Tag: inspiration

Exploring Handwriting: Cursive vs. Digital Age

Cursive superpowers

The white board was littered with alphabets and numbers. We were discussing the different ways in which people wrote their numerals or alphabets. 

“How come nobody seems to like cursive writing as much anymore?” I said, and off we went writing our little cursive numerals and alphabets like artists swirling their best hieroglyphic characters.

“Is that an ‘I’? Truly? I have never seen an ‘I’ like that before!”

“Wow – that ‘J’ is wild! No wonder teachers moved away from cursive. “

“Well, there is a lost skill – imagine the superpowers teachers had deciphering everyone’s handwriting and essays.”

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia anyone?

That was true. It is a superpower. Writing fast was a superpower too, one that was made easier with cursive. How beautifully could we go on in one pen stroke for a word like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis? How many people suffered from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia back then compared to now (fear of long words!)?

“I think in terms of the keyboard locations when I spell a word.” said a much younger colleague, and I drew in a breath – the places where generational differences get you is truly mind-boggling. But then I realized their generation spent more time typing things out in word documents, or in chat screens than any other generation preceding it, and it was only natural for their brain to associate the keyboard with the spellings..

One person said that when they added numbers, they imagined them as dominoes being added together. “Were you a gamer?” 

“Yes!” they said, looking a little sheepish.

The Cognitive Processes of our Brains

Truly, the brain is such a multi-layered immensely capable and adaptable organ. Neuroscience must truly be fascinating to study and research. How many visual thinkers were there among other species? What percentage were analytical? Many would possess kinetic intelligence. Once we stop only thinking of the narrow spectrum of human intelligence, the world becomes that many dimensions more fascinating. I peered into the bookshelf at a book that has been on my tsundoku shelf for ages: ‘How the Brain Thinks’ and resolved to read it soon.

The picture of the brain was on the front, and I smiled as I thought of a friend who told me that they don’t like eating cauliflowers because it looks too much like the human brain. What was that type of thinking called? Visual or Associative.

Knights of Rain

“Don’t you feel like a Knight of Rain?” I said. The words must have sounded somewhat garbled for the rains were lashing, the winds were whipping, and the trees were swaying somewhat alarmingly.

The husband shouted out a response lost to the elements. It sounded like ‘WHAT?!”

“I moved so I could use the wind’s direction to my advantage. “I said, don’t you feel like a Knight of the Rain?”

He lifted his umbrella momentarily to give me a withering look. A mistake. For the winds elegantly made an upside down lotus of the black umbrella he was holding, and he danced to right it again. I saw a neat few buckets of water making use of the interlude to rain its droplets all over him. 

I smiled. “Using our umbrellas as shields, we make our brave foray into the wild world frenzied up by the elements.”

I heard some grunting and tutting, but nothing more.

This year, the rains have been particularly sparse. Yesterday was only the second day of proper rainfall, and I’d yearned for it. Obviously not wanting to miss the fun, I dragged the husband along for a short stroll – in my defense it was not as bad when we started out. There were no warriors required then – merely prancers. Every little raindrop whispering its presence out to the world craving for its sound.

I’ve always loved the piece by YiruMa with the sound of the rain in the background.It feels like the magic was music was just waiting for that sound to make the transition from beautiful to sublime.

If They Could Do It, So Could We

🌲🌳🌴🎋 I peeked out from the umbrella at the branches of the pine trees and willow trees swaying and dancing in the rain, I felt the joy building up inside me – if they could do it, so could we! 

🦅🐿️🐦‍⬛🦢I heard the sound of the winds and the rains against our flimsy shields of cloth, and marveled at the wood ducks enjoying themselves in the waters. When the rains stopped, they took just shook themselves off, with a little dance, didn’t they? If they could do it, so could we!

🐳🐟🪼I felt the trickle of chill water droplets that managed to shimmy past my umbrella’s shield and my jacket’s hood to slide down my neck, and gurgled a bit. I peered out. Were we lost – where were we? If the lost fish could find their way to the streams, and the streams to the rivers, and the rivers to the mighty ocean, so could we!

Who needs raincoats when there are rain quotes?

When finally the pair of us stepped into the home, one euphoric, and the other helpless. “Wasn’t that the most marvelous walk in a long time?”  collided with “Only an idiot would step out in this weather.”. It was like watching hydrogen peroxide mix with yeast and water. The laughter shaking out of our systems with the rain droplets. 

“I need a change of clothes before heading out now.” he grumbled but I caught a smile, as he shook his head and said, “A walk in the rain!”

Who needs raincoats when one is busy looking for rain quotes?

“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.”

– Roger Miller

Sonder and Saudade: Reflections on Travel and Books

Sonder

Traveling anywhere in the holiday season brings this fact to the fore. Airports, railway stations, bus stops, freeways – every place is packed with people, more people and more and more people. It was faintly unnerving at times to see this many people out in the world, all seemingly busy doing their many things. How many of them thought deeply, what did they do to occupy themselves, earn a living, attend to their loved ones? How many of them were loving and giving, and how many selfish and cruel?

That feeling of realizing the sentience of our fellow beings can be especially acute when traveling in crowded places. There is a beautiful word for it: sonder.

But wherever you were: one thing was apparent. Business was thriving. Clothing stores, eateries, perfumeries, jewelry stores – they dotted every city, country and airport. One time, I remember gazing out the window as we rode from one end to the diagonally opposite end of the city, and seeing shops after shops after shops. There was an apparent unending need for clothing and electronics, for consumption. One cannot help wondering about the ecological impact of all this, but there you are. ‘Better’ means the old has to go somewhere, and make place for the new. Maybe the next wave of innovations will be in making biodegradable plastics, electronics and clothing. After all, the waste that we are generating now can hardly be a scalable problem.

Lack of book stores in all the airports, cities

Even as I gazed out through the window taking in the local sights though, one thing sent a pang through me: the lack of bookstores anywhere was truly tragic. I felt their absence keenly. I had asked my siblings to fit in a visit to the bookstore. The only one in the vicinity was a little like a wild goose chase. The shop had moved they said, you cannot see the billboard from road they said. When finally, we found it, the reason was apparent. It was tucked away underground, as if hidden away from population. Only if you truly had the magical three things, could you find it: the will, the means, and the luck.

The bookstore had a passionate but regretful owner. “No space madam. Only so many books!” He said, gesturing apologetically to the small collection he had. To be fair, the little store had a fair amount of shelf space for children’s books (maybe those are the ones people are actually buying), but other fare was slim pickings. They were a few translated classics (which was a new section I admit) – it was heartening to see A Hundred Years of Solitude translated into Tamil. We picked up some books including a Tamil version of 1984 to donate to our local library in the USA.

The Hidden Bookshops of Timbuktu

But it all felt like the hidden bookshops of Timbuktu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts

How many malls, streets covered with stores, and yet for intellectual stimulation, one had to either go scrounging or online? It was the same in many airports too. Perfumes, alcohol, watches, jewelry, clothing, chocolates, coffee, burgers: you could find these everywhere you turned, but good old fashioned books were tucked away in a corner (if at all), and hard to find.

What would it take for every coffee store, every clothing store, every jewelry store to have a reading nook that people could browse and buy books if they wanted? Wouldn’t that be marvelous? A tiny art nook that one could spend time creating their own art and craft while others shopped? I know reluctant shoppers would gladly accompany their friends and family if they could be tempted with the right incentives.

Was that utopian thinking?

Image: The beautiful hotel in which we stayed in Zurich that had a large marvelous library in its lobby. My heart sang, my spirits danced, and my soul settled, here in the presence of greatness!

Saudade

Our own town in US lost its bookstores to the great Amazonian sweep a decade ago. But luckily stores like Target or Costco still have a small pecking section for those really wanting to buy books or see them before picking them up.

Oh books! When did you go from being ubiquitous to precious to rare?

Could this be referred to as Saudade? That feeling or yearning for lost experiences?

On Tyranny: Power and Compliance

On Tyranny

This book is a required reading for what’s coming.

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The book restricts itself to Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which is even better. For power hungry dictators have been there throughout human history, and the book may well turn out to be a treatise of its own, if not time-capped. Recent events are usefully analyzed from a technological and sociological view. After all, many of the fascists of the past century found themselves propped up through a democratic process, even if they refused to give up power democratically later on. 

One of the first topics in the book, On Tyranny – By Timothy Snyder Illustrated by Nora Krug caught my attention.

It talks about compliance without being asked to. 

“Do not obey in advance”

“A citizen who adapts in this way  is teaching power what it can do.”

  • On Tyranny – By Timothy Snyder

I found myself nodding along several times during the examples given from the Hitler regime, or sociological experiments conducted since, and was quite shocked to see it all play out again in recent times. 

For instance, the past week itself gave us examples of ‘Do not obey in advance’. It was in the flurry of news items about Meta – the mega social network bending over and showing what it is capable of doing for Donald Trump’s regime. The company removed the fact checking team, and essentially stopped DEI efforts.

Quote from article on removing the fact-checking intiative:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan memorably wrote four decades ago.

As far as DEI efforts go, to get to a point where a DEI team was necessary took many decades of work, mindset changes and progressive ideas. To remove it all in one stroke sets us back by at least two decades, does it not?

Now slowly think of all the programs and places in which progress has been painstakingly achieved through education, forward thinking initiatives etc, and the mind boggles on what lies ahead of us.

In the past few weeks, there were several discussions in which we wondered:

  • How do we know when a leader is likely to become a fascist ruler?
  • How do we know whether our systems designed to survive democracy will do so?
  • Which of the very institutions that help towards justice will be disbanded or at least thwarted in their efforts to do so?
  • And many more. 

The questions will answer themselves soon, shall they not?

Gratitude and Intentions: Welcoming the New Year

Welcoming the New Year

It has long been tradition to welcome the new year. The hope of new beginnings, the ability to reset, taking stock of what needs to be done in the year ahead, what did not work in the year past, is always precious.

This year, I sat in an airport reading the beautiful meditations of Maria Popova on the symbolisms of the new year, and some blessings to begin the year with.  She says in her beautiful essay on new beginnings: 

Some Blessings to Begin with – The Marginalian

“The universe didn’t owe us mountains and music, that we didn’t have to be born, and yet here we are with our physics and our poems and our ever-breaking, ever-broadening hearts.”

  • Maria Popova

I found myself nodding along at her evocative language, and the beautiful blessings she envisions.

Many times in the past, I have had discussions with the children, and nieces, on why I pray or meditate , and what blessings I hope to gain from it. I love having this discussion with them, for they know I am not a particularly religious person: so why do I pray? It also allows me a glimpse into the kind of personalities they wish to become.

Why do I pray?

I tell them I pray so I am able to set my intentions for what I hope to do with this life I am blessed with. Like setting resolutions for who we are becoming.

🐘 When I pray for health, it means, I would be cognizant of what I eat, how I exercise, how to keep my mind and body stimulated and healthy.

🐘 When I pray for prosperity, it means, I will subconsciously work towards a better life – not just for me, but for those around me too –  for when we all have better lives, we all prosper. (granted ‘better’ in itself is a nebulous term, and usually at different epochs in our lives, they mean different things) 

🐘 When I pray for continued success, it means I will work towards having goals, and try to cultivate the motivation and discipline required to achieve them. 

🐘 When I pray for good relationships, it means I would subconsciously avoid conflicts over little things, and work towards harmonious relationships. 

When I pray for….you get the gist. 

Do the same things then hold for blessings too?

I wonder. 

For some blessings can only be recognized as such after the fact.

image

What are the blessings I am grateful for?

I am grateful for the blessing of life, the fragile conditions that allow us to thrive on this tiny blue planet, the people in our lives who are crucial to our happiness, the microbes and bacteria that all do their part in keeping us functioning, the interconnectedness of the universe that enables the web of rapture to continue, the curiosities of our natures that help us continually improve and problem solve, the conditions of peace-time, the opportunities, the ability to find joy in our lives, the abundance of flora and fauna on this marvelous planet, and so much more.

So what are the blessings you are grateful for, and will they translate into prayers or resolutions for you?

Elevating Resolutions for the New Year Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds – The Marginalian

The Role of Seaweed in Reducing Methane Emissions

The Odds of Our Survival

I was listening to a podcast by Yuval Noah Harari (How humans came to rule the world) and he was saying that if he were to draw odds of survival in the wild against a lion or a zebra, he would not rate himself too highly at being in the race at all as much, but as a species we do seem to have gone above and beyond. It is true. While human-beings can be extremely frustrating , what humanity is capable of achieving is truly astonishing. The eradication of so many life-threatening diseases such as small-pox, continuing medical advances including the recent covid vaccination, and so much more.

Humanity never does seem to have a dearth of problems to solve too. Maybe it was one of the things that came out of Pandora’s Box too. This ability for every solution we create, we seem to have more problems to solve. The industrial revolution led us to climate change, increased technology and reliance on over-stimulation with social media etc is leading to increasing mental health problems. But still we persevere on. When industrialization swept the globe, many feared the end of meaningful work, but the nature of work has morphed and morphed into something our ancestors can hardly recognize as work. 

Climate Change

Take for instance all the ways in which we set about solving the climate change problem (after having caused it in the first place – true true! ) 

While talking to college going young adults, one of the majors that keeps popping up is environmental science, ecological preservation, green engineering – all fascinating fields related to tackling the increased effects and problems of climate change.

That is the redeeming quality too of our sometimes frustrating species. 

This piece of news make me rejoice in the capabilities of human-beings, and the beauty of our planet earth all at once. 

Feeding seaweed to cattle reduces their methane emissions by upto 40%. Considering that 40% of methane emissions are from cattle fodder, this is a huge step in the right direction indeed.

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/12/scientists-just-took-one-step-closer-to-a-climate-friendly-cow/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The oceans coming to our aid again! Seaweeds – truly if there are deities in the universe, the ocean would have to be ours. 

Methane production from live fodder constitutes 40% of greenhouse gases, and if feeding cows seaweeds reduces that by 40%, we may very well have a significant dent on the problem (16% reduction in methane will be a significant dent if all cows are able to get on a seaweed diet.) 

I want a beautiful word for the interconnected-ness of the universe

Seaweeds 🙂 The beauty of it is astonishing and the more I think of all the wonders that bound us together on this small planet, the more I am astounded by it. The interconnectedness of it all sometimes has me breathless in awe. How did we get to call this planet home? 

I ramble, but it may well be tipping point for the planet.  If the doomsayers are to be believed, the breakthrough comes as a critical moment.

The Ocean Deities Defy Pandora

It is as if the ocean deities are having a laugh and teasing Pandora with this win, and and with wins right now – we should take all the logical and sensible ones while we can.

The Oldest Trick in the Book

Flittable Flipperbits

It was one of those days when I felt speed and productivity were playing a cruel joke on me. It bonked me from chore to meeting to event to missed messages, and by the end of it all, I had a vague sense of all the things that didn’t feel quite right because the important had been muddled in with the unending stream of the banal.

In all the melee of rushing about the day, I realized that I had missed an important piece of communication, which, had I picked up at the right time might have saved me about two hours of turmoil, but there you are. 

Later that night, I felt foggy. Nebulous clouds, misty and mysterious as they seemed, I knew I needed to sit and stew for a bit for them to take shape. But then, of course I was too stimulated to do that – flittable flipperbits!  I marveled yet again at the highly energetic, always-on-top-of-things folks we meet in our daily lives. They sparkle with busyness, and seem to be happy about it too. I felt that strange longing to be like them just for a day perhaps! 

By the end of the day, the world seemed to laugh at me, and I had no choice but to join in. So, I did. 

The husband gave me a curious look and said, “Well – you just did get a day like that, and you seemed to have managed pretty well – you were busier than you wanted to be – a day filled with things to do, and jobs to get done, buzzing about. You seem to have missed out on some important things, but you took care of them. And you seem to be laughing at the end of it, so what’s wrong?”

I gave the poor fellow a look that I usually reserved for poorly cooked cabbages, said he wouldn’t understand, and swished off to bed. I felt like a cooked cabbage myself, how was that any good? 

Dreamy Strawberries

It was all made clear to me the next morning when I awoke from what seemed to be one of the strangest dreams that even I have had in a while. It involved marriage halls with catchy music, social situations that I fervently hope and pray I shall never find myself in, and feeling like I was run over by a truck that had strawberries in them with flowing taps of chocolate (but not dark chocolate – for some reason, this seemed like an important thing for the brain to remember the next day) 

So I decided to meditate today – the diagnosis was clear: this was an over-wrought brain. Nothing else. I shall meditate and all shall be well. By the time things pick up in a few hours, I shall have the world in control again, I said, and sat down to it. The oldest trick in the book really, but the most effective.

How did we muddle it all up?

I thought of all my wonderful yoga and meditation teachers, and invoked their calming voices. They floated up, and did their job, and I spent the next few minutes thinking about a conversation I had with my friend – who is a poetic soul brimming with love, and we had chuckled about it. How the world of remuneration is all inverted. The ones who really should be the best compensated are the ones who teach us to spend time with ourselves, taking what is available and trying to help us shape ourselves into something far more beautiful – our teachers, coaches, mentors, yoga, art and meditation teachers – and yet, the world has somehow played a cruel joke by compensating those who make the very algorithms and enable the lifestyles requiring these things to dance to the bank, and not the other way around.

I thought, I’d share this video though – for it says a lot of what I’d like to say – only a lot more cogently:

Rory Sutherland – Are We Now Too Impatient to Be Intelligent? | Nudgestock 2024

“Let’s let go of all stray thoughts – acknowledge them, but tell them, you’ll come to it.” said my meditation teacher’s voice in my brain – forgiving yet insistent, and I chuckled. How did she know where I had gone off to – even when I was only bringing her up as a figment of my imagination?

Meditation done, I felt like I could begin the dance of a new day with fresh energy, and rather looked forward to seeing how I would muddle it all up again. Somehow, that felt right.

Nature’s Ephemeral Splendor: Winter’s Whimsy

Winter is taunting in its loveliness.

The Thanksgiving break breezed in and breezed out – with a whirl of color, warmth of friends, and the whimsy of the winds. Cooking, baking, singing, dancing, playing, hiking, walking, admiring – all the wintry delights we’ve come to associate with the holiday season were there, and I wished for the same for every one of us. 

Our friends, who had visited us from Seattle, had us smiling as they exclaimed each day, “Oh – it is so beautiful to see the sun shining like this!” They purred like contented cats in the sun, and we went on many little and long walks to take in all of this.

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I glanced at the beautiful trees overhead and sighed a little today – December is already here and though the rains are keeping away, I knew the beauty of the fall leaves is already fast diminishing. Why does fall – one of the favorite seasons of the year have to be ephemeral?

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Well, all glorious periods are ephemeral aren’t they?

I suppose philosophers would say that beauty lies in the ephemeral nature of it, and I agree. I have never felt more content than when looking up into a tree that is gloriously sporting all colors in its beautiful foliage – green through maroon, or while gazing into the golden benevolence of a gingko tree. 

img_3794

However glorious days bring with it a problem – that of summoning up the determination required to stay indoors and doing work while all of the world outside beckons you to celebrate with it? How does one ignore the joyous swooping of a California blue jay?

Well, one doesn’t.

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Inspirations for Writing

Talented Inspirations

I recently read The Firework Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman

I’ve always wondered about the series of books that are titled thus: Galileo’s Daughter, The Clockmaker’s Daughter. The appeal of the daughters of men with interesting careers is an interesting premise. For so many years, women were denied the opportunity to consider interesting careers.

Like Elinor Dashwood (of Sense & Sensibility fame) says of women and careers:

“You talk of feeling idle and useless. Imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever”.

  • Jane Austen, Sense & Sensibility

If ever I am grateful for anything, it is that women’s talents are now nurtured and recognized. After all, talent does not distinguish between the crude lines drawn out by humanity – it does not care about race, caste, creed, sex, religion.

Fascinated as I was by the book, The Firework Maker’s Daughter,  I loved the colorful cast of characters, and  what is required from them to succeed in their profession. It also got me interested in the writing style of Philip Pullman – his was witty, whimsical, and oh-so-light.

Pullman on Writing (Source: Wikipedia)

“I have stolen ideas from every book I’ve ever read. My principle for researching a novel is ‘Read like a butterfly, write like a bee,’ and if this story contains any honey, it is because of the quality of the nectar I have found in the work of better writers.” 

  • Philip Pullman

A better imagery for writing I could not think of. If one thinks about it, life itself presents all the inspirations we want. Even when is in the midst of the Thanksgiving week-end, and may be busier with spending time with family, friends, trips etc, the inspirations are all around us. 

If you are looking for that November spark, look at sparkling fireworks of Diwali, the colorful trees of the fall foliage around us, the many friends and family one meets during November’s Diwali & Thanksgiving  seasons to gain your sense of well-being, gratitude and inspirations!

November’s Purpose

The world seemed to be buzzing with purpose, and I set out thinking about lofty human ‘angsty-things’ as the children called it too. What was our purpose – is there such a thing? Did ducks, hawks, deer, dogs pander after silly existential questions? We would never know!

It was a beautiful November day – one of those days that poets and artists can spend all their lives dreaming about. It truly was a delight to step out into the sparkling cold air, raise your head to take in the glorious panorama of the skies above through the glorious reds and yellows of the maple, beech, sycamore and willow trees.

As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see

– Vincent Van Gogh

The yellow leaves were looking golden in the sun’s rays, and the reds were nothing short of royal. We took a dozen pictures but knew there was nothing to be done but to sit and soak into the world around us. So we did.

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I set about closing my eyes to try and capture the day in my memory under a particularly fetching set of trees – it was after some time that I found myself called back by a bird. It wasn’t the shrill call of the california blue jay or the titter of the wrens, or the frenzied call of hummingbirds. Curious, I opened my eyes to see which bird it was. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was a woodpecker. It swooped low by me and flew to an adjacent clump of trees, and I followed as silently as I could. Though I realize that for birds and animals I must sound like a stampeding rhino. 

There – up above the smooth branches of some beech trees were a whole family of woodpeckers. They weren’t hammering their heads as they were known to do. The baby woodpecker’s downy feathers were still growing, and the sight made my heart still – more effective than any form of meditation I have ever attempted. 

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It was like an invitation to witness the simple pleasures of nature on a glorious day. I don’t know how long I stood watching the woodpeckers, but the head’s questions of purpose and meaning seemed rather meaningless just then, for the simple beauty of being alive on a beautiful day like this and being able to bear witness to the passing seasons with a heart full of gratitude felt like purpose enough.