The wood of our creation

In the indiscernible woods, as you venture ahead
At the stroke of midnight, or apparently so

You stumble over mounds of logs with holes
Or may be they are femurs of long gone souls

You shudder because this isn't the beautiful woods
About which you read in your history books

You walk ahead but you go straight down
Through a rodent's tunnel underground

Oh! wait a minute, hold your breath
Here lay villagers, napalmed to death

You scamper back all muddy and brown
Scared of the history, that you just found

Above ground its just a beautiful night
You head south where there is a little light.

A step or two and there are people running at you
They call themselves tigers, and they hack and hew

This son et lumiere isnt just the right kind
So you head north , to divert your mind

You wonder what's wrong in your travel plan
This forest isn't as green as shown in your map

You are not sure where you are anymore
This is your african safari, but you missed the Ugandan lore

This was your journ of south-east-asia
Yet you didnt know whats on in Cambodia

You planned to hunt tigers in that small island
Only to find there was none left behind

You thought that smell came from a geyser nearby
But this is vietnam .. you smell napalm when she sighs

Enough of the forest you have seen for the day
Leave alone the desert .. she has plenty to say

As you traverse back, you realize this isnt night
We have messed up the skies as we have done with the land

You want to go back .. to your history book
And scream at her as she innocently looks

My friend, this is the wood of our creation
a testimony to man's regression

A thing of beauty is a joy forever

'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'..... not a cogent sentence unless you categorically define 'beauty' and 'joy'.. which would in effect take away the very essence of these two words.

However, I have made an attempt to apply this line to my life and it fits like a missing block.

Photography for instance. I clicked my first shutter when shutters made more noise than a mini air-gun. Papa's camera weighed significant enough to alter my center-of-gravity and throw me into an unstable equilibrium. Of course, dad wound two full rounds of the leather strap to ensure his Zenith SLR did not hit the ground even if I did. I was 4 or 5. Dad set the aperture, shutter speed, focal length et al. He even set the frame from point to point. There were clear instructions to me to hold the breath, keep the hands steady, hit the shutter hard so it went all the way down .. and then stand where i was in attention till dad came and manually wound the film for the next shot. The first photograph i took was a blur.. it shows my parents' heads (the rest of their body could not make it inside the frame). In that blur you can see one smiling face and another frowning one looking directly towards the lens.

That particular photograph (i.e if you can call it so) cannot be called 'beautiful' by any stretch of imagination. However, every time in the past 20 years that I have looked at it, I have seen that smiling face and that concerned look. It is a beautiful medley of parental love and concern for their child. I have taken many photographs till date ... good, bad and ugly.. but there is that 'thing of beauty' in this one which has made it 'a joy forever'.

Books. I have read few books in my life belonging to myriad genres. At a very tender age ma and dad gave me one called The Charlie Brown Dictionary by Schulz. I walked a mile holding their hands through the Calcutta Book Fair with the single motivation of Benfish fish fries (they always used to put up a stall at the fair) and came back home with this book which was significantly bigger and heavier than any of the books my parents bought for themselves. A concrete reason for a child to feel happy and important. Oh and i had the fish fry too ! The last time i went home i was 25. I went through those now yellowing pages where Snoopy, Lucy, Woodstock and Charlie Brown taught me the basic words in the english language while they kept playing baseball , going from one escapade to the other. Baseball is still as alien to me as it was then, but the game has given me as much fun as it intends to. Charlie Brown has been a joy forever.

Apart from 'beauty' and 'joy' there is the 'thing' in that sentence.

Can the 'thing' which is a 'beauty' and thereby gives 'joy' be abstract ?

Can the 'thing' be intangible ? Something like say 'memories'

All i have been doing in this blog is to list out memories which are beautiful and are a reason for joy. Therefore in 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever' , the 'thing' may not be a thing.. it can be anything.

As life moves forward, I keep looking backwards. I guess at one point we all do that, but i keep doing it chronically and regularly. Sometimes i feel i fall in the extinct class. But hasent the salmon and the hilsa done that for years and survived still? So may be i will too.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever... as of now that 'thing' is a short nap... so long.