Factory Made

Have you been to a plastic place... moulded in the factory and placed for bare function,usually ugly, no identity, no relation to context, one amongst a million others....like a mobile home which can be picked up and plonked anywhere; it would be just as out of place there too.....No? Then visit the smaller cities of America...you'll know what I'm talking about.

Lucky Ali songs take me to a different place. His voice is like water as it trickles to dusty corners of mind, awakening emotions long forgotten.
A long time ago I knew a person who I thought was like such a song. A rare, lovely blend which enriches me by merely its existence. Ahhhh...life and its illusions!!!

As the sun rises

I clicked this one from our balcony...on one of those rare mornings I woke up early :D

When words fail

Sometimes words crumble like a sand castle that has stood for too long underneath a baking sun. Sometimes our minds cannot swallow the enormity of life. Sometimes we just lose ourselves in the maze of our thoughts. Sometimes we fool ourselves into becoming numb. Sometimes we are so weary that nothing seems to be worth it.

But Life goes on......

For my friend who lost two people who she loved within the same week.

A lullaby

I suddenly had a vivid recollection of dusky chai -times and nights when my mother would talk me to sleep. She told me her stories- now they are mine, entrenched in me-and those images and impressions are branded forever in my memory.....

As I lay me down
on a lonely night
I hear her whisper,
a whisper, a soft whisper.

With a voice soaked
in our past, she
sings me a song, a
song, the sweetest song.

She washes me with
a lilting saddness as
I drown in the comfort
of darkness, a heady darkness.

She twirls a tale
as I sleep yet awaken,
she speaks of my mother,
my mother's mother's mother.

I can touch her velvet voice
as we travel away and
they fall in place- the pieces,
the pieces, the very many pieces.

I drink those words of long ago
and the walls of my mind ring
with an echo, an echo,
a poignant echo.

Yup...I'm not going to be posting much for a month. Totally busy.

We have a guest .....the Guru of Healthy Living....my mother in law :)

Magic of place

Some places have it and some don't. A sense of being....a sense of wholeness that resonates with the its context. Or maybe I could describe it as a life of its own with its merits and its flaws...like a person. When it has a story to tell that somehow links everyone who walks by.

Maybe its a sort of timelessness...... or should I say an ability to float through time? And you feel your presence as if its aware of you. Its like you're really alive....more alive than usual. I wonder how that comes to be? By virtue of design, history or thriving inhabitation?

Or something more intangible and metaphysical?

The Problem with this country

The Problem with this country is that they won't give you a PHD if you don't dot your "i"s.

As you can see I have been customizing my template and I worked on Photoshop after a very long time. And let me tell you Photoshop has therapeutic properties! Once I started I couldn't stop.....And I took out some pictures I shot in the past six months and worked on them too. Here they are.
This one above was shot in a service plaza. We were driving from Houston to San Antonio and it got so hot that Ash decided to stop and take a mini nap.










The boat picture, one of my favorites. I shot this is we were canoing down rainbow springs. Oh!! And this was before Ash lost his paddle...thats another story!!








The one below is also from the same expedition. Its a beautiful park/forest- the water is bright blue and trees are huge. They have these trails winding around a number of cascades (artificial but lovely anyway)






The picture below is one of the San Antonio sky. As you can see I've used the same image for my Blog Heading :)