conversations with bricks and concrete
January. 28. 2012
“And if you think of Brick, for instance,
and you say to Brick,
“What do you want Brick?”
And Brick says to you
“I like an Arch.”
And if you say to Brick
“Look, arches are expensive,
and I can use a concrete lentil over you.
What do you think of that?”
“Brick?”
Brick says:
“… I like an Arch””
-Louis Kahn
rum boogie cafe
January. 28. 2012
what I miss most about the dirty south is the music (and the biscuits)…
thought for the day
January. 18. 2012
Liberty isn’t given- a person can’t give another freedom. Every one was born free, that’s a gift of existence. You can only take away from it. Don’t.
the falling flower
December. 23. 2011
art from art from years ago- words make the most beautiful pictures and I just had to paint hers…
drenched
December. 7. 2011
Got drenched in the chilly evening shower today but loved it for the above reasons. There are probably an infinite number of ways to kiss the rain- these are just some of mine…
gotta love that iphone after all
I love you, my hope
November. 24. 2011
Purple sunset on a crisp evening walk with a friend today- unaltered I swear!
Friends often question my exuberance, asking me what makes me a happy person and I struggle to articulate that happiness is a spontaneous state of being. The list of reasons I rattle off when questioned begins with having breath and consciousness, but inevitably ends with the love I find everywhere.
I remember walking to my student job, tired and beat on an ordinary Louisiana afternoon beaming in the bliss of just being there, then. I remember tearing up in waking meditation simply feeling “So much joy! So much love!” That is the ecstasy of being- what is joy but synchronicity with existence and its magnificent flood? Even when it’s bad, it’s good- it’s all good. Happiness is a state of mind, I choose to exist in joy through and through the shit. And the love I have for and get from my family and friends, helps me shine on- they are my hope.
This Thanksgiving I am evermore grateful for you beautiful people who keep my life whole. Forget the miles between us, I feel the sweetness in you. I love you, my hope- Happy Thanksgiving!
fourth time around
November. 22. 2011
"En amour, écrire est dangereux, sans compter que c'est inutile." -Alexandre Dumas { Bon anniversaire Mama }
look up, look out
November. 2. 2011
as the snow flashes by…
the highway series
October. 25. 2011
fueling my timeless dance with displacement, wheeling out of Boston-
“Never wish away distance. Never wish away time.”
-Bruce Weber
Storm
October. 12. 2011
Dark thunderstorms translate into reassuring, soothing, near spiritual experiences for me. Always have.
I grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas whose soil seeped into me when the rain poured down. An expert paper boat maker, I’d chase the rain and sail my boats in the puddles it left behind for days. Squatting little knees bent, toes at the edge of the water, careful not to wet my tomboyish knickerbockers…I remember coaxing my boats and singing to the rain each time I find myself mid-song in downpour…
This painting was an experiment in black…See, black is never black-I wonder if you can see the greens, blues and reds in clouds rolling in-
walkin in memphis
October. 9. 2011
music makes my world go around…
freedom from fear
September. 11. 2011
“All material in nature,
the mountains and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent,
and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light.”
– Louis Kahn
I came to the United States as a student on August 30th, 2001. 12 days after my arrival, the WTC was bombed.
Still jet-lagged, skipping Ms. Olin’s 9am class, I was asleep when Alli barged into my dorm room and exclaimed, “Ishi! They bombed the WTC!” But in my fitful fever, my mind couldn’t parse through the information well enough to command consciousness and I zoomed back into sleep. It was only later when I answered the phone to my new best friend’s quivering voice that I realized what had just happened.
Even as I stood trembling, incapacitated by shock waves of horror flowing through my being, living the crash in my head, I couldn’t entirely fathom it all. And somewhere in my trembling, I realized I knew this feeling all too well. It was the first attack on American soil, but the Indian soil in me had quivered before in the face of the same terror, many a time.
Before that morning, I did not know what WTC stood for and had never been to New York. Shy in my newness I wondered if I could honestly be a part of the grief? In which capacity does a legal alien console her 12 day old friends?
Although it wasn’t all 9/11 that did it, since that fateful day, I have grown up. The event gave me a premature preview into the American psyche and this society’s mechanisms of dealing with grief and disaster, very different from the fatalist nonchalance I was used to in India…With typically American efficiency, meetings were called, we were given phones to call home to re-assure our parents and cautioned against going out into town alone. Caught off-guard and cornered into switching points of view, my sense of self questioned itself and for the first time I contemplated my being as the Other.
I have lived and loved, won and lost and surrendered pieces of my heart to souls deep within American folds while nurturing them into mine; I have watched the dispersion of fear and the struggle to overcome it in an intoxicated, unpredictable dance which moves us all through the darkness, through the light. Resilience is a beautiful thing, grace under pressure, that is what defines a great civilization, or a human being.
“I have no fear at all at all, I have no fears at all.”
marfa window
September. 7. 2011
looking through concrete Judd into the wilderness…
stranded
September. 6. 2011
I have this love affair with trains that just won’t die. Found this stranded cargo train on the road to Marfa, TX (iphone shot hanging out the window)…ingredients for a swell weekend in West Jesus Nowhere-
1. one good friend+
2. the desert sky+
3. a tent to pitch (w/ hammocks)+
4. minimalist art+
5. falling stars+
6. an unusual bookstore+
7. and serendpitious reunions
= Ishi heaven!
Cyclical City
September. 1. 2011
Meandering through the streets of Tokyo, by yours truly. A very brief photo-essay for Architizer based on my Traveling Fellowship to Tokyo in October 2010…hope you enjoy the escapades!
“Food is one part. Love is another part.”
August. 20. 2011
Good Morning wonderful souls!
Please watch ze video first.
I don’t often do this, but maybe I should! Sometimes things need to be done to preserve and nourish the best within us all. And sometimes our money goes way farther than our time.
This story resonates so deeply…everyone needs to visit a developing nation, see what hunger does to a man. Why it is poverty- not terrorism, not civil war, not natural disasters, that claims the most lives throughout this planet- forget even that- it causes so much pain! pain that we can’t fathom! Sitting here on our iphones and laptops, living in a/c, driving cars, buying jewelry, wasting food, opening taps to find water flow freely- everything at our fingertips! ALL are luxuries, my friends. Every one of them.
Fragments of forgotten madmen starving in the streets of Srinagar (where I began life as a person) line the edges of my consciousness and still surface when I sit down to write stories…nothing I do ever seems enough, and I am still unsure of how to resolve or come to terms with what I have known of the tattered human condition. And then I find this, and it is uplifting, and hopeful, and resonates with all that I hold sacred. Something beautiful, that MUST be nourished.
Let’s please help him! Hell- reach for the 5 quid lying in your jeans back pocket if nothing else- people live on less than a dollar a day. Imagine what even 10 dollars can do! It is a LOT. What if you just donate $ for just one meal a month you’d eat outside- throw that into this bucket, cook yourself a meal, share it with someone you love, and send the money saved this guy’s way?!
I operate on joy, not guilt- this email isn’t to guilt you into helping- everyone’s misery is not your responsibility. It is just a reminder of what you value, and cherish- and an opportunity to uplift both the destitute, and your own spirit. Won’t you please forward it to every potentially resonant soul you know?
Donate here: http://t.co/oyaDyy3. Consider it a birthday gift to yourself ; )
Thanks for reading my ramblings. I hope you are thriving, no matter which piece of this precious planet you are on.
much love,
Ishi
full stop.
August. 8. 2011
August 8 marks the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and is a good time for reflection, no matter which side of the war you fell on.
Sometimes it is good to encounter the edges of one’s profession, because then you may begin to stretch it. At the peace memorial in Hiroshima, I watched this little girl walk round and round the monument. Architecture can only do so much, I realized. No pain will be alleviated by the helix better than the cube, no wounds healed by steel and concrete. All it can do, is give a community a sacred space in which to collectively mourn and remember, and hopefully find the love to see each other through, and to let bygones be bygones.
acid rain
August. 6. 2011
I think everyone alive needs to make a pilgrimage to understand the wounds of our world. It puts things in perspective, and the next time you find yourself advocating violence, you might just find that thought quieting down. Last year I made my way down to Hiroshima because the bombings have haunted me ever since I was a little girl, and they come back to do so today, on the anniversary of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, as I remember walking through the streets and exhibits with eyes that would not stop crying.
This is a piece of concrete wall salvaged from the rubble after chemical acid rain dripped down from the skies. I stared at the wall and shuddered to imagine its touch on human skin, if it corroded concrete so. Imagine the burn searing through your pores, and then let’s talk about nuclear armament.
Japan’s radiation sorrows seemed forgotten to the rest of the world until the reactor explosion this year. The question now is whether humanity will awaken from its abysmal denial, and acknowledge the terrors of this dangerous game, or much like when a teenager guns people down with a vengeance in a US school here or there, it’ll just be played down as a one time thing- a chance encounter with death, with no need to address laws or policy. Do all these victims die in vain, time and time again?
check it!
August. 4. 2011
Commission for Architizer- shots of the Perot Museum as published.
The deck park is going to make this whole thing come alive, hopefully people will get out there to hang, once the triple digit heat leaves the city alone! All in good time, I guess!
za-koenji
August. 3. 2011
It’s the kind of day that I if I lived in Tokyo I would swoop up Suginami and hit up the Za Koenji Theatre in Tokyo by my very beloved
Toyo Ito. You won’t find a single square here, and that’s exactly what I crave somedays!
