ant hills
Walt Whitman, traveling souls, in passing, the thread we fling, life on east coast of India 3000 years ago, cleaning up, creative living, song of our life, and irrelevance.
Hello my dear reader,
Thank you for joining me. I hope you are doing well.
The past week has been about writing, editing, swimming (or learning to swim), venturing out, planning for the upcoming months, reading, and visiting archaeological ruins near Pondicherry that are said to be from as early as the 8th century BCE.
But first I want to start with some poetry.
Maria Popova’s amazing resource of information, art, and love The Marginalian inspired me to read Walt Whitman, and I am happy I did. Whitman is also one of Neruda’s favorite poets and in his memoirs (which I just finished), Whitman was mentioned many times.
In the poem the Song of the Road, Neruda’s comrade, Whitman reminds us of the importance of our own souls, of our humanness, before everything else,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. All parts away for the progress of souls, All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
Everything is here to help us ripple through the river of life. We don’t have to be so serious about every ideological difference, the color of the cloth we call our flags, or whether we call him the Krishna or the Allah. But in our struggles, we forget that our true business here was to pass, admire, live, suffer, and thrive, and not to carve our name on every stone our hands can reach up to.
As Whitman writes further,
Allons! we must not stop here, However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
Leaving a legacy is one thing, but imagining that we matter more than in our passing is a mistake we all commit. It’s the passing, the doing, the living that is above all.
And because I have read Song of the Road for the first time I could never quote Whitman’s verses on doing for nothing other than the pleasure of doing (a theme I elaborate upon often and is central to my five-year celebration of writing).
Walt Whitman asks,
Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.
Like a fisherman, who drops a little food to lure the fish, waits for hours, pulls out a tiny fish, and casts another hook ready to wait as long as it takes, again, we all achieve one goal only to start striving for another.
In that way, Whitman’s Noiseless Patient Spider is a mirror-image, a perfect one, of every human journey.
A Noiseless Patient Spider By Walt Whitman A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
The ancient Romans must have also flung the threads about 3000 years ago at Arikamedu, the archaeological site on the east coast of India near Pondicherry where burial urns, amphoras, ceramic plates, statues, gems, jewelry, beads, and many other artifacts dating from as old as 8 BCE have been found. Archaeologists say the site must have been an Indo-Roman trade center.
plates found at Arikamedu now displayed at Pondicherry Museum. Belonging from 1 B.C to 2 A.D
burial urns, some of which were found at Arikamedu. Belonging to 1st century BCE.
amphoras, in which wine mixed with many other things was stored and sailed over seas
“When did we arrive on earth?” I ask my partner while leaning against the brick structure on the site. He says 50,000 years ago. This number has been eluding me forever so when I come home I Google it again and I find that 50,000 years ago we probably developed the language as we know now. We could have been here 300,000 years ago in a form similar to our present selves. By then we probably had already started giving up our superior athletic abilities, fragility, and animal-like skills for a larger brain.
the brick structures at Arikamedu
the gate leading up to the Indo-Roman trade center
We walk through the ruins looking at the brick structures but the bricks look new. Covered with cement the structures don’t look old either. After coming back from the ruins I find an article on Hindu which says the monuments were made during a French excavation 250 years ago.
Now plastic bottles, single-use plastic, beer bottles, tobacco packets, other rubbish covers the ground of what once must have been an important place for the sailors to rest and build and trade.
the grounds of Arikamedu
Even the artifacts excavated, some of which lie in the Pondicherry museum, are ruined because the museum has painted upon them and marked them with numbers.
In view a Paleolithic axe, which could be 1.8 million years old, painted over for museum records (top right)
Admiring ant hills, I pass marked mango trees. I run into a large red-yellow gecko, my neighbors back in Auroville. But the one at Arikamedu was larger, perhaps wilder than the ones near human settlements.
We walk over the dry mango and palm leaves, crushing them under our foot, tiptoeing through the garbage, skirting the broken glass to the North of the ruins. From the trail fringed by the wild, I see the Ariyankuppam river through which the ships and sailors arrived at the trading city.
Ariyankuppam river
We decide against clambering down the slippery path that leads to the garbage-patted dark shore. When we have passed, a man shouts from behind, “Hey friends” and holds up a large board on which we can’t read anything. But I have cruised through the quiet waters of that river to get to the 2000 years ancient Mangroves before. Also, I don’t hope the ride with that bearded man through that garbage den would be that fulfilling. So we skip.
We trace back our way. A couple of dogs watch us go but they don’t even bark once. Men loiter in a corner with their bikes forming a natural fence but as we approach their hide out the standing ones glare at us. We make distance and go back the way we had come because we are sure they are drinking and playing cards.
scattered
Earlier I had driven through the streets to get to Arikamedu and my partner was insistent on driving straight without losing our way. But I had seen small houses in the streets, women in nightgowns drying fish on the road, flour drawings outside every Tamil home, and men watching us from behind their doors as we passed on our rickety rented scooter.
Those were the very people who had first started discovering the trade center and had found what the French and English and Indian governments claimed theirs later.
But my partner was right in hurrying up because later the heat gave me a headache. I had woken up at 5:30, swam for an hour, hadn’t had tea, and had driven in so much sun something was bound to happen.
We rested in the ruins for a long time. There was nothing much to see in the brick buildings so I looked at the cud-chewing cows sprawled on the arid earth and the crows sitting atop the cows picking lice off them. A man crunched on snacks while watching a video. A man and a woman walked through the arches with their child in between them. Another man sat on the low brick wall reading a book. Children clicked pictures of their parents and camera holders posed against the Roman archways.
After a while we picked up our bag and left the place the same way we had arrived. And I couldn’t help but feel that we should stop excavating the past now and clean up a little after ourselves. Otherwise what would our descendants find when we are long gone?
What do you want to do as you pass through this magnificent earth?
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Articles From the Past
How to Sort Through the Mundane For Creative Living
We don’t have to always know. That is what is inside will come out when we enable ourselves with a pen or a keyboard or a blade of grass. After a few lines of conscious effort, flows the free waterfall of ideas. And when ideas flow, we type faster than we can. We paint with both hands. We code as if there is no tomorrow.
This is how I sort through the humdrum of the daily to live creatively. Read the methods and meditations now. Or Pocket for later.
Peru Visa for Indians 2022 [From India and South America]
Covid Update July 2022 – Peru is now open to international travelers. Travelers must show proof of vaccination. Those who are unvaccinated have to show a negative covid-19 test issued up to 48 hours before boarding. Find the complete information on the official website of the Peru government.
This is a guide on how to get a visa to Peru on an Indian passport (and also tells who doesn’t need to get one).
Get to the visa guide now. Or Pocket it for later.
Quotes I Love
“He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” — Seneca
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.” — William Blake
“The years go by. You wear out, thrive, suffer, and enjoy life. The years take life away or restore it to you.” — Pablo Neruda
“Suffering is the name we give to how we live with life’s imperfection, and with our own — which is so often the wellspring of our profoundest suffering. How we bear this imperfection, what we make of it, is our great living poem.” — Maria Popova
“Life takes from our stomachs all the strength we can give it and more. But if we give away with a smile it remembers to return us in surplus.” — Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve been reading short stories, books, articles, and so much more. I can’t possibly list all what I have read in the past week so I’m putting down the things I found most relevant and worthwhile.
Beautiful reads from the week,
I Loved this rendition of James Falconer Kirkup’s poem Ursa Major by Elizabeth Gilbert for Universe in Verse (an initiative of The Marginalian’s Maria Popova)
What’s the Difference Between Memoir and Personal Essay? by Suzanne Farrell Smith — For the writers amongst you
It’s the most common question my creative nonfiction students ask. We know memoir and personal essay overlap. Both tell true stories from the author’s life with intimacy and honesty. And both are crafted with literary devices: scene, dialogue, sensory detail… That’s what makes creative nonfiction compelling. We love true stories and we love to be entertained.
So where do they differ? To answer, I draw from several resources on writing creative nonfiction and illustrate with two Hippocampus pieces. By my measure, memoir and personal essay differ along four lines: focus, mining, voice, and sense.
Though this is the personal essay mentioned in the above writing guide, I wanted to share it here. The Capacity of a Human by Linda Anne Silver — is a mother’s search for peace and reconciliation in the wake of her daughter’s passing away.
Trucks thunder past on the Trans-Canada Highway but we have access to the internet, and I Google the little rock pile figures we saw along the highway and learn that they are Inuksuk, an Inuit cultural symbol. The word means that which acts in the capacity of a human. They were navigation aids, markers for travel routes. The modern use of them is to leave a mark, something to communicate to other humans after we’ve departed from this spot; some evidence declaring, “I was here.” It’s what we all want to do; why we paint or sculpt, or write words for others to read. For some of us, our children are the living clues that we once were here.
Fits and Starts by Matthew Zanoni Müller — This is the memoir mentioned in the writer’s guide above. But I had to share it (especially for those readers who wouldn’t click onto the guide). Fits and Starts is not about a little boy from Germany adjusting to North American life. The memoir is only one of the prints of the negative of life which shows that change is hard, sometimes we need little signs to make us move along, and that even little tiny baby steps forward are all we need to get going.
The Guardian’s interview with the Tsunami survivor who lost her entire family by Tim Adams — I’ve been meaning to read the book Wave: an account of the devastating story of Sonali Deraniyagala whose entire family was wiped off in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But I haven’t been able to make time. Or perhaps I haven’t had the heart to read the book. But this short interview tells so much about the before and after of the author’s life that I have re-read it many times in the last couple of days. The story puts in perspective how all the little and big things we go mad caring about each day are so irrelevant on the canvas of the universe.
You think you will go mad with wanting it back." — Sonali Deraniyagala
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
that’s worth mentioning
Emily Dickinson’s bloom collection in animations and words
And for all my Wanderlusters.
One last photograph from this week.
The earth never tires, The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. Walt Whitman
Thank you for reading.
I hope you have a thriving week. Take good care of yourselves :)
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Yours,
Priyanka
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