Of Grand Gestures Like Forgiving and Moving On...

As many of you would know, I maintain two blogs on the Blogger platform - Miles of Style and Curses and Verses. Miles of Style is a reflection of my fondness for everything fashionable, stylish and superficial. Writing articles for this blog is frankly quite easy, I find a lot of inspiration for my write-ups in daily life as well as on the internet. It is here that I write about all the materialistic things that I covet and believe you me the list is long! I also have a lengthy list  topics to cover on this blog which shall see me through February in the least.

However, my other blog, Curses and Verses is extremely difficult to maintain and write for. It is here that I write about things I feel deeply about. My posts on this blog are very spur-of-the-moment and not as frequent.  Two posts in '07, none in '08 and five in '09...statistics suggest that I find it rather difficult to put into words things that I  feel deeply about. Inspiration is an in-frequent visitor!

Having confessed this, today's inspiration came rather all too easily to me. I was on my way to work, and as a rare occasion had the driver driving me there,(most days he chauffeurs  my in-laws whilst hubby and I drive ourselves to work) which left me with some time to channelize my thoughts. Random that I am, I suddenly thought of this absolutely touching William Blake poem that I had read a few years ago. The precise lines that came into my head were: " 'And throughout all Eternity, / I forgive you and you forgive me. / As our dear Redeemer said: / This the Wine and this the Bread. "  I first came across this poem, (aptly titled Broken Love) in a movie called 'The Heart of Mine'.  You can read the entire poem here. And while it is difficult to find a complete analysis of the poem on the net  (in case any of you do find one, please pass it along to me), it isn't difficult to feel the poet's pain, discomfort, anger and frustration. Barring the last four verses, which many believe were not part of this poem but were found in Blake's personal diary not meant for publication until someone came across them and found them to match with Broken Love decided to add them to the poem.

For me; the last verse (that came to my mind today) worked kind of like a release from an otherwise painful poem. You can almost feel the poet's soul finding an escape from its possessed and tortured body upon uttering these lines of forgiveness. I couldn't help but wonder if forgiving someone and being forgiven in return could really set one free? But anywayz, I take this verse randomly popping into my mind today and flashing like a neon advert as a signal to forgive and forget past grievances. It takes a lot of strength to genuinely forgive people that have hurt you but I think we owe it to our souls to set them a-free from these dark dungeons of pain and resentment.  In order to achieve inner peace and good health it is essential for one to forgive - not only others but also one's self for all previous actions and inactions. Yes, I think sometimes life does demand a "grand gesture" from each one of us and Forgiving is just one of them.

Here's hoping that all of you too find courage and reason enough to forgive those who've hurt you, after all life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time. Some things are better best left for God to handle...and as mere mortals we may not be able to change the past but we definitely can enlarge our future!

p.s " You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well." ~ Lewis Smedes.

Denial Ain't Just A River In Egypt

Elizabeth Bishop's One Art has been stuck in my head since last night and I figured the only way it would stop haunting me was if I wrote it down here.

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 everyday. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, 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 beloved 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!) a disaster.

Its hard to explain why I love Bishop's poem so much. Maybe because losing one's possessions (tangible and otherwise) is a natural phenomenon and each one of us can relate to in some obscure manner. Although, what I love the most about this poem is how the poet is in denial of her suffering over her losses.  She wears a mask of nonchalance and repeatedly tells herself that these losses weren't disastrous in order to move on. The very fact that 'losing' is termed as an 'art' by the poet shows that she's trying hard to mask her grief by pretending to be indifferent about all that she has lost. However, if read carefully you can feel the poet loosing her much worked upon detachment and self control as the poem progresses. The cracks in Bishop's composure are highlighted not just through her words but also through her use of  punctuations. At first the poem flows smoothly but towards the end it has a lot of breaks in it. You can feel Bishop's organized thoughts giving way to fragmented sentences and her non ability of coping with her losses.

There are two lines in this poem that leave a deep impression on me. The first being "so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster" - which just goes to show the non permanency of all material acquisitions as well as relationships. The other line that moves me deeply is Bishop commanding her own self to "Write it!". She tells herself to put her grief down in words. Over here you can almost feel her pain and understand that appearing calm and composed has become a huge burden for her and that she must admit her grief before its too late. And in this way, while pretending to describe her losses casually Bishop leaves behind several clues to the fact that she is silently (and deeply) in  mourning.

A lot of people have analysed and dissected this poem endlessly, debating over the nature of the poet's loss. Whether she's lost a friend or a lover or someone else. Whether her loss occurred due to the said person's death or a break up or an argument. However, I feel that a mark of a good poem is that it ignites a similar sentiment in its readers and makes us re-live/feel the very lines of the poem in a completely different context, a context based on our own life or experience - and One Art does just that for me.

Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde

I just realised that I am a child of two very diverse philosophies. There are days when I am a materialistic girl lusting after designer clothes, shoes, bags... wanting to spend it all, live it up and generally be fabulous and then there are days when I want to change the world and I am naive enough to believe that I seriously can. On days like these I long to break free from labels and find a real meaning to my life and human existence. I want to find God, understand religion, venture into politics, do some meaningful charity...

Dr. Jekyll

Mrs. Hyde

I wouldn't go so far as terming this as a split personality, only 'coz these two very different sides to me coexist rather peacefully most of the times. I try and control my frivolous capitalistic greed by educating myself constantly with healthy doses of history, current news, philosophy, art and culture. As I write this I can't help but hum the more I learn the less I know about before (UB40'S Higher Ground) to myself.

Hopefully as I grow older and wiser (and have a boudoir laden with exotic fashionable goodies to occasionally retreat to :P ), I shall in Chuck Palahniuk's words want out of the lables and not want my entire life to be crammed into a single word. A story. I will want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure that for now remains A spinx, A blank. Unknown. Undefined. 


 And I am certain that now that I have defined this insatiable need and put it down in writing here...I shall get there eventually.

Here are some beautiful lines (written by I don't know who) to help curb our never ending materialistic desires.

In gloomy tones we need not cry

How many things there are to buy

Here is a thought for you and me

The best things in life are for free.

Stopped To Smell The Roses

Ques: So what have you been doing these days? (With an accusingly evil glint in the eyes)

Ans: I confess to have been sitting on the fence refusing to make up my mind. But in my defense I say I'm taking some time to smell the roses before I succumb to the daily grind.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

(From T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

One of the things that I've learnt in retrospect is that it's okay to not be a part of the rat race and its okay if you don't get there first. It's okay to take your own sweet time before you reach a decision, and that most of these decisions are not life and death ones anyways. There's always room for amending/improvising or just simply not adhering to your previous visions. Some may call it frivolousness but I call it evolution.

So unless you're Hamlet whose acts of delay & indecision eventually lead to his death, I say its okay to take some time off, chuck that job in a windowless office, get out of a rut, not be no.1, procrastinate endlessly, holiday in the bahamas or (in my case) stop and smell the roses... As long as it makes you happy!