A monsoon memory from 2017.
Monsoon in Pune, Maharashtra, India. September 2017. Shot with iPhone 7.
How to live through a pandemic or an inferno.
Another post on how to live. This one addresses the current situation — the Covid pandemic — that we are living through since 2020, a phase of history (I still can’t believe I’ve been living through this) where we saw those in power abuse the power recklessly, these evil, lying morons. And a future situation (an inferno), which may occur and occur very soon if the same morons continue to run this world.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
— C. S. Lewis, On Living In An Atomic Age (essay), 1948
How to live.
These words brilliantly express how I prefer to live my life: boldly. May they inspire you too.
The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.
— Seamus Heaney
Ghats of Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India. February 2021.
Vincent.
Frank Herbert on greatness.
The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Wilderness.
Himalayan wildlife. On the way to Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India. February 2021.
On the Himalaya.
I have solid opinions/thoughts on everything except the Himalaya: Anything I say feels redundant immediately. My words fall flat, to sea level.
House gilded in the evening sun. Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. December 2020.
Crowding shadows.
The clearing is surrounded by a forest that is choking itself. Black trunks with the lichen’s bristly beard. The jammed trees are dead all the way to the top, there a few solitary green branches touch the light. Underneath: shadows sitting on shadows, the marsh increasing.
— Tomas Tranströmer
Shadows crowding at a roadside snack shop. Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. December 2020.
In the mood for.
I’m in the mood for a dream for a night for a body for a bed for a flight for a flower for a breath.
Goodnight, world.