I heard of this trail from quite a few people, cited as one with extremely scenic views over varied landscapes of redwood forests combined with grassy slopes of Mt.Tamalpais overlooking the ocean. We arrived at Muir Woods around 2pm and as expected, there was no parking to be found. So, instead we drove up straight to the Pantoll Ranger Station some 4 miles further ahead. This cut our intended hike, but being no enthusiast of hiking in the dark, I think it was best that we were left with a 6+ mile trail in the remaining 4 hours of daylight. The Matt Davis trail starts off right at the Ranger Station and it was the ranger who recommended going out on MD and returning on the Steep Ravine. In hindsight, I think it was a great suggestion, since the MD trail is longer and quite steep going down to Stinson Beach, while the Steep Ravine inspite of being a little steep on the way up, doesn't feel quite so- save for a 10ft ladder!  Matt Davis starts off as a narrow trail on exposed slopes of brown grass, but very shortly, enters the cool shade of the redwoods and it is extremely pleasant to walk on without the afternoon sun beating down your neck. It is flat for most of the first 1.5 miles as it weaves in and out of the forest and hugs around Mt. Tam and should supposedly offer exquisite views of the ocean. But to our dismay, it was one of those usual foggy afternoons, where all we could do was imagine how the water would look from there. Then begins the steep descent to the Stinson Beach, but an extremely good workout for the knees.  After about 3.3 miles, we arrived at Stinson Beach where we found our way to the nearest Cafe (the one right outside the beach entrance) for a cup of coffee, but instead only found a Veggie Burger which A decided to try after much deliberation on how best to justify the extra calories. It was fabulous and was devoured in no time. A short stroll on the beach and we decided to hike back at around 5pm. The Dipsea trail actually offers really good views of the beach and the beach-town, and would have been great to walk down to the beach on this trail as many others we encountered were doing. This trail meets the Steep Ravine after 1.2 miles from which point, it is a climb of 1.8 miles through lush (almost tropical) greenery back to the Ranger Station.  We made it back by 6:15pm and with lot of daylight to spare, to my great relief.
We finished the day with an excellent ( and extremely indulgent) dinner of Chhole Bhature and Veggie Kati Roll at Vik's Chaat Cafe in Berkeley.

There are biographies and then there are memoirs, and then there is that which is an intriguing 'braid' of the two.  Where the author is no longer an outsider in the screenplay of events, but himself a living and breathing character, adding a few sprinkles of salt and pepper to the concoction.  Two Lives by Vikram Seth is one such piece, and flipping page after page of a beautiful tale of love, life, friends, fiends and a time marked by events so strong, that half a century is defined by them,  you grow breathless reminding yourself that the author is not weaving a web of fantasy, but instead, this story is one that actually unfolded over 50 years, and that these characters actually were alive and so real.  The Seths of Biswan open the memoir with a view into what their principles were, and for times as old as the early 20th century, they come across as a family that is savvier than the others you have read about, and actually hold education in high esteem, besides the fact that their women seem so independent, given the times. Dr. Shanti Seth, somewhat fortuitous in the pecking order, nevertheless, is a character of compassion, moral strength and kindness. This trait of his, accompanies him through the book, until just about the very end of his life.  Henny Caro, the lady with scars from a time that unjustly descended on her family in the form of a dictator who would go on and be responsible for the lives of thousands of people in one of the central countries of Europe, is an interesting ice-maiden of sorts, until the author pleasantly unveils her caring, motherly side. These two pivotal characters of the book are as interesting in their actions, thoughts and words in white as well as in the shades of grey. And it is this greyness that makes the book so credible and possible to relate to. And it is done in true Seth style - philosophically, with tenderness and a wisdom beyond years thats always makes him a pleasure to read, where he reveals a little more of me to myself. The only part of the book I would not have minded changed, is the author's purported description of the brutalities of the German concentration camps and what Henny's family must have gone through. Other than an in-your-face-can't -avoid feeling of disgust for something that has been condemned to no end, the description serves little purpose in the book.

Excerpts from the book:

'It is true that centuries are arbitrary units-determined, among other things, by the miscalculated date of birth of the founder of a religion and the number of fingers on our hands- but because we invest these units with spurious significance, they take on true significance. Shanti and Henny's lives were almost coeval with that arbitrary unit, the twentieth century. Both were born in 1908, Henny died in 1989 and Shanti in 1998. Many of the great currents and movements of the century are reflected through the events of their lives and those of their friends and family.I felt that a picture of those individual lives would be complemented by glimpses of their century,even if these glimpses were mediated by the opinion, perhaps opinionatedness, of the author. Indeed, the lens has also turned upon its wielder, for this book is memoir as well as biography.'

'Behind every door on every ordinary street, in every hut in very ordinary village o this middling planet of a trivial star, such riches are to be found. The strange journeys we undertake on our earthly pilgrimage, the joy and suffering we taste or confer, the chance events that cleave us together or apart, what a complex trace they leave: so personal as to be almost incommunicable, so fugitive as to be almost irrecoverable.'

'No one apart from the two parties concerned understands a marriage and what goes on in it and often enough, not even they.
What is perfect? In a world with so much suffering, isolation and indifference, it is cause for gratitude if something is sufficiently good.'

A very poignant and valuable piece of advice for any endeavor of creativity, from Harold Davis' inspiring photography blog:

'If you want to take interesting photos you need to look with fresh eyes at the everyday things around you'

True, the beauty of creativity lies not so much in doing different things as in doing things differently.

Rein in those meandering thoughts
Converge those mental waves
Lose yourself in the moment
And nothing will cease to amaze.

One of the best things about living in the Bay Area is the proximity to natural pleasure spots well-removed and away from it all while being so tantalizingly close to civilization.  This Sunday we drove some 10 miles out of San Jose into the Los Altos hills to hike along the Long Ridge trail in the Upper Stevens Creek County park area. Heading south on Hwy 17 towards Santa Cruz, we took the Hwy 9 exit through Saratoga, turned left on Big Basin way and after some 7 miles or so, made a right turn on Hwy 35 and almost missed the trailhead at the 3.2 mile mark. There were quite a few cars parked on either side of the road and when we came across the Palo Alto city limit board, we realized our mistake and doubled back to where the cars were parked. The Grizzly Flat parking area is across the street from the Long Ridge trail. The boards were placed somewhat away from the road which is why we missed them as we wound along the curved road. A couple of brown chameleons darted across when we were examining the maps and another member of the reptile species slithered up the dried grassy slope. With the sun beating down at 89F, this kind of company just did not help. I have made a couple of wrong calls earlier when it came to picking hiking trails and a strong scent of undesirable nostalgia rose up inside me.  But the trail looked promising with some green gentle slopes and a few steps later, as we entered the shade, our initial discomfort started to fade alongwith the fading of the rustle in the bushes.  There are a few loops in the Preserve and we decided to take the 4 mile round trip loop along Long Ridge trail to the Wallace Stegner Memorial bench that was expected to have a good view of the Los Altos hills and the ocean beyond and then find our way back. The trail is quite easy with some steepness initially, but thereafter mostly gentle. This trail is shared by mountain-bikers, so we had to step aside to let some speeding cyclists race downhill. The trail gets pretty close to the paved road at times and we could hear some traffic going by a couple of times. After about 75 minutes, we came to the open area where the bench was located and took the opportunity to get some good pictures of a great view and eat our picnic lunch. We also spotted a fox farther up on the hill, looking out and taking in the view. We took the same route back to the parking lot passing some more bikers on the way.

'Self-actualization is a state in which we ironically transcend ourselves and connect with the oneness of something bigger than us'
A few years ago, I read a book that spoke of Nirvana and the role of reincarnation and what purpose it purportedly serves. Perfection or peaking of our potential to achieve was cited as one of the ways of attaining eternal bliss. And today, on Chip Conley's blog, the above words seem to echo the same sentiment voiced in that small book steeped in eastern mysticism. We drink the same wine off different bottles, don't we?

With age and cynicism, I have moved away from fiction to more practical and real works of words. Occasional and selective forays back into the web of stories have been pleasant and I enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri's two earlier books - Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. Interpreter of Maladies was an engaging tapestry of crisp stories of various flavors. The Namesake - the book perhaps overshadowed by the film based on it, was more of a saga of a man struggling with a weird name and a weirder heritage.  The author writes from a perspective of a person raised in mingled cultures- the fine dance between a unique identity but at the same time striving to be and feel integrated into a foreign society.  Immigrants expectedly will identify closely with and feed off of  this aspect of her work. But as an immigrant audience, I found a subtlety and metaphorical beauty beyond this apparent in-your-face attempt at striking a chord with the reader.  Wall Street Journal today has an interview of the author whose third book 'Unaccustomed Earth' was just published.  I might just make another exception to my 'No Fiction' rule once again.

Fashion is cyclic. What was hot some years ago faded into oblivion, only to come bursting onto the popularity charts again a few years later. And since fashion is an extension of our lifestyle, can that be far behind in its own idiosyncratic patterns? Growing up in an age of  western science, but in a culture steeped in eastern philosophy and cultural practices, nothing strikes me more today than the cross hemispherical movement of ideologies.  While the West gravitates towards Yoga, organic food, meditation, vegetarianism, alternative medicine, the East flush with cash is swooping in on materialistic hedonism that comes in varying shapes of neatly arranged cans of packaged food on the newly-arrived-supermarket shelves, the glitzy restaurants and take-outs that fill stomachs but also take away some minutes of life with every morsel, thanks to flashing images of their benefits touted by their famous endorsers and also due to the brutal work-life imbalance in the name of globalization. I am no untainted saint in this regard myself, but after my first  few years of appreciating the convenience of food manufactured to scale, it is a highly cathartic and a fulfilling experience to go back to one's roots and appreciate the wisdom in life led in-those-days and try and put some of it back into practice.  The working lifestyles of people these days grant easy excuses to play hookie and compromise on food for health in favor of food for convenience, but the mental discipline to abstain from such easy escapism will reap rich rewards in terms of quality of life, in my honest opinion. Nothing can beat the healthy and positive vibes of a good fresh-cooked meal enjoyed with one's family around the dinner table.  With corporations growing bigger than governments, the economics of scale and subsidies also expectedly make it easier to follow the herd to the local supermarket or the local Wendys or Mac Donalds to gorge on some high fructose, high fat dollar-meal than first spend money on fresh organically grown produce and then time, cooking it everyday.  But like someone I worked for once said, we all have to die of something, don't we? So what's the harm in one solitary vice?

These were some initial thoughts after a talk by Michael Pollan- author of Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. The talk itself was very entertaining and like I mentioned, reiterative about and reminiscent of my time growing up in India; the speaker extremely engaging and erudite, but without the air of seriousness weighing down on his shoulders - a remarkable trait. Both books are on my to-read list.

Its been a few months since my cross-country transition. Cross-continent rather, because there cannot be two places more dissimilar than New York and the Bay Area. New York is a song I loved to hum and will always do.  But change being the only constant, there came a time to switch tracks.  While New York fed my insatiable appetite for energy like a battery-charger, the Bay Area has helped me find my pace and be comfortable with it, stop and appreciate the silence that also inhabits the world and made me look forward to Mondays again. As the adage goes, the Valley has come to symbolize the entrepreneurial spirit. In the deceptive lull of warm and sunny, suburban stupor are masked a hundred tiny such flagstones of creativity, embodying the drive and purpose of their founders to create, build, push known boundaries, touch lives, or simply give back to society. Their efforts are humbling, the ideas inspiring. While every city block in New York is an awe-inspiring evidence of human commercial ingenuity and survival,  every block here has a garage where some innovative mechanic tinkers with technology. CK12 is one of these start-ups that came on campus to talk about and showcase their work. Education being their area of focus, their aim is to provide Flex-Books- a web-based, open-source, collaborative way to disseminate textbook content sans the cost associated with buying and carrying traditional books all over the world. Likening the model to that of iTunes that slices music albums into tracks for the convenience of the listener to buy, customize into playlists, the platform enables the customized creation of textbook content by selective picking of required material from their listed sources to compile books tailored for each child and her individual needs, all approved to meet respective state standards. This flexibility in designing course content is definitely applaudable since each child differs in her pace of learning, understanding, assimilating, requiring extra attention to a topic or advanced material whatever be the case.  If backed by a suitably enthusiastic user base comprising of teachers and students, it would be a great way to enable learning by pooling resources and efforts in a highly cost-effective way. The promise this holds for children in under-developed countries is exciting. Causes associated with education for children somehow have an aura of nobility that surpasses any other for me, personally.   A cause I hope to contribute to someday.
Reference: http://www.ck12.org/

If you have ever stood before a work of so-called 'Modern' art scratching your head in clueless bewilderment even once, this film is for you. My knowledge of the afore-mentioned artist came about from A's and my sojourn to the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York. Like all other works of Modern Art I have tried to comprehend, his too defied my meager understanding. But they were distinctive and visually less unappealing than the others, in all fairness. This film is a delightful peek into Teri Horton's real journey into the pretentious art world following her accidental ownership of a Jackson Pollock original. Her only fault -  she landed the painting from a thrift store for $5. Employing everyone and everything from art lawyers to forensic experts, she succeeds in gathering compulsive evidence that the paining is indeed an authentic original, but when the stuffy collared art world denies to even consider these factual evidences just because the painting showed up at a thrift store, it really begs a thought - as A pointed out about ' whether art in itself has any value if disassociated from its creator to the pretentious world of art collectors'. My inability to comprehend this form of abstract art seems redeemed! Ha! :)
Picture courtesy http://www.picturehouse.com/jacksonpollock/

As the sun goes down,
The blue-gray mountains
A mute testimony to its journey today
Together we catch
One fleeting moment of togetherness
Before we go our own ways.

Reborn.
Emotions, thoughts and words.
Tunes, fleeting sensations,
a vacuous moment I could almost touch.
Familiar stirrings, a gentle nudge,
All reborn.

I have come to love you
with the familiarity
of my own breath
You will be around, won't you?
Like the blanket wrapped around my shoulders,
Musty with age,
Frayed with wear,
Your womb, yet warm and safe.
Arriving on tiptoe
Leaving behind warmth
of syrup down my throat.
A welcome high
that fades away as daylight creeps in,
Leaving behind a vague memory
And a shadow of a smile.

In a life lived just once, how much do events and experiences weigh? In a life fraught with ephemerality, where choices and consequences resulting from those choices give you no chance of re-doing or undoing , does that one opportunity to make or break weigh heavily on your shoulders, or does it mean nothing in its one and only flight through reality? Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return or rather the absence of it in human lives, and the resulting lightness of being is delved into by Milan Kundera in this book. Four lives, like the four directions, start out- sometimes intersecting on their journeys but then essentially orthogonally to each other, to their destined lonesome destinations. It is true that we all need something to keep us going , something that edges us on from one day to the next. And this carrot on a stick varies from you to me to him to her. So while Tomas finds this in his conquest of women, one after another, but yet acknowledging his dependence and love for his wife,Tereza and Tereza finds it in her one desire of owning Tomas mind, body and soul, their lives continue to play this strange symphony of togetherness and bitterness. Sabina, who shares a part of Tomas’ past yearns for that one elusive safety net of a family and involuntarily and unknowingly casts her net of betrayal in a succession of disappointed attempts at finding it. As for Franz, the eternal actor playing to an invisible onlooker- Sabina, he is spell-cast with the idea of love , worshipping Sabina and yearning for her approval. Does Tomas find his answers to the questions his conquests and Tereza pose? Does Tereza ever get her Tomas to keep, like the private heirloom box by the bedside? Does Sabina eventually settle down in her attempts at finding a resting place from her treacherous pursuits? And finally does Franz ever realize what it is he loves and does he win it? Three sublime character sketches, and one potentially so, move through the pages of this engrossing book. Some of the author’s truisms just made me smile, almost as if he were writing what I have thought about before. There is a time for every book in life. Whether I read this before my time, yeah, its probably true. What would be interesting is a different perspective a few years down the road.

Look down on me
In enflamed exhuberance
While I hang on to your memory
And wonder
What would I not give
for a piece of that sky?