warm eyes.
Where have you been, dear old poet?
Where have you been, Czeslaw Milosz?

In Black despair
In grayish doubt and black despair,
I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,
pretending to joy, although I lacked it.
The age had made lament redundant.
So here's the question --
who can answer it --
Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?

The words go round and round your head, like you are tasting a fine new wine, your taste buds testing its youth and fragrance. All your senses absorbed in one task. No, not getting drunk. Your eyelids close for one brief instant.
All things go on, just as they used to.

Somewhere

Somewhere far away is a little girl. She looks out the window, at the snow. Flakes slide off the tips of pines, like silk that once knew the pink of her shoulders. In her bubble, tresses caress her nape, the scent of which he knows so well.
She looks on, waiting. Thoughts float. Dreams were dreamt.
Somewhere on a sunny day, he was with her. On a cobblestone street, they skipped together. The entire world ceased to be. The young blush on her face stroked by laughter and recklessness. They sat together, for time that is now etched into eternity. A sea of possibilities. It was not very long before she drove back. To what was home. On a dark night, into a storm. The black outside only disturbed by a white angry frown from the skies, lightning that struck hard and seemed to have some purpose.
There is quiet now. A lone drop of eye silver finds its way to her lips. Lips that once fed hunger. Hunger she can't remember. A touch now traces a name on dust.
He is there. Relishing wines of far away lands, as winds from distant forests & smells of past lives disturb but a strand of hair on his head. Each of which her fingers recognised so well.
Not all is well in that country. She bats an eyelid, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except she is not little anymore. A song saunters into the stillness.

Somewhere my love there will be songs*

to sing

Although the snow covers the hope

of Spring

Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and

gold

And there are dreams,

all that your heart can hold......

She knows what follows. So well. Romances that are short lived. Moments which are relived, once, twice and yet another time. A hussy sunset. He left her that night. To never return. To pick up pieces of porcelin with naked fingers. Porcelin so fine that fingers will bleed.
Somewhere, a woman's fingers bleed.

If you love something, set it free,

if it was meant to be yours, it will return.

This could be said for many things or people that

we know in our life time.

For that special love in our life.

"Someday we'll meet again, my love"

Somewhere.....

* Somewhere my love
Lara's theme- Dr. Zhivago

Born into brothels

So we watched the seemingly endless list of " I would like to thank....." at the grand gala Oscars on Sunday. And though for a portion of us living worlds away, who got hooked perhaps just to see how The Miliion Dollar baby vs Aviator would fare, there was a surprise.
The Oscar this year for the best documentary film went to Born into brothels.
Zana Briski is an American photographer who arrived in Calcutta, India with her collaborator Ross Kauffman. They were on a mission to film prostitution in Calcutta's (in)famous Sonagachi red light area.
Now in a place like this, lives behind curtains and walls are not for everyone to see, let alone be filmed. A couple of American photographers with cameras is something that gets avoided like the plague.
But what moves them is the lives of children born to these prostitutes. The photographers befriend these children and teach them photography.
A lot of pictures in the film are taken by these children.
In India, with a buzzing middle class, a booming economy and an executive class, these children almost seem to live in a parallel universe. From which there seems to be no exit . Life without an intermission.
Courageous, wickedly funny sometimes and just plain naive like most other children, they make these pictures and mark favorites with a crayon. The girls almost resigned to what they know will be fate. The boys who want to save friends.
This film defines life for some people you may never meet. Yet it will tug at your heart, these children will almost call out to you.
When they begin to see the grim and bleakness around them through their own eyes, they also begin to respect themselves some more.
And that perhaps is very important given the way these kids get treated in a society that looks down at them, a society that does not let these children go to school with their own smug, legitimate children.
When they comprehend the harsh realities of existence, and when a stranger walks into their lives and decides to make it better, this film undoubtedly validates the triumph of the human spirit that dances and smiles despite the odds.
It is a film that will be applauded by any audience. A film that reflects the difference an individual can make.
Truly, the power of one.

Live with me, and be my love

For sweet romances and pretty butterfly thoughts, walks in the snow and thoughts by the sea.
For you and me and eternity.
Shakespeare.

Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.

LOVE'S ANSWER.

If that the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.