All in white

White hot raging fury.
Age looks back at youth
memories pale and misty.

Crisp white cotton sheets.
A lone white cloud
in the shape of your lips.

Black boots, white lace.
Clouds of white hair
around a wrinkled face.

In aqua sea, a white sail.
All in white people carry
a body minus soul.

Swans in the sky, sailing.
endangered polar bears
hoping against hope, waiting.

Mogra chains in braids.
The full moon emerging
from the arms of clouds.

Bright fluorescent light.
Tuberoses in clusters
serenading the night.

Two tiny baby teeth.
Thick layer of cream
sweet lassi underneath.

Starlight and angel-dust.
Bride’s white to widow’s white
a single death betwixt.

Crystal sugar jar.
A dove’s tentative flight
in a world of war.

White confetti rain.
Snowy autumn blooms
lie under snow slain.

~~~

(for a fun prompt 'White' from a FB friend :)

The War on Consciousness

The War on Consciousness - another banned (and then unbanned) TED Talk

The Science Delusion

TED (can you believe it?) has been censoring talks. But word got out and there was a furore and they were uncensored. This is one of them - The Science Delusion

Simple truths

Watch a young girl talk about her awe-inspiring work helping others.

This being human

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from the beyond. 

~ Rumi
 

Kerala Kaleidoscope

These last two months that I have been in Kerala, I have been taking lots of photos. I finally managed to put them into an album (of sorts)

Kerala kaleidoscope


Even though the photos were high quality, uploading the movie on to YouTube compromised the quality somewhat, Even so, view in full-screen, if possible.

Spoken word poetry

Three amazing spoken poems ....

Aloneness

"Aloneness and silence are two aspects of one experience, two sides of the same coin. If one wants to experience silence one has to go into one´s total aloneness. It is there.

We are born alone, we die alone. Between these two realities we create a thousand and one illusions of being together - all kinds of relationships, friends and enemies, loves and hates, nations, races, religions. We create all kinds of hallucinations just to avoid one fact: that we are alone. But whatsoever we do, the truth cannot be changed. It is so, and rather than trying to escape from it, the best way is to rejoice in it.

Rejoicing in your own aloneness is what meditation is all about. The meditator is one who dives deep into one´s aloneness, knowing that we are born alone, we will be dying alone, and deep down we are living alone. So why not experience what this aloneness is? It is our very nature, our very being." 

~Osho

 

Wake up. Day calls you

Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me :) And I got this wonderful poem sent to me. What a wonderful gift and an awesome way to start the rest of my life ....


Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your body's metal.
cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more


by Pedro Salinas

Translated by Willis Barnstone

Wabi Sabi: The Magnificence of Imperfection

Cheryl Hunter shows that a simple story, well told and presented, has tremendous potential to educate, entertain and impact people .....

A powerful talk with deep meaning.

Being solitary

An Excerpt from The Stations of Solitude by Alice Koller

Philosopher Alice Koller explains the benefits that ensue from solitude and the creativity that is birthed there. Here is an excerpt on nurturing.

"I surround myself with silence. The silence is within me, permeates my house, reaches beyond the surfaces of the outer walls and into the bordering woods. It is one silence, continuous from within me outward in all directions: above, beneath, forward, rearward, sideward. In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe. I require this silence. I search it out. The finely drawn treble song of a white-throated sparrow is part of it. Invasions of it by the noise of engines are torments to me.

"This is my solitude.

"I do not cloak it among other persons, and I know how it appears. No sign of submission, in the eyes of most men; too assured, in the view of most women; not properly respectful, to the gaze of all those in authority. I have become that third gender: a human person, the being one creates of oneself. I fell in love with my work, became fiercely protective of my freedom, started to make new rules. In this, Sartre is surely right: persons are not born but made. The choice lies escapably within ourselves: we may let it wither away, or we may take it and run."

Night - haiku

 

I miss the night sky
that invisible net
that snagged the stars

~~~

the sickle moon reaps
a thousand laughing souls
put away your tears

~~~

a lone cricket
punctures the night
looking for light

~~~

the early koel
pokes awake the sleeping dawn
call by strident call
 

~~~

the Ides of March

the night pulses psychedelic
with lightning strobe lights

I wait for the drum rolls
but the sky is strangely silent

in God’s own country
in the land of hartals

it seems the God of Thunder
is faithfully on strike

as fields high with grain
ripe for harvest lie torn apart

by the unruly fists
of an angry Wind God

I think then of the Ides of March
how Caesar ignored the warnings

in the flashing light I look for
the writing on the wall

I hope it’s not ominous
I hope the Earth has forgiven us

our Caesar-like greed
our clawing, controlling maw

now parched and cracked
and thirsting for rain

praying to a bereft Rain God
now crackling in anger

flashing in fury
pointing sparkly fingers

at us who have robbed
our sons and daughters

of their unseen paradise
taunting, it is only just

that Caesar should die
so that the Earth may live

~~~

The Old Man and the Sea - Animated

In 1999, Aleksandr Petrov won the Academy Award for Short Film (among other awards) for a film that follows the plot line of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Petrov’s technique involves painting pastels on glass, and he and his son painted a total of 29,000 images. Rather incredible.

Awesome!

My Kindle book is FREE today

Today, my Kindle book of poems  'In praise of sparklets' is FREE on Amazon. 

If you were thinking of buying, this is the chance to get it for free :)

Reviews would be welcome.

~~~

How to be soulful

“You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences. To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.”

-Jean Shinoda Bolen

Silence

I am not experiencing silence/peace.
I am silence/peace experiencing the experiencer.

~ Cesar Teruel

60 of the world's happiest facts

60 of the world's happiest facts

Cool!

We Are One - The Science of Interconnectedness

Awesome article!

We are one - the science of Interconnectedness

Males were once females too

A very interesting animation on a known scientific fact -

The science of how we are all female