I Am!

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest—that I loved the best—
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

(I Am! by John Clare)

The Usual Suspects*

* Science, religion and leftists.

With nostalgia

Suddenly you are missing Bethnal Green Road. The salwar-suit shops, the off license 24-hour grocery stores, the English Premier League odds scribbled in chalk marking what kind of a reception which team will get tonight from the dedicated fans, the half kilo bhindi and everything else. Imagine!

What could induce this acute sense of nostalgia, you ask. A slice of bad pizza, a conversation on the ‘poor PR’ being done by the guys behind UID, and the general sense of moroseness that descends when one is trapped in a shopping mall that is trying to be Oxford Street, London or Soho, New York anything but Pushp Vihar, Saket. Possibly. Or maybe it is the passing reference to graffiti in East London that someone mentions reading about in the inflight magazine as the plane soared to 30,000 feet.

And so, while the drinks are being sipped and the forks pick an indifferently diced cucumber now and a mercilessly torn rocket leaf then. The mind has already passed the Regent’s canal, has crossed the tube station and is walking straight down Bethnal Green Road towards Brick Lane. No, not the Brick Lane of the novel, or of the film based on the novel. More like Brick Lane of the Saturday nights- of the impossibly asymmetrical hairstyles, people spilling onto the pavement along with their drinks, the music, the organic food, the vintage cloth stores and yes, even the graffiti. Ok also, Brick Lane of the daytime where a slice of 1980’s India is preserved in the form of brass decoration vases, Manipuri and Bhangra dance dolls, the smell of rose incense and Mohammad Rafi (or Mohammad Aziz) songs blaring from what one hopes are Phillip cassette players. Where one goes to in the futile search for the “perfect” curry. That mythical thing every Londoner can almost taste but not quite grasp.

All this is nostalgic now! You might argue: It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back.* And one might say: Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.** Why should nostalgia always be equated with longing, when sometimes it is merely reminiscence; a pleasing reflection, a fond evocation? Something that gently lifts you up. You may end up hanging in a limbo but admit it- isn’t the view great?

*Bill Vaughn
**Robert Morgan

The fading

Moments turn into minutes, days stumble one into the other, months
into years, and time, it is said, has passed. We say life has moved
on. Not realizing time and life are two independent entities. Mutually
exclusive. Rarely does one care for the other.

Rain falls on Bombay. This is Bombay with its ancient banyan trees and
chawls with pots of hibiscus flowering red and yellow on the
windowsills. And corrugated iron sheets hiding from public view the
gaping hole in the earth that will, in some days and months, turn into
a gleaming steel and glass monstrosity. Slowly, over days and months,
it will rise from the hidden depths. However, time will not wait. It
will lapse.

Shaded by umbrellas, small and inadequate, against the monsoon
downpour, there will be life, or something like it. And maybe at some
moment, on some given day, it’ll summon the courage to softly ask,
"But what is the meaning of it all?” Time will most likely not reply.
Life will try to catch its fading reflection rippling in a pool of
rainwater. Or maybe it will simply sigh. And pass on.

I dreamt I was a butterfly

I dreamt I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke.
Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a
butterfly dreaming that I am a man? - Chuang Tzu*

*Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream is a Taoist parable on the interchangeability between appearance and reality: Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

Transformation of Things proves that differences between things aren't absolute. Most meanings we seek in this world are bound up in apparent contradictions.

You can read more about Chuang Tzu's dream here.
And about how chasing butterflies is so much more than what the eye sees here.

Best advice ever

Mind your head. The rest will follow.

Strolling the streets somewhere between Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water I had an epiphany. It was the same feeling that I had had almost three decades back under the neem tree in 10 Turner Road, Kanpur. The summer sun was out and about on both the days. Back then it was unbearable. Now it seemed pleasant.

I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.

Wake me up when September ends

Laughing at the sky

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky - Buddha

Thursday

It is already Thursday! There is much to be done. Things to do– lists, yes there are multiples of them in a futile attempt to arrive at the best possible way to do everything in the least possible time. Prioritise. How can one do that? Wont it mean placing greater value on

one thing over the others? But they are all things that need doing, and each on completion will lead to a certain sense of fulfillment and other things to do. The choice isn’t simply between vanilla and strawberry. Though you may argue even that isn’t so simple sometimes.

Then there is the rain. It has been raining continuously for two days. How can one do anything but watch it rain? A river flows beneath the parked cars. Wouldn’t one like to find out where it goes? Shouldn’t that be on one of the lists? The sparrows are settling down in the balcony. There is much to “chee chee” about before they are all comfortable; organized according to their pecking order. Then silent and still they will watch the worst of the rain pass by. Time to pick
up the camera. But for the light.

And then while sorting through all these sensory impulses one looks back at the screen and there is Patti Smith reading from The Waves by Virginia Woolf. After replaying it three times one goes on to hear Dancing Barefoot because that’s how the mind works. Then the book Street Haunting is picked up and after reading a few lines from the first essay one starts to recollect the gulls swirling around the dome of St Peter’s at 10:30 at night. Such poetry. And one instantly whispers, “Send a philosopher to London; please God no poet!”*

A truck carrying construction waste blows its horn. Somewhere a house of cards collapses. Is this the butterfly effect?

Coming back to the desk and everything else it encapsulates one catches sight of the work to be done. And the lists. Multiples of them. Ah! But it is only Thursday.

*Heinrich Heine. More about this soon.
You can watch Patti Smith's performance here.
Or read Street Haunting– the complete essay here. Go on try it. It's only Thursday.

Tread lightly

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle– Albert Einstein

Watch what your hand brushes past. That curled leaf is an origami nest housing the single egg laid by the female giraffe weevil. The mother has thoughtfully injected a chemical into the leaf, so that its tissues undergo a cancerous growth and the larva when hatched gets sustenance.

Watch where you put down your foot next. The water running across the trail houses tiny monsoon crabs. Soon they will get busy burrowing into the soil, bringing in oxygen and keeping the cycle of nutrients flowing. But right now they watch you closely (almost sizing you up) for a split second before scurrying to safety.

Don’t come too close. That is not a dead leaf. It is the master of camouflage– the blue oak leaf butterfly. Its underside mimics a leaf perfectly down to the midrib. Would you believe that its upperside is a vibrant indigo?

So, please tread lightly. Here miracles abound. The tarantula has built trap doors out of silk thread, another spider is mimicking an ant as it goes out to hunt them, and another is weaving a fine web between the branches of the Kadamb tree– diversification and
specialization are the hallmarks among spiders too. Then there are the trees, the birds and maybe even a pair of eyes watching steadily.

Every mushroom, every termite, every falling leaf– every breath that is taken in and every breath released demonstrates a miracle. So, tread lightly and don’t forget to keep your eyes and mind open.

Take birth on Facebook and die in the pages of mainstream media: The short and irrelevant life of protest movements in urban India

Let me start by saying: I have nothing against “we the people” ensuring that errant citizens are brought to book or forced to comply with the laws of the land. That is worth commending. But I’d just like to add a caveat: Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at others.

Meaning, dear fellow citizens first learn to wear the helmet, drive in lanes, not jump traffic lights, not unnecessary blow the horn, not over speed– you know follow basic traffic rules, (that you are required to be aware of to get a driving license) before trying to force autos and taxis out of the roads. That the recent attempt to keep taxis and autos off the road in Mumbai failed miserably, no matter how people like us choose to spin it, is an entirely different matter.

Which brings me to the more important point. Autos and taxis aren’t the "villains” and autowallahs aren’t “chors”. The fact that the problem was framed in these terms is the reason why the solution offered was inappropriate, if not downright silly. In another India, educated (and might I add civil) citizens would first attempt to understand what does public transport mean? Then go on to wonder why don’t we have good public transport and instead have so many autos and taxis on the roads in our cities? Then find out who are these people who drive these autos and taxis, where do they come from, and why do they leave from wherever they have left?

When we have asked and sought answers to these questions we would (I hope) not come up with "protests" that only widen the gap between “us” and “them”. Instead we would concentrate our energies in ensuring that the real errant citizens obey the laws of the land and the real “chors” are bought to book. Okay, maybe simply start a social media campaign and get enough “likes” to make it to the pages of the mainstream media. But at least then it wouldn’t all have been so vain.

Meanwhile an educated and enlightened take on auto-rickshaws and the life of those who drive them can be found here.

Upon meeting old friends

Recently we had a reunion. It was an almost unplanned coming together of old friends. Each had been busy in their own world, getting on with life, doing the best they could- being as unobtrusive as they could. There were no grand achievements to boast about, or pictures to brandish as proof. That we could once again come together for a few moments was enough.

But most importantly, no one said, “You haven’t changed at all!”

Wild flowers

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
(Having misidentified a wildflower by Richard Wilbur)

As I wander'd the forest,
The green leaves among,
I heard a wild flower
Singing a song.

I slept in the Earth
In the silent night,
I murmur'd my fears
And I felt delight.

In the morning I went
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy;
But O! met with scorn.
(The Wild Flower's Song by William Blake)

The good Will of a Flower
The Man who would possess
Must first present
Certificate
Of minted Holiness.
(The good Will of a Flower by Emily Dickinson)

Measure for measure

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension.*

*Oliver Wendell Holmes

Away

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,*

Even ideas to stay alive need fresh air. They have taken a holiday.
How can they be denied?

*Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fossil fools

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

We all know them. The unfortunate among us meet them everyday. In offices, on the roads, in the queue standing before us. Even misanthropes who are social media addicts meet them online. There is no escaping them. Like cockroaches hiding in old, decayed woodwork we know they are there even when we can’t see them. The fossil fools. In the corporate world they are known as ‘middle management’. And everywhere else as those middle-aged men.

They have achieved a level of mediocrity– comforting and self-sustaining. Even though they may not rise any higher up in life, they know, as they occupy the ‘middle’, that those on their way up will have to go past them. And the rest will soon join them. So they are comforted. Somehow this makes them more than a little proud of themselves.

Due to the above-mentioned advantage they build an entourage consisting of other “middle men” and juniors who in a few years time will morph into them. The accolade from juniors flatters them. The support of others like them empowers them.

But their life is not without its unique pitfalls. For how long can these fossil fools last? The wheels of progress won’t grind to a halt just because they have achieved the pinnacle of their mediocrity. There will always be smarter, bolder and more efficient ideas waiting to take over. What do they do then?

Thus begins the vicious battle unimaginatively called ‘defend the turf”. The motto being– he who blows his trumpet the loudest wins, never mind if he is out of tune and giving everyone a headache. Ruthless missions are launched to shore up large ‘followings’. Every bit of mediocrity is not only applauded but also richly awarded. Every little spark that threatens to burn down the entrenchments is mercilessly rubbed out. All middle men combine forces and they are out to take prisoners. Those unwilling to tow the line are ignored. For what one isn’t aware of, doesn’t exist. If one can’t see it, surely nobody else can. So says the cat among the pigeons as it closes its eyes.

Watching these desperate attempts to perpetuate mediocrity, we should raise our fists in anger and howl. Instead we gently shake our heads and whisper,

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret,

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

–Men at forty by Donald Justice

New Learnings

When misanthropes become social media addicts, and no one notices the irony, you know it’s the worst of the times. And the best of the times. A time when every day brings new “learnings”.

Here’s what I learnt in the past one week.

1. Missing classes meant copying notes and catching up with what had been taught during our absence. Lessons weren’t repeated for our benefit. If we had doubts we could discuss them after class. Unsurprisingly, the world too operates on this principle. You missed what’s going on; it’s your prerogative to catch up.

Even to become a contrarian you need to understand conventions first.

However, if you are under 40 and don’t know what ‘tactical media’ is, despite being active on facebook and twitter. Despite doing PhDs from Oxford or Harvard. Despite working for a media outlet. In that case, it is simply time to re-evaluate your ‘education’.

2. People tweeting from their blackberries shouldn’t accuse those tweeting from their iPhones of being Luddites. Please get a dictionary. Or open a new tab and type ‘meaning Luddite’. Same rule applies for comments on facebook.

3. If someone claims to be an atheist and a meat eater chances are very high that they are most obsessed with religion and vegetarianism. That’s the curse of assuming ideas based on negation. The anti-ideology.

4. No matter what meat eaters, who may or may not be atheists, choose to believe - yes, being an atheist also requires following a system of beliefs, there’s a reason why most men and women capable of reasoning are calling for people to consume less or no meat at all.

If you don’t understand the problem with factory farming, over fishing, or how eating a solely meat based diet is resulting in wastage of resources and is unsustainable, don’t make facile arguments about plants being helpless (plants aren’t helpless they have been on this planet since before humans evolved).

That is unless you haven’t ever laid eyes upon any biology text. In that case read more.

5. Everybody has to live with his or her own peculiar contradictions. No matter how ridiculous.
Richard Dawkins on Vegetarianism: “What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.“

6. Everything is connected. Often there is less than six degrees of separation. E.g. your desire for sushi for dinner once a week - extinction of blue fin tuna.

7. In the US, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, people think house sparrows grow up to become pigeons. This gives a clear idea of how much thought people put in before arriving at a conclusion. We see how deep the abyss is. We realize how much patience is needed to fill the gap with.

Postscript: Yesterday I realized bandhs are good for the country. Smashing public and private property, coercing people to stay at home through threat of violence, putting the country under an emergency like situation is the only way to get “people like us” to talk to the "poor" (okay just the taxi driver) and realize that inflation and price rise are badly affecting them. Shouldn’t we be calling for more bandhs?

Postcards from islands by the sea

Here is where the sky is blue! We reflect. Reality maybe deceptive.
But the truth is always true.

Home is a metaphor. A four letter word. A synonym for hope. A handful of twigs.

Everyone is equal beneath the clouds, besides the sea. The breeze that
caresses her, brushes the cheeks of he.

No one ever walks alone. There are the shadows. There is the sea. The sea.

(Mumbai, or Bombay as it was formerly known, is made up of seven islands. In 1782 the Hornby Vellard project was started to build a causeway to unite all seven islands into a single island with a deep harbour. With its completion in 1854, along with laying down of roads and the railway, Bombay became a major sea port in the Arabian Sea.)

Sparrow Day Care 2

A time to eat...

Cambodia

As the dark clouds gather, threatening thunder and rain, we talk about Cambodia. Not that there was rain when we were in Cambodia, far from it. But rainy afternoons when all one can do is watch the water colour the landscape makes the mind meander and Cambodia may just as well be where it may choose to roam.

We say yes, let’s talk about Cambodia. But let’s not talk about the shoot. At least not the producer. And absolutely not about the National Geographic photographer. And we agree not to. But let’s talk about the shoot. You know the shoe shine boy and the ladies with their babies. Oh! Yes, yes, we remember. But let’s not talk about ‘channeling Steve McCurry’: the little lama with the index finger close to his lips, the girl with the blazing eyes and pink headscarf. And we laugh. For we remember the book and the “inspiration” for the photographs. But then we also remember the airport where we saw the book. So, she says, let’s not talk about the airport. The military men with steel in their eyes. We say almost in unison, this is no afternoon to talk about military men and airports! And there is silence. We remember but choose not to talk about the military, or the history and even those other photographs- black and white and chilling. For what can one add to all that has already been said?

Then he says remember the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Again there is silence. By now the rain like silver sheets is busy obliterating the beautiful watercolour that it had painted just a few minutes back. Cold, dark lines of grey on grey. We remember Siam Reap and the trees that are taking their time to shred apart, stone by stone, what was once the pride of the Khmer rule, unlike humans they lack both pride and perhaps also a heightened sense of purpose.

We might as well talk about the Foreign Correspondence Club and that lunch, which we know, even though we may not want to, we always do end up talking about. She says, hope the crab tasted good because everything else, to be honest, was unpalatable, But the mention of sea food has already transported us to the Russian market in Phnom Penh; the humidity and the overpowering smells. Unmindful of the rain she opens the windows. But we are already talking about Phnom Penh and of course, the Russian market.

However, we know that the discussion has been salvaged. For we shall talk about Mekong and Tonle Sap- the beautiful water bodies. The boat cruises, the Japanese tourists, the monks and the sunset, the butterflies and the children. Once we get to the children, Cambodia will overwhelm our hearts. And soon we shall run out of words. The children of Cambodia leave such an enduring impression.

So we did talk. It hasn’t rained in two days. The sky is an astonishing shade of blue behind puffed up white clouds.

The Cannonball Tree

The Dutch are pragmatic, the English are self-deprecating, the Americans are “awesome” and Indians, well, Indians are officious. The above characterization is based on random observations of people and has never (almost never) been empirically proven. Though in the case of Indians the observation has been long and hard. And considering how the population at large aspires for a government job, very nearly true.

There are other observations too. In India, when someone says they love gardening they don’t mean they bend down on their knees and slog away come rain or shine. Or for that matter revel in the joy of watching a seed sprout tiny tendrils that would go on to become something truly beautiful. There are other miracles they prefer like the ones that turn a gerbera into a sunflower when it’s in a vase on their dining table. Actually what they mean is that they love the fact that they can afford someone to come 3 times a week to take care of “their garden”.

Also in India when they call a housing complex green, they don’t mean “green” in the environmentally-friendly sense. No, they don’t even mean it in the sense of the building complex having a park. They only mean that something green in colour maybe a few bushes or a few trees can be found in the vicinity.

While we are on the word park, it often means a patch of grass, there maybe some neatly pruned bushes, but what’s more important is the paved jogging track. Who said anything about the park in a city being a bio-diverse landscape with different species of native trees and plants, and birds, not to forget the odd wild mammal? Do you think you are living in London? Anyway we have “enough” National Parks in the back of beyond to spend our vacation at. And malls to spend our weekends in.

So, if you spot a cannonball tree that has attained its true majestic glory in the heart of Mumbai– don’t get excited. And don’t even think of taking photographs. There will always be some man who’ll come up and say, “Don’t take pictures. You are not allowed to take pictures” A tree can be easily ignored, and almost as easily chopped down. But the opportunity to extract a fine (should it be 50 or 100 rupees), especially where none exists, isn’t easily found. For what are rules– but made by humans like us? Did I tell you that Indians are officious?

Some rain and a million thoughts

Rain by Shel Silverstein

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.


The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.


Oh, Gray And Tender Is The Rain by Lizette Woodworth Reese

Oh, gray and tender is the rain,
That drips, drips on the pane!
A hundred things come in the door,
The scent of herbs, the thought of yore.

I see the pool out in the grass,
A bit of broken glass;
The red flags running wet and straight,
Down to the little flapping gate.

Lombardy poplars tall and three,
Across the road I see;
There is no loveliness so plain
As a tall poplar in the rain.

But oh, the hundred things and more,
That come in at the door! --
The smack of mint, old joy, old pain,
Caught in the gray and tender rain.

Woman on the Edge of Time

Woman on the edge of time by Marge Piercy (1976)

Parallel universes: universes that are separated from each other by a single quantum event.

Parallel universes exist. This I know because in another world there was once a dinner party. The wood fire warmed the room. From the hooks at the fireplace hung two pots of spicy baingan bharta and palak ka saag. All part of our vegan feast prepared by S. Though he did laugh at the fact that he was cooking Indian food for us.

The giant ficus plant that concealed the bathtub from the rest of the room, every now and then, dropped a yellowed leaf. We sat around the wooden dining table, eating, drinking and talking. Roaming from the coast of Brittany to the mountain villages of Uttarakhand. Then M said, “Lets play a game. One by one we shall talk about a book we have recently read or are presently reading.” And we said how does the game go. And she said, “That’s it. We talk about the book we have read or are reading.” And everyone laughed. But what a game it was! What a treasure it revealed.

This could have been another one of those stories that I conjure out of nothing. However, I have that book in my hands. So it was real. But that dinner party appears to exist in a time and age far removed from present reality. So, did it really happen? Or, was it just a dream? Well it was simply an excursion into another world.

Woman on the Edge of Time also deals with such an excursion. Its main character Connie is poor, Hispanic, abused, labeled a sociopath and incarcerated in a mental asylum. But she is “receptive” to Luciente and the people of Mattapoisett living in 2137. People from a future world that would cease to exist if Connie isn’t able to change things in her present. Connie’s struggle to not get forced into a brain control operation mirrors the struggle that every human, with varying intensity, undertakes. The struggle against oppression. The struggle for beauty and truth. The struggle to exist. And that is what the story is about.

How one reads the story and what one takes away from this book depends largely on what one believes: on one’s ideological position. For this book challenges ideas regarding gender roles, racism, imperialism, consumerism, science and technology, and environment degradation. Is Connie insane or a victim of gender, ethnicity and economic disparity? How does one even define sanity? Can we truly have a society where everyone is equal no matter what gender, ethnicity or class? What would that mean for the one thing that sets women apart from men: childbearing? Is more science and more technology really our hope for salvation? At a more simplistically level, is all scientific research really guided by idealism? Is the agrarian, communal, gender neutral life of Mattapoisett the utopian just and equitable world we yearn for? Or is the totalitarian dystopia, the alternate that Mattapoisett is at war with, and Connie accidentally stumbles upon, our future reality?

“We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.” *

Postscript
It is often said that another world is possible. And it is often found that those who utter these words do so because they clearly see all the injustices that persist in our world. They see and feel them so clearly that in some other world they, immobilized by grief, horror and lack of faith in humans, would accept things without questioning. But instead they are often the most hopeful people. They think that change will come because they believe in the essential goodness of humans. And even if they fail, in the end they triumph simply because they tried. But above all they are truly happy. This I know because in another world I had dinner with them.

*Luciente to Connie in Woman on the Edge of Time.
(Afterthought on books: part 14)

Inspiration is hard to come by

You have to take it where you find it. - Bob Dylan