Archive: 2012

Consolidating the blogs -

Consolidating the blogs

I started this blog my personal blog, Almost As Good As Chocolate1, on September 29, 2006. There were busy moments and there were large lulls. Over time though, with Twitter and Tumblr, with work and life, I ended up posting here2 less and less.

I am, however, posting on the Tatvam blog and on Tumblr. Given that it’s been a year since I’ve posted here3, it is time to consolidate, to simplify.

All of this content will move to my Tatvam blog4 where I will continue blogging about film, but now, also about things that interest me and about technology. Every post that was written originally on this blog will be tagged with the “Almost As Good As Chocolate” category. And you will not need to update anything – the RSS feed and the emails will still work as I will update them on the back end.

Over the next few weeks, as I transition, there *may* be a few glitches. Thank you in advance for understanding.

I’ve met some great friends through this blog5 – I look forward to seeing you on Tatvam.

Update: I realize this post gets a bit confusing when it’s viewed, post-migration on the Tatvam blog. Just to be clear, it was the last post on my personal blog. All the posts were then migrated. Now it lives here on Tatvam. Clear? Good.

  1. It used to live at http://shripriya.com/blog, which now redirects to my Tatvam site ↩

  2. see point 1 ↩

  3. see point 1 ↩

  4. it has now moved and you are reading it on Tatvam ↩

  5. see point 1 ↩

Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

— James Arlington Wright

The Joy of Quiet

A wonderful article that nudges me further down a path I was already exploring.

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

Instead of being more in control, we are less in control – especially of our time.

In my own case, I turn to eccentric and often extreme measures to try to keep my sanity and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all (which is the only time when I can see what I should be doing the rest of the time). I’ve yet to use a cellphone and I’ve never Tweeted or entered Facebook. I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event. None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism; it’s just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

Disconnecting is self-preservation, it’s joy creation and as he mentions earlier in the article, it puts you back in touch with your creativity.

This picture was included with Pico’s article1. It’s particularly suitable because in the past week, I spent time searching for, and finding, seashells on a beach with my boys. It was, without a doubt, the best part of the past year.

This picture was included with Pico’s article1. It’s particularly suitable because in the past week, I spent time searching for, and finding, seashells on a beach with my boys. It was, without a doubt, the best part of the past year.

  1. Photo credit: Vivienne Flesher ↩