A distinct memory of Fear

It happened around a year ago. It was the beginning of summer. A friend and I were out jogging at dusk. We'd gone some ways from our campus and it had become, as is typical of Ithaca, quite rural. We crossed an open field with wild grass and after a short stretch of trees neared a small stream. We stopped there to rest. I was enjoying the tranquil sounds of nature and the increased blood-flow. We were at ease, joking with each other as is usual among friends.

This is when it happened. A beast broke out of the dark woods and ran directly at me. It was swift, powerful and not un-menacing. I went dead paralyzed. It was a first for me. It was a strange feeling. The body automatically took over, became immovable. The mind almost stopped thinking but was at full alert. I felt the surge of blood in the background. It lasted for all of five seconds maybe. Like a trailer of some wildlife documentary. After coming to few meters of us at the same swift speed, it veered away jumpily to the stream, drank some water and ran back to its master coming out of the woods.

It did not leap or attack, did not grow in size or breathe fire. It did not tear us to bits. It did not do any of the many possible or impossible things that fear tells us in leisure.

On our way back, we were behind them by about two hundred meters. On my friend's advice, we walked so as not to provoke the animal. Once out of the field and on to the paved road, we jogged lazily back to town.

The Urchin

It was a pleasantly warm summer day in Ithaca. The leafy shadows of trees were playing mirages on the bare walls in the Commons. By the benches and carefully planted trees, people walked in packs, twos, ones. Not surprisingly, the kids were making most of the din, if you discounted the noisy and flippant wind.

On a green bench, X was fidgeting with his phone and looking on at the play of shadows, probably waiting for a text. The urchin accosted him out of nowhere. Scraggly looking, with a toothy grin and lanky arms, he asked for fifty-five cents, the amount he needed for a bus ticket. X smiled and, while fishing for the wallet, pulled a 1000 Korean currency note that he had. The kid looked at it fascinated and loudly proclaimed never seeing anything like that. They both concured together in grins and smiles. X had no change, only a ten dollar bill. The urchin, a momentary shake of the head later, bounced along.

As X watched the urchin run, trying to catch up to a kind man, the wind lifted him up in the air in a smooth swoosh. Soon he was flying over the Ithacans with two angel wings, but no halo oddly.

A small library nestled in a big University

After a satisfying dump

And Men's room joking, some bonhomie,

My legs, without a mission, trundled in,

Not knowing where to find an inspirational stop,

For the weekend gaze and reverie .....,

To a library nestled in a big university.

Wooden walled, well lit and sunny streams.

Carpets and sparse crowd of inviting chairs.

Kind busts and smart paintings keep gazing

At a silent girl working, her head in her book,

At a guy playing with the piano playfully.

Outer world's noise muffled incoherent,

Except for a persistent bird call nearby,

The occasional footstep or passing chitchat,

The mounted Fan's intent tennis-fan whir,

This place's silence hands an unpleading invitation.

In a time and style of its own and the world,

A mix of equal present and equal past,

This room's setting, the bound books on shelves,

The antique piece, elaborate wooden ship models,

The unlit stone fireplace, the grand piano,

(And the plastic creepers, the hand-sanitizers,

The electric outlets, computers and magazines),

Reminds me, though I don't partake often,

Of the charm, spaces such as this held

Upon the scholar back then, and still hold

For the silent spirit.

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*The Browsing Library, WSH, Cornell

Nothing to Say

Should I be writing

about nothing to say,

When I have nothing

absolutely to say ??

This amazing blankness

is pretty awesome I say !

With that I'll cease

this driveling away :)

A nice day at Cornell

Lying on ... Libe Slope
(Faraway music's near afloat,
Uris's castle, contours old,
People cheery, lovers bold,
Mom and girl share the earphone,
Baby on Daddy's shoulder broad,
The grass green sunny close)
flaunts our singular campus abode.