"happy new year, first of all. i hope we have about a million, or two million more of them. that is, if we can get over the summer!" - Jimi Hendrix, Band Of Gypsys, 1970
things have been going good. someone asked me the other day how it felt to be so far away from home. and it kinda tripped me out for a second. cause i'll tell you, i dont feel that way at all. they say home is where the heart is, and my heart is always with me. right here. so im always close to home, in that sense. in a way, right now is some of the most peaceful time ive had in a long time. less ups & downs, just more of a coasting in between the two extremes.
ive been reading some of basho - a 17th century poet, one of the towering figures in japanese classical literature - stuff and he's making quite an impression. he's big on not faking it, engaging things as they are are. indeed, what he says about poetry applies to all of life:
"go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or go to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. and in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupations with yourself. otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one - when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. however well-phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural - if the object and yourself are seperate - then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit."
right on
max
P.S: for those of you not on facebook, or who haven't seen any of my pictures yet, i put them up here: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/brothermax/India20092010#
