Monday 25 August 2014

Quiet happy

It's been a mixed bag of things that have kept me busy, entertained and quite happy this last week or so. Which is doubly awesome to some extent, since I was also on duty! First up was a visit to Oslo to attend a free concert, my first Indian classical one in quite some time, and it was a flute recital by Pt. Hariprasad Chourasia! 


A wonderful evening was rounded up with a visit to a restaurant that I had last visited, more by accident than design, back around Christmas '05! Isn't it wonderful when you find half remembered paths exactly where you'd left them? Complete with clown statues and everything :).


Since then I've managed to lose (then find, then lose again, etc.) my way through the woods surrounding Asker on various occasions. Always managing to find a way back, in the end :). It's been a bit dark and gloomy lately, but since that's only a precursor of what's to come, I've been taking what I can get. 


There are always bonuses of course! The odd sleepy lake with mist floating over the water, water lilies, strangely (to my eyes) coloured wood rotting peacefully in between mushrooms and the occasional bursts of bright sunshine through the trees.


It's official though, summer's over. Some of the leaves have started changing colour already. On top of that, the temperatures have stayed consistently low, so swimming outdoors is adjourned till next year. Although there's always the pool for that.


There's also been more cooking, parathas, no less :D. Now if only the sun would come back out for properly long periods of time, I'm itching to get back out on the bike, even if the days of cycling in just shorts and a tee-shirt are over.

Currently: hoping that the clouds will clear
Listening to: Django Reinhardt - Fly fishing

Sunday 17 August 2014

The ghost of you

There are many things that might remind someone of their mortality. One of the less dramatic ones (ironically) seems to be the death of stars. Music, film, that kind of star, not the gigantic thermonuclear kind.

I suppose it's the death of Robin Williams that's brought on this line of thought, but more so as I came across one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's films. The end of Jack Goes Boating, no less. I keep thinking how in Scent of a Woman O'Donnell and Hoffman played classmates, only a few years apart in age in reality, but the two went somewhat different ways since then.

The thing is, sooner or later, as more of the famous people you grew up watching or listening to disappear, less and less of them can be considered to be gone before their time. Eventually people begin to go in the fullness of time. To quote the House finale, everybody dies.


It is not always that I consciously think about it, but there is a reason Roy is quoted up at the top.

Currently: reflecting on memories
Listening to: Ella Henderson - Ghost

Thursday 14 August 2014

Of raindrops and old techno music

Whenever I have one of these big stories stuck in my head (aka something I'd like to put in a proper post about, but am either lazy or busy or both, or neither even) I tend to stop posting other things as they happen. No great drama, I assure you, it's all mostly of the "Ooh! I went cycling again!" or "Woah! It's still sunny at 9pm." variety. Well it is, and yes, I did, not respectively.


Anyhow, it's the more random things, purple sails, for instance, that I feel bad about not posting. Also bizarreness of Chinese fortune telling, which, I assure you, appears to be entirely different from the bizarreness of Indian fortune telling. At least in my experience.


For a variety of reasons I've been walking around a bit more than cycling, and even cooking some. (Heh, I slipped that last one in all cool and quietly but really, I'm doing somersaults inside. Cooking, as in the proper food from scratch cooking, for me is what would qualify as being a B I G D E A L. :P)


Latest in a long series of realizations: I should not have started reading the already-published issues of Sandman: Overture till all of them were out. I just shouldn't have.


On the other hand, Guardians of the Galaxy was totally awesome :). Caught it on 3D last night, and couldn't stop laughing :D. If only all films were this much fun. Oh well.


In the mean time it's been pouring buckets. So much rain, that I was reminded of monsoon back in Asansol. Which is saying something. Looks like summer's over, and it's left behind a wet and limp sort of autumn. Wonder what winter's going to be like.

Currently: glad to be a car owner :P
Listening to: Darude - Feel the beat

Friday 8 August 2014

Afterglow

It is sometimes difficult to capture a moment once it is past. It feels a bit like several sheets of glass superimposed, of varying transparency. Each with an image, some obscuring others and in turn being obscured, in a maze of colour. A sense, a feeling is all that is left and even that seems fleeting, hard to trap into a cage of words.


There have been many such moments since I last put anything down in this space. Moments in the sun, surrounded by lakes or fjords full of waves or flat as a mirror. Moments on stretches of grass or outcrops of rock and stone. Moments on sand and on strips of tarmac snaking past a dizzying variety of landscapes.


Then there were the nine days spent on that outcrop of sun, stone, wood and water some call Lofoten. Where the nice weather days look stunning and awe inspiring, and the bad weather days even more so. Where the edges of the world seem to draw closer and the amazing seems only an arm's length away.


Now I am back in the real world and it is just so hard to let go of the last remaining wisps of that other one that are fading away. One of these days I'll write a more coherent account of the trip. Maybe.

Feeling: amazed, still
Listening to: Ingrid Michaelson - Wonderful unknown (ft. Greg Laswell)