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
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…
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.
look here
February. 15. 2011
I love how the sculptural lines twirl around, breaking up the frame…ahh the beauty of a sunlit facade and its collision with art!
If I was the DMA I would make postcards out of this one.
snow grey and black
February. 1. 2011
I hear snow’s on its way…
silver beach
January. 15. 2011
Might be because I’m a sailor’s daughter, but I don’t care how many beaches I’ve seen, standing at the foot of the sky with an endless expanse of water is always elating.
Beaches have always been summer things for me, until I saw the snow come in close to the water, and turn the sand silver. It helps the sand soak in the clouds and the whole thing gleams…
I will always remember making this picture: my sister waiting far behind, hiding from the sub zero wind-chill around lake Michigan, my fingers numb, and my stuffed hoodie getting in my eyes as i struggled to find the shutter and wheels with those frozen fingers.
A picture, is so much more than a picture.
“We are all creatures of our memory” said Frank Welch on a sunnier afternoon to me, and I know that pictures to me are the language of my memory; thought, feeling and emotion swim in me together.
Therein probably lie the origin of my love affair with photography- browsing through fat piles of family albums and remembering through the years, feeling my ways back in time, constructing, dreaming…
down the road Ak, this one will surface too…winter beaches, sunlight, my sister’s shadow and I- set up for good pictures right there- below or above zero.
blue red and white
January. 13. 2011
handsome red barn on a frigid snow day…
it isn’t strange that wandering brings restfulness to the restless.
seasons
June. 12. 2010
summer
into
fall
into
winter then
spring
through hints
of
lives lived in
rain and snow and mist
in between
there’s this wall in Oak Cliff…so delightful I could make a series outta this one.
Someone wants a season calendar, right?
winter tree
March. 6. 2010
still wandering in a cemetery in Austin.
I used to draw these naked leafless trees for a pretty long stretch growing up. They just kept coming out.
I was sorting through shadows usually encountered later- it was an insulated search though, and I remember my mother and her mother both asking me what was wrong, why I leaned towards these symbols of desolation…
…all while I was just looking at beauty.
fountainplace
March. 4. 2010
I was tempted to straighten the zebra crossing and make it level, but this picture is also about motion…I love love love this elevation of Fountainplace. Without a doubt, one of my favourite skyscrapers, anywhere.
I’d wanted to take these pictures for so long, I stood shivering waiting for the light…
shade
February. 28. 2010
sun, shade and colour on a crisp winter afternoon…the rust just makes it better.
under an ancient fire stair…hugging a facade.
Ma
January. 21. 2010
…a languorous December afternoon and a moment of ease-
here it is
Time, stolen in the kothi at Agra and kept forever:
woven cots with wooden legs, traces of water come and gone, baby Krishna peeking from the window-
and the languid refusal to drift along
often it
feels like the remnant of some ancient era:
she is my shadow and sunshine
white
January. 9. 2010
and I thought:
“Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be…”
-Browningdelicate white winter morning in London….that’s not snow on the ground
earth wind and sky
October. 8. 2009
can you smell the grass, feel the sun and hear the wind?
snow
October. 4. 2009
waiting on a train in a cold cold Chicago winter
