Merry Christmas

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” 

~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Here's wishing you
joy and laughter, sweet and spice, sun and ice.
A mixed bag of all things nice.

Merry Christmas, dear friends.

Stormy

A rather strange legacy follows me wherever I go - snow storms! They somehow make their way onto my nomadic trail, be it any part of the country. As I write this, snow falls moodily; furious now, gentle the next moment. The Pacific Northwest is witnessing a storm of historical proportions, so the weather news says. We have been trapped in snow storms before and therefore know the nagging anxiety it gives rise to. This time, fortunately, it does not look that bad and I sincerely hope it stays so.

Although being cooped inside all day does not feel exactly uplifting, I try to sneak out and take some pictures now and then. Perhaps the only bright side of the picture.

It's time for a hot steaming cup of ginger tea, my third since the morning. There couldn't be a more perfect day to drown oneself in that warm, gingery aroma. Hope there's no storm in my tea cup now!

Snow blossoms; verb or noun, who cares as long as it is beautiful. An old, favourite mug that I had long forgotten till a rampant search for 'something with snowflakes' was conducted. A futile attempt to catch the ethereal flurries before the greedy rains lick them all in a day or two. The freezing landscape dressed in a soft palette of grays and whites. A strange reverberating calm.

Season's first

Snow! Yes, our part of the city received a very generous amount of the pristine, powdery sheen over the weekend. Just when I was beginning to worry if we would have to go back to India empty-handed, without a chance to watch the familiar soft white fluffs blanket the stubborn, wintry ground. But there it was, magical and eternal like every other first. It felt new despite our two rather harsh winters spent in the East Coast. It was welcoming even if the slushy roads were not. And it was heartwarming, in a very childlike cluelessness, in spite of the plunging temperatures and the ticklish chattering of the teeth trying to spell brrrr!!

This morning as I stood on the patio shivering, enjoying the Narnia-like landscape, it felt fantastically surreal. Like a vintage oil painting, the scene reminded me of James Joyce's 'The Dead' from Dubliners. A man who has just learnt of his wife's romantic past is shaken by the suddenness and the intensity of the moment - that her dead lover is perhaps more alive to her than her emotionally frigid husband ever could be. He contemplates this ugly truth standing by the window watching the snow fall quietly, while a slow but heady storm wells up inside him. This passage is perhaps one of the most poignant piece of writings that literature has ever seen where Joyce, the master storyteller shines throughout.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” 

~ James Joyce, 'The Dead'

Fabulous first

"A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice."

~ Rumi

Another year unfurls. A beautiful first of January at Stevens Pass. A winter wonderland. The Cascades, proud and mighty, at their wintry best. Their manly ruggedness mellowed by the familiar powdery white embrace. The evergreens, how very ironically, draped in a determined spread of ever-white. A feeble winter sun trying its best to brighten one and all. A hint of blue sky here, a glimmer of green bough there. The bald ski slopes decked with a chiffon fog. Not a speck of colour as far as the eye can see. An old world of black and white. But engirdled with magic alright.

A day like no other for the mountain lover. A freaking, fabulous first.

Musings of a snow lover

When the trees stand fearless with their stoic naked bodies and the furry friends rest in their snug little homes you know winter has arrived. On soft baby paws marches in the snow,

that magical time of the year, that untamed high of the spirits. Like every first that we cling to so dearly and in that strange unexplained fashion, the season's first snow too feels exhilarating and quite ironically, life-giving. I am a lover of snow, of the dark desolate beauty that it ushers in on the fringes of its pristine white blanket. I am a lover of seasons and their moods. One must search for and embrace the beauty in each, although the fragrance of spring and the colours of autumn remain the undisputed winners.

Few years back when I had watched the soul-stirring Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, I had nourished a very fond dream - to romp around on a frozen water body in the true bohemian spirit of Clementine. The dream took a vivid turn when we came to live by the shores of one of the five Great Lakes, colloquially known as the Third Coast of the United States.

When we first arrived in Ohio, we were greeted by many a proud tales about Lake Erie, which by its 9,940 square miles of surface area is a mini sea in its own rights. Come winter and the lake almost freezes in chunks and is also the major cause for which the Clevelanders receive the wrath of Mother Nature - copious amounts of the "lake effect" snow.

So when the sun finally showed up with a long haggard face after days of overcast gloom, it was time to visit the frozen shores of Lake Erie. And viola! The scene before us was too surreal to believe at the first glance - the forlorn scraps of snow on the sands, the wintry look of the deserted beach and most of all the frozen still shores. The vast stretch of frozen water crystals sparkled like huge pieces of uncut diamonds when the rays of a feeble winter sun fell on them. To be Indians and to have had only heard of such miracles before, we stood there in speechless admiration marveling at nature's handiwork. And to walk gingerly on that frozen chunk of an endless lake felt like a different world altogether - something like both living and dying in that one moment.

Snowy day blues can be rather stubborn, hence I resign myself to a vista of chaste flurries that fall in gentle white fluffs by the window, with a hot cup of my signature ginger tea. During these few ruminative moments the world feels like a perfect place, sane and unprejudiced. For one who has very rarely succeeded in resisting temptation, sometimes I just grab my coat and go for a walk as the tiny flakes waver around me like thousands of unfurled dreams. Surely, heaven must be something like this. A part of me also feels like Jadis, the wicked White Queen of Narnia! Whatever, despite the plunging temperatures and the shiny red reindeer nose, I am always game for a little snow walk in my weathered boots and a warm heart.

A tree story

I pout and preen in my blossomy sheen

I swing and dance in a greenish trance

I'm the perfect coy mistress in my golden autumn dress

I shiver and sigh when the winds are high

Cold and lonely I stand, dreaming of a happy summery land

November, faithfully yours

It is a beautiful, very beautiful yet desolate November afternoon. The dramatic melange of the pristine, white snow and the blood red winter-berries makes my heart melt. Despite the absence of the sun. Despite the want of warmth.

There is something contagiously ominous about joblessness. First, you scream bloody murder for every lost opportunity of glory. Second, slowly but steadily self-pity replaces self-respect. Not to forget the all and sundry's opinion of you as the sole person inhabiting planet Earth living an idyllic life, where everyday is a Sunday. Then certain expectations from distant quarters of the globe just crawl their way into your space, that carefully constructed comfort zone of absolute anarchy. Of course, the last nail in the coffin is the obnoxious label - 'jobless'. And the rest of the regrets just follow, one after the other, like a continuous line of resolute ants.

Lately, I have been at my wits end for no particular reason, except for a bunch of unsolicited destinies that have tumbled down my way. Perhaps we all tread this autumnal path, only some must endure it for a longer period. We drift along with the tides unwarily and attach ourselves to a whole new existence, one that must always walk as a shadow behind us. There is a tacit beauty in namelessness, in the terrible truths that certain revelations carry. They ensnare you in a world where one is left with very little of one's own, except for a futile bunch of 'what ifs' and the obvious layer by layer of emotional corrosion.

Words have always comforted me during such moments of utter despair, both the spoken and the written form. They work like an emollient on my fractured hopes. But of late, each time I have tried to give voice to my woes, (and mind you, I choose my people well) the content as well as the context just melt away into a clumsy - "Oh, I'm good. And you?" The moment I try to scribble something sane they disappear, back into the riotous corridors of my mind. I have realised my vulnerability, that arrant disappointment that crushes you when you have a whole kingdom of raging thoughts inside that just refuse to cascade out. And by the time I am done unhinging them, there is an impatient nascent batch waiting to join the pandemonium.

I have been struggling to keep up to the one promise that I had quite nonchalantly made to myself on the day I had created this blog - to at least publish one tolerable post every month. Now, howsoever perfect a procrastinator I might be, this is one thing that I have tried to stick to in spite of my reputation. In spite of the fact that promises are darn fragile.

November, faithfully yours.