Wonder what it is about Park Avenue that brings out the most gorgeous looking dogs in the city. It must be the broad sidewalks making it easier for people to walk their dogs. But these dogs look good, quite the sight to see as I make my way back to the bus terminal at the end of each day with a smile on my face.
I am starting to recognize some of these dogs and their owners. I know which owners are getting friendlier, brought together by their dogs bonding over an evening promenade.
Walking straight up from 32nd Street to 40th Street along Park Avenue and then turning left on 40th to walk straight into the Port Authority is, I believe, the longer way to go. When I timed myself along this route I clocked 30 minutes, and I am a fast walker, albeit a very distracted one when this is my chosen path.
When I am in an incredible hurry I zigzag wherever I can, left on 34th, right along 6th Ave, left again on 36th, right on 8th and finally – Port Authority. I can cut 7 minutes off my time when I do this. But it isn’t as interesting as the leisurely stroll along Park Avenue and Bryant Park.
The other day I was strolling along Bryant Park, the first leg of my right angled walk, in the morning, humming the Raag Bhairav scale, and lingering on the Komal Rishabh, and was startled at the sense of overall peace and oneness I felt while doing that. Something about that note awakened my senses to a palpable sense of belonging, felt in that instant. I heard my inner voice saying, "I love this place, I love this city!" I am amazed at the familiarity, at seeing the same people walking along the same paths everyday, smiling because I look familiar to them. If they were to bump into me at a restaurant or a movie they would probably wonder where they’ve seen me for awhile, as would I, and then we’d walk over and say, “Hey! Fancy seeing you here, don’t I see you cutting across Bryant Park everyday at 5:30 PM?”
And I didn’t just dream that incident up. It actually happened to me when I went out to lunch with some co-workers and found myself staring at this person on the table across from me. He was staring as well, in between bites of his sumptuous looking California Pizza. It finally occurred to me that he was a bus mate. It must have struck him at the same time because we spoke up at once saying we knew each other from the bus. We had never spoken to each other while on the bus and here we were like old friends.
There are so many such faces all around, people to whom I feel vaguely connected even if I know nothing about them. It makes me feel at home, as though this is the permanence I missed before, as I felt I was skating through life, unable to put down any roots anywhere and not sinking into any experience. I once caught sight of myself in a photograph, sitting on a chair somewhere. I was leaning forward and not back, ready to spring, to leave at any moment. None of my pictures ever show me leaning back in a chair or relaxed and at ease with myself. But in this gorgeous city I feel totally at ease. Its streets and avenues feel like hallways and corridors of a much loved home. Perhaps the kind of home where an extended family lived in days of yore; uncles, aunts and an entire spectrum of cousins. That's how the city feels on a balmy spring day in April, after the heavy coats have come off and the Mr Softee trucks have appeared on every corner. The lady who sits within the Mr Softee truck by my corner smiles at me when I fuel myself with a milkshake before starting my thirty minute walk every evening. She recognizes my face and is always amused and surprised by the flavor I am going to demand each day, flavors that range from vanilla,, butterscotch, strawberry, banana, cookies and cream, banana etc. She tries to read my mind and guess what it will be.
I love such interactions with total strangers. The one advice from well meaning souls that's hard to heed when one feels so much at home is the one about not talking to strangers. I love talking to strangers, rather...love it when they talk to me. Like the man who was relishing his ice cream cone and met me in the elevator ride to work. He was telling me how he had a big dinner planned so decided to go for the ice cream cone for lunch; his way to budget his daily calories and to keep that waistline- in line.
And of course, there's always the requisite weather talk, the vacation talk, the gardening successes - elevator, bus and water cooler buddies regularly providing the baseline tone in the background adding a certain richness in timbre, a slice of their lives forever embedded in my memory cells, becoming an inseparable part of me.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tagged again!!
Damn! Damn!
Don't I talk about myself enough, anyway?
Here's what's required of me now:
Eight things I am passionate about:
1. Spending time with my family - doing things with my daughter.
2. Reading at least four books at a time, reflecting on what I've read, using it as a basis for digressing to other flights of fancy.
3. Music - practicing playing the violin (western) and singing Indian classical music for at least an hour a day. Have taken to heart the general saying that to be an expert in anything one needs to practice at least 3 hours a day for 1o years. Can't do 3 hours a day so maybe I'll be an expert by the time I am a doddering old woman of ninety or so.
Someone also introduced me to some old time fiddle music. He gave me a CD where every song has been played at 3 speeds and the idea is to listen and learn - that's the next musical challenge.
4. A few long, solitary drives every year with the music blasting and windows down, one way to feel really alive.
5. Trying to become a better writer but while that's a distant goal, I am passionate enough about writing whatever I can, whenever I can.
6. A passionate Internet junkie.
7. Passionate impulsive spender.
8. Passionate about making new friends and retaining them.
Eight things I want to do before I die:
1. Outsource aging to a Picture of Pragya Gray
2. Carnegie Hall debut at 90?
3. I want to be a published author before I die but the Stones said that you can't always get what you want and that if you try sometime you just might find that you get what you need. So it's a good thing to list as a want but seriously lack what it takes to make it happen and definitely don't need it.
4. I want to make sure my uncle's gift of clairvoyancy didn't fail him when he was telling me that someday I would excel in the areas of kala and vigyan (art & science). Maybe the art of procrastination and the science of laziness!
5. I am usually "walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind, on the border line of the edge..." just like Green Day and maybe sometime before I die I'll take a long hard look over the edge at what lies beyond.
6. See my daughter excel in everything she chooses to do.
7. Restore...
8. When I've had a good practice session with my violin, I can play with my eyes closed for a few minutes, without worrying about what my left or right hand is doing. The bow glides over the string in a few surreal moments before a lapse in concentration or focus reintroduces a scratchy tone (hey, I just started). But in life (as in violin or anything else) I would like to be able to do everything with effortless ease with everything I touch, do, say being a direct extension of my thoughts - kind of the way the heroine in the vampire novel Hunger felt the day she was turned into one!
Eight things I say often:
1. I just finished reading...
2. Here's something I read...
3. I was wondering...
4. Long time no see, how goes?
5. Did you ever see that show?
6. Just like in that song!
7. Why does it have to be perfect, approximate is good enough
8. It's like driving...
Eight books I have read recently(only 8??????):
1. This Is Your Brain on Music
2. Musicophilia
3. The Raw Shark Texts
4. Laura Warholic: Or Sexual Intellectual
5. A Sense of the World
6. The Gathering
7. The Innocent Man
8. Echo Power
Eight Songs I could listen to over and over:
1. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
2. Old Habits Die Hard
3. One
4. Angie
5. Madhuban Mein Radhika Naachi Re
6. Ae ri jaane na doongi
7. Main dil hoon ek armaan bhara
8. Most classical based old hindi film songs, Robert Plant, U2, too many to name!!
Eight things that attract me to my friends (guessing, like Alankrita...don't have too many friends, so don't really know):
1. Sense of Humor - I can be funny - I think
2. I listen
3. I am relatively unstressed and unflappable, usually.
4. Have a "Just Do It" approach
5. Non-judgmental and objective
6. Try not to have expectations
7. I follow up on promises
8. Consistent, constant, reliable...or at least try to be...
Phew! That felt like punishment of sorts!
I think I'll tag Ranjini and John.
Pragya
Don't I talk about myself enough, anyway?
Here's what's required of me now:
Eight things I am passionate about:
1. Spending time with my family - doing things with my daughter.
2. Reading at least four books at a time, reflecting on what I've read, using it as a basis for digressing to other flights of fancy.
3. Music - practicing playing the violin (western) and singing Indian classical music for at least an hour a day. Have taken to heart the general saying that to be an expert in anything one needs to practice at least 3 hours a day for 1o years. Can't do 3 hours a day so maybe I'll be an expert by the time I am a doddering old woman of ninety or so.
Someone also introduced me to some old time fiddle music. He gave me a CD where every song has been played at 3 speeds and the idea is to listen and learn - that's the next musical challenge.
4. A few long, solitary drives every year with the music blasting and windows down, one way to feel really alive.
5. Trying to become a better writer but while that's a distant goal, I am passionate enough about writing whatever I can, whenever I can.
6. A passionate Internet junkie.
7. Passionate impulsive spender.
8. Passionate about making new friends and retaining them.
Eight things I want to do before I die:
1. Outsource aging to a Picture of Pragya Gray
2. Carnegie Hall debut at 90?
3. I want to be a published author before I die but the Stones said that you can't always get what you want and that if you try sometime you just might find that you get what you need. So it's a good thing to list as a want but seriously lack what it takes to make it happen and definitely don't need it.
4. I want to make sure my uncle's gift of clairvoyancy didn't fail him when he was telling me that someday I would excel in the areas of kala and vigyan (art & science). Maybe the art of procrastination and the science of laziness!
5. I am usually "walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind, on the border line of the edge..." just like Green Day and maybe sometime before I die I'll take a long hard look over the edge at what lies beyond.
6. See my daughter excel in everything she chooses to do.
7. Restore...
8. When I've had a good practice session with my violin, I can play with my eyes closed for a few minutes, without worrying about what my left or right hand is doing. The bow glides over the string in a few surreal moments before a lapse in concentration or focus reintroduces a scratchy tone (hey, I just started). But in life (as in violin or anything else) I would like to be able to do everything with effortless ease with everything I touch, do, say being a direct extension of my thoughts - kind of the way the heroine in the vampire novel Hunger felt the day she was turned into one!
Eight things I say often:
1. I just finished reading...
2. Here's something I read...
3. I was wondering...
4. Long time no see, how goes?
5. Did you ever see that show?
6. Just like in that song!
7. Why does it have to be perfect, approximate is good enough
8. It's like driving...
Eight books I have read recently(only 8??????):
1. This Is Your Brain on Music
2. Musicophilia
3. The Raw Shark Texts
4. Laura Warholic: Or Sexual Intellectual
5. A Sense of the World
6. The Gathering
7. The Innocent Man
8. Echo Power
Eight Songs I could listen to over and over:
1. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
2. Old Habits Die Hard
3. One
4. Angie
5. Madhuban Mein Radhika Naachi Re
6. Ae ri jaane na doongi
7. Main dil hoon ek armaan bhara
8. Most classical based old hindi film songs, Robert Plant, U2, too many to name!!
Eight things that attract me to my friends (guessing, like Alankrita...don't have too many friends, so don't really know):
1. Sense of Humor - I can be funny - I think
2. I listen
3. I am relatively unstressed and unflappable, usually.
4. Have a "Just Do It" approach
5. Non-judgmental and objective
6. Try not to have expectations
7. I follow up on promises
8. Consistent, constant, reliable...or at least try to be...
Phew! That felt like punishment of sorts!
I think I'll tag Ranjini and John.
Pragya
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Had a conversation with a friend the other day about movies and books and about how disappointing it always was to see a movie based on a brilliant book that one may have read. So much is lost when mediums are changed. Characters get reinterpreted, stories get hacked, changed. It's almost always a disappointing experience.
We did acknowledge with some reluctance that movies can whet appetites, make one want more, like when one sees a movie and knows that the book has to be the immediate next step.
However, TV shows, surprisingly, can often do more justice to the novel and stay true to form. Perhaps because they have more time. I have been watching Dexter on my iPod. I downloaded all of Season 1 and am almost done with all 12 episodes. The show is amazing. In essence it is about a serial killer who kills serial killers and other murderers; a serial killer who enjoys killing but has been taught (or programmed by his father over several years) to never take an innocent life. I hear that the show is based on Jeff Lindsay's - Darkly Dreaming Dexter and almost as soon as I finish watching the 12th episode of Season 1 I am going to acquire a copy of the novel. It would be almost as hard for me to resist as it is for Dexter to resist a good kill.
In watching these episodes what's hooked me are the moments of introspection that Dexter goes through when he wonders if being nothing but a collection of learned behaviors makes him a fraud.
How often are the rest of us simply pretending, showcasing learned behaviors and burying the slumbering and occasionally awake beast within. What's our essence, what's acquired, what's real?
He feels empty inside as if he's floating above, watching things, observing, not really a part of anything. When he feels nothing for a person he pretends he does or rather, has been trained to pretend and to blend in so that no one ever suspects his sociopathy. He resists sexual encounters because he believes that such intimacies will bring him too close to someone and then they'll know him for who he really is. Makes one wonder what it is about sex that triggers a series of expectation building or triggers an alteration in behavior. As if a new precedent has been set and all that came before was meaningless. Even though all concerned know, deep down, that what's going to come after isn't necessarily meaningful either.
One wonders how a show so bloody and so monstrous could have one contemplating so much else. But there it is.
We did acknowledge with some reluctance that movies can whet appetites, make one want more, like when one sees a movie and knows that the book has to be the immediate next step.
However, TV shows, surprisingly, can often do more justice to the novel and stay true to form. Perhaps because they have more time. I have been watching Dexter on my iPod. I downloaded all of Season 1 and am almost done with all 12 episodes. The show is amazing. In essence it is about a serial killer who kills serial killers and other murderers; a serial killer who enjoys killing but has been taught (or programmed by his father over several years) to never take an innocent life. I hear that the show is based on Jeff Lindsay's - Darkly Dreaming Dexter and almost as soon as I finish watching the 12th episode of Season 1 I am going to acquire a copy of the novel. It would be almost as hard for me to resist as it is for Dexter to resist a good kill.
In watching these episodes what's hooked me are the moments of introspection that Dexter goes through when he wonders if being nothing but a collection of learned behaviors makes him a fraud.
How often are the rest of us simply pretending, showcasing learned behaviors and burying the slumbering and occasionally awake beast within. What's our essence, what's acquired, what's real?
He feels empty inside as if he's floating above, watching things, observing, not really a part of anything. When he feels nothing for a person he pretends he does or rather, has been trained to pretend and to blend in so that no one ever suspects his sociopathy. He resists sexual encounters because he believes that such intimacies will bring him too close to someone and then they'll know him for who he really is. Makes one wonder what it is about sex that triggers a series of expectation building or triggers an alteration in behavior. As if a new precedent has been set and all that came before was meaningless. Even though all concerned know, deep down, that what's going to come after isn't necessarily meaningful either.
One wonders how a show so bloody and so monstrous could have one contemplating so much else. But there it is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)