Making Mirrors...

Heh...

Tea...

Weekend Meditation by Dana Velden (from the Kitchn)

Making a cup of tea, a proper cup involving loose Assam and a strainer and gently warmed milk, is a start. So you go to the kitchen and put the kettle on and pull down the old white pot with the bright flower decal on one side. You start to feel the comfort of your task, the purpose of it filling up some of the empty space that sadness has carved into your heart. There's a reason for ritual, you discover, as you pour in a little hot water to warm the pot and then encircle it with your chilled hands: the repetition, the body memory, the soothing rhythm of things happening in a certain order and with intention. 

The tea is hot and milky and for a while it is enough. But soon you realize that even though what you are experiencing is sadness and loss, there is also a request, a whisper, for celebration. A tiny acknowledgment that life and appetite must ultimately prevail. So you go to the pantry and find a crinkly package of butter cookies, just three little star-shaped ones with red candy centers, and a clementine. And a pretty plate to put them on because the request for beauty is somehow penetrating, sunbeam-like, the fog of sadness. 

The clementine is, of course, a little too cheery but you gamely dig your thumb into the peel for you know that this is your responsibility now, to turn towards the brightness. The clementine answers you with a gruff, almost rude, spray of juice, sticky and fragrant. Suddenly you find yourself surrendering to it, to this little orange dictator that demands your attention and appreciation. And of course it is sweet and fills your mouth with joy. 

The tea cools, and the clementine detritus curls on the table before you like the skin that a dragon would shed. You listen to the sounds of home, the tick of the clock, the refrigerator's hum. A few random and practical thoughts pop into your awareness: are there enough quarters for the laundry, will the package make it to Milwaukee on time, do hummingbirds migrate? 

Slowly life gathers around you, urging you to get up from the table and start back into the busy doings of the day. You resist, lingering in the sorrow for a while longer, for that's where you last saw your old friend, the one whose passing has brought on this little one person tea party. Eventually you realize that sorrow isn't done with you yet, that it will be your companion for a while longer. So you rise from the table to sweep up the dragon's skin and wash up the dishes, a clutch of tears caught in the back of your throat.

But it's OK, it's alright. You're human and you're built for this.

HT: Divya :)

Hallway Mirrors...

In a strangers house, I turn the clock to 10 am, and I see her sip on cardamon tea by the frosted window pane, you sit on the couch, covered in green cashmere you look adorable, and you read her favourite book, you tell her about the cat who ate too many mice and died of hunger. She tells you how so many people die of happiness each year. You go back to your book later and she rinses her teacup with such love as if it were her own baby.


In a stranger's house, I walk downstairs and I see her sitting on the green grass under the warm sun. I see you plucking red flowers for her, only the reddest will do for her, she wears them in her pale hair. You both sit there on the green grass all morning getting up only to get a snack. She tells you she likes pickled tomatoes and you ignore her. You finish your beer and ask her to get you another. But she's too busy with her pickled tomatoes to listen to you now. So you both sit there all afternoon on a toasty summer day, breathing in each other's warm breath. You both glow of happiness, summer and maybe even love.


In a stranger's house, I open the window and I see the dark clouds enter your bedroom and I see you sprawled on the bed and I can hear her say how much she loves the orange and pink quilt her mom made for her when she was 8. You just nod your head and she takes the cue and tells you about her nightmare. You both cuddle without talking for hours and then she disappears under you.


In a stranger's house, I open the door and only empty walls greet me now.

Stuffed Owl...

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row

has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one,

which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking,

I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny, the way

someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged

as a human being. When you think of me

is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest

satellite dish in the universe, your smile

as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,

how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,

but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence

so far, without spilling a drop.

Jeffrey McDaniel

CPR...

Yes, like a ship just sunk inside my chest. 

LoveSong...

He loved her and she loved him

His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to

He had no other appetite

She bit him she gnawed him she sucked

She wanted him complete inside her

Safe and sure forever and ever

Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away

Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows

He gripped her hard so that life

Should not drag her from that moment

He wanted all future to cease

He wanted to topple with his arms round her

Off that moment's brink and into nothing

Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press

To print him into her bones

His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace

Where the real world would never come

Her smiles were spider bites

So he would lie still till she felt hungry

His words were occupying armies

Her laughs were an assassin's attempts

His looks were bullets daggers of revenge

His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets

His whispers were whips and jackboots

Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing

His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway

Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks

And their deep cries crawled over the floors

Like an animal dragging a great trap

His promises were the surgeon's gag

Her promises took the top off his skull

She would get a brooch made of it

His vows pulled out all her sinews

He showed her how to make a love-knot

Her vows put his eyes in formalin

At the back of her secret drawer

Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves

Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs

In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

-Ted Hughes

Bubble...

It's going to be interesting to see how this turns out. I can see the same thing happening here in Mumbai. Big real estate developers building these big luxurious houses, some even come with their own private swimming pools, and although, Mumbai -the city of extremes- has that kind of money, there are also those who can't afford even an one room-kitchen in Mumbai. And so confused, I asked a friend what happens to those who can't afford multi-crore flats, and then she told me about Virar.

Anyway, back to China, knowing the Chinese, I shouldn't have been surprised:

The second, a Beijing municipal regulation restricting families to owning one apartment each has also failed because, as Chovanec said, “People got around [it] by getting divorced.”

Read, China’s Empty Apartments: Part1 and Part2.

And, Chinese hit by over-inflated house prices.