I can’t wait to plunge my head into the snow.
I’m in Dehradun right now where it’s 43 degrees Celsius of brutal city summer.
I can’t wait to plunge my head into the snow and come out looking like the apple trees in snow. I can’t wait to plunge my head again and again into the snow until I start to look like an apple tree in snow and no one can tell me apart. I can’t wait to be an apple tree in the orchard who loves the snow.
Selfie in the snow. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. January 2022.
I’m desperate to wake up once again into this magical world.
Snow in the apple orchard. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. January 2022.
I want power.
I want power. To bring to life my way of thinking. I want power and I’ll get it.
A message from the Beas.
This is the Beas river posting as a guest. I have a message for some of you, to warn you of a devastating flood:
Pray that the day may never come when the huge concrete walls you have built on the riverbed for your illegal home or business will come flying on your back, leaving you bedridden. As restricted as I feel today.
Pray knowing that this day may come as soon as tomorrow, knowing that you may not be able to walk from tomorrow no matter how much you pray for prayers do no good for criminals.
What seemed like it happened yesterday was three years ago, in phone photos. Time flies in times of tech excess. Nothing is important, nothing to remember.
Hello, little black ant.
Where are you going on this lovely morning in the Himalaya with a tiny white crumb — half your size and more than half your weight — perfectly held in your black mouth?
A landscape for you.
Of the partially dry and colourful Tso Kar, with fresh snow on the mountains around this fluctuating salt lake. Taken in the bitter-cold (so lovely) morning, the day after the snow. It was September 13 2021, one of my many wild days of travelling and living everywhere in Ladakh.
Isn’t it a painting?
Fresh snow on the mountains around the Tso Kar lake, Ladakh, India. September 2021.
Full moon in the Himalaya ⋮ The night after.
It’s the night after the full moon and I’m still thinking about the night before.
As on the night before the full moon, I’m sitting here on my porch in waiting. Waiting already for the next full moon.
I’m sitting on my porch, waiting for the next full moon, and dreaming of finding love while the almost full moon hangs in the sky.
Sitting on the swing in my porch and dreaming of a full moon night when I’d suddenly see a woman and fall in love with her — like Diana, the goddess of hunting, chastity and the moon, fell in love with the shepherd Endymion in this painting, with moonlight bathing Endymion’s body:
Diana and Endymion, Between 1705-1710, Francesco Solimena.
I dream of singing this song to my love: Aaja Sanam Madhur Chandni Mein (Youtube), from the film Chori Chori (1956), written by Hasrat Jaipuri.
But tonight, I’m alone, sitting on the beautiful swing on my porch without a lover — as I was the night before, and as I will be the night after. As alone as Sappho was in 570 BC when she wrote the midnight poem fragment:
Moon has set
and Pleiades: middle
night, the hour goes by,
alone I lie.
I’m sitting on my porch alone and dreaming of meeting a woman on the night of the next full moon.
Full moon in the Himalaya ⋮ Full moon love & love.
I am convinced. Nothing in this life is as beautiful as the sight of the full moon in the Himalaya.
Each sight so special and heavenly — for the moon makes me wait, every day of the month. I wait for the first waxing crescent glimpse in the sky just as I wait for it to become full. I wait when it’s absent during the day and I wait when it’s absent at night. I wait for it through eclipses and clouds.
Like how I was waiting for it tonight, from the swing on my porch. A few minutes past 9, I’m sitting on the swing in the porch of my mud house in Vashisht. Beyond my mud house starts the jungle of the mountain. I’m waiting for the slightly distant trees branches to turn green with moonlight. Suddenly, the moon rises above the mountain. A lovely white fruit brings a spectacular flood of light. The dark sky is no longer dark, no longer frightening.
The moon in the mountains is so beautiful, so real that I can’t believe it’s real.
While it is still rising, while I’m still seeing it through the branches, moths and other little insects come to light, flying around the branches against the moonlight. I dream of a garden coming to life around the trees, with butterflies of the night and colourful fireflies — welcoming the moon, welcoming the light. How nourishing this sight to my eyes, how pleasing it is to my heart.
I have always loved the moon, always. But never so much as when seeing it from the Himalaya. It has never been as clear as from here, never stuck as deeply to my heart as here. When I saw it the first time, above the snow-capped mountains, it was as if I was seeing it for the first time in my entire life. I immediately forgot the hazy sights of ever seeing it from polluted cities at the sea level.
I frequently go to the swing on my porch and sit staring for several minutes. On one occasion, a few minutes past midnight, the moon is right before me. When I lie slightly on the swing facing south, it falls directly on my big eyes, which open up bigger and bigger as if agreeing with me that this is truly something to see.
Full moon in the Himalaya ⋮ The night before.
The night before the full moon. It’s midnight, the almost full moon is before my eyes. I’m sitting on the porch of my mud house.
I’m sitting here in waiting. Waiting for the full moon.
January Full Moon, 1941, George Ault.