The Illusion Of Ocean’s Calm



troubled mind lured by,
illusion of ocean’s calm,
peace, a tragic quest

This week’s prompt at Haiku Horizons is calm.


Sometimes, when my mind is troubled, I feel like running away into wilderness, away from the everyday things and people that make my heart race with anxiety and doubt, emptiness and anger. My mind wanders off into thoughts about how restless I am. How unsettled I am. How every time I long for peace, it feels like my mind is just trying to grasp some figments of imagination that never existed. Sometimes, while I think about wilderness and isolation, my mind often reaches into the memory for an image of a calm ocean. I can think why such an image comes to mind spontaneously, but it can’t be more deceptive. The ocean’s  calm is a great illusion. But maybe I am wrong! Whoever said ocean’s calm means a plain surface with no ripples. Maybe, once a man ventures into the ocean and has lived long enough in it, all the thundering storms and towering tides that rage the waters become the definition of calm. Peace is as simple as the smile that slowly grows, unwrinkling the frown on the face while sitting in a tranquil garden, the only sound coming is the music of the wind and dance of the leaves. But, sigh! Peace is also not as simple as that.

Christmas On The 26th


a shiny red present . . .
joy! the kid tears it open.
shouts in merriment.

~ ~ ~

a crumpled red wrapper . . .
the ragged kid picks up from bin.
christmas on twenty sixth.

~ ~ ~

‘Christmas on the 26th’ relates to the ragged kid picking up the crumpled wrapper from the trash the morning after Christmas.

~ ~ ~

Written for the prompt Gifts at Haiku Heights. Please find Haiku from other writers on that link.

~ ~ ~

Time and What We Know As Life


Sometimes you encounter forces so great and abusive, far beyond what is human and explainable, that you are confused whether you have to accept your imminent defeat or if you have to put all doubts about the reality of comparative strengths, and fight against the perceived injustice, which, for all we know, seems to drag on till the end, the end of either hope, or of breath. Without you knowing, you become a coward by persisting to be brave. Without you realizing, the principles you lived-by form a death trap you are destined to step on. Without you feeling, you become empty of the very emotions that once defined everything for you. Just when you realize you are too tired and cannot fight, the force pushes you down an abyss that you believed cannot go any deeper than where you already are. You are overridden with rage, that even in the moments that you believe are your last ones, the force still expects you to put up a fight. The rage helps you recover some sanity, and strength, and fight a little longer before everything circles back to your waning hope and tiring soul. It is as if the force throws you down a very deep abyss and the only way out is that you, a human, must grow wings to get out of the darkness and gloom. All the poems you wrote about flying don’t really mean anything, unless of course you find someone who makes you believe that you are not actually falling, but flying. Well, that again brings everything to the great and abusive force that snatches your only light, and the whole things repeats till the end, the end of either hope, or breath.

‘Cooking Me’ For Dummies


Weekly Writing Challenge: A Pinch of You

This week, we want a window into the complexity that is you. We want the recipe for all the bits and pieces and quirks and foibles and loves that make you you.

This is going to be long, brace yourself.


Although my recipethe medoes has flesh as one of its large number of ingredients, it is vegetarian. So, you can expect to find a  , somewhere on my body, although I’d highly recommend that you don’t go searching for it. I simply can’t seem to make a list of all the ingredients that make the recipe. Even the thought of making such an effort is sucking away all the vitamins from me.

*Suddenly, a magnet enters the creation room*
Oh! No! Stop! Stop! Noooo!!! Not my iron, nooooo!
*Magnet escapes with the loot*
Why me! Why is the world so cruel and unfair!

Low on iron, the recipe was going to end up being tall and skinny, being able to both reach for the high apple in the garden of Eden and being blown away by a quiet breeze right before I pluck it. Darn! Someone added fate without my knowledge and I hardly know what effect it will have on the final recipe. Who was it? Is he the one who sent the magnet? Why? 

Later, by a happy accident, philosophy slipped into the cauldron in which raw good and evil were getting cooked at such high temperatures, the solution looked redder than what lava would look like if it was blushing. Although at first it did seem like a happy accident, I soon realized that it would have been better if it happened, maybe, 10 years later. The cauldron has been on flame for only 17 years, that poor thing exploded after philosophy got mixed into it, it was like a burden from then on. I looked at the world with disbelief, the stark diversity of a man’s actions, swinging from extreme evil to extreme godliness.

I needed to heal my wounds after that explosion, which kind of caused people to discriminate me, like an untouchable, although not in the complete literal sense. To be precise, the explosion made me an introvert. I added analytical and factual reasoning to my reality, the science of deduction, as Sherlock Holmes would call it. I saw people make choices, I saw what led to their choices, what the choices made them.  It all made sense. I saw people abuse power, I saw humble people crumble to dust. I saw a writing on the wall. But I am only 20, it all weighed too much upon me. I needed to vent these fumes of restlessness, rage and realization. I needed another world.

And I then added love, faith, hope and trust. This helped the ticking bomb in me stay dormant. Nature was always a part of the recipe, what fellow humans couldn’t contribute to my recipe, nature did and with love. Although, sometimes, her fury would scare the crap out of every living thing. But hey, she is not angry for no reason, she has us humans to deal with. Just beside this cauldron was a kettle in which a mixture of experiences was being boiled. The kettle started rattling fervently. Gosh! What is wrong now. Maybe I have to get some experiences off my heart. So I took out a cup of the contents from the kettle and poured it into a mold called writing. It conjured interesting shapes and patterns, and that gave a little peace to my mind in midst of such a buzzing ambiance.

Writing gave my recipe a new dimension, and only then did I realize how much I needed it. Even before my recipe(the me) was complete, which is going to take 40-60 years depending on the course of action humans take to counter the growing insensitivity in humans and the global warming triggered by them, I was able to visit new worlds through imagination and other manifestations of the burning need to express. So, I soon kind of learned the craft of multitasking. I faded in and out of all these worlds, all the same trying to continue completing my recipe in this world. But sometimes I am lost in thought, wondering if I have to regret not taking the orthodox path to cooking. The general approach of the youth in this world, that seems to have so much energy and fun in it. But the reasons why I chose the path I am currently on quickly surface back to the fore and I continue stirring. But my recipe would be incomplete, no matter how much mastery I learn, if all coal became ashes, if all the water is evaporated and if all the fire was dead. What am I saying? That I need help. Love. Trust. Faith. Freedom. They make up the air I breathe and in their absence, I move to my end quickly.


If you made it this far, visitor, then I bow to you and thank you.

‘Tis Not Something You Ask An Introvert


Daily Prompt: Party Animals(?)

After spending time with a group of people, do you feel energized and ready for anything or do you want to hide in the corner with a good book? Photographers, artists, poets: show us personality.


You are about to read a post about mingling and partying by an introvert. You have been warned.

*Tada*

Okay. I guess it all depends on how you spend your time, and with whom.  I have many memories of me hiding away from people because I just couldn’t take it, whatever they are calling partying and fun, any longer. Now that I think about it, I never had the foresight to carry a good book with me that could have come to my mind’s rescue countless times. But I have been lucky sometimes, as this meme tells you. I just go off to their book rack and stand there even if I find nothing interesting. It is like wearing an invisibility cloak. If people call me at such a time, I’d say, ‘just a moment’, grab a quick book and set off into another room so that they’d have to spend a little more time searching for me. Introverts are next only to ninjas in stealth mode trait.

Soooooooooo, I am so definitely not a party animal. I would not ‘be ready for anything’ if I had to endure an hour of ranting by people I’d rather greet, smile and wave goodbye to in quick succession. But I do feel free around a select few and I’d be more energetic than my usual self in their company, like at home. But it is a very very intriguing thing what someone else’s presence can do to your own personality or behavior.


Please drop off links of your posts if you are writing for today’s prompt, I’d like to come by and read them

Here are posts from other bloggers about this prompt, do check some out:

  1. 21 july Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) | family photos food & craft
  2. Will you play with me? |
  3. Personality | Books, Music and Movies : my best friends
  4. Daily Prompt: From Dr. Hyde’s Perspective | The Whimsical Circumlocutor
  5. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) | writinglikeastoner
  6. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) | Chicomallorca’s Blog
  7. I Do Not Photoshop Any Picture I Upload | Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) | likereadingontrains
  8. ‘Tis Not Something You Ask An Introvert | Black and White Heart
  9. Party Animal with Social Anxiety | Tony’s Texts
  10. Daily Prompt: Party Animals | suzie81’s Blog
  11. A Daily Prompt Poem: Personality « Vicariously Poetic
  12. Which Party Known By | clarior e tenebris
  13. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) « The Blogging Path
  14. The After Party Diner (short fiction) | The Jittery Goat
  15. Party Animals (?): Who Was She? | Khana’s Web
  16. Daily Prompt: About Last Night… | In diesen Augenblick
  17. Daily Prompt: Party Animals, aka me vs. going out | printed cats
  18. Party Animals (Sonet) | Liars, Hypocrites & The Development of Human Emotion
  19. Daily Prompt: Hiding After Midnight | Creative Mysteries
  20. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) – AND THE PARTY GOES ON AND ON | LADYBOY PROMPT
  21. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) « Mama Bear Musings
  22. There are two sides to the coin | tornin2’s Blog
  23. Quiet Time is a Good Thing | Code For Confession
  24. Party Butterfly | The Magic Black Book
  25. Party Animals | Geek Ergo Sum
  26. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?), No Thanks | Mindful Splatter
  27. Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?). | Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss
  28. Pup Party… | Haiku By Ku
  29. Philosophy of Friendship|Daily Prompt: Party Animals (?) | Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis and Me
  30. Daily Post – Personality | the mmmmm family
  31. Party Animals – Daily Prompt | oh lovely existence

Nomadic Life? Maybe In A Different Age


Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home

If you had the opportunity to live a nomadic life, traveling from place to place, would you do it? Do you need a home base? What makes a place “home” to you? Photographers, artists, poets: show us MOVING.


In deed, there is and will never be a place like home. Aaah, the home sweet home. I, for one, am very introverted and so home is definitely a big thing, the reference point of my entire universe. Like Sheldon Cooper would say, referring to his spot on the couch,

“In an ever-changing world it is a single point of consistency. If my life were expressed as a function on a four-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot, at the moment I first sat on it, would be (0,0,0,0).”


That is two Sheldon Cooper references in three posts for the daily prompts, hmmm, that tells how well I connect to it. It is so funny, every one of the lead characters are great actors and actresses. Anyway, I’d rather be home than any place else because the sheer ambiance  and aura of my people  is soothing and reassuring. And as I have said in an earlier post, I have not been much of a traveler until now. Its funny, that’s two blogposts about travel in the last three, a little out of my comfort zone I must note! If you did read my previous post about visiting foreign lands and fairy lands, you’d know that I am ready to be a travel enthusiast, although becoming a nomad does sound like it needs more than just hobby level passion. But its intriguing, we can hardly handle relocating to a new place once. These nomads move livestock, goods and almost everything they call theirs to hundreds of places spanning all their lives.

But I certainly don’t want to be a nomad in the present day, not in this technology obsessed world. As I’d like to believe, the point of having a nomadic life is to have an epic journey to the center of nature and to my knowledge, I have always liked the times when there was less concrete and guns in the world. I’ve always imagined what life would be like if I was alive during the time of kingdoms and thrones. That’d be a perfect period for venturing out into the wild. But nevertheless, to take up such a journey in today’s world would be as much a challenge if not tougher, for it was beasts that threatened your life back then, now its humans who took that job of spoiling it for you. And you know, humans are everywhere. I mean, everywhere.  And that is the third Big Bang Theory reference and the end of this post.


Please drop off links of your posts if you are writing for today’s prompt, I’d like to come by and read them

Here are posts from other bloggers about this prompt, do check some out:

  1. Still Africa—and this DP is a Repeat | Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | likereadingontrains
  2. Moving Train | Books, Music and Movies : my best friends
  3. There’s No Place Like Home | Geek Ergo Sum
  4. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | flow of my soul
  5. I’d pack up today…if I had the balls to do so! | thoughtsofrkh
  6. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | suzie81’s Blog
  7. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home « Mama Bear Musings
  8. New Paths | Words With Ryon
  9. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Black and White Heart
  10. The Nuts and Bolts of Moving | windandlaughter
  11. Under Your Shadow | Prayers and Promises
  12. Living Out of a Suitcase | EMBRACE YOU
  13. 20 july – Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | family photos food & craft
  14. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Under the Monkey Tree
  15. Life as a nomad….or not? | My Experiments with Words
  16. Accidental Nomad | Stuphblog
  17. There’s No Place Like Home: Moving | Ese’ s Voice
  18. Random: Travel thoughts | mcpw
  19. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home > A Tale of Two Cities | From Ground to Home
  20. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Sanctified Brother
  21. Only Thing Worse Than A Broken Home Is A Broken Heart | The Jittery Goat
  22. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Retired2Travel
  23. Nomad. | The Ambitious Drifter
  24. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Prateek Bhatia
  25. A Direction You’d Love | clarior e tenebris
  26. Home is where my heart is… | mindurspirit
  27. Daily Prompt: Moving | A New Day
  28. Déjà vu | Tony’s Texts
  29. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Blue-tinged Dreams
  30. Daily Prompt: You’ll find me at home where I belong | SERENDIPITY
  31. Runaway | Hope* the happy hugger
  32. With Mama… | Haiku By Ku
  33. Do I have to love the ‘Daily Prompt?’ | luvsiesous
  34. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play | A Day in the Life
  35. Vertical jumps |
  36. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss
  37. There’s no place like home : Daily Prompt | I solemnly swear i am upto no good!
  38. The Nomadic Life (my demons and me) | Iam Who Iam
  39. Encore Post | Sorta-Ginger
  40. Dawn | Vampire Maman
  41. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Elizabeth Melton Parsons
  42. On the move | The Nameless One
  43. There’s No Place Like Home | Stranger. Fly. Home. | amarllyis
  44. Stranger. Fly. Home. | amarllyis
  45. Underneath the stars, far far away… | The Rider
  46. My meaning of home | tornin2’s Blog
  47. Forced Nomadism | Expressions
  48. To Be a Wanderer . . . | Mme Solitaire
  49. Home, Sweet, Home… FOREVER | It’s a wonderful F’N life
  50. There’s No Place Like Home, there’s no place like home…. | dearanonymousfriend
  51. Moving… | The Rider
  52. No Place Like Home…. | Testing the Strength I Have
  53. Home | West Coast Review
  54. The perks and the quirks of moving | quirksmag
  55. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | 67steffen
  56. Life As A Wanderer « Getting Rid Of Boredom
  57. Love is home | Life is great
  58. Freedom on the Open Raod | Lewis Cave
  59. The perks and quirks of moving | quirksmag
  60. Apa Kabar Indonesia Malam? | praztforiks
  61. Do I Deserve This? | Ellikitty
  62. Click Your Heels Three Times…. | DragonMommie’s World
  63. FOREVER Moving! | It’s a wonderful F’N life
  64. Return to your roots | Never Stationary
  65. This house where the wind blows | From Under the Pages
  66. Daily Prompt | There’s No Place Like Home | Alice is Online
  67. I’m going to get a new home base very soon, actually | djgarcia94
  68. Poem: Roaming | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
  69. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home « The Blogging Path
  70. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Borneo Rainbow
  71. My Sanctuary | A Virtual World
  72. Kansa Muse on Micro Farming and More
  73. Daily Riffed 6: Pity Me, I’m Almost A Human Being | A VERY STRANGE PLACE
  74. Daily Riffed 7: Pity Me, I’m Almost A Human Being | A VERY STRANGE PLACE
  75. Dirty Garments | Defined Imperfection♡s
  76. I, the nomad | My thought exactly…!
  77. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | putthekettleonblog
  78. Home is where the heart is! » My Life, My Way, My Words
  79. Daily Prompt: Need I Repeat Myself? | One Starving Activist
  80. Living the Nomadic Life | Code For Confession
  81. Home is Where the Cats Are… | Sued51’s Blog
  82. Until the Beginning of the Next Leg of the Journey | The Arkside of Thought by Sahm King
  83. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Heron There & Everywhere
  84. no place like home? | cresting the words
  85. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Little Kitchen in the Woods
  86. Home | A collection.
  87. “A Nomad’s Ode to Being Too Long in One Place” | Juan-Paolo Perre : Poetry
  88. The Whimsical Realm of Angela’s Mind
  89. Would You Leave? | Living and Lovin
  90. There’s No Place Like Home | Pinkpodster Ponders
  91. I Am Nomad (Timber) | Liars, Hypocrites & The Development of Human Emotion
  92. Rurouni (Wanderer) | Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | wbart1029
  93. There’s no place like… | A Bird Of Passage
  94. A silver lining.. | Relax…
  95. Home (seen from space) | marsowords
  96. No Place Like Home | Danny James
  97. Only heart is home | Dancing in the rain!
  98. Only in Wisconsin | Wiley’s Wisdom
  99. Daily Prompt: There’s No Place Like Home | Personal Gallifrey
  100. At home in two citites | Secrets of a Restaurant Widow

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Golden Hour


The golden hour is the first and last hour of sunlight of the day. Every week, The Daily Post hosts a Photography Challenge with a theme which the bloggers need to interpret, take photographs and post them on WordPress. This is the first time I’m participating in Daily Post’s weekly photography challenge. Hope some of you photography enthusiasts would join too. The more, the merrier!
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I don’t have a DSLR to capture stunning images. Actually, I don’t need one. A 12.0 MP point and shoot camera with some Adobe Photoshop skills can do equally amazing stuff, although some might say such photographs are unoriginal. But poor us, we can’t afford DSLRs!

06
Empty Tables In The Morning
05
Melt Me With The Snow

 

Journey Into The Dusk
Journey Into The Dusk
03
Sunlight: “A sign board ain’t gonna stop me!”
Filtering through flaws!

Let me park my car in the sky.

 

 

Visiting Foreign Lands and Fairy Lands


Daily Prompt: Stranger in a Strange Land
What’s your favorite part about visiting a new place — the food? The architecture? The people watching?
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The possibility of discovering things keeps me excited when visiting a new place. Living in an urban city, combined with the pressures of college, I’ve developed a repulsion towards vehicular travel, but that is starting to change and I am very glad about it. I have traveled more in the last 2 months than I did in all 4 years of my graduation. I have always given much thought about architecture whenever I go some place. There is something conjuring about the history of mankind when looking through the architectural manifestations of it. Although I have never been to the pyramids of Egypt, or any of the other 7 wonders of the world except the Taj Mahal, I am sure that everyone would stare in amazement if they were told that the pyramids were built in  2600 BC. Freaking awesome, right? Evolution always amazes me, although it has become worrisome lately. And there is always something adventurous in meeting, or even looking, at people of different cultures.

As much as I love going to new places, observing the new people and their ways, I am not so adventurous when it comes to food. I simply don’t risk it with the local cuisines everywhere I go. I’d be happy and smiling if the place offers something I eat regularly, I’d say thank you very much.

And yeah, the vehicular travel thing! The other form of travel I always preferred was the mind travel.  As I said, I traveled very less, physically, during my college days. But I partnered with my mind and soul to places I could never have traveled in real life. Although it sounds like a deluded personality trait, I’d have to tell you that I have grown very much as a person through those journeys. There is something in me that wants to have a higher level of understanding of the experiences in life, and imagination coupled with reasoning the reality is one of the biggest and most challenging things I’d ever take up.

Anyway, some people may find it stupid that I took this post towards philosophy, so I’m going to stop it there. Coming back to the ‘new places’ theme,  I’d be joining an IT firm soon and I am excited about the prospect of having to move to a new location for work. I have never been out of home during all of my education, and the explorer in me is pretty much raring to go out there with his camera, canvas and journal, recording experiences and growing from them.

Random places most of us dream to visit:

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You can find posts from other bloggers @ The Daily Post. This is also a part of the Ultimate Blog Challenge(UBC), today is Day 18 and I have only started two days back! It would be great if you could join us.

The Warmth Within (#Haiku #Photography)


We all find ourselves at the mercy of a chilly night or an empty street at one time or another during our lives with no companion to warm our shoulders that dropped at the prospect of having to face terrible hardships alone. None, not even the ones that we believed loved us the most, cared for us the most. We often look everywhere for our missing pen while we were holding it all along in our very own hands. At every phase of our life we have someone by our side who strengthens us. But there are also these periods when we are alone and left to fight on our own. But we know we can’t make it out alive unless we get help. And that is when you seek the help of your companion you have been overlooking. It is youIt is the hope within you.

go no far places

~ ~ ~

I wrote this haiku a long time back. While I was struggling with the block, I started mashing up photography and poetry to help myself out of the sluggish writer’s block. It kind of worked. To write words and tie them together seemed a mighty task. But slowly, with the help of photographs and some Photoshop skills, I started to get back on track to writing and blogging again. So now that the story behind posting this, drop your comments and share your thoughts about the haiku. Link back to your posts, I’d gladly read them. I can’t write good stuff if I don’t read good stuff!

 

Together Into Unknown Waters


we found shelter
under the same canopy
rain, start of something

Together into unknown waters

~ ~ ~

Writing a haiku after almost two months. This time, I stumbled upon Haiku event at Write Tribe. I never knew haiku ‘had’ to have a reference to seasons, or technically, the presence of a ‘kigo‘. Kigo is a word or phrase associated with a particular season.  Those visiting from my entry at Write Tribe, if you love haiku, here is another Haiku portal for poets: Haiku Heights hosted by Leo. It is a lot of fun there too, and every April and November, we have a month long haiku challenge! Its good to be haiku-ing, writing and blogging again! Please do drop by and share your thoughts about the haiku.

~ ~ ~

Black and White Heart on facebook.

Fly My Soul Like A Kite


of all symphonies reverberating in the yonder,
one magically hooked my soul and made me fly.

and as I soared,
a myriad of worlds unknown, flashed before my eyes,
each one looking so much like home,
I felt like seeking asylum in every such world,
regardless of what it had to offer,
sorrow or serendipity.

of all symphonies reverberating in the yonder,
one magically hooked my soul and made me fly.
my consciousness. my conscience.

~ ~ ~

lliterary works small