SPRKS IN CSF: thoughts on fear unleashed

SPRKS IN CSF: thoughts on fear unleashed: I go to chaos theory and butter-fly effects, to explain the fear unleashed on us. But that does not stop me in my tracks, quite contrary......

thoughts on fear unleashed

I go to chaos theory and butter-fly effects, to explain the fear unleashed on us. But that does not stop me in my tracks, quite contrary... I want to go back and write even when day to day life upstages me with a variety of activities to be tended to , pushing for attention, even as the children call out to be attended to. Despite all this I feel this urge... I want to put it into words. Fear is that which has no form, the unknown...
But I for one cannot say I am afraid. I may be more cautious, but you cannot push me to be afraid and I was never a coward. I am cautious, but no, do not mistake it for cowardice. I lost fear  to an almost impulsive urge to face up to any threatening situation so long ago , in my early child hood...yes it was gone when I first met a snake, face to face. Instinct made me walk away, even as I was spell bound , all curious yet with pounding heart.Some days I still hear that pounding if I listen for it in the stillness of the night.
Yet with age and wisdom I do not run into threats, Instead I still go on with my mind clear and my head held high, even as I stoop with age. The acts of violence, that was unleashed...they just make me think more, for you cannot rain fear on me, nor can you steal my thoughts.
I will still go to the cafes , clubs, to the malls and beaches. The few that have darkened their souls with their acts do not  make me afraid, for they are inconsequential blots in our time , they too will get erased...corrupted ideologues, in any religion or policies will add to the chaos theory like a butterfly effect, but the goodness in people will have to appear to counter that alternate trace left by some distorted minds...
So you will see me on the streets, stores, crowds, unafraid,my mind clear , and my head held high despite the stoop in my frame , my sluggish gait, despite all that age does to my physique, or the bounding distracted appearing youth , with all hopes intact....yes I am each one who  you see, without the taint of fear, seemingly unassuming, average ,but the one you cannot taint, be it with the unleashed violent acts or the rhetoric from somewhere there...the one you should really fear is each one of us,ones like me... 

SPRKS IN CSF: Japan-images, fuzzy yet may be clear

SPRKS IN CSF: Japan-images, fuzzy yet may be clear: As the dawn creeps along on the tail of fading darkness, I lay somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Some images come floating by again....

Trump's kampfs

The trump has trumpeted again...no surprise there. It is well known that it is what he does. Here it goes to sounding ridiculous but his self purported struggles  are called what??- hopefully he will come up with a new title or a non-literal translated one  that 'ends not with Kampf'. As time has compressed , the distance between wars have widened, may be it is about time for the next despot to come into being. The cyclical end of worlds that all religions and cultures believe in or make into legends in one  form or the other,finally has come to a tangible reality, a possible event, not just the stuff of legends    ( almost like the UFOs) taking shape in the surprising Trump trumpet of the day.
Despite the life of average days that fill my days, this has urged me to write.
Today a war on conscience  and tolerance has become  the hall mark of a once great country!

These shores that echoed with the cries of the despised and trampled,
Now has a chance to echo egotistic trumpets,and just them,
As the masses still in dismay pour their sweat and time , lost to the rehoteric...
Bullets still fly, but sharper still flies words, and lame pundits ,
Paid a fine sum to echo hate...oh how we have progressed...
Disdain and greed, has in its wake left the death of honor,
Beauty lies wasted in tired hearts, lost to doll trolls, and grand gallows,
Death of  honor and truth ,unquiet goes a day into night...
Wasted  its efforts , lie the youth , confused,lost ,
Past and future lie entwined, denied ,yet they entwine
Marked between all the furor in a heap , rotting ,
Ne'er knowing justice or greatness, crumpled at the alter of hate ...
All wise and great who walked here, lost are your truths to hate ,
The heavens weep today as many a time before ,
Yet we course  that path again, past is lost to history...lemmings we are
Leaping into the abyss, or stare in shock,
Unfreeze us to act , to voice , to steer , if only...from this fog of hate...

I wish we have courage in our hearts and goodness in our soul to rise above and despite the many trumpeters of hate and divisive demagogues

SPRKS IN CSF: problems , problems..

SPRKS IN CSF: problems , problems..: I read the editorial , the gun epidemic and then i go out and get some groceries. Incensed I return, and put away the groceries. On any ave...

problems , problems..

I read the editorial , the gun epidemic and then i go out and get some groceries. Incensed I return, and put away the groceries. On any average day it is easy to push away the looks, the checking and re-checking of my name or whatever the cashier whom we secretly call the 'racist' to get on with the day.I can easily shrug away the race and gender biases, for I know my strengths and that many carry biases unaware, just as another aspect of life's ripples...I can usually take comfort in my assessed  knowledge that she is in her sixties or at least look it, has a bad case of disdain for any 'off-white' skin tone, and may be , just hates her job. I would then smugly walk out thinking of the many roots of her envy partly grown out of her ignorance, the possible health issues she may have , her lack of alternate skills,etc.  Today these little irritations make me more annoyed. May be it was the car(with a burly male in his pompous polluter) honking at me on an amber light turning red that addled me further.Yet there it had stayed longer , as an itch , longer than I would care for ...effectively wasting some of my energy into an irritation.
I can't turn on the TV for it will have all punditry going full blast and after yesterday, I dare not watch news, as I do not care for the sensationalism of an event where news is porned out to a reality TV circus .I have to say, shame on you - 'all who call yourself journalists'... What happened to knowledge, that is a merger of good sense and education?
Then I think of the American dilemmas...multiple problems that are going to be compounded by the looming elections when politicians are left with what they do, politicking- a purpose less act of stirring the pot to boil over ,their effort ,all of it  just to get elected. Then there is the 'genie' that is out of the bottle and growing wild, under an umbrella of an amendment...add to it the ignorance of the masses -you see how the problems grow and grow.
Oh the problems that no one cares to address, and they just grow wild , drowning out the ones who try to address even  parts of it, out of control like the  Hydra of Lerna  and just grows as a cancer on the society...some things need addressing, and fast before we are swallowed up by it all.

SPRKS IN CSF: mirror effects-with in us

SPRKS IN CSF: mirror effects-with in us: I come across a piece on mirror neurons, and wonder. Is it what we claim at points we are above, yet may not be. I remember learning how to...

SPRKS IN CSF: Nature- lost( help to prevent earth's demise)

SPRKS IN CSF: Nature- lost( help to prevent earth's demise): This seems  more relevant today than a while back , when it was written, after a walk. The coral reefs are dying at a higher rate, and the ...

mirror effects-with in us

I come across a piece on mirror neurons, and wonder. Is it what we claim at points we are above, yet may not be. I remember learning how to trick monkeys, using mirroring. Once you threw something, they would throw what was in their hands. In a village  with the adults all doing their thing, for a four year old , it was some kind of a fun interaction with the surrounding nature. In a time when the fruit trees tenderly cared for by the farmers were being used by the monkeys  to feed them selves ,(may be the monkeys felt like the executives of today...  their right to be paid  and given bonuses) paid workers would go about making noises to scare them away .  Any occasional wandering monkey was a target for my experiments, especially as some would scamper over the trees at the back yard, with half eaten fruits, on their way to the untended areas of the land, still awaiting planting to the west. However a few of them  did not allow their mirror neurons to act, or may be they did not attend to my actions and hence failed to imitate it .
Many years later , as those villages and quieter lives have become non-existent, even as the proximity of chaotic order of  nature is fiercely encroached by man-made order to decimation of wild life and nature itself., I sit at a computer wondering. The article brought to surface a long ago memory of childhood that had stayed dormant for decades, barely ever recalled in that period. Today if I close my eyes some of that is as clear as in those days...care free wonder filled days, where monkeys, some with their babies lived nearby, hopping about, where all the noise of nature just brought wonder and joy....
Mirror neurons seem fascinating . These days I  look at my dad wandering back and forth repeating the same thing over again, forgetting the pieces about that same event few minutes before.Gone are the days we would walk those forest paths, he and mom figuring about plantings, workers, monkey problems among other things, and I would look for fireflies, or  fallen soap-nuts in the path...His present wanderings with its sticky quality make me wonder, is it the mirror neurons gone wild, by mirroring his own action, as his memory has cast shadows , illuminating only parts in his brain. Has his GABA systems shrivelled in parts, releasing the brakes that held his mirror neuron activities,just to create repetitions ...his actions  are meaningless to me, but would have channeled meaning with the Gaba working ,-his ligand gates in good condition  , not creating spilled toxins, that cloud his neurons.
Do the GABA system faults drive the echoes for an autistic child, is that too a Gaba switch  not turning on, not letting things to make the right sense as the rest of the world around them visualises and understand events .I see the GABA neurons sparking, burning some, setting at some spots, and dark in other areas their evolving brains. I hear the sizzle of error connectivity. But then again what makes the Gaba to start its work, the ligand gates to go at  different stages, all according to some ' turn on' command from the genes. We may have , even when we deny the various pollutants we have put into our enviornment, deny  again that these have in  any way affected our very futures, bring ease to let us collectively blame some thing else  but our own actions...say "May be it is after all in the GABA system faults" and ignore the antecedents and contributing factors  to those faults.Let us ignore again , all signalling going on within us, ignore everything and go pollute more , so our signal transductions  go crazy within us and for generations that follow.
Ah, our need to mirror find some thing to latch on to...even if it is the greenest lawns and the things we didn't know we needed until presented through those  beautiful ads...

A new year-hopes and aspirations

December has moved to January,one day to another with a lot of meaning for some and some meaning for a lot. In one fell swoop humanity moved through a cascade of counting the minutes as if it indeed was  the last act to perform.
Then, there it was...done.
What of the expectations, all those hopes...that never really take leave,
 nudge even when you sleep,
what of the resolves overlooked , as the days move...
as if these are only for a specific date that changes one year to another.
Really, is it all that different, if we resolve to change some small bit on the next day,or the day after,
even as life tumble forward with not much kept under the controlled plans;
there- all so carefully laid out.
So, here we go with individual ideals and plans, one day to the next...
some lemmings, others octopus like and yet others ostrich visionaries.
In between there lies a bit of all that in everyone-
Attempts at maintaining some form of resolves finally...
hopes and aspirations bloom and fade, to care, to change we strive..
these defines us, by the time and efforts we garner

.

Unjust actions, the world in ferguson

Let us all stand tall and walk with silence,honor all who are silent,forced by the times, by moments that arrest voice--  stand up against injustices, be it in Ferguson, Missouri, Florida, Palastine, pakistan, Borno or anywhere else in the world... The world is ferguson, it is every place ...  Let us stand up against injustice, united; to be louder in our moments of silence, in solidarity with all who are silenced-to protest , with honor , with dignity and valor ... Let us  with quiet  dignity , stand together, come together across all divisions, and fracture the unjust institutions, shake them to their core..Never by chaos,not by destruction, but by a strength that pulse from our depth, from our integrity, for cowards with their unjust modes, can all but crumble, thus...

Stolen childhoods

I turned on BBC news, and arrived at switzerland's stolen child hoods. My eyes avert itself from the screen, as I try to  focus on my cup of tea. I stir the cup of tea and it spills onto the table. Even as I push the swiss childrens' plight to my minds back screen, I tear up ... from the dredges of a past that I cannot out run or throw out, comes a name- 'selvam'... I cannot recall any image, just his distress..
I am at a place and time ,a child...yes I was just a child , walking ,  the coordination required for maneuvering doors  still alien.Today I am crying silently as I sip the tasteless tea, for 'selvam'. I cannot remove the innate empathy of those days, nor the reality that because of that compassion I caused suffering....
Selvam was also a child, sent by his poor and hungry parents to this big house, all to labour away his right to a childhood...on hopes he will be fed, and some cash would flow into their burdened lives for his labours..
There are child labourers all over this world even as I write this.Nothing has changed much for the children, just new facades and new names for the exploitations of children. Some think it is justified to cheat another of their time, their rights trod over,-  willfully negated in front of their own children..but to what end....
I still remember that day when the sun's slanting  rays cast its orange glow , stretched lines on the wooden floor . In an upstairs room slanted shadow of a window grew long on the floor. I slid a peice of bread through the space at the bottom of the uneven door to Selvam's room.I cried with selvam, who was beaten that day. I could  not think of my parents as bad or especially cruel then, yet I stuggle to forgive them of what cannot be forgotten, cannot be undone.... I can understand that  they too were the products of their time.
Now even as their memories fade, at times I feel the urge to force them to remember, but they will not remember anything anymore, only  the memory of that day breaks in me in sadness and shame, a sadness that envelops me in thick oppressive guilt...Yet, I cannot be held guilty, instead it should be my parents , and the society at large... they should embrace the weight of the shame, they should  wear this cloak of guilt suffused sadness.
I wonder about Selvam....what became of him? Did he make it in the world okay.....Did his burdened days rob him of all that we call 'life value" for ever? I know that I will never have answers
Every child soldier, every child who labour, be it in the tobacco farms in the vastness of american south, be it in the brick kilns in India, or cocoa farms of Africa... every child is another Selvam... 
There is also your child who  lives with the  heaviness of guilt... carrying the burden of stained lives. stained by the suffering of the selvams all over the world.
Changing shapes, or the color or the label  will not remove the disparities , the injustices that divide us,...all of us those with or without  will continue to struggle  for the tainted  childhoods... washing away the stains  unto the end....in-escapably  unto the end....

Through a distorted lens,viewing ebola

As the Ebola  outbreak continues unabated, the sad plight of nations bearing the burden is mostly pushed aside in our scramble in the west, to contain it from touching us, consuming us. ..
I for a moment wonder if this is how in some unforgotten past an ancient culture brought about cremation , in its effort to curb some catastrophic disease. Did the nidus for caste evolve thus, as a communal effort at isolation, but  like all efforts that grow rigid and at times deadly with time, they did too, just  to become a vehicle for suffering, sans any reasoning...
Are all the screening and possible isolation measures going the same way, with time we will know ,-how much divisive attitudes it will drum up, how the suffering of  communities will be increased by rigid distancing and over-played biases , the cause for more suffering overall.
An offshoot thought, wouldn't it reduce the risk for all the people involved in the burial of  those who died with the disease, if they could be cremated in a safe space.If  faced with new challenges we can, all of us, can change our rigid beliefs and practices. As it was possible to move away from ritual bathing of the dead ,I am certain other practices can be changed in time, especially in dire circumstances.
   
     Some other old beliefs come to mind,eg. 'when did turmeric become an all protective  object in various parts of India'. Did it come out of some viral-bactireal killing property and such use ...reasons that  got lost in time, just to remain as a cast off shell of an original active use, post catastrophy through generations, losing all the original rationale....
Looking through distortions ,some of past practices now take on a different hue.

SPRKS IN CSF: Unjust actions

SPRKS IN CSF: Unjust actions: Let us stand in silence  for a minute  @ at Noon on this day and every day  to stand against injustice, be it in Missouri, Florida, Palasti...

FOG

FOG

Wispy tendrils of yesterdays
Rise from the snow, leaning, lifting up,
To hug the air, yet again.

Dementia -some thoughts of a GPS trying to reset

I took the picture that fell out of the book and turned it over. Out side the wind blew in cold air from the north. I had been quietly  remenescing as I sorted through the childrens books, some to give away and yet others to keep.Some faint memories without a time stamp hung in the air , 'of reading to my children at bed time' and then the picture fell out.
It must have sat there for over a decade.There sat my parents, in their active life , involved, energised by life, smiling back at me...I do not recall taking that photo, but the energy that was them still enliven the picture.
The years in between has aged them,-- cells that broke down,  acting out , coursing through time as their improper repairs gatherd into clumps of waywardness, all slowly, quietly as all cells age.The biggest change had been that they lost  themselves too- slowly , quietly. I want to forget the present but keep the memories of the past alive , but how can I when the present is the reality.
Hence, despite the present reality I delve into the past and wonder what had been different, what changes over the years got us to  here.There are many  questions in my mind,but  most though evade any  answers.
        Why my grandparents and great grandparents seemed to have an easier course in their old age? Are my memories fixed in some skewed perception of the past that is causing the recall of the past to be faulty?Why do my parents' generation seem to have more debility? Answers to these questions are all too elusive.
Yet as I delve into  my memories, what do I have the easiest recall for, ...not my high school or middle school years, but they are of  my childhood, my early years, then some for my pre-adult and early adult years. The rest all stay mixed in with a lot of fluff..There are bits of my own children's early years that stand clear as well. I am glad that most of the fluff stay as fluff....
As I ponder over this, it does make sense-- these are survival sensitive periods and carry emotion charged memories, hence are  easily laid down.  There are also  hormonal shifts that ease the storage and retrival of these memories, probably triggered by emotion driven cues, that set the whole recall process in motion.(this then  may also  explain how some PTSD circuits are set to a constant cycling set of cues and can't re-set itself )
      In a far away past during my grand parents' time and generations prior to that , families grouped together into small communities.... small villages, stayed small, with a static rythmicity to life.Children grew up , settled near-by , change being almost imperceptable... when you look further back in time the community was further condensed, with groups of extended families under one roof, additions added to the family home . Lives stayed almost set in one place, with its set pace. Changes were only those of time marked by seasons . An assigned child , usually a son and his family cared for their parents in the same home that many generations had passed through.
The way to the church/temple/mosque remained the same, the foot-paths long worn too remained unchanged,except may be, widening with time, as generations  trekked through...all neighbors were known--so and so's child or someone related , hence almost unchanged. Thus communities thrived on the known.
Unknowns by  itself  produce stress, and stress is not conducive to well being.Where change becomes  synonimous with progress, one forgets what this causes to an aging brain and body. The youth progresses into that  range of aging/ages and in that span they forget the cost.They see possibilities in change and charges ahead until they too progress into time...
The memories that settles into time stay and these may be what were stored. I picture them being sorted tagged and settled  into boxes , scattered there with  emotions, mostly pleasent ones that come along as one grows.May be that is why I can recall to the smallest detail where I have wandered at ages three and four; may be these memories, they store well .
What the past generations embellished through-out their lives , being in the same community, interacting with the same group of people, their three and four year old memories maintained with additions(almost as add ons to the same strand)may have helped them.No new damaging  stresses, no severe changes requiring  shut down of the systems all the way  from brain to the periphery.
I realized how disorganising change can be for one, as I drove up the path to my grand parent's home, on my last visit to India.I searched for landmarks... the giant jack-fruit tree,the sound of the brook, the big boulder by the side of the road, the glint of the evening light through the trees. At some point I too realized the simple fact- I was lost. The script that my brain had safely stored away was not compatable with what was there in front of me. Yet it was just only minor changes to my known path, just a new  path few hundred feet away from what I had known and saved into memory.
Even though at five or six yearsof age  I could trace my paths , eg to the mainroad, to aunts house, to church and back , from my grandparent's home( about 5 miles) I felt utterly lost this last time right in front of the house.The changes that came with time confused me and distressed me. Like all stressed plants and animals,  that may fail to thrive, or even fail to survive in a new locale I see how distressing and disorienting  the repeated stress tend to be.
          Imagine how shocking it would be for an older person, to be re-planted thus and expected to adapt ...
Let's take my father for example, who preferred to walk when-ever he could, yes with his charecterestic long stride..he-a social being , now living in a newer house, where everything is suddenly different. To him all that surrounds him is changed,and his internal construct now just causes dismay in the face of these  acute changes . The stress of change causes distress and furthers his confusion.. These stresses further compounds his memory impairments ,all stress being neuro-toxic. The lacunae in his memory in turn furthers his stress, and he enters a vicious cycle of loosing memory and function
In the progress modelled after presumed  modern societies, there is a dismay at aging, a lessened regard for aging as an asset.In a past where age was venerated for wisdom and the care of the aged was a required social norm,it may not have been a burden as it is today just because the societal construct of that period was more forgiving to the process of aging itself. It was probably more supportive just by reducing the destructive stress of change..

At times I wonder how if we projected the progress of changing societies, eg in India  into the future, what will be the result. I have no answers, just more questions.In India we have a population that is migrating even when it is static, migrating because of changes that occur all around.One cannot ascribe an economic cost to it, because stress cannot be measured in straight forward economic cost.The cost is going to be multiplied and multi-layered.-regrets for some, the disregard that results to mitigate those regrets, the growing  frustration for children, neglect for some, all in all a vicious cycle that ends with suffering all around, especially as the Indian society moves forward with lesser self reflection or any tangible long term planning for the care of its aging population.It can only further lead to fractures to the society at many levels.

Hence the question is what can we do to this growing  tide of distress?

The distress for the child in me is two fold,one I can not ease my parent's distress and then, - how will I manage when my memory starts fading.

          Yet I try to remenesce with them, hoping that a spark will catch sometime to spark a little bit of memory and hence some comfort. Mostly for my dad his memory is set at his childhood now as he has progressed further into his dementia.It helps me to use my imagination to describe his own home and its surroundings,because I too remember it as it used to be, before those distressing changes all around. I try to ask some questions, and sometimes a spark catches and I see him smile and engage.I am so glad for skype and he seems to wait for my calls. Some times it is only dis-interest that I face on these calls. If only I could set time back to a place before everything started shorting-out at the neural-circuits and spinning out error messages in the memory codes in his brain, if only....

A tribute to Ruth Patrick

Ruth Patrick, 105, a Pioneer in Science And Pollution Control Efforts, Is Dead

By WILLIAM DICKE

Dr. Patrick, one of the country's leading experts in the study of freshwater ecosystems, or limnology, was an innovator of a number of environmental practices and principles

Even as the drips of rain splatter,

Taking me yet again to a land,lost and gone,

Alive in my mind, ever so briefly,

Drops splatter there on fallen leaves,

   Coconut trees sway, shower the ground,

   As the wind spy on another humid morning,

   Drops fall and clink on a stained jack-fruit leaf,

   I lie there,watch the jack fruits, marvel and dream...

   Open doors, open air and quiet days,

   A childhood stored in memories...

Yet it comes un-announced,

Sweetness of  water on a hot , dusty day,

Mangoes falling with the rain storm,

Dropped in their juicy ripeness,

Sweetness on my tongue, the pureness of joy,

Un-hurried life, now gone.

   Thus I pray, nature take over please...

   Even at the morning walk, scrape the rubber soles,

   Forgotten , the milky sap and all before,

   All felled trees , dead to grow soured sap

Missed  giants, some forgotten in moments

Be it an enampechi,or leech, 

Be that the Panal bush or the mud-swinmmer fish

Long gone before the scientific giants, 

Some  who braved before the masses

Liberals,Like grand mother, 

Like science  freind to child through news snippets...

Enough to inspire, no-less..

PS... the river flows now barely, fully blocked up by debris . The water , nor the ground can reclaim its purer state again, in the new rubber  growing era. I had been read to about some enviormentalist lady who worked with river water, which added to my fantasy of my friend the river.  

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin’s death had brought notice to a social divide that permeates our lives all around,creeping silently to lean towards divisions; ignoring the real issues. Life at times feel sidelined, so  also the losses... Alas, mostly the losses are lost to most , a fading sets in  except for a few, where the incomprehensible loss remains forever .

Much before this Tarek/Mohammad Bouazizi  died in Sidi Bouzod – a nondescript market far from the bustle of any city, far removed from Tunis. Yet this single event moved onwards to a cascade of changes, change to a social set up that silently grew invading society,  one which grew into shatter divided social spaces and divisive policies.

The weave and heft of the social fabric had come undone, but this unfurling was quiet, staying inside thoughts until it erupted in to the injustices that  grew unchecked.

As the fog swirls in from the sound, curling around my wheels, moving in to envelop the land, I cannot stop thinking of lives lost, others crushed, all striving  to become something in the  set ways that is portrayed as perfect, yet (in reality)so far   from it… I see Trayvon Martin’s life as a small ember, as it ignites change-change hopefully in the right direction, to honor and value all  life, lives for being , just being ,  become true to ourselves and thus  to others, beyond easy divisive leanings. May be this effort  to look within into our own biases will then move us, each a little closer to strive for  the  real perfect.

Memories - fading shades of time

On a recent phone call to my father , I had skimmed through some days of the past, what once had been bright now sitting dappled in shadows of fuzzy memories.I tried to re-ignite some sparks, pushing on recall- on events, sounds ,  then on to scents,and then finally giving up. It left me with just a sense of all permeating sadness, glancing at life, how it is , how it had been...
As a child I had dismissed and mostly disliked my great grandmother, for her need to repeat the selfsame stories, her critical and restrictive nature not sitting well with the little child that was me. Now I see the same nature shifts in my father, a shift I see each time I visit,as time stretch long  in between.Yet depending on his shifts, I too reach back and recall , understanding anew  the aging mind , the aging brain.
I compare notes in my mind and see that after all, none of it is all that different, be that my great grandmother or my father. the similarities stand out dwarfing the differences...
I see again the stooping stature of my great grand mother, her critical rants, soon forgotten giving way to the  need to  consume my attention with her stories from the past while all my tiny legs waited was to follow my mind to a run in the sand.
I see my father doing identical things, slight stoop indicating his bone loosing itself as gravity works on his body.  I picture tendrils of plaques clouding  over, probably firing away on his neurons sending off error signals that come streaming as annoyance at my four year old nephew for rushing off before his repeated stories are done...Through the years the changes are there, pendulous arcing moments that track some of the past.
Irritability laced stories giving  way to rage...at some slight , real and imagined, which then had given way to an exacting mode with a need to control every one whom he perceived to be a child at some point in time,telling us all how to do day to day activities the right way. This then was replaced with a certain pleasantness phase , when all the stories became humorous and goodnatured. Yet with each of these phases part of his memory had slipped away,dissolving quietly.
Of course there are moments of clarity, brief and momentary, may be as another neuron sparks, bringing into sharp focus another stored away memory, another sliver of protein , and then it goes pulling of all connections.Now memories are mostly defined by their absence, everything has become vague and undefined and hence lost....I imagine the plaques hiding in the shadowy deeps of the brain like an octopus, spewing ink over memories and grasping the neurons one by one in its tentacles. I picture the neurons sparking at  their dendrites,lost in a  confounding ocean of memories of a lifetime , igniting one faint event with that  misplaced spark, as it is disabled and then the memory can not be retrieved for it is lost, not to just one neuron, but to all association areas and hence is gone...all gone to rest in that amorphous amalgam as the ink spewing octopus swim along....we all , the children watch, some cry, some get annoyed, some ignore it all, some times we do all these together, yet none of us can bring back the associations, because we do not hold anything to trigger these memories.No key words, no RNA, nothing , nothing
There are no shared memories now, they have become just ours for now, and we have waited too long to share them and now they have become for us a burden, by not sharing them earlier...we have let the plaques win, we did not even notice them, we tarried and now we hold regrets, not knowing where to put them down, for now its ours to hold forever....

Thoughts on mothers day

Some times the celebrated  mothers day bring distress into sharp focus. I know aging happens, yet the hardest part of aging is that , even when it is inevitable , there is nothing you can do about it...not for the one whose life is shearing off in small threads, nor for the one left watching it helplessly...
you remember your aging parents, quiet moments of regret trailing you , for their infirm state, welling up in your eyes at times, yet you cannot do anything about it.
Even when you phone them , you realize oceans separate you and options are limited in every way.When you visit, you want to stay, yet each day ,your adult life pull at you a little harder and you know of the limitations that call itself --'responsibilities'.
Moving away from the place of your origin tugs at you the most, and then every progress become a constraint and in the end a useless endeavour, or it feels so.
You wander, lost , bereft of tethers that attach and hence bind, mourning that loss even as you tear at all restrictive weights..you dream , yet searching, in secret yearning for those binding tethers, even as you tear up the tethering forces that are invisible.
Here progress becomes its own failing... you "skype", marvel at the technology that gets you close, yet swirls of a vaccum deep inside robs you and in its wake, leaves shadows of distress..
You wish time had stood still, in one sense it may have quashed progress, but in yet another sense, inevitable losses would have been easier, may be...there you could visit your parents , frequently, comfort and ease their aging selves, taking leave as the day wears on and they wear on you.
Maybe they would feel the stability of living in the community they  identified and became part of, from birth, delaying their whole aging process...they would have been happier, with less(owned tangibles), but active still with random routines, that in itself would have delayed illnesses and limitations ...
They sacrificed much for their children, mis-percieved as progress, so today you too continue in  that same line of honorable mis-perceptions...
So while the communities have marched onto its current global form, at one corner  of that information superhighway, you are caught between two worlds...oceans apart, with an ache that persist just like the waves, marking time, making it relevant..Yet you try to hold on to remembered bits, hold on to fraying connections , with the fraility of your mother on one end, with her memory that lurches between static and random recalls , and on the other end impatience in your daughter scraping at time for clear still moments of thought....