[1] This world is shot

with desire, from the first breath, the first suck on the breast; it seems so

the more I think or don’t think.

[2] Last night sitting in a car a friend unfolded a cloth mural of grief, delicately woven with past complaints, accusations, and desires for something else, something transcendental, unseen, and thus always incomplete.

Here when a son dies in a war, they give you a folded flag to keep. So was it a flag instead, that conversation, waving at half mast for a dying marriage?

[3] A comment that was made to me: “I am surprised at your ability to stay alone for years at end.”

A response I didn’t give: “This is because my loneliness is a devious interrogator who is skilled in the use of Chinese water torture. Ever listened to the clock drip each second on your forehead? You will have to pretty much embrace me to discern the physical map of pain”

[4] Gossiping about the troubled loves of an young woman acquaintance you find yourself laughing

at her charming directness and unbridled romanticism in taking on new lovers in order to discover the one father of her unborn children,

and at your even more comical cynicism towards her saga as you recall your dog awful howls at the drowning tide after midnight, every night.

[6] I write this obscure line because like the concealed wood thrush, I too have fallen into the habit of posing a question, and a moment later providing an answer myself, repeatedly, less musically.

It is said that if the statement "God doesn't exsist" is true, J.S. Bach's music alone would disprove it.

I woke up with a minor hangover this morning. Yes, I was drinking tequlia anejo (simply the best, senors and senoras!) last evening, and then later couldn't fall asleep because of this disturbing discussion I had sitting in a car. Two of my good friends here are, apparently, having severe problems in/ with their marriage, and perhaps (I hope not!) are headed towards Splitsville. Thus I woke up at 10.00 am, groggy and dehydrated.

Given this, Bach with breakfast seemed to be a capital idea. I began with his Cantatas - the gentleman turned out these masterpieces (yes, masterpieces even if they beseech the Lord to come and save dark skinned heathens like me) in a clock work fashion, one brand new one every Sabbath Sunday. Superb, like this honey on my cornflakes.

Yet, Bach's music for me is associated with the violin close on the heels of cello, however much I enjoy his great choral music (Jesu, Joy of a Man's Desiring is a piece that makes my hair rise every time I hear it) or his beautiful piano work, Goldberg Variations, as performed by the Canadian savant Glenn Gould. Perhaps this is because Bach and his essential motifs came to me via the music of Illayaraja, who infused Indian film music with really beautiful orchestral arrangements using banks of violins. So here is some Vitamin Bach Violin for you:

First Yehudi Mehunin playing "Chaconne from Partita No.2"

In this, Nathan Milstein plays a blazing fast "Partita No. 3 in E"

And finally, this one has all the violin greats, both young and old, on the same stage performing Bach's "Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins":

Too bad, I could find any of Heifetz playing Bach. He kills Bach let me tell ya.

"What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water." "Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view." - Hannibal Lecter in 'Silence of the Lambs'

He was obsessed with a certain view. Only in this case he was looking inwards into a room with a table set under a dormer window, right in the middle of a beam of light.

There were two of them sitting there, at the table, reading, and when in their books they came upon a line of beauty, noting it down in leather bound notebooks with yellowing paper.

The smell of ink and paper, the light of afternoons turning into evenings, occasional squeak of a chair scraping against the wooden floor, the hymn of easy breathing.

He saw this as clearly as he sees himself every morning in front of the bathroom mirror shaving, i.e., he saw, and perhaps continues to see only what he wants to see.

The stray white hairs, the high dome of a balding forehead, lines around the mouth, the faint hint of a double chin, the belly that is flabby, the threads of time in other words.

Towards these a certain form willful blindness. The eye sees, and saw only the eye, his and the other’s. And eyes are usually clear chambers of light, rarely dark except in sleep or under conditions of loss.

One of them blinked. That was all it took for this loss to occur. Remember the game children play, the outstare game, where one refuses to blink even as eyes become watery graves.

And then a tsunami in minor scale. And then the disappearance of the tree in the sea. And then even the disappearance of the sea. Memory is what he has instead of a view. Memory was, actually, what he always had.