A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

 
When I was thinking of writing for the blog today I realized the whole exercise has become a bit of a routine… I have been on a trip so I have to write about it… I did this particular thing so I must write about it… I mean, it used to be the same when I started out… I did write about stuff I saw or thought or so on but there was an excitement in the act of writing… there was a spontaneity to it… which I feel is missing now… not because the blog is not something I am excited about anymore… I guess it’s one of the things I would like to see grow old with me! :) …but the whole writing business has become a bit staid and predictable and timetable-ish and I am not liking that … I can’t become more creative in my writing – a friend of mine once said I am not ‘creative’ and I possibly am not though that’s contentious – and in any case the idea is not to be someone else…but I’d definitely like to become more spontaneous… umm, well, spontaneous is also not a word that describes me, but maybe a little more than I am now… let’s see, what else … maybe I shouldn’t be so hung up about ‘this has to be done this way’ ….which reminds me… I saw the movie ‘Up’ this weekend… it’s an animation movie and for that reason I wasn’t exactly jumping with joy to go for it… but this was the first time I was going for a movie around here and that made for something… plus it was supposed to be a 3D movie and I like the whole wearing glasses and watching movie thing … I have to say the movie was very good… and why did I remember it just now? Because the underlying message of the movie I could connect to very well...and is probably slightly related to what I was saying before… we sometimes get so used to doing things a certain way, thinking about things a certain way, wanting things to happen in a certain way, that we never really explore the world around us for what it has, we never let ourselves loose to figure out opportunities in things that we never thought of before… we are afraid of letting go…the familiar and the comfortable… we don’t realize that what is ours is with us… it cannot go anyway … it does not consist inside of things… it consists inside of us … and we can never lose ourselves … we would probably find more bits of us that we never knew existed… I don’t know if I sound rather philosophical here… but the movie was good, go watch it :)

I didn’t really want to write an account of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas because I am really no good at describing locations…I know people expect me to say Grand Canyon was out of this world… it was, but that’s about all I can say! I love taking pictures (check out the pics on my photo blog) but nowadays I feel more and more that digi cams have made the whole experience of enjoying the moment rather ‘camera-oriented’ … as in, say prior to when there were cameras or easy access to cameras, what did people do when they landed at Grand Canyon for example? Enjoy and experience the grandeur of it? See it in rapt attention and absorb its fine details? And what do we do now? Get our cameras out and capture it through the lens… capture ourselves in its amazing setting… I don’t know how many of us actually ‘see’ the Canyon… or hear what it says … at least, I don’t … I myself am rather crazy about getting my pictures taken and rather regret it has to be so … I also quite enjoy the art of photography and love capturing shots in various angles… which brings me to another pet grouse I have had for a long time now… ever thought how unfair it is that if you are a good photographer yourself, you end up taking good pictures of everyone without having any yourself? How sad is that? I always lend my camera to various people in the group just to check if anyone is even close to decent… but usually that’s rare… the funniest thing with people who don’t even have a remote sense for good visuals is they’ll ask you if you are ‘ready’ … if they can ‘take a picture now?’ … I feel like telling them that if you hold the camera, you are the best judge – you have to decide the right moment, the right angle and so on, and tell me…instead of asking me! but what do you do? Sometimes they even wait for you to say you are ready, which means you have to distort your mouth, your smile, to actually voice that and then they go ‘click’! the only way out of this sticky situation is to get a 100 pictures clicked and pray that at least 10 are fine… that’s my strategy and it works :)

I loved Las Vegas … am sure I didn’t see the sleazy or steamy side too much, but loved the vibrancy and party-heartiness of the whole place …it would be a wonderful romantic destination am sure… I didn’t really get a chance to ‘gamble’ much, not that I was particularly looking forward to that… I just don’t have that risk taking spirit I guess! But I enjoyed the interiors of some of the best hotels there… Venetian, Bellagio, Paris, Ceaser’s, Treasure Island, Mirage… they had marvelously captured the themes within each hotel and every one of them had something different on offer…we had too little time to explore Las Vegas and that’s one regret … but there was only so much we could catch up in so much time and it was more than worth it!

I have been doing a lot of ‘electronics’ research … I am scared to death that I won’t buy some of the cool stuff you are supposed to get here because I just don’t know what it is or what it’s supposed to do… so I try and push myself to ask people or read about it… in one of these tête-à-têtes I bumped onto this ‘baby’ – it’s a 500 GB External Hard Drive from Seagate … the memory in my laptop was reaching its last dregs and that’s exactly when I got enlightened to the existence of external hard drives in general and this one in particular… it’s in these moments I am ready to believe there’s something in the theory of God after all :)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 3:32 am 4 comments