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.
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
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:
mytimemachineisyourtimemachine
September. 16. 2010
look up.
breathedrift with me through the time sky
my time machine is your time machine
my eyes like yours
parse through eons
gathering tales from infinity in whispers
can you hear?
did you know when we were?
does it matter?
but-
who can grasp the expanse of the universe?
but-
who can refuse to try?
…long exposure, looking up from the Koibab Forest up at the Grand Canyon rim before the descent.
A not-so-stellar-stellar shot, but not bad for a first, right?
Thank you Cole Rise: antimethod, for a shot of confidence. At least it made me try…
the heart of the matter
September. 13. 2010
Depths of my spirit, for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.”
-Khalil Gibraan (A Tear and a Smile)
The heart of the matter has always been here. I knew it when I learned of its existence….and then it made sense. Of course it did- it’s where we came from, and I had to go to it.
The Grand Canyon has haunted me since memory- even when I lived on the other side of the planet, surrounded by no one and nothing that had any connection to it, it was like a given.
In everything I do, I seek understanding- the bigger picture, the bigger picture. An obsession that keeps instigating wandering- very precious to me. The heart of the Canyon had to be a stop in the journey. It would be the place that hurt my soul to leave….and it did. Something of my spirit lies in that river, in the red rocks I lust after- it must, because the tears are streaming down my face still.
Every step of the journey was surreal. I kept trying to trace the source of this craving- it is so far removed from the life I come from- the roots of my lineage that wind around the Indian subcontinent in simple minded, earthen folks; our Vasant Kunj flat that I grew up in in the heart of Delhi…Delhi, where most are consumed by survival, amid the bustling humdrum of life lived in sensory explosion….to here; to rocks, and yearning and joy and pain.
Here I was. I was here.
I still can’t believe I touched it. Or rather, that it touched me…this magnanimous space chiseled by the ebb and flow of time and water. One look up- the history of our planet carved and on display. Swallow that, it says to me- and I struggle to digest.
When the climb got really rough, I found myself singing “we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…” just like my mother had taught me…back when I had just learned to speak and words flowed into each other, sometimes amalgamating their meanings into residual feelings, that I still remember.
Funny thing about that canyon- distracted by your desperation to understand its heart, you stumble upon the heart of your matter.
models of the solar system
August. 31. 2010
Resonance- its a rare and beautiful thing…for years I’ve been in love with a poem by a classmate from Andrei Codrescu’s poetry class- back when he played puppet-master and I was tied to Anne Sexton….oooh! the fire there!
I only remembered parts of it- which I quickly jotted down so I wouldn’t forget- and pieced into the beginning of my portfolio.
Carolyn Chun sent me the whole poem this evening, and what is beautiful must be shared, so here it is in all its glory…
models of the solar system
1.12.07
cbcfrom her cordoned window,
a girl observed in the night sky a lunar eclipse,
a round shadow cast by a round planet.begin. premise: perfection. to this end symmetry
of form, elegance of rhythm. centrality of perception.
concentric spheres: earth inside the sphere containing
the orbit of the moon, inside the sphere containing
the orbit of Mercury, then Venus, the sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn, all inside the sphere containing the
fixed stars. beyond the stars heaven, purgatory, hell,
eternity pulled taut in every direction (breathe into it).what’s the expiration date on this? better use up the
ground beef before it goes bad. the Vidalias
in the bottom drawer have begun to rot—why
did we get so many? why did you leave? strange—again. premise: perfection. to this end alignment
of observation with intuition. Copernicus’ heliocentric
model, in which circular orbits are unchanging, moving
forward and backwards in time to encompass eternity with
each gently sweeping revolution of round shouldered planet.how long can I believe in the perfect circles?
roundfaced moon, center of a Black-Eyed Susan,
zero’s empty circle, ripe orange circle—expiring
in the crisper. wasn’t infinity better to hold on to?
the circle drawn in the sand? the circular stones
falling from hands? and you, my prodigal circle.again. premise: perfection. to this end simplicity of
practice. Keppler’s elliptical orbits describe the winding
solar system.but what has been always and will be always are
clear—the fixed orbits, from periapsis to apoapsis,
eyes meeting and then moving away. what has the
ability to hold you except the universe? what is your
trajectory besides momentum? what keeps you
burning—do you know I am sometimes awake all night?again. premise: perfection. to this end completeness
of thought. Einstein’s general relativity bending of
spacetime. the flavor of unification, the taste of food
consumed in a dream. what can we do? how can we
know this is true? the universe, we are told, is
expanding at an increasing rate into dark cold unknown.
that beautiful sea. that endless night. unquenched drowning.-Carolyn Chun
wabi-sabi
July. 23. 2010
In third year of arch school I drew the Ise Shinto Shrines in Ise, Japan for an investigative study. I kept trying to capture the form and compose the drawing just-so, but it took a while…to understand the faith, and then delineate it honestly, was a very enjoyable challenge.
wabi-sabi in Japanese translates into imperamanence…the transient, cyclical order of life death and rebirth/renewal in nature.
They disassemble the whole temple complex every 20 years and rebuild an exact replica of it on the adjacent plot of land so that the shrines are neither new nor old.
I guess that makes them timeless.
There you have it- one elegant way of suspending the wheels of time, or at least taming them to your tune…
The drawing is pen on vellum with an underlay of graphite shadows…and the composition portrays the order inherent in the subject at hand…tracing footsteps of the solid-void relationship these spatial carvings leave in the forests of Ise.
This year, I hope to see these shrines in person….to smell and touch the forest, and relish the carpentry- the ancient, immaculate, economy of this wood craft that has withstood everything from eroding belief systems to shattering earthquakes.
October will bring Japanese adventures, stay tuned for pictures…more about that later!
ando
March. 27. 2010
Ando in a nutshell
I love that all things possess a shadow and a reflection…and they’re both such different things…
[The Modern Museum, Fort Worth]
and the odds are…
November. 15. 2009
Everyone has a favourite number. I’m partial to probability- and its counterpart- improbability;
I wonder who you are reading these musings of mine…this blog has 754 hits- so someone’s reading these snippets of my mind. What do you think/feel when you see/read?
The odds of you being here out of our 6 billion fellow humans make you rather special- to me.
Throw in the fact that we don’t know each other- if there is more than one degree of separation between us, you’re even more special!
If you think about it, everyday events and the banality of life seem rather miraculous. Existence aside, random collisions in both space and thought are so very improbable!
Oh well- I’ll just say thanks- for sharing thoughts and discovering this little piece of virtual space I call my own.
