Month: March 2023

Hummingbirds’ Magic

I was rushing to the car – needed to be somewhere. But the little hummingbirds stopped me for just a moment yet again. We have a few of them hovering over our lovely little lavender patch in the garden. The little bright flurries of beauty never fail to enthrall me. There is at least 1 red ruby throated hummingbird and several Anna’s hummingbirds gleaming in the sunshine with their green plumage catching the light of the day in brilliant angles. 

I am eternally grateful – both for the fact that I have these little visitors and for the ability to stop and appreciate them. 

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I have now stopped trying to photograph them while they flit for I find I am barely ever able to capture them with my iPhone, and my friends are far better photographers. This way, I get to enjoy the brilliant pictures and the momentary flashes of joy unencumbered by the effort of trying to capture it. 

Able to flap their wings upto 200 times a second, they are incredible long-distance flyers too. The ruby throated hummingbirds can fly 500 miles non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico during their fall and spring migration seasons.

The hummingbirds weigh only about 3 grams and therefore the term ‘more than their weight in gold’ doesn’t mean much. What they are able to accomplish with that body weight is phenomenal. Apparently, they can consume half their body weight in pure sugars and eat upto 5-8 times an hour. 

More fascinating hummingbirds facts here:

https://nourishncherish.org/?s=hummingbird

That metabolism doesn’t come easy for the little ones are hardly ever sedentary, They take a maximum of 90 seconds per break and flit almost all day long. Gathering nectar, feeding their littles ones, building their nests, and generally making the world a more happening place. 

If hummingbirds fascinate you as much, try reading this book:

My Tiny Life by Ruby T Hummingbird – written by Paul Meisel. It is a beautiful book that captures the life of hummingbirds. The book is a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor winner and is a lovely informative little book.

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🪺On May 15th a tiny hummingbird hatches from its egg, and thus starts our marvelous journey with the little bird as it learns to fly, mature, meet and greet its fellow humminbirds and eventually enhance the circle of life by having its own little family to nurture and nourish.

🕊By June first week, the little ones in the nest are ready to fly with their mother, in a flurry of wings, and a soaring of tips. 

“Up, down, backward, forward!” 

🪷 By the first week of July, the bird is getting territorial and fending off its fellow hummingbirds. (Pic from the book, My Tiny Life – by Paul Meisel)

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🚁 By the last week of September the birds are getting ready to migrate before they return in March, sometimes flying upto 18 hours non-stop to get back home where its journey started a year ago.

The illustrations and content is marvelous and once again, I am enamored by artists able to capture the magic of light and movement in art. (Sample pic inserted above to get a feel of the beautiful imagery in the book)

Talking about the Weather

I have no idea what people mean when they say talking about the weather is mundane. The disdain of, “Just talking about the weather!”, “I mean why not talk about the weather to kill time?” 

Apparently, Oscar Wilde said: “conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

It isn’t. It is marvelous. 

No two days are exactly the same, see? 

In any case, I would much rather talk about the sunsets and moonrises, fluffy happy cirrus clouds and stormy heavy cumulonimbus clouds, than about any other foul thing wracking humanity. 

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

– Mark Twain

It’s been a curious winter for those of us spoilt by our usually mild Californian winters. This winter saw us receive unusually large amounts of rain, our mountains are swollen with snowcaps, and our rivers are welling up and rushing into our oceans, the winds, when they came, ripped treetops, and crashed onto roads & homes and showed us how powerful nature is. One house on my regular commute route had a 100 ft tree crashed straight through – I can only hope the inhabitants weren’t present in the house when the tree fell, for it would most certainly have caused injury or worse.

Having grown up in the mountains where extreme weathers were not unheard of, and blackouts a way of life, I would’ve thought recent weather events would not have surprised me so much. But I suppose it still did. My heart leaped as a huge tree branch crashed right behind my car as I drove home through a particularly windy day. I think I held my heart in in my mouth to keep it from leaping out and flying off with the gale for a full 5 minutes. 

The quickly changing weather has us all philosophising too. More than we usually do.

Do the weather related moods signify something as drastic as the impermanence of our existence? Or is it just that – vagaries of nature to be borne, witnessed and experienced? Could it signify our emotions flitting in and out of our systems, lapping like little waves against our psyche, shaping, reshaping and muddling our coastlines ever so subtly, the cumulative effect of what we allow to feel weighing in?  Like weather patterns, we could change. After all, like one of our favorite songs often reminds us: Behind the clouds, the sun is shining. We can only appreciate a good day when we have days in which stepping outside is hard. 

For those of us spoilt by the consistency of the sun and the brilliance of our days and the glows of our sunsets and sunrises, this is a time for philosophy. Unabashed but lovely philosophizing. 

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I quite agree with this quote that I found attributed to John Ruskin:

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

John Ruskin

The Madness and Serenity Within

The feeling of being unmoored, like being whisked around in a merry-go-round was still lingering in the air. The madness within seemed to be reflected in the madness outside too.

I hung off the railing and stood like that for a  few minutes. It can’t have been more than a few minutes. For the skies were turning from purple to inky blue and in those precious moments, I stood there watching the world spin around. The river flowed on ahead of me – brimming, swirling, continuous. Out in the distance, a train rattled as it sped away into the bustling city, torn tree branches lay scattered all over the ground near me (the gales of the past week had been more than any of us had ever experienced in the past few years.)

Come to think of it, this winter had been nothing we experienced in a long long time. 

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The feeling of the world in movement was more and more keenly penetrating. As I stood there, gaining my bearings, a runner came bobbing and panting, his head fixed with a headlamp. I grimaced not at the poor fellow, but at the speed with which he was running. He smiled in the weak light and I smiled back. If, running at that speed, the fellow could smile, I could do so too. However, I felt restive. 

The planets peeked out at strategic points amidst the clouds above and the setting sun was a reminder of the 1000 miles per hour rotation that the Earth managed. 

The past few days were blurs of meetings, deadlines, gales, gushing rivers, flood warnings, school meetings, preparations for this and that, travel plans. 

A week in short where the world felt like a merry-go-round. 

I dug my feet in a little deeper – I needed to ground myself. Relativity is a marvelous thing. For I closed my eyes, just taking in deep breaths of the flowing river, and the colors of the Earth around me. Not moving, not running, not planning, not driving, not doing. Just Being. The clock-like ticking inside the chest seemed to sense what I was doing and calmed down too. 

Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat  at any time and be yourself.

– Herman Hesse

I opened my eyes, and after a few more moments felt a serenity – the world around me still moved at that frenetic pace, but I seemed happy and more content to be a silent spectator.

Lives of Musicians and what the Neighbors Thought!

Lives of the Musicians – Good Times, Bad Times (And what the Neighbors Thought) is a fantastic book of the lives of musicians. 

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Some of the more famous musician’s stories we may have heard before, but the book had enough that are not as well known. Written with a look at their personalities, the book talks about the idiosyncracies of some of the musicians too. For instance, did you know?

🎼 Antonio Vivaldi had a job teaching violin at the Pieta orphanage for girls in Italy? Orphaned children were taken in and given a musical education so they may go forth into the world and spread their gifts. What a marvelous thing to be remembered for?! The girls’s orchestra was apparently one of the best disciplined of the times and though people never saw them perform (they were hidden away), they received accolades and recognition for their sheer talent.

🎹 Johann Sebastian Bach was boorish and stubborn. Once he wanted to quit a job, and the Duke would not hear of it, and threw him in prison instead. During the month he spent in jail, Back wrote 46 pieces of music that is still listened to today 300 years later.

🎻 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was probably the “most-kissed little boy in Europe” given his grueling performance schedule starting at the tender age of 6. Mozart had a strange childhood – he could be whimsical, superstitious. At the time of his death, he owned 6 coats, 3 silver spoons, and 346 books. His most expensive possessions were his piano and pool table. If you are fascinated by Mozart, and haven’t read this hilarious book, please do so. 

Young Mozart – By William Augel. It is in comic book format and is a joy to read.

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🎶 Guiseppe Verdi – lived a simple life on a farm with his beloved animals, amusing himself with poetry and history. He was a successful farmer, a senator, and cared very little for what critics said about his music, but his music pleased his audience most of the time too.

It is humbling to see how many of these great musicians’s eternal glory came after their lifetimes. Many of them were well known in their lifetimes too, but had no idea of the kind of imprint they would leave on the musical scene centuries later.

The book only looks at the loves of western musicians – a similar book of eastern musicians would be just as welcome. It would be nice to read about the lives of Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Annamacharya in a similar format: We continue to be enthralled with their compositions centuries later.

Paint the Wind

Paint the Wind – By Pam Munoz Ryan

The book starts off like most children’s books do, by taking the parents conveniently out of the way. In this one, the parents are killed off in a freak accident and the child, Maya, we meet at her paternal grandmother’s house leading a dull, orderly life in which there is no place for frivolity, laughter or joy. Her grandmother dies and the young child finally gets to see her maternal side of the family who were held in such disdain by her pat. Gran that she does not have any recollections of them.

Of course, all this is meant for us to feel for Maya and hope her life turns around and she gets to enjoy life in her time. She does. 

I don’t know why books do that. But they do. 

The book is a story of how Maya finds herself while finding the horse her mother adored a decade ago. The horse, Artemisia, is now a wild stallion who broke free from her aunt’s ranch and joined a stud stallion, Sargent, and became the leader of the herd. Some wisps of wisdom offered up here and there make the sweet story likable. 

🐎 “With horses, it’s not the biggest or oldest who is the lead. It’s the horse who has the confidence to guide the family in times of danger, who has knowledge of the land and knows the routes to safety, who is herd smart and can make alliances with other mares and keep peace. Some mares have the ability. Others don’t. Think about great human leaders. They have many of the same qualities.”

Pam Munoz Ryan – Paint the Wind

🐎 “When the horses run against the wind with their manes and tails flying, I think they look like fleeting brushstrokes of color.” 

Pam Munoz Ryan – Paint the Wind

I have never had the opportunity to photograph a field of racing horses, but I have admired them. Their power and strength seeming to include the environment around them. I remember pulling over on a whim in Iceland where a field full of Icelandic horses offered us their manes to pat. It was easily the highlight of the trip for the daughter. I hope she remembers the way her face lit up when one nuzzled up next to her. 

I have to admit I chose the book because I saw Artemisia on the blurb. That was the name my daughter wanted to name her horse who was secretly a unicorn, and only reveal itself to her. I miss the innocence of her beliefs and the determination with which she loved her book horses. She read American Horse Diaries, watched My Little Pony, though her favorite was The Secret Unicorn. 

So many little tidbits that I’d listened to with fascination when the daughter as a little girl told me came back: #horsemagic

🐎 The color of horses: Audubon (light tan) dun, bay (red-brown) 

https://horseracingsense.com/12-common-horse-colors-patterns-pictures/

🐎 The different strides and their names: trotting, canter, gallop , lope

🐎 Horsing vocabulary such as Remuda: a herd of horses on a ranch

All in all, it was a wild journey into the canyons with a little girl and her horse. We all belong on Earth and there are so many ways in which we can find that feeling. Our attraction to nature, this planet’s nature, is one of them. 

The Peace of Pursuit

It was a rare day in which there were no pressing demands and I found myself wondering what to write. Now in wondering what to write, there was a strange sense of duty and an obligation to not waste the afternoon thus gifted for literary pursuits with anything else.

But I was also in a state of limbo – not wanting to write about any books I was currently reading, wanting to write that children’s book that has been gnawing in the back of my mind, and also itching to get that short story taken out of the attic for a proper airing and rewriting. 

I did none of these.

My mind harked back to Intimations – a slim volume of essays. I have been wanting to read Zadie Smith for sometime now and thought essays a good place to begin. I do not understand what the fuss is about – some essays are good, others merely perfunctory. But the book was written and published as a sort of meditation during the early months of Covid-19. They are no works of philosophy, but one essay in which she touches upon the nature of time resonated.

It is a common refrain – if I spent half the time thinking about writing, actually writing, I could’ve had an impressive repertoire. But the thoughts of writing are far more entertaining. Sometimes, by the time the words make it to the physical form, some of that magic has evaporated. Other times, the art of writing brings forth something far different from what I anticipated and that is rewarding in itself. Nevertheless – less thinking more doing would be nice in the realm of writing at least.

Time To do : Essay by Zadie Smith in the book Intimations

I do feel comforted to discover I’m not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.

Zadie Smith in the Essay, Time To Do, Book: Intimations

On a walk a few weeks ago, a close friend & I were talking about what is the making and breaking of us. As youth, young adults and as adults. The crux of it boiled down to what we wish to do with our time when there are no demands on it. That kind of time only increases as we age. I see many retired and older people at somewhat of a loose end. After the seemingly long years of bustling careers, raising children, paying mortgages: When all the business of living is done with, and the busyness of living is no longer there to fill our times, then what?

Those of us who are not there yet, have time now, to think of what brings us wholesome happiness, so that we may be better prepared.

Read: What is your friend?

What is your Friend?

I was musing thus on a walk with the husband one morning in which I begged for some quiet. My throat was not okay, and the river by our home was full and flowing. The husband, is not the quiet contemplative kind. Quite the opposite actually. So, I should’ve known that the quiet would last all of 100 meters. He glanced at me, and started laughing loudly. 

“What?” I said.

“I was thinking – okay, I have seen the river, looked for birds, the clouds look good. What else? And I turn and look at you, and see you have a small smile playing on your lips! So, now I am thinking – did she see deer somewhere? Is that what the smile is about? I see no deer, and you still look lost and dreamy!”

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“Well!” I croaked, joining him in his laughter this time. “I was thinking of this post actually. Tying an essay by Zadie Smith and Time.” 

Oh the poor man! I started and we landed up chatting all the way back much to our pleasure. 

I suppose mankind, over the centuries, has arranged life such that there is structure, work and livelihoods all to be taken care of, so that unstructured time is relatively hard to come by. Yet, I remember reading somewhere that one of the best things we can gift ourselves with is the ability to be comfortable with ourselves as there are periods (inevitably) where one is alone. The Covid years suddenly bought this crashing on the world population at once, but it is something philosophers have been musing about for eons. 

So, I suppose finding something interesting to do, and finding ourselves rejuvenated in the thoughts of it, or the pursuit of it, are gifts in and of itself.

Who Am I?

Here 🥂 is to interests, hobbies and finding the Peace of Pursuit.  

Hovering 🚁 & Pondering 💭

The world as I see it, can be wondrous at times, and full of traffic jams at others. One such glorious day when the clouds were scudding and meandering in turns with the weight of moisture, I sat gloomily in the car, wanting more than ever to join the clouds above. The signals had all been acting up and I waited as cars patiently stopped and proceeded at a pace that is entirely unsuited for modern life. There were at least ‘n’ slack messages, ‘m’ voicemails and the gods-knew how many emails that had come up in that time for all the inhabitants in their little cars during this time. I mused, and let out a satisfied laugh that this is life. It is meant to have ponderous moments of quiet. 

I have often wondered about the ways in which we choose to traverse physical spaces and ensure our presence. In the magical world of Harry Potter, people apparate and disapparate, materialize with floo powder out of chimneys, fly on broom sticks, charm motorcycles and cars to fly, send messages via owls, patronus charms and so much more. The world of science fiction loves wormholes and time tesseracts. Any solutions that don’t come up with the limitations of the speed of light, against the physical ache of distances to traverse. 

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While we we may be faster that we ever were before, the human imagination is still active and thriving to do more. The stars and galaxies await, do they not? The next thrilling step in our glorious adventures forward?  

In our world, I looked around, what problems would arise if we were all to lift off into the air. The same as it would be on the roads for sure, if thousands of cars took to the air at the same time. Not to mention the hovering charms required to keep them hovering in mid-air traffic signals. A little dragonfly is capable of such magnificence! Feats as hovering that we find ourselves thinking about obsessively. 

The idle mind harked back to the section on how birds evolved for hovering in the Flights of Fancy book by Richard Dawkins. Size being against them, they still managed a variety of ways in which to achieve it – whether it was in the way their wings spread out to absorb the thrust from the winds, or reverse flapping to counter the surge of propulsion, it was obviously one of the evolutionary hacks that spurred life on earth (birds as nectar seekers and life spreaders).

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“Forward propulsion by wings is achieved by a kind of rowing through the air. Hummingbirds go to the extreme of a rapidly buzzing (humming), sculling movement, in which the wing is turned almost upside down during the upstroke. The wing works almost as efficiently on the upstroke as the downstroke, and it enables hummingbirds to hover like a helicopter and fly backwards, sideways and even occasionally upside down. Hovering was an important evolutionary discovery for birds. Previously, insects had a monopoly in nectar because they could perch on flowers. Birds were too heavy until they finally invented hovering.”

A couple of days later, as we went walking around the green hills with the waxing moon on one side, the setting sun on the other, lupines, golden poppies and cranes glowing in this unique combination of light and moisture in the air, I found a hawk hovering. I stood mesmerized by all things light and wonderful. The shadows cast by the hovering bird, the winds changing speed, and the birds’s intuitive adjustment to its environmental influxes. 

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‘Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.’ – Carl Sagan 

A low rumbling in the distance indicated a flight coming into land at a nearby airport, and the spell was broken. I did not want to apparate out- I wanted to amble back towards reality.

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