I and the body

Body is nature

Body is nature ,in leaf and in branch a bit of sky disappearing to a winter that has the four directions as clothes one wears , when one will go naked to the wind , breath like wind in door but body smile shall go on in the lips.

Body’s faint smile reasserts aliveness its relationships , all laughing matters all jokes remembered, fun replayed sarcasms revealed, jibes intended.

All this while ,inside, pectoral muscles are over time, bones in their support holding up nature like big green earth, a creation fish held to save world’s love of life, bon homie.

Digambara

He wears four directions as his clothes. Does it mean he wears nothing? Practically nothing. First ,he wears N,E,W,S. Because the four directions are only with reference to determining his locus. Like the sky they are shunyata, a zero hood that is nothing except value it confers on numbers,before and after. The skyclothes body wears confers value on it.

Clothes are the sky he wears .Sky is nothing.

I just stumbled upon zero-hood. Delicious turn of phrase. He wears zero as hood.

Zero hood
I just stumbled on this zero hood. A delicious turn of phrase.

He wears zero as hood. Which means he wears nothing . It is a hood to protect him from the ravages of time, from the savages of space.

Faint smile
Body has a faint smile. Under the lower basement the body smiles through the roof till the fourth floor living room, where smiles were till yesterday horizontal.

The faint smile will go on vertically till later in the day when it will turn ashes like all the previous smiles that went before.

Wind in door
In the midnights the pipal leaves moan softly from a mountain breeze. During the hot day the children plucked pipal leaves ,moistened their spikes with their spit and made funny surrr sounds on them with their fingers.

The leaves are now moaning softly. The saddest mountain tales they have brought are too familiar to them. They are just doing their duty.

The wind is trying to pass under the door. As if a new postman is inserting mail through the door gap.

From the savages of space
Ah, another good turn of phrase. Fits in nicely with the hood.

Who are those hooded hordes swarming over endless plains?

Eliot’s The Waste Land

I and my body
How far am I from my body? I wrest myself away from it and manage to stay on the air to watch it through its funny contortions .

I love the delicious irony present in its dogged persistence today, its linkages in time through yesterday and tomorrow.

I rarely look down and I do not like to look at its nine holes. Let the holes do their business.

Nine holes
Nine are my holes to the world. When body dies my nine holes shall merge in the general space .

I shall be empty space, merging in the emptiness of space.

Growing old
Now that you are moved over from being uncle to grandfather, do you have two new green horns? A little girl in the river island first calls you uncle and later revises her address as grandfather. Did she spot horns?

The old men are in their river islands and tiny moths make a halo around their shore lanterns . Little Bengali girls reach over and touch their horns. The halo of the moths shakes with the lanterns shadow.

Green horns
Since you are recent old ,you spot two new shiny green horns on your head.

Now you are a greenhorn old man.

Famously
The sun is up and beyond .I am sitting in a pool of bright yellow shine. The tree  saree hardly waves, not even a shred of its baby memory. A  bird is shouting from a tree space but everything  else is quiet on the ears. Just now a noise of film songs is sauntering in from a pant pocket.

This morning it was about famously. And fatuously ,by a cows behind. The flies are abuzz about cow tales. And when we lay on the straw mat  we are horizontal . We see flowers famously at the feet as the flies abuzz.

Famous biryani
Do you know the city of Hyderabad is famous for its biryani. What meat,what rice ,topped by a tumbler of Irani tea,!!!

The goats behind biryani are anonymous. Before they warm stomach they hang upside down in a butcher shop ,totally contented .They were not all that famous .

An only goat
Kenny the child came looking for an only goat. But the white goat he met said an only goat was lonely. Besides the white goat cannot tell funny stories.

Kenny did not come looking for any goat. Kenny is turning back, an only boy of his mama.

Kenny’s window : Maurice Sendak

Fish for thought
The  cement branches  in this park have the names of their donors painted in monstrous ,colourful letters. Excuse me ,madam ,I am sitting on your name.

This morning we had a  tremendous fish for thought. Elizabeth Bishop goes micro about fish she catches for an evening meal. Eye to eye ,fish and woman ,the victory goes to fish, who has large fish eyes. The boat has bilge that holds a grease rainbow .

All is colours like the park benches here. The fish is victorious in the sea .

Sitting on a name
In the park with parrot green benches, I sit on someone’s name. The benches have the names of the donors on the benches. I mean no disrespect.

Micro about a fish
Madam goes micro about a tremendous fish she catches from a boat. A bloody fish with gills,barnacles ,fish eyes etc. In a war of eyes ,everything is so micro.

Elizabeth is Bishop in a macro way. She is Bishop not in the ecclesiastical way. She just carries Bishop name .Fish have no names but there are big fish,small fish. They are all tremendous. They put up a tough fight when you want to eat them.

Fish eye
You may edit your camera picture with a fish eye view. A concave way of looking.

In our ancient mythological tales beautiful angelic women had fish eyes and the God wives too, for whom we have a temple that rises to the sky.

We are not sure if eyes look like entire fish or only like the eyes of the fish .The latter is not such a big deal.

Only an expert archer who can shoot a revolving fish eye can marry the beautiful princess.

Concave
A cold wind is blowing  farewell to winter. The sun is a mild peach in the tree.

This morning fish eyes came  with their concave world view, a paradigm. Beauty eyes are fish eyes with a concave  vision. In the dance the woman plotted fish eyes with her fingers on dark lined eyes.

The goddess of the fall temple is fish-eyed and beautiful. Old man in the sea has to grapple with fish eyes in  life and death.

Disappearing
Yesterday night we  had heard another act of  disappearing. As the television news hour went on as  a battle of bright wits , the disappearing sound played softly in the wind.

He appeared a year ago in a balcony of some one else’s disappearing. The latter smoke was a sound we all heard in our plastic chairs. And now what a fine disappearing  act he would perform ,while still in heavy-lidded sleep!

Absurdly soundless.

Dying soundlessly
He was in a plastic chair that made living sounds. He would watch a balcony from where others disappeared . In fire and brimstone. A smoke that went from your nine holes. A smoke that meant for everyone of us to disappear from white plastic chairs.

Now he disappears soundlessly from the plastic chairs . Disappears from the nine holes.

Uncles and aunts
On the parrot green bench ,the winter is still around. The sun seems recent.

This morning we thought about the old heads talking. The old heads are some bodies to look up to , uncles and aunts. They bob up over street crowds turning to the side streets. They go  sit in old mausolea .

The recent ones will look up to their heads . The recent ones find their words from their dark staircases invisible, quiet and some times ascending.