Transfiguration

Maria wrote about Seamus Heaney’s advice and I borrow here:

“Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others. 

{…} — because unless that underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element in your make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into whatever profile the world prepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You’ll be in danger of molding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those of your own intuitive being.

{…} The true and durable path into and through experience involves being true to the actual givens of your lives. True to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge. Because oddly enough, it is that intimate, deeply personal knowledge that links us most vitally and keeps us most reliably connected to one another”

What happens when you ride the depth of despair only to float back up weightlessly?

What happens when you flirt with nihilistic despondency only to take a beat and romance the thrilling buoyancy?

What happens when the mind gets enmeshed in a loop of tendentious self-sabotage only to take a deep breath and be en-souled in a hum of quiet serenity?

All yours, springing from within, completely divorced from outside?

For one, it becomes a life without a dull moment; even the continued solitude is froth with happenings.

Happenings that are painful, that makes you bleed, that attacks your reveries of prosaicness with feral elongated silences, with supernova implosions.

There is no static self. Even your cells you were are born with, are replaced. Your environments change, your living conditions change. Yet you remain montage of your various selves pieced together bit by tiny bit over the course of a lifetime – reconfiguring your realities, continuously normalizing the equations of your here and now.

The more elements and variables of pain and strife, pleasure and joy, righteousness and morals, kindness and darkness, learning and mistakes – you parse, the more living the montage.

You come undone, you rebuild, you live on, you remake, and you evolve.

The continued transfiguration –more of it; sharply in focus; an arduous event horizon - definition of this year.

Almost 8760 tenacious hours have been put in to hone the skills. Now is the time to glide through the ballet of next 8784.

Happy 2020 Leap to all of you!

Copyright © Neerja Yadav

Transfiguration - Visuals

Twelve Steps

DEC

NOV

OCT

SEP

AUG

JUL

JUN

MAY

APR

MAR

FEB

JAN

Copyright © Neerja Yadav

Of Apulian Sun and Airport Romance - the Ways of November

On the banks of cerulean Adriatic, Puglia is about to become tourism’s next darling. The wide-eyed fresh faced southern belle, if you will.  But don’t just label her yet – she isn’t next Tuscany or even South of France. Puglia – Southern Italy’s gem - has its own bucolic charm.

Called the sun bleached heel of Italy – the region boasts of longest coastline of mainland Italy and Lonely Planet does better justice than I ever can, to the region.

From Munich I flew Alitalia to a quaint Bari airport.  Couple of hours of wait, coffee shots and buttery fluffy croissants later – I was joined by my sister. We look like twins and with dark hair and darker eyes – we could almost pass off as locals.

At a 25 mins drive from the airport, we had a week long stay at a enchanting 1927 Stone cobbled Unahotels Regina at Nociattaro.

An evening walk around in Torre A Mare followed by a hearty seafood meal where we were served the main course with a flourish and shy Hindi translation of “you girls are beautiful!” after having been told we were from India.  Needless to say we giggled like schoolgirls and went “Awww” - Italian Men! We could (and probably should) dedicate an entire blog post if not a book on the beauty and the unaware charm of these delicious specimens.

There was a time when strangers on the side of the roads doubled up as guides and maps; and getting lost in an unknown city in an unknown country was part of experience; the discovery of a beaten or unbeaten path to the destination made up the family legacy stories for generations. Google Maps made it an easier prop of the stories now.   

Hence, ensconced within, a 300 Euros a Day S 560 4MATIC Sedan chauffeured by very amiable Giovanni  - we made our way to:

the UNESCO Heritage Village Site of Alberobello – famous for its white limestone huts with conical rooftops called Trulli - some dating as long ago as Bronze Age.  The place makes you believe in magic. It is magic

 Via the meandering hilly highways lulled by the hum of the car we went on the idyllic cozy Locorotondo. It was the weekend and the air was a heady mix of washing, homemade orchiette pasta, woodsmoke and mulled wine. Walk around the town with its quaint church square – nonnas going about their business, young people hanging around. This place makes you want to give up your city life and make home here.

The beautiful white cities with medieval architecture, meandering highways lined with sun dappled olive groves and brilliant cuisine – Puglia as a region has fairytale beauty to it. 

And not just because of those delicious men! 

And this post hasn't even begun to do just justice to myriad experiences one had. In any case, in my experience - like pain, pleasure of senses can never be fully described. You just live it!  Making it part of one's blood streams. it shapes you. 

This wasn't meant to be a travel diary or even a reflection on flying 18 hours one way for a week long vacation at one of the less touristy spots. 

This was meant to be more of a dog eared page - as an adit leading to - hibernation cave of my self for a while.

                                                                    Copyright © Neerja Yadav

Things Unfinished

My heart beats precariously. 

Waking up late to morning sun – sunshine soaking in the very marrow as it travels. The photons fraternising with the blood cells – reunion of the dust particles.  Stardust.

After the house chores were done. I sat on the window seat with the filtered sunshine and wind caress, with a huge mug of tea and lit a cigarette more for the inhaling and the nicotine laced breath than the smoke. To the background score of no music, no noise save for my own thoughtless mind’s

I write less and then I write more - sometimes with frenzy, wrestling the words, ideas, feelings out of me at a feral state. And then switches code and takes forever over a few sentences like a languishing fever -  brewing, pontificating, mulling over – before it becomes the right shade of music – just enough grunge and enough jazz.

On weekdays – every morning I try and find a place by the side windows – windows that overlook water. It’s a busy harbour, yet the seemingly never-ending expanse of water, the undulating sails of waves – keep my balance centred.

Crackling Fire and Rippling Water – both of the same effect. How?  Why are hows important? Maybe they are not. It just is. Finding joy in the no definite answers and the unfinished-ness of things.

This is what I am learning. Leaning in with grace. 
A challenge for my Asperger driven OCD Mind. 
That the process is the pleasure. 

Whilst finishing things and tying that bow on the neatly done wrapping is a definite satisfaction; however the walk to soak in the moments could be a reward in itself.

This week – someone genuinely was overwhelmed by my poetry and said “I could marry you for this!” and this week I went out for lunch with someone who was brave enough to talk about mental health awareness with his own example, unabashedly. This week – I found space every single morning by the window overlooking the water – a feat in itself with the hot desk thing. This week – I paid almost all my debts. This week a few more steps  towards creating better user stories and better user experiences at work. This week – a few more meaningful candid chats with some solid examples of humans.

 This week, a strengthening of a bond of traditional belief; organically

I walk to a quaint café near my office, mid-mornings and watch people come in. The barista and I never say more than a hello and the order; and yet there’s a warm familiarity to it.

It’s the weekend now.  I write this while the Bose speakers flirt with jazz and Nirvaan plays quietly with his Lego, building out his complex imaginations. 

It’s the weekend and am grateful for the interlude. It’s the left-brain days.  

The weekend, I look forward. I exhale. I fall in love and fall apart.

We argue. We fall harder. Whatever happens I collect and create stories of us with all these unfinished pieces and fragments of questions, answers, conversations, snippets, chores and things left undone – unsaid – unfulfilled.

Copyright © Neerja Yadav