Life

A Seeming

Flash Fiction

That I am and that I am not is a seeming. Life is a seeming just like its partner, death.

*

A beautiful sunrise/ sunset… a beautiful seeming.
[Source – Pixabay]

Rosaline, sitting on the branch of a huge tree, was collecting the passing clouds. Though friends with the clouds, she didn’t like to see them at night, maybe because she also collected stars.

The day-night cycle confused her. Grandma’s solution “you’ll understand it once you become a big girl” didn’t help Rosaline at all.

And so she started living in different worlds – the-bright-blue-sky-world, the-mischievous-cloudy-world, the-paper-boat-rainy-world, the-sparkling-starry-world, the-moon-pie-world, the-ghostly-pitch-black-world…

Two worlds sometimes merged into one and formed something unique.

Whichever world Rosaline was in, she was always excited to live it fully. Happily, she always announced early in the morning “today I’ll be in the-mischievous-cloudy-world’ or ‘give way to Rosaline, the-moon-pie-world awaits her.”

Lost in her myriad worlds, she lived madly. She even recorded her visits to these wonderful worlds.

She was proud to be the youngest and the oldest member of her family, youngest by age and oldest by the many visits she made to these worlds.

On her 92nd visit to the crunchy-autumn-leaves-world, she died. She fell from a huge tree.

Her last words were, “Grandma, you need to plus 22 more worlds to break my record”.

*

A crunchy-autumn-leaves-world.
[Source – Pixabay]

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Stopping to get a Rhythm Check

O rose!
[Source – Pixabay]

Just then, when the wheel turned, the rose fell on the grass and I fell along, the music within me found a new rhythm. I quietly listened to it, resisting the magic at first as I was hurt, but then tears always dry in the end. I got up and walked in suspense, unknown to me before. Bathed in the new rhythm, I paced up and ahead. Trying to catch the music in the air, I ran and reached near a green pond. I had a smile on my face by then. Curious! I tried to fathom the quietness that permeated the air. With a queer yet happy faith in things around me, I started to dance, round the pond… hmm… laa-la-laa-laa. The pond somewhere was hiding a piano, the branches a violin and the beetles, drums. It started to drizzle and I stopped dancing. Sitting by the side of the pond, cross legged, playing with a twig unconsciously, my mind went silent or maybe it was thinking something of its own.

She met the swans!
Don’t remember if I did too.

[Source – Pixabay]

Like it happens in life, the image and the music fades away, leaving a consolation named ‘it is just the past’. But luckily, I still relish that experience sometimes. Let the memory play tricks I say. What fades within, stays within forever and often takes you beyond… that’s enough, isn’t it? If you happen to turn the wheel and fall on the ground along with a rose, you’ll know that it is.


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Over And Over Again

Springtime – A Painting by Claude Monet
[Source – Wikipedia]

How can I be alone when I am always there with myself? Is this illusion stronger, better, more true than the other one we call life?

In fiction, the tides merge with the sea, the sunshine flows warmly through the perforated leaves, the collocations rise with sense and settles smoothly, a fulfilling aftertaste savoured by one and all.

This is my hope, light and everything. This is what I am following, leisurely. Those who call it a crime are shunned automatically.

Myriad ideas know me well and I know them too, at least some of them. We haven’t set a selling price or cost price, we are friends and I am not clever. Ideas follow a different train of thought, though unaware about the details, I understand the emotional part of it.

The high plateau doesn’t rise again. There I walk alone and often stop near a tree to rest. One eye shine with stars in it and the other quietly shed tears. For a moment I knowingly choose one of the two sides, but generally I prefer walking on the border line.

I saw a shooting star and like the last time I wished for the same thing… I don’t remember it now, though I am thankful. Whenever I am thankful, I feel confident and happy. Often the glow makes me glow.

What I remember now is that I have been here before… it was as different as same it looks now.


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It Came Quietly To Me

Poem

Mountains… grand and free. [Image by Jagriti Rumi]

Cry at times and don’t hold it back,
Take a pause and then look back,
You’ll find a way,
You’ll see the light,
With a calm mind and free eyes
You’ll connect with your soul and realise
That you were, you are and you will
Always be free.

 

I am happy I am free.

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Pierrot Le Fou

Review-Cum-Commentary
So after I watched Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou I went for an evening walk with a question in my mind.
 
Why did Marianne call him Pierrot? I left without an answer.
 
 

The Poster of Pierrot Le Fou, a film by Jean-Luc Godard

 
It was getting dark as slowly the fog from the mountains was covering the valley from all the sides. The clouds made a thundering noise at some distance. It was surely going to rain and I still didn’t take any umbrella.
 
The two dogs with me were extremely excited, they rarely worry. Rain or not, they are always up for a walk.
 
I have a habit of calling them not by their names. Funny, they always wag their tails. I guess I call them so because of what their personalities reflect as a dog.
 
So happy!
 
So excited!
 
Anyway, Pierrot Le Fou…what a ride! From eccentricity to understanding it, from the society to clashing with it, from love to killing it, from life to getting killed. It was about Pierrot…a single individual and the incidents that occur one after the other in his life.
 
Criss-cross, criss-cross we climbed down the mountain. My mind was quietly dealing with the same question – why Pierrot?
 
Was it because of his personality, did Marianne know him more than he knew himself?
 
It seems so, in fact, he was aware about it but was reluctant to accept this fact and that’s why he reminded her each time she called him Pierrot that his name is Ferdinand not Pierrot.
 
Suddenly, as I was busy thinking and talking at the same time, it started drizzling. We decided to go back. The dogs were as happy to return as they were when we left the house.
 
I started running and so did the dogs, it was raining heavily now. Climbing a mountain is tough. I was short of air soon and I stopped to get some.
 
The dogs also stopped, we were getting wet. Breathe, breathe, I told myself and started walking briskly. And then when the cool fog was all around and my nose felt very icy, the question in my mind escaped.
 
Panting heavily, trying to catch up with the two dogs, I felt truly in the moment…I was in the present.
 
As if someone was behind me with a gun, I ran so fast. The dogs were running next to me. It was downhill now and we increased our speed. ‘Thundering typhoons, run, run, run!’
 
I am sure about one thing, Marianne didn’t lie when she called him Pierrot. She was being honest with him.
 
But I don’t blame Pierrot either. After all, he was busy reading and contemplating all the time. Someone’s philosophy ruled him.
 
Pierrot, busy reading.
 
This is what he was reading.
 
We reached home, wet. I was smiling. I sat on the chair and looked at the view. The young tree in front, with green leaves, was playing ‘raindrops’ tune. I listened.
 
Then I felt that I know the answer to the question, finally, but couldn’t put it in words.
 
Oh! I remember one word though – emotions.
 

Reflection

How brilliant it is that we can time travel? The art of storytelling can take us anywhere we want.
 
Recently, I met Scout and Jem in America; it was the unforgettable 1940s then. While I got to know their daily routine and the way they spent their summer holidays, I realised that it wasn’t much different from the way I and my brother spent ours.
 
Of course, the fact that we were brought up here in India, our games, and our ways were a bit different but the spirit was the same.
 
And who cares about the dry, old facts when feelings rule high?
 
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is wonderfully written and is a complete circle. The events start and hold your attention throughout.
 
You reach the end and find that you, along with Scout, have drawn a circle, a perfect one.
 
Though you wish to read more and know more, after keeping the book down you are left to ponder upon a great number of things just like one feels after a revelation.
 
Time flies so fast and gives us an impression of change but what changes and what doesn’t remain uncertain.
 
To me, this novel shares a feeling that things might appear to but they don’t actually change.
 
In fact, things just shift from one level to the other.
 
But wait, all of this is more powerful than one can think. We still want to hear what Scout has to say.
 
Her story remains as engaging as it was for the people back then.
 
This is what a soulful story does, it continues and flies and sometimes even time travels.
 
First edition cover. [Source – Wikipedia Commons]

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By- My Friend

Seeing through their eyes. Image – Pixabay.

All we need is love…really?

I feel that more than love we need to have the ability to understand the loved ones in our life…we need to stop for a moment and see the other person without our preconceived notions.

I had this thought in my mind for a long time and I wanted to write about it. Recently, my dear friend unknowingly gave voice to my thoughts…and she did it so very beautifully.

What she has written is so true and accurate and apt to my feelings that I thought of sharing it with everyone else through this blog.

Here is what she wrote- 

UNDERSTANDING  

There are so many dimensions to each one of us, and the combination of all these dimensions results in our PERSONALITY. It is not something which can be pre-defined.

On the contrary, it is something which keeps on getting refined with every new day we face in our lives, through our varied experiences.  

We all think that ‘Understanding’ is an inherent personality trait we all are born with, that once we reach a particular age and maturity level, we automatically attain the level of understanding we ought to.

But I disagree. Understanding, according to me, is the most difficult as well as the most significant emotion we possess.

More so, it demands a certain level of effort: the effort to put one into the other person’s shoes and think the way he/she does, and not according to your own mind.

Only then would one be able to ‘Understand’ the other person’s perspective. And this equips the individual with another beautiful emotion – Empathy.  

This is the kind of Understanding we all demand from people we are close to, people we depend on, people we love, and majority of the times, they let us down.

Only because they think that they know us so well that they don’t even try for a split second to come out of their own selves and use all that they know about us to grasp things from our perspective.

We all have to always remember that nothing in this world comes for free: that for all important things, we have to invest our energies, either mentally, physically or emotionally to attain or retain something or someone in our lives.  

May god bless everyone with this ‘UNDERSTANDING’.  


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A Painting That Sways

Paint and sway.
Image by Pixabay.

Delicately touched

Touched only to sway

Swayed with love

And loved just to say

To say it loud enough

Enough of the artificial blue light

Pure blue light of the sky and the moon

The sky and the moon that play a harmony together

Together they sing to me

Me, who breathes quite often,

Often they sing and I dance

Dance like I am a cloud close to them

A cloud close to them that is me

Me, who dreams to be free,

Free like the painting of a moonlit night

And a moonlit night will always say

‘Hey, paint well and remember to sway.’


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I Can See Mountains from the Window, I’ll take this Window Along

The mountains are so grand; I realised it that day when I climbed one. The green velvety zigzag stretch left me overwhelmed.

A thought caught my attention and told me how beautiful and majestic the mountains were, how incredibly small I was, how peacefully colourful the surroundings were and how sublime the music played by the wind was.

*

Portable Window! [Image by AnnaliseArt from Pixabay]

*

I saw the clouds and they saw me; I blushed quietly. With my feet in the wet green grass, I stood there enjoying the drizzle. I sat on a calm rock calmly and opened the notebook. I couldn’t write for some reason, so I drew the scene instead.    

Have you ever felt the same? Like when you feel something you cannot describe in words or otherwise? When the smell of an old book takes you back in a different century?

As if the leaf that fell near you was meant to fall there so that you could pick it up and observe it? And that the glamorous city lights were talking to each other and the moon was talking to you?

What about the smiley face drawn by a passer-by on a dusty car that reminds you of the one you had drawn? Have you ever felt the still mind?

The drawing that I made took the shape of the yin-yang without my knowledge. Opposites complement each other. I sat near the window and thought about it; the sun passed by and the moon came with white light very quickly and in the shadow, I saw the light and immediately, I agreed.

I again looked at that drawing, in gratitude but the drawing was no longer the same… there were dark green mountains and blue sky, white clouds and green grass and me, sitting on the calm rock calmly. And I looked through the window…

I can see mountains from the window, I’ll take this window along.


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Shadow Told Me

Shadow spotted a birdie.
[Image by J Rumi]

Shadow doesn’t like to take bath at all, the wet hair confuses him, he licks himself but still remains wet. This is what Shadow told me.

Once Shadow was happily sitting in the veranda then suddenly he saw something in the garden… and then, Shadow ran towards it. But before he could see it properly, it flew away. Shadow’s Mamma told him that it is called a birdie and that they can fly. Shadow now notices the birds all the time, they fly in the blue sky and vanish, sometimes they sit on trees and sing. Some sing sweetly and some talk ceaselessly. Shadow likes them; this is what he told me.

Lalaa-la-laaa, sings Shadow.
[Image by J Rumi]

Two words that Shadow used – ‘happily’ and ‘suddenly’ – somehow looked magnificently beautiful to me.

Whenever he talks to me, he uses these two words a lot –happily and suddenly. He is happy to get a yummy lunch and then suddenly he jumps from one place to another and again becomes happy. This superb cycle of being happy and then having a sudden emotional change and then in the end being happy again…wow! Amazing life!

When there is a sudden change, one can feel anything like anger, hunger, excitement, retirement, sleepy, weepy, and more; the best part is you will be happy again. This is the kind of life Shadow lives, he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t need to know because he is simply living it. Shadow is happy at the end of the day!

“I too am flying… wait birdie…”
[Image by J Rumi]

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