POSTCARD#270: Delhi: Sitting in the garden these cool days, and the world as it’s seen, suddenly falls into an enhanced version of what it is. Alice in Wonderland… things are not what they appear to be. The presence of my cup and book, my phone and a pen, just lying there on the garden table, extensions and extrapolations of the environment I’m in – who I am. Everything I see becomes unfamiliar, yet known – uncanny recognition of every-day things, strangely out of context here, but also fit quite well in these surroundings of birds, sunlight shining through the trees and a pattern of moving shadows through layers of leaves.
A momentary easing… the ‘beholder’ sees beauty through the glass of eyes to the world out there and the self, as ‘me’ in here, disappears completely – a flow of words just tumbling out and I’ve got to get it all written down… if not, it will vanish. It’s the writing of it that gives it life (of course), the quickening. Words snatch at a direction, fractals of the original instance. Too huge, I cannot see the whole pattern, only what is here and now.
We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news. Everything falls into a vortex of shattered ends and beginnings as the focus shifts to the headache mode – It’s part of me these days… take meds, wait for it to pass, allow healing, nurturing. And now it is later. Fragments of imagery of the story appear in the mind so fast I can’t keep up with it. Scribbling it down on scraps of paper, and rewritten on the back of till receipts found in wallet, pockets. The back of my boarding pass… reduce the size of handwriting to get it all in the space, then take a photo of it and zoom in to see. A flow of utterance, stumbling incoherent urgency, activates extensions, developments, and completions… and I arrive at an ending. It changes the beginning (I thought it might), and there, it’s done. Refined, defined, in the form it takes, chunks of language jigsaw together, trim the edges and placed.
Extreme minimalism… the story contained is edited out. The Absolute is in all things, omnipresent means it’s everywhere and there’s nothing that it’s not a part of. Ponder that for a moment. Where is it not? There’s no ‘nothing’ and no ‘thing’. Gone is… even the word ‘gone’ is gone.
light through glass (20170613) by crow
for a single moment
perhaps that pause
between heartbeats
the sun shone through
the wings of a butterfly
and i understood
the reason for cathedrals
(reblogged from: Words and Feathers)
dhamma footsteps 
Reblogged this on strangegoingsonintheshed and commented:
Another blog that captured my attention. Beautiful and lyrical.
Thanks for the reblog – strange goings on in the shed, such a great blog title…
It was my pleasure. As for my blog title, well, just think of it as a surreal garden shed filled with a few oddities.
Sounds interesting…
I think we aim for the same thing when we both write.
I think so too. What we aim for might not be where we arrive, usually it’s somewhere related to but different from what we had thought at the outset…
Sometimes I don’t even have an aim at the beginning, just an urge and a focus on the journey. But as you know I often come up with very short pieces and they are more likely to arrive pretty much complete.
Yes, I’d like to be able to use a more limited form, as you do. It has that ‘immediate’ quality…
I love the way you write. It isn’t something I think I could achieve, whereas I believe you could compose short poems. Prose pieces have their own virtues and uses.
Sorry to read that the headache situation is unchanged.
There are times when I see the immediacy; something to do with language and cognition placed in the Eastern revelatory ‘self’ investigation. I go to see the neurologist on 11th July for PRF procedure:
I believe it’s a sunny day where you are
“I believe it’s a sunny day where you are”
A stunner. 🙂 Still:
“Sunshine all the time makes a desert”
– Arab Proverb.
I found this at https://mindfulbalance.org/2017/06/17/33739/
I hope things go well on 11th.
😀 fantastic! Ben Naga in Arab disguise. Ah well, it’s raining here…
Ah no… it’s Karl Duffy the Irish Man in Arab disguise, not Ben Naga. Sorry for that oversight.
No problem. We take turns using the disguise.
It keeps me occupied…
Keeps me busy too, I need two or three days to write a post and choose an image to go with it. How is it for you?
The ideas either come with an urgency or brew for a while. When the time is right it makes it’s presence known. I don’t write everyday though. The right image makes all the difference, it enhances the writing experience for me. Art is important to the writing process.
Yes, I recognise that urgency. It’s probably always like that, even if it has to brew for a while. I recognise too the feeling: it makes its presence felt, and this could be the motivation, as you say, to write. Or it’s the image that triggers it somewhere along the way to getting the thing written…
Yes, the urgency. Have to rush to get the words down. So sorry for the interruptions by a headache. As always, beautiful, the photograph, too.