Sunday, February 28, 2010

She said, "I dreamt I wore a Mulberry hat."
He said, "You should be a beginner to life always."
She said, "I prefer lilac, though."
He didn't say anything.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Juxtaposer™

IwillalignIwillattachIwilltouchIwillfeelIwillsmellIwillseeIwillhear
IamtheJuxtaposer™

Dhrupad "Nuances"

Yesterday was quite transcendental. I went for a lovely Dhrupad concert organised by my friend Yogesh in Ramakrishna Ashram, open air, under the moon. I am getting the flavour of this wonderful soul. Its like an open sea of the slightest nuances in voice. God bless India.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

As Much As You Can - C.P. Cavafy (The Canon)

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.


Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)


Thanks, J.
Bringing in the light through the back door,
Limiting the shift of the paper I tore.

Untangling the night from the timid sun,
Developing negatives on the run.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A day of strange serendipitous events...

About yesterday...
So, I got to Aum Cafe as usual in the morning. Marcela was there, her hearty laugh, her positivity, her all-black clothing. Such a wonderful happy soul. We chatted for a bit about this and that and then finally when she scribbled her full name on a piece of paper, I found it strange that her surname was Rossiter and the first four letters of her name Marc. So, who is Mark Rossiter? He is a very good friend of mine in Dubai. He was the protagonist of my film Look here, Kunigunda, back in 2006, all those mad black and white days in Dubai trying to jump off that corporate machine, those lonely days in Ogivly... I needed that outlet. Anyway, so we spoke of the possible genealogical connection and there was Ludwina there who apparently is a psycho-analyst which then made her interested in the film since the film is about the wonders of the subconscious mind. Somehow three of us were connected, informally, though "formally separate". So, they are coming over to watch LHK today...

In the evening, after a few j's and a cookie I made my way to Hayat to meet Gael and friends. I got there, we all connected, it was very peaceful, a few good laughs with Gael, spoke to his friends. I don't remember their names, though. I also had a lovely chat with Mohammed, the Jordanian who runs the restaurant and discussed his love for Oum Khalthoum, her beautiful voice, her different expressions of love, the soul in her music... Suddenly I got a text message from Mohanettan (Paris Mohan). He is dead broke, apparently vomitting blood, no food. Ten minutes later, Gael's friend asked me if I knew Paris Mohan since we were on the subject of tribal life and the films I made in Kerala. How strange. She knows Mohanettan quite well and we connected through that. I wonder how these things happen. Strange connections, funny grids, patterns, all merging into the universal one, the law of nature. Dharma, totality and beyond...

An Introductory Note

Just as industrialisation began to take over, Dara Okat began planting the seeds of Earth-Realisation, a 14-volume, 150,000-word document on the consideration and the understanding of our mother earth and the wonderful harmony of its existential elements. These detailed descriptions and handdrawn sketches of his artworks titled Schema-Livitus were displayed at the Okat Lab, circa 1955, and were conceived on a windy night in December when Okat was stranded at the Paris Convention on sustainable societies.

It was around this time he began with the conceptual drawings of Hinterland, a place, according to him, "for everyone and no one". Alongside he started writing his second full-length thesis on the emergence of a new consciousness. He titled this work The Psychograph of Dara Okat. In his initial studies and research, he developed the floating room where he conducted exhibitions and talks with imminent philosophers, activists, musicians, filmmakers and dancers. These sessions were documented by The Vision Controller in detail and an analysis of current scenarios was archived in analog and tape format at Arc-Eye.

Hinterland, figuratively defined as an area lying beyond what is visible and known, was a place that Okat saw as a collective of kindred spirits. The make-up ie fabric of their internal textures were cut from the same cloth. They wore Vision Controllers, a silly metaphor to the ever confined lives of the others, those in externalities and personalities. The essence of these things was baffling to the human eye. The island, the sun-eye, was the heart of Hinterland. People visited, walked the visceral path* (originally sketched by Dara Okat, circa 1950), bought the funny gadgets of H10,000/-, tried out the DaraOkatSubliminal T-shirts from Quro, sampled some fresh basil at Tea Tree, walked the "D" bridge cross Alpha Channel and unto the wildernests that followed.The Ellipses was the communion of three friends, film, music and architecture.

Tangent, sometimes also called Transition, was Okat's den. He projected messages from his ethereal room in the trees. He would come down dressed in a beautiful bear costume monkeying around looking for honey. These were the little signposts in his cave. His tavern, his carnival, his terra.

His remote-controlled channel Okat TV projected those flickering images of the cult superseries "The Moons of Randox 12". Those still images of a nape bearing the fruit of Okat's brain, the seeing eye. I wont forget those last hours we spent at Arc-eye sifting through videos and still images, analog feeds from The Vision Controller, a post-modern eye-videocamera that comes in three models - black, white and mirror. Discreetly becoming the nemesis of the seeing eye, the antithesis, the antagonist. Eyeless, yet witnessing everything, documenting everything, live feeds right into the nerve cells of the heart of Arc-Eye. That ginger tea Okat sent us at sunset was unforgettable. I wont forget the strawberry specially hand-picked by Okat, like he quietly sent us a bit of his energy, a sneak-peak of the oracle that he is. Kingsize.

Monday, February 22, 2010

I'm the sky's hidden tears, the sun's hidden fears...

disTEMPO

Click, clack, three-four, waltz shfting to a sevenish rhythm, breaking into a major vacuum, lost in Bflat minor, drifting over keys, aimless, like tip-toes on water, cling-cling tinkling, tip-top-tip-top, drop...
The second movement is a flutter, shifting to another mood, pulling the beat past time, before time, never in time, challenging the nature of things, aligning itself to the void, breaking the parameters of sound, sleeping in silence, awoken in the freshness of that warmsound, the sound of the new day. Apparently, the sun is up.
The leviathan of the outro, the enormity of the progression crushing like the hardwaves on rocks, forming clusters, plaza's and coves, the progression denotes a dip in the psychograph, a trough after a peak, a low after a high, lost in that last joint made with the night's unfriendly hands...
End-image appearinggg...

Fivefiveseven

Dead stov' on the ground
Right hand underground
Six two one oh! bound
Foundlostfoundlostfound

Break three in its knees
Head lost blown to squeeze
White mouse after cheese
Me's, you's, me's, you's, me's

Cry the pillow off the bed
Fight the fellow in my head
Kill the yellow in my red
Bite the hello in my bread

Sunday, February 21, 2010

A Pole
brought in
A December Soul Caught in November

Hinterland

Dot above the eyes
Sitting in tangent
Transmission,
Open.
Never shuts
Sees,
Never blinks,
Listens,
Never thinks,
Breathes.

Dot above the eye
Like the last sentence
In a seminal work
Existential and
in silent oneness with Her
Like a thoroughfare
Stretching out into a wistful dream

Dot above the eye
Placed like a door
Open door, oceandoor
Never shuts
Open,
Since the dawn of man.

You are here, we are open.
Like the dot above your eyes.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Possible Preface to "A Hopeless Man" by Nic Holas

Any2 for ribbed Shackle Toe?

Through the realms of Sardine Village;
From the burden of yesterday's meat defeat
comes "Swift AL" and his pointless and scattered collection of weapons, soft socks, branded folds, pre-smile jokes and not forgeTTing his / her partner in crime "BolloX McBollox" a deeply clean, clean shaven, beard of a twat.... See More

Together they work alone sorting through enormous, yet reportedly too expensiV to see "lost dead knee helicopters" with zero intent.

buTT it is that thYme of year when 89th Ventricle Street becomes the newest monster of aLL, so no wonder AmbiDextor IV is hanging about pining for his gorgeous wife with her 5.89 million nipples.

Yes, after careful farting with smelly bell shaped after meal grins, these wankers are best served with metal shaped poo from Mickey House.

Smell?

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Five, three, two

Five seconds later, five decembers back,
Five things on the bedside table,
Three switches to the right,
Aluminum conditioning, a repository of defeat,
Two words in my head, two colours in my bed,
Pulling the chord from the ceiling
...into the stages of my psyche.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

Tulips The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Time

Its 11:17, I have no idea what that means,
Its Wednesday, I have no idea what that means,
Its February, I have no idea what that means,
Its 2010, I have no idea what that means,
But I do know that...
Its the time for colour and a curious love, a time for corduroys, a time for elephants and turtles, a time for two R's, two N's, two L's, a time for a breathing heart.
I might know what this means.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

It has to begin somewhere, end somewhere.
Okat thinks, Okat lives, Okat says,
"Hinterland is everywhere, Hinterland is you. All you have to do is look."

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The Transmigration: Sunbirds (Wildlife analysis)

Step 1: Research

The sunbirds and spiderhunters are a family, Nectariniidae, of very small passerine birds. There are 132 species in 15 genera. The family is distributed throughout Africa, southern Asia and just reaches northern Australia. Most sunbirds feed largely on nectar, although they will also take insects, especially when feeding young. Fruit is also part of the diet of some species. Their flight is fast and direct on their short wings.

The sunbirds have counterparts in two very distantly related groups: the hummingbirds of the Americas and the honeyeaters of Australia. The resemblances are due to convergent evolution due to the similar nectar-feeding lifestyle. Some sunbird species can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird, but usually perch to feed.

The family ranges in size from the 5-gram Black-bellied Sunbird to the Spectacled Spiderhunter, at about 45 grams. Like the hummingbirds, sunbirds are strongly sexually dimorphic, with the males usually brilliantly plumaged in metallic colours. In addition to this the tails of many species are longer in the males, and overall the males are larger. Sunbirds have long thin down-curved bills and brush-tipped tubular tongues, both adaptations to their nectar feeding. The spiderhunters, of the genus Arachnothera, are distinct in appearance from the other members of the family. They are typically larger than the other sunbirds, with drab brown plumage that is the same for both sexes and long down-curved beaks.

Species of sunbirds that live in high altitudes will enter torpor while roosting at night, lowering their body temperature and entering a state of low activity and responsiveness.

Sunbirds are a tropical Old World family, with representatives in Africa, Asia and Australasia. In Africa they are found mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar but are also distributed in Egypt, in Asia the group occurs along the coasts of the Red Sea as far north as Israel, with a gap in their distribution till Iran, from where the group occurs continuously as far as southern China and Indonesia. In Australasia the family occurs in New Guinea, north eastern Australia and the Solomon Islands. They are generally not found on oceanic islands, with the exception of the Seychelles. The greatest variety of species is in Africa, where the group probably arose. Most species are sedentary or short-distance seasonal migrants. The sunbirds occur over the entirely of the family's range, whereas the spiderhunters are restricted to Asia.

The sunbirds and spiderhunters occupy a wide range of habitats, with a majority of species being found in primary rainforest, but other habitats used by the family including disturbed secondary forest, open woodland, open scrub and savannah, coastal scrub and alpine forest. Some species have readily adapted to human modified landscapes such as plantations, gardens and agricultural land. Many species are able to occupy a wide range of habitats from sea level to 4900 m.

Sunbird are active diurnal birds that generally occur in pairs or occasionally in small family groups. A few species occasionally gather in larger groups, and sunbird will join with other birds to mob potential predators, although sunbirds will also aggressively target other species, even if they are not predators, when defending their territories.

The Transmigration: Blue Jays (Wildlife analysis)

Step 1: Research

The Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is a passerine bird, and a member of the family Corvidae native to North America. It belongs to the "blue", Canadian or American jays, which are, among the Corvidae, not closely related to other jays. It is adaptable, aggressive and omnivorous, and has been colonizing new habitats for many decades.

The Blue Jay measures 22–30 cm (9–12 in) from bill to tail and weighs 70–100 grams (2.47–3.53 oz), with a wingspan of 34–43 cm (13–17 in). There is a pronounced crest on the head, a crown of feathers, which may be raised or lowered according to the bird's mood. When excited or aggressive, the crest may be fully raised. When frightened, the crest bristles outwards, brushlike. When the bird is feeding among other jays or resting, the crest is flattened to the head.

Its plumage is lavender-blue to mid-blue in the crest, back, wings, and tail, and its face is white. The underside is off-white and the neck is collared with black which extends to the sides of the head. The wing primaries and tail are strongly barred with black, sky-blue and white. The bill, legs, and eyes are all black. Males and females are nearly identical except that males are slightly larger.

As with other blue-hued birds, the Blue Jay's coloration is not derived by pigments, but is the result of light interference due to the internal structure of the feathers; if a blue feather is crushed, the blue disappears as the structure is destroyed. This is referred to as structural coloration.

Blue Jays have strong black bills used for cracking nuts, and acorns and for eating corn, grains and seeds, although they also eat insects such as beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars.

Blue Jays can make a large variety of sounds, and individuals may vary perceptibly in their calling style. Like other corvids, they may learn to mimic human speech. Blue Jays can also copy the cries of local hawks so well that it is sometimes difficult to tell which it is. Their voice is typical of most jays in being varied, but the most commonly recognized sound is the alarm call, which is a loud, almost gull-like scream. There is also a high-pitched jayer-jayer call that increases in speed as the bird becomes more agitated.This particular call can be easily confused with the chick-a-dee's song because of the slow starting chick-ah-dee-ee. Blue Jays will use these calls to band together to mob potential predators such as hawks and drive them away from the jays' nests.

Blue Jays also have quiet, almost subliminal calls which they use among themselves in proximity. One of the most distinctive calls of this type is often referred to as the "rusty pump" owing to its squeaky resemblance to the sound of an old hand-operated water pump. The Blue Jay (and other corvids) are distinct from all other songbirds for using their call as a birdsong.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Dial-Ogh

p.s.H.:
Did Yu hear about the man who was born with a shoe for a mind?
Well, for a while his best friend, Arnold "the", thought it 0.9% hilarious to pile on loads of weight to his 2 foots. No one will EVER know how this took place, but after 10.46 years in social solitude his 2 foots got so large (or extra big) that they becam...e "mind". He combined both 2 foots into one convenient mind and within this mind he placed his shoe. It became his mind.

The Vision Controller:
Mind then took a walk (with his mindless feet) to the otherside of the galaxy. He was so disappointed when all he could see were clones of himself, but badly reproduced, made in taiwan clones selling for six quid. Alas, he thought to himself, and retreated into the unbecoming glaziers in south of france. He was 4.6% less happier than he was initially...