To my sister on her birthday

We may not always see eye to eye
Feel or think or act alike
But I'll love you 'til I die
And I'm with you, come what might!

Happy 40th birthday!

Life

Dark, strenuous, dizzying and repetitive yet strangely beautiful when seen from above.

The Year of Yes

I wish I had said Yes!
beloved
When you asked me out to walk
among the leaves
the turning leaves
You were offering me
the sound of dreams,
And I turned you down
politely.

Not today, I smiled
Perhaps,
Maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!
beloved
I wish we had shared this light.

Next time don't ask
Just take me!
Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help
beloved
To begin the Year of Yes.

by Shaista Tayabali

Blogging

In his latest and utterly ravishing blog entry, dear blogger friend Rauf (whom I met through this ancient post) reminded me that the two of us started blogging four years ago this October. I hadn't remembered this and it hit me that it feels like a lot longer: so many things have changed so dramatically since October 15 2005 that that date seems to belong to another lifetime. This blog's original purpose has long been fulfilled and rendered obsolete: people and situations change and underlying creative frameworks (necessity, inspiration and technology) change accordingly. I don't believe in definite ends so I've let The Millstone (a tribute to my favourite Margaret Drabble novel) linger on. Sometimes - though it's increasingly rare - I even find it enjoyable to come back and feed it once again, wondering what I'll think of all of this twenty years from now (I doubt anyone else will find it worth the while to come back, my kids included). I expect most entries will serve as memory triggers for happy, complex or curious episodes which haven't been registered in writing but are engraved in recondite corners of my mind, waiting to be pulled out. Were I a good writer and had the spark of inspiration they might make a good book: even the dullest things can be turned into great stories if you're a good storyteller and know how to let the " little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you".(*)

I've learnt so much from other bloggers during these four years! I've enjoyed the enormous privilege of glimpsing into their minds and dispositions, their experiences and worlds! Rauf (Daylight Again), Mariana (Gatochy's Blog), Sylvia (Kókosbolla), Gert (gertsamtkunstwerk), Tina (Swiss Miss), Ruth (synch-ro-ni-zing), Peter (Peter's Paris), Jill (Caffeine Court), Heather (Dooce), Catherine (Petite Anglaise), Lucy (Lucy Pepper), Claudia (O Mundo de Claudia), and so many others: thank you, I owe you immensely!



(*) Thank you Ruth!

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood, isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my Soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my Soul.

-- Walt Whitman --