yarnofwords is now on Instagram

Dear All,

I'm taking my love for words, the tryst which began 14 years ago to the next level. After much thought and consideration, I'm sharing my poetry and quotes on Instagram. I can be followed at yarnofwords:)
Deepest and most sincere thanks for all the love you showered here, for staying put, just like my words despite of long gaps in writing.

Instagram is solely for the love of words and writing. Sharing an excerpt here....
Spread the love
Looking forward to have you there!

From being a writer ...to living as a reader

There was a time when I would crib over the fact that reading was not something that I could do; after all it required sitting and reading and that needed patience. My Masters course offered no escape from reading for we were expected to read approximately 150 to 200 pages per week and comment on them with our two page reflections. Perhaps that was the first time I began thinking, reflecting and questioning as I read.

Today as I look back at my reflections of readings of Plato's The Republic or Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye amongst various others, the reflections appear alien      (as they have a profound touché!). I wish to bring up the difference between reading and reading with reflecting. The latter is what truly nurtures the soul. The questions raised the doubts that bud and the everlasting confusions, all are tiny seeds of a soul that come out nourished after a good wordly meal. Last year, specifically, marked for me a new beginning in terms of reading books. We psychologists or psychotherapists ought to read to work to the best of our potential for our patients. Thanks to my profession, I read some elegant, classy yet raw and brutally honest books. I read Alain De Botton's Essays in Love, which still mesmerises me, ( I'll be re- reading it again sometime), Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, Tanya Byron’s The Skeleton Cupboard, Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, J.K.Rowling, Irving Yalom, two renowned psychotherapists Jon Carlson and Jeffrey Kotler, Erich Fromm, Winnicott, Richard Bach, Rumi among many others. I simply read and as I did I found how I gradually began appreciating the authors I read.

 Reading is like drinking green tea, you need honey to start sipping it initially but as you begin, the green tea itself seems sufficient ( for me Tulsi flavoured) and each sip a dip into eternity. So, even if you read a page a day, don't fret, you're on the right track! Today as I write on my cellphone I was amidst reading Ruskin Bond's "Falling in love again". It's a poetic treat. He is my kind of writer. His metaphors are like streams of waterfalls and his words are like music on harp. His book is my third book of the year (the other two are partly read, yes I have begun to devour books now) and his lines melt my heart like a chocolate. I rise and fall in the waves painted by him on this canvas. For those on goodreads, an advice - Reading is not a competition. Among all the things you run for or about in life, please spare reading! It's supposed to be a leisure (I'm not including textbook reading here) and let it be. I purposely haven't synced my goodreads with FB friends for I do not want to get worried by who is reading how many. Goodreads is one favourite site for me. I love their reccomendations. This year my cherished gifts were all books and I'm only glad! There are some 60 books waiting to be read and the list only gets longer by the hour. Have a blessed and a nourishing reading year ahead!

 Love

Have a reading year ahead!:) 

P.S: I just finished Ruskin Bond’s Falling in Love Again and Virginia M Axline’s Dibs in Search of Self

The beauty that fails to die

Dear words,

Did you ever know that you would be stringed together

With the last or the middle letter to form a necklace I would love to wear?

Dear music,

Did you ever know that a little tap here and a string there

Would melt my heart and soothe my soul?

Dear capsicum,

Did you ever know how green would look on you

As you wore that colour and carried that crispness to lure me in?

Dear Dark Chocolate,

Did you ever know that you bitterness would glide

And arouse someone even as you would melt in their bodies?

Dear Flowers,

Did you ever know that your petals would add vigour

Joy and hope as lay there dead, bringing someone alive?

Dear water,

Did you know how gracefully you could flow, in reality

And in metaphor, washing away my fears and pain?

Dear love,

Did you ever know the many hearts you would touch in a lifetime

Aching, breaking and uniting forever?

Dear Beauty,

Did you ever know how musical you would sound

As I would utter your being in my whisper?

There’s a book lying on the shelf…waiting to be picked

 Ever thought which words shall whisper into your dreams or crawl under your pillow as you lay there, opening a case of pages, immersing yourself into a world far away from ‘reality’? Oh! too long a sentence, was it? Some sentences like it brief. Some like to stretch their muscles nice and long, some like it crisp. Some like it warm. Some like it cold. Some like it fluffy. Some like it flat. Some like to rise. Some like to wallow. As each word dips itself into the last drop of hot chocolate lying besides your lamp, it kisses your lips, quenches your tongue of the longing you’ve always had, slowly entering your bloodstream, permeating the cell boundaries, only to enter the nucleus and make you feel the feel of the words you just tasted.

Your intuition calls you. It slowly rises from ashes, the one you never thought belonged to you, becomes a molecule and fuses with your spirit. In moments of oblivion, when the chatter outside makes you deaf; in moments of catastrophe, when the pieces of self look at themselves, all broken and shattered; in moments of elation, amidst smiles filled with glee, a voice speaks, only to find us no one around. Who do you think it was? Cum’on! I answered it right in the big-inning of the sentence.

As I read the text on language, it’s development and theories, words called me. My body felt hot with all the heat that the city was giving away. They contrarily felt cold. I invited them over. We had a chat, a very small one, just when Yalom wrote “Patients will resist your disclosure”. Our chat was mere a thought which was blank. No word spoken at my end yet understood by them. They knew it reached me. However I knew it too, yet I didn’t understand what chord they struck in me. Some are magic, they are all smoky, light, enchanting, vague and alluring. A swoosh! And they are gone, leaving behind a feeling unnamed.

Did I know Yalom would invite me for having breakfasts, lunches and suppers? No! actually Yes! We all carry answers to our questions we never think we will ever be able to answer. We reach out to those we think shall know. Why? The heart needs comforting, my friend. Far away in the corners of the heart lies a part which hears nothing but words. Words written are what it listens to; those that play music which enters the soul, so gradually, making them feel a part of our veins. The next time somebody invites you to open the pages to their world, give it a thought “Why now? Why them? Why You?” and may be as you shall ask the why’s, more shall emerge as more shall die.

            

Currently reading: Gift of Therapy by Irving Yalom

On the list: Tuesdays with Morrie, Illusions and There’s no such place as Far Away by Richard Bach

P.S: I'm on Goodreads, let me know if you wish to join:)

I read you

After all this while of reading

That which was so obscure

I found a light beside that street

Leading straight to your heart’s core

Wondering if you were two people at once

 A question I once had asked

Got my answer in time

For some words have filters in dark.

Your vagueness enticed me

Into reading the soul behind

For true hearts lead on

Hidden paths become a treasure to find

As I compared myself to others

Sun’s rays beating to outshine

You said I was a sun of my own

To each his own, their kind.

The trust gathered in those ink scribbles

The ones petite, pretty and fine

Are the ones that brought this soul

To a love that your words defined

C( Qu)oated*

Be glad that you don’t have instant manifestation. This buffer of time is really your friend. It’s your opportunity to observe and to ponder and to visualize, and to remember. It’s your opportunity to take an Emotional Journey that might be different from what you’re actually observing.~ Abraham

Before it could even start, I had a lump in my throat; an imagined one. You know how memories haunt you, as you lived your life trying to escape the moments which were only running towards you, following you like ghosts of the past, the past you never know would turn out on you, only till the time you were in present, for real.

Experiencing a vacuum is a phase which many of us have lived and those who have not may wait for. Life being itself has its ways of helping you experience myriads of emotions, only if you stay connected to them (myriad: how I love this word). Of course, vacuum has no air. It makes you feel breathless.  You live, only to question. You live, with anguish that burns through your skin. You live, with your heart that wanders to a place you’ve never been to. You live and that my dear friends, is the sole problem! Why? Cause it’s not really a happy place to be in. Yet it’s a place you ought to be in, in that very moment.

Having been in that vacuum before, the memories rushed through the mind, like blood rushes through the veins, in that fight-or-flight mode. “What if it happens again?”, “This time I shall definitely get crazy!” Work being the most important part of our lives makes its presence felt so vividly that you invariably get dependent on it, not just for income but for time’s sake too. And there stands the time laughing at you, as you walk past it hurriedly for the bus to catch, the metro to ride, or the breakfast gulped in few bites, only to see you walk back with fatigue in your bones and years added to your soul. For the lives that love their work and consider it a blessing, I offer my smiles to you, for those who complain, I offer my hand to you, come along, feel the vacuum, if you must, for it answers those questions you always ran away from. READ, beckon your soul’s voice and you shall be freed!

Not having any work after you have spent your two years of existence, slogging, writhing in pain, fatigue, exhaustion, can be difficult. Work has a powerful way of taking your life away from you even as you live each day to work! It’s a mystical charm that cloaks itself on your life hiding away the true facts, until you see them in your dreams or feel them as a ‘déjà vu’ or daydreams as you nonchalantly swift through your daily chores.

This time, the vacuum beckons me on and off. The grace of words calms me down. Both their words, are soaked in, one who holds the wand of mighty thoughts and the other where death does the talking. There is one more writer who needs to be allowed to enter the doors. His time shall soon come. When will yours?

* read as coated and quoted at once!

Thank you Leo, for the lovely prompt:) Link up at a prompt each day to get your words flowing.

On thinking and writing

Every time I come back here at this space, I see how people continue to visit this blogger space, mostly, from abroad. I often wonder what pulls them to this used-to-be-abode of mine. What interests me more is that around 83 people search for my blog url directly, and the blog views are nearing 2 lakh. Now, that's a number! Isn't it? But somehow, that doesn't ring a bell in my head.
Guess, at different points in life, we value different things. So goes for me!

Considering that my quarter life hits the stumps next week, I feel that this blog has had a journey of it's own. It has grown with me. It has fallen, risen, swimmed in the tides, only to nurture a beautiful soul within me.

They say it right " The only experiences you get in life are from the worst one you had".

Don't all of us hit the lowest of the lows, wanting to bury ourselves under the ground, never to see the earth again. Then the night takes it's course, only to give rise to a gorgeous sun. The sun shines the brightest after the worst of the storms. So does life:)

Being optimistic in times which are tough is the hardest task. God however knows his ways. So do we humans.

Think for a moment all the qualities that make you 'you' today. Where did you get them from? All the lessons learnt, the toughness and the strength, where did you get all that from?

God is kind. And so are people.

Been too busy in life all this while. Thoughts come by and go by too, like a breeze. The only difference being, earlier they would be weaved into a yarn. Now they are just left being threads of a wool ball.

In good time, I shall write
About the pains that scratched the heart
The smiles that made a start.

In good time, I shall write,
About the battles that I fought
And those that I won

In good time, I shall write
About the valleys that took me in
And the peaks that were supreme

In good time, I shall write
Of the love that seemed lost
And the one that was kept alive

In good time, I shall write
Of the flame that died
And the one that is still ignite

In time, I shall write
In time, I reminisce
In time, I stand
In time, I swim

With time, I evolved
With time, I run
With time, I slow down
With time, I breathe

May time, bless us all.

Love.

today, let's be high on tea;)

 

In your words I find so(u)lace

Trying we both are, in our own separate ways.

The moments sometimes freeze, but mostly it sways.

We both are a little afraid of what we would see.

And, we both keep our love, locked in different bays.* 

Hello you there,

How has the writing been doing? Any thoughts on penning down what you already have in your mind? I thought a little coaxing will help you write, sigh, what was I thinking? You continue to be a lazy snail and I race along the waves, attempting to occasionally sit by the shore and listen to the music of the waves. I’ll take back the word ‘lazy’ because I know the thoughts are going in your pensieve. I wait for the day they get woven into your yarn of words.

So lost in the world of words

My green tea sat there waiting

And a sip of bitter tea

Brought the memories

Of how someone saved me from choking

There are times when I’m quiet and silent and I can feel you, your silent presence is enough for my soul to find its link to its soul-ace. As I write, I wonder, why do we need words to define all our experiences? Will the experience not cease to exist and be the moment we start to define it? It shall morph into a memory. Won’t it? Then what shall be of the experience? It’s like killing it with words just when it takes birth. A rather tragic analogy, never thought I will be thinking of words in such terms! Tell me, if I do not speak, how thou shall understand the feelings deeply felt, the rise and the fall of the thought-provoking waves amidst the gleaming light bestowed upon by the might moon?

The names imprinted in the sand

By my feet, not my hand

Waiting to slip by, with the waves

When it’s in the heart, why need the land?

Your old posts are a treasure of gold for me. Every time they read again, a new feeling rises. At times it’s helps me reminisce the feeling I felt when I first read it. Your words aren’t banal, they are melodies written on piece of instrument which plays ‘the moment’s music’, uplifting spirits and words, themselves, to skies that don’t exist. That’s how I feel when I read Pablo Neruda, Kahlil Gibran and Rumi.

You would be surprised to know that even as I keep coaxing you to write, my own habit finds a rare place in this schedule of mine. Yet, here I’m, writing unlike you, literally in every word!

Thank them who taught us

To read and to write

Thank stars who showed us

The one path, amidst many blinds

For if it were not for words

What else would it be?

The locked door at this end

Finally did find its key!

*these lines have been written by my fellow blogger friend Kunal, the link of his post has been shared there and here. The post has been inspired by his beautifully written words:)

Distance hurts but we got to do what we like best with that distance

Considering its an all new chapter of my life I have started here the count of lessons too shall begin from that very first number we were taught to write as ‘one standing line’.

#1. Distance hurts but we got to do what we like best with that distance

As you grow into a mature butterfly with every single day that passes by, you also realise that even as you try to keep that pain and tears away from your dear ones, wanting not to see them dissolve in that pain, they are doing the same at the other end, protecting you as always. Pro- tec-tion. Se-cure. Its fab-u-lous how words form a melody and a meaning in themselves. How se-cure makes us cure and how pro life is pro-tec-tion? Did you ever share this with these words, for they know not the meaning they hold?

Yes, they’ve been loved ever since their re-cog-ni-tion and val-ue added some more val-ue to the already eventful life. There is this sol-ace ( sole-ace) that they give, perhaps darling as you find a fondness in that reading, I find mine in writing. The words bind us the way they always have.

If extroverts had an option to find solace then maybe they would want to have one special gift from their loved introverts. It would be being at peace with that fabulous book and a comfy corner. To think of, it’s not hard, right? In fact nothing is hard until it is tried and tested. As a writer writes, a comfort and that special solace comes by, not coz words have always been loved but because words as they come by, they leave soft kisses on a heart that longs for love every single day, on a heart that has been full of life every single day.

Once a teacher told her student, who was annoyed by the fact that she was not a good reader. He said “Just that there is a need for readers there is also a need for writers, for if there are no writers whom shall one read?” These words brought a smile to her face, for she was a writer and still continues to be. There may not be many people who read what she writes, there may not be that appreciation for her words, at a large scale, but knowing that she always writes because it pleases her is a beauty in itself. Why, you ask? The pleasure that small things give is at times magnified by the big things, to the extent that one forgets the sole of happiness in big events. She writes coz she loves. She also writes because some day she would like to gift these words, little bundle of joys to her children when they grow up, hoping that they would nurture these little curly letters in their own ways.

What it takes to keep writing even as no one ever comes by

A choke in my throat

Perhaps a little tear stuck by

For the words would often be read

Sometimes by friends, more so by passers by

Time went by hopping to blogs

Words here and there, but never a lie

Some friendships were formed

Few for a while

Others faded, like a cloud passing by

And there were phases

Of posts after posts

And then a silence, a blankness for a while

And there was this one avid reader

The one I love

My posts would be viewed

Sweetly, from those miles

And I would often share this feeling

A vacuum of sorts

And he would simply say

“You write from heart, as others for the piles”

Yet this heart would wonder

Feel that ache and pinch

Words, my first love knew

Would offer sweet smiles and winks

And as this yarn keeps spinning

The yard stays vacant all day

And a few beautiful souls drop by

And appreciate the existence of this place

The dreams then flutter its wings

For well, some true ones say ‘worry why?’

Some hearts still get touched and feel

And relate to the words written by………….

Aakriti

PS: Keep writing

From the time you began learning “A, B, C…..LMNOP” to now, try pondering how much have you expressed all these years, using words, your thoughts, and a pen and a paper?
Have you ever tried penning down your thoughts so as to get back to them sometime in future? To smile at yourself as you read how silly your thoughts were, your behavior, being so immature, and your innocence so subtle yet, pure?

Well, if the answer to the above questions is “YES”, then good, welcome to the “World of Writing”, and if NO then you are welcomed more so with profound appreciation, for the fact that you took out sometime to read this one!

I wonder if you know how much power do words have. No matter if they are written or spoken, they have the ability to evoke an emotion taking you to great heights, one moment, and tearing your heart apart as tears fall down your cheeks.

It’s only when we read books, fiction, non-fiction or soul stirring stories that we realize the depth of emotions the writer has. His /her ability to make his way with words, juggle them and pen down beautifully in an artistic way that the reader literally jumps, laughs, cries, gets startled, with everything that the protagonist in the book does.

I, as a writer, do not know whether I was born as an expressive girl or not. But writing too has a lot to do with it.

Writing helps one to express one's thoughts on nothing but a piece of paper, all ready to en-wrap you with its warmth, it welcomes you to cry your heart out, to vent out all your pent up feelings, and then it nicely preserves it for “you”. The paper then is at your mercy. Save it or burn it!

Our thoughts have an immense power which gets strengthened when it takes the form of words (written).

Try it for once; see how “YOU” feel. It needn’t be as great as Paulo Coelho or J.K. Rowling. Anyways you don’t expect yourself to reach at that level in your very first piece.
But, for once, in your moments of happiness, despair, grief or sheer serenity, try and pen down your free flowing thoughts to begin with. Make it a daily practice. Then perhaps you will realize how much you feel at ease after expressing yourself by writing!

Writing in its best form allows you to connect with your “inner self”. In the turmoil of our emotions, it acts like a guiding light, helping you understand your feelings , your “own self” , the way no one could have known.

You do not need great vocabulary to write down. Pure, honest words have more weight than words which are complex and ambiguous. And vocab also builds automatically with time, as you read more and more.

So grab a pen and a paper and get down to write and express what YOU and YOUR thoughts are…I'll end with what Mathew Arnold sais and I quote:

" Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style"

Happy writing!!:)