Be happy for no reason!

Be happy for no reason!
You have reason enough to be :)

Since I only upload pictures I've taken myself on this blog, unless specified otherwise, pictures will of course seem random. Like this one, that I call 'Beads on a Branch'. This tree is actually pretty full of green and growing right outside but you won't be able to see that right now because it's night. :P

Pick yourself some wild flowers off a mountain side!

There's a timeless joy in the simple pleasure of picking wild flowers growing on a cool mountainside, as I discovered earlier this past week, that is an end of itself.  Oh, and wild blackberries off the edges of a dense, dark bush growing further downhill on a slope. Daisies, a single buttercup and others I do not know the names of, came together in a delightful little bunch in my fist, which was at once that of a child and a lady's.. as for a few moments I did nothing but choose my flowers and scamper up and down the mountain's sloping side. My host smiled and said she did the same when she was much younger, for as long as she could. Then I happily carried them back to show my mother, and laid them for a few moments to rest upon this ancient stool, hand painted to show the rose hips that grow around.

I was visitor to a delightful house that afternoon where the sun shone warmly after a night of cold rain, more than 165 years old, that had been built by the British and my hosts family had arrived only the week before Pakistan's creation. Now very much grown up with their own children scattered across the world, the children of this house still return to the mountains every summer, foregoing the chance to stay anywhere else in the world, with a fierce love and longing, proof of a happy childhood. They have left everything as sparse, as dark and wooden as it was, and spent a decade of summers restoring the ancient furniture.

Here, they point out: is a blue bird's nest hidden inside a hole in the veranda's beams. The roses capture my attention.

Pick yourself a few wild flowers off a mountain side. Forget about bringing them back, for they will wilt faster than you imagine, and show you they were happiest growing in the midst of nature's majestic sights, where they serve as testament to God's Beauty. You can only come to play a while, before you must go back.

Strange Language - I

i thought it was time to share some of my 'other' kind of writing..that sometimes tries to record how my thoughts flow sometimes at night.

I can make some people laugh or scowl. The rest just stare. Whatever. If that’s okay with you, come on in. Leave your shoes at the door and open the windows. Walk barefoot, there’s dew on the grass that grows inside here. I need fresh air, even if its winter. I can tell whether a room is a prison or a porch just by feeling it when I enter.

Oh, and that scent is real. I don’t like synthetic experiences. I really don’t. 

I took the time to bake that pie just so we could smell apples and sugar caramelizing together with lemon juice. I won't skip the cream.Tart and sweet is my favorite combination of flavor always. It is also the most restrictive. My throat, I don’t know why, it’s always sore. Something about the voice cords. Controversial voice cords, faultless for the words they deliver. 

Well, Vocal cords if I must be correct. I’m done using correct English. There’s a language out there that we speak in our dreams and it was created so that those who never learned can understand, and even those whose tongues are destined to be rigid and faultless can utter. Every being in the Universe speaks this language in our dreams. Birds, walls, people, and more. It is heard by every human whatever their state of hearing, for the only soft and exciting place for our words to land is in the hearts and minds of another.

Too often have I flown through the proverbial ear canal route. Screamed through glass doors inside people harder and colder than rocks and steel. 

I don’t know how I speak it, it’s gone when I wake up, but somehow it’s there in our dreams and it moves our hearts, travels across welcoming distances sometimes and comes up against a human wall others so that I am a ghost tugging at you.
It uproots it and throws it reeling into a empty space full of possibility, with space and riches enough for every human being there is, and returning to me like a boomerang, sliced by the emptiness it found there and the things it saw and felt far away. Such is the perceived poverty of the heart. 

Such is the power of our 7th sense, this kind of communication that makes us fly in and out of our selves and time. That bridges humans with something other than just need and makes both togetherness and solitude an experience. Distance is never a matter, the heavens, the grave, the earth; all merge into one plane and eternity. 
Do you hear me now? Do you see me as I speak? I have turned into a shimmering, moving plight that seeks a soft place to land, only to rest before I fly onwards again. To your destination. And mine. 

World Refugee Day and Father's Day

I wish for those who long for home, home.

I wish for all refugees across the world and in my country, to soon be back in homes that are theirs, and full of love, happiness and peace with their families. Ameen.

Happy Father's Day as well. Fathers, a refuge in their own right.

Above: Gardening. Harvesting vegetables in a small patch at home is just the kind of thing for Dads.

Heartfelt prayers for someone

I am distracted today by the sudden striking of extreme testing on a small family I now know of and cannot stop thinking about.

A young man on his way to work had an accident that caused a head injury so serious, his chances of surviving are slim, and even if he does, his condition is uncertain. Too late to lament over anyones rash driving, or that he was not wearing a helmet, I pray God Will Have Mercy on him, his mother, a widow whose only child he is, and his wife - newly wed a few months ago, and that he survives and regains health, Ameen.

I post this to ask my readers and visitors to please pray for him and his family too with great hope - the God we pray to commands life and death and all there is in between and after, so that miracles for Him are no difficulty. 

A reminder to be grateful for the life and health we have, and must not take for granted. A reminder to always pray to Allah to Protect us from the striking of misfortune. 

Update: He passed away today, at the age of 25. I am so sad for his mother and wife, and that he will not see his child who will be born in a few months. I pray God gives his mother and wife the strength and peace they need.Please remember this family in your prayers.

An important lesson to learn from the birds

Lately when distressed, I remind myself of the birds.

So happy outside my window, even in this searing heat they neither carry nor gather any water.

Somehow they begin and end each day with complete faith, and are fully rewarded.

Their Lord Provides for them, and they know it.

And so they set out each day, 

to search for food and as they do,

 they sing and soar and swoop and play 

and are as light as can be.

They teach me a lesson in trust. 

Surely their Lord can also take care of me and my troubles too.
 Surely He Will.

Create your own food memories!

Do you take pictures of your baking in progress? My suggestion is to stop amidst the preparations for what will become happy memories, and take a picture. Later on, it serves as a joyful reminder of the pleasure of creating a winter dessert served to friends, even months later in the scorching summer.

This above, is my apple pie in the making.. sugar, butter, lemon juice, cinnamon and tart apples, tossed and mixed  and piled into a pastry crust - one of the best scents to waft enticingly through the home!

My take on old fashioned/vintage style floral photography

 Caught these flowers in spring.