For my love

Because I don't need a reason to say I love you.

i'm not just normal, am i? normal is boring :)

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”
~Oscar Wilde~

This is just to say

What do you do when there is an abundance of plums? Eat the gloriously sweet fruits for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and for everything in between.

But I can never eat them without thinking about one spring afternoon in Scotland, where we discussed this particular poem and the evocative nature of these gorgeous fruits. D., I think you have me scarred for life. :)

Open letter to the weekend

Dear Weekend,
You are due to arrive tomorrow, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know just how much I am looking forward to you being here. So much so that thoughts of you have had me a little too distracted to focus fully on work. I just need, need, need, my Friday morning smile and if there was any way in which those can happen every single day, I would be a very happy girl.

I want you to know that when you do get here, we are going to have a wonderful time. Just you and I. When you are around, the conversation never stops and the laughter comes easily. Whatever we end up doing, I am always happy just being in your company.

You know what they say about good behaviour being rewarded by special treats, right? I am thinking that there may be some of those involved.

Just hurry up and get here.

Anxiously yours,
xox

message in the sky

all is still
my hands are raised in prayer
my face turned up to the heavens.
that is when i see them
almost gliding
through the crisp morning air
painting their black silhouettes
across the vast expanse
of the blue above.
and just as soon as they appeared
the flock of migrating birds
are gone
leaving behind an indescribable
lightness in my heart
like a promise of hope.
i wonder
if everything has to spelled out across the sky
in big bold letters
or great flapping wings
to find that one line of freedom
inscribed in your soul.

Three steps to a smiling morning

1. Be woken up with cuddles.

2. Fill the home with the smell of blueberry muffins being baked in the oven.

3. Enjoy a leisurely breakfast.

Love letters

I just adore the sweet love letters that I receive. This one is from Hero.

racing against time

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
~Arnold Toynbee~

I don't know about play, but today, it has been a day of rush rush rush,

scurrying to get things done and meeting deadlines on time.

A Moment of Happiness

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

~Jalaluddiun Rumi~

Closing the distance

“True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.”
~David Tyson Gentry~

Someone asked me yesterday, completely out of the blue, “How many friends do you have?”

Apart from the fact that it was such an unexpected question, I found it a little difficult to answer straight away with a specific number. I mean, ask me something like how many children I have or how many siblings I have or how many hours of sleep I had last night and I can answer you no problem. But I don’t have a set number of friends that I can state instantaneously.

And how do I define the boundaries of friendship anyway? When does an acquaintance become a friend? Does a colleague that I spend several hours with five days a week become a friend, or does she remain in a different box? Are the people I interact with online on a daily (or almost daily) basis, friends? Or do they have to be categorised separately because I don’t meet them face to face? Can my best friends from childhood still be counted as friends even if I now see them once a year over a catch-up dinner in a restaurant?

While I was pondering this, he repeated the question, and followed on by telling me that he had exactly 499 friends and needed to add one more to make up 500.

“Really? 499? And they are all ‘friends’?”

“Yes, on facebook.”

Ah ... facebook friends. Well, that’s an entirely different kind of relationship, isn’t it? Let me just say that I am not the biggest fan of facebook. I have 75 people on my facebook friends list. The majority of them can be categorised into three types: family; childhood friends from school; and friends that I met at university and stayed very close to afterwards. I do not add people on it unless it was someone I really knew and would actually talk to in real life. For me, facebook is really only a way of maintaining a connection with some aspects of my past. It is like a newsletter in many ways – it announces people’s birthdays and it lets me peek into what is happening in the lives of people I have some connection with.

Having said that, some of my closest friends are those I don’t meet face to face. Friends who live in different parts of the world, but whom I keep regular contact with through emails and/or long chat conversations. Some of them are people I have met online and have become the closest of friends with, without ever having been in the same physical setting together. I don’t need to physically spend time together to be friends. They are people I feel connected with, and care deeply about, even if we may never sit at a table and enjoy a cup of tea together. It’s not the physical presence, but the feeling of acceptance and belonging that is shared; the level of comfort you feel in sharing bits of each other – our hopes, or dreams, our fears, our secrets, the mundaneness of our everyday lives – that make us friends.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. How things – including relationships – change. While I am excited at the thrill of new friendships, it makes me sad to realise that I have grown distant from some people I was very close to before. Looking at one particular name on my list on facebook, I am reminded of how I have not spoken to her for over a year, after having fallen out over a misunderstanding. I haven’t taken her off the list because she is someone I care about. And if she is someone I care about, surely I must do something to salvage the disintegrated friendship, right?

It’s a rainy Friday afternoon. The children are busy playing house. The chores can wait. I am going to take my phone and settle down on the couch for a long conversation.

if you are one of these, you have an open invitation to my home

~if you don't read the thaana script, this word means 'welcome' in Dhivehi~

1. Good conversation

2. Happy memories

3. Books and books and many more good books

4. Happy surprises that come from the heart and don't cost the earth

5. Laughter

6. Creativity

7. Good food

8. Love

9. Angels to watch over my family

10. Fresh cut flowers or a potted plant

11. The smell of the ocean

12. A cool breeze

13. Warm tight hugs

14. Fresh fruit

15. Scented candles

16. Sweet voices that tell me, 'I love you Mumma.'

17. Cookies and cream ice-cream

18. Time, endless time to enjoy the things I love to do with the people I hold in my heart

19. Beautiful poetry that makes me dream

20. The clean up fairy with her magic wand (if there isn't one, there should be one!)

What about you? What would be on your list?

SShhh...

Secrets.
A whispered word,
a lipstick stain,
a clandestine meeting,
a hidden note,
a favourite toy,
a piece of your heart.
Moments and thoughts that we keep within us
bits of others and ourselves
that we steal for our pleasure
and conceal from the eyes of the world.
Secrets.
A part of what makes us human.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I started this blog as a creative outlet for the images I capture and (some of the) words that string together in my mind. Blogging has been a way of meeting and getting to know many wonderful people, and making new friends. That, to me, is the most rewarding part of this little space in the virtual world. There are a lot of amazing photographers and fantastic writers out there that I regularly like to visit and who inspire me. I learn a lot through observing their craft. Over the three years that I have blogged here, I have received tremendous support from so many of you that I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all those of you who make the time to stop by and leave a comment so that I know you've been here. Some of you I have come to know especially well, and your comments both here or through emails have been so very much appreciated, and I want to send out big virtual hugs to you for making me smile at the end of long tiring days, and for extending a hand of friendship from across the miles.

Change

Coming across these today pressed into a book of poems made me think about how nothing endures unchanged. The long stemmed exquisite red rose buds that I had wanted to capture forever, now lay flattened and browned, their life squashed out of them; the colour drained; the delicate petals hardened and their heady fragrance gone. Is this what happens to us too? Do we change so drastically that we become only shadows of our former selves? I have always been focused but perhaps now my vision has changed. I see now things that I didn’t see then. I see the cracks on the wall and the bumps on the road. I see how things sag and grow soft, firm defined contours turning shapeless with time - and I don't mean that in (just) a physical sense. Is that simply a part of ageing? Or is it just the way I see things in this new reality? Have I as a person changed? My sensibilities? My beliefs? The essence of who makes me me? I think not. And I know one thing for sure. I am just as dreamy as I was then. Perhaps even more so than I have ever been. And I believe in my dreams. Of that I am certain.

There are many things I don't know

I can sew a quilt, embroider and create a whole range of soft toys.

But I don’t know how to turn a piece of fabric into something wearable.

I can sit for hours and make stories for children out of nothing.

But I don’t know how to do small talk with someone I don’t really know.

I am at home in the classroom and I can teach a lot of different things.

But I don’t know how to teach you to swim, to whistle or to sing.

I can turn scrap and all kinds of odds and ends into a cohesive collage.

But I don’t know how to turn moments of uncertainty into firm belief.

I can unstitch a crooked hem or wipe clean the never ending mess of artwork.

But I don't know how to undo feelings and compartmentalise my heart.

I can take a leap of faith and trek unflinchingly through rough terrain.

But I don’t know how to move ahead when I cannot climb over a giant boulder.

I can enjoy lazy days just as much as I do the rushed ones filled with motion.

But I don’t know how to wait patiently for things to fall into place.

How do you define good?

I know next to nothing about photography

and know absolutely zilch about the technical aspects of the art.

When I have a camera in my hand

~which happens at some point everyday~

I do what comes from my heart.

I point and I shoot,

which is all my camera is supposed to do.

I go with what looks good and what feels right

rather than whether this is what the textbook says.

Maybe that makes me a bad photographer,

but that's who I am.

Someone told me recently that 40% of good photography is in the editing.

I hardly do any editing.

Maybe I should.

I love the transformations to photos I see on so many of the photography blogs that I visit

especially when I see the before and after shots

but I just don't have enough time in the day.

For me,

the essential elements of a good photograph are

lighting

and

a photographer with a good eye and enough skill to make any subject interesting.

The technicalities of the camera and the post processing

are really immaterial to me.

But then, of course I would say that.

~

What about you?

What do you think makes a good photograph?

i keep my promises

this little guy came visiting recently.

a wise (yet not so old) man advised me to be nice to it

and let it be.

but i couldn't just have him exploring my home

and i didn't have time to give him the grand tour

so i asked him

very politely of course

if he would step outside into the night

and fly away

and he agreed

on the condition that he be featured here

as the most charming, most compliant wasp in the world.

and i keep my promises,

so here he is.

Do you have far to go?

I keep reaching for rainbows

and I hope

that one day soon

I won't have to keep chasing my dream

but that

I will be living it.

~

Are you happy where you are?

Where do you want to be five years from now?

this way or that?

you have choices.

how do you choose?

flip a coin?

roll the dice?

pick a number?

draw straws?

how do you choose?

how would you know if its the right one?

how do you ever know?

you never know, do you?

it's a risk you take.

risk losing it all.

but ultimately,

you have to choose.

to do ... and ... want to do

i don't really know how i ended up with so many deadlines for one day.

but it seems that for tomorrow, i have to finish:

developing proposals for two professional development programmes for two different schools;

designing the first draft of a graduate course;

writing up the results of a literature review on school systems across the world;

proofread an assignment for someone i cannot say no to;

offer detailed comments on a boring statistical report (which puts me to sleep the minute i start reading it);

prepare two presentations for two different meetings

~

but i am sitting here at my computer, listening to the rain, and thinking about everything else i would rather be doing right now. and in doing so, i am mentally making a different to do list:

baking a caramelised onion and cheese tart for dinner, with maybe a pear waldorf salad

walking in the rain, splashing through the puddles, face up to greet the coolness falling from the sky

setting aside time to go through the school work of my little ones and an extra long story hour before bedtime

exploring the new book i received in the mail last week

journalling in my notebook

curl up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and watch the coconut tree sway in the rain.

catch up on all my favourite blogs

write a love letter

plan a holiday, a getaway

take photos of the rain and the rain soaked outdoors

put some music on and dance

paint my nails

hmmm

even housework seems somehow more appealing than trying to tackle all this writing i am supposed to do.

but because i am the good girl that i am (ha!) i shall get back to what i am supposed to be doing and write write write, till i get them all done.

now.

Rain

In that time just before dawn, that sliver of a time when the night is no longer still, yet the rustle of a new day has not quite begun, the thunder roared. Angry. Fierce. Revengeful. Then, blinding light. A flash that bleaches out all colour. Lightening at its menacing best.

You ask if a storm is brewing. I open the window and look out into the darkness. I see no clouds. The dance of the thunder and the lightening continues. Teasing, moving away, the distance between them growing. Then swiftly closing in, in a powerful, intoxicating rhythm that is reminiscent of the intense drama between the matador and his cape as they build the captive energy towards the crescendo of the paso doble.

Then, just as suddenly, it stops. An anticlimax after all the build up.

The almost-storm forgotten, we talk. Of everyday things. Breakfast pizzas to surprise sleepy children. Work activities to boost flagging morale. Clothes that function vs. clothes that are fashionable. Giggles. Laughs. Hugs and teasing. An easy companionship. A strong connection. A shared love.

Then a flurry of activity as breakfast is cooked, children are fed and bodies are clothed all in a race against time. The languor of the early hours in stark contrast to the vigor of this moment. Almost late for work, I gather my things and rush down the stairs.

Five steps out the door and the rain comes rushing down.

more from a day of smiles

wouldn't you strut your stuff if you were this stunning?

this one needs a visit to the hairdresser

does the size of the beak have anything to do with how much noise is made?

soulful eyes and a pose to gain some sympathy?

the gentle giant. i love these elegant creatures.

what a pink tongue!

when you are the king, you dont have to try very hard to impress.

oh i am just full of joy today

it's that time of the week again;

and

i have a sore throat;

and

i have developed a sudden allergic reaction to work;

and

it sounds like a storm is on the way

because

there is a lot of thunder and lightening around

and

i just realised that the fridge is bare;

and

i am hungry.

~

maybe i should just go back to bed and try getting up from the right side again?

Need I say more?

I have no words today except to say that I just love (my) duck(s) :)

It's all about the moment

Unposed, unplanned, spontaneous moments captured on camera can be fun.

I certainly enjoy taking them.

Capturing people at work

their faces focused with concentration.

Or where smiles are a-plenty

when at play.

On the street, I see people stop

and engage in animated conversation

and there are those who determindely walk on.

Children always make great subjects

the expressions on their faces are always a delight.

Sometimes though, you don't need to see the faces.

It's all about the moment.

i am on page 19 and i have 81 more to go

it is the weekend and i don't want to be working. there are a million things i would rather be doing right now. anything except trying to complete this piece of work which i need to be perfect by sunday morning. i keep telling myself that i need to have this done and over with by this evening so that at least my saturday will be free to enjoy with my loves. but i have procrastinated like i haven't in a long time. hell, i have even done all my laundry ... and if you know me, you know how much i hate laundry. i am fast running out of excuses and i guess i just need to sit down and focus and do this. maybe i should just go get that piece of chocolate cake from the fridge. you know, just for the energy. to see me through this. because this is going to be a long night.