Hostel

A small room with a cement counter all around to place our metal boxes. A bundle of all of our posessions into the hostel. oe goturs were filled with cardboard boxes of new dresses. I remember one red dress with a blue lace in front and a midband. That room was just to store our belongings. There was a bigger room for sleeping.
Once my classmate wore his elder sister's nightie. Being big for a fourth grader and larger, he was stuck in it for a while. He seemed to know more than a fourth grader of things in general. One morning we went to drop off a sister at the railway station. That day we had idli there with the chutney reeking of green chillies. I dont remember who paid for it.

Listening to an upbeat Punjabi song, I feel that is how I could take farewell from the world.

Early evening

A child jumping
up and down two
steps of an
open staircase

waiting for his
mother

As a kid, I was
ready with milk,
tea powder and sugar
ready on the stove
to turn it on
as soon as I
found her few houses
far

Life in things

A sweet box with an assortment of sweets. Some were slabs of two colors brown over cream color sweet or green over cream color. All made from milk. These were our treats from Shankerpally town during our summer holidays spent in Fatehpur village.

Unposted letters

From daughters to mothers

- the vague delight of being a stranger in a strange place. - Lynn Freed

Joseph cornell boxes in David Gaylan's 'boxes' essay in this anthology. A story by her. Of another writer inspired by ' The Incredible Appearing Man' story.

Pipestone paperweight in 'Unnaming the flowers' essay by Sonia Gernes.
What you hear in the dark?

Susan Griffin's essay is a revealing letter, embracing the miry relationship of a mother and daughter who have shared love only towards the end of it.

The land where you are the chief

Writers dreaming
A review
I liked the essays by John Nicols, Jack prelutsky, Reynolds Price.

Dreams may seem chaotic, but one can always create structure. - John Nicols
I liked the persona of John Nicols.

Prelutsky's essay shows us how dreams work into his poems for children. Writing with Jack Prelutsky. His poem froma dream.

Sometimes when I finish writing a poem, I look at it and say, What can I do with this, can I write the opposite? - Jack prelutsky

Reynolds Price linked his early childhood - trapped in a narrow tunnel dream to his experience of breech birth. His interview
Dreams are obviously the art of the artless. - Reynolds Price.

At Starbucks

A new mom is on a single chair
table
walked in with a stroller in left hand
and a 2 month old baby in her right
the boy drinking his milk from a bottle
was slinking into sleep

A mom is mixing coffee
'Zucar or Splenda'
son answers 'Zucar'
for father who wants 'Splenda'.

Another mom with
a wide stroller
bulldozed the chairs
and people in her way

From the colour of it
I could tell the
white choc mocha wasnt good

Odd one out

The ear bud
looked extra white
It wasnt so every day
I opened the drawer
From a box of pink
ones I had picked a
spare white

Nightmares of a mom to be

A snake breaks the latch
of a big blue drum
theres another in a
cardboard box used to
deliver flowers
The mom was convinced
before ordering them
snakes that they were
easy to dispose with
The first snake didnt
seem vile
only curious about
whats going to happen
The mom walked into the
patio with her husband
to discuss their POA.

The next nightmare:
Hands with eczema
strangely no pain

The next nightmare:
Husband is lost in
a sea of relatives
back home

Mother knows - womanhood, motherhood, selfhood.
Frost: A love story

A review that includes this book.

Ackee in Coconut lady

Holidays in heck
Lava gull

Games people play

Transactional analysis

Today I saw a kid playing with an alphabetic caterpillar at Ross.
Marshalls has cloth diapers.

My Oedipus complex ncluded in iIn praise of mothers anthology is hilarious. The anthology also includes Jane Goodall's story Mothers and daughters about chimpanzees. A quirky behavior.Its amazing that studies have been done on chimpanzees to the extent we know how the mother-daughter relation saga plays out with different personalities of daughters.

The war was the most peaceful period of my life - kid character in the story by Frank O Connor.

The Leap by Louise Erdrich has a hook with 'My mother once said that I'd be amazed at how many things a person can do within the act of falling'.

Fenstad's mother

Happiness

Songs my mother taught me - Hortense Calisher
The Good Deed by Pearl S Buck.

With few letters

wilderness, wildness.
Thinking of wilderness, the moment I like to recall is the time I was birdwatching at Catalina mountains where I heard a Bewick wren sing. It was on a branch at my eye level. I felt like a giant led into the toy city.

The other day I was thinking about lighting and lightning.

Assassin bugs
Spinner bugs. Thinking about this I was reminded of a story where a drowning ant's life is saved by a leaf thrown into the water by a friend.

Walking is almost an ambulation of mind. - Gretel Ehrlich.

Miners lettuce
Cirque

windsounds becoming watersounds - Gretel Ehrlich

I like the word meltwater.

A ticket to Tanzania
Terrazzo
Makonde art
ngoma
Mohamed Amin
Wilfred Thesiger
Mirella Ricciardi