Ruchira's Ramblings

  I’ve been looking for things to say.   I have been afraid of staring at blank pages. What if someday I have nothing to say anymore? What if nothing I say interests anyone anymore? What if no one hears me? What if they hear me and laugh at my naiveté? So what am I going to write about? Like most of my recent posts, this too has been weeks and months in the making. I’ve been running away from saying the things I want to say. What if I say too much? Share too much? What if they laugh and roll their eyes, muttering about my presumptions? What if no one says a damn thing and I fall through the rabbit-hole of silence once again? On some days, I listen to one song on loop, willing it to weave a story in my head that transports me from my present. On other days, I run through my playlists, discarding old favourites like a moody teenager picking at food, too distracted to allow for the distraction of music and rhythm. Somebody perhaps I’ll sit down and write songs again, feel the...

NaPoWriMo Day 24. Prompt from napowrimo.net: "Today’s prompt is to write a poem that is inspired by a reference book. Locate a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia, open it at random, and consider the two pages in front of you to be your inspirational playground for the day.". The book I opened was the  'Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms'. And I thought I would give the villanelle form another shot. 

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 20. Conversation Poems.  Prompt from napowrimo.net: "Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that 'talks.' Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. ...the idea here is to get away from formally 'poetic' speech and into the way language tends to work out loud." My first try, the prose poem is something that began to form in my head last night when I was struggling with the alphabet prompt.  The second poem I conceived this morning when I was doing my morning paper while thinking about the prompt. I tried to write only the second, but the first one insisted on being written.  Then I wrote the second anyway.  Have a good Sunday everyone.  The Night King is coming.  And Happy Easter.

It has been a while since I’ve blogged. Apologies to you, and to myself as well for not writing. I have been planning this piece for a while, and it has been so long that I have probably forgotten what I was going to say. But then, this is a ramble, really, so it doesn’t matter in the end. A few weeks ago, I came across an article about the first phase of a major radio sky survey using Low Frequency Array telescope, revealing “hundreds and thousands of previously undetected galaxies.” Without going into technical details, seeing as I am not a sciencebro , here’s a figure: “their radio signals have traveled billions of light years before reaching earth,” (one light year is 5.8 trillion miles)- which just blows the mind, really. The actual article shared on Twitter had a highly entertaining comment thread, with people talking about mass, infinity and multiverses. All of it reminded me of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. For all its subversions, politics, imagina...