Cherry blossom in New York
I often describe Queens, New York as a concrete jungle, but since I first visited there in 2000, the city has planted quite a few trees and in April, many are in full blossom. It creates moments of beauty and a welcome contrast to some of the cities less scenic areas.
Pink apple blossom. A profusion of colour. (more…)
Young seedlings left to fend for themselves
I have enjoyed sowing and planting seeds in the house this year. But, rather inconveniently for my seedlings, I am away for ten days. So I have planted them out…
Secret lives of colour – Ultramarine blue
Increasingly I shop online. I never particularly enjoy shopping – especially for things like clothes. Amazon is very convenient – especially for things like electronics. But, while I like the convenience of Amazon, I don’t like its growing dominance and the more ‘soulless’ nature of this form of shopping. There are not many shops I feel an attachment to. The one exception is bookshops, which are somehow important for towns. I went to one town in South Yorkshire and it was all second-hand clothes shops, gambling shops and Pound shops – it was very dispiriting!
Where possible, I like to visit bookshops and buy something that takes my interest. I was browsing in this bookshop in Ilkley, where I saw a book called “Secret Lives of Colour” – it turned out to be a good book – something I would never have bought by an online search.
It had easy to read chapters on colour-dyes used by painters. It was really fascinating to learn the trouble artists had to go to – in order to get different colours. For example, there was one colour which came from a secret source in India. It was apparently made from cow urine, in which the poor cows had been fed only mango leaves!
Good use of time
Last summer we had the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run visit Oxford. A runner from Australia said they had been reading their journal recently, and came across an entry when Sri Chinmoy was speaking to me on a Christmas Trip in Malaysia. She said she wrote down, that Sri Chinmoy had said: “I made good use of time.”
I don’t remember this. When you were in close proximity to Sri Chinmoy, it was easy to concentrate on the consciousness of the moment. The mind wasn’t working; it was more like being in the heart, absorbing the glimpse into another word. So I didn’t really remember much of the conversation. It would have been very nice to remember, but the words always felt less important than the inner experience. (more…)