Category Archives: light

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turbulent saudade

Verandah rain

Ver and Ah

Like a thousand times before in my life, I stood on the verandah.

I overlooked a flourishing green garden that could creditably claim the term ‘Lebensraum.’ An Olympic stone throw away gaps between the trees provided glimpses of the mountains in the distance.

One could mistakenly say that I was looking, but I wasn’t entirely just seeing something ahead of me. It was a seeing, – but more in a knowing way seeing in my mind, – all that what was around me, even assuming a deep metaphysical dimension too. I saw with my mind’s eye, – that eye, which adds imagination to vision, – in parallel to my real eyes that were somewhat inexplicably staring in a removed way, out of focus from reality.

A pronounced and conscious experience of the present unfolded itself. An enamored bond, – of having been here in this exact location a thousand times before, thinking similar thoughts, – enacted itself like a ritual. A magnetic attraction to a place of origin pulled me along.

In case you wondered, I was not having the cognitive experience of let’s say a visitor who comes with a fresh, curious and receptive look.

I was in reflecting mode and felt encouraged with hope as I stood on the open verandah, refreshed deep down into my soul by the view directly into nature. However, I was also prone to flooding by emotional thought drowning from the weight of the intensity of my imagination reliving events.
At the opposite extreme was a determination and belief that my reality is adjustable to my wishes and dreams, perhaps whims too, if I can only get in touch with this inner being called ‘Life.’

The land of nature presented a captivating view.

Grass spread like a living, deep-pile carpet towards bushes and shrubs giving way to trees sloping gently down towards a river hidden from view. There was an un-invaded openness and the occasional hill posing like a sentinel, – guarding the dragon mountains that pronounced themselves behind the horizon on a background of the deepest blue sky, smudged with white blobs and the dew point flirting with ambient temperature in the creation of a baby called Rain.

An inner turbulence of Saudade, – a melancholic hue with a cloudy patch of shadowy sadness and an indeterminate incompleteness, was in abstract contrast to the warmth and light of the late summer’ midday.

The summer-rain latitudes express boundless gratitude with profuse growth and breathless beauty in nature. A thousand colors pinked and perfumed with Double Delight and Mint, with touches of plumbago blue, bottlebrush red, cumulus white and Chinese-lantern orange, escalating into undocumented green presentations beyond the scope and comprehension of mere definition. Thoughts were punctuated by the melodious call of the Black-headed Oriole and the announcement of the Red-chested Cuckoo with long moments of haa-haa-haa-de-dah of the Hadeda’s, awakening the last slumbering senses.

Memory was choreographed against a scenery of unrestraint growth painted with the tincture of eons of existence and strains of loose imagination. Events re-lived themselves as if their stories had to be highlighted once more and gain attention, connecting the thread of existence with the fabric of eternity, materializing in this unique present. An invitation to re-read the past with the lantern of ‘now’

(‘now,’ this whole, current cognitive, conscious awareness experience a human has: re-inventing itself periodically through subconscious actions on a different level to the physical, with emotional, compassionate and passionate growth)

illuminating pages hitherto less exposed, their meaning obscured until now, as the dots of life started connecting through lines: revealing a path, pointing to a purpose, exposing a gift, – presenting a meaningful picture that quite naturally highlighted and indicated a preference. The invocation of one’s creative spirit in a way that kindles meaning and brings benefit and pleasure to all concerned.
(There are many rituals, ideas, substances, practices to invoke the spirit – ideally find your own)

Everything rhymed in colorful poetry as nature’s hormones reacted to a dose of growth-vaccination in the form of heavenly water.

Remembering became an act of adding content to what seemed an immutable forest on the canvas of life by superimposing events sometimes so grossly out of touch with the underlying reality that they created a contrasting inset of disharmonic visual irritation. When the drive to understand life is also an incognito mission to retain sanity, then answers are essential for maintaining stability. They provide views through a stabilized gyroscope in the turbulence of Saudade. Answers are the voices in our silent universe of thought and they are the conversation that leads to more enlightenment and knowing.

For the 1001’s time I am standing on the verandah, – once again looking for knowing and starting the ritual from the beginning, accompanied by a deep sense of feeling.

Signed
Mel an’ Choly

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Light, shadow, me: the trinity 

Without me (or a tree etc.) light would have no mate
 That's why I am
 That's why we are three
 Inseparable and still unique
 Sometimes I, the shadow, am, and sometimes I am not
 That is because sometimes you are and sometimes not
 When I am not, I just am behind a veil
 Sometimes I am you and you are me
 Shadow, light and me, the trinity
I, the shadow, am the soulmate of you
 I am not the opposite of light
 I can only be if you are, and me too
 It is you that sculptures me
 It is me that draws your face
 Using the crayons filled with grace
Without you I would be a lonely light
 I could not live and shine so bright
 That would be night, a mere shadow of me
 We are as one in three
 Therefore I am trinity
We are inseparable and yet apart
 You rise in the east
 And yet in the mornings I stretch west
 But in the evenings east is my quest
 When you are there then I am here
 But altogether we are the trinity
We are at our peak when we are born
 Or when we go to rest
 Antipodes you think but somewhere we do meet
 A triangular circle
 Mathematics at its best
At noon I am not, but still you are
 We are combined together
 We have met
 Now is our time to rest and be complete
 I am light, shadow, me
 I, you, we are trinity
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Shining me

For as far as I can look back standing in my own light has seldom happened.
I needed to first become aware that I am a light that can actually shine.
Others regularly out-shone me.
It was as if everybody else was aware that shining ones own light was advertising oneself to the universe, – except myself.
Somehow, perhaps early circumstances affecting that aspect, I was not a shiner. I understood the principle that if I don’t shine my own light then I am under the radar so to speak. What I didn’t understand was that for anything to happen in my life I have to switch on my light and keep on shining it.
Being boldly visible like a super-star is another thing, but shining my own light, not just a candle, but a real light, is a requirement to life, – or so I would like to think now.

It is easy to stand in the rays of someone else’s light.
My husband this…, my wife that…, my company…, my friends…, they all shine a light and I can find comfort gathering myself under their umbrella of light.
Long before I ignited my own light I had found others’ light. I would ask, “Why can’t I be like them?”
Little did I know that no one can be like another. Unbelievably so each and everyone’s light is also different, – very different, even if they are your own offspring. It is an utter mystery to me how there can be so many of us and we all shine a different light. Man has become such an expert at cloning stuff and yet the universe is all about diversity. Even when it all looks the same, it isn’t.
Another thing I find a paradox is that when I shine I emit something and yet I actually attract something. I give something, and yet that very process of shining(giving off), that radiation I emit, actually attracts stuff and doesn’t affect my shine at all, it might just make it brighter. It has a principle of action and reaction built in. Shining, more than anything, seems to attract stuff which has a basic consistency of what I shone out there. If I have a dull light it is impossible to attract sunny, resonant, interesting stuff.
This observation leads me to say that:
“What I am I attract.”
Truthfully, I didn’t know that for a large part of my life, and even when I got the message I actually still didn’t get the gist of it until much later. Whatever was shining was a side product of whatever I was doing, but not a deliberate attempt. Sometimes one can shine and don’t even know it. That is cool, but when the light goes out then it becomes a problem, because when darkness takes over in your head you are exposed to such an onslaught of negativity and misfortune that ones only hope is to find that light again.

But, how do I find that light of mine so I can shine it?
I love fantasy, I even write it. I love to think about an ethereal world, the metaphysical, the spiritual, the magical. I love to dream.
When I get down to doing stuff however I become a realist, pragmatist. I need concrete stuff that works.
However intangible this might be, I have absolutely learned about the power of thought. Thought is the essence of my light. Because I can dial in any thought, and I can really go overboard here because my thoughts are private and so I can think whatever I want, I can change my light with such variability and speed, like a tuning knob on one of those old radios, that my light becomes like a discotheque kaleidoscope or a rave club shadow world. Surfing up and down the spectrum of light causes my thoughts to race inconsistently and so I never get to the point of actually emitting anything long enough to evoke a desired reaction, except getting back some garbled snippets of everything but really nothing coherent and usable.
Once I got to this realisation I knew there was only one cure. I had to sit down for half-an-hour and meditate on being light: pure, glorious, radiating, warm, embracing, shining light.
I am light. I shine. I am.