The Annoying Itch

You are pretty sure
That the room is dark and calm
And you have been laying still

With eyes closed and ears shut
You see glaring lights
And hear deafening noises

When all you pray
Is to get a good night's sleep

As an answer to your prayer
Your head attempts to clear this clutter

It searches for words, replaces them
It strings them together
And recites them over n over
Until it finds the right ones
To allay the annoyance

Now you cannot restrain
But to straighten up and scratch the itch
Lest you lose the pearls you beaded


Dated - Oct 17, 2018

Thankful and Happy

It's not happy people who are thankful;
It's thankful people who are happy.

The circle called life

When thinking expands, the thought grows
When thoughts grow, the talk shrinks
When you talk lesser, your action excels
When actions excel, fame increases
When fame increases, you accumulate wealth
When wealth accumulates, happiness brims you
When you are happier, life blossoms
When life blossoms, pride ascends
When pride ascends, you talk more
When you talk more, your act shrinks
When you act lesser, fame decreases
When fame decreases, wealth reduces
When wealth reduces, life gets dull
When life gets duller, the thought grows

and yet again,

When your thoughts grow...


Source: WhatsApp foward
Translated from: A temple inscription in Tamil


The other day, I was wondering... what would I do without such quotes!
Here's for the New Year!!

Socrates' Triple Filter Test

Here is an interesting conversation between Socrates and an acquaintance:

Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?

Wait a moment. Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test.

Triple Filter?

That's right. Before you talk to me about my student, let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Are you absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true"

No. I just heard about it and...

Alright. So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter - the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?

No, on the contrary...

So. You want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain if it's true?

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.

You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?

No, not really...

Well, If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?

Coming of age

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
~ Alden Nowlan

What a beautiful quote from A Word A Day (AWAD). Great find Mr. Anu Garg!

· · · — — — · · ·

I felt like


I had a high temperature.


Or, was it like
sitting next to a heat furnace
with fuming rods of red?


Or may be
I was seeing molten fluid
flowing on and through my skin...


You say: Naah! 
You were facing the 2 o clock heat.


But the truth was...


It was 6 'o clock in the evening
and I was facing a 40 kmph
w a v e  o f  H e a t.


~ May 24, 2012

Begin it.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. 
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
~ Goethe

The providence moves too...

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: 

that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too.

~ W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

If by Rudyard Kipling

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

Some Retro Records to Welcome 2012

Mishaps are like knives that either serve us or cut us,
As we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
~ James Russell Lovell


I complained I had no shoes
till...
I saw a man that had no feet.
~ Author Unknown


Experience is a hard teacher
because she gives the test first,
the lesson afterword.
~ Vernon Law


When one door closes another door opens;
but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door,
that we do not see the ones which open for us.
~ Helen Keller


Tell me and I'll forget;
show me and I may remember;
involve me and I'll understand.
~Chinese Proverb


Leadership is doing what is right,
even when no one is watching.
~ Marquis de Vauvernargues


What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters
compared to what lies within us.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Worrying is like a rocking chair,
It gives you something to do,
But it does not get you anywhere.
~ Unknown


Our greatest battles are that with our own minds.
~ Jameson Frank


For every minute you are angry,
you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dated: Sometime in 2003 - 2004
The above quotes are a few of the yields of my recent dusting.

time off thoughts...

feet's feel of a dry restroom floor crows that imitate the celebration of a footballer's goal work-life in fast lane and life in safe mode parentish body-language of an offspring coherent flow of thoughts retentivity of thoughts till you find a pen delicious breakfast of dinner left-overs self-indulgences of a martinet an unintrusive stranger in a journey

Buddha

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

- Buddha

Music and people

This analysis started when I read a quote on iGoogle: Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. - Kin Hubbard

For a long time now, I had gotten into a habit of sharing quotes with my friend, over messenger. But, now that she has migrated to a foreign land to assay if the pastures are really greener, I kind of miss the remnants of the grins that we usually exchange when we meet—the ones that we did not have time to share amidst the busy schedule at work. But, you don't really have to worry about not being able to share your thoughts, because the messenger medium is still going to be the same except for the time gaps after which I get a reply. The time gap is close to 12 hours, which is an expected modus vivendi and to which I have got pretty used to, after a bunch of my sidekicks and thought partners left to the US about four years ago.

Well, the reply was: I really don't understand what he is trying—if he is making fun of classical music, I do not agree to it and if he is trying to make a point, I do not understand it…

Fair enough, I thought.

The reply that I managed to send was: I don’t know if he is trying to make a point or make fun; but given that he is an 18th century cartoonist/comedian, I guess it is the latter. Seriously, I mean, accepted that it is really difficult to learn and master classical music (be it hindustani, carnatic, or western), but still, I think the frequency of the patterns are so sparse in a given 4 to 5 minutes time space that it is really difficult to comprehend it. May be if I acquaint myself with its structure by methodical learning, I might enjoy it better than I do now.

Not sure on what lines she is going to reply. Meanwhile, I thought I must gather some of my scattered thoughts together before they get volatile. So, what is the relation between the words in the title, and the title and the contents that you have been reading till now? I do not have a concrete answer for the latter question, but I seriously thought understanding music and people were similar in some kind.

Certain people connect to you so well, match your wavelength very well, that after one or two conversations, you think you would be able to predict much of the person's behaviour and become friends. Same with music—certain tunes catch you real quick.

Sometimes, you feel the need to know a person for quite some time, to get started and going. Same is it with music—certain songs stay in the testing grounds for a relatively long time before it stirs you deep inside.

With people, you need patterns to judge a person's behaviour. You would like to see certain patterns in them and would want to see them quite often to actually accept them as friends. Almost all songs that appeal to us follow this simple logic or mechanism. I mean, it is not that you sit with a paper and pencil, or laptop to jot down the observations—the brain keeps registering all the behavioral patters associated with a certain person in a certain memory slot allocated to that person; it could even be an incident for that matter.

Certain other people fall under the category of fast music—they catch your attention pretty quick and leave you without any damage, with the same speed they came zooming into your life. You were happy as long as they were there, but did not really bother or worry you after they left you. This could be because of the entry of another person of the same or a different kind, like how one number replaces another, on music charts.

Some people leave lasting impressions and they might happen to be your school-time friends, who come all through your life's up and downs. They would have accompanied you in almost of kinds of moods—moodswings. Like certain songs that you just want to listen whether you are bored, tired, depressed, irritated or uninspired, or happy, elated, or fully loaded and in full throttle.

What I have written can well be passed off as worthless, but still it seemed to have derived some kind of satisfaction of having me gotten an opportunity to reel off my thoughts. Alright, it is time to wind up the free fall...

July 2

Every king was once a helpless baby, every oak once an acorn, every mighty ocean swell once a ripple, and every great structure once a blueprint. It is not where you are today, but where you are going that counts.