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Strange cold
That year’s cold was strange Our thoughts were frozen Our eyes white washed…We started fearing our own cold questions Some elders felt necessaryThat more of us must burn as wood-stockUntil the cold is goneAnd dissenting voices were silenced We kept burning our own kindIt reached a point when ‘Our words grasped each other for warmthAnd suddenly started to rhyme…’This year we feel the same coldPeople are burning as wood stockAnd words are dreaming to rhyme again together…November 2023On wars happening around us.
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Ode to unanswered questions
Today I want to celebrate those unanswered questions we all live within us. (Because no matter how convincing the answers we find along the way , we just don’t want to believe in them) Questions, that transform themselves from naive desires of moths on fire to distant dreams of snow laden birch trees to destinies entwined beyond space and time beyond the ideas of heavens and hell… these unanswered questions tie our past and future sometimes surpassing generations flying within us like Siberian cranes with endless wings on calm lands in troublous skies patiently determined covering thousands of miles to reach their summer pastures only to fly back again all…
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Somewhere in Kyrgystan (Video)
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I will meet you again…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBrP1EH3XY Here is an attempt to translate Amrita Pritam’s one beautiful poem and a youtube song version of the same. She was one of the most infamous and romantic women writers of pre-partition India and like her poems her life story was also unusual with many parallels to the stories of Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera. Locked between an unrequited love which she never had, and a dedicated lover who dedicated his life for her, she created beautiful poetry full of imagination, hope and magical realism… Enjoy! I, will meet you again! Where? How? Don’t know(really) May be! like a flicker, in your thoughts I will land on your canvas…
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Swings of life
To seek,outside of ourselvesin order to find ourselves What bullshit is that…Yet we keep on asking more from life outsideswinging back and forthback and forthfar beyond smiles and heartbreaksto feel meanings and answersin this life and beyondOnly to feelmore fresh and windy questions back…I see ‘Time’ sitting on a swingheld firmly by long ropes of ‘Destiny’moving to and froto and frosame beginnings , same going nowheresame smiles, same heartbreakssame looking outside,this infinite sky of desiresthat big mountain of dreamsto and froto and froEvery effort to go even more bringing us back even more Yet this godly child in us keeps us movingon these swings of lifeHope mistress pushing…Fear monsters dragging…Fresh…
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In search of White…
“in search of white…” was filmed in Siberia , on my way to Great Lake Baikal trek. February 2022 Soundtrack courtesy : song parts from Ludovico Einaudi’s song “Experience”. http://absolutesalman.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/In-search-of-whiteupload.mp4 Siberia Feb 2022 . Listen with sound open… Music Courtesy : music parts from “Experience” by Ludovico Einaudi
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Ode to Birch
(Siberia , Feb 2022) Snow is whiteSnow is pureBut snow is cold too.Is it this coldnessthat keeps her pure and alive? Hope keeps us on the railroads of lifeI see , outside the train windowpassing Desires,as pure as snow,on this infinite canvas of whites…shrouded by Birch treesin numbers unknownwith their tender white skinsSoft, as if about to dissolve in uslike a Russian девушка*Yet hardest in soul…Buts it’s also the hard birchthat burns the best and burns for long…And like hope, she keeps burning herselfto keep everyone warmbecoming nothing in returnOr perhaps everything for some? And these snow-like desireskeeps on coming backfalling onto her, like crazy loverssometimes with tender kissesat times…
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To Beloved’s lovers
It’s a translation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s renowned poem “Rakeeb se”. Faiz was one of the most influential contemporary poet of Pakistan, who also lived couple of years in Moscow during the СССП days, and even won the Lenin peace prize. We grew up listening to his beautiful and sublime poetry. I am sure he must have fall in love while in Moscow. It’s funny how beautifully he is transforming in this poem a usually complicated relation associated with jealousy into such a romantic, optimistic, and perspective-taking way of seeing and appreciating love. This is to all your beloved’s lovers Enjoy! To my beloved’s lover (part I) Come & meet me my dear…
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Existence : Life (Rumi Symphony project)
#Translation project Ertyaas asked me yesterday if I know what they are saying in this song (link above). It was a song by Hafez Nazeri’s Rumi project. This invoked some old memories. I used to hear Shahram Nazeri (Hafez’s father) a lot few years back during my Africa days. The father and son duo are coming from Kurdish Persian diaspora and infuse Sufi poetry from all the sufi poets in their singing (link to old blog with his song and translation) I also recalled, back in school days, how our urdu language teacher used to teach us, to understand poetry in its essence. It was a process of peeling layers…
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On Vipassana, and the Law of Anni-chey!
“I think it’s time you try Vipassana and start practicing the law of Anni-chey” Ertyas said. “And why do you think it’s the right time for me?”. “Well! it seems you are fighting your battles from your past in your future, but you are not living in the present and perhaps you should try living in the present more”. “I am living in the present, am I not with you now, listening and enjoying your beautiful company and crazy recommendations”? I said flirtishly. “You see you are sitting with me here, but you are thinking more about the future, and nothing lasts forever, and for that reason the very suffering…
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Mountain Tango!
And “the Wind” seizing a tango moment initiates his first steps with a White Cloud again.. Nobody sees the Wind, but her. And she needs a wind, to dance too, no? And not just some ordinary wind But the strongest of all winds Wind that can blow her away from all her questions of the past and the present... Nobody sees the Wind, but her. And "the Wind"; he needs her too... to exist , to be felt... to become from nothing to everything (in those very moments...) And like an experienced Milonguero he leads her way to the sky floor holding her strong yet giving her freedom as wide…
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Off the beaten road .. Everest Part 1
“Everyone who’s heart is broken comes to mountains”. Said the hairy German”. “So was it a big heartbreak for you this time that you are summiting the highest mountain”?, I jokingly asked. “You can say so! I just got divorced without even knowing any reasons. My wife for a good 29 years left me in pure German style by just putting a note on the kitchen table.” It was my desperate attempt to come out of pandemic lockdown which stopped most of us from traveling last year, and to get away from everything in life for so many different reasons of past and future and ongoing sounds and fury of…
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Otherness…
Otherness To experience the Other. Holding hands for the very first time and... to keep holding on long, forever, even when this wet otherness is felt, seeping in between mingled fingers... Shaping the Other, fast in thoughts , in dreams and slowly in trailing sillage of left behind smells and broken hairs and finished coffee cups still bearing lip marks of contagious smiles and unspoken emotions... this Otherness comes and goes, in many abstractions. Silent conversations without the distance of words and spaces in between, Or the silence that hangs in between the very words and spaces... Spaces created by the Other Or the otherness we create inside us, of…
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Random shots from my Kiev Balcony(6 seasons)
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Untold Story – Chernobyl-Ukraine
She finished her final lap in the swimming pool, and was overlooking the Ferris wheel from the big glass window when she heard Andrey on the other side, talking to an unknown girl. Her feelings of insecurity started tormenting her mind, making here uneasy in herself. She thought for a while, how can one trust a man completely. Little did she know that in just one day her whole concept of security and fears were about to change altogether for years to come.All these petty emotions to be overshadowed by a much bigger and real suffering.She tried looking back at the glass window again with an uneasy mind… It was…
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Ode to Desire…
(Inspired by a Crimean Tatar Friend) Jan 2016, Kiev, Ukraine Red red Desire burning in the eyes. lost staring deep in the fire, A young young bride on that cold Mongolian night. Thoughts of her future Were dancing in the fire Her heart flames in uncertainty Her fears shouting shadows from the fire. Who could have told her than! Her sons and daughters Riding on the wings of desire are destined to travel and rule Strange strange people and far far lands in not so distant time. Just few hundred years apart Knot by knot Birth after birth Wars after wars Fire after fire among strange people, among strange times,…
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The dance goes on
The dance goes on…. (Moscow, October 2015) A white white cloud Holding smiles of Appolinaria. His efforts are useless, the smiles keeps on escaping, Here and there and everywhere. For how can he hold Something , as godly as “light” In his hopes, in his dreams, in his songs Light is for everyone, No?
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Becoming a Master Perfumer’s Apprentice
I will teach you the meaning of perfume, he said. You have to start with a name. Name is everything. Will you smell this, he gave me a smallbrown bottle to tell him whats inside? Yes you are right, it isCocoa , now will you try this second one. Something in me was telling me that I know this smell, it was pleasing to senses and homy, but I was not able to name it. It took me more than a little while to finally recall it was the smell of coffee (and for some reason it reminded me of my last morning coffee…
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Anahita
Anahita (26 feb 2015,Luxembourg) Another sea, inside her… moves… rebels… concedes… and finds calmness everyday Much bigger, much more uncontrollable the wavy thoughts, splashing her feelings , emotions, dreams… Her self-awareness, matches the flight of the seagulls sitting on the wind, flying over the world and the wind smells of gone by moments (they always do!)
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Butterfly dreams
Butterfly dreams In my dreams I keep opening you as a butterfly opens her wings ready to fly into unknown worlds… and sounds of that wing’s flapping often open my eyes and often, long after waking up I find my self in those unknown worlds dreaming you with open eyes…. 15 dec 2014 Luxembourg Inspired by another poet’s idea of a butterfly.
