Tomorrow!

My life is becoming like a movie in which nothing-really-happens and yet there is a constant tension seething under the covers. Like slowly moving molten magma under a volcanic dome ... a deferential silence maintained as the imminent explosion is patiently expected.

I am nervous with apprehension ... it wakes me up at night and startles me during the day. Sometimes I look forward to what may happen with joy, at other times I am afraid and want time to freeze so that I will never have to go beyond the 'now'. Most of the time I vascillate between cynicism and gratitude... My cynicism, because its going to be yet another day in a life in which nothing-really-happens, is quickly replaced by thankfulness when I think of all the horrible things that might happen ... because nice things happen seldom. And so with my baggage of joy, fear, cynicism and gratitude, all rolled into a neat rucksack, I traipse through time.

And yet, I hope ... while I wait patiently ...

Like Patience on a monument,
Green and yellow with melancholy

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Nothing in particular

Its been one of those weekends. Started off with a Friday evening at the bar where I stayed too long and babbled a lot more than I should have. I wish I could control myself a little more and be a little less opinionated. Anyway, the damage is done!

Saturday morning: went skiing for a few hours. It was followed by an enjoyable lunch with friends. Other than that I officially brooded through the weekend. Took care of chores such as laundry, but got NO work done. School starts tomorrow and I feel like I haven't had enough of a break.

K' very kindly gave me 2 packs of frozen blackberries yesterday, which had defrosted by the time I got home, and needed immediate attention to avoid a rot. I had initially intended to bake a blackberry pie, but being too lazy, I decided to blend them into a juice that I could use as a health drink (!). But laziness seldom pays. The blended blackberries were so dense that it was barely drink-worthy. It also ruined all chances of making a pie of the berries and made the rot-meter reading even more critical. So I ended up baking a blackberry-almond cake... thats an almond cake with 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp vanilla extract, a drop of lime juice, the blended backberries and of course the almonds, baked for 45 minutes at 375F. It turned out pretty well. It went from being the disaster of the weekend to making a last minute sharp turn to be the brightest spot.

Oh well!

Yet again...

The Holiday season is over. The New Year is here. The following lines, adapted from Howard Thurman come to mind:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of the holydays begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild nations,
To bring peace among
brothers and sisters,

To make music in the heart.

Even as we bid farewell to the old order and usher in the new, most things remain the same. The opposites of love and hate continue to battle everyday as human history is written and re-written, every moment, in the blood of the fallen warriors. A history that weaves together the joys of the victor and the ignominy of the vanquished and all else in between, producing a garment of many hues that relates the pain of the living and the beauty of life ... the music in our hearts.

Its still snowing and we have a long grey winter ahead, before the varied hues of spring take over.

Be Merry

A snowflake in the middle of your palm.

Snowy Feathers

Yesterday morning, I went bird watching in the lovely snowy woods with K. As she pointed out, in doing so we joined the Audubon Scoiety's international Christmas Bird Count. For most of the part we bushwhacked, me in snoe shoes and K on X-country skiis. The time was indeed very well spent. The woods were beautiful and quiet. The snow formations on the bare branches reminded us of all sorts of things - ranging from candy and marsh mellows to shaving cream :)

But really the most gorgeous part of it all was the pervasive softness ... I do not want to refer to it as silence, because there was the hush of the falling snow, the shush of a gentle breeze making the trees shower us with snow, the muffle of the water in the stream, the shuffle of life amidst a scene that loves to hide it behind its thick white silky drapes ... all of those silent sounds and visions cummulatively forming a soft and deep wonder. The evidence of life when it peeped out of the drapes was music to the ears, the chick-a-dee-dee of the chickadees and the chuk-chuk of the woodpeckers, not to mention the regular grid patterns on the tree trunks giving away the art work of so many woodpeckers that inhabit the wintry woods.

Of course winter in all her beauty is pregnant (only slightly so right now, but growing...) with certain negativities that result in my shoveling woes (or should I say scooping woes... the scoop is post-shovel) ... but hey, this might eventually give me those 6-packs I hear so much about!

Seeking freedom... again!

I had gone to bed and not being able to sleep... started listeing to my thoughts. Couldn't not note some of them.

I saw the trailer of 'Brokeback Mountain' online today. Very touching. I am scared of watching the movie. Maybe I won't. That scene in the trailer where he holds the shirt and jacket ... memories flood back, hits too close to home ... enough said, the movie has made its mark on me already.

I was thinking to myself, there can be two kinds of situations (states) related to 'relationships' (the 'R-word' as one of my friends used to say) one is when you are in a fulfiling one, we shall call it the Value state and the other is when you are in a situation of unreciprocated love, a state we shall refer to as the Pain state. Typically people vascillate between these two states, often within the same relationship, sometimes across different relationships.

What happens when you are in neither of those states? Its a strange feeling. Like an untethered boat drifting down the river, at the mercy of the tides ... sometimes gently floating downstream, sometimes being dashed agianst rocks in the rapids. Often such a state is referred to as 'being free.' But in reality, there is no freedom when the boat really is at the mercy of the tides. Just momentary starts and rushes ... wasted energy with no necessary direction. Freedom lies, indeed, in the vascilation between the Value and the Pain. It is the freedom to feel... to feel human, instead of retiring all your faculties that deal with feeling.

While I complain not about my life, I do sometimes long for the pain that once made me wander on grey rainy afternoons aimlessly down wooded trails, uncertain if it was the rain that moistened my cheeks, or if it was the unknown grip wrenching my heart. I dare not seek Value, but yes, I do long for the Pain... it once set me free.