To Kindle, or Not to Kindle.

While catching up with my reading last night I could not help but wonder, how fascinating it is that we humans can read. Is there anything better than reading a book? I don’t mean the electronic version you download on your Nook or Kindle with the Kate Spade cover you bought at Barnes and Nobles for $50. I’m talking about the faded letters of a worn hardback. I’m talking about the soft breeze of flipping through the pages, front to back, then back to front.

Call me old-fashioned, stubborn, naïve, whatever name fits, but when I thought about buying a kindle, I felt that reading on a Kindle is not my thing. There is something about holding a book that I adore. Curling up with a Kindle is just not the same for me. In a post-recession era that we live in, I understand that it seems economically irresponsible to spend money on books when you can download them moderately discounted on the revolutionary notepad. However, more often than not, what you give up for convenience; the price largely just doesn’t seem worth it. When you read on paper you can sense with your fingers a pile of pages on the left growing, and shrinking on the right. You have the tactile sense of progress; the gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story offering some kind of a sensory offload. While I appreciate the Kindle for its few advantages, I think it’s a sad reminder of the fast approaching technological revolution to which our society has so readily succumbed to. It’s just another example of another tech-toy placed on the cultural and traditional parts of our lives, which has replaced the simple joy of reading a book with something that’s faster and easier.

I remember the hours that I used to spend in bookstores and libraries, digging for my favorite author and how time used to fly by quickly; delightful I must say. I feel you can’t spend those hours on a Kindle, surrounded by discounted first editions and worn copies with footnotes and underlined passages. You can’t write your name in the cover and hand it to a friend. You can’t leave a note in the binding when you return it to the library. You can’t highlight your favorite parts and make notes on the side.

Life moves fast and just because everyone seems to be gravitating towards a life of electronic screens and wireless connections doesn’t mean we must leave everything behind. We can save some of the past; keep the good things alive; relish in the decadent and simple beauties man creates, rather than conceding to all the advances the masses say are better. The Kindle may be the future, but there are still a ton of things you can’t do with it…

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Happy New Year!

Many things are thrown our way in this game of life. It is how you deal with them, shows your true character. 2014, a year of endings and beginnings, a year of failures and celebrations, a year of loss and findings, a year of despair and hopes, a year with elements reaching the zenith of the familiarity and the unknown; was strangely magnificent! With all of us holding ourselves through the chaos, in the different dimensions, in different time zones, in different state of self being; sometimes almost withered, and at times amused by the broken fragments of our lives; fragments which are disconnected, abrupt, clear and polished at some places, blurred and cracked at others; often made us mark a new beginning, a new edge, a new life, time and again, in this year. To every soul who has striven to survive and have touched lives, I salute each one of you.

In this new year, 2015, may you have a deep understanding of your true value and worth, an absolute faith in your unlimited potential, peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty, the confidence to let go when you need to, acceptance to replace your resistance, gratitude to open your heart, strength to meet your challenges, love to replace your fear, forgiveness and compassion for those who offend you, clear sight to see your best and true path, hope to dispel obscurity, conviction to make your dreams come true, meaningful and rewarding synchronicities, friends and family who truly know and love you, a childlike trust in the benevolence of the universe, the humility to remain teachable, the wisdom to fully embrace your life exactly as it is, the understanding that every soul has its own course to follow, the discernment to recognize your own unique inner voice of truth, and the courage to learn to be still.

Happy New year to everyone across the Globe!

In Pursuit of The Unknown.

To you, I mean not to be unkind,

Only to be true to my self.

Have I much life to live?

I don't know.

Only, that I live

to be sure,

for living is my pursuit.

It is to pursue my own

interpretation of what is good

noble and just, to reflect

on what it is that brings me joy, 

to define for myself what 

pleasantry is.

I am in search for the something, 

which I refer to as 'unknown', 

I wonder if all my actions

are getting me closer to it, or it's just a shadow of my own.

However, each new day that I partake of 

in this life is one more drop,

in the well spring of my pure existence.

My goal,

is to see the 

overflow.

Sunset. Lake Mendota. Madison.

As the sun was sinking down the horizon, it mingled with the blue sky, reflected its rays from the waves of the lake Mendota and blended perfectly to form a picturesque dull golden hue that had filled the canvas of the sky. 

I seem to have completely lost my touch with photography, but I still tried taking some pictures of the sunset.

The Tranquil

Black Is Beautiful

Love Triangle

The Hue

Alone is Calm.

Alone is calm. Alone is being somewhere with nothing other than your own thoughts, able to hear the things that you often intentionally block out with meaningless conversations and loud music and well-attended parties. Alone is listening to the things you have to say to yourself, giving time to the more important reflections of life that you often allow to settle in the back of your mind like a fine dust swept under a rug.

Alone is eating dinner for one, taking the time to savor each dish instead of having its flavor interrupt you as you try to carry on your conversation. It is reading a book in the corner, undisturbed by everything else going on around you, happy to exist in a scene where the only partner one needs is the soft din of conversation around you. Alone, the feeling of the satisfaction of selfishness, the refreshing reprieve from having to take others’ concerns into account, happy in the knowledge that no one is there to interrupt you in the conversations you have with yourself. However, it should not be confused with loneliness. Loneliness, I think is allowing this freedom from judgment to take root in your life, to become a reason to let things go. It is losing perspective of other people to the point that your entire world narrows down to you and exactly what you’re doing in that moment. Loneliness is wanting a sounding board for all of the things you have discovered on your own, the things you want to confirm with the comforting reality of hearing another human being speak them aloud.

Alone is walking along a street, just you and your city, taking things in that you often don’t take the time to appreciate when you’re busy with life. It is allowing your senses to be your company, talking to you with a million different voices of how good this smells or how wonderful that feels. It is taking the time to soak in your surroundings, instead of just existing blindly within them. I have come to an understanding that even though people are happy in their beautiful lives, deep inside they are lonely. In time I have learned that people come and go, things change, time flies but the only thing that stays with one is one’s conscience, and to protect one's sanity, one needs to make peace with one's loneliness. 

I have realized that it doesn't really take much of an effort to be happy when you are alone, unlike when you feel lonely despite surrounded by the people who have too much to offer and have their opinions about everything that is under the sun, and you are simply not interested.

Perhaps.

If I was to dream,
then dream I would
of days that have gone by.

Days when your eyes would gleam
and so would mine,
but joys remembered are no longer mine.

As the Sky today turns to stormy hues
Drops of rain turn to deluge
Away from the memory lane I try to seek refuge
only to come back to live on the edge.

I walk in a garden of memory,
reliving the joys and the sorrows as well.
I walk with a cane down memory lane,
perhaps there, joys remembered will remain.

Perhaps when my hair has turned to gray
and my face is etched with pain,
And my eyes twinkle with delightful remembrances
I'll walk with a cane down memory lane.
Perhaps there, joys remembered will remain.

Happy Birthday, Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost. 

When Love Arrives.

Dear Love, 

You always come unannounced to me at the wrong time, at the wrong place and sometimes in the wrong time zone. In spite of you being a non-cooperative guest, I always have been thankful to you for your visits, be it for the briefest rendezvous at some random place, or for those unplanned events with beautiful misunderstandings when everything seems to fall in place, or for meeting me in the most outrageous circumstances that which makes me believe the affair to be some kind of a melodramatic cosmic event. Nevertheless, I have always enjoyed your wonderful company and our interesting conversations. It makes me feel alive.

I hope you are well where ever you are. If you are planning a visit, do consider stopping by. I shall be more than delighted to meet you again and catch up from where we left.

Truly Yours,
Me.

Mystical Mirage

I stood in the midst of the buzzing street
waiting for the one, I long to meet

time stood still, heart beat grew loud
the  glimpse so magical, as he drew himself out of the crowd

The twinkling eyes made my heart sing
like melody of birds in first morning spring

The mystic breeze of this sheer ecstasy
turned everything more beautiful than it was supposed to be.

His One flirty smirk and my heart flew high
on gossamer wings through the cloudless sky

crazy fantasy; the rush of adrenaline
sudden kick, like a shot of Gin

As gazed into me his soft heavenly eyes
‘Boom!’ gone was my common sense with inanity reprise

Inability to think sensibly struck my heart
I thought ‘Damn! What a start!’

The sense, the touch, as he held my hand
swept me off my feet to a distinct land

Melted away this sudden brief tryst
like the evanescence of the morning mist

as if a leaf caught in the wind carried him away
vanished he suddenly like a phantom, as a memory of yesterday.