I had wrapped up last year with Yeats. This year I begin my journey through words with Frost. I should also mention over here that I have had the good fortune of visiting New Hampshire, where Frost lived and worked for many years. This poem is yet another favorite of mine and a milestone in my journey through words.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Writing on the very last day of the year with nothing much to contribute from my side, but with a few lines from my favorite poet W.B. Yeats. This poem has been the one poem that has always been extremely dear to my heart. Perhaps it summarizes my entire existence. Thus, sharing it with all on this last day of 2022.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
One of the best decisions I took this year was to start this blog. Incidentally, I have always been a diarist per se, be it on blogs or writing in diaries or scraps of paper. Documenting my thoughts has always been an essential part of my daily mental exercise. It is also a part of who I am…a writer at the core, masquerading as a professor or an academic in front of the outside world. The words that I use in society are never really my words. They are borrowed, for that particular occasion. My words are seldom spoken. I prefer writing them, documenting them for posterity. This blog was essentially a step in that direction. This is definitely not my first blog. I’ve had blogs before which have somehow got lost in the convoluted jungles of time. Maybe I have a couple of them saved somewhere, but most of them have ceased to exist. Thus, this particular blog was important when I first started writing it sometime in the month of August 2022. Gradually, with each passing day the blog became an essential part of me. Something that I cannot severe from my mental faculties with ease. Not only did it help me by acting as a notebook for my writings, but also as a clean slate for me to document my thoughts and understand the pathways that I have chalked out for myself completely. Furthermore, this blog also made me come in contact with various writers of repute and a community of thriving and pulsating minds. In more ways than one this particular blog has indeed become an inseparable part of me.
2023 is simply round the corner, and before ambling into the same, I would like to share a few of my writings from an old blog of mine over here. Perhaps it is a way in which I can preserve those old writings and ruminate over them in the distant future.
Night trips away on cobblestones of moonshine dust, I watch the fireflies ignite my life at dusk; There is darkness in the heavens and on earth. Dark moorlands beckon…
I have traversed distant lands And lived innumerable lives… Yet, it is against your sandalwood scented skin That I am able to sleep away the weariness of a million years, Spent in solitude… Father, O Father. In tranquil slumber…
Through the verdant softness of silence Rivers of tranquility flow, Linger on, there is a meadow of sunshine ahead… Walking on green grass…
I walk through lavender evenings, I saunter through ebony nights. In the solitude of my hermitage A single lamp throws shafts of burnished gold. Write on O confessor… Your sins are yet to be washed. Documenting untold deeds…
Perched upon life and its myriad vignettes, I clasp the delicate nuances of love to my heart, You are faraway in another universe, Yet, I write love letters bathed in my vile blood… The pen breaks…the ink scatters…words escape my frozen intellect, I welcome my imprisonment with open arms, Crawling across the filth of my fossilized sins… A writer ? No, a confessor…
I still search for you…in the air, the water, the fire and the earth. I still search for you in haunted nightmares and benign dreams. But all that I have are memories. Tiny grassblades, defiant against the merciless gales of Time. The road ahead is long and dark. Light it up with your smile…in your universe. And I will try to weave a tapestry of tears…in mine. Epistles across universes…
Moths flutter. Flames quiver. The evening trembles with unkempt desires. Amidst the unstable currents of infidel Time, My dreams bathe in crystal lakes after decades of resigned aridity. Irises dotted with hope…
The mist comes tumbling down riding raindrops encased in pale pearls.
Pearls of sighs. Pearls of treasured secrets. Riding white crests and troughs, filtered through trees washed in blue shadows.
I cup my palms to catch the mist. It slips through my fingers and my soul.
A truant lover. An unsure paramour.
Kissing raindrops…
Rude words, rude visages, rude thoughts, Are scimitars to a sensitive soul; It is better to bask in the gentleness of a cloistered life, Than be consumed by mindless cacophony. Leaving the noise behind…
At sunset the horizon bled in gold and your face bloomed like a rose. At sunrise I watched you promenade across mists bathed in my autumn dreams.
Sunsets and sunrises. Moments fly into eternity.
And here I stand clutching a throbbing heart to a hollow chest the shape of an ancient oak tree.
Visions of sunsets…
These tiny notes are nothing but disjointed scraps of thoughts. At times they simply languish upon papers and have no further utility in my life, at other times they become a part of my writing or a part of my thoughts conjuring up a character or an event in my book (s). Coming back to this year as well as 2023 and what it may have in store for me, I would like to state that I hope to become more regular with both my blog as well as my writing. I have plans for beginning my second novel at the fag end of 2022. Thus, when 2023 rolls in I will be happily typing away in my computer conjuring up vibrant characters and events and tales that need to be told. Come 2023 and I will be deeply entrenched in literature with minimum interaction with the outside world, be it through writing or reading. Wishing all those who love the written word a productive 2023 with quality time spent in reading, writing and living a life enmeshed immense creativity.
Good luck folks and wishing everyone a very happy 2023 filled with joy, success and love for the written word !
Silence is still the scimitar That carves moons out of our souls, While we languish eternally in memories Of roseate waves and yellow butterflies on the wing. We wait for life to promenade in hallowed calm And your footfalls to grace our wood smoked hearts, Someday is still far away, Someday is still an unhealed scar...
Decided to activate my Facebook account temporally in order to convey my holiday greetings to near and dear ones (since most people never reply to my emails). I was thus confronted with the usual phenomenon of “the one line wonder” or rather the common practice of keeping in contact with relatives and friends through a one liner (be it a greeting or a comment or a query). In most cases, people even tended to use GIF stickers in order to convey Christmas and New Year wishes. Another phenomenon that tends to trouble me is the system of instant messengers (Whatsapp being the worldwide favorite). There are a plethora of them these days, beginning with Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Skype, and thus the list tends to go on and on. Once midnight set in on the 24th of December, my Whatsapp messenger was flooded with one line wonders. All this made me think about my childhood when Christmas meant lovely paper cards and long letters delivered by post. Those were exciting days when computers were used by few and most people relied on the good old postman to deliver their holiday cards. And I remember my mother stringing up those cards across our living room and admiring the various colors splashed across the same. Those cards and the winter sunshine filtering through the same were a part and parcel of my childhood and its marzipan encrusted memories. Alas ! Those cards are no more. Nowadays scouting for cards in my native city is akin to embarking upon a treasure hunt. I often hear the sentences : “Nowadays no one uses cards madam.” “Everyone is into SMS these days. That’s why we do not keep greetings cards in our shop.”
I have nothing against the progress of civilization and technology, but what I fear that this culture of one liners or “the one line wonder” as I call it would ultimately lead to the gradual liquidation of the habit of writing (be it letters or any other mode of communication). I suppose most children will hold onto this habit of daily writing or scribbling in their notebooks till they graduate high school, but after that the situation seems rather grim with the influx of smart phones and computers. With Email already being relegated to the domain of office work, and messengers taking over personal communication, I doubt how long we can keep up the tradition of writing beyond the famous one liner message. I wonder if blogs will even remain in the next few years or whether we will all be forced to write truncated thoughts and emotions tailor made for 500 characters on social media sites.
Hoping for a miracle in the universe of the written word in the near future. And wishing for the long forgotten tradition of hand made and printed cards to revive once more. Au revoir !
I was browsing through a selection of Yeats’ poems (he happens to be my favorite poet of all times), when among many poems familiar and known a rather unfamiliar one caught my eye. Frankly speaking all his poems tend to enthrall and reader and keep him or her captivated for hours. There is of course my dearest one, “Lake Isle of Innisfree” and others like “Leda and the Swan” or “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and many others that are well known to lovers of English Literature. However, one particular poem caught my attention today. Sharing it with my readers on this blog :
Ephemera by WB Yeats (written 1884, published 1889)
‘Your eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids, Because our love is waning.’
And then she: ‘Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border of the lake once more, Together in that hour of gentleness When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep: How far away the stars seem, and how far Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!’
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves, While slowly he whose hand held hers replied: ‘Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.’
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once A rabbit old and lame limped down the path; Autumn was over him: and now they stood On the lone border of the lake once more: Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes, In bosom and hair.
‘Ah, do not mourn,’ he said, ‘That we are tired, for other loves await us; Hate on and love through unripining hours. Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.’
William Butler Yeats
What made me ruminate about the above mentioned poem was the similarity of its language with Virginia Woolf’s prose. Then when I flipped through the pages and started going through his other creations, the similarity became even more evident. I have been currently re-reading Woolf’s “The Waves” and I’ve earlier read her other creations like “Mrs. Dalloway”, “Orlando” “To the Lighthouse” amongst others. The language is punctuated with images and sounds, both limpid and mellifluous to say the least. The same applies to Yeats too. It is as if the stanzas of his poems paint pictures that are both exquisite and vivid. Woolf does the same too. The pictures float and dance in front of my eyes. They tend to hold me and my emotions at ransom, forcing me to finish reading whatever has been laid out in front of me.
The resemblance is uncanny between these two virtuosos of literature. One focuses upon prose bringing out the virginal beaut of words underlying every sentence, and the other splashes paints across his canvases of immaculate poetry. And I am caught between these two, or rather I am tossed between these two like a tiny boat caught in the midst of two whirlpools of similar emotions and words. Words that resurrect my soul from within the clutches of a moth eaten civilization. Words that make me view the world differently, both as a reader as well as a writer. Words that carve out new pathways for me. Words that make me realize that my ultimate destiny is tied up in knots of words and emotions that I must unravel during the course of this tiny and insignificant life of mine. Before I end, I must share a few tiny gems from “The Waves”.
“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
These two and others within me have been pushing me desperately to begin my new novel. Thus, I will return again to this blog whenever inspiration strikes me. Till then au revoir ! And happy reading !
Sharing a couple of posts from an old blog that was secretly hidden somewhere in this big virtual world. Managed to resurrect it from the ashes of the obscure and the decadent. These are disjointed writings. They are neither poems nor prose, but rather effervescent thoughts that have held my mind at ransom at various points in time.
“Out of the blue grasses and the wood smoke rise tiny dreams of unknown lands of the East. Out of morning dewdrops and the mist that hangs like a wispy thin curtain of misplaced love rises a life so little and insignificant that perhaps a gentle nudge of a truant breeze is enough to scatter it all over verdant meadows like abandoned dandelion tufts.
And maybe out of all this is awakened the desire to go back to the old..the known…the easily understood pathways…
Swept away by the wind…”
“At sunset the horizon bled in gold and your face bloomed like a rose. At sunrise I watched you promenade across mists bathed in my autumn dreams.
Sunsets and sunrises. Moments fly into eternity. And here I stand clutching a throbbing heart to a hollow chest the shape of an ancient oak tree.
Visions of sunsets…”
So much for now. Till something new strikes my mind. Au revoir and happy winter !
Once upon a time when I was still ruminating upon the fact as to what genre of fiction I should delve into, many suggestions were offered to me by near and dear ones. Some advised me to try my hand at horror, others believed that science fiction was my genre, and still others talked about writing a series of crime thrillers. What all had in common was the concept that I should try my hand at bestsellers. Well, I did believe at that point of time that I was indeed capable of writing a bestseller. Today I do not. I have never really been someone who has had the acumen to produce a bestseller. There are many more accomplished writers who can easily do that. Perhaps what I am capable of is simply being the slow and languid writer whose writings are pockmarked with surrealism and monologues. This is me and this is something that cannot be altered easily. And therefore, I cannot compromise with my writing too.
This December I propose to embark upon my second novel with full commitment. And surrealism will be its genre if there is any such genre. I do not wish to write too much about the world as it is, but rather about the world as I or my characters see it. There will be a marked difference from what is and what I perceive it to be. The difference will also be highlighted by monologues, both internal as well as external. Most importantly, everything will promenade around peace and around all that which signifies the rainbow hued emotion of love. Because at the end of the day, everything is about peace and love. And everything else is redundant or ornamental to say the least.
Deleted an erstwhile post on Bobby Darin and his famous song “18 Yellow Roses” because it verged upon things too personal. And I am not here to discuss anything personal except for that which I consider to be an ode to peace. As mentioned in an earlier post, most of my writings revolve around the concept of peace, or things related to peace (could be emotions too). I tend to avoid violence in my writings, unless of course they are tangentially related to peace in some manner. And coming back to the concept of peace, the word has been used and abused in a million ways (if we take diplomacy and international relations into account). In the social context, peace may mean different things to different societies. For some merely procuring food every day can denote peace, and for others rallies and revolutions bring forth the same. In my writings (those which are literary in nature and not academic at all), peace features in ways that are both realistic as well as metaphoric. I believe in the concept of the internal monologue, which often becomes the primary backbone of my novels. Maybe I have picked it up from writers like Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and J.M. Coetzee. They have always been my favorites. Their words cajole limpidness from within sentences. Their writings transport the reader to other worlds where dreams and internal worlds hang heavy over external stimuli.
In my case, I attempt to delve deeper into the concept of peace. Both at the societal level as well as at the cerebral level. Internal monologues are essential for any human being to not only understand and evaluate this world, but also to assess his or her relation with the outer world. We are a part of this outer world and yet technically we are not. We tend to be suspended somewhere in between. We wish to talk to ourselves, but the outer world rushes in each morning with its share of duties and obligations, and tends to tear us away from all those unspoken conversations that could have happened. This is something none can avoid. Even the most dedicated writer may try to lock himself up his study and block all kinds of external distractions, fails at some point. The outside world will rush in and overturn all those well constructed thoughts, till nothing remains except odd scraps of conversations that we have held with ourselves and our characters.
I am no exception to the above. I tend to hold my internal monologues or rather dialogues with peace as often as I can. Yet the world tends to come between us. Between me and myself. Between my conversations with peace, love, and other emotions that are essential for the survival of every human being in this fast paced consumer-oriented world. The Internal monologue has become more necessary today than it was ever during earlier times. We live in a world dominated by fast paced thoughts, images and sounds. We are seldom thrown into an environment that is languid and slow. We tend to sprint through each day with the energy of a marathon runner. In such a scenario it is difficult to converse with peace let alone cultivate the same.
Still, the hope remains. As writing remains. And so does the eternal attraction of literature. Someday in some quiet corner of the world, peace will once again unfold and fall in waves over all those willing to encourage conversations with it. Amen to that !
Au revoir ! And live in peace….and I return back like a prodigal writer to my manuscripts.
PS: Congratulations Vivaldi on integrating Vivaldi Social (Mastodon) into the browser. I am a bit wary of using the same since I prefer a life away from anything social (online or offline), but I sincerely hope that more members join this venture and acquire the much needed freedom from big corporations as well as from social media despots. Good luck !
