A bit late perhaps, although not for the week that has many festivities associated with the dead including ‘Dia de Muertos’ that ends today, but ‘Happy Halloween’ anyways. Here is something that I have always associated with Halloween, a stop motion movie which is worth watching at least two times of the year. In ‘Nightmare…
Category: Contemplations
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Rilkean memories ~ remembering makes us who we are
A beautiful ballad called ‘Remembering’ in an expressionist musical style by Avishai Cohen and his Trio, suffuses my home while I write this, as if to underline that I reminisce a lot and today I remember Rilke. “Poems are not . . . simply emotions . . . they are experiences”, said Rainer Maria Rilke,…
Shearing grief off a Ficus
There is this beautiful Fiddle Leaf Ficus in my home that wasn’t naturally meant to be a stand alone tree like how it’s ornamental use dictates. It is from the plant genus Ficus, of about 900 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines and epiphytes, many of which produce aerial support roots that hang from their…
A haiku-esque photo amble on a long beach …
Stratified clouds jostling for attention, a self effacing Sun, quietly forming dunes, all conspired to create the perfect sand and spray in Ocean County, New Jersey; a day that began with oysters, after a long leisurely drive that ended finally on a long stretch of beach that provoked spurts of inspired Haiku. I call it…
What a tidal salt marsh can teach about interdependence, resilience and healing
The marshes have their own unique way of commiserating with the human condition. Along half a mile of floating boardwalk through a marsh in Saw Mill Creek, a tributary of the Hackensack river, I encounter parallels to my own life. The Kingsland marsh discovery trail on an impoundment in the Richard DeKorte Park, southern part…
A hint of ethnicity and fiesta politics ~ spotlight on little Manila
Awake now, scrolling through the miasma of reality that includes surging statistics on everything devastating, including the diminishing sunspot activity of our very own star. Scanning too the algorithmically curated factoids of the day and then, the morning takes on a decidedly Zen turn to meld into the present and the now. It’s a lazy…