Someone very close to me once told me of Aran sweaters (also known as fishermen sweaters). It was something new to me, to hear of these thick knit sweaters that would come with intricate designs tying together families. Apparently, in the olden days families all wore the same design in their knit patterns. The idea being that if ever lost at sea while fishing, people would know what family they were from if found in sea or washed up on the beach. And even now with so many generations passed, there is a sort of history tied to this Irish tradition. You can find your "clan" stitching, find a bond to the kinds of people, the poets, scholars, the fishermen that you descended from...be able to trace the footsteps left behind.
Knitting has been something I was introduced to at a very young age. Growing up in a small valley, we didn't have much to do in the cold, winter evenings. Knitting was a good way to keep the fingers warm at the very least. Plus, we'd get new sweaters for the school year. I have always been amazed at how we're able to create wool in so many textures, let alone with two metal needles convert it into pieces of art. Slow and laboriously, one stitch at a time, in a rhythm, with the right tension in the wool, we create.
So when I did hear of these Aran sweaters, I did look up their patterns. They have to be some of the most complex stitches I have attempted. I don't know if it's just me... but I somehow have found so much art and poetry of sorts in almost everything I have been exposed to. Knitting is not any different. Almost everything in life can be a metaphor including a sweater.. is it just a piece of clothing or is the story of a woman knitting her family pattern, learnt through the generations? Is it a child learning how to pick up fallen knots, learning of patience? Is the simple joy of a kitten converting a ball of wool into a play thing? Is it a distress signal tying you down to where you came from, is it a legend, it a story, is it the beacon that will guide you home, the wall of comfort to keep you away from the cold, or the bundle of love warming the insides of you that the cold will never reach...
Whatever it is... I hope all of us can find our "sweater" feeling tonight.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Beauty
Day 252
The moon had seemed larger than life a few days back. It felt as though I could reach out and touch it. As though it was coming down from it's icy throne, to spend a few moments with us, trying to fit into the surrounding. Floating in its dark veil, it dominated the skyline.
Beauty is often admired but at the same time can be found to be intimidating. Not going to go too deep into this... but often, the beautiful are most alone. There is always a hidden tragedy - wanted by too many, accepted by too few. Expecting life to be easier for the more beautiful, the more talented... the more we see that challenges us brings envy in us, the harder we push them down.
The moon is beautiful but with a dark side. Admired while it battles with it's ever-changing form. Everyday it is a different version of itself... some days it is bright and full of light, able to shine without hiding. And others its weak and wane, dented with its imperfections. Friends to the lonely, muse to lovers... admired at a distance, never too close.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
The Calm
Day 251
Been having some long days recently... lots of things to be done, mind all over the place. Sometimes though in the middle of the chaos, you find a focussed space, where what must be done must be done... and all other thoughts that cloud our mind can be put away.
The mind is an interesting place... it can convince us of so many things. We can take the same situation and make it out to be anything we want to believe it to be. Look at something in positive light or negative light.. look at it with understanding or with no tolerance. We build our world or break it down by our interpretation of the space around us. Question though is how much of this is truly in our control... is it where the difference of personality, experience and habit come in...or is it just a matter of being stimulated in a certain light, being surrounded by a different kind of thinker, or just making a personal decision to do or react to something differently...
Every now and then it feels like we choose to reinvent some part of ourselves. After a certain period of time or circumstances... after hurts or joys, new responsibilities... we take on new roles. During this transition period, is where all the "noise" in our head comes. And ironically enough... it was being busy, in the middle of chaos that can sometimes find you peace.
Still mind, still waters... embracing the calm while it lasts.
The mind is an interesting place... it can convince us of so many things. We can take the same situation and make it out to be anything we want to believe it to be. Look at something in positive light or negative light.. look at it with understanding or with no tolerance. We build our world or break it down by our interpretation of the space around us. Question though is how much of this is truly in our control... is it where the difference of personality, experience and habit come in...or is it just a matter of being stimulated in a certain light, being surrounded by a different kind of thinker, or just making a personal decision to do or react to something differently...
Every now and then it feels like we choose to reinvent some part of ourselves. After a certain period of time or circumstances... after hurts or joys, new responsibilities... we take on new roles. During this transition period, is where all the "noise" in our head comes. And ironically enough... it was being busy, in the middle of chaos that can sometimes find you peace.
Still mind, still waters... embracing the calm while it lasts.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Times Gone By - Part 1 (apparently)
Day 250
I know in a lot of ways I can't call myself "old". A lot of people reading this might be amused at just the idea of that... but regardless, in my short life, I have seen some things reach extinction and was recently reminded of that. I thought I would write a blog reminiscing about the "times gone by" - the things which were so easily accepted as part of my everyday and just as easily left... Don't know if I miss all of them... but here's a few..
1. Encyclopedias - I remember getting homework assignments and collecting bunches of encyclopedias. Looking them up by letters and searching for topics. I would have to sit on the floor cos I had so many books open. It was hard work going through those books of pure knowledge and yet strangely satisfying to find the answer in print.
Do I miss them? Yes! It was a very sad day when Britannica announced sometime in 2012 they would no longer be printing any more. I remember us owning the full Britannica series, with the corresponding junior series in our living room. Patiently sitting - never thought the book that resembled the answer to ANY question I could come up with would stop being published after 200 years. And yet it did.. there's still something about the memory of those magically thin papers - each page being able to bear the weight of the entire book, the golden seal...the smell of something sacred.
2. Audio tapes - I don't think these are "fully extinct" as just recently I was sitting in a car with an audio player. It does bring back memories though... I remember all the blank cassette players I would have. We would record songs on our cool 2 cassette playing stereo systems and make mixed tapes. There was a spinning deck of cassettes I had. I think all of us at some point or the other manually wound up the tapes with the back of a ball pen. Also learnt the magic of how to fix chewed up tape by cutting it off and replacing it with folded tape. Yes, I can see my niece reading this and having no idea what i am talking of. Just writing this though brings back the shuddering memory of when you're hearing music and there was that funny sound in the player and you opened it to find a waterfall of brown tape flowing out...
Do I miss them? I can safely say no... too much trouble for their worth. Though the sound while winding these tapes was strangely therapeutic at times..
2a) Video Tapes - this is just a sub section of the above... somehow these were just mystery to me. I am not sure I ever fully understood how they worked... lets leave this thought here :)
3. Cameras - There were the new thing that I discovered, the special winding cameras. Film which you had to take to stores to get developed. I do remember my dad having slides and this amazing projector. We would turn the lights off, clear the wall of hangings and watch light transform the white into a slideshow of memories, while continuously filling in these little plastic slides into it. The camera which gave out the pictures immediately, looking like magical art and as you watch in a minute or so, the picture would appear.. and just like that you'd have captured a memory :) Films were definitely an advancement...
Do I miss them? Yes and no... I still have a soft spot for slides. There is just something almost poetic about them. Photographs, having those albums... I used to love pulling one out of hundreds of albums and just jogging down memory lane. Writing little notes behind pictures, dates. It's not something I can say I can completely move on from!
4. Modems - The internet was an amazing discovery around 1999/2000 for me. This magical (yes, apparently I used that word a lot while growing up to understand how some things worked...) box which would from now on be called the modem, would start up making alien sounds, flashing lights and invoke the Gods in cyber heaven to connect us in ways unimaginable. Which would explain why thunderstorms, power outages and sometimes for no good reason this modem would not - the cyber Gods did not have a clear line. I remember how our land lines would be filled with insane sounds, but also how easily we got trained to find comfort in these sounds. I was able to identify a "waiting" buzzing mess of a sound, and the "we're connecting, almost there" beeping buzzing wave crashing sound, and the final sound you got which would stop your heart after having no internet for 5 days... the "we're in business" - at the grand speed of 64Kbps!!
Do I miss them? No.. and no. And no. Too emotionally draining.
5. Floppy Disks - another nerve wrecking endeavor - I was told I was blessed to be using the 3.5 inch floppy as opposed to the 5 inch floppy. I don't know about that - but this 3.5 inch floppy has given me nightmares like no other. Assignments - all nighters, my programs... all sitting on this vulnerable piece of plastic that somehow could stop functioning for ANY reason - the most popular being its Monday and your life depends on it. And so I remember buying boxes and boxes of these, writing over so many times, I had to also buy boxes and boxes of floppy labels. I would have a backup of the backup of the backup of the backup of my "main floppy".
Do I miss them? Actually yes. I would love to make them coasters.
Okay this blog seems to have gotten much longer than I thought! And I am not even done with my list :) Well maybe I will do a sequel to this...
To end this, I will leave this with one of the most amazing errors which would cloud a lot of my MS DOS days...
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Never understood the difference between Abort and Fail? Just typing that out there my fingers strangely want to do this... AAAAAAAFFFFFFFRRRRRFAFFFFFFFAAAAARRR
Yup, nothing ever really happened. Must have been a practical joke.
Good night, I am done rambling!
1. Encyclopedias - I remember getting homework assignments and collecting bunches of encyclopedias. Looking them up by letters and searching for topics. I would have to sit on the floor cos I had so many books open. It was hard work going through those books of pure knowledge and yet strangely satisfying to find the answer in print.
Do I miss them? Yes! It was a very sad day when Britannica announced sometime in 2012 they would no longer be printing any more. I remember us owning the full Britannica series, with the corresponding junior series in our living room. Patiently sitting - never thought the book that resembled the answer to ANY question I could come up with would stop being published after 200 years. And yet it did.. there's still something about the memory of those magically thin papers - each page being able to bear the weight of the entire book, the golden seal...the smell of something sacred.
2. Audio tapes - I don't think these are "fully extinct" as just recently I was sitting in a car with an audio player. It does bring back memories though... I remember all the blank cassette players I would have. We would record songs on our cool 2 cassette playing stereo systems and make mixed tapes. There was a spinning deck of cassettes I had. I think all of us at some point or the other manually wound up the tapes with the back of a ball pen. Also learnt the magic of how to fix chewed up tape by cutting it off and replacing it with folded tape. Yes, I can see my niece reading this and having no idea what i am talking of. Just writing this though brings back the shuddering memory of when you're hearing music and there was that funny sound in the player and you opened it to find a waterfall of brown tape flowing out...
Do I miss them? I can safely say no... too much trouble for their worth. Though the sound while winding these tapes was strangely therapeutic at times..
2a) Video Tapes - this is just a sub section of the above... somehow these were just mystery to me. I am not sure I ever fully understood how they worked... lets leave this thought here :)
3. Cameras - There were the new thing that I discovered, the special winding cameras. Film which you had to take to stores to get developed. I do remember my dad having slides and this amazing projector. We would turn the lights off, clear the wall of hangings and watch light transform the white into a slideshow of memories, while continuously filling in these little plastic slides into it. The camera which gave out the pictures immediately, looking like magical art and as you watch in a minute or so, the picture would appear.. and just like that you'd have captured a memory :) Films were definitely an advancement...
Do I miss them? Yes and no... I still have a soft spot for slides. There is just something almost poetic about them. Photographs, having those albums... I used to love pulling one out of hundreds of albums and just jogging down memory lane. Writing little notes behind pictures, dates. It's not something I can say I can completely move on from!
4. Modems - The internet was an amazing discovery around 1999/2000 for me. This magical (yes, apparently I used that word a lot while growing up to understand how some things worked...) box which would from now on be called the modem, would start up making alien sounds, flashing lights and invoke the Gods in cyber heaven to connect us in ways unimaginable. Which would explain why thunderstorms, power outages and sometimes for no good reason this modem would not - the cyber Gods did not have a clear line. I remember how our land lines would be filled with insane sounds, but also how easily we got trained to find comfort in these sounds. I was able to identify a "waiting" buzzing mess of a sound, and the "we're connecting, almost there" beeping buzzing wave crashing sound, and the final sound you got which would stop your heart after having no internet for 5 days... the "we're in business" - at the grand speed of 64Kbps!!
Do I miss them? No.. and no. And no. Too emotionally draining.
5. Floppy Disks - another nerve wrecking endeavor - I was told I was blessed to be using the 3.5 inch floppy as opposed to the 5 inch floppy. I don't know about that - but this 3.5 inch floppy has given me nightmares like no other. Assignments - all nighters, my programs... all sitting on this vulnerable piece of plastic that somehow could stop functioning for ANY reason - the most popular being its Monday and your life depends on it. And so I remember buying boxes and boxes of these, writing over so many times, I had to also buy boxes and boxes of floppy labels. I would have a backup of the backup of the backup of the backup of my "main floppy".
Do I miss them? Actually yes. I would love to make them coasters.
Okay this blog seems to have gotten much longer than I thought! And I am not even done with my list :) Well maybe I will do a sequel to this...
To end this, I will leave this with one of the most amazing errors which would cloud a lot of my MS DOS days...
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Never understood the difference between Abort and Fail? Just typing that out there my fingers strangely want to do this... AAAAAAAFFFFFFFRRRRRFAFFFFFFFAAAAARRR
Yup, nothing ever really happened. Must have been a practical joke.
Good night, I am done rambling!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Limited
Day 249
I remember during one of my dance classes... my teacher showed this amazing step, where you go from doing a step standing, to gracefully falling to the ground and then a little bit of a tumble and back to standing. I was mesmerised at her grace and how she moved between positions without thought. And then came the time when I had to replicate what she did. I was find doing all the moves till I had to go from standing to the floor in half a second. I was expecting some instruction on how to do this, a trick, it looked so easy, so effortless. She said to me, "Don't let fear limit you."
And honestly, that's all it was... letting go of the solid ground, letting gravity pull me in and not reaching out in fear, letting the motion carry me through the step. And no it wasn't painless the first few times, but then I too stopped giving it thought. For some reason those words were in my head recently. It is such a simple thought, and yet so hard sometimes. It is not necessarily to live life without fear... but to live life without it limiting you. For you to choose to not do something, and not because you're scared.
There are so many ways we limit ourselves.. by not trusting ourselves enough or just being too scared of the consequences. It's easier to just disappear, to just say you can't do something, to run, to find a way to give up. And yet in the end... all we've done is cloaked ourselves with fear. We've limited ourselves, our experiences and relationships which can give us so much more if we only didn't fear them... if only we used that fear to be careful, to learn, to grow... to expand.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Castle
Day 248
And I saw you build castles with your fingers
The air moulded to your movement, it trembled
I saw the towers reach out to the sky
Their majestic strength said to me,
"You are my dream, you are my queen"
And I saw the sea part at your touch
My heart reached out into your open hands
I felt the meeting of our souls
And the gardens in the castle said to me
"We are your home, you are my queen"
I saw the seasons change, the tides come and go
Didn't look at the dark shadows just your words
Weaving, promising, leading…your whispers my truth
And the stars in the night, illuminated your face, said
"You have nothing to fear, you're my queen."
But the storms that had to come came
The waves that had to rise rose…
And I held on harder than I could
Let it beat against my back…saying to myself…
"We're together… I am his queen…"
And yet when I looked up, and opened my eyes..
I saw the castle crumble with your hands
The sounds thundering, the crashing walls
I saw the dust cover me, your eyes pulled away
Their desolation spoke to me, and said…
"You're beautiful, but no more my queen."
- RKS
Thought re-thought
Day 247
Every day is different. The world around us, the feelings within us, the people who stand with us, those who stand apart. Our thoughts, our aspirations, our viewpoints, our definitions. Everything is constantly changing. Maybe because of this we strive so hard to find that one thing that doesn't. We try to find the person who won't leave, the one sacred memory that won't be tarnished, the place to hide when you feel the most lost. The comfort of a space you know, you recognize...
Sometimes it feels like we chase a lot of mirages trying to find it. Trying to find that constant we run down so many paths, we build up so much hope and expectation... and somewhere in this journey, in this quest to hold on, we don't even realize how much of us is being pulled away, how much is being taken or added. We're adapting, building ourselves up without even our knowledge.
Are we fluid creatures and it a fool's quest to find stationary ground? Can any emotion tie us down, is there anything that remains...unconditional, accepting. Do we only become permeable to the constant when we let go of our fear of change? Maybe if we didn't fear losing what we had, we would be able to let it be with us in ways that can't be pulled away? Or maybe these are just emotional comforts we give ourselves as we defiantly refuse to accept the notion of our solidarity being our only real constant.
Sometimes it feels like we chase a lot of mirages trying to find it. Trying to find that constant we run down so many paths, we build up so much hope and expectation... and somewhere in this journey, in this quest to hold on, we don't even realize how much of us is being pulled away, how much is being taken or added. We're adapting, building ourselves up without even our knowledge.
Are we fluid creatures and it a fool's quest to find stationary ground? Can any emotion tie us down, is there anything that remains...unconditional, accepting. Do we only become permeable to the constant when we let go of our fear of change? Maybe if we didn't fear losing what we had, we would be able to let it be with us in ways that can't be pulled away? Or maybe these are just emotional comforts we give ourselves as we defiantly refuse to accept the notion of our solidarity being our only real constant.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
The Fading Summer
Day 246
You were the warm breeze, the clear skies
The smile that travelled from my lips to eyes
You were the twinkling night sky, the calm
The feeling allowing me to be who I am
You were the soft sand, the blue sea
The dance in my feet, the closest to me
You were the resounding laughter, the warm rain
The gentle healer, the quiet listener, my companion
You were the season I never wanted to end
The night I held on to with passion and claim
The sun I didn't want to set...
The dream I never want to forget
Like magic, like a beautiful reality, a promised forever
You were my everything.. my perfect endless summer.
- RKS
The smile that travelled from my lips to eyes
You were the twinkling night sky, the calm
The feeling allowing me to be who I am
You were the soft sand, the blue sea
The dance in my feet, the closest to me
You were the resounding laughter, the warm rain
The gentle healer, the quiet listener, my companion
You were the season I never wanted to end
The night I held on to with passion and claim
The sun I didn't want to set...
The dream I never want to forget
Like magic, like a beautiful reality, a promised forever
You were my everything.. my perfect endless summer.
- RKS
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