Radhika Mukherjee's Blog, page 12

Celebrating Bloggers: 3 Amazing Short Poems

This is a poetrypressed post, in which I celebrate three poets who wrote three short poems that moved me, made me think or made me smile.

Probably best read accompanied by a piece of cake and a hot drink?

1.

A simple, joyful poem that makes you fall back in love with life.

I Would Love

By/On: Spanishwoods

2.

Beautiful, inventive words which make such music, musically.

Disharmony

By/On: Putting the Dog to Sleep

3.

Clever and delightful all at the same time.

Time Climbs Over The Fence

By / On:...

Translucent

There is no shape to the feeling that has gripped me, no name. It is sensations and currents rippling through me, bringing one moment a tear, then a smile. A hummingness courses through my mind. At the day’s very end, just this one thing seems to tether me to humanity.

Each day I go into the studio alone, leaving my life alone, and from beyond the silence, beyond the darkness behind the eyes, summon swirling shapes and bright lights and etch them on the blank canvas.

Vast stretches of cosmicn...

The Great Crab Warrior Of Davy Jones

The Great Crab Warrior Of Davy Jones (By Radhika Mukherjee)

Here’s another one of my fantastical ‘soul sketches’.

I find they are a great warming up activity for writing: meditative and absorbing; creative, yet not too taxing.

They are my version of adult coloring books, where I first sketch the shape and then fill in the outline with soft pencil. When finished, this one looked to me to belong squarely on theFlying Dutchman!

I really like the whimsy of it, that I can never quite predict what...

Cold

The cold and dark no longer scare me. Here, on the empty, cobbled pavement facing the garbage processing center, I make my fire. It burns warm and orange-gold.

All my gold I gave. Now the cars and bikes and buses whizzing past witness the last spark of my life. Into the blaze I put the wood I collected from the trees lining the street, the paper that blew straight to me, and other odds and ends that nobody wanted, like nobody wanted me.

My life I gave, to family – parents, alcoholic husband,...

Celebrating Bloggers: 3 Awesome Reads on Love, Loss and Book Longing

A great weekend is incomplete without something wonderful to read. Here are three blog posts that affected me deeply, and are sure to add something special to your day:

1.

A beautifully warm glimpse into a mother-daughter bond through the lens of a favorite holiday. Written wonderfully by one of my favorite people! :)

Put Her In A Pumpkin Shell By Pam Kirst

2.

An intense poetic expression of loss and forgetting:

And Like That She Was Gone By Brice Maiurro

3.

This is the reading list I was loo...

Searching (A Tale Of Light And Longing)

There was once a girl who was seized with the madness of sheer ecstasy. No other object had she, nor rhyme, nor reason.

Sitting quiet at a table, at a neighborhood cafe she would want to shout out in joy. Walking tree-lined dappled sunlit roads she would want to dance, skip, scream. Staring out a high window, up towards fluffy white clouds in a bright blue sky, she’d want to fly.

But she stayed quiet; she pressed her lips together and swallowed her incandescence. And dropped thick lashes over...

What If There Was a Hogwarts for Writers?

This NaNoWriMo season, here’s some wishful writing thinking:

There are so many of us who decide fairly early in life that we want to be writers and nothing but writers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if at that point we didn’t have to go to regular school anymore but were whisked off to a Hogwarts-like school for writers instead?

Let’s say this school was:

The Holographic School of Writing and Cogitating

The Holographic School of Writing and Cogitating
(Hluboká nad Vltavou, Czech Republic. Photo Cre...

Happy NaNoWriMo 2015!

Happy November, writers! It’s that special time of the year again when it’s all about writing and writers: It’s NaNoWriMo 2015 time!

I wanted to wish all the participating writers all the very best. Those 50,000 words are nothing compared to your resolve, passion and enthusiasm. Go and win this thing! (But don’t forget to get some rest, okay?)

So, pounce on that keyboard and mouse, grip the pen and paper – and off we go!

Here’s me raising my cup of hot chocolate to you!

As for me, I’m not p...

Chant of the Inner Child

We all are children, adrift in the harshest world…

Forever afeared and covering it,

Forever seeking, forever stoic.

We may add a few layers of growth,

But that tenderness at the core remains.

Whether it’s shielded, shrouded or indulged.

The most wonderful things can come out of it,

So much impetus for love, laughter and creativity.

Also hurt, vindictiveness and destructiveness…

The calm watcher isn’t half as real,

Has much less influence.

Yet is needed to temper the wayward child.

When jo...

The Thing About Strength

Sometimes, the best things about you make the most trouble for you, out in the world, don’t they?

In a light-bulb moment, I learned, that you have to accept your strengths if you want to cultivate a calm, purposeful sense of yourself. If a situation or relationship seems better if you diminish your strengths: it is going to make you weaker, or turn your own sense of self into a brittle sort of ash you will not be able to gather up. It’s like trying to throttle the sun!

Much better to quietly...