Portrait of the blogger as a dissatisfied being

This morning on my way to work, while navigating the usual obstacles on a typical street in these parts  (cows, dogs, cow patties, dog poop, garbage heaps, humans  spitting, loitering, moving along), I saw two tiny women lugging two huge bags between them.  At first, I didn’t really look at what they were carrying. And then one of them dropped one side of the bag she was holding and the other set hers down to help her companion. That’s when I saw what their cargo contained – flowers. Fresh, fragrant,radiant yellows and reds looked ready to spill from the bags. The sacks contained blowzy red roses as big as small cabbages; rich yellow marigolds almost as big as my fists; tiny, clean white jasmine. It was the sight of those flowers that pulled me out of the funk that I’d fallen into.

I am not saying that my path to work in the morning has no redeeming qualities. It does. The temperamental  morning sun; the tall trees lining the road that sometimes perk up with glorious blooms; the morning hush (despite the idiot who must honk loudly on a relatively empty road); the whiff of incense from the temple I pass – these do alleviate the drudgery of a path often traveled. To be fair, it is more likely that the ‘oftenness’ of the travel has more to do with my ambivalence toward it than the actual path.

This has often been a problem with me. I go out of my way to avoid routine even if the routine is a comfort and even if the routine has a purpose. Let me make it clear here that I am NOT an adrenaline junkie. I like my adrenaline in moderate doses and occasionally. But I need novelty constantly-even if the novelty is constructed into a routine.  I remember attending a meditation session with a Buddhist monk at a monastery in Indonesia a couple of years ago. The one thing that he said that actually comforted me was ‘Nothing remains the same and everything changes.’   This morning it was the flowers that changed everything.  There was a time when I would have thought that those flowers meant something – was a portent of something wonderful about to happen. But now, they are simply a moment when something beautiful fell right in front of my eyes and made me forget for a brief instant the filth and the chaos that were poised trembling over the next instant ...

Flower power : Blue lotuses at the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy,Sri Lanka.

Fall on the Heath

I went from growing up in a desert where there was a hot arid summer and a cold dry winter with sudden showers to living on an island close to the Arctic where each season was clearly separated from the other but always punctuated by a steadily falling rain. Now, I live in a city close to the Tropic of Cancer in a country that plays host to a variety of seasons in a dozen different places. And it is while sitting here waiting for the rest of my life to happen that I suddenly miss fall.

In my mind the season will forever be associated with the beginning of term. The word also brings with it a vivid memory of  wonderful fiery colors , that strange quality of light that is at once luminous and cozy giving an instant air of intimacy and mystery.

Found this photo online and it captures perfectly the quality of light in a way that I never was able to do.

I love long walks and Hampstead Heath was a walker's paradise. I discovered a peace unlike any other during those long walks alone on the Heath with the chill in the air , the strange hush, the leaves and their colors, my hands dug deep into my coat pockets sometimes seeing my breath in clouds , my desert bred ears stinging deliciously in the cold wind and the splendid colors of the sunset. The sunset was different from the brilliant displays of color of a desert sunset. This one was calmer somehow and closer- a cool observer of brilliant things. Over the next few years as I walked over the Heath through various seasons and in many different types of weather , I decided fall was my favorite time and made sure my fall walks were undertaken alone. 

For some reason, fall is also associated with the intense earthy taste of  warm gooey chocolate ,piles of books,curling up under pink comforters and rain drops on window sills...

Khor Rori

There is a place in the south of Oman , about an hour's drive away from the city of Salalah. The place is called Khor Rori. It is an isolated stretch of sand and sea and cliffs that seems to go on for miles in either direction. In the midst of this immensity , there lie the ruins of structures from long ago of an old port town and some others that at least at that time hadn't been identified. Khor Rori was also an important point on the fabled Frankincense Trail that stretched from the Dhofar region to Jerusalem. I first went there in the winter of 2004. Having been brought up in the Sultanate , I still find it hard to believe that it took me more than 25 years to go explore one of the most beautiful regions in the country.

Phrases such as 'virgin beaches' are often thrown around carelessly. I doubt though anyone would understand what that truly means until one sees the beaches at Khor Rori. The waters of the sea in their shades of azure and cerulean and green takes one's breath away. Every legend and myth and fairy story you ever heard try to find space in your head. As cliches jostle around and as exclamations of 'ohhh!' and 'wow!' and 'oh my god!' peter out,you are left with perfect silence.

Silence is the only prayer acceptable in the end in this place. Even a herd of camels that tip toed down to the water was quiet.History and time and stories stop mattering. Maybe some people would call it good vibrations and maybe that is what I felt that winter. All I can say for certain is that I have never felt like that again- that feeling of privilege to be in a place that felt so preternaturally sacred. The sugary sand served up for my  pleasure to accompany that pristine water and the purest of cerulean winter skies felt like it had been put there just for me. That moment in time was mine alone when everything came together- in perfect isolation.

Found this photo online

Here's a site I found that has excellent photographs of the area and the more historic details. I particularly love the photographs of Oman taken by this gentlemen - Eric Lafforgue and his photograph of Khor Rori is simply stunning!

Falling in love

Discovering a new author is like falling in love. It happens in unexpected ways . You are forever changed and you begin to see things with greater clarity.

My current favorite author is Mona Simpson. I came upon her quite by accident or at least a round about route. I chanced upon her writing through reading about her brother -Steve Jobs. Whatever the initial reasons for reading her work, I have now come to love her writing. I am currently reading My Hollywood. There is something about the way she writes that just about breaks my heart. I find myself sucked into a world where I can hear the characters talk and see what they see and feel what they feel. This , for the longest time, has been my assessment of a good writer.

I have to say though this hasn't always happened with what are often called 'the classics'. I think the first time a 'classic' hit me like that was when I read Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.I eventually read that book at least 8 more times- cover to cover. I wish she had written more. Agnes Grey was touching but mostly in the sense that it was Anne finding herself as a writer. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White was the second time that lightning struck. I neither wanted the book to end nor could I take my eyes off the pages even to go to the bathroom or to take the time out for a bite to eat.

Simpson, however, captures my imagination in a different way. Reading her book has been a bit like taking my heart out of my chest and holding it out to be crushed anytime anyone chooses. I have not set out here to write a review of the book ( plenty of people have already done that and in wonderful ways!). Instead , it leaves me wishing I had such felicity with words- the talent to evoke such images of the maps of the human heart. Her work feels like a cartography of that most mysterious of human organs.

I watch helplessly the unfolding drama and would like to get to the denouement. It might be crushing . It might be disappointing. It might leave a bitter taste in the mouth. But I must know. 

Breathing

I have been house bound these past two days. It started with a cold on Sunday evening. Dragged myself to work on Monday. On Tuesday, I decided I couldn't be bothered keeping up appearances and abandoned myself to the misery of the cold and a general low mood.
This has been the worst year. There probably were worse years but I don't recollect them. This one though has been the year of false beginnings, traumatic endings ,nerve -wrecking waits , false hope. There must be a lesson in here somewhere. I just don;t know what that is at the moment.
I said in an earlier post that I believed that there is no such thing as too much. I think I still believe it. Except that at the moment, I'm so tired I don't know what to believe.
I want conversation- uplifting, life-affirming, intelligent - conversation. I want to feel that connectedness that I haven't felt in so long.
I have been trawling the net looking for pieces of writing and I have discovered lovely pieces of writing . This one in particular called Orangette I found to be a lovely read.
In the meantime , I'm breathing...

No such thing as too much...

Okay, so I'm a fan of that show - Grey's Anatomy. I may not be a buy the box-set kind of person. But I have been known to switch off my phone and shut myself off from the world and curl up on the couch to watch it. Every once in a while, the voice-overs at the beginning and the end come up with startlingly accurate observations. Well, to be honest, so far there have been two which I identified with so much that they have stuck in my mind.
There was an episode in the first season when Meredith talks about how sometimes there is no such thing as too much. And then last night, it was about trading - trading people for dreams.Or more accurately about trading love for dreams.
The first part , I really truly believe now. Sometimes there really is no such thing as too much. I don't believe that you can ever love too much or dream too much or hope too much. Maybe , or rather most definitely, loving too much or dreaming too much or hoping too much can break you. It can really ,really incapacitate you for life. And yes, more often than not, some survival instinct keeps you from doing any of that. But every once in a while, or maybe once in a lifetime, you do. You do love too much and you do dream too much and you do hope too much. And also, because this is life and not a television show, things don't turn out the way you want it to. And yet,you cannot help yourself. You persist. Sometimes, I wonder why. And pat comes the answer - what else is there, really?
As for trading dreams for love. I can say in this moment,that in each of our lives there comes a time, when we would give up everything for love. I don't necessarily mean romantic love. But love. I never thought that I would ever be in that position. or make such a claim. But it turns out , I am capable of it too. There was a time when I thought that that would be a sign of weakness .But knowing what I know now, I can safely say that far from being a sign of weakness it has strengthened me in ways I am only beginning to discover...

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There are times when I wonder if I'll get over feeling a certain way. The weight of emotions become too much to actually believe that they'd one day go away and it will all be as if what went before never was.
There are times like today when washing my face over the sink before going to bed, I'm suddenly overcome and I need to stop and catch my breath. Sleep flees and I'm left wide awake trying to breathe through the pain. A friend told me once that's all that I'd have to do. Just breathe through the pain.
But what do you do when the pain overwhelms even breath? What do you do when you can barely stand up and what do you do when you feel tears pushing at you and threatening to break every barrier you have managed to erect?
I feel some days I can lower a veil of indifference over all that I truly feel.Someone said to me recently in the middle of a conversation in the dark, that maybe if the veil stayed in place long enough it'll become a skin. I thought I'd had that mastered. At least in the dark at that time, it felt plausible.And then I awoke to the bright light of day and realized that I was afraid of one day not feeling the things I feel as deeply as I feel them. What if when I stop feeling I lose everything forever? How do I live then?
There are some losses that will break me. I am sure of it. I am afraid of them. I do not know how I will live through them. And in the strange way that life has, I am made aware everyday that I am completely helpless in the face of them. How will I do it? Writing to faceless strangers in the middle of the night...and hoping for just one chance...just one more chance...to see and to hear and to talk... just one more... and then maybe more than just one more...