THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE: PART TWO
Dear Friends, having introduced ‘The Enigma of Time in Verse’ in Part One, along with few selected poetic quotes, I now mention what some of the important Philosophers thought about Time down the past centuries. But while doing so, I have tried my best to simplify some of those early concepts for better understanding and appreciation of my readers. If you like it, kindly re-post the poem. Thanks,  – Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

          THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE : PART TWO
   I commence by quoting Sonnet 60 of Shakespeare about Time,
   Hoping to seek some blessings for this Part Two composition of
   mine!
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

              PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
Animals are said to live in a continuous present,
Since they have no temporal distinction of past, future,
or the present.
But our consciousness of time, becomes the most
distinguishing feature of mankind.
Though we are mostly obsessed with objective time, -
As the rotation of our Earth separates day from night.
With the swing of the pendulum and the ticking of clocks,
Which regulates our movements, while we try to beat the clock!
But the ancient theologians and philosophers of India and
Greece,
Who were among the first to ponder about the true nature
of all things,
Had wondered about the subjective nature of time;
Was time linear or cyclic, was time endless or finite?

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON TIME:
I begin with Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher of 6th Century BC born in Ephesus.
He claimed that everything around us, is in a constant state of change and flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice Heraclitus had claimed,
Since water keeps flowing down the river all the while and never
remains the same.
This flow and change in Nature is a process which is ceaseless.
The only thing which remains permanent is impermanence!
Here is a quote from poet Shelley reflecting the same idea:
“World on world are rolling ever
  From creation to decay
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

Now Heraclitus was refuted by Parmenides, born in the Greek colony of Elea,
On the western coast of Southern Italy, as his contemporary.
Parmenides said that our senses deceive us, since all changes are mere illusory!
True reality was only eternal and unchanging ‘Being’, which was both indivisible and continuous - filling up all space.
Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, through his famous ‘Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise’ had shown, that when the tortoise was given a head start,
Swift footed Achilles could never catch up with the tortoise,
Since the space between the two were infinitely divisible, resulting in the impossibility of movement and change in motion!
Now the Greeks were never comfortable with the Concept of Infinity.
They preferred to view the universe as continuous existing ‘Being’.  
However, unlike Heraclitus’ ‘world of change and flux’,
Both Parmenides and Zeno have presented us, with a static unchanging universe!
Thus from the above examples it becomes easy for us to derive,  
How those Ancient Greeks had viewed Time.
Time has been viewed as a forward moving changing entity;
And also as an illusory, continuous and indivisible Being!
To clarify this further I quote Bertrand Russell from his ‘History of Western Philosophy’;
“Creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter, to which God gives form as an artificer.”

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON TIME:
For Plato, time was created by the Creator at the same instance when he had fashioned the heavens.
But Plato was more interested to contemplate on things which lay
beyond the sway of time and remained unchangeable and eternal;
Like absolute Truth, absolute Justice, the absolute form of Good and Beauty;
Which were eternal and unchangeable like the ‘Platonic Forms’, and were beyond the realm of Time as true reality.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was the first Greek philosophers to contemplate on reality inside time, and provide a proper definition as we get to see.
He said, “Time is the number of movement in respect to before and after” - as a part of reality.
To measure time numerically, we must have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and also notice the difference objectively.
Therefore, time here becomes the change which we see and experience.
Time takes on a linear motion moving from the past to the present;
And to the unknown future like a moving arrow travelling straight.
Aristotle had developed a four step process to understand everything inside of Time and within human experience:
(a) Observe the world using our senses,
(b) Apply logical rules to these observations,
(c) To go back and consult past authorities, if your logic agrees with their logic,
(d) Then only you can come to a logical conclusion.

No wonder in our modern times, experiments conducted by the LDC or the Large Hadron Collider, located 100m underground near the French-Swiss border,
By going back in time simulates the ‘Big Bang’ conditions, that moment of our universe’s first creation.
The scientists thereby, study the evolution of our universe with time, which  resulted in the  finding of the Higgs Boson !  (On 4thJuly 2012)

NOTES :  All elementary particles interacting with the Higg's Field & obtain Mass, excepting for photons & gluons which do not interact with this field. Mass-less photons can travel at the
speed of light with a mind boggling 186,000 miles per second! Now this LDC is a Particle Accelerator 27 kms long ring-shaped tunnel, made mostly of superconducting magnets, inside which two high-energy particle beams are made to travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions, and the shower of particles resulting from the collision is closely examined, presuming that these similar shower of particles must have been produced at the time of the ‘Big Bang’ some 13.8 million years ago, at the time of Creation! Sound like fiction? Well, Prof. Peter Higgs got the Noble Prize for Physics, for locating the particle called ‘Higgs Boson’ among those shower of particles, on 10th Dec. 2013.

NOW TO LIGHTEN UP MY READERS MIND, FEW TIME QUOTE I NOW PROVIDE :

“TIME WASTES OUR BODIES AND OUR WITS,
  BUT WE WASTE TIME, SO WE ARE QUITS!” – Anonymus.

‘Time is a great Teacher, but unfortunately it kills its Pupils!’ – HL Berlioz

“Lost , yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
   golden hours,
   Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
   No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!” – Horace Mann


PLOTINUS & ST. AUGUSTINE ON TIME:
Now getting back to our Philosophy of Time, there was Plotinus of the 3rd Century AD,
The founder of the mystical Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy.
He had followed Plato’s basic concept of Time as “the moving image of eternity.”
Mystic Plotinus tried to synthesize both Aristotle and Plato by saying that the entire process of cosmic creation,
Flows out of the ONE  through a series of emanation!
This ONE gave rise to the ‘Divine Mind’ which he called the ‘Realm of Intelligence’ and is an aspect of reality,
When everything is understood in terms of Platonic Forms of Truth, Justice, the Good, and Beauty.
However, the later Christian theologians had interpreted this ONE of Plotinus, -
As the Christian God, the Divine Creator of the Universe.
For God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless, in God there is no before or after, but only a timeless present.

Now this lead St. Augustine, to formulate a very admirable relativistic theory of Time!
St. Augustine, the greatest constructive teacher of the Early Christian Church, had written in Book XI of his ‘Confessions’ during  5th century AD, -
His thoughts about the enigma of Time which had perplexed the Greek philosophers of earlier centuries.
To simplify St. Augustine’s thoughts, I now paraphrase for the sake of clarity.
Time can only be measured while it is passing, yet there is time past, and time future in reality.
To avoid these contradictions he says that past and future can only be thought of as present: ‘past’ must be identified with memory, and ‘future’ with expectation.
Since memory and expectation being both present facts, there is no contradiction.  
“The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation,” - wrote St. Augustine.

This subjective notion of time led St. Augustine to anticipate Rene Descartes the French philosopher the 17th Century,
Who proclaimed “Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin, meaning “I think, therefore I am”, and is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Now cutting a long story short I come to Sir Isaac Newton, well known for his Laws of Motion and Gravity.
Newton speaks of ‘Absolute Time’ which exists independently, flowing at a consistent pace throughout the universe, which can only be understood mathematically.
Newton’s ‘Absolute Time’ had remained as the dominant concept till the  early years of the 20th Century.
When Albert Einstein formulated ‘Theory of Space-time’ along with his Special and General Theory of Relativity.

Now the German philosopher Leibniz during 17th century, had challenged Newton with his anti-realist theory of time.
Leibniz claimed that time was only a convenient intellectual concept, that enables to sequence and compare happening of events.
There must be objects with which time can interact or relate to as ‘Relational Time’ he had felt.
Ernst Mach, like Leibniz towards the end of 19th Century, said that even if it was not obvious what time and space was relative to,
Then they were still relative to the ‘fixed stars’ i.e. the bulk of matter in the universe.

CONCEPT OF TIME AS 'SPECIOUS PRESENT' :
During late 19th century, Robert Kelley introduced the concept of ‘spacious present’, which was the most recent part of the past.
Psychologist and philosopher William James developed this idea further by describing it as ‘’the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’’
William James also introduced the term “stream of consciousness” into literature as a method of narration,
That described happenings in the flow of thought in the mind of the characters, - likened to an internal monologue!
This literary technique was later used by James Joyce in his famous novel ‘Ulysses’.

TIME CONCEIVED AS DURATION: HENRI BERGSON (1859 -1941)
Next I come to one of my favourite philosopher the French born Henri Bergson.
The Nobel Laureate and author of ‘Time and Free Will’ and ‘Creative Evolution’.
Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ says Bergson was ‘the David destined to slay the Goliath of materialism.’
It was Bergson’s ‘Elan Vital’ that life force and impelling urge, Which makes us grow and transforms this wandering planet into a theatre of unending creation.
For Bergson, time is as fundamental as space; and it is time that holds the essence of life, and perhaps of all reality.
Time is an accumulation, a growth, a duration, where “duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances.
The past in its entirety is prolonged into the present and abides there actual and acting.
Duration means that the past endures, that nothing is lost.
Though we think with only a small part of our past; but it is with our entire past that we desire, will, and act.”
“Since time is an accumulation, the future can never be the same as the past, -
For a new accumulation arises at every step, and change is far more radical than we suppose…the geometric predictability of all things, Which is the goal of a mechanistic science, is only a delusion and a dream!”  
Bergson goes on in his compelling lyrical style:            
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. Perhaps all reality is time and duration, becoming and change.”
Bergson differed with Darwin's theory of adaptation to environment, and stated;
“Man is no passively adaptive machine, he is a focus of redirected force, a centre of creative evolution.”

Martin Heidegger, the German thinker in his ‘Being and Time’ of 1927, had said:
“We do not exist within time, but in a very real way we are time!”
Time is inseparable from human experience, since we can allow the past to exist in the present through memory;
And even allow a potential future occurrence to exist in the present due to our human ability to care, and be concerned about things.
Therefore we are not stuck in simple sequential or linear time, but can step out of it almost at will!

CONCLUDING  PART  TWO OF ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE
In this part I have tried to convey what the Ancient Greek Philosophers had felt about Time in a simplified way.
Also some thoughts of Medieval and Early Modern philosophers and what they had to say.
Where Sir Isaac Newton stands like a colossus with his Concept of Time, Laws of Motion, and Gravity.
Not forgetting Henri Bergson, one of my favourite philosopher, of the mid-19th and the mid-20th Century.
All through my narration I had tried to hold the interest of my readers, and also educated myself as a true knowledge seeker.
In my concluding Part Three I will cover few Modern Philosophers along with the relativistic concept of time.
Certainly not forgetting the space-time theory of our famous Albert Einstein!
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

A duality of elan vital, two people
Spectres of emotion
Intertwined by a fuselage of bruised skin & tendon
Tissues become orbital, gushing towards grafts
Helixes of snot, **** and lymph
Boy & girl
As they embrace the animating principle and eachother, they fuse
A one piece tapestry adorned seamless with no hem, beginning or end
Always was, always is
Patiently turning to liquid as their being unzips
Lying figures of runny makeup and genetic *****
Quintessence, a texture of synaptic potential
Corpus Callosum
An entirety of self, lost in imbued disintegration
Theory of mind, looped & bound
I will water the thought
Roots envisaged in dystopian amygdala
Piercing data packets with a frost-like intensity
Forgetting our obsolescence moments ago
A neuron dipped in nylon
Theta waves and the non-euclidean crux of dissociation
Ghosts in the machine, your macro god
The sympathies of fractional distillation
Digitised/assimilated unto the nanosphere
Cold hands and brass backs galvanised in oscillated tears
Commodified, sold out and bought
Stretching, from purple, white and black
slowly losing its colour, amorphous in shape
brushed across a smudge, ambiguously chromatic
Monetised flesh god
An eternity bathed in starlight
Cutting an incision in the sky to allow entropy
Divided dimensions of energy
Fleeting and intangible
No longer a delirium of seperation
All semantics become light
As a rusted vehicle passes overhead
And all the worlds questions fade out of existence
Flutters of red tape and foregone growth of practice
Sinew flayed, integrated towards information
Our minds shared
In circuits and resistors
Photons and electrons
We radiate

Though authors are a dreadful clan
To be avoided if you can,
I'd like to meet the Indian,
M. Anantanarayanan.

I picture him as short and tan.
We'd meet, perhaps, in Hindustan.
I'd say, with admirable elan ,
"Ah, Anantanarayanan --

I've heard of you. The Times once ran
A notice on your novel, an
Unusual tale of God and Man."
And Anantanarayanan

Would seat me on a lush divan
And read his name -- that sumptuous span
Of 'a's and 'n's more lovely than
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan" --

Aloud to me all day. I plan
Henceforth to be an ardent fan
of Anantanarayanan --
M. Anantanarayanan.

Homicide bomber through trial and error
The epitaph moniker scours my name
A sacredot comes to abduct unseen felonies
But you and I will never ever be the same

We neglect the olive branch
We are poles apart

Catacomb undercroft, catacomb deposit box
The cabinet mourns for me
My stigma is lost

Big chill runs through our vertebrae
It can surely be precise
Don't contemplate but ruminate
Extinction will suffice

We respect the villain
We lock horns

Catacomb undercroft
Catacomb deposit box
The cabinet mourns for me
Our stigma is lost

Diuturnal explication
Evanescent predicament
Fabricated blade incision
It cannot be over yet
Diuturnal - explication
Evanescent - predicament
Fabricatedbladeincision
It cannot be over yet

Homicide bomber - trial and error
Epitaph moniker scours my name
Sacredot comes to abduct unseen felonies
You and I will never ever be the same

We neglect the olive branch
**We are poles apart

Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
                Transmuted back to breath
        in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration?  The muses drawing breath for you?  God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell --
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains -- Otsego County
        farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana --
coffee, alcohol, *******, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street --
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

                                                May 1996

Enter the dragon with death and disruption
Pride and tradition cataclysmically thrown,
Magnificent structures reduced to rubble
Distraught people bereft of their homes.
Chasms of heartache with bodies of babies
Strewn with the bricks in vast disarray,
Dust in the air and the howl of the sirens
Shouting police on a horror filled day.


Christchurch is bleeding, her confidence shattered
Our keynote cathedral is lying in shards,
Vacant eyed people are clinging to strangers
Jagged black holes in suburban back yards.
Christchurch is bleeding, our torn, gracious City
The nation arises in hurt and alarm,
To face the challenge with strength and resources,
To nurture our sister with healing and balm.


Sympathy shown by the myriad faces
Racing to help from all parts of the globe,
Expertise offered with money and labour
Students with shovels and priests of the robe.
Sadness and torment for kin of the missing
Frustrated rescuers work till relieved,
Moments of triumph with lost resurrected,
Agony felt when the dead are retrieved.


Led by the strength of the Mayor of the City
Courageous citizens help where they can,
Moments of bravery, moments of agony
Inspirational feats of elan.
Poignancy shown by the sad Maori Warden
Guiding the aged through the strewn broken glass,
Aiding the ambulance crews in their labour
Proud to be Kiwi as folk show their class.


Christchurch WILL arise from the death and destruction
Once again people will overcome grief,
Pride and resilience will triumph with the passing
And time will repair with deserved relief.





Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
AUCKLAND
25 February 2011

Contemplation is like fishing.
Often my reason fails me
and I cast out into the waters
hoping I can catch that vital energy
feel its power, its resistance, its strength
that is elusive
but I know is there
and those moments of connection
with that mysterious force
give me energy.
I am alive
so I keep castings into the ocean
knowing the elan is there,
the verve that takes me from my mind
to dance, to move, to swerve
in that moment of now.

Author’s Note: I bow in gratitude to Brian McLaren and Barbara A. Holmes for their wisdom that inspired this poem and kneel in awe and thanksgiving to all the fish I have caught over the years, for the excitement and nourishment – the life they gave me.

Maieutic dreamer, the ecstatic euphorias of cerebral cortex’s ****** matrix are pandemic.  Extravagant exorbitances of flirtatious flamboyance and flippantly flighty flit-ness.  But what of stint-ness snities?  Excruciating exacerbations of laboriously beleaguering hypercritically meticulous tediums.   Synaptic syntax is fervently intense like a feral phrenic frenzied ****.  Ruminating humanity’s collective consciousness gives me hysterical deliriums.  We’re frenetically febrile, atrociously impetuous impudents who don’t know our id conclusion from our impromptu innuendo juncture.  And what of the organizational principles of our subconscious continuums?  Do we only dream about dexterous articulation?  Can we become the agile acuity we envision or do we wallow in the drifty drivel of dour droll’s dreary?  What’s to phatic say about futurity fatidic’s forlorn wanton?  We need chutzpah, moxie savvy’s panache.  Is there no such thing as a universally acceptable ontological deontology?  Probity is as obvious as due yesterday, ethology’s entelechy the omnipresent reward.  Elan vital is not subjective, it’s objective.  Explicating epiphanies of social contiguity’s prospectus so innate as to be irrefragable.  Not perhaps the oligarchies of eclectic synectics, but perhaps the pugnacious audacities of emote to exude aimed imbue.  Assay relay’s convey, foray delay purveys inveigh.  Perhaps if we are all cogently fecund with our vituperatively vociferous the holocaustial cacophony of our obstreperously abstruse will be just what the grotto grouch gumption ordered.  Infusing all with the capability of  aspiring to higher powers and yet not forgetting the mystery of self and others.  I know I know what an ingratiating sycophant on the introjection.  Gambits of alluvium aloof impunity when we all know immunity is Epicurean absurdity, but I already covered that on the phrenic aimed holocaustial cacophony.  Seriously of we all enunciate so on the diction of mesomerism's to punctual.  Why can’t that be the essence of accidence ambience acoustics, the arbitrational attenuation of actuator's aorist.  We are not ethereal, we are corporeally preternatural and the sooner we all learn to respect each other to that the sooner we can get down to the sublimely surreal in oneiromancy’s apotropaic panaceas.

Stellar spirit, fearless flier to high skies, your wings are gifts of freedom,
your florid songs, tug at my heart as much as those plumage,
your elan, though subdued a bit by harsh weather, takes new shoots,
never in disquiet, indomitable, your inner lamp, now burns with camphor light.
I see you fly above the storm clouds, singing anthem of your soul,
spectacular, in clear weather, cheered by your dear ones near,
the hillsides, valleys and dales resound with your dulcet tunes.

From origins of humble pie
From parentage so bland,
A simple soul with simple goals
He sprang from South Auckland.
The green, green grass of Tuakau
The onion fields of home,
Wherein he tended hives of bees
For golden honeycomb.
 
Tall and lanky, mighty man
He strode through life in tune
With little fanfare, little flair
No technicolor moon,
To choose the low key profile
Was an automatic thing,
Humility was in his blood
Elan, a spurned gold ring.
 
Self conscious, long and concave chest
A toothy lantern jaw,
With skinny ribs and pallid skin,
A boy could want for more?
Bright shiny eyes and earnest will
He gathered up his gear
And conquered Mt Olympian
Without a trace of fear.
 
A forte found, a passion sprung,
A love for mountain air.
The rocky crags and pristine snow
The cold wind in his hair.
***** after ***** his long legs climbed
His skill and ardor grew,
And all at once he found himself
In a Himalayan crew.
 
The stories told the legends made
Those mighty deeds alone,
Both he and Tenzing stood astride
The planet’s summit dome.
They went to where no other man
Had ever been before.
They conquered Everest’s soaring peak,
They witnessed heaven’s door.
 
And on and on through life he strode
He raised a happy brood,
But tragedy would strike and ****
That joy in Kathmandu.
To ressurect, to lift your game
From whence you were so low.
It takes a special breed of man
To wear that dreadful blow.
 
The Sherpa schools and hospitals
Were built by funds he raised,
He organized good teachers
And the building Trusts he paid.
In far Nepal and India too
His fame did spread afar
But this man kept his ego
Firmly locked up in a jar.
 
He shot the mighty Ganges
In a jet boat through and through
He drove a Fergi to the Pole
And through McMurdoe too.
Across the world his fame did grow
To epic size and plan
But in his heart he stayed intact
An ordinary man.
 
Throughout this fair and lovely land
I think it’s true to say
That every man & boy & girl
And farmer baling hay,
Respects this Kiwi Icon true
And salutes, to a man,
This epitome of greatness
From the Himalayan land.
 
Today we said a sad farewell,
The rich and famous too.
All gathered here in squally air
In thousands, me and you.
We celebrated greatness
And a noble life supreme.
We tasted humble graciousness
In a grateful Sherpa’s dream.
The words were said, so well I thought
Reflecting, probably,
This lifetime will not see again
The like of Hillary.
 
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
22 January 2008

Isabel sits on the rusted garden bench,
my heart misses a beat, yet again as I watch,
her eyes are downcast, it's late afternoon,
she looks **** tired, dishevelled, distraught.

The world is on a slide, going bad to worse,
believe me i could see premature grey in her coiffure,
she is fired from her job, I can guess,
it hits me hard to think she is inconsolable.
Then, we all are, who is secure these days!

Under a tree, with withered leaves, she sits,
climatic change, obviously is playing havoc with it,
the evening sun, just slanted westwards,
seems unusually cruel to this girl,
no cover of thick foliage, moreover.

I see children playing around Isabel,
even they are soon losing interest,
if mirthful they are, make some noise and
run around, she would have smiled,
I would have felt far better than this!

Well, I don't know Isabel, may be her name is different,
on evenings I used to watch her from afar,
with curious eyes, I admired her incomparable elan,
hoping to make friends with her,
such a gentle soul she looked.

We'd become friends, by and by, I had hope,
I saw her smile and loved her sunny side,
but before I could meet and ask her out,
it happened, even without a notice,
I am fired from my job, today.
They said the downturn affected us bad, it showed,
What can you possibly say,
other than, just accepting the pink slip

I see you sit expectantly biting lips
  on the extended museum steps leading
to a veranda around the building, that invites
a flash mob,of your ilk, effervescent, to come together
perform and celebrate, nothing in particular,
  except giving a shock pleasure to all those marked  "the other"

Once you made me believe, together we make a whole,
that is the story we live on I was told, I merely listened,
I and you missed few beats and steps here and there
find us now in pages different, why, even ages apart,

"What a fine specimen,!" a pacifist, I can't but appreciate
watching your elan. As if seeing an alien in my home ground,
I watch the spectacle, gulping down my discomfiture dutifully,
while you romance with much finesse,to the cell phone,
you cling on as if it's the beau you want to show off.

"Wouldn't she make a fine museum piece?"
that would point towards the life style,
that highlights only the moment present,
and constantly on the run to remain there,
while past vanishes and future becomes obscure more and more.

With a gentle smile for you to pick up, when you are at peace,
I move on; more than the museum pieces still living,
I am interested in  regular exhibits I easily grasp.

Fashion has always had two elements famous and embody, which probed the notion of how a distinctive muse can instil life into clothes. Simply put, a designer always aligned himself to a persona. But the advent of fashion blogs and websites removed the exclusivity factor and with slight modifications made it accessible to all. Fashion Lady is one such platform that women can turn to for fashion advice – 5.35 lakh women who follow the blog on Facebook vouch for it. Sree Reddy the woman behind all the glamsham, in conversation with Hyderabad Express, talks about her journey from a fashion-conscious woman to fashion advisor.

The journey thus far...

The odds of a Rajamundry girl, coming from a family where girls didn’t study and were married off before they turned 20, making it big in the fashion industry is almost zero. And yet, 13 years after leaving her home in Rajamundry, Sree, the fashion advisor of her family and friends, has become an advisor to the 2.5 lakh women who visit her website every month.

“The best thing a woman can wear is her confidence but Indian women, do not feel comfortable in wearing fashionable clothes. ‘Will I look good in this?’ is the first question on their minds. This is what Fashion Lady hopes to change,” says Sree who is the only educated woman in her family.

While being passionate about dressing well and helping her family do so too, Sree always had this thought at the back of her head that there would be several others who would need a comforting voice to tell them that they can pull of that little black dress or the low-cut blouse with an equal elan.

“My parents never stopped me from pursuing my passion but when the time came I gave my assent for marriage. I then moved to the US with my husband. But a few years later when we returned, my husband urged that I make a career out of my passion and this is how Fashion lady was born,” Sree reminisces and adds, “My experiences and encouragement from family inspired me to undertake this journey.” Having started with one staffer, the online magazine, as Sree likes to call it, today has 30 employees who write and advise across verticals, fashion, beauty, makeup, wellness and much more.

“The idea is to make make Indian women aware of latest trends; which with slight modifications can be incorporated by them to suit their personalities,” says Sree adding that it is offers a holistic approach to fashion.

Besides its advisory role, Fashion Lady also brings out monthly periodicals that help woman dress up according their sun sign.

Was it difficult to create a brand and name for herself in the city? “Not really. Passion helped me,” she says.

While asserting that Fashion lady is for “the real women with practical suggestions”, Sree admits that Hyderabad lags behind in terms of fashion and style. “It is not as laid back as it is made out to be,” she quips.

Achievement

“All I knew was that this was my calling. Reaching five lakh plus fans in less than three years of existence and appreciation over the years are my achievements,” she says.

Favourite designers

Bridal: Manish Malhotra Party wear: Tarun Tahiliani Formal: Label Ritu Kumar Closet

Must - haves

White lenin dress

Tan sandals

Gemstone accessories

Floral stole

Shades

Fashion is...

Anything you feel comfortable and confident in is fashion for me. There is no fixed definition for fashion, it is very subjective. But yes, I love to dress up in traditional Indian clothing.

Fashion philosophy

I won’t change my style to impress anyone -- I will be me wherever I go. I am not shy in portraying myself as Indian. In fact, during my stay in the US I would wear only traditional Indian outfits

Would like to style?

Every Indian woman who is not confident about carrying latest fashion. I want to be there to tell them that they will be able to pull it off.See more at:www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

Maieutic dreamer, the ecstatic euphoria of cerebral cortex’s ****** matrix is pandemic.  Extravagant exorbitances of flirtatious flamboyance and flippantly flighty flit-ness.  But what of stint-ness snities?  Excruciating exacerbations of laboriously beleaguering hypercritically meticulous tediums.   Synaptic syntax is fervently intense like a feral phrenic frenzied ****.  Ruminating humanity’s collective consciousness gives me hysterical deliriums.  We’re frenetically febrile, atrociously impetuous impudents who don’t know our id conclusion from our impromptu innuendo juncture.  And what of the organizational principles of our subconscious continuums?  Do we only dream about dexterous articulation?  Can we become the agile acuity we envision or do we wallow in the drifty drivel of dour droll’s dreary?  What’s to phatic say about futurity fatidic’s forlorn wanton?  We need chutzpah, moxie savvy’s panache.  Is there no such thing as a universally acceptable ontological deontology?  Probity is as obvious as due yesterday, ethology’s entelechy the omnipresent reward.  Elan vital is not subjective, it’s objective.  Explicating epiphanies of social contiguity’s prospectus so innate as to be irrefragable.  Not perhaps the oligarchies of eclectic synectics, but perhaps the pugnacious audacities of emote to exude aimed imbue.  Assay relay’s convey, foray delay purveys inveigh.  Perhaps if we are all cogently fecund with our vituperatively vociferous the holocaustial cacophony of our obstreperously abstruse will be just what the grotto grouch gumption ordered.  Infusing all with the capability of  aspiring to higher powers and yet not forgetting the mystery of self and others.  I know I know what an ingratiating sycophant on the introjection.  Gambits of alluvium aloof impunity when we all know immunity is Epicurean absurdity, but I already covered that on the phrenic aimed holocaustial cacophony.  Seriously of we all enunciate so on the diction of mesomerism's to punctual.  Why can’t that be the essence of accidence ambience acoustics, the arbitrational attenuation of actuator's aorist.  We are not ethereal, we are corporeally preternatural and the sooner we all learn to respect each other to that the sooner we can get down to the sublimely surreal in oneiromancy’s apotropaic panaceas.

Pertinaciously vituperative irrefragable determinism.  Inscrutable axis of spontaneities’ imaginative.  Perplexity’s prognosis to prospectus.  Elan vital’s preternatural perpetuity.  Cohesive coherency’s opaque opulence.  Space-time continuum’s natural induction expressed as identity.  Exponentially tangential imagination’s immaturity.  Entropy catalyst blonds.  Spaciotemporal telemetry tactician’s tellurian terrene.  Protractive analyses dimensional delineation.  Reflectively refractive positional empathy.  Prophylaxis protocol.  Objectified manifest's self inductive diminutive minutia iotas of interstitial edict.  Graspy greedy stingy frugal mingy minions.  Manumission’s indentured servant sail.

Yet to be savoured
the hot vessel gifting shape
each layer to float aloof
formed by lift and separation


Finger high a simple layer cooks within
chopped, olive oiled, salt and peppered - but not aloof
above moons torn asunder are rendered invisible
by the bottom fed surge


Peppers roasted then rested aloft
A second fat yellow flow born of Elan Valley found eggs
milk and olive oil to lap, crest and paint over toasted colours
rising to crust shy cratered fractions


Atop rounded shapes of mushroom and tomato resting sliced
drowning under a richer fatter frothy yellow falling flow


Hot voids bubble and rise
cooked through, risen and browning


Behold plated warm autumn colours
banded in daffodil gold

.

The hollow truth carried on the wind
Budding asphodels wilted upon the pyre of paradise
Erst the rusted gates of Heaven
Deleing corrupt realm deliverance salting
The rivers of Eden,
Ananta, contemner of dawn
Stealing Levannah breaking Sol.
Without brethren kith, treading the tide
Of redemption thitherto
A tear in the fabric of the universe
Another drop in the ocean aflame
So that that fire humanity could be set
Broken vessels as like sunken ships
Eclipsing their own elan;
Fraying equilibrium averred officers of Hell
No more angels standing yet ranked still
In offices most high despairing
Purities ruination conjunctively
As with the same stride sought in
Pitched battle- touchable caste
Derelict of kin.




ELEETE J MUIR

She told me she would take a bullet for me
I was left stunned only recalling my hereditary
The horrendous guilt emerging all at once before me
Until I recognized her inactivity and realized she want listening to me
I dropped down on the floor almost instantly
Kneeling on one knee hoping her approval of me
Pledging allegiance so she knew she has the chance to consult me
Every time she recalled her children that neglected her for another woman they didn't know
Or the times she felt enigmatic to disown you
As she calls out your name begging to return home
Hearing your voice and having that bit of hope that one day
You mention her, get back to her and abide in her
playing with the golden precious sand
that make up the land which your ancestors once lived in.

I stare at the ruins that lay before me
A familiar face I stumble across
As I lift the grains of sand hoping its a person I know
Unidentified

I stand beneath the bridge hoping it will echo my freedom just like it did back home
I want to scream a thunder
but knowing its too late I'm pelted with stones
being told to go home
as I sit in font of the TV screen hoping I see a  familiar face before me
My country.

Hergeysa burco barebera ceerigaabo
Our cities names was never meant to be pronounced by you
The syllabols were never meant to pass your diseased lips
And the delicacy not meant to struggle through your rough throat
But they did anyway.
Every night I see the elan in her face
Whilst providing me with the decree of a fast spree from our relationship
The visions we incarcerate together
And the identical marks and scars we endeavor
With out any confession of our pleasure we seek forever
Our heart beat beats twice as fast
Forming a rhythmic percussion

simultaneously taking a breath of Africa
I lay beneath the golden sun as the rays shine through my eyes
Proudly defining the color of my skin
Showing that none other can be akin
As I am the uniqueness of this historical country

Mogadishu, bosaaso, Los anod, barberra
Our cities names were never meant to be pronounced by you
But when we look at our stars one last time
I realized that it has been colonized too


© S Y A

i.

Lief O' Lief, or the gloaming,
Inly beholding; the imperium
Betwixt ourn palm's.

ii.

Beckowing song's, thro the chamber's
And corridor's; Crystal chandeliers,
Whites in the luster that Pierce.

iii.

An abatjour, bringing elan up through the floor's,
A woo for mine girl;
Mi amour', mi amour'.

iv.

We shalt accend, adamantine. Adaxial, tacent in talk;
Taction bloprined. Jerusalem's city, renewed, refined.
Inviolable Yeshua; afar off, Jesus abideth here,
readeth the sign.


©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Prophetic poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley ( àgapi mou) dedication

They were playing the beach boys
all day at work today
I went up to the computer
I typed in Black beach boys on Spotify
a white coworker put her hand on her hips
she said to me,
“Elan, there are no black beach boys, Im sorry.”
So I had my graphic designer friend
take an old beach boys poster
replace their faces with black men
Then he changed it to "Black Beach Boyz”
I put it on a T shirt
very professionally done
made me proud
I wore it to work the next day
My white coworker asked me
with a confused face and tone
“There really are the black beach boys?”
I said with a straight face,
“Yes they were the original. Then the white beach boys took their name and music and became famous.”
She said after a pause,
“Oh, wow. I didn’t know that."

He’s trick, like enrapturing
Wherein lies the paradox of his pantheism parapet’s paragon
Extraversion embezzlements and euthanasia extortions
Embark embargo extraditions
Diction’s enunciation echoes of opaque opulence
Its redolence a savory waft
The evolution of psychic clarity’s id conclusions
Bizarre dichotomous augur the singer’s aural austerity
Gypsy Queen, his guitar’s moniker, romanced aimed intention
Elaborate elliptical empathy endeavors for posterity’s predication
Pandemically  phatic  propriety venerations
Their apex crux axis beyond finite solution
Carousel ceaselessly ceremony chaos character charisma
Cerebral cortex’s ****** matrix's vertex vortex
The individual must remain sacrosanct
Traipsing through the fallow furrows of assimilation’s synthetic synthesis
Like capillaries' capricious and intravenous intrepid
Incalculably sensual beyond emotion’s expression
Impetus intrigue's intuitional verve
Ethology’s entelechy, theosophy’s theophany
Zoomorphic zoolatry's social contiguities
Futurity's corporeally preternatural fatidic
Elan-vital's apotropaic apotheosis

Ya gotta be proud of ya country
When ya wear it around on ya sleeve,
Ya gotta be proud of ya people
When they really know how to believe,
Ya gotta feel pride in ya product
when ya fashion & craft it with care
..and ya gotta repulse all the *******
when the rest of the world won’t share.

For man, as a species is poisonous
and God threw the towel in for sure,
When adam  & Eve ate the apple
and threw up all over the floor.
They broke all the rules at the outset
they muddied the waters so bad,
that confusion and greed ran in tandem
and mankind was fast going mad.

Eruptions of steel fly in carbombs
in the streets of Iraq every day,
Ethiopian babies are buried
before they are graced with a name,
and the great wheel of life turns in circles
and the rich play golf with the brave
and who gives a ****
that we’re stuck in the muck
Just so long as that mortgage is paid.

The Parlimentarian’s lying
The coppers are taking the graft,
the oilmen are creaming us all now
and the banks are so rich..they just laugh!
Society’s falling asunder
and we all stand around ******* beer,
can our kids now be blamed
when they all get inflamed
and inhale and inject and turn queer.

Our taxman’s making a killing
he’s fleecing the populace bare,
the small businesman’s plunged
cos he’s chucked in the sponge
and there’s nothing but vacuum left there.

There’s the segment that run high and lofty
their ideals are as white as the snow
for abortion’s as black & the **** is as slack
and GE and PC are go
The fingers are pointed at others,
the hands, lily white, seek refrain
sanctimonious soul seeks  unseekable goal
and the whole lot gets flushed down the drain.

Our PM is staunchly unchallenged
she adjusts her adjustments just so’
her manouvers adroit ‘
the election’s in site
and Labour is flush with the dough.
Minorities step up beside her,
the lesbians snap to their feet
and the marraigeless mothers
and **** ups and others
all cluster to be so discreet.

But the weather is turning up roses
the exchange is bullish so far
and the girls are as pretty
as the **** in the city
and the door to the future’s ajar.
Perhaps there’s some system to it.
Maybe I’ve missed the great plan
for religion has zeal and Christ made a meal
of repairing his mess with elan.

So you see I’m reconciled to it.
I’l glide along for the ride
It’s futile to fight the humungous great might
in it’s institutional slide.
So I wrap myself in my solace
embalm myself with my pride
for in my little world
this old flag is unfurled
.. and Kiwi I’l stand by your side.

Marshalg /Mangere Bridge /Christmas 2005

Mr. Ivories

entertains with elan,
daily during cocktails on the mezzanine level.
Jolene always orders a Black Russian,

mine is a Dewar's and water.
We drop a fiver in his basket on the Steinway,
along with a request for "Ebb Tide",

Jolene's personal favorite.
He conjures an image of Fred Astaire at keyboard,
his tails flipped elegantly over the piano bench,

like long black raven's plumes.
Jolene points out two announcers from CNN,
seated opposite. Makes us feel

important by mere association.
Our waitress asks, would we like another round
before the hour's end, as we speculate

about Mr. Ivories' musical propensity.
Time escapes in moonlit harmonic vapors,
leaves us already longing our next soiree.

the slow smoke gloats and motes of atoms matter
dappled in the dingy blue of wintry twilight, frozen swollen
with white ash sunlight and long shadows, noodling in the canopies
of our vast wilderness. in the back room.

my rocking chair grinds an arc on a single point beneath me.
i teeter on the minuscule reminiscence, much -  
as a wave teeters
on the moon's
whim.

i rejoice.

and deny.

i long for gone remedies, while pondering
what plagues my faith -
in the Mist...
what troubles the blight elan
of my ignorance.

and
at the door, i find you sleeping
on god's dime.

and i dream with
you.

Maieutic dreamer, the ecstatic euphoria of cerebral cortex’s ****** matrix is pandemic.  Extravagant exorbitances of flirtatious flamboyance and flippantly flighty flit-ness.  But what of stint-ness snities?  Excruciating exacerbations of laboriously beleaguering hypercritically meticulous tediums.   Synaptic syntax is fervently intense like a feral phrenic frenzied ****.  Ruminating humanity’s collective consciousness gives me hysterical deliriums.  We’re frenetically febrile, atrociously impetuous impudents who don’t know our id conclusion from our impromptu innuendo juncture.  And what of the organizational principles of our subconscious continuums?  Do we only dream about dexterous articulation?  Can we become the agile acuity we envision or do we wallow in the drifty drivel of dour droll’s dreary?  What’s to phatic say about futurity fatidic’s forlorn wanton?  We need chutzpah, moxie savvy’s panache.  Is there no such thing as a universally acceptable ontological deontology?  Probity is as obvious as due yesterday, ethology’s entelechy the omnipresent reward.  Elan vital is not subjective, it’s objective.  Explicating epiphanies of social contiguity’s prospectus so innate as to be irrefragable.  Not perhaps the oligarchies of eclectic synectics, but perhaps the pugnacious audacities of emote to exude aimed imbue.  Assay relay’s convey, foray delay purveys inveigh.  Perhaps if we are all cogently fecund with our vituperatively vociferous the holocaustial cacophony of our obstreperously abstruse will be just what the grotto grouch gumption ordered.  Infusing all with the capability of  aspiring to higher powers and yet not forgetting the mystery of self and others.  I know I know what an ingratiating sycophant on the introjection.  Gambits of alluvium aloof impunity when we all know immunity is Epicurean absurdity, but I already covered that on the phrenic aimed holocaustial cacophony.  Seriously of we all enunciate so on the diction of mesomerism's to punctual.  Why can’t that be the essence of accidence ambience acoustics, the arbitrational attenuation of actuator's aorist.  We are not ethereal, we are corporeally preternatural and the sooner we all learn to respect each other to that the sooner we can get down to the sublimely surreal in oneiromancy’s apotropaic panaceas.

The taste of Cloves on
Cloven hoofed delicacies
Entice the Palette's elan
Often served with Yams
First smoked then slow roasted
At Holidays its often Toasted
And it makes one heck of
An Omlette with Cheese
Its certain to please

he's a much sobered man
when he's drunk

words then flow with elan
he's a jolly hunk.

he's a much sweeter pal
tipsy when he is

nice and warmly liberal
he puts you at ease.

does it so smooth
each inspiring peg

no more uncouth
he's no more a dreg.

when drunk he's at his best
never was a kind sweeter man

unburdened of his heavy breast
he kisses long ignored woman.

when boozed he's passionate no doubt
the hidden emotions are in spate

his heart freely speaks out
opens his secret's floodgate.

next morn he can't just recall
why stands an empty goblet

he lies in smell of alcohol
worries aren't light on his chest.

genius is snapping at my dragons. feel free to ask them. they’ll barter hard tongues
and won't apologize for mad hatters. but this. This matters.
it ungathers. It unravels and the sunscape chafes on the void's tatters.
but it rathers you know me now,
than meet me at crossroads.
it's your call.

come
from your unexamined life
and be sitting with your eyes
like two mouths.
they will speak when spoken two;
when i give you all...
and you want me
too.

hello. my name is unsung. and That's the song.
don't get me wrong; but right your vessel -
and
this ocean will float your devils
with your nephelim. with your unbridled elan.
be sweet. keep your feet unplanted, but be enchanted by the road you're on.
find me in the thicket of unbearable seeing.
you will be me -
for the moment you release
' things '
and imprison Nothing.
of course
you'll need a cauldron
to rehearse your heresies
as often.

may i suggest
a new
guess ?

a question that suits you
better than " what the **** ? "

and has feathers ?

can we do that
and love each
other ?

My name is Elan Gregory. I am mixed race writer. If you do not relate to being African American, please call me “they.”
If and when referring to me when I am absent, please call me “them.”
Because of the failure of whiteness to assimilate into blackness. The biological acceptance of being from Africa.
Because of these patterns of disassociating from humanity that is imperialism.
Because of segregation.
I am not mixed race until the others who accuse me acknowledge they are as well.
A light skinned French father and light skinned English mother make a seamless offspring that is perceived and experiences confidence being “pure white.”
Everyone is pure mixed race. Not pure black or white.
So to those that resist evolution I am “They or Them."
I have three books published. "Organic Intelligence," “Lucid", and "Escape from Liberty.”
More recently I have been solely writing poetry. It is much more efficient and intimate.
I decided to write books to try and expose the urgency of deconstructing social construction. When in the event of socially constructed human dynamics there are practical (dialectical) ways in navigating and understanding what it means to be human.
Social construction is a verb. Not finished. An enforced process. Sometimes internal. How can it stop? When does it stop? How does it feel? How did it happen? Who started them? Why?
Many of the issues in society that I thought I could influence enough to change things for the better are still becoming worse.
Poetry I feel has more urgency and immediate potency in terms of energizing new events and movements.