Skip to main content

Immanence

What the six Brandenburg Concertos do to me is this.

They simply fill me with music, surround me, isolate me, gently tease me away from my cares into their Elysium; they permeate every nerve, till each has become, as Khusrau wrote, a taut string vibrating with the sound of the universe itself; they at once excite and becalm, distress and elate, arrest and move; they hurt me, they make me feel small before the universe and then they heal me and make me one with the universe.

Add to the experience my hormones coursing adrenaline and testosterone, and sleep deprivation and the flush of success and the inebriation of starvation mixed with coffee—something strange happens, I am at a sudden high of consciousness, at once depressed and euphoric, for a fleeting minute—nirvana.


dust patterns
. . . the ghostly outline
of my turntable

(Published in Haibun Today September 2014)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ku on the theme of "Water"

 drinking up a mountain of ice tea — summer heat Holi advent… all the colours of the water guns neighbour’s plants — Amma’s acrobatics to water them potted plants — we redirect or neighbour’s A/C drip after last rites resealing the pot of gangajal summer forenoon sparrows turn our dog’s bowl into a bath (Published in Cafe Haiku on 04/04/2021 for the theme of "Water")

spooky road...

 

Homecoming

He was a Sainik School boy, since his 6th standard, then NDA, then IMA. 45 years of marriage to my mother did not get that out of his system. I was internally devastated as we wheelchaired him to the Navy hospital ward. He'd lost weight and energy and, as it seemed, the will to live. At the Navy hospital, we weren't allowed to stay or minister to him. I thought I had seen the last of him. In the night call with mother he told us what he ate at the Naval hospital: noodles and manchurian for lunch, chapati-dal-subzi for dinner. We had struggled for weeks as he nauseated food, and ate nothing but thin buttermilk. That was his home, among the men in uniform. The boy just got home, after 30 years in the wilderness of civilian life. finally finding what our pet likes eating most — attention Published in Glomag May 2025