Day 12 - L for (a) Lot

Out of the blue

And the conventional

He send you the cue

He wouldn't need a virtual network

A postal pigeon
An actual mail box,  

Or even a manual messenger!

Swiftly through the skies

Re purposing a foil balloon

He darts it,

Right to your doorstep.

The message from the stars

Awaits at your threshold

With flowers and smiles 

And a monkey as an aid

Holding a red heart

With the thought written

Loud and clear!
'Love you very much'

Out of the hundreds of balloons

That are let go into the air

He hand picks one

The unusual, applicable one.

Time and again He proves his prowess

His circle of security

Around my existence

His shadow of love

On my being!

And how can I believe 

In coincidences or happy accidents?

When tailor made

Premeditated blessings

Drift from nowhere to my door?

Love, His all encompassing, all empowering shield

Embraces, owns and reassures thus!

Pictured - the balloon that made to my doorstep, carrying a message from the skies and a muse to banter about.

***********

On the other side, Bessie's mom makes her debut! 

Day 11 - K - K for Knowledge and knowing

Day 11 didn't come easy. I mean, I was on the top of things till day 10, scheduling the posts ahead of time and sometimes waking up 3 am with ideas that dumped into the brain like they would through a leaking roof on a pouring day. I almost thought I found the fountain of inspirations and I'd never ever have to look far and wide for ideas to create.

And I couldn't have been more wrong. Last night, I had an intense urge to pry out my eyeballs - I mean, I don't mean to scare you, but that's how horrid the spring allergies had it on my eyes. The significant other forbade me from it saying "Ignore it and it'll go away. Think it isn't there!" Guess what? It worked and for the first time since the onset of my allergies in 2007, I had a 'no swelly, watery, blackey eye' situation thanks to my adhering to that idea of thinking it isn't there. I took it a step further and applied that thinking to the writer's block too...Guess what? It didn't work a second time. SO despite the sneeze fest I woke up to, I embarked on my hour long walk in the spring weather, daring the pollen, the sniffles, the tears - only with one hope. That I'd get a ponderable thought on the way. 

Well, I did find numerous other thoughts cross my mind, manifesting into knowing from knowledge. If you live in the area and spot a lady crouching on the side walk while looking like she is shooting nothing with her smart phone as you zoom past on the Boulevard - two things! First off, she isn't not shooting nothing. She is probably trying to focus on the emperor moth or the rolypoly with her camera set to portrait mode. Secondly, she doesn't need to be reported to the neighborhood watch. Armed she is only with the camera and sometimes she forgets her surroundings when she focuses on bugs! Please be informed! Now back to the point - so I did find a ponder under M, R and even Z but no K in sight!

It is dusk right now and a little voice in my head that heeds the 'manifest all you intend to do' sits at the desk and tries to think up something meaningful for K. I wanted to go full blown 'discourse' mode but decided on outsourcing the elbow grease to Matt and Bessie. I did end up sketching them in different scenarios having different conversations. The above one isn't up to the mark but for now it seems like an accomplishment. 

In my humble existence, I gathered some knowledge but not until later did some of it culminated into actual knowing. And when ever that happens, I feel utterly blessed to have learnt it the way it is to be learnt - sooner or later doesn't really matter - because knowing is also knowing that the universe provides us with the right insights in the hour of need. 

I'll snort some allergy relief spray for now and pray that I'd know all I need to know for the coming many days of this challenge and stay put on the road to finish, dodging the torpor that comes along with spring! From the absolutely bucolic but utterly brutal spring weather in the territory of Gold, I bid adieu for now :)

Day 10 - J for Juxtapose

On the sepia soul founding
Layer some sod of the body
Sprinkle petals of feelings
Voila, there it is 
The intersperse of this being.
Scattered along the assortment 
Is the peekaboo of reflection
Textures of experiences
Forming a riveting yarn
Weaving these many musings
Standing testament
Of the nips and slashes
Sighs and Chortles.
And then, the path
Reveals to you the visual 
Like a road map to yourself
A little joyous green 
Bordering the morose grey
Topped off with the serene white.
And that amalgam right there
Inspires, arrests, manifests!
In articulation - yet leaving some unsaid
For the lack of wordage.

Day 9 - I for I am Inane

Here I am, on the ninth day of the fourth month, tackling the letter I. Lately, a part of this I are Bessie and Matt. I am supposed to reconfigure them, pep them up, revamp them, re envision them but something out there gets in here in the brain and I am keep second guessing if this is really a good idea or I'll be the idiomatic "Laying an egg" being demonstrated in action.

But that is how this messy mind works. Thus the need to meditate. Meditation is simply doing nothing. And it is not just literally but also figuratively as in not thinking. I was asked to do this simple exercise of keeping a watch on my thoughts for a minute. I was yet again, (truth be told, I can never get over)stupefied over my bandwidth of inanity. Thoughts are supposed to expend the vital energy. It's all confusing right? There was a time when I thought my thoughts define me. There was a time, just in the recent past, when I had such great pride in multi tasking - until I realized, there isn't something called 'multitasking' - while I listen to music and sketch, I am either sketching or listening to music. Though both are being done at the same time, the mind shuts off one task to a mechanical level and the other to a conscious level. There could also be a third scenario, where in both the tasks get mechanical and the mind wanders into the lanes of the past or future, carefully replaying or imagining a thing bygone or a thing that might never come into being. 

Sigh...what simplicity. Do nothing. Think nothing. Stay still. practice Silence, a commodity that is increasingly endangered in the modern day bedlam. 

I try. I flex my 'doing nothing' muscle so it builds the strength to mitigate the tricks of the mind. 

By the way, illustrated is the very first draft of the comic strip I wanted to sketch today. I'll revisit this with some conviction and seriousness and precision and intent.

For now, I am in the eternal haste to jump from one thing to the other, do two three things at a time and feel all galvanized by the trickster mind. But then, I'll flex my intent to shut it and let the Source take over.

Reminder to self - It is all inside. Sub vocalization, thinking, analysis - such over rated stuff! For now I'll go and do nothing. Let's see how that aids the doing of the right thing.

As simple as it sounds, Doing nothing is the toughest thing to do out there. Try it for yourself and see if you can shut that pesky mind off for five minutes, or even one.

Day 8 - Happiness is yours for asking

This is what I call life coming a full circle. You make your little Bessie live a life with an imaginary friend philosopher and guide Matt, and you yourself make conversations with imaginary readers in here - talk about life imitating art or vice versa. No one knows what imitates what, like the rhetorical question "Egg first or the chicken?" But it gives you immense joy all the same. Which brings me to the ponder of the Hour - 'Happiness'

If there is anything I teach my first born on a repeated basis, I teach her just this "Don't depend on anyone for your happiness. It dwells inside you. It thrives in the way you look at life and not in the way life looks at you." A few months ago, when I blogged about a quote that read 

"He said it's all in your head. I said, so is everything but he didn't get it" 

I have to confess that I didn't get it as well for the truest sense of it. I knew that most of our lives are lived out of our heads but I didn't fathom the fact that absolutely all of it is lived in there. The responses we choose, the reactions we nurture and the perspective we look at things with, would make up for this experience called life. I think it is actually kind of unfair to vest our happiness in a person or a goal or a dream for that matter. It all leads to that same spiritual road I embarked upon lately - that we are a speck of the infinite and all the intelligence that the nature has within itself, we have within ourselves. It is just what we choose to dwell upon, give power to and choose to flow with. 

So pretty peeps, keep a guard on that savage brain that generates the narrative to every occurrence outside of us. It is the mind playing its maze to make us lost in the drama of this illusory cosmic plan. And, Happiness is there within. Seek it inside, in silence, in stillness and in being aware - and pretty much every care we face is solved!

And, now to the afterthought on the underpinning of my comic strip - It is still in the "I just want to do it" mode without putting enough effort, but I see that Bessie looks messy. A heroine needs a better facade for sure - and that Matt, he needs to be more extinct and exotic. I'll work on some Trex sketches today and see how they can evolve for tomorrow for day 9 In I for "Imagine"

Day 7 - G for Guts galore

I cannot believe a lot of things about myself. This isn't being said in an egotistic way - but in a  "I really cannot believe how audacious I am" way.

Above is the first draft strip I drew for today's entry. It is kind of daunting to do it just with my Calvin Hobbes volumes as instructions. I wish someone taught me the logistics of sketching and creating a comic strip. I am consciously trying not to look for any online sources to keep it raw and straight from the gut - like the rest of everything I do. 

I notice that I missed Bessie's hands and the drawings are not fine. I should work on the text part as well. And, to top it all, Matt and Bessie could change into something entirely different as the days pass. That being said, Matt has a chance of morphing into a T- rex. A 9 out of 10 chance.

In the meanwhile, I'll work on being more patient and taking my time sketching. With this first one, I was in a frenzy to complete and see if it is really possible to do what I intend to do - that is creating and sketching my own little characters playing to my own little tunes - though they might sound offtune and offbeat, more often than not.

What's life without a little gutsy side?

Here's to the seventh day - An attempt sprinkled with haste but topped with guts.

All hail Human hopefulness.