wishing on raining stars

Being sick is so much easier on a gary-ish day. This one was perfect in fact- I'm curled up in my bed feeling miserable (so many of my friends have mono, I hope it's not that!) Looking out the window at the very beginning of October (even remembered to say rabbit when I woke up yesterday!) The leaves should start changing soon, and falling. Fall is my very favorite season. Sometimes the sunlight seems almost tangible and the clouds are thick and puffy, turning deep purples and pinks at twilight. Plus you can pull out all those warm comfy clothes and just sit, with a cup of tea, and forget about everything you need to do for a bit.

A few days ago, before I was cursed with this stuffy nose,scratchy throat and achy body, I was walking my dog in the park by my house with my baby sister (she's not really a baby anymore, but I still like to call her that) a gust of wind came through and coaxed the leaves to jump from their branches and twirl through the air to land at our feet. My sister danced down the path trying to cath them. "Look!" she cried "It's raining leaves!"

She was so beautiful spinning and jumping around, i could only stand and watch her. She finally caught one before it hit the ground and brought it over for me to see. She told me that if you catch a leaf before it falls, you get to make a wish. So i wished- well, if I told you then it wouldn't come true!

Happy Autumn and may all your wishes come true!

pictures

if only time

While wasting what time I have by trying to put off unpleasant things that must be done (like applying for scholarships and writing supplemental essays) my mind wandered as it does now and then... Googled "if only time" and here's what I got:

if only time could stand still and embrace the day

if only time were more like plasticine

if only time flew like a dove

"it’s a great pity that time is not more like plasticine, where one could gather up all the little bits and pieces — the leftover minutes and hours that were spent waiting for meetings to start, standing in queues, sitting in traffic, watching someone else’s food go round and round in the microwave — and squash them together into usable hours, like one big ball that gradually turns the colour of mud."

~ Sarah Britten

I think this is a wonderful thought (and plus, plasticine is a much nicer word for the stuff than Play-Doh, which has become its name) If we could use all that wasted time and bunch it together like leftover cookie dough once you cut out the shapes, you would get so much more delicious pastry out of life.

However, this is not the case, unfortunately, and I must stop wasting my plasticine lest it harden into unusable clumps that crumble and scatter all over the floor when you pick them up.

(pictures from when I went to Paris last winter)

la france

So, here's the only deal:

I adore France to the absolute bottom of my heart- I love visiting, I love reading about it, I love seeing pictures, I love the food and the art and the atmosphere- and yet, I am going to fail AP French in school parce-que je ne peux pas parler francaise (because I can't speak it). I wish I could just open my mind and my heart and the culture would flow in through my pores.

My mother grew up in France. What a life that musts have been... Paris in the '60s...

To live in the twists and turns and secret corners of this city

And spend summers in these fields by the sea in Normandy

To lie in these fragrant fields for hours...

And when you tired of that, to lose yourself in a place where no one knows you, but the city itself accepts you...

To drive this car along endless roads when you needed to get away...

To come here and picnic with family (she has four brothers) and read poety on a blanket...

And to come home and curl up in a window seat and watch winter strike Paris with all his strength, but never conquer...

Photos via here, and here

The one story that stuck with me out of all the Paris stories was this:

One morning when my mumma and her twin brother were just two years old, they got up before anyone else and (god knows what possessed them) picked up their mother's huge old Underwood typewriter between them and proceeded to shove it out a third story window of their appartment at the Place Vendome (here). My grandmother was awakened by a knock from a kindly, albiet slightly apprehensive, Parisian holding her mutilated typewriter. By that time the twins, having acomplished their goal, were back in bed like little angels.

Aren't children delightful?

welcoming autumn

Sunday was spent saying goodbye to summer. It was a good season, it really was, but time to move on I think. Took a couple of friends and a certain boy down the block from my house to the beach. They brought their guitars and the boy and I listened while they played an adage to autumn.

It was one of those afternoons that goes on forever and the sunlight just gets thicker and softer, causing time to move slower and slower through it. We lay on our bellies on the rocks and watched the drama that is life in a tidal pool unfold. The crabs and the snails and little fish- the green grasses waving in the invisible current.

We left before the sun set so that in our minds, the place would stay perpetually afternoon and the night would never bring an end to the light.

Today I made a cake: baking has a wonderful ability to soothe- and noticed a snatch of unexpected beauty in the way the light hit a bottle of water on my windowsill

Autumn's Here

a silver chain of rain

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain
Unraveled from the tumbling main
And threading the eye of a yellow star:
- So many times do I love again.
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes




It rained today. I went to class in rain and I came home in rain. On the third floor which looks out of ancient windows onto the roof, the seething purple clouds provided endless distraction from Calculus (quite welcome) and it rained through English Lit, the drops providing a soothing counterpoint to the analysis of The Power and the Glory- Graham Greene anyone?



Having little to when when I got home (for once...) and with visions of raindrops in my head I set out to photograph my garden that will soon be gone thanks to autumn

And a lovely spiderweb- I love how raindrops and dew cling to each strand

And then I got to go back to my cozy little room and read my books with a nice cup of tea and some toast! Who could ask anything more of a rainy day?

here's to

Everyone gets that feeling once in a while, when you start something new and it feels like you've been doing it your whole life? I felt it when I first went away to sleep away camp when I was eleven: it felt like I had been going for years. Well that's what this school year is feeling like. Four days into classes and I've been in this world for ages.

For all that it's school, it's a wonderful world really: ancient stone walls silently keep the secrets of countless students; forgotten bits of buildings used in decades past that time slowly forgot; tucked away corners which you need to know the school to be able to find; the sycamore trees, the brook, the paths criss-crossing in the back woods; the grass that grows to your knees in the spring when they forget to cut it...

If you want it to be, it can be as magical as the garden you played in as a child

Photos from here

life in the heart of

Life in deserts was sandy,

Life in caves was lonely,

Life in ocean was salty,

Life in stars was resplendent,

Life in car was modern,

Life in mountains was exhilarating,

Life in Sun was brilliant,

Life in forests was mystical,

Life in shadows was enigmatic,

Life in battlefield was belligerent,

Life in pearls was exotic,

Life in office was monotonous,

Life in sky was breezy,

Life in submarine was voluptuous,

Life in trees was mischievous,

Life in roses was fragrant,

Life in grass was intoxicating,

Life in webs was silken,

Life in paradise was divine,

Life in temples was sacrosanct,

Life in gutter was abhorrent,

Life in dirt was deplorable,

Life in rain was seductive,

Life in beehives was vivacious,

Life in wine was sensuous,

Life in gardens was pleasant,

Life in mousetrap was asphyxiating,

Life in fists was curled,

Life in prison was disdainful,

Life in whirlpool was spinning,

Life in theater was dramatic,

Life in art was enchanting,

Life in boats was undulating,

Life in diamonds was glittering,

Life in moon was milky,

Life in roots was entangling,

Life in chains was hedonistic,

Life in bareness was lascivious,

Life in haziness was romantic,

Life in knives was lethal, Life in Chili was piquant, Life in swings was fascinating, Life in lechery was insane, Life in rhythm was celestial, Life in pulse was frantic, Life in lies was cowardice, Life in superstitions was non-existent, Life in revenge was pugnacious,

But life in the heart of your beloved was, is, and always will be love, love and only love

Photo credits: Jonathan Sloman, weheartit.com

Poem: Nikhil Parekh