books and old copies

One of my memorable visits and times of tranquility was visiting Trinidad. I didn't get to see all T &T, not of course without setting foot on Tobago. It was nice, not grand like some type of Spalding desert; oasis and women clad in their festive wildlife. No, it was grainy, real, warm, and the ocean breeze speckled across the floor of Indians & Africans, long settled here to develop a national identity with culture bright as the g rinded turmeric ascending in the dishes. None of it, of course would have been more pleasant had it without an old friend. It is a place, I can always think of setting foot, into relax. Until you've gone somewhere, you cant enjoy the peace pervading enjoyed by the homebody, nor share in her discomforts of the familiarity(to which you are unfamiliar). But, you can say at least, i stepped on your homeland, danced (well i didn't get the chance to meet some pretty ladies, but inside I did- and that is all good enough for me), and laid on your mixed soil, inhabitants speaking volumes for the present, and the vanishing past.

• “My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
  but I'm in total harmony with them.
  I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything;
  nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
  Who cares about wealth and honor?
  Even the poorest thing shines.
  My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
  drawing water and carrying wood. ”

  - Layman Pang (c. 740 - 808) from The Enlightened Heart

May my character not spoil my destiny ~African Proverb

"Life is a spell so exquisite, everything conspires to break it." -Emily Dickenson

O what is beauty
that I feel it to be so hot-blooded and suggestive,
so filled with imperative
beneath the ease of its changes,
between the leaves and the clouds of its thousand
and again a thousand opportunities?
-Mary Oliver from Riprap

Even if your mind stays away in the forest,
Or in the house, Or In duties or in great thoughts
If your mind does not bow at Her feet,
What is the use? What is the use? And What is the use? --Guru Ashtakam

'Even as the lion, not trembling at noises, even as the wind, not caught in a net, even as the lotus-leaf untouched by water, so do thou wander alone, like the rhinoceros '