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
I am steel and concrete.
“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
marfa window
September. 7. 2011
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!
morphosis
July. 31. 2011
Just got off Woodall Rogers Freeway, shooting the Perot Museum of Science and Nature for Architizer after an exhilarating adventure, treading the highway and feeling cars swooshhh past my tripod!
Something about the first shot reminds me of the quarries Edward Burtynsky’s often shoots…except the delineation of chiseled form is so much more controlled…more photographic adventures ahead, as this beautiful beast comes alive.
My photographs are up on architizer’s website, so enjoy some Morphosis if you will, and send me some lovings on www.facebook.com/studioish!
Like this:
being and becoming
July. 29. 2011
[Shunyata : acrylic, watercolor + waterproof ink on brown particle board]
ahhh the splendour of physicality! this
spellbound atomic breakdown
simultaneous particulate collision
see, I
only just came alive
consciousness no more than chemical reaction?
from singularities to Turing’s labs
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
wheel on wheel, steel on steel
July. 17. 2011
on the 17th of July 967 John Coltrane died and waking up to a lazy Sunday this morning, listening to Violets for Your Furs, I wonder if his last thought was a hum…
this poem runs through my head often, and my tongue enjoys the assonance…so listen, listen to the Coltrane roll…
In Memoriam John Coltrane
Listen to the coal
rolling, rolling through the cold
steady rain, wheel on
wheel, listen to the
turning of the wheels this night
black as coal dust, steel
on steel, listen to
these cars carry coal, listen
to the coal train roll.
-Michael Stillman (1972)
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.
Like this:
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.
the thing about the sea
June. 10. 2011
I am my family’s self proclaimed memory keeper, even though I arrived last.
This is Daddy and Aku at the beach, in a world where I didn’t exist, photographed by my very young mother. It’s a strange thought- the world without you in it- perhaps because no memory of it has survived in the stories we are become…even so, it seems to stay afloat whether we drift in or out
I think she was scared of the ocean, even wrapped in a sailor’s arms. So it looks to me they just stood there a while, toes in the sand. And that’s the kind of father mine is. Patient, and ever so gentle, he may just be kindness personified.
Happy coming birthday, Ak…we’re all missing you on it already : )
“The thing about the sea, it’s bigger than you and me,”
goes this beautiful new track, local artists Hope Trust’s throw me overboard
all i want to be
June. 6. 2011
you know…as opposed to, not-
still
May. 28. 2011
“the password is books…speak easy,” he said.
reflection
May. 20. 2011
still can’t get over the show…what a gorgeous walk in the clouds
