My Inspiration for August 2024

Aug 31, 2024

2 min read

This August was a month of intense ups and downs, of intense beauties and great sadness… Everything feels beautiful and palpably, painfully transient. Words from Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore keep ringing in my mind; man’s life is one long farewell…. It is so true. I have also been thinking about the Japanese phrase “ichi-go ichi-e” which means “one time, one meaning” and describes an encounter that only happens once in a lifetime, and it is suppose to remind us that every moment is precious and will never return. Many poetic moments will stay with me from this August; rainy morning sitting by the window and listening to songs such as Paarthen and Megham Karukatha, both from films with Dhanush, sounds of squirrels and crows, vibrant flowers, hazy pink sunsets, night walks. A song that touched me as well was “Kanne Kalamaine” from the film “Moondram Pirai” (1982) with Kamal Haasan and Sridevi, and she is so god damn beautiful! I watched and enjoyed the film Jab We Met (2007) in which Kareena Kapoor plays a role of a pixie-dream girl of sorts. I read J.G.Ballard’s great story “The Garden of Time” which was the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala, which is ironic in a way, but a great piece of prose. I am currently reading and enjoying both Gavin Hopps’s book “Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart” and Viktor Frankl’s “Yes to Life – Despite Everything”; the former is witty and the latter is wise, and one needs a little bit of both in life.

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

(Homer, The Iliad)

“Like flowers scattered in a storm, man’s life is one long farewell.”

(Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

“How swiftly summer has fled, and what report has it borne to heaven of misspent time and wasted hours? Eternity only will answer.”

(Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Mrs. A.P. Strong, September 8, 1846)