Come September Reflections, Revelations – a father, son, saunterer’s Odyssey
“Man is most nearly himself, when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play” – Heraclitus (c. 535-475 b.c.e.)
Arun Prakash Sanghvi civitas Visitant mundi (September 1944-) 1
“O quam cito transit gloria vita” (O how soon passes this glorious life)
Illuminating the “new math”: 7+5 = 12 (September 5, 2019)
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Father
Washington DC, November 2018
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Son
The Taj Mahal – 1956 (age 7+ 5 = 12)
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Dedication To dearest mummy, daddy, Uma, Priya, Arjun, Dan, Dilafruz:
You, my most precious non-possessions Not of an age - But for all time; You had no choice but to part – summoned By the necessity and force of the Life journey; Nevertheless, for this soul left behind, I cannot possess you - Yet you possess me Each of you therefore, a “thief who stole my heart”! A blessing in disguise still – life’s entanglements are bitter-sweet - yet Between grief and nothing in life I’ll take grief any day – The freight has to be proportionate to the groove.
…To my Muse, and extended family of most treasured friends: your love and affection in amitié continues to nourish my vital life sustaining energy (prana). Truth be told – I discovered early-on, and my life has been far richer:
“I was born with an enormous need for affection, & an awful need to give it”
“If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” 5
“The Lord whose Oracle is at Delphi, neither reveals nor conceals, but gives signs” - Heraclitus (c. 535 b.c.e.)
“There are no unambiguous answers to life’s big questions. The unconditioned state of mind that questions Is more important than the question itself” -Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
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Foreword “The world is so full of a number of things I’m sure we can all be happy as kings” - Robert Louis Stevenson (1859-1894)
Emperor Penguins
“My life has been the poem I would have writ But I could not both live and utter it” – alas Unlike that Boston Brahmin, I fail the poets’ grade. My poetics may be sophomoric – their authenticity is anything but; They capture with vivid realness the light of my being - the Silent songs – springing forth in my deep heart’s core; Songs that sway, stir and stay - night and day Even on life’s noisiest shore.
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“On Life’s vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale” -Alexander Pope (1688-1744, “An Essay on Man”)
Saunterer en route to the Komodo Dragon Island, Eastern Indonesia 8
Preface Midway along the path of life, I found myself arriving at that place and time…wanting to be as clear as possible to myself and reach out directly to my nearest and dearest family and friends. I felt compelled by a sense of urgency, and an irrepressible urge coursing within to communicate aspects of the life journey – that axis between the “seen” and what was “felt” deep within, and informally penned in haphazard manner in my personal journal over the years c. 1985-2005 mostly - not in the least driven by some intellectual fantasy of an aging amusing relic to share “acquired wisdom”. Rather this is an attempt to capture the essence in synthesis with correct balance of judgment, authenticity of light, with that anonymous serenity that speaks to some substance, without the cloud of personal identity. This is a tall order indeed, but a commensurate force of passion has propelled my compulsion in this endeavor; specifically giving expression as best as I can to the silent songs of my truths that awakened over the years of my life journey to date.
“men affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present.” - William Wordsworth’s (1777-1850) characterization of poets When I chanced across this characterization in recent years, it struck a deeply resonating chord within; explicitly brought home to me that while I was not a poet per se, my affectations all along in life indeed since childhood, drawn as much by the absent, unsaid, and its unseen “field”– in the very midst of the then present moment. For this task, I find poetics to be the best (only) medium that can “make nothing happen”. Like music, poetics as well is felt much more before it is understood. And as in music where refrain and silence are essential as defining punctuations – not merely the notes heard – so too in poetics. Just as most of the mass of the universe is unseen; and dark matter which can be inferred from the influence of its powerful energy field on observable objects and phenomenon; in that very vain, poetics is an effective medium, for conveying more than the written words in the lines and stanzas. For much more than these explicit words are the silent words between the lines and between the words in each line unsaid/ unspoken, and palpable even in the metrical structures (be they rhyme, metre, refrain, line breaks), in the very gaps pauses, and punctuations by silence.
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“know thyself” one of the Delphic maxims: “gnōthi seauto”; (inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (c. 400 b.c.e.)
“Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the course of the stars; and they pass over the mystery of themselves without wondering.” -St. Augustine of Hippo, (c 400 c.e.)
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Contents* Invocation to Muses – (p. 12) Canto 1 – Beginnings (Joy) (p. 19) Canto 2 – Partings (Woe) (p. 25) Canto 3 – Loss (Reckoning) (p. 29) - Mummy o’mine, O’ (p. 31) - Daddy o’mine, O’ (p. 35) - Till we meet again (p. 41) Canto 4 – Child is father of the man (p. 43) Canto 5 – The Carousel of Seasons (p. 47) Canto 6 – The Circle Dance of Life’s Ebb and Flow (p. 49) Canto 7 - et tu moments in this Saunterer’s Odyssey (p. 63) Others’ words - (p. 79) Giving thanks - Hare spiritus mundi (p. 83) Primary sources for inspiration (p. 87)
*The poetics herein are organized along several “Cantos”; as a means of evoking some of the dominant emotions felt within at various junctures in my life journey. In keeping with the encompassing title “Come September” - not all the dated events fall solely in the month of September. Rather, events with anniversaries falling in the month of September (Cantos 1&2 and partly 3); provide the spring-board for the subsequent Cantos on the Odyssey of my life en route to my personal Ithakas.
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Invocation
Homer and Muse
Sketch from Homer Odyssey, Google digital archives
Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, sweet-speaking Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy; Sing in me and through me tell the story of the Modern day Odysseus – from the land of the Indoi/Sindhu**; The story of this latter day wanderer, saunterer – aspiring flaneur; Considers himself everyman anywhere, calls himself “civis mundi”.
**The name of India is a corruption of the word Sindhu - the name of the Indus River, mentioned in the RigVeda (c. 2000-1100 b.c.e.). Neighboring Persians pronounced ‘s’ as ‘h’ and called this land Hindu. Greeks pronounced this name as Indos/Indoi. Linguistically, the Avesta/Avestan (early Zoroastrian texts – c. 20001000 b.c.e.), also refer to Hinduš; and the Persian emperor Darius I (550-486 BC) in the Persepolis terrace inscription, listed as his conquered territory Hindus and even beyond the Indus river. Iindía in Byzantine ethnography denotes the region beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός) River; since Herodotus (c. 440 b.c.e.) alluded to “Indian land” as Ἰνδός, Indos, and indicates that of all the known inhabitants of Asia, beyond the vast land of sand (present day Rajasthan?) the “Indians dwell nearest to the east, and the rising of the Sun.”
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The Sindhu/Indoi set sail from the port of Bombayover 50 years ago today; Seeking in the new world - scholarship, friendships, adventure. Endowed with a child-like wondrous spirit, imagination, Sense of mystical curiosity of the world at large. Fearlessly sailing the oceans and hemispheres wide - lost count after 90 nation States and ports of call. Opted for the long road - being in no hurry to arrive per se, The most epic journey being the on e of self-discovery within. His Ithaka(s), though he never lost track of them - for One’s destination is not a place - but a new way of seeing things. O’ Muse! Inspire me with your golden voice; Of the Indoi’s “ship of state” Confronting on his Odyssey - the clash of winds, giant squalls, devilish Currents, gargantuan waves, perfect storms along the way; How he navigated on the varied oceans within – Oceans of the mind and of the heart – more vast and turbulent than the oceans outside. No matter the climes and chimes - the strife of the winds, From this side one mighty wave rolling in, From the other side another, And the ship in the middle of it all.
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The theater within Everyman The selves we conceal and reveal That drive us forward or hold us back
“All the world is a stage� - The Mind-Heart Opera streaming within 24/7; be it in-sync or out-of-sync with the real-time performance of our staged roles without. 14
To put it another way, everyman must face up to The cyclic constancy of flux, impermanence of life, quotidian stresses. Unavoidably effecting all his relationships - without and within – Beginnings, partings, endings; joy, woe, grief, loss, absence, unrequited love/affection….. Circumstances that unavoidably trigger A tug of war between the calculating mind’s Agency/Ego focused on Advancing narrow self interests – and The Captain at the helm of the Indoi’s ship of state, guided by a second compass deep in his heartlands. O’ Muse - As a man is so he sees and does. This Indoi captain of the ilk “what is essential is invisible to the eye” ; the heart has its reason, which reason does not know” In other words, think with the mind but act from the heart.
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O’ Muses, invoked by the giants - Homer, Hesiod, Horace Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton too Be generous in thy favor to this lesser mortal; A mere wise fool, with unpolished lines, Miscast on life’s 24/7 stage, in that longest playing Universal opera of life - “The Comedy of Ego, Eros and Errors”; In reality a tragicomedy - for Man is great when it comes to taking off But no good at landing! O’ Muse, most humbly, I am a Nobody - I sum to nothing, Composed like the rest – of Eros and of dust; Like everyman, oft beleaguered by the same. Know not much, and am not even sure of that. Yet still eager to learn at thy feet, and show hereby my affirming flame. O Muse, inspire my song with thy celestial heat, Till I my long laborious work complete; Add perpetual tenor to my rhymes – about The Indoi’s Odyssey across the vast oceans within his mind and heart; Deduced from his birth, to present times.
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Sappho “the tenth muse” (Pompeii fresco)
O’ fair-haired sacred Muses, Who sit on the golden throne I implore humbly, all thee; “Come to me now, be my ally” Sing to me, let my penned verse Be gifted by your voice Marked by poetic buoyancy – with Cadence, tone, rhyme – and T ruthfulness at once recognizableIn the very ring of the writ medium itself. Oh, Muses, please grant me this big favor I shall be grateful forever.
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Six weeks following birth on Tuesday September 5, 1944, 9:04 pm (picture taken at Chitra Studio, Cawnpore, UP, October 21, 1944).
Club Med, Eleuthera, The Bahamas
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Canto 1 – Beginnings Joy
Summer’s best of weather, Autumn’s best of cheer – but What floods earth, air, and mind, What makes September fair; ‘Tis a thing or two - which I shall always remember. To name them thrills me doubly yet Come September.
I can never forget That day of one September Seventy-five summer and springs ago; When our eyes first met Long before my very first step Three heart beats in lock-step.
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“Infant Joy”, William Blake (1789)
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What did I know then of my good fortune – Life’s chance placed me In the care and nurturing affection of mummy and daddy. A wonderful childhood followed - far from the madding crowds – Living in aerodromes all across India Situated some distance from the nearest cities and din– Surrounded by silent beauty and bonded with the spirit of nature; Ample time for reverie - in that fertile solitude, My imagination thrived within an uncluttered brain. A childhood nurtured and nourished with poetry, literature, Geography, music growing up with ease in a diversity of cultures, Extreme diversity of languages foods – all across my Mother India.
A childhood marked by an engaging learning environment sans dogma, ideology – sparked my lifelong kinship with nature; Embrace of ahimsa (non-violence), the “Golden rule”, compassion towards all – people from all strata of life, caste, creed, means.
Yesterdays children are tomorrows adults – no wonder That child kept the childhood sense of enchantment; Never lost the sense of possibility at any age, Never forgot his youth’s perennial spring!
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Priya One-month-old (November 1984), Abingdon Street, Arlington. (Uma wearing daddy’s hat)
Priya One-year-old (November 1985); Club Med, Eleuthera,The Bahamas 22
September 24, 1984 Heralding a momentous joyous beginning. Special delivery by Stork airmail courier; A most precious package arrived in the Sanghvi household; A complete bundle of life’s joy – to hold and behold, our Beloved (Sanskrit root – Priya).
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Son Leaving Home
Santa Cruz airport, Bombay, September 5, 1966, approx. 11pm
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Canto 2 – Partings* Woe
‘Twas also on the very date Twenty two springs and summers thence (September 5, 1966), marking another big beginning. I took flight to that distant land, Once belonging to our western namesakes, Seeking landfall not far from Plymouth shore. What did I know, what did I actually know then? I had “not been there” yet. How that “walking away” – leaving home - at once a joyous occasion; Yet reverberating within, A gnawing emptiness forever, Since that fateful day one September. Life has a powerfully direct way of teaching us – I’ve realized since, What goes around, as well comes around. At a later time - it was this father’s turn to experience first hand That gnawing emptiness following a parting - not once, thrice over. And even the third time around, this father found no firm ground. And, what did I know, what did I know then Of love’s austere and lonely offices, Until it was my turn as parent; Occasions when love-signals from mummy and daddy I may have ignored – or not picked up – and the fugitive Openings I never took into their hearts Like the light of stars that today leans on me Was shining years ago – that only now with delay I see. 25
One World - We are family too “everything that lives is connected�
Ural Owl, Tsurui, Akan District, Hokkaido Japan Lisa Sprout, amateur Audubon awards
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Excerpt from father’s card to Arjun - on eve of his “walking away” Harvard-bound (circa late august 2014)
“That coming parting and the letting go, sound A big beginning, in that very end. The rhythm of pain and pleasure The complete consort in a dance Soaring side by side Giddy in joy and bursting in pride Gnawing emptiness of the imminent void Third time around, still no firm ground. For, every parent knows (mine too) – that Life perhaps teaches us best Selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go”
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“beneath the touch of times unerring hand forever etched in memory priceless treasures – sunk in the sands of time bygone” - arun
Floating Divas in the Ganges
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Canto 3 – Loss Reckoning
“Between grief and nothing I’ll take grief”
Another September, I shall vividly ever-remember, Mummy my center, my North, my South, my East & West, All my hemispheres – terrestrial and celestial All that collapsed – my clocks all stopped. On that fateful day, September 29, 1998 5pm. Standing by her hospital bed - forced to make the impossible decision And then watch as her last breaths faded away. A second time on another later day, daddy too. Among life’s starkest realities – “man must learn by suffering, Drop by drop torture upon the heart – falls the sharp memory of pain. Against one’s will, eventually comes wisdom” – In the letting go, an awakening…. Despite its strength, distance and unforgiving length These alterations of absence For hearts of truest mettle and quality Such minds that have found Affection’s rock-solid ground, Beyond time place and mortality - for such hearts that cannot vary Presence lives in absence – in the deafening silence. 29
We are all stardust - Carl Sagan
Chilean Night Sky over Atacama Desert, Site of the ALMA cultural heritage museum
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Mummy o’ mine, O mummy o’mine! “Jete Nahi Dibo” (I am not letting you go) What song has surged tonight That echoes in my heart Interweaving the stars! What vernal joy Now like a child at breast I gnaw the magna mater’s void I’m now drunk With the universe Twinkle, twinkle, my mother star, How I wonder, now you are! Up above the world so high, My diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, When on me nothing shines upon, Then you show your star- light, Twinkle, twinkle, through the night.
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This terrestrial traveler wandering in the dark Thanks you for even the tiny celestial spark; Otherwise this son could not see where to go, If you did not twinkle so.
Dearest mummy, you will forever be my shining starThat you once were. Even from up above, so high in the sky, Your distant sparkling light Guides this son’s path bright day and night. -arun
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Rock of Gibraltar – On of the twin Pillars of Heracles of the ancient world
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Daddy o’ mine, O daddy o’mine! “the wood burns out, But the fire goes on forever” - anonymous African saying
January 24, 2006, 8pm at home in the Ashby, McLean with me by your bedside, Your (~99 years) visit to earth ended dearest daddy - For me as if mine had ended too. “The Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – The Nerves sat ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questioned ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, went round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone”.
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Pole Star
(North Star, Dhruva Tara)
Hubble HD image
*Dhruva – Sanskrit root, meaning “constant, immovable, fixed;” Tara” – star in Sanskrit. In ancient times this star was also known as the Heaven’s Door. Only the brightest stars in a given constellation can become the Heaven’s Door. The distance between Earth and the North Star is over one thousand light years. The North Star, also known as Polaris, has been seen to be the most important star in the sky since ancient times. Unlike other stars, this star seems to stand motionless, close to the Earth’s magnetic north pole. In the ancient times this proud and majestic queen of constancy in the northern sky was a guide for navigation, and commonly known as the Sea Star.
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In that stupor, for all I cared: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message my Daddy, he Is Dead. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, For nothing now can ever come to any good.
O’ dear daddy, there on the sad height- that fateful night, Made weak by time and fate; yet you blessed me with your fierce tears of love, as if with blinding sight, not letting go. Strong in will power and hard work since youth Strive, seek, to find, and never to yield; It mattered not how proximate the gate, You, as always the master of your fate The captain of your soul Did not go gentle into that fateful night – but did Rage rage against the dying light. Later that night your prana metamorphosed – rose as if Out of the spiritus mundi - unleashed a fiercely raging, howling wind, its Whistling high-pitched shrieking dance of frenetic unstoppable energy – Wind shadows of lion’s body and head of a whirling dervish? In a trance of mystical fervor and séance – Turning, turning An unending gyre surrounding my abode, refusing to let go .
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Trees at night – indigenous folk art, India
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Sound and fury –- full of passionate intensity Raged unabated for next two days and nights – Surely some mystical revelation at hand? On day three the final letting go – The howling winds of your spirit’s energy came to pass. For good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Do not go gentle in the night – they Rage, rage against the dying of the light So too you did my dear daddy. The wood burns out, But daddy your fire and light never faded. You are now clad in the light of my Pole-star Piercing my darkness of time. You always shining in my view No matter the clime or chime; A vivid image of what is remembered foreverOnce my terrestrial Rock of Gibraltar – now My celestial Rock Star, daddy you are. In keeping with tradition from the Olympic games, Three torch bearers of the Sanghvi family flame Are standing by after me - to run the next laps, daddy. -arun
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Till we meet again
Ananta Prem (”Unending Love”)
When that unforgiving timekeeper Chronos calls my time Comes to collect his dues - and my clock shall cease its rounds; This son, who all along warmed my hands before the fires of life Astonishing life - that let me do it my way till this September day This Nobody/Everyman shall be ready then – For that other fire - on the pyre. Mortal I, a bunch of atoms with consciousness Fragmentary matter with curiosity, cohering for a few milliseconds in cosmic time - on Earth a micro-universe of atoms - labeled “arun”, Shall return to the implicate Order - as stardust. Then the three of us shall together laugh again – Like the good old shared times; laugh At the troubles and grief of our partings whilst briefly visiting earth. That fateful day when we three shall meet again In the Sky Club of the cosmic firmament – till then Au revoir, mummy and daddy, Un bel di vedremo – Homecoming
-arun
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“My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety”. -William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
“Clouds come floating into my life, No longer to carry rain or usher storm, But to add color to my sky” –Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
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Canto 4 – Child is father of the man “A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” -An ancient Lapland folk song
“We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings - the sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones”. -Tomas Tranströmer (1931- 2015), Nobel laureate (2011)
The years and months moved on by and by, The child’s cartwheels turned to car wheels; The once child, is now seventy-five. That boy tagged along with me – Unbeknownst at first, as a stowaway. He occupies the pole position within my very heartland; My best friend, companion along the way – to this September day. We frequently chat and together chuckle – indeed I prefer his company to most others’.
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O’ spiritus mundi -arun
I realized it well in childhood I cherished it in youth. I appreciate now more fully —
Individual organisms are all connected Through deep time, and across space; An interconnected web of physio-chemical mechanisms – There are no boundaries per se across these ecosystems. The cosmic spirit, its very breath unites man and all nature In interdependence and harmony Of nature’s symphony - our existential reality. -arun 44
The light within that child, is the very attar of this Man – The sense of awe, sublime enchantment and kinship – The child-like energy, spirit, imagination about life and nature. His heart still leaps in joy, skips a beat, encountering the simply sublime Sings to the wonder of his place on the microscopic “pale blue dot” Our mother galaxy, The Milky Way – our solar system, its “tiny sun” – In essence a hydrogen bomb/nuclear fusion reactor - sustains all life ; Not as a mere idea, but an energizing existential reality . “seeing” that the gifts of the infinite are strewn in the nature and dust in the finitude around us. That “we are all star stuff” - awakens the silent songs of truth within this man-child heart’s deep core -arun
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Christmas at The Odyssey, December 2018
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Canto 5 - The Carousel of Seasons arun ( 1944-)
Spring still makes spring in the mind, When seventy-five years are told; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old The seasons come, the seasons go, The earth is green, or white with snow; No matter the climes and chimes I still feel the warm rosebuds of affection below. In the depths of one winter, I discovered within me An invincible life long spring, summer - and autumn too. For autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower; And each day of autumn brings spring little closer ahead. Time and change shall naught avail, No matter where my family, friends and I cast forth and set sail. In our glorious firmament’s oceans - terrestrial or celestial Our true love and friendship shall forever prevail.
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The Cosmic Carousel and Circle Game Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja)
ca. 11th century bronze, Chola dynasty - The Metropolitan Museum, New York **Image depicts the Vedic conception of the never-ending cosmic dance cycle - metamorphoses and time; represented by Shiva’s roles as creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe.
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Canto 6 - The Circle Dance of Life’s ebb and flows “Natura naturans” (nature doing what it does - Baruch Spinoza, et al)
What an astonishing Life We each have won a free lottery ticket To the measureless theatre of the kosmos; Choice of casting on Life’s astonishing 24/7 stage – Ours! Be sure to read the fine print though. Validity is laughably short, bounded by two arbitrary dates – A priceless ticket, nevertheless. A wonderful opportunity to discover – Experience the sublime beauty, truth, nature, love; Not in their singularity, but in their quotidian ubiquity, Not based on comparison with something else, For the astonishment exists per se, in the ordinary – If you are mindful how to apprehend.
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We’re captive on the carousel of time And the painted ponies – they go up and down; We can’t return - only look back from where we came, (alas Orfeo learned the hard way in the underworld when he looked back at Euridice!)
And go round and round - In the Great Circle Game.
Each season sings its same unique tune - but It is a different me on each go-around. Therein life’s golden opportunity – to look afresh, anew each moment - If only we shed the accumulated baggage of conditioning and the known.
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.. the dominions within us ..
Life’s constant ebbs and flows - beginnings, partings, endings, dealings – a constant emotional roller coaster for Everyman – to wit Joy and woe are woven together fine - under very grief and pine, Runs a joy with a silken twine – In the very Temple of Delights - Veil’d Melancholy has her Sovran shrine too. Man is great at taking off – no good when it comes to landing!
Among the biggest challenges in life for far too many, Shed the mind’s self-forged manacles - get past ourselves; Break free from the mental prisons of our very making Let in the real light of Life – connect the infinity within us and without - clear out the incessant noise of the ever-chattering mind within – jettison the flotsam, Cast away free from the clutter of the monkey brain’s theatre within.
With the mind empty and if we start to see and listen from our heart - finally then a chance to recognize for the very first time – the very places whence forth we started from many times prior – and On further go-arounds, the possibility of more curtains lifting Discovery of our personal truths arriving quietly within.
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“day and night together yield one delight, in a giddy dispersal of light”
Nature’s dappled beauty 52
As the blood in our veins unseen Whose course is set for the heart, Our realizations too, arrive unseen, un-announced, In restraint, akin to a gentle tug to the heartAt the end of a direct line that connects us to the spiritus mundi.
Nature, love, truth, we recognize through the dominion of the heartNot through reason – the dominion of the Cartesian mind and ego; For, the heart has its reason - which reason does not know, Simple, profound wisdom – That cannot otherwise be sought or bought.
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Mysterious tremendum - the dominions above and without.. “M’illumino – d’immenso” (“immensity illumines me”, Giuseppe Ungaretti)
“in this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation” - Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859)
“all mass is interaction” - Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate (1918-1988)
Whatever its arche The cosmos, under its mysterious cloak of seeming chaos A veil’d dance in perfect harmony – a la a bikini What it reveals is tantalizing; what is concealed, vital! Most matter of our universe is invisible – comprising Dark matter and energy - whose existence and mass - Inferred from Influences on observable objects and phenomenon. Ever present, nature’s tremendous tensions – Everything man sees - hides another possibly bigger thing and force, Absence - presence constantly play peek-a-boo, The conjoined twins leave us guessing!
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“at the level of the body and mind, each of us is a separate entity - but at the level of life, we are all members of one interconnected body” –Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)
Family of foraging baboons – Luangwa National park, Zambia (Patrick Bentley)
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The seen and the unseen bonded inextricably In the very union of their co-existence; Life’s Tango of Unity – seemingly A dance of tensions with its own order and harmony. Like the lyre and the bow. Life and death - creation and destruction, Expansion and contraction Each force by its own activity develops the counter- balance - tensions that can never exist solo; Each a half of the unity Opposites paired in synergy that make a whole. All things double – paired Centripetal and centrifugal – If one attracts the other repels. In the affinity the repulsion In the force the limitation. That which always was, and is, and will, Replenishes its measure as it also burns away – Together as one only they can exist.
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All said and done… “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” -Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Life has many unexpected turbulent twists and turns –yet Everything under flows with energy and purpose With unstoppable logic of a river From its source – to its destination. Life is about living the questions with an open mind – There being no unambiguous answers. For us life is akin to a 24/7 live performance without rehearsal! Maintaining balance in midst of constant flux, uncertainty. Whilst you can’t always change your circumstances You can choose how to interpret them – your philosophy. Maintaining balance, through the choppiest of times; Steering to find calmer sunnier waters – by analogy Whereas Beethoven’s music seems to find an “answer” invariably - Schubert’s almost never could.
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All said and done If Life is about flux, metamorphosis Constancy of change – uncertainty Entangled with carpe diem and memento mori; Love and beauty are about truth and constancy – That outlast death Can be found abundantly in the routine, the ordinary – In ubiquity - not singularity. And that’s all I shall ever know after all these years. . ..and... Imagine - isn’t the daily sublime sunset a little too much for our two eyes That, who knows, might not open to see the sunrise – Chant the Gayatri – and imagine Trying to plumb the unattainable secrets – well beyond any science Nature of the links between the gigantic domains – The mysterium tremendum without and within us. An incomparably magical mystical experience – yielding The sublime sensation of deep joy each time without fail In the simple knowing that which forever is impenetrable Really exists!
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“I look up at the night sky and know, yes, we are part of this Universe, more important, the Universe is in us.. .....I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There’s a level of connectivity — that’s really what you want in life”. -Rabindranath Tagore
Sothern skies - Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) website
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical; the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists...is the highest wisdom, the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of the cosmic religious spirit, true religiousness. I do not believe in a personal God; who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings, watching over us to reward or punish. I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in orderly harmony of what exists. The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogmas, theology...it should be based on a sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmic spirit” -Albert Einstein 60
Finally, one day, apprehension – A moment sans fanfare, thunderbolt or “epiphany “- far from it The simply profound truth quietly arrives deep within our heartland The earth and the cosmos do not merely hold our body – but Far more vital, gladden our heart like nothing else For the contact with the infinite is far more than physical.
Joy unsurpassed is the very product of the union of all kindred things It is not in the power of our possessions It is in the power of our union You (we each) are indeed “that”; The universe is in each of us – it Is us “tat tvam asi”.
from yours truly Namaste O’ mother nature, O’mother life, O’mother kosmos Om..
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“And after all these years scholarship, enquiry, experience I don’t have any unambiguous answers know little Not even sure of that” - arun, ca. 2000
mi compadres @ full attention in rear-guard honor for Mr. Nobody - La Plage, Ashwem Goa
“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing” -Socrates 470-399 b.c.e.
“Knowledge is the knowing that we can not know.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
“The more I learn the less I know”
-Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate Quantum Physics 1955 c.e.
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Canto 7 - et tu moments of serendipity in a Saunterer’s Odyssey My aphorisms - “What was oft thought, but never so well said”
‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!
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Un bel di... Two Nobodys meet by astonishing chance
One fine day in a September!
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An et tu moment
Reykjavík, September 5, 2017
One fine day in another September – my 73rd birthday – celebrated in lovely Reykjavík, the northern most capital city of the world “at the arctic circle”. Settled by Norse tradesmen starting circa 750CE, with successive waves of Celtic slaves from Scotland and Ireland, following. Sauntering along solo, soaking in the city vibe, pulse, cultural and architectural history... out of the blue… akin to the experience of a sudden sky filling lighting flash, stunning, dazzling... speechless..
...lo and behold… as I turned a corner near the City Hall… on the lakefront… an “et tu” existential moment - yet another self-professed Nobody, not embarrassed to publicly make the statement that he knows very little as well; a kindred soul mate, walking the path of his life journey. For an instant moment our eyes met in glance - and that look said it all… it takes one to know one and we both felt it in that moment.. 65
One World – two civis mundi
Dani tribesman – remote central valley -West Papua (formerly Dutch Irian Jaya), ca.1996
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“Looking back along the way - I never had a master plan charted for the life journey per se. Rather I have been guided by a general sense to live life as you go responsibly; explore, enquire, and experience some of the astonishing diversity of nature, cultures, our kosmos; and an innate calling within the deep core, drawn to professionally work for bettering the lot of the far less fortunate fellow citizens of our planet, and for nature - not privilege profit making for self or others.” -arun, circa 1990
Ithaka
C. P. Cavafy 1911
As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body.
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Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Odysseus and the Sirens, vase of the Siren Painter, c. 480-470 b.c.e. (British Museum)
Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time: may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind—
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as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn’t have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Odysseus and Aeolus in the Cave of Winds 69
“A big challenge in life is getting past oneself” “I prefer my company to most others’” –arun, ca. 2002
Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel (The devil is sitting in the mirror) -Herta Müller Nobel Laureate (2009)
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LOVE AFTER LOVE
Derek Walcott, Nobel Laureate 1992
“The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life”.
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Apprehending the basic symbolism of Yeats’s primary and antithetical gyres leads to understanding the metaphoric foundations of the poem; a dualistic pattern that history follows continuously throughout time and space is depicted in the image of the dual gyres. In this pattern, the two gyres wax and wane reciprocally to each other; signifying two opposing forces or essences in the space-time continuum. When one force reaches its climax, the other reaches its nadir, and vice versa. The dominance of one force is by the every implicate order transferred to its almost-dormant antithesis directly after it reaches its widest point. Together, these eternally cycling vortexes contain the sweep of history, and this transference of dominance symbolizes a potentially transformational shift in society’s (organisms, organizations, institutions ‌) course and general ideology.
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The contemporary resonance of history across time and space is pervasive - in the ever unfolding flux and transformation marked by birth, growth, decline, regeneration in another form; be they organisms, organizations, nations, societies, civilizations, institutions economies. In the very dynamics of the virtuous cycle of their growth – the antithesis, built-in forces of their decline. -arun circa 2002
“What’s past is prologue, what to come - In yours and my discharge” -The Tempest, Shakespeare (This quotation is engraved on the National Archives Building, Washington D.C, and commonly used by the military when discussing the similarities between war throughout history.)
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Nobel Laureate 1923
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand – Surely the Second Coming is at hand…
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Mobius Loop
If its full length were crawled by an ant, the ant would return to its starting point having traversed both sides of the paper without ever crossing an edge.
Kosmos as a Mobius loop in space - time - Every point in our centre-less kosmos, no matter where we happen to be situated - is the centre of an infinite “sphere” as we perceive it in space-time here. On earth if we set out in any one direction and keep going, we do not fall of the edge of the earth; rather our road circles back to the starting point. –Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), Theoretical Physicist, Mathematician, Cosmologist, University of Cambridge.
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“all roads eventually lead back to us” -arun, circa 2010
“when you come to a fork in the road, take it” -anonymous
The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. 75
Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost (1864-1963)
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Temple and Muse with barbiton
Detail of vase lid - MusĂŠe du Louvre, K570, attributed to painter Asteas, ca. 360 b.c.e.
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Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807), “The Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon�. Hesiod cites inspiration from the Nine Muses while on Mount Helicon. (Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania).
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Others’ words my Muse - France Britto Dearest friend, My entire family join me in celebrating this blessed day! In those fleeting moments when it was given to us to meet...speak and share perceptions, insights, You with your intuition, your wonderfully honed instincts, these surely imbibed from your beloved, respected parents.... Our shared sense of wonder at the mystery and magic of our world, the joy of communicating with those we love... seeing the promise and the beauty in each... the faith to keep going and never tire of seeking... for the quest is eternal and infinite... Thank your dear friend for being among us... for your courage and constancy, for daring to go bravely into the unknown, for who knows what undiscovered troves it may reveal... for the hope that leads one onwards... and... inward.... to the greater discovery of the Self.... And so like the Little Prince, we seek and see with the heart.... because what is important and essential is invisible to the eye...”On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur... L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux”... And so..... let us praise and give thanks to Divine Providence Which brought you into our midst... Let us pray that you may long continue in good health and spirits among your wonderful family and your many friends who respect, love and pray that you be blessed with all good things always.
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Sauntering in Vanuatu
Vanuatu – studio of Oceanic artists Nicolai Michtouchkine, Aloi Pilioko (ca 2015)
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Dear Arun, For the example you set; For the wisdom you share, And the full life you lead‌ Happy Birthday Affectionately, Ramachandra and Santhi
Dear Arun, Happy birthday! Wishing you all good things on this most auspicious milestone event. Amit and I are so lucky to have your wit and wisdom – and you in our lives. Love, Susan and Amit
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“Ubuntu” “I am because you are”
Mountain gorilla mother and recent baby - Virunga National Park, Rwanda (c. 2002)
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Giving Thanks Hare Spiritus mundi
Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome –So instead of getting to Heaven, at last I’m going, all along. - Emily Dickinson
In the name of the Bee And of the Butterfly And of the Breeze – Hare spiritus mundi … -Arun version
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“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has enough time” - Rabindranath Tagore Nobel Laureate (1861-1941)
To Life -arun
That it will never come again Makes Life bitter- sweet; At once a giver and a plunderer. So be it. In that sphere - between memento mori and carpe diem At once mundane, yet brimming with magical sublime wondersMarked by its chance and our choices in each moment, Life offers all its potentialities - metaphysically The wondrous “space-time” at our disposal for wresting – Our “eternity” in each moment.
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Like the butterfly, which counts not months but moments We too have time enough; Forever being composed of nows – not of time. We hold eternity in the magical “Now” moments of our Life streaming by – for our taking . Thank you - my life long afternoon In this autumn that has no age For my dearest family - and For dear old friends you led me to; Echoes of them come even now to find me. Thinking where man’s glory most begins and ends I say my glory is I have such dear family and friends Forgive me then - for The avarice to hoard the memories. Each day of life is precious and extra, A cause for celebration – giving thanks: For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love, family and friends, For everything Life’s goodness sends Om shanti, shanti
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“aging is mandatory, growing up is optional” -arun, ca. 2000
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Inspirations and major influences in penning my poetics
Disclosure I have endeavored in this labor of love, sophomoric though it may be, to script my poetics, organize the content, and curate, choreograph and cast the document as a juxtaposition in “visual poetics” format; depicted through the holistic lens and filters embedded within my heart’s core. Looking back, it became immediately and amply evident that since early on in my journey I have been naturally drawn - possibly pre-disposed given the early influences of my mother in childhood, including introducing me to poetry - towards seeing our glorious world, wondrous cosmos and nature, as a connected unity across all material and immaterial and varying degrees of consciousness. And I have been drawn to the metaphysical and the mystical aspects that envelop our spiritus mundi. Last not least I have been drawn as much to the absent as the present wherever I happen to be. The poetics, crafted in blank verse mostly, are entirely mine – unless otherwise where attributed to a direct source in the main body – and essentially attempt to project the light within me in my own words. However, I have benefitted immensely by the inspirations and influences of many masters – in course of reading their poems, and especially literary criticism and essays – among the sumum bonum poets of the world in my grade book. Their works I mostly chanced across in more recent years especially following retirement (post 2004 onwards); and are identified below. I am grateful for these “finds” that helped me polish somewhat what otherwise largely remains my amateurish work. 87
Dedication Centuries old poems sung by devotees describing Lord Krishna; “That Love is all there is”, Emily Dickinson; “The Wild Palms”, William Faulkner; Audrey Hepburn; “The more loving one”, WH Auden.
Invocation Invocations from: Homer, The Odyssey (c 1200-800 b.c.e.); Virgil, Aeneid (29-19 b.c.e.); Ovid “Metamorphoses” (8 c.e.). Hesiod (Cosmogony; and Theogony) And from: Principal Vedas and Upanishads (c. 2500-1000b.c.e.); Plutarch- “Isis and Osiris”, Pyramid texts (c. 2500 b.c.e.); Heraclitus writings (575-435 b.c.e.); Sappho (630-570 b.c.e.); Alcaeus, “The Ship of State” (621-560 b.c.e.); Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Proust (1871-1922); and Nobel prize award ceremony banquet speeches by: V.S. Naipul (2001); Seamus Heaney (1996); Wisława Szymborska (1995); W.H. Auden, “September 1” (1907-9173).
Preface Opening line lead-in from “Dante’s Inferno: Translations by 20 Contemporary Poets” edited by Daniel Halpern. Some of the finest contemporary poets, including Carolyn Forché, Robert Haas, Seamus Heaney, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, Robert Pinsky and Mark Strand, joined forces in an effort to put, as Halpern says, “one of our ‘sacred’ texts back into the hands of the keepers of the language.” Derek Walcott, Nobel Laureate (1992) – in an interview by English professor, Christian Campbell, Rhodes scholar, Duke University. Walcott discusses issues of identity, culture, and language in context of one of his masterpieces: “The Light of The World”. Hart House Theatre, November 23, 2010. W.H Auden ( 1907-1973) – “Poetry makes nothing happen” (from “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”).
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Canto 1 – Beginnings (Joy) September, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885); William Blake Canto 2 – Partings (Woe ) Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden (1913-1980); Walking Away, Cecil Day Lewis(1904-1972); “Delay”, Elizabeth Jennings(1926-2001). Canto 3 – Loss (Reckoning) Chorus in Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” ; Presence in Absence, John Donne (1571-1631). W. Faulkner (1897-1962); Simone de Beauvoir (1908 -1986). “ Mother O’Mine”, Kipling (18651936) Nobel Laureate; The Star by Jane Taylor (1806) in The Rhymes of the Nursery (1806); “La Notte Bella”, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1912-1970); “Vismaya”, Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Laureate (1861-1941) “After great pain, a formal feeling Comes”, Emily Dickinson(1830-1886); “Funeral Blues”, W.H. Auden (1907-1973); “Ulysses”, Tennyson (1809-1892); “Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953 ); “Invictus”, William Ernest Henley (1849-1903); “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Nobel laureate 1923;“My Pole Star”, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Nobel laureate 1913; Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Other Inspirations: “Unending Love”, Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Laureate; “Atoms with Consciousness, Matter with Curiosity”, Richard Feynman Nobel laureate, Quantum Physics (1918-1988) ; “On the Nature of the Universe”, Lucretius Carus (99-55B.C.E.) Canto 4 – Child is father of the Man Inspirations: (i)“Knabenwille ist windeswille/Junglings Gedanken lange Gedanken”, German translation by James Taft Hatfield; original compilation in Latin by Professor Johannes Schefferus, “Lapponia”, Frankfurt 1673. (Lapponia draws from native Laplander work of Olaus Matthiae Sirma - Walt Whitman anchored his ‘Lost Youth” poem by ending each stanza with the two lines, but without specific references). (ii) Vismaya, Rabindranath Tagore. The daily poet blog, Arjun Janah. Canto 5 – The Carousel of Seasons Albert Camus (1913-1960) 89
River Arun, Nepal
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Canto 6 – The Circle Dance of Life’s ebb and flow Rig Veda (~2500 – 1500 B.C.E.); Heraclitus of Ephesus (535-475 B.C.E.); Nobel laureates - Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941), “Sadahna- The Realization of Life” , Nobel laureate 1913 ; Other Nobel laureates: Wiliam Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “The Second Coming”. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965); Doris Lessing (1919-2013), Nobel Laureate 2002, “Prisons we Choose to Live Inside. Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012), “The Poet and the Word”, Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1996, and “Birthday (The Astonishment of Life)”; Derek Walcott (1930-2017), “Light of the World” interview by Professor Christian Campbell, YouTube (2011). William Blake (1757-1827) “Whatever is, is Right”; John Keats, “Ode to Melancholy”; Blaise Pascal (1623-1662); William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “The Cosmic Spirit” . Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881); Ella W. Cox (1850-1919), “Whatever is – is Best”; Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) All Said and Done”, Penguin Book Series; “The Circle Game”, lyrics Joni Mitchell (1943-); “Two Trees” by Marie Borroff (1923-2019). Professor Literature, and Poetry, Yale University. Canto 7 – et tu moments Alexander Pope ; Madama Butterfly, lyrics from Opera by Puccini; Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel (“The Devil is Sitting in the Mirror”), Berlin, 1991, Herta Müller, Nobel Laureate (2007); Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” Envoi - Giving Thanks, O’ spiritus mundi Emily Dickinson; Sappho; Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Milkmaid (1657) Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Rijksmuseum
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Vermeer
Wisława Szymborska Nobel Laureate (1923-2012)
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum in painted quiet and concentration keeps pouring milk day after day from the pitcher to the bowl the World hasnt earned the worlds end.
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Saunterer journeying incognito
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