still not the stuff we are made of
January. 31. 2012
Revisiting an old post from September 15th 2009…two years older transcendence still evades, but the sorcery is ever more delightful.
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
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.
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 }
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-
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.”
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?
being and becoming
July. 29. 2011
[Sunyata : acrylic, watercolor + waterproof ink on woodboard]
ahh the splendor of physicality! this
spellbound atomic breakdown
simultaneous particulate collision, see I only just came alive-
consciousness no more than chemical reaction?
dimensions wrapped within dimensions
existence smiles, experiencing itself
as you in me in me in you- I
trace my being through the ovals of your eyes
past the outermost of orbits
and seep again, into the void
falling up
July. 7. 2011
and staring into the whirlwind atmosphere at 27,000 feet
she almost fell upwards, head on the ground (fast dissipating) and feet in the clouds
there was nowhere to go but up, and she had no fear of falling
and there is much to be said about that.
in defense of the tortoise
June. 18. 2011
One of my many nicknames over long loving years was “khargosh” which translates to “rabbit” from Hindi…courtesy my madre. Earned because I have always moved fast, though I’m sure my baby “bunny teeth” had something to do with it too…
Even so, I know the pleasures of slowing down…see, you can stop time. Because it is, all so relative.
Here’s the original text before the cutting board in case you wondered:
In Defense of the Tortoise
There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I caught myself trying to skip ahead of an elderly gentleman as we both approached the door to a lunch stop. I wasn’t consciously trying to beat him to the door, but my instinct was to hurry in and hurry out. Catching myself, I wondered whether the 30 seconds I would save were really worth challenging a 70-year-old, and I slowed down. And that decision allowed me to allow him to hold the door open for me. It was a small pause, so worth taking.
I know I’m an accomplice in the perpetual chase of deadlines and superlatives. I’m just not sure how or when I, or we as a civilization, agreed to be ruled by the chase where the ubiquitous motto seems to be “more + bigger + newer + faster = better.”
I once saw an advertisement for “fast yoga” on the door of a fitness center. Call me old school Indian, but that reads like an oxymoron. That aside, it seemed to fit with the kind of life we have created here.
That dynamic may be at work as you read this newspaper. Scanning constitutes reading to most; we want news stories told in the first two sentences, TV sports formatted to our limited attention spans, movies to get to the point already and clicks to respond instantaneously. We have become so impatient that even flying (you know, soaring above the miles you would otherwise need to walk or drive) seems tedious and prolonged. Where will this mindset collapse? Are we programming an entire society to develop ADD?
In a series of interesting studies conducted by Harvard, MIT and National Geographic on longevity and happiness, science confirms what Patanjali knew 2000 years ago, i.e. the physical and mental benefits of meditation and slowing down. Of particular interest to me are molecular biologist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard’s research and explanations of the subject; some have called him the happiest man in the world. He isn’t on the fast track to anything.
Stress, it turns out, directly affects your lifespan, shaving those years off the tail end. And, one doesn’t need a study to confirm how stress destroys happiness- just think about how happy you were the last time your heart was palpitating madly, palms sweating, mind racing in panic mode.
Though it’s nice to see the global slow movement catching on (slowly, at least), it worries me that we live in a time and place where that needs to be codified. Slowing down every day, enough to harness self-awareness and control, is a base ingredient of happiness. And that happens to be the motive behind the entire drama in the first place, right?
I once heard Amit Goswami, an astute physicist, sum it up best. “Do, be, do, be, do!” he said, eyes gleaming. “You can’t do do do, or be be be.” You just have to balance your inner tortoise and hare.
elemental
June. 14. 2011
thinking in charcoal for an imagined bath house…
i have about a thousand charcoal sketches of the frigidarium, tepidarium, caladarium, you-name-it-arium lying around dying to be scanned, or better yet, built.
song for the earth
April. 22. 2011
Happy Earth Day! Rain it is you, my soil that I crave even here around the bends of this faceted world where edges seem sharper than some I have known, I listen to rain seep through your furrows my ears to your parched skin and my breathing with it in unison I cannot, but love you for your breath was my beginnings
you’re a good man charlie darwin!
April. 9. 2011
It’s nice to stir the pot once in a while.
I am happy to bite the bullet on behalf of those battling similar claustrophobia in these parts. Thanks for reading, for your supportive words, and for keeping your hearts and minds open! I’ve never enjoyed checking my inbox more…
before becoming
March. 7. 2011
from the same morning enroute Delhi to Agra…in search of an ancestry as good as dead.
before becoming
remember, love? the
taste
of a young winter morning
before becoming [remembering]
sifting through strangeness
of gold weighted air
through
cotton webs of memory-
crisscrossing through power lines
my
long walks to the convent, I
carved
forgotten trails through foothills
little feet swayed by giant imaginings
mist on my tongue
it, seeps through my
hungry pores and, now
cleanses
not broken
February. 23. 2011
I swallowed my awe and curled my toes in the cold sand, gazing at the flats and the darkness beyond, reflected at dawn…
had the story begun thus, would you ever have guessed what this photo really is? A crystalline landsape on a Monday morning windshield…sometimes, the trick is to relish the beauty buried in the mundane. I could write a whole story rooted in that one imaginary encounter here.
A most unusual, yet fitting way to understand happiness surfaced today:
“When we give in the world what we want the most,
we heal the broken part inside each of us.”
-Eve Ensler (of the Vagina Monologues)
something beautiful always exists, you see: broken, or not broken.
blood black roses
February. 14. 2011
sometimes I think everything that ever needs saying was said by Neruda.{ Happy Valentine's Day }
not alone
January. 25. 2011
…but of course!
“Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.” -Viktor Frankl
time space and i
December. 27. 2010
in the end, i may just be a colorist. colour, it has spoken to me always, and i have learned to listen.
have you ever pondered the extents of the universe?
its lines, its breadth, its breaths, its seeping through your being?
ever questioned the nature of existence? the lack of a beginning, the lack of an end?
“Time,” I read in Yogic texts “is nothing but a modification of the mind.”
Ironically, I’m going to be thinking about that a long long time.
Mostly in colours….
