November Rain

I always wanted to experience that one song, by Guns n Roses, which had such an impact on me as a kid. I loved this song regardless of the fact that I didnt understand its meaning at first. Being with her made me truly learn what it meant. Isnt it proverbial in some way that the year we decide to make it official I get to experience something that I have never had the opportunity for. November Rain. But there is nothing cold about this November Rain.

This is for Puriya: November rain by GnR

When I look into your eyes
I can see a love restrained
But darlin' when I hold you
Don't you know I feel the same
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain
We've been through this such a long long time
Just tryin' to kill the pain
But lovers always come and lovers always go
An no one's really sure who's lettin' go today
Walking away
If we could take the time to lay it on the line
I could rest my head
Just knowin' that you were mine
All mine
So if you want to love me
then darlin' don't refrain
Or I'll just end up walkin'
In the cold November rain

Do you need some time...on your own
Do you need some time...all alone
Everybody needs some time...on their own
Don't you know you need some time...all alone
I know it's hard to keep an open heart
When even friends seem out to harm you
But if you could heal a broken heart
Wouldn't time be out to charm you

Sometimes I need some time...on my
own Sometimes I need some time...all alone
Everybody needs some time...on their own
Don't you know you need some time...all alone

And when your fears subside
And shadows still remain, ohhh yeahhh
I know that you can love me
When there's no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain

Gyroscopic Inertia

We master the physics of motion so easily as we grow up, then why is it so difficult for us to master the physics of emotion?

I was standing in the bus fighting its centrifugal force as it made a sharp turn across the road. The sudden jolts when the driver hit the brakes, the sudden pull backs when he accelerated on a miraculously empty patch of road. I felt everything and even before the inertia could make me lose my balance, I controlled my muscles to stay put. I did lose my sense of the center of gravity, but it was easier to balance with just the muscles in my feet.

Some of my recent experiences have taught me so many valuable lessons about having been able to develop my fictional muscles which I can use to control my emotions. I don't know how effectively I would be able to grasp them, but its still fun to flex them nevertheless. Sometimes things just hit me point blank even before I am allowed to realize what I am supposed to think about them. Each of this instance is a test of my instinct, although largely the actions that follow then become the test of my emotions. I do face an inability to perceive what the outcome can be or should be, but I am slowly learning to bridge this gap.

I have been observing people around me, mostly elders and their mannerisms & how they have been handling some of my shared experiences. I must say there was some amount of experience embedded in their actions, although there was mostly that instinctive response that we could expect from someone who would go through it for first time. It taught me something that even after having tonnes of experience in handling such family issues and tackling such situations, there can be an element of surprise (or lack of recall of the action taken earlier). It bothered me when I realized that this could also happen to me as I grow more experienced. In investing, maybe even after learning from some of my mistakes I can eventually endorse to my intuition for guidance at the same time rely on facts to back me up. It may not be in that order & thats where lies the rump.

Indulging in classics helped me grip reality at a whole new level, especially learning from putting myself in their shoes. One thing which is supposed to sound like a management lesson from the 30's is, "Don't try fixin' what aien't broken." Its fun to read this thought, because most of my actions were tending to fix things that "I" perceived to be broken. So if my perception was so strong as to lead me to act when no action was necessary, would this perception drive me to make similar mistakes in my investment decisions?

Yes, some thoughts have haunted me, some have sobered me & some experiences have humbled me beyond recognition. This seems like living in a pinball machine, bobbing around bumping onto experiences to get reward points of knowledge.

Or.... maybe I am reading far too much into my own deluded reality!

Last Chance to See, One more time....

I remember writing about the Carl Sagan book, "The Pale Blue Dot", almost more than a year ago I think. That was one humbling experience traversing the length of space to turn around just one last time to take a look at our mother planet. All that we stand for and care a lot about, is just one small pixel in the peta-tera-giga-pixel picture of the cosmos. Why should we be any more significant then?

I watched the series, "Last Chance to See", specially remade to re-trace Douglas Adams' and Mark Cawardine's journey after 20 years. The book was an immensely satisfying experience, which brought home the message of wild-life conservation out to the mainstream. Its not just another experiment to control populations of obscure species. Several reports  have come after Adams' trip to those places and documenting their experiences in their book, how popular these conservation attempts had become. People sent money, aid and a whole lot of things to facilitate the conservation attempts in one way or another.

This time, Stephen Fry and Mark, go through the same experience along with BBC, to catch up with the conservationalists to check up on those near extinct species. I can't say that I havent been deeply moved by what I got to watch. I remember sprawling on my bed reading through Adams' Last Chance to See, enjoying every moment, every trek, every description in his own quirky and witty manner making it even more enjoyable. I could hardly imagine that someone would want to capture this on a camera and make it into a TV series.

Its the most humbling experience, so much bio-diversity we have around us and we are merely just a tiny blip on the map, yet have such a lasting impact on it. Human intervention and colonization have long introduced extraneous elements onto a landscape and destroyed its ecological balance. Its sobering to realize that some of us do in fact give a damn about it and do enough to care to change the irreversible effects of our encroachment.

The more I write the more it gets diluted, but I want to recount one experience, the very end of the series, the final episode which follows the Blue Whale. Majestic animals, jumbo-jet huge yet with an almost royal elegance, 'fluking' their way towards the abyss. Some of the moments they have captured on tape are breath-taking, almost unreal. I have been raised on discovery channel and NatGeo but never was it so personal. The sheer size of this animal and yet we control if it deserves to live or not, is a gross misstep across our natural boundaries. The song of the humpback whale, almost feels like being trapped in a Sigur Ros song with the Auroras dancing around us.

All this does drive home a point. All the things we humans seek: love, compassion, acceptance, companionship, courtship, kinship and parenthood are all present in this dynamic biodiversity. Yet most of us fail to recognize the deserved gratitude that we must show towards it. 

Nature is only once, the only place we have left to be. This certainly wasn't 'the' last chance to see...