Mono no aware

There is sometimes an urgent need for melancholy in my life, not with the unthinking yet ceaseless necessity of the daily milk or the three newspapers, but with a more gentle kind of longing, that builds up slowly, bit by bit, only to deflate gently and evenly at a somewhat unexpected time: like today morning, when I became very overwhelmed, cried because I read a beautiful essay, had some tea, a quick shower, and am now cheery enough to write a blogpost.

Hi!

***

The Perfect Pound Cake and Chocolate Cake (or more recently, chocolate cookies and oatmeal cookies) are the most recent thing I have mastered. I am now more confident of being a mom. I can solve any problem my baby will pose by throwing sugary baked goods his way. Now I'm just waiting for his teeth to arrive.

YAY. #futureproof

(I doff my hat to Smitten Kitchen here and here and Rose Levy Berenbaum for all the cakey goodness.)

***

The cappucino maker made a gurgling sound and I nearly jumped out of my seat because I thought it sounded like a baby crying. EVERYTHING sounds to me like a baby crying. Given that I live at home with a (my) baby and my next door neighbour has a baby that's a few weeks older, phantom crying is probably real crying. That or I'm going a little crazy. Both are possible.

***

I'm becoming moved by art and music more and more of late, I take this to be a good sign that I am not dead inside. Indeed I feel gradually more alive and inquisitive, birdlike even, chirpy and sharp, as the end of my maternity leave approaches.

What kind of art, you say?

Like the final notes of this piece, say, or the exquisite wistfulness at the end of this piece , or this album which is perfect for sitting on my couch and watching the chromecast wallpapers scroll:

HD earth and HD sky
glorious resolution
lets pretend its real

Haiku nice?


***

Since the pregnancy, everything, every moment is now more exquisite. I observe and have become mindful of my own mortality and fragility, I see it when I holdmy child - a visceral gurgling reminder of how fleeting and fine, this life is. I couldn't articulate it of course, nearly as well as the Japanese can. Mono no aware.

***

Excuse the Japan references, I am researching for my trip there and it is everywhere in the nooks and crannies of my mind.

Monsoon grey

I'm sitting down with some paints and a sheet of blank paper. My current living room is a study in understated 90's elegance. Well, for a shell of an apartment, at least.

The floors are pale cream mosaic, the good kind. The walls are cream too, and the lighting is ornate. Furniture is sturdy and well made, some kind of sheeny expensive wood. There is no art on the walls, save a painting of cranes in the marshes - a blue and white soothing still life.

Amidst the mildy incongruous modern touches like a flat screen television, a space-agey heating device and an extravagantly crafted glass bowl centerpiece, there is a lamp that I have grown to love. A fishing pole meets the hunchback alien probe kind of lamp, strangely grounded in a hunk of marble.

On days like this, where the skies are monsoon grey, and the pool is limpid and quiet, and the fairy lights across the green areas are switched off, I pull one of the heavy chairs towards the lamp by the window, drag the side table so I can plonk my feet on it, and I feel a quiet happiness.

I wish you were here so you could be a part of this fleeting monsoon grey joy day. But wherever you are, I hope you are happy.

***
I don't really listen to much Coke Studio, but this one, which G has sent to me, is an excellent mid-afternoon rainy day song.

Sonu Kakkar and Vishal Dadlani - Coke Studio, Season 2, Episode 1: Madari