William Stafford will always be my favorite poet. I read LOTS of poets, constantly. Recently read & loved Hettie Jones & Koon Woon, always read W.S. Merwin, Molly Peacock, Jane Hirshfield, Jane Kenyon, Lucille Clifton, on and on and on. I never stop reading. I'm reading manuscripts for a contest now. Very exciting.
Being away even if for short periods can be so educational. These people who break into a smile on my return, who are they whom I love? Sometimes I wonder who these people are with whom there is this compact understanding of love. These strangers whom I born with, born from. I love them so. During the train journey I couldn't stop thinking about them. It's easier to write in the first person, I am thinking while writing this. It's easier to live in the first person with the correct combination of the third person. It''s easier when you become a character in your own eyes.
Yesterday when I entered home after being away for a week, I felt like I was walking into paradise. The car ride from the train station to home was so quiet. Plain and peaceful. Compared to the bustling, dirt-filled, polluted Jaipur roads, the roads here were quiet, stretched pastures. There was a still a soft chill in the air when I got off the car. And as it moved into the driveway, birds could already be heard in enthusiastic chirps, as if in my welcome. A little sunshine filtered through the leaves, obscuring a hint of lingering fog that was beginning to fade away. Dad looked unusually youthful in his bright off-white shirt and half grey sweater, standing at the gate, smilingly, in my welcome. My mum too broke into a big smile. The living room through which I entered looked big and the teak of the furniture, the maroon of the carpet, and the gentle pale of the walls all glorious after mingling with sun light wafting into the room through the large windows in the front. This house is beautiful and spacious. But when I entered it yesterday, I felt like I was walking into a palace. Into paradise.
