THE BUTTERFLY HUNTERS

Butterflies attract butterfly catchers;
Young men with invisible nets
Seek to imprison young women
With the desire to fly.

The ability to escape from such perils
Is an advantage acquired only by time,
(Not wisdom, but experience). Such men
Must be eluded at all costs.

If butterflies must be caught -
And really, why must they? -
Better to do one's own catching.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2017

Artwork: Catching Butterflies, French, late 13th century & Berthe Morisot (1841-1895): 'The Butterfly Hunter'.
Poem linked to Dverse Poets for their Open Link Night. 

AN ORANGE SLUG IN THE PATH OF A RATTATA

They came. They conquered. They left. With a piece of my heart tucked into the soles of their feet.

Last night, around 2am, the owls were busy tap dancing on the roof of the Coach House, the converted garage I have called home for the past three years. I thought of Raf, who sometimes worries about me in the midst of all these owls. But he understands I'm nocturnal. 'I'm nocturnal, too!' he declared, last summer in Portugal. He was four then. At five, he is now a skilful Pokémon catcher. One sunny day, he and I combed the entire village, collecting measly Pokéballs at the phone box library and finding mostly Rattatas and Pidgeys (and a Mr Mime!) - he got stung by thorny ivy snakes, was shocked to discover roses have thorns and the duck pond from last year seemed to have vanished, so all in all it was 'the worst day, ever.' 

But! We met an orange slug. Have you ever? Bright and burnished, it looked nothing like its ordinary grey camouflage-ready mollusc cousin - Raf and I were gripped by the drama. Of course neither of us knew we were looking at Arion vulgaris, the cannibalistic roadkill eating variety. Arion vulgaris - what a name! I'm quite partial to the term vulgaris because in the late thirteenth century that is how lupus was referred to - lupus vulgaris.

I didn't blog last month - one of the rare months of complete absence. I have been struggling with chronic tachycardia most of the year. I hope there is nothing too sinister, cardiologically speaking - fingers crossed, anyway - but at the same time, almost twenty years of lupus, steroids, chemo and immuno therapies have no doubt taken their toll. My heart is overworked, but never under appreciated. Did I tell you I've finished my book? My last chapters are all dedicated to my heart, wondrous organ that it is. 

While the smallest loves of my life are far away in other countries, I am head down, writing to publishing agents. I rise to meet the day and either crumble back to bed or send my book with love to strangers. Wish me luck as I wave it goodbye!

BOOKMARK A POET

A few months ago I was interviewed in style (at home no less) by the short story writer Alex Ruczaj for the Cambridge radio station Bookmark, which she, until recently, co-presented with Leigh Chambers. I've known Alex a while and attended a fiction workshop that she organised. She writes beautiful stories, with fascinating character premises and a blog. It's nice knowing working writers - writers in the middle of their craft - who have little ego and lots of passion. Or at least it seems that way to me. The best part about my Creative Writing Masters has been the development of friendships with writers who make the world of being a writer feel real.

Leigh Chambers (left), Alex Ruczaj (right)

http://cambridge105.fm/book-night-28-03-2015/ should provide you with the link page, and if you scroll down to where it says Podcast: Download, click on 'Download'. That should open up the radio interview link (oh how tremendously technical I sound). I am interviewed 34 minutes and 45 seconds into the programme, to be exact…
http://cambridge105.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/bookmark-2015-03-28-13_01.mp3
I hope the link works but if it doesn't - I shall tell you I sounded quite good according to reliable sources. Alex asked me about my blog - how I began it, why I began it and the wonderful paths it has led me down. Sometimes I miss the first years of blogging - there is something I yearn for about those times - lost now to the mass of social media sites. I am not sure what it is I yearn for, but I know it is a shared longing among my early blogging friends.

Where I sometimes write by the window, and where I was interviewed...

I meant to upload this interview soon after it was available online, but my mind lately has been distracted by writing my first book. An exhausting business. How do they do it? However. Onwards.

SHAISTA'S BOOKS

This year begins the sixth year of my blog Lupus in Flight. Six years! I have never been so conscious of time's passing and her markings as I have this year. It feels a little breathless all of a sudden. It feels as though everything has already happened. Everything that truly matters is already in place. I was a curly haired child with goober glasses only yesterday. Tomorrow my nieces will turn thirteen, my cousins will celebrate their silver and gold anniversaries, my school friends and I will look into each other's eyes and shake our seventy year old heads in wonder. How? When? we will say...

My body hurts today. I stop, breathe, look deeply for the site of hurt, but I can't quite separate it. Hurt is always difficult to isolate. Remember the scene in Amélie when the little boy's marbles, hard won in the playground, burst out of the pockets of his uniform and to his horror, roll away? Never to be gathered. The best moment of his life becomes the worst, the unforgettable tragedy. That's how it feels, sometimes. All my precious marbles are in place, tucked safely into pockets of my soul, but my body's cells and organs are threatening to tear the seams, spill everything out. I rely on you to remind me we are all connected by the red thread and nothing that once was found can be lost.

So it is with my books. The last time I read a book all the way through in a few sittings was in 2012, at the start of my Masters. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, in case you were wondering. Since then, another glaucoma operation has put paid to my ability to read with any comfort at all. I can still read but I find myself picking at the tops of books, first chapters, beginnings... And then hurriedly gathering another to me. I have read so much and want to re-read so many, but there is always more and more to read. Social media is battering away at my eyes with its continuous streams of articles. All so interesting, so much entirely unnecessary. I must choose between this and that, but which to choose? Either I disengage or try to keep up.

Stop the clock for a moment and celebrate what you have read, Shaista, is what I tell myself. So a week ago I started a new blog - a library is what it intends to be. A reference of books I am reading, have read, crave. The title is simple - Shaista's Books - no Latin words here. Just a Persian one. I have already written four posts so will you stop by and take a look? The posts will be linked to the top right hand corner of this blog so you can always access the other blog. I am often asked what I'm reading or if I have books to recommend; the new blog is the beginning of my answer. At any rate, it's an experiment, just as this blog once was!