Was all prepared to retire for the day (and the year in this case) when I realised I was missing something. The inky sky had been lent a million, multi-hued new stars just for tonight! As each firework shot up, it seemed to spread its wings and shower the darkness with brilliant light. Each pearl of light hanging in mid air sharing its glow with who ever cared to watch. I did...

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder they say... but who with eyes can fail to behold such beauty? The sky shall remember the lent light and so shall I.

The wonders of my memory made me realise how utterly un-New-Year-ly my New Years have been. Last year, I watched Pulp Fiction on DVD. The year before that there was vodka for company. The previous year I was down after the fateful bike accident. The year before that I was in Kolkata (ah!). 2001 was good... the Asha Bhonsle programme. Or was that 2000? 1999 - a party which I wanted to run away from...

Must admit I have kept up the tradition!

I shall remember this new year's eve for sitting in my room and writing a blog.
:)

Cheers mate!

Last night the fog was the densest that I have seen so far in Leeds. London mornings were worse, but that, my dear, is London. The sky is clearer now - as clear as it would get for the day I guess.
The first month that I was here, I could not help wonder where all the seasons of mellow fruitfulness were. This is the land, the clime that inspired the best poets of all times. This!! Yes, I was forewarned about the weather - the weather - before landing here, but nothing could have quite prepared me for this. Now I know where "blame it on the weather" came from... Anything - from bungled assignments, malfunctioning toilets, erratic microwave ovens to PMS - can actually, and quite conveniently, be blamed on the weather.
So all those poetic patches... were they just a figment of dope-induced imagination or were they brief snatches of reality immortalised forever? I dearly hope it's the latter (although the cynical nag in my head points a sadistic finger at the former), for I too shall get my own snatches and frame them forever on the walls of my mind.

...and thus my thoughts go public. It is a different matter though that there are so many of them I have no idea which to select as the privileged first. Should it be the Christmassy ones that I gathered over the last week, or should it be the New Year-y ones which are yet unformed?
It struck, suddenly yet again, that I seem to be scattered in bits round the globe: a bit in Arizona, a bit in Kolkata, a bit in London and a bit here, in Leeds. So while I still see the red and green baubles on the first Christmas tree I helped dress up, am also yearning for momos of Cheena para at six in the morning. I live a shredded life - but what wonderful shreds to live in.
A car goes by, leaving a fine spray of water and a whoosh! behind it in the midnight darkness. The fog lights peer through. The magpies sleep. I shall now become a magpie as well...