let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear

so comes love

by e.e. cummings

(I loved it. Did you not?)

Sometimes a high-balcony-look is essential to let go of things.
After all, people are harmless in their primal nature. No one wants to be bad.
Everyone wants to be good, it is just that some mess up trying to be good.
After all, everyone wants happiness just like you and me.

So, LET GO and LET LOVE COME.

I love weekends because I get time to  be with myself. This weekend, I have loads of plans – reading, traveling and of course, writing.  Writing is high on my radar and I have more than three blogs to update. The other things include shopping and traveling to some nearby picnic spots. Hope you too have a lot of plans. Have fun and celebrate life. Happy weekend!

And the best of all,

But things are changing. I don’t write in my mind anymore. I do everything on paper. Words come straight to paper, without any editorial scrutiny by the mind. It works almost like automatic writing. I start typing out on a clean white word document without any preparation. No lengthy meditations or speculations. With keys under my fingers, I JUST write. This habit has made me a great writing machine. I know that what I have written needs a lot of editing, but that can be done later. Your inner critic should never put a stop to your writing flow. Never.

When I type un-edited words on my document, my mind keeps chattering on the ugliness of the words. But, I continue, never for a moment stopping by to listen to its critical chatter. Would you believe, in a few moments I’ll have thousands of words on page. Having such a voluminous amount of words on a page is a tremendous confidence-booster. I don’t have to panic about deadlines. I just have to bother about making the lines perfect. I can always do that at a leisurely pace. Editing is easier than writing and does not demand any inspiration. It is pretty mundane and can be managed with so many words on paper.

How to just write?

All blah-blah apart, how to write just like that? A few tips:

1. Shut down all distractions. Disconnect your Internet first. If you had to do research, download the pages, read them thoroughly and then start writing. Never keep your email or IM open. Close Twitter, Facebook and all other social networks too.

2. Better if you have a writing software like Darkroom (for Windows) or Writing Room (for Mac). This software is a writing tool that isolates you from everything except your words. No spell checkers, no other distractions. The page occupies your full screen and you do not even get to know the time when you work with these software. You can download both DarkRoom and WriteRoom for free from the Internet. Try them. They do help.

3. Think for a while. Speculate on what you want to write for a while. Yes, only for a while. This can be 5 minutes or 10 minutes but nothing more than that. Never stare at a blank page when you do it. Look away from your computer screen. I prefer resting on a chair or closing my eyes. Even a walk in your backyard helps. Now, you may wonder why I suggest this as this is against my rules. This time is to fix your title. It is to regroup yourself from distractions so that you can fire on all cylinders when you start writing.

4. When all the 3 steps are done, start. JUST WRITE. Let words flow on paper like hell. Never bother if you misspelled ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘difficult’. Just write. Keep writing. Forget that your system has a backspace or delete button. Edit only if your are changing the whole concept or if you will forget to add something later. Do not edit spellings, sentence structure or even paragraph order. Just write. Without any editing. Strictly no editing whatsoever.

5. Are you done? How many words do you have on your page? Thousands? Good. Now, take a break. Drink something or chat with someone. Relax for 5 to 10 minutes and then, come back to your piece.

6. Start editing now. Edit with a clear mind. Remember that you are an editor now. So, you should not have any mercy for flamboyance or eloquence. All you need is a clean, concise text that can be comprehended by your target reader. No room for literary language. Be merciless when you edit. Cut all crap. Do not delete them, just keep them stored somewhere, may be in another document or below the article. You may need them later, in case you need more words.

7. Edit once, twice, thrice. Edit till you feel the piece is perfect. Then, remove all unwanted stuff and experience the fulfillment of having written a beautiful article.

Would love to receive bouquets and brickbats from you, do comment!

Hero - Chinese Movie

Once upon a time, a movie’s influence used to stay on for one or two days with me before fading away. But these days, you come out of the cinema hall and you’re a different person all together. Nothing of what happened inside that dark closed space happens outside it. It is almost like you live the movie, play your part (when you’re inside the theater), and cast off everything when you come out.

I think movies stop influencing you as you age. When I was a child, we used to watch movies in a nearby, at-a-walkable-distance theater and I used to live the movie for the next 2 or 3 days.

When we walked home from the theater, I would be a reflection of what I saw on screen. If it was a horror movie, I would be afraid. Every dark corner would threaten with some unknown, invisible, dangerous creature. If it was a sentimental flick, I would be on resolution-mode, making resolutions on how to act from then on, things like how to not behave badly to others, how to love others, would crowd my mind. If it was action, there would be a jumpiness in my gait, alertness in my eyes. I would look around with courage and confidence, ready to attack any rogue hiding behind trees and walls. My steps would be swift and sturdy, like a battalion marching.

Movies ruled my hormones and monopolized my thoughts for about a day. By the end of the next day, routine life settled in. Normalcy returned. No more action. No more swaying swords or handling guns. No more non-resistance. Or infinite love. Just plain me. Me before the movie. It is then that-is-movie-this-is-life thought shows up. You realize you had been to a MOVIE.

Speculations apart, I do love movies. Not the mass crap type. But the singled-out, intellectual types. The gorgeous, artistic types. Movies that are of epic proportions. Poetic and out-of-the-ordinary. Such movies have tremendous power over me. They brighten me from any gloom and completely turn the downside up. A few such favorites:

Hero: My all-time favorite. I watch and keep watching this Chinese movie. Directed by Zhang Yimou, this movie has Jet Li as its hero backed by a stunning cast. What I like most is the flick’s artistic splendor, majestic setting and epic-like action. Names of characters read like poems – Sky, Broken Sword, Flying Snow, Nameless. Every single frame of the movie is artistic and picture-postcard like. Must-see if you love art and photography. Here’s more information about the movie. Take a look at the photo gallery too.

Hero Movie

Hero Movie - Flying Snow

Hero - Fight Scene

Vanaprastham: Malayalam movie directed by Shaji Karun starring Mohanlal and Suhasini. A rhapsody of art, culture and tradition. I have this intense love for Kerala traditions. Their dance-drama Kathakali is my favorite. I’ve had sleepless, high-intensity-artistic nights after watching Kathakali performance on TV or YouTube. Painted faces. Red costumes. Decked dancers. Playing hands. Dancing eyes. If Bharatanatyam is all about grace, Kathakali is all about radicalism. The dance is so artistic that you cannot sleep after a performance. In Vanaprastham, the hero is a Kathakali dancer who is loved by a married princess. She loves his role of Arjuna (a mythical character) in Kathakali performances. The princess’ craze for the ‘Arjuna’ in the hero drives her to have a child by him. Problems arise leading to the hero’s last dance. Read more here.

Vanaprastham

The Devil Wear Prada: Another hot favorite. This is for the fashionista in me. I love Meryl Streep’s role as Miranda Priestly, editor of number one fashion magazine Runway. The movie is an adaptation of a novel which is an inspiration from the life of Vogue magazine’s editor Anna Wintour. Miranda wields control over everyone in the world of high heels and hot couture.  She decides what is to stay and what is to be dumped. Anne Hathaway plays Meryl’s coy, not-so-street-smart secretary. Terrific movie if you love women and fashion. Read more here.

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada - Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway

I have other movies to my list. Will publish them soon. Thanks for reading.

But, and thank God, life intervenes. Stops us. Polices us and gives us a break from the rut. It showers us with little moments of love. Moments of sunshine and honey. Moments that stay on forever and forever, affixed to happiness.

Yesterday, was one such day. I was beautiful than ever. The light chatter, lunchtime banter, and after-work bye-byes – everything was simply remarkable. I felt like the whole world loved me and there was freedom in the air. I had nothing to worry about or no one to fight with. Wished I could dance on the streets in front of dropping jaws and weird-whos-this-nut-looks… I loved every bit of the day though I had to plod through midnight to complete my work. The crescendo happened at midnight. I love late nights and yesterday was fabulous as there were fireworks in the neighboring area and I was the only witness to all of it…only late-night witness…looking with awe at the beauty of golden light splitting and dancing and going crazy in the silent, midnight sky.

P.S. I tracked back my happiness to a small incident that happened in the morning. A short chat I had with an acquaintance. That event triggered of all the my happy hormones and there I was, firing on all cylinders, throughout the day.

We do everything in our capacity to present ourselves as the most wretched things on the earth. Our sore faces, spiteful tongues and above all, our merciless behavior (to ourselves) – we are done for months of pain, grudge and guilt. And guess what, we replay our ugliness again and again and again, to register it in our gray matter.

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

(This poem was sent to me by my friend Jason. Like him, I too liked the “write it” in parenthesis. Thank you Jason.)

My cat - Tom

From the time Tom and I got close, I have been thinking of this day. What will happen if something happened to Tom? How will I face it? In fact, I have thought (and prayed) several times that we should not know about Tom’s death in any case. If it has to leave us, let it run away and let us live in hope that it will return. This is because I know that Tom’s death would be earth-shattering for me and I would pass through a dry period of despair and emotional void following it. I did not want to face that. So, I presumed it is better to think it is somewhere and return some day.

Now, it has all been for the good. A loss makes you rigid. You steel yourself in some way or the other. You learn that pain is not that painful. I realize that any painful memory or loss can be overcome. You know, I tend to think when I brood over any loss – this is nothing big – I have lost my Tom, my friend has lost her parents, my aunt has lost her husband and my cousin has lost her life. Yes, everyone at some point has lost something or the other. If people say they have not lost anything, wait. They’re yet to warm up to life. Just as I have warmed up to it a little bit.

Whatever the case, I love Tom and still will miss it. Still I do hope that it will comeback today, tomorrow or some other day. And the intimacy still stays.

Update: Tom arrived, finally