Happy 29th Anniversary, mama and dada!

Today marks my parents 29th wedding anniversary, so a toast (virtual of course) to my parents and their brilliant relationship - honesty, trust, respect, love and compromise - the 5 cornerstones that keep them together :)..

love ya both!

Love letters..the art and the emotional stories...

It's March 14th today and a very uneventful day, except the fact that it's a Friday, and I'm glad my weekend's finally here. The feeling lasted only until I read these two excerpts...They reminded me that it's a month since Feb 14th, that all important sugary day which slithered by so quietly this year..We either overdo the importance of Valentine's day or we ignore it..These two articles travel beyond those simplistic reactions to something deeper.

The first one is a love letter by the French philosopher Andre Gorz to his terminally ill wife before their joint suicide in September 2007. Here are the excerpts I fell in love with...

excerpt begins.....

“You will soon be 82. You have shrunk six centimetres and you weigh just 45 kilos and you are still beautiful, gracious and desirable,” the book starts. “It is now 58 years that we have lived together and I love you more than ever.”

...

I asked myself what was the inessential that I needed to give up in order to concentrate on the essential. I told myself that, to grasp the reach of the upheavals that were looming in every domain, there had to be more space and time for reflection than the full-time exercise of my profession as a journalist allowed.

I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance. I told you that in the dedication of my last work.

....

I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together."

....excerpt ends.

The emotion behind this letter is strong, so strong we are left to wonder if it's true, and if we will know love like that...

The second article I read today is about love letters displayed as art at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution's Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in early February. Essentially, it showcases letters written by famous artists to their paramours or children...it's not always about romantic love, but rather the different emotions that color each shade of love (aah, rather versatile with my words now dont'cha think..lol)..Here's my favourite excerpt about one of the letters...

excerpt begins...

Xavier Gonzalez (1898-1993), to take just one example, left small illustrated love notes for Ethel, his wife, almost every day. The papers that he left to the Archives of American Art include many hundreds of them. Almost anything could prompt them -- a memory, a whim or the act of stepping out to get the morning paper. One that's on display shows him struggling home in the pose of Atlas, bowed beneath the towering gray weight of the Sunday New York Times.

...excerpt ends and so does my monologue..

Goodnight everyone, and sweetdreamz......

Lyrics..

I've repeated myself often enough in my blogs to emphasize the fact that I'm fascinated by the way in which words can be twisted to mean so many different things, based on intonations, context, emphasis, speaker, audience and even the language.

Tonight, I rather feel like posting this video..with beautiful lyrics in Hindi..and of course, its a bonus that it has english subtitles...

Planning is fabulous!

I like to plan everything. Most of the time, plans don't work out. My dad's favourite quote is 'Man proposes, God disposes'. In this instance, man proposes, fiance accepts. Such a sweet proposal - so much detailing went into the planning - very nice!

I wasn't planning on blogging tonight, but after seeing this video, couldn't resist updating it..hope you like it..

Children...

In January 2003, a baby girl was abandoned by her mother hours after the birth. Somebody found the newborn baby and called 911. the baby was rushed to the hospital, and was treated. She was perfect, the way newborns usually are, and was eventually names Mira – short for Miracle. The whole city of Toronto considered her to be a miracle baby, and thus her name. She was later adopted by a couple. Her birth mother was found and she received treatment/therapy (unsure what exactly was wrong with her). This poem was a reaction to Mira’s wails for her mother and for all the other abandoned babies in Third World countries, who never stand a chance.

A child

To the eye that cannot see
A dark cloud on the far horizon
To the ear that cannot hear
The threatening rumble of summer rain

To the skin that prickles
With the premonition of something dangerous
To the hackles that raise
In response to the shiver of wariness

To the shudder that races through
The gloom of descending darkness
To the scream that pierces through
The scent of the suffocating blindness

To the howl from the baying hound
An echo to the arrival of doom
To the whinny of the frightened horses
A response to its blinding nearness

To the wind that wails
Through the leafless trees in the forest
To the cries of a motherless child
Hanging alone…in a basket…in the middle of nowhere

Born in world which can see, hear, sense and feel
Be it clouds, thunder, gloom or fear
A child alone, without its shelter
Impervious to everything but its cries for a mother.

By,
Angela Archana Vincent.