Happy 4th!!

Dawn comes, and with it,
Your footprints on this earth.
This house has been empty all night
save the single flame of a lamp, waiting.
I gather the dust of your presence,
breathe in your fragrance
And your light spills into me.

Am an anarchist?

The fire isnt blazing anymore. But it is quietly sufficient, you would have to get really close for the warmth. And there is much needed rest in being self contained. I have a suspicion that I'm a closet anarchist. A spiritual anarchist. A strange term even to me. Every thing I have been writing of late eventually leads there, and I find myself at a loss to communicate without preaching. So I figure let me label myself as such, before I am forced into it. :)

Here's a sample of what I'm writing now:
What is right? and what is wrong? There's none, except what expereince teaches us.
Others' experience as well. If we are wise enough to want to avoid those same pitfalls, along with some introspection. Our intellect that can zip through a thousand different permutations and combinations of actions and long term consequences. What is right is what is beneficial to one's self. What is beneficial to us in the long run is also beneficial to the collective. and what is wrong? whatever is harmful to the collective, is harmful to our own psyche in the long run as well. Taking it a few threads deeper, there is something that works on our psyche, alters it towards content or misery, towards victim or master of destiny. How else does one say to the child " the fire will burn you, bad company can lead you to misery, smoking and drinking will eventually make you less than a man, and lust will kill all the joy of inncence in you, some things, habits will dull your awareness, lead you to misery. And all misery leads to some disease of the physical and mental body. And it is a long climb out of that dark well" ?

Are not all ethics and morals laid out thusly? Only fear is more powerful than reason. Hell works better than heaven. Perhaps a long time ago, when human intellect and emotional intelligence was still evolving, there was a need to coerce everyone for the common good. Only it took strange turns, because authority and power are corrupting, and hunger for them acts slyly. The will to subjugate everyone else.

Our human system is not so flimsy as to need external ethics imposed on us. And rules and moral laws are degrading. They attack the back bone of the human spirit. Within us we all seek a natural balance, one that existed within us a very very long time ago before sophisticated cunning started. It is born of a choice, a free will, one that unleashes reactions within and without when we swing too far from that balance. We swing, we learn, we go back to that state of principles already built within us. It is a natural state of dignity, of nurturing - ourselves, those in our care and each other. A state that is geared towards our further evolution.

Ignorance after all, is not a mere lack of information. It is the lack of awareness of the process of one's self.

Amongst the crowd that applauds you
I stand quiet, tonguetied,
for merely to think of you
is to be with you in silent awe,

You speak to me,
not with words
but your hands,
your eyes,
your heart.

With you majesty has a form -
the immense gravity of the stars,
and love is an ocean
immeasurable, uncharted.

And love between us is wordless,
unceremonious,
neither witnessed nor vowed,
but
with my spirit
that flows into you.

These moments with you,
tender buds of promises,
I gather to my heart.

From somewhere deep within the recesses of black restfulness a memory stirred, slept before it woke fully
and stirred again. In the movement arose a semi awareness, of its own existence. Of its own stirring. In
a half conscious stupor it dreamt of a world spun into being, a cocoon built of dust. It rested. Memories
passed it. There had been light. While life fluttered like the urge of a seed. It pushed forth, each
heartbeat an infinitessimal movement, a tiny leap towards awakening. A stir of the limbs, and it woke
to the soft fluttering of life. Wings. Still moist. Body. Raw, tender. Life.

Between waking and awake is a thousand slips. The abyss of illusions. The sloth of tamas, slavery to the depraved senses of a gross existence, and the dulled intellect. Unthinking, unstriving.

Between life and alive are degrees of consciousness. Ascension. Captain of the soul, master of fate.
The glory of life. To be alive is to savor the present. At the focal point of the greatest convergence of energies and awareness.

"Stop, Spot, Stop!!"
Spot does not like to stop.
But Spot must stop,
Or Spot will stop being Spot.



PS: It must have been the influence of driving a van load of high energy kids. Who giggled themselves into hysteria upon hearing this.

Some poems
are like old friends
-growing lovelier with age.
And with each reading,
they grow
comfortingly simpler, honest
till
they become a part
of our hearts.

Ben Kingsley here

Once more in tattered cloth I knock on your door,
with trepidation, aware of my own unworthiness,
fearful of your non-acknowledgement.
Your grace smiles on me with the same remembered love
as though I had never turned away.

Today,
come sit by me,
let me hide
in the folds
of your sari.
Let the quietness
of your love
overtake me.

Reading

It has been lying
where I left it
after last night's reading.
In the sun
all morning.
And now it is after noon
the sun only warmer
a sheet of warm honey
spreading
through the window
over my back,
prone, full length.
The hour feels
content
drowsy with golden love.

I pick up the book,
the pages toasty
under my smoothing hand
giving off their scent.

Each word, precious
dropping off like a petal
soft, rounded
or
wrinkled, angular with living
the sound
melody rich
to be felt like velvet
on the tongue and lips,
the letters
rolling into each other,
words rolling into lines
and
sentences rolling into meandering paths
weaving through the poet's memories
and bouncing off mine.

It has been exactly one year. One year since you hugged me like you would never let me go. Since that moment when we parted and I was left with the tingling awareness of your fingertips leaving mine. And as I tried to contain all of you within me, with each step that increased the distance between us a sense of bereavement eclipsed all else in my life.

"These hours are mine" you said when we met at the airport, pulling me into your arms, gathering me wholly - bruises and pride, faults and false convictions - into the warmth of your heart, "you belong solely to me." And I gave myself up completely, plans swept unresistingly aside to be replaced by your spontaniety. With one look you unleashed a sea of pounding madness. The hours and days melded, stretching farther than the infinite sky. And I was drunk on the look in your eyes, the eyes that became my sun and my moon.

"Do you need anything?" you asked me, several times, on the long winding drive over hills and mountains through the night to your home as I sat next to you, enveloped by your presence. Always it is only you I shall need, my need for you greater than the sustenance of the earth. Your love the only element I need for existence. Your love is the land that bears me, the sky that shelters me, the air I inhale and exhale, the essence of my soul, the ardent sun that paints the world in living colors, the dark night lit with a billion stars that cloaks me in its warmth.

"Put me to sleep" I begged you, tired of the inexhaustion of your overwhelming energy. And you did. I lay cradled in your lap, asleep, oblivious of the burning midday sun, the jutting rocks on the hillside poking into the softness of my flesh.

I tried to contain all of you within me, but I miss you so fiercely. Gather me back to your beloved shores.

Abira Gulal

I am
this tear
rolling down
your cheek
to the rough
of your chin,
trailing
salty kisses
down your neck
to nestle
in the hollow;
the way
you
linger
within me
long after
your goodbye.

Few things beat the pleasure of discovering an interesting writer. Of words that spin a very personal world.

Dawn

sparkling drops of dew on petals of moonlight
scattered on the rain drenched green
-a barefoot stroll in the first blush of light.

Floonew

Do Re Mi Fa Su LA Ti Dooo. She sang. Floonew.
But the teacher said Priscilla was the best singer.
Floonew wasn't sad.
Because they were sisters.
Floonew said she is my sister.
Then they sang together.
The End.

Story and illustration by "Pink Sunset"

Dedicated to my friend Nirguna.

--Today's story by the youngest. Plus, posted some of Lily Pad's poems.

This is the harvest of the passing hours of my life. The spirit of my existence, the loneliness of the depths, this struggle for something just beyond my grasp.

Those moments on a morning walk, face tilted to the sky and the boughs that rain with the breeze. Fresh with the cool wind against my cheeks, the pinkish streaks of a sky slowly glowing gold, the very nature of light altering to a warm orange red. The vitality of the rising sap in my being, lustful, grasping. The urge of the seed pushing out the germ. And the muscles flexing in a primeval response to the vigor, my feet pounding the asphalt at at a steady pace. At war with the play of elements on my senses, the burnished gold filtering through the leaves and the playful blue jay skipping just ahead of me, an eye cocked at me.

In a moment's spark we connect. All of a sudden it lifts and soars taking my spirit with it. The banking and the flap of wings to rise higher, the dips, the rush of wind against the streamlined body and the feel of it on the feathers of the wing, the toes grazing the wind stream - I feel it all, in my own being.

Breath on a little star caught in her tiny arms, it's dust sparkling in her eyes.

This is the harvest of my life, the meaning of my existence. The endless treasures that unfold and fold into my spirit. The connection with another heart, the tenderness and the pain, the melancholy. Those moments when I'm at once negligible and one with the vast sky, the flowing river, the immense moving depths of the ocean, the massive strength of the pounding sea, and the drops that sparkle for a precious second as they leap high over the crests of the wave. If at nothing I can excel, then let me at least excel in love.

Sometimes we do things we regret so much later. May even be horrified at. Certain situations, seemingly inevitable reactions, actions, subsequent reactions and actions. The rifts and drifts. 'Move on' is something you tell yourself, or hear. What of the residue left in the heart/mind that begs to be cleansed? The residue that has driven us just that bit further from the deepest part of who we are? No, I am not sad. Just getting back to writing. Gladly.

And then you look at your hands, at what you hold in them. And the lasting preciousness of it's being wipes out all else. Realise that a moment spent away from it is more than a moment taken away from it. But regret is good, remorse is good. You learn. Go back to the basics. To your self.

I have grown. A part of me has been irrevocabaly lost over the past two years. And a part of me grieves it. Some of me believes I am still the child I was, deep down. I'm not. I have not the time or the solitude to make amends to myself.

Lacey in the freezer

The snow ball is a she, her name is Lacey. Permission was given (by me) for the acquiring of the same middle name by the owner and maker of the said snow ball. Lacey( the snowball, not the girl) sits on a shelf in the freezer dedicated only to her. So she may stay cool. And safe. From the likes of the father (of the said Lacey girl) who managed to crush it during the night when he dumped his ice pack on it. It is my job now, after having stopped the hysterics by repairing her and rounding her to a semblance of a round ball, to take her out of the fridge whenever asked to do so by Lacey girl. So the new best friends can be together. And put it back in after it has been sung to and reassured that it is well loved and not forgotten. oops. she, not it.

Words

It is not you, but the expression of my love that I miss.

Pilgrim

Momentarily you pierced my life
in a single point convergence of all prayer,
the culmination of my endless existence.
And I stared into your brilliance
burning to ashes in the fire of your love.
Now I
am the wind
that roams the desert.

I walk back, slowly, to the camp...the fear is past...replaced by a curious feeling of emptiness. I am not yet aware of the depth of it.

"Where have you been?" Mel asks me as I join her and Sims in the act of slicing lettuce and tomatoes for the salad. . "Oh. Just walking." There's laughter here and jokes, the guys are grilling the meat, making more smoke than heat and pulling each other's legs with drawn out "duuuude"s and its easy to forget the woods. It was an aberration and even if I did see a ghost, that was all it was : a ghost. But still I'm reluctant to talk about it, even though I know they would listen with all seriousness.

I like this group..there's frivolousness, but not mindless frivolity. There's lots of laughter but of the encompassing variety, and there's brevity as well. There's solitude here and companionship as well, there's closeness and caring but not the overly emotional kind. Teri is slicing the water melons and the boys are finally done with charring the meat..we girls tease them about their lack of survival skills..."we were expecting a freshly killed wild pheasant" we say. "Peasant? Dude..do you see any peasants around here? I didn't know we had cannibals with us," one of them responds. An invitation for Mel to chase after him, knife in hand.

The night wafts in gently on the wings of dusk, its beauty at once resting light as a feather on one's soul and the magnificence of "one with the universe" of silence. We stay up as long as we can by the fire before turning in. The boys have gone for a walk and come back, as the girls drift off one by one. And in spite of the settling peace, I find myself unable to sleep. A strange restlessness pulls at me. I crawl out of the sleeping bag and quietly unzip the flap of the tent I'm sharing with the girls.

The moon is full over the lake as I stand at it's edge staring into the ripples of light made by the slight breeze. He is present again, here and now. I'm aware of this, of the essence of the Universe. There is a dream I'm trying to catch. The night sky here is clear. Beauty without restraint. I, who am born of all this, am separated from it. My awareness is self oriented. The ardor of the Universe caresses my forehead, seeks my heart, overflows the cup of my soul. The veil is lifted, and I see it is a dream only this side of the veil.


ps: in continuation of a story posted a long time ago. you wont find it here.

Cardia

That we each chose to carry this absence, this silent presence of the other within, is a comfort. Content like gravity, under the veins of our daily lives. Till it pulls me within, so preciously tender that it may as well be the rushing force of a fast flowing river. This river of memories, feelings and sensations, that unwinds and submerges everything.

Lynching a phrase from Ruth I have to say,

Say No to McPain.

Never has an election been this raw emotionally or this anxiety ridden. Not even close. The move by McCain has been bloody brilliant. While refusing to address the most important issues at hand, to allow discussion for possible solution, the McCain, now McPain duo, camp has managed to whip the media, the right wing, the feminists, the conservatives, the Hillary camp, a major part of America into a patriotic frenzy. And I'm worried, of the defusing any questions to Palin by classifying them as sexist, of a belligerent and hot tempered McCain , of people turning a blind eye to the ignorance and closed mindedness of trigger happy Palin, of the "hockey mom" running mate who at best is Rush Limbaugh in a skirt becoming the next vice president and very possibly president .

I am not a savvy writer, much less someone interested in politics, but here's Tara.

She moves through life
like fish swimming in the water.
Not the tiny ones snapping to and fro.
Her movements are reminiscent of the Universe.
Its the great white
gliding
majestically.

Unmindful of the pettier ones;
the currrent of her passing
bullying them a bit.

Shepherding, scolding
Soothing, stimulating
A go between, a procurer.

And when the kids have grown and gone
she will glide slower and slower,
her great big heart
flooding the shores
with salty tears.

No. 14, Adagio

The moon sinks into the mist,
cascades down the arc of the spine
splashes delight into the water
notes of the palest moonlight,
like wine.
Wordless whispers of calm,
this prelude to a fierce passion.

It is a world of tenderness you weave
with the genius of your fingers.

Mischief

"Its the lamp post that attacked first" she assures him,
"I was merely trying to get the car away from it."
Eyes wide, a slight wrinkle creasing the forehead
in apparent puzzlement.
How could he resist laughing?