On my shelf is a small book about 5 inches square. It has a brown paper cover with my name on the paper cover. I can’t remember who covered it–me or my brother. Until a few years ago, its binding was as strong as the day it must have come freshly out of the bookseller’s box. It’s Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, an anthology of poems.
Continue reading Our little book of poems
Tag Archives: personal
A quiet walk on New Year’s eve
Every New Year’s eve seems like the brink of something momentous. As though we are suddenly standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon looking into a vast uncharted space where anything can happen. A second chance at things left behind in the old year. A significant mark on the graph of life.
I’ve celebrated this significant moment in many spectacular ways in years past commemorating the glory that such a transition is in a way that matched the perceived momentousness of the event.
I’ve spent it on a revolving dance floor in front of the fog machine in Ybor City in Florida. I’ve watched glorious fireworks lighting up the night sky amongst hundreds of people in Las Vegas and Boston. I’ve brought back shiny stars and conical paper caps after parties in Calcutta.
And yet, this year was about a quiet walk by myself along the river towards a train station and a town square near the place I live. All urban, concrete, full of shadows, strangely quiet because of the cold at night.
Continue reading A quiet walk on New Year’s eve
Make Bottledworder better in 2013
It’s that time of year again. Kids laughing and people rejoicing and men and women trampling each other to get to the sales at the malls.
Bottledworder wishes Bottledworder could put up the following scrap of paper on the blog:
But wait! Bottledworder is already a zero. We’re all zeros here, propping each other up like brightly coloured balls in ball pits, all bouncy but without a hope of looking attractive without others.
So no. Bottledworder is not on sale.
It’s the new year again. It’s the time of reckoning. Bottledworder needs to reckon.
Bottledworder needs some pats on the back and some constructive criticism so Bottledworder can wallow in self-pity with the critical stuff during the holidays punctuated by a few moments of good feeling about the blog for the upcoming new year.
So ,
What you need to do:
Bottledworder will be very happy if some of you would write a short post about Bottledworder on your own blog with a link to “Bottledworder” touching upon why you like to come to this blog and what you’d like to see here next year.
Basically, what do you like here and what would you like to see more of?
In return, I’ll reblog the best post here in the new year (on Jan 5th) and I’ll preface it with a writeup about your blog and why I liked your post.
I’ll also keep posting readers’ posts about my posts under the Reader Responses section through 2013.
I’ve been getting some excellent multi-paragraph comments to some of my blog posts and I thought this could be a good way to make your responses a bit more permanent and visible here.
Thank you for your support!
Should you write about everything?
There is a time to write and there is a time to stay silent. To not write. And there are times when writing does not come.
No, I am not talking about writer’s block. I am talking about events in a person’s life that leave a deep impact. Pain that lies too deep for tears and emotion that lies too deep for words.
Know what I am talking about?
Certainly there are blogs out there that chronicle pain and love and other emotions as they come everyday. The blog is a form especially suited for such an outlet.
But at the same time, good writing is “emotion recollected in tranquility” for many of us. Noting experience down in the heat of the moment often distorts the shape of what lies deep in our hearts on the mirror of our page, desecrates what seems to be pure, exposes to interpretation and reception and distorts what must not be interfered with. Continue reading Should you write about everything?
Daylight Saving Time ends today
The clock on the dresser said 8 am. I had woken up. I was just about to move myself out of bed (and perhaps even make myself a cup of tea). I was almost at the brink of thinking up some ideas to write on. Maybe even make breakfast.
I was just about to place my present at the right moment in the scale of my life between the blank that came right after I went to bed last night and this morning when I rose out of the foggy depths of sleep.
Time was supposed to pass slowly because it was Sunday. Continue reading Daylight Saving Time ends today
On being Freshly Pressed
I had been nurturing my fledgeling blog for several weeks now when all of a sudden I receive this email from WordPress asking me to look out for my blog to be featured in the next few days. Continue reading On being Freshly Pressed
The Ex-Files: Ex Boyfriends and Girlfriends from the Twilight Zone
The Ex archives and the archiving process–the meaning of storing, filing, classifying and communicating about exes and the final, ceremonial, cathartic exorcism. That could be a good subject of contemplation today.
Why do we keep returning to the Ex-Files in life and literature over and over? Continue reading The Ex-Files: Ex Boyfriends and Girlfriends from the Twilight Zone
Dinner and a movie– alone!
Have you ever tried to tell someone that you had an engagement Friday night?
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“I’m going out for dinner and a movie.”
“Who’s going?”
By that, they mean who’s going with you?
Try saying “Me.””Myself.” “I.”
Look of incomprehension. Then understanding. Then pity. Then the inevitable desire to “reach out.”
“We’re going bowling. Come with us!”
Why is it so difficult to understand that it might be possible to enjoy one’s own company?
Why can’t a person go for a dinner and a movie by themselves? Continue reading Dinner and a movie– alone!
Why blog?
Okay. So I decided to write something little, something small whenever I feel like it. Isn’t that really what writing is all about? I mean, writing doesn’t really move mountains, or solve the economic crisis. You may try to hit someone hard with words, but a baseball bat is better. A few years ago, I saw a big cow eat an entire book. Didn’t make the creature any wiser. She was still standing, tied to a pole, the last I remember.
So then, why do I bother to write these blogs? But more intriguing a question than that, why do some people read other people’s blogs? I mean don’t students just hate assigned readings and teachers hate grading essays? How many students will have their grandmothers die multiple deaths rather than admit they just didn’t do it or teachers invent departmental meetings to avoid contact with the written word in the form of student papers?
So why would you read the ramblings of someone you don’t even know leave alone stand to gain something from? Continue reading Why blog?
Facebook and Friendships
In the last few years, something has changed about my understanding of friendships. Before Facebook, I had sort of assumed what a friend was, what friendship meant, and how I myself interacted with friends.
But in a strange way, contrary to a simple idea that Facebook makes me realize the difference between “true” and “false” friends, people I actually know in “real” life vs. people I have barely met or not met at all, my notion of the idea of friendship itself has changed. Continue reading Facebook and Friendships
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