A year passes and I do not even blink or rather blink too late. I did finally take notice though. So here I’m, still trying to row the boat to nowhere. The stream seems to be drying up and the flow of water is slowing to a trickle but the place is the same. Who knows what lies at the end of the fabled rainbow? Perhaps inner peace, perhaps a sense of arrival or perhaps a persistance of memory?

Memories are very dangerous things. They suck you in, twist space and time, and distort reality until you find it difficult to see or breathe. But here I’m celebrating them in all their mottled glory. Have I succeeded in decoding the many messages they hide?

Before I end here is something I tried on someone I know. I never did get an answer from her but perhaps you can do better!

I’ve a bad habit of reading several books at once. One in the morning, one on the way to work, one at lunch, one before dinner and one just before I sleep. So my mind is a delicious pot pourri of scenes and conversations from wildy different settings! A little snippet from the stream of my conciousness follows:

“I roam through the streets of Danzig, beating on my laquered drum, in time to the rhythmic pounding of shells from German howitzers exploding in the old district. She said she would love me forever and then left the Carribean to the civilized pleasures of Paris with that dashing doctor with a long name, full of an illustrious past. I tried to drown my only love in the arms of a million whores and in the sweet sweat rolling off the bodies of women married to the wrong men. But time did not stop. Instead, the sun raced across the hub, and then hit the dank darkness rising from Ankh Morpork, the city that seems to sleep but in reality is only lying on her stomach trying to scratch a particularly unreachable position on her back. The wizards had still not left the great hall. Dinner had gently segued into breakfast and it looked like lunch would not be far behind the kitchen door. So he somehow liked the work I did in Nuremburg and started giving me other assignments. He asked me to make a blueprint for the Third Reich, filled with monuments that would rival Rome. I was too caught up in the grandness of my work to think deeply about the sheer madness unfolding around me. They gave me a name that meant ‘The Peaceful One’ but my violent past and present seemed to make a mockery of their kind idea. I tried to live up to that adopted name. I became a part time doctor, relieving the poorest of poor of some pain. But my past kept pace with my present and finally caught up with my future. The Bombay underworld needed my expertise.”

Can you guess the names of the books and their authors I’m reading now from the above literary stream I conjured? If you get all of them right you will win the grand prize of spending a special evening with yours truly in a universe where all plans fall perfectly into place!

This post is doubly significant. Apparently, according to my blog software, it marks a century of posts. So here it is to all of you, all the people who visit here so regularly and help keep the flame burning. I hope we will keep building bridges over rivers of thought and emotion. A heartfelt thank you to all you known and unknown visitors here. Without you there would be no light at the end of the tunnel.