Arriving, Re-embracing And Decorating With Love

Here comes the Guest Post from Kim Ridenour Raikes, poet-author, professor, pastor, painter and so much more. The theme is "abandonment/isolation/renewal/rebirth/arrival" - think of that word string as a circle and start anywhere. Here we start with arrival as Kim arrives to visit her beloved house that she sadly had to part from a few months ago. 

As a symbol of a journey, arrival, renewed energies, here are Vishnu's feet pictured in the wonderful altar Kim had in her home. May such energies awaken once more in all the abandoned homes within and without us.

This is such a viscerally felt and exquisitely written elegy to a house - it deserves to stand alone, unembellished  by my thoughts or emotions.

Over to Kim:

"Isolation" - an artwork by Debojyoti Das

                                      

I saw this just a couple of days after visiting our old house, which we visited a few days ago. We knew from our former neighbors that the new owners had stripped it of many things, like our gardens and children’s swings, which we had placed there over the years, and that they would be living in the sunny south half the year, starting last month. And they warned us that things had changed.

But to see our house looking so abandoned and shut down shocked us. We felt the pain and loneliness of our house, our home for 23 years, as if it were a living being. Of course it isn’t, yet surely all our dwellings absorb our spirit, and our house seemed to miss our presence, as we do its place.

The view from the deck of Kim's "abandoned and re-embraced" house in its heyday

So we brought decorations, as for a Christmas tree, to its neighboring trees, with the permission of our former neighbors. We placed wreaths and garlands of bird seeds and nuts to help them through the winter, and so cheer our house as well.

Thirty years ago when my mother died, we of course had to sell her house. It was empty for a year. I mourned to a friend, who happened to be a priest or pastor, that it felt empty each time we passed or tried to care for it to attract a potential new buyer. Our new friend said, “Perhaps her house just had to be quiet for a while."

Quiet, like Vishnu’s sleep, is a time of rebirth and creation. That spring, after my mother’s death, the wildflowers in her lawn burst into bloom like never before. Rebirth has a power of creation and hope that transforms emptiness and loneliness and doubt if we decorate it with our love. In darkness, light the lights!

Sleeping Vishnu in Mahishasuramardini Cave in Mamallapuram

This post should ideally have been hosted on Chakratirtha - Journeys Into Place, Mind, Spirit, being so close to the theme of that space, but it asked to be here. Thank you Kim for not leaving it unwritten.

About The Pictures:

1. How Kim's dear house might have been feeling - stripped, deserted, neglected and bereft of human company during the festive season - this is an artwork by Debojyoti Das that inspired a long conversation and these words from Kim. The image belongs to him, no sharing without permission. Heartfelt thanks Dee. 

2. How Kim's dear house looked at Christmas in her heyday which was not so long ago - this is the energy that Kim hopes she was able to breathe into her as she reassured the lonely house of her abiding love. Our missing defines our love after all - image belongs to her, no sharing without permission.

Don't miss the synchronicity of the blue - it's uncanny isn't it?
And I am excited to tell you, that just after publishing I realized that a myriad stars were decorating the sky above the lone house, showering it with love and these very stars were shining as Christmas decorations on the icy rail of Kim's deck.

Footnote for Kim:
Sometimes there are houses that a personal circumstance forces owners to leave in a hurry. and it agonizes them to do so. I know my own family went through it and I have friends here who did the same. There are also poignant stories that friends told me of the Partition - their ancestors walked out of their fully functional up-and-running houses, a mere bundle of essential possessions in hand. I recall how one family left the lamp burning at the altar. I cried. Neither the abandoned house in the artwork nor your beautiful house (it will always be yours) has a negative vibe. They have stories, they are lonely. Some lonely artist or writer will step inside one day long after your time (maybe when some owner down the line leaves it empty) and listen to the stories it's hiding in its folds. The children's laughter as they swing in your bee and butterfly garden will capture their inner ear and heart. And know your altar still dwells in the heart of your house, the lamp burns as an akhanda deepam and the ancestors definitely visit in September. When this owner sleeps those globes will magically light up to light their way.

PS - do visit all the links. It's well worth your time.

“You’re a teaser, you turn ‘em on Leave ‘em burning and then you’re gone”

Yup - that is ABBA, the phenomenon! 

ABBA <--then and now-->

Today is a special occasion. First we have a new month with new hopes and opportunities. I made a resolution that I would write till my hands fell off this month. But first, here is a guest post. Because guests have right of way and hence today's "write of way"

Introducing Ashesh Mitra - many of you are familiar with his blog and his channel where he is Storyteller Extraordinaire.  Do visit these links and show love - you won't be disappointed and you will be loved back for sure. That's one thing he is really good at.

Ashesh this is apart from everything, a congratulatory post wishing you all the best in your new assignment. Full Power! This is also a thank you post because I have come thus far in my recovery from the nasty illness that grabbed me like the hunchback grabbed Sinbad, thanks to your unstinted support.

Okay on with the show. 
Many of us have sweet memories of ABBA - I had more than a crushette on Anni-Frid Lyngstad (heck she is now 76) 

Over to Ashesh:

“You’re a teaser, you turn ‘em on

Leave ‘em burning and then you’re gone”

~Dancing Queen, ABBA

A living room with a sofa and a TV and an ancient music system is where this story started. The system had a tape player and a child was inserting a tape into it. Closing the tape receptacle, he pressed play.

That child was me. The band was ABBA.

It is 2021 and ABBA are back with a new album called Voyage which I heard on Spotify recently. I then saw a small clip showing Bjorn talk about how they approached the album and decided they would ignore the modern music and bring back what they recorded before in the ‘70s. The result is an album that awoke the child in me again and I listened to it and took a trip down memory lane. The memories are what I am going to talk about today.

I was a young warthog when I first heard ABBA and I think the song Eagle was the one that I could understand back then. It seemed steeped in fantasy. How could eagles know everything? How far away did they come from?

I also remember watching a cover of Dancing Queen on MTV back in the day. Those songs were our anthem.Ilived in a world populated by ABBA, The Beatles and fairy tales.

It was easy to associate ABBA with dragon slaying. Songs like I Have a Dream told me to be brave. Songs like Mamma Mia made me dance because I just could not sit still when that song came on, even though it would be much later, post an actual breakup that Mamma Mia would hit very differently. But let us not get ahead of ourselves and tell this tale properly.

ABBA took me to a different world. I was too young then to appreciate the depth of songs the likes of which Queen had brought out. I was in fact too young to appreciate the depth of ABBA’s own music. The depth of the lyrics was lost on me. It was just the tune and Agnetha Fältskog’s voice that I grooved to.

Then slowly I started to grow older and ABBA started to grow with me. Suddenly I found a song like The Winner Takes It All chaperoning me through a bad exam result. I think what made me wake up to what ABBA was really capable of was the movie Mamma Mia, which had Pierce Brosnan sing SOS about Meryl Streep and Meryl Streep sing The Winner Takes It All.

For me, this meant a total ABBA revisit. I started from the first and ended at the last. I believe kids these days have an abusive word for what happened to my mental capacities upon rediscovering ABBA as an adolescent. A part of me also started delving into rock like anything and seeing as I had grown a little, I stared falling in love with the music of the ‘70s. But, try as I may, I couldn’t stop putting on ABBA and grooving from time to time.

And now it is 2021 and ABBA’s Voyage is a return to the early 2000’s and a music system with a tape player and a boy going on a trip to a war torn land while Fernando plays. In a world dominated by EDM, it’s nice to know that ABBA are back. In a world where cartoons and comics have taken on dark undertones and the world’s many problems are bogging us down, I feel good because a band from Sweden have brought out a new album and reminded me that black clouds have silver linings.

It would be perfect if I still had that tape though!

Back to me - Folks do comment here and share your own thoughts on ABBA and their reunion and anything else you'd like to from that era. We really, really need your voice here. Don't leave it unwritten!

I will leave you with my favorite Abba song