In a thin air-light piece of blue paper words were written, no space wasted, legibly shinning, beautifully written. It was for everyone, Cid Corman called it direct poetry.
Cid Corman wrote for and ran the magazine Origin. He followed a lovely rule, he replied to each and every letter that the magazine received within 24 hours, if he couldn’t, he didn’t do it at all.
Lucky must be the ones who got his answer, that too in the form of direct poetry. The book, Famous Blue Aerogrammes, is about these replies.
I have just read a few of these, still I can say that it continues to create magic… blue feathery magic that makes you smile.
But for a time I make moon and shadow my companions;
taking one’s pleasure must last until spring.
I sing — the moon wavers back and forth.
I dance — my shadow flickers and scatters.
When I’m sober we take pleasure together.
When I’m drunk, we each go our own ways.
I make an oath to journey forever free of feelings,
making an appointment with them to meet in the Milky Way afar.
Li Bo overwhelms one with the powerful yet simple use of imagery in this particular poem. You’ll see him walking alone, with a pot of wine, the moon shining above and his shadow dancing along. Loneliness is what drives him, hope is what is hidden. Maybe he laments for the dead past or he cries to see the uncertain future, but he is definitely, truly in the present. The moon, his shadow, his two close friends, vouch for it.
Read more about the poem and the translator’s take on it here. For the poem’s literal translation, click here.
Faded and hazy… old eyes can nevertheless make out who is who. They are all standing awkwardly still for the photograph. It deserves a lovely laugh. It achieves so every time. And moist eyes…
Black is disappearing into the white and the white into the off-white. Will the memory die soon? Or will it live as an anecdote?
An anecdote that is passed on, with number of ears listening to it adding flavours they find must be incorporated, by one storyteller to another. It becomes precious, a small piece capsuling time. Golden time…
Her old, wrinkled smiling face was so young once. Gush of euphoria hits my mind for a few seconds, while she stays as quiet as serene scenery, softly caressing the black and white photograph.
Your memory, liquid time solidified by a click, an era’s voice captured in the photographic paper stays alive… first in form, later as a story.
If you fall and the fall resembles the fall of Macchu Picchu…
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The dust around you, the dust in you tells you the truth. Listen carefully. They blame the dreariness on the modern technology, but just open your eyes to see who is not moving. City streets shine blood-red and dead empty; finding fault is out of fashion now. Hiding is a fad, not believing is a fad, not feeling is a fad. You don’t check the time any more, the clock reflects grime all around. The war is also over, the hunt has ended, panic seeped within is now quelled and happily so. The dead ones are dying and the living ones are dying. You know nothing stays forever, yet you hope for a forever. Stale thoughts to no thoughts, you look outside the window, you imagine what it will be like to jump, to bring an end.
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If you fall and the fall resembles the fall of Macchu Picchu, you will rise back.
5W, 1H and a question mark.
If you go through The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda, you’ll know. If you believe, you’ll know.
Walking straight, walking on the mountain listening to ‘The Times They Are A Changin‘ I saw nothing, neither the trees nor the rocks, neither the shadow nor the light, and just kept walking ahead. Mountain spoke, I didn’t hear, until I bent a little.
It said, ‘You will reach your destination, you will, for sure’, and happily I smiled, crossed my hands behind my back and continued walking.
Swiftly I moved forward, there was no stopping me. Dashing ahead I crossed jungles after jungles, I played with the shadows and the light, I didn’t even wait for the wind.
Like a curse, definitely a curse, a disaster hit me – I started panting. It had never happened all this while, why now?
Then I remembered faintly of what the mountain told me… I pleaded it to guide me again, the mountain listened. It said, ‘Know patience and its power’, I bowed down and stopped walking. I stopped for the first time in my journey; I learned the art of deep breathing. Ages passed there; then I left in search.
In search of what I was looking for. I was looking for what I was in search of.
Familiar with the pace of the trees canopying me, stopping and listening to the rocks and their untold gathas, attuned with the shadow and the light, I kept walking when I reached near a ferociously musical river. It carried along the ocean’s depth and waves’ nimble notes… ‘Will merge with the ocean, I do not wait for anyone’, replied the river to my question – ‘can you please let me pass?’
So I changed my path and followed the river. Who said you can’t? Change… change and move ahead.
Right where the river met the ocean, where it all seemed to end, where the trees, rocks, shadow and light all disappeared, music stayed by my side and showed me a narrow, slippery way to cross the river. I stepped in, the water was cold, but shallow and so I could cross easily.
With joy and cheer I continued along, I danced on the way, I slept peacefully and then walked leisurely. I sang, the tune echoed. My mind envisioned a valley of flowers and pink clouds when suddenly I tumbled down.
I was hurt. My dream shattered and cold winds bruised me badly. It started hailing. Troubled, I shouted angrily… who knows at whom?
The weather opposed me and pinned me down, I accepted defeat.
Lying half dead, I waited for the weather to change…
When it did, I woke up and saw as the fog disappeared that there was a huge mountain standing in front of me. I couldn’t stop smiling, a new journey was going to begin.
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Majestic, towering and free! [Image by Joe from Pixabay]
I dare you to forget not. Forget what not? Try to remember… remember that day when…
… for the first time you crawled… you struggled to walk… you hopped all along… you won a race… you tap danced with grace… you came in style… you left wearing a smile… you befriended the walking stick… you crawled for the second time…
… for the first time you were loved… you were pampered… you were jealous… you were told to share… you were lonely… you made a friend… you believed in dreams… you knew true joy… you hurt yourself… you stood up… you worshipped time… you quietly realised… you happily understood… you loved them back…
… for the first time you felt you knew absolutely nothing… you followed their path… you managed to survive… you built a new track… you knew right is right and wrong, wrong… you travelled in time… you accepted the change… you thoroughly read writings in brief… you said of course… you said not at all… you repented and laughed at the mistake… you cheered your take… you declared that you still knew absolutely nothing…
Everything is forgotten on the way, but the journey goes on… the journey that is unforgettably yours.
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“Don’t forget now, alright? Go, leave, carry on!” [Image by Lin Tong from Pixabay]
The contents of the collective unconscious are archetypes, primordial images that reflect basic patterns that are common to us all, and which have existed universally since the dawn of time.
– Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious
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Lovers, on their way to meet the jester. [Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay]
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It is an archetypal journey. The action, the beckoning, the characteristic, the defined, the empowering, the foolish, the grand, the hierarchical, the idealistic, the justified, the karmic, the love-blind, the materialistic, the nurturing, the ordinary, the perilous, the quark-shaped, the resisting, the surviving, the tempestuous, the utopian, the visible, the wanderers, the X-catchers, the Y-believers, the zealous.
Collectively it is all done. But still the individual holds the absolute power to create… to create once again, to retell, to relive. And together we witness.
If you find the process as a slow one, then let the jester hit you with paradoxes. Understand, later you will, that every cell is wholly participating and it isn’t slow or fast, but magnificently beautiful.
This elemental connection when subtly enters the conscious, baffles and simultaneously glorifies us.
Nearing the known, reaching the unknown; beginning with a fear, ending triumphantly or vice-versa; thinking that it doesn’t matter, feeling that it does… each journey has a homeland.
Well, the map in my possession is incomplete, I still have to collect many missing jigsaw pieces- Ponyo, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, and more. I am all AGOG!
Dominant colours– green, blue, white, yellow, and red – on the map, endless stretches of farmlands, mountains, rivers, sunny days, foggy evenings, starry nights, and cottony skies are fulfilling.
Colours reinstate the quiet you, making you sensitively aware. Wide EYES!
The map warmly takes you to different worlds; worlds you will strongly start to believe you belong in, you always did. Yes, each world on the map has that charm, each world is linked through MAGIC.
Magical creatures, seen for the first time as you follow the map, will become your close friends, the closest ones. Tell them your secrets to make them yours forever.
The map took me to the magnificent majestic world of Princess Mononoke. I confess I was afraid, threatened for my familiarity with and my memories of this life-journey disowned me and left.
Alone I walked, met many Kodamas and I walked ahead. Alone and FASCINATED!
This world merges evil and good, rights and wrongs, anarchy, and peace… thoughts and feelings of being in the centre, with a grand forest and a grand iron fortress, converging. I will return to this world, for I have to.
Do you know what Prince Ashitaka said to Lady Eboshi when she asked him what was he there for? Prince Ashitaka said, ‘To see with eyes unclouded by hate.’ GRAND!
In the world called Spirited Away, I was with Chihiro all the while even when she became Sen… or was I? She kept swinging on the threshold, meeting and understanding the spirits and their realm.
With Chihiro, I crossed the tunnel in the end, we turned together with a measure of hope, wanting, trust, and belief.
We left and the threshold disappeared, but the feeling stayed. The feeling is ALIVE.
The map will take you, to your utter pleasure, both in the future and the past, in the known and the unknown, in their story and your story.
Gladly I followed the dirt road and reached the world of Totoro, My Neighbour Totoro. All I did there was dancing, under the huge tree in the Tsukamori forest along with Satsuki, Mei, Totoro, and two small Totoros.
Listen to the track we all danced to –
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Déjà vu, dreams, and fantasy fused together in this world and promised. A promise so DEEP, one never made before.
Oh how the dreams never end, how we build on and on… maybe for the dreams speak to us honestly without any guilt, without shying from LOVE.
I have been on Howl’s Moving Castle, what a wonderful world.
But I warn you, it is like being in a dream, a lengthy dream, one which tackles evil and disgust and the power game; where love and compassion dimly shine and darkness shakes you from within, leaving you weak.
If you hold on, Howl the wizard fights back and casts a spell to restore harmony and balance.
How well a spell can work? For how long will it preserve? Corruption spreads, how will it all end? Howl’s Flying Castle a dreamlike reality…
I left this world after learning how to make a castle fly – apart from Calcifer’s (the fire-demon) help, you need to nurture freedom within. VOILA!
And so the map showed me another beautiful world which was all about flying, The Wind Rises it was called. Know that ‘flying and magic’ is a must in life. Abide by for there is magic WITHIN.
If you happen to forget yourself, truly forget yourself, may you be reminded as the wind rises, that you must LIVE.
Live to fulfil, to cherish, to create, to inspire, to love, to remember, to let go, to smile, to embrace the truth as it all ENDS.
I will continue to make the map to Miyazaki as slowly it is being revealed to me how the dreams are unfolded, how the stories are made, what it takes to truly believe in it all, and what a treasure living is.
P.S- My friend Tashi gave me the first piece of this map, the one that took me to the world of Princess Mononoke; this is the tradition, I now pass it on to you.
Endless footprints following footprints/
When suddenly a few of them rise/
To bloom like a flower.
Greetings!
A storyteller, following the ancient tradition of cave chroniclers, standing in vrikshasana (the tree pose) on a hill top (it is sunny, but windy), breathing in and out stories (relishing it all, but at times overwhelmed), declares animatedly that she will continue to – tell stories, share rare story gems, and connect with the pacy universe while also keeping the website ad-free.
Big thanks to my readers. Stay tuned!
Also, a humble request to the new subscribers to check the spam folder after subscribing. Silly (but necessary) confirmation emails often land there instead of the bright inboxes. Merci!
Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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Gabbeh, the 1996 film, is a simple tale of a gipsy girl, her clan and the way their life goes on. Unfolding beautifully just like an artist painting a canvas, Gabbeh quietly touches the grand questions.
Ranked as one of the greatest British films of all time, The Lavender Hill Mob confides in the audience, letting them see, feel, laugh and think without tickling persuasively with a joke here and a punch-line there.
Godard… Breathless and Alive
A Tribute to Jean-Luc Godard, the Film Philologist who Reinvented Cinema.
Yes fly! For walking on the second track is dull and usual, but dreaming high, high, high requires tools. Tools like the right pair of shoes, a chirpy, gritty soul that eats butter-jam dreams, a soul that drinks milky-milky creams.
Silver cascade shimmering the night sky, music to the waves and surreal beauty to the eyes, the Moon loves the art of discipline.
It may be difficult to believe for the Moon’s splendour defies time, it stupefies the clock, it follows the path of a dreamer, but how could this be possible if the Moon knew not discipline?
In this moment, I am a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I am complete and incomplete, I am pleased and uncertain, I wish for nothing and I know I have to wait.
Because the distance covered reminds me of the hurdles I have crossed and the ones I could not, it reminds me of a throbbing past and a dreamy future and it reminds me of how much time is left.
Meredith and the Green Lake
Illimitable Splendour
A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
