traveling within

Quick art inspiration from an afternoon tea with Netta.

Wherever you go, east, west, north or south, think of it as a journey into yourself! The one who travels into itself travels the world.

Shams Tabrizi

Soul in a volume

I believe the below is true with any form of art or work. In the same adaptation coherent with the below quote, every slice of what you see here from the subtle nuances to the colors chosen to the illustrations and photographs to the themes that we explore, they have my heart and soul in them with which they’ve been dreamt on and conceived. Every time beautiful people like you skim through, its spirit grows and strengthens. Grateful for your glance here.

living and dreaming with it.

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

endless horizons

That’s about five days of some writers block here and we’re back with endless horizons. That’s the merriment of a canvas with infinite possibilities of creative expression with brushes and colors of imagination. This is the canvas of hope, the canvas of the border of my mind. Grateful for your glance on these lines.

Endless horizons

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

― Christopher McCandless

veiled luxuries

It’s not a 23-course buffet menu that is merriment.  It’s often in those simple luxuries concealed under the veil of unadorned ordinaries. For me, it can be in some ghee roasted bananas and crisp cashew with warm coffee at home with Netta on a very content afternoon. Happiness and contentment at THIS very moment. Inconspicuous ordinaries have luxuries treasured in them. Grateful. Forage for these luxuries, count the blessings.

Mouthwatering ? Explore culinary experiences.

implanted beauty

Some hand wash bottles are designed so well. Taking a moment to appreciate them on a fine afternoon

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

corona tea

A cup of tea that coincidentally aligns in the form of a virus

These days, we are drowning in COVID-19 information in all spheres. I don’t think a single day passes without us hearing some tally of people infected, recovered, and passed away. Here’s a lighter moment while we are navigating these unprecedented trying times. Last day, while we had a cup of afternoon tea, the pattern on the surface coincidentally appeared in the form of the common coronavirus graphics that we see on news outlets. : )

Illustration of the morphology of coronaviruses; the club-shaped viral spike peplomers (red) create the look of a corona surrounding the virion when seen with an electron microscope

stories & tea.

We’re holistically themed on rediscovering the extraordinary in the ordinary by vision.  Let’s compliment with a little poster from an afternoon tea with Netta.

“Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture

to be the eyes of a dove.

The title of this post is inspired by a beautiful poem written by the Serbian poet Dejan Stojanovic. Saw this lonely bird on the office gates after a day from work.

“To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle,
the slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

stumble over pebbles.

These are some pebbles that I randomly glanced at Corbin’s Cove beach in Port Blair during a visit with Netta in 2018. It’s a beautiful palm-fringed beach with pleasant blue sea water and lush green coconut palms. They’re enriched with colorful corals and artful rockfaces at the peripheries. I have some vague recollections of an old post that I read on medium portal which spoke about the art of seeing beauty in the everyday. Pebbles purvey such thoughts on appreciating such beauties around us. The detailing and subtleties of these pebbles graciously nudge of themes in a philosophical context. As Emilie Cady puts it, ” Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains“.

“A rock, a large piece of rock weathers off a cliff and dives deep into a pool of gushing water. Back washed, It journeys roughly and knocks of other rocks, smashing through the waves as it loses itself in scattered pieces except for its core. That core travels far and wide, it coarsely gets ground by gravel pieces smaller than itself and bullied by boulders all of which it bears up as it withstands the pressure of a distant journey off the shore. At some point, it gets dry and it encounters mud, it gets smeared dirty but the mud doesn’t stick, the rain washes of the mud and it rolls off into the sand. It dances in the sand and dives into the bottom of the waves.

Rising like a phoenix through the ashes, it emerges polished, looking more beautiful than it did when it got edged of the cliff. It rises a pebble, smooth and sleek. Coveted by rocks starting their dive.

To be a pebble you have to run the turbulent tidal race.

― Victor Manan Nyambala