THE NEW POUR INTO THE BUCKET
navigating between three extreme seasons
…
one week till the next Pour
33 new pieces added to The Bucket
from 766 to 799 total
June 1
...
presented to you
as ever
at glorious random
...
with no piece over 100 words
or more than13 lines
...
with a few ideas and wordings i’ve had for
ooo
ten twenty thirty years
but never used in a show
...
and including
...
a poem i wrote in 1985
which must be one of the first five poems i ever wrote
and which not one person has ever seen
...
one story from ‘97 i never dared release in any kind of print
[quite easy to not do when you don’t publish anything]
...
stand-alone fragments from poems i did in shows
in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2025
...
a quote from Veronica Franco
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a cheap gag from 2001
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a piece about a rare monument to the atrocities of the British Empire
which prison i visited twice this April
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a homily
an aesthetic position
an inkless inkling
...
and more
…
all of which will be accessible
behind the paywall
here at The Bucket
...
…
image has two of the new pieces
two of the original
...
meanwhile
its been a mighty leap from sea-level to 3000m
from Chennai to Leh
from South India to its very North
from stifling-slum humidity to thin air
from jungle to “cold desert”
finding my way between three extreme seasons
swelter, Monsoon and ice
...
where i’m currently brushing the edges of one season
the very last of the Ladakh winter
for its snowbound here nine-ten months of the year
and, though the real icebinding cold has passed
it’ll be notably warmer next week
...
and before this i landed full-square into another extreme
easily the most likeable of the three...
the last of the highest Chennai swelter
and therefore avoided the third
the South-West Monsoon
while another coming Monsoon
way out East on the Andaman Islands
drenched me twice, only twice
before i boarded ship and sailed West
...
experiencing some kind of climactic extreme was inevitable
so this is not bad going
...
and all this has brought me to the
thin air of Leh
a town of 45,000
with a high-mountain culture
more Tibetan than Indian
...
where hundreds and hundreds of empty-ish hotels and homestays are
stirring for the imminent short-summer Tourist Season
...
where its pale blue above
and one form or another of grey below
grey-white stone
grey-trunked thinly green trees,
grey-brown stark valley-sides
grey-black roads
albeit with many white hotels and homestays
and some very white whitewashed stupas and gompas
...
where it’s cold
but not glove-cold or woolly-hat cold
with snow-capped peaks and furrier dogs
where it’s a mix of old and new
crumbling stupas
and just-built guest-houses
with intricately carved wooden awnings and balconies
...
...
so i
two eyes
in a head
on shoulders
above two walking legs
am choosing to stride my rhythmless jig
in this meandering zagzig
to pace the
back ends of the
back alleys, boonies and backroads
on my slow
planless and solo
goalless and just-so
stop-start-go
...
...
so i’m trying to not feel like i
threw myself out of paradise
as its more like i was forced out
by the Rainy Season
...
yet it’s been quite a series of transitions,
from white coral sands and greenest green jungle
on Havelock Island in the Andaman Islands,
to three days on a passenger ship, the Swaraj Dweep
carving through the gentle blue-grey waters of the Bay of Bengal,
to Chennai, Triplicane district
heaving brimming and generally full-on
a swelter in the sweatbox,
to the non-time of an overnight flight,
to here
the northernmost state of India
...
where Chennai to Ladakh is
as much of a change in geography as one could maybe ever manage
without crossing a national border
from as urban as urban gets
to cold-desert mountains
...
...
i knew it was going to be a huge change
yet, as i usually don’t worry about or research my destinations too much, i
simply get there and enjoy dealing with
whatever newnesses it throws at me
yet it was, and is, a way bigger difference than
anything i hazily anticipated
...
so i’m physically feeling the all-change
the cold and, especially, the altitude
...
for any sense of triumph at successfully avoiding the worsts
got tempered by altitude sickness
which has now, after four days, finally lifted
it was not genuine-problem Altitude Sickness
just the ordinary ungood symptoms of acclimatisation
mixed with missing most of a night’s sleep en route
yet still
muggy-headed-ness, terrible sleeping, slowness
...
...
so here we are beneath the sky
looping loops with an easy eye
wandering with softly treading feet
over stone and brick and grass and root
and concrete
for you have to be somewhere
and we were there
or near
before we were
here
where thereabouts
and whereabouts makes
hereabouts
...
...
where, as Leh is only so attractive
i will have to get out of town
and actually do stuff
which means a trek
while i’ve been doing a lot of walking
but not loads
and have only climbed one hill in months
a shattering morning of semi-accidental tropical canyoning
behind Radhnagar Beach on Havelock
so my thighs are not fit
and i’ll start with the easiest
the “Baby Trek”
the Sham Valley Trek
two or three nights in homestays
and 58 k from Leh
which should be great
but does mean i have to acquire some gear
wind-proof jacket, woolly hat, etc
...
...
...
...
in other news
...
my attempt to walk along the fabled Indus River
was a no-fun stroll past commercial buildings and broken rock
with the grey clouds growing over the snowy peaks to the South
though this region is actually a “cold desert”
doesn’t get a lot of rain
and the huge clouds huff and puff but don’t do much
so, when the light but cold rain came in Akling
i took the fortuitous appearance of a direct road for the 5k back to Leh
and thumbed a lift in nought-point-five seconds
with a friendly guy playing Pink Floyd
...
so we’re stop-starting in thick traffic back to town
when the driver-guy points to a sudden double-rainbow
and says
“hey, we’re listening to Pink Floyd and there’s a double rainbow”
...
...
