fun – Page 5 – Nourish-n-Cherish

😇 Even AI Knows 😈

A Guild of Authors

A friend and I were returning from a meeting in which authors from different genres were presenting their works. We fell to discussing the books that appealed to us, and what worked in the format, and what didn’t. I, for one, felt that giving folks a platform to present their books, while noteworthy, could just as well have been done via a YouTube short, but what would have been harder to achieve would have been moderating a discussion about the overlapping topics between the authors. That was something I would have loved to see.

A Company of Authors – Stanford Guild

The sections were grouped together by genre, and topic, so it would have been a good panel to have discussions around.

Even AI Knows!

As conversations usually go, we meandered, and I said something to the effect of the housework and the truth of an Indian woman having its effect on writerly ambitions etc, to which he mentioned a joke he’d chanced upon, and I guffawed at the truth of it.

“With AI, I thought, it would take over monotonous tasks such as dishwashing and house cleaning, so I could take up Poetry & Art. Instead AI has taken up what little I had of Poetry and Art and left me to do the dishwashing and cleaning!”

Even AI knows to steer clear of household tasks, while humans (women still bear the brunt of the housework) are in charge of these mundane tasks. Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?

“Really! Of all the things I wanted help with – it was Art that was the least. Give us one tough thing to spend our lives mastering and perfecting!” I said. “Help me with robots – one for the chores, one for help to care for the aged, another with companionship for the lonely etc. Why art, literature and poetry?”

“I do think there are startups for every one of these in the off-ing somewhere.” said he – sanguine as ever and optimistic in the ways of the world’s future.

He was right of course.

Elderly Care – Robots

Intuition & Instinct?

It did help us loop back to a book that was discussed in which the author spoke about intuition/instinct being a precursor to our conscious thinking, and whether AI would be able to simulate that level of prescience. Which made me wonder, whether that was what made us human, but plenty of us have learnt to ignore these things over time (after all, we don’t need to know when a tiger is lying in the bushes). But would it help us identify dangers in our life?

https://open.substack.com/pub/managingeditor/p/surfin-mia?r=2e6vr0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

More importantly, if that too can be modeled, what does that leave us with to claim our humanity? Messy emotions and imperfect decisions maybe?

Which brings me to the most important question: What would you like AI to help with, and what would you prefer AI kept is nose out of?

Vibrance of Variety

Flight journeys to exotic lands across the planet are tedious. Grateful as I am for flights, and the miracle of hot food, good air, and the view from above. It can get to be a trifle monotonous after the first 10 hours, By 12 hours, it is painful, by 14 excruciating. You get the picture.

This time, we got to chase the sun rising over the Arctic Tundra. I peeked out into the orange horizon, and gasped. The sun rising over the clouds and us watching from above can give us quite the divine feeling. A feeling that only travelers in the past hundred years have had the blessing to experience. Sailors may have experienced this divinity while out in the oceans, hikers and mountaineers have been trying to experience this phenomenon from up above.

I did not get good pictures from up above this time, but some older pictures are always worth seeing again.

I was trying my best to stretch, glide and keep the body supple as I walked up and down the flight, waving my little hellos to the babies who had all decided that sleeping was not something to do when surrounded by this many people. What an adventure this was! Why would anyone waste it sleeping?

I looked at the poor parents, and they stood bleary eyed, teary eyed, weary all rolled into one. I remembered with a shudder the travels and travails of traveling with babies.

Never awaken a sleeping tiger cub…

One baby was friendly and smiled. He grinned and was the highlight of my flight. He reminded me of the daughter all those years ago when I haunted the flight corridors with her.

“You have a bassinet, my dear! Why would you not sleep? Lie down – stretch those little arms and legs and just sleep!” I coo-ed and he giggled.

“I wish we had bassinets!” I said to the frazzled mother, and she agreed heartily.

Walking up and down the flight and out in the airports, I couldn’t help noticing the number of different personalities in the world. Were there really infinite possibilities of personalities in this world? The combinatorial explosion is hard enough to contend with. Then, over and above, nature, is nurture. Each one, whose circumstances helped shaped them in drastic or subtle ways.

I had been reading a rather large family saga over the past few days, and realized that no matter how many personalities we encounter in this world, we will still be surprised by humankind.

The baby cooed and asked to be shown the panel wall behind me, and I obliged. We smiled yet again and took a peek at the sun rise, then a few hours later, we left the blazing day behind and kept flying into the night. The babies cooed and cried, laughed, and danced. Each personality budding and developing into their own personalities to add to the vibrant variety we already have on this planet.

“So, how old are your children now?” the mother asked with a yearning look as I tried to shake sleep. I assured her that time would fly past and she can soon dream of sleep on long flights!

Wind💨, Rain 🌧️ & Boats ⛵️

In what was a beautiful wind-whipped whirl one morning, the on-a-spring-break son and I went on a walk. Power & Internet were down, which meant we could both twirl off on our adventures while these things were being restored.

A few minutes in, we were confronted with a huge water pipe that gushed out in great spades. The county’s water department was already there looking into the problem, while we stood watching in awe as the water spooled off into the drain. Clean water.

“Hmm…everything decided to go nuts huh?!” the son said, as we stopped to marvel at the swift waters.

“Do you think we’ll have time to head back and bring back papers to make boats?” he asked, after a few seconds of awed water watching. I saw the determined faces of the county workers’ faces gleam with triumph – they had fixed the problem no doubt, which meant our time was short. Luckily, it was also garbage day, and the windy day had scattered a couple of pamphlets in the wind as the garbage truck tipped the contents over. So, off we went chasing after these pamphlets to make into paper boats.

If the maestros of productivity were to observe us that morning, there would be a lot of tutting, and note-taking on ways-to-improve, but we felt amazing.

Our boats, Mitillandimus Tittilandumas, and Mixter Baxter Junior fared the best. The remaining capsized before starting. For those interested, our boat christening was inspired by Gerald Durrell’s boat, Bootle Bumtrinket, in the book, My Family and Other Animals.

There does not seem to be a word to capture the sense of adventure, contentment and joy watching your paper boats take off on adventures, but we both highly recommend the experience.

What kind of life is it always to plan

and do, to promise and finish, to wish

for the near and the safe? Yes, by the

heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want

a boat I couldn’t steer.

~ Mary Oliver, Book: Blue Horses

Just as the last of our boats disappeared with the rivulets, the wind picked up, and we tried keeping ourselves upright as we continued on. It was no use. Within minutes, the winds were accompanied by plump raindrops, and we scuttled back home.

It had been a useful outing, and we came back refreshed and grateful that the rains started lashing down a few minutes after we reached. Back home, the power gods had restored electricity but not the internet. So, we settled ourselves down to a cup of tea and cocoa. We sipped in silence while the rain pattered all around us.

“Wonder what happened to our boats!” the son said finishing his hot cocoa, and we smiled together. They were not in safe harbor, and it was an exhilarating thought.

🌸🌸🌸 Oubaitori in Spring Time 🌸🌸🌸

Spring is here, and with it, the delightful uncertainties of the weather.

Would it be a cold, bright, cloudless day, or a cold, cloudy day, or a warm sunny day? The possibilities are endless. Sometimes, I feel like a lamb in spring-time ready for a spot of prancing and rollicking in the hills, other times, like a caterpillar not yet ready to shed the cocoon.

Springtime is a fantastic excuse to wear a silly hat and chase after unicorns, wouldn’t you agree?

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

With the increasing length of our days, it is a beautiful feeling to step out into the sunset at the end of the day, The golden hour seems more radiant, and seems to even linger more, though that just may be due to the fact that the body has had the time to sip a cup of tea at the end of the day before sunset.

One evening, I stopped to savor a fat plop of a raindrop on my face, and saw that the cherry trees had leaves on them. The flowers had all but gone. They were there two days ago. I peered at another tree not far away, still resplendent in its floral beauty, and another one that had a good smattering of brown leaves along with their pinkish blossoms. Once again, that longing to capture the blooming and blossoming in slow-motion came over me. How lovely it would be to sit and watch for the leaves to come in?

Ah! What little things give us pause?!

I read about a beautiful Japanese concept, Oubaitori

The ancient Japanese idiom, Oubaitori, comes from the kanji for the four trees that bloom in spring: cherry blossoms, plum, peach, and apricot. Each flower blooms in its own time, and the meaning behind the idiom is that we all grow and bloom at our own pace.

A few days later, I went on another walk, this time peering up at a clear blue sky, and no jacket, only to notice the young gingko trees in the neighborhood beginning to sprout their light green leaves of beauty. I remembered the large gingko tree we’d long admired. That large tree, over a century old, fell in the winter storms this year, and I felt a pang. The patch on which it stood was overgrown with fresh grass, and a meadow full of yellow flowers. Nature’s lessons and epiphanies are rarely novel, but always welcome.

Making a mental note to go for a short hike in the beautiful green hills nearby, I reluctantly headed home.

Spring time is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s Party’!

– Uncle Fred in the Spring Time – By P G Wodehouse

Maybe it is time for a spot of springtime laughter with the maestro, P G Wodehouse himself.

Zinniga-Zanniga Tree – The Cure-It-All Tree

Dr Seuss Magic

“Isn’t it marvelous to leave such a legacy behind?” I asked sleepily. It was Dr Seuss’s birthday and typically marked as Read Across America week. I miss the fuss of the week in elementary schools. The middle schoolers and high schoolers get to have their fun, but we just get to hear about it a lot less, I guess.

Lazily, I picked up a book written by Dr Seuss, that has been lying around for ages in the children’s bookshelves and had never read before. The Bippolo Seed and Other Stories.

bippolo

The stories, some of them at least, had predictable plot lines, but oh! How he presented them! I feel justified in the use of as many exclamation marks as necessary when writing about Dr Seuss. For instance, there is a story of a bear ready to pounce on a rabbit. The rabbit, doing some quick thinking, stalls the bear with an intriguing thought.

The Rabbit, the Bear, and the Zinniga-Zanniga

“I sure hate to tell you It isn’t too good.
I was counting the eyelashes 'round your eyes,
Your left eye…your right eye…and, to my surprise,
They weren’t the same number!
…
“I’m sorry…SO sorry.
But, sir, it is true.
Poor Bear! This is dreadful!
One eyelash too few!”

In typical Dr Seuss fashion, the rabbit takes it to ridiculous extremes. Could the bear’s spine be cracking, could his brain be lopsided, all those aches and pains, oh it all makes sense. By the end of the tale, the bear is sitting atop a zinniga-zanniga tree with a flower pressed to his eye so that the extra eyelash can grow and make him feel whole again, while the rabbit skips on his way, free from the bear’s claws.

Oh!

I laughed so hard, I sputtered and sprayed my coffee, I put my phone in the refrigerator and looked for it all morning, and I almost walked straight into a zinniga-zanniga tree myself.

What a marvelous tale to encapsulate how our worries sometimes run away with our imagination, the hypochondriacs hidden in every one of us to a certain degree poking fun at itself, and the societal pressures on perfect eyelashes playing into the bear’s psyche?

Sometimes, we need entire tomes to discuss these themes, other times, a lost story of Dr Seuss would do.

The Leap Wish

If you see me just for a day, with my nose transformed into a beautiful horn, and roaming the skies or plumbing the depths of the ocean, I can explain:

A Leap Wish?

“So, what do you wish can exist for one day only on Feb 29th? “ the son asks one evening.

“Hmm?” I am taken aback from the question, though I really shouldn’t be. The skies know I have had my fair share of them. But it still surprises me.

“It can’t be a person, but it can be a magical power, a creature that is long extinct etc. Like a leap year wish – a leap wish!” he says.

That was an intriguing thought. Something to wish for that only exists on Feb 29th. I thought, and thought about it shamefully for so long. Why was this so hard?

What would each of us like?

🐋“Hmm..maybe a chance to see our world from different perspectives? Like being a unicorn filled with magic and a narwhal who can dive deep and long?” I said. “Let me think about this a bit more. What would you want?” I asked him.

Screenshot 2024-02-28 at 8.40.47 PM

🦕Unsurprisingly, he came up with so many different things and versions, but finally settled on, “ I’d want dinosaurs to roam the Earth as they used to just for that one day, so we can see, how it all was for them.”

The husband said he would play the world to his advantage and ask to be able to teleport himself everywhere so he could experience a sampling of the world and make the most of 24 hours to make it 36 with the time differences.

“You and your can-do attitude. Can’t just take the 24 hours given to you – you have to optimize it to 36!” I chided him gently, though I admired him all the more for it, especially hearing what he had in mind.

🪸The coral reefs of the coast of Australia to the beaches in Brazil, a cold desert stop in the Gobi desert on the way to a hot one in the Thar desert or the Arabian one.

birthday

By the end of my conversation with him, I found myself thinking of longing and gratitude to live out our lives on this wondrous planet.

What would you like?

What about you? What would you like to experience that one day? Remember, it only lasts a day. For all you financial magnates, if you want a billion dollars to experience life as a billionaire, remember you get to be yourself with your old bank account the next day. That may make the remaining days that much more normal – be warned!

I spent the walk back pondering on how our life would be if we each got our wishes. Would the leap day every four years be wondrous, exciting, nerve-wracking, frightful, beautiful, scary?

We’ve all heard of the gypsy’s curse: May you get what you wish for! In this case, would it be too much for us to handle?

🌈Irisophiles?🌈

February is really the month of Love. Not just because of Valentine’s Day, but the rainbows!

February has been the month of rainbows – at least here in the Bay Area. Even if we know the Science behind rainbows, they are special. We’d glance outside, and see the sun peeking out after the rains, and I’d run to see if the magic is there. That in itself is surely magical.

While there are many words to describe the love of sunsets, clouds, starry skies, the sun, the moon, eclipses, forests, rain, thunder and lightning, there isn’t really a word to describe the love of rainbows. No one word to capture the soaring of the heart when it spots the multi colored ring of the Earth’s horizons. The squealing of the young and the old as they charge outside to catch the magical light of this beautiful universe. Imagining how marvelous it must look to hummingbirds and those who can see a larger spectrum of light.

Rainbow Tales

Of course rainbows have enamored humankind for centuries.

🌈I can’t help thinking of the silly fable about the fox marrying the crow and throwing the garland up in the sky, and that is how a rainbow is formed, every time we spot one.

👰Greek myths have a goddess, Iris, who is both a messenger of the gods and a personification of the rainbow. In Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, the demigods are able to use drachmas to communicate with the gods through a rainbow.

🍀The Irish, of course, have a quirky tale about finding gold at the end of the rainbow.

That is why I was this surprised at not being able to easily find a word for a lover of rainbows in a world filled with them.

Should we call ourselves Irisophiles?

🌇Opacarophile: lover of sunset

🎨Chromatophile – a lover of colors

⚡Ceraunophile – a lover of thunder and lightning

🌩️Nephophile – a lover of clouds

☀️Heliophile – a lover of the sun

🌜Selenophile – a lover of the moon

🤽Limnophile – a lover of lakes

🕯️Photophile – a lover of natural light

🌧️Pluviophile – a lover of rain

🌊Thalassophile -a lover of the sea and oceans

🌳Nemophile – a lover of forests

💛Xanthophile – a lover of the color yellow

Here are a list of words to engage any nature-o-philes:

Words for lover of Nature and Weather

What do you think? Should the lover of rainbows be called an Irisophile. Or what other words would you suggest?

⚡️💨⛈Cloud Kitchens ⚡️💨⛈

We were walking at a time when everything around us was glowing in a golden hue. The sun was setting, highlighting the clouds in the horizon from within or behind, giving them a glorious gloriole. The recent storm had news channels talking of our favorite term in recent times – atmospheric rivers.

The actual river was flowing with muddy waters from the recent rains, the trail was still strewn with branches and twigs after the recent battering of the storms, the deer that usually had more space to graze were standing glumly off to the side for their favorite haunts were water-logged. Or at least I thought they stood glumly: they looked contented and happy with the fresh grass, and each other for company.

“Look at those clouds and the lighting from behind them!” I squealed.

“Oh please amma! You talk of nothing but countertops and cabinets these days!” said the son.

“I do not!” I said, mock-offended and a trifle sheepish. Well – the fellow was not entirely wrong. It was true, I was becoming one of those bores who go on and on about cabinets. I am trying to switch out the cabinets in our kitchen, and it has proved to be a task that had hidden depths to its complexity. Regardless – just then, I was talking about clouds and the sunset, and said so with a haughty sniff.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of how the hidden lighting would look under the cabinets.!” he said, and I laughed. I had not actually thought of it, but if the poor fellow thought his usually cloud-and-sunset-loving mother saw cabinets in clouds, I had scarred him indeed. Feeling suitably chastened, I promised to shelve all talk of cabinets for the walk. “Get it? Get it? Shelve talk of cabinets! Huh?”

He rolled his eyes, and though the clouds reminded me of the subtle grays and whites in certain countertops I had seen, I kept the opinion to myself, and we walked on chatting amiably of this-and-that.

Kitchens could wait, sunsets could not.

Sun Rise Sun Rise!

We stood there waiting for the sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

We had driven up there the previous evening in what felt like 20 degree weather. The moon lit scapes around us were beautiful from inside the car, but outside, it looked unforgiving. It was cold, and the desert around us was different enough. Even so, the same landscapes at night take on a different feel and dimension altogether. The shelves of stone around us in the early morning light of dawn was breathtaking. As if a different hue was revealed with every tilt in angle of the sun’s rays.

How drawn to light we are as a species? Somewhere, the sharp smells of pine wafted through, and I wondered briefly whether we stopped to let our other senses weigh in as much when we have sight and light.

I suppose we do let sounds and smells in, and do allow our sense of touch to help us along. But do we really develop our other senses? A preliminary search says we gather about 80% of our sensory perceptions using sight.

Dogs, on the other hand, seem to distribute their perceptions between sight, smell and sound.

The early morning calm of the sun-rise and my meandering thoughts were interrupted by the loud calls of a mother looking for her children. I turned around irritated, and was somewhat surprised that I was surrounded by this many people on a cold Christmas Day morning, standing on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sun to rise.

But I suppose, it was my fault for not expecting this. It promised to be a beautiful day, after all, and like me, many had decided to brave the cold, and take in the marvelous sunrise over the horizon at a point helpfully named Sunrise Point.

I let out an amused grin, and exchanged a look with the children – they seem to have caught on to my look of surprise at finding other people there. It was a beautiful moment: the mother pulled her child towards her, and the sun burst forth in glory over the horizon.

All was well with the world at this moment.

Let’s go for some breakfast and then take a long, quiet walk along time, I said shuffling away from Sunrise Point, and the children chuckled at the thought. We are not an early rising family, and we scurried inside towards warmth, food and coffee before attempting to take on people and canyons.

🍁I Found A 🍁🍁Million🍁🍁 Bucks 🍁

“It rained last night, did you hear?” the son said the first thing in the morning as he crept groggily downstairs.

I confessed I hadn’t. It had been a late night – one fraught with beeping alarms, low-battery carbon monoxide filters, very cold temperatures, and a spate of international phone calls. I remember peeking out at the full-ish moon before finally collapsing into a warm bed, but not much else. In fact when the alarm went off in the morning, I was in the midst of a strange and confusing dream in which somebody was giving me a recipe. I can’t remember the details, but I also remember my first thought being – what a strange recipe!

Luckily I shook all memories of frog chutneys and slime pickles aside and made for the open air. The air was fresh – the Earth beautiful after the rains, and I was not going to miss it.

I was rewarded with brilliant cloudy skies, rain-drop topped leaves, and quiet birds shaking their wings and beaks throughout.

I stopped to marvel at the casual beauty that lay there in front of me – the lake not realizing the perfect reflection it provided to the mountains in the distance, the fall trees closer by, and the still groggy white heron on the opposite shore. All just there for anyone wanting to see it. Sleepy, dewy, cloudy, misty.

fall-COLLAGE

I stood there trying to remember the chemical names that were responsible for the brilliance of the colours reflected before me: carotenids, anthocyanins and tannins. I wondered at the wisdom of these trees: realizing that it was time to stop photosynthesis and let the tannins and cyanins or whatever take over without any fanfare, and producing the most breath-taking show for the world to revel in.

🍁Carotenids : the pigments for the orange and yellow colors

🍁Anthocyanins: the pigments that are responsible for the purples and reds.

🍁Tannins: responsible for the brown color.

Almost instinctively, I looked around and found myself alone. Alone in a bustling suburban area – the only one who took a quick detour and stopped to admire the lake on my way from somewhere to somewhere. It felt nice. Special. Like I had won a million bucks.

November is already on its way out – 2023 is already on its way out. The trees have put their show on, on time. I gave myself a little scolding: My Christmas tree was not up yet. “But I did have some beautiful poinsetta plants beaming their reds at me in the morning, that was something! “ I said to myself heading to a small park bench, and there: I found a million bucks.

I left it there for the next lucky person to find, and went on my way, a smile playing on my lips.

Who said the universe did not have a sense of humor?

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