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!
look up, look out
November. 2. 2011
as the snow flashes by…
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…
fluid mechanics
May. 20. 2011
leaving storm clouds behind, flying west at dusk…like flying through a series of the wildest brushstrokes-
add the bonus of bonding with 26D and 26E, and you have one helluva trip-
thanks matt and seth for stellar in-flight shenanigans!
roadshine
May. 12. 2011
the rain came down last night to kiss the parched ground…its beauty so persuasive, it made the asphalt glow golden
ahem…that, and Oak Cliff really needs some road makeovers!
[Shot true color by the way: no sepia-ing in photoshop- the evening did it for me]
rainshine
May. 12. 2011
The most gorgeous dusk followed summer rain yesterday- it pulled me out of my house and brought me alive
bernini
February. 9. 2011
restfulness in bernini shade…
Rupinder, I remember making me repeat in studio, “Columns are beautiful things.”
inspiron # 1
February. 5. 2011
Ode to Nikola Tesla. Numero Uno.Prints available in Yellow or Red for the nerd boy in my life.
I think one of the biggest flaws of the world we live in today, is our set of constructed values as a race on the verge of unprecedented technological breakthroughs…
There seems to be a fascination with ‘genius,’ even if disconnected entirely with the emotional, human and spiritual intelligence. And we celebrate feats of the human mind often with complete disregard to their implications upon the human spirit. I have always argued the two are inseparable, and have subsequently found it disappointingly hard to truly, honestly, heroize and draw inspiration from the most celebrated of minds.
Sometimes it seems necessary to compartmentalize respect in order to have heroes, because most of them would predictably turn out to have some Shakespearean tragic flaw, which would inevitably be justified as being a facet of their very humanity. And I am not one to compartmentalize.
Still, through the eons since the dawn of time, there have been spirits who have overcome the disconnects and reveled in their own spiritual humanities- gifting their world, and its inheritors, their creative prowess, surely disturbed, yet still unperturbed by the resistance of their more stifled human counterparts.
When I encounter a “genius,” I ask, ” does s/he have a backbone?” And the answer changes everything.
Their stories trickle down to me strained through the webs of time, but I am still here to celebrate their beauty. My list is not long, but it is solid, and recently has a new addition : Nikola Tesla.
Hopefully, you will go off and investigate his story, and when you do, you will find in it instances of more than just a superpowered brain- glimpses into his strong, resplendent heart. He once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of a desert. That’s still a record in 2011 because the blueprints of the mechanics were embedded in his head. And then he spoke of peace, saving pigeons, vegetarianism and equality for women.
He died broke and unrecognized, as is to be expected. But two thousand people showed up for his funeral. That’s the human factor I guess-
The Tesla quote on the poster I have made says: ”We begin to think cosmically” because that, really makes all the difference.
sentry
November. 22. 2010
You can barely decipher his silhouette in camouflage.
Wonder if he guards the building or its merchandise…
tangled
October. 3. 2010
Sometimes life can get so tangled up that unwinding seems out of reach, doesn’t it? But then you always get out of it and find your feet. The art of grounding, I call it.
For the past couple of summers, we’ve gotten in the habit of hauling out to a friend’s aunt’s ranch-house in east-jesus-no-where: the middle of hill country. Somehow, the summer feels more languid when you live in a place where your mailbox is 2 miles away.
My idea of luxury is not money and things, but time…easy mornings…living at my own pace.
This is a corner of Aunt June’s house, on a cool summer night. When I shot it I wished the web was more complete- prefect, symmetrical, eye candy-ish…in retrospect, I’m glad it wasn’t.
Did you know spider-webs are stronger than steel?
experiments in light
October. 3. 2010
reflection, refraction, prismatic dispersal, chromatic aberration….physics is such a turn on- just take a look!
el diablo
September. 29. 2010
…from a crisp winter evening what feels like years ago, but wasn’t…
Shadows are beautiful things.
oh inverted world!
September. 24. 2010
home
September. 7. 2010
all journeys begin at home….before you start chasing the light
celebration!
September. 7. 2010
there’s this red barn in the middle of hill country, texas…all lit up with wedding lights celebrating Lyndsay + Brian’s wedding! Congraaaaaats people!
a hella good time!
i loves youuu
August. 11. 2010
so, so much.
painted outside Jo’s cafe- out the front door of Austin Motel…makes me wanna grab a spray can mah self!
the man with the hat
June. 10. 2010
Photo shoots like this one are the highs of photo-journalism…
the coming together of things:
my love
for people/character/art/ architecture/ photography/ wandering/ doing/ making/ learning/
and sunlight
Meet Frank Welch.
If you haven’t heard of him you should look him up here.
To say he has moulded the shape of regional modernism here in Texas may be an inadequate beginning…the man with the hat has switched them out often.
His collected photography can be found here.
Look for my Profile interview with him in the next issue of COLUMNS!
horizon
May. 17. 2010
consider it art from art…took a day out in the Texas countryside this weekend
the storms never came-
years ago, my poetic boss sent me this poem…it’ll make you fall in love with Billy Collins if the title of the book didn’t already- it’s from The Art of Drowning.
Horizon
You can use the brush of a Japanese monk
or a pencil stub from a race track.
As long as you draw the line a third
the way up from the bottom of the page,
the effect is the same: the world suddenly
divided into its elemental realms.
A moment ago there was only a piece of paper.
Now there is earth and sky, sky and sea.
You were sitting alone in a small room.
Now you are walking in the heat of a vast desert
or standing on the ledge of a winter beach
watching the light on the water, light in the air.
-Billy Collins [the art of drowning]
at the drive in
May. 9. 2010
nostalgia for something I have no memory of-
some fragment of my idea of Americana in this
silhouetted boy watching a movie from the roof of a truck
