When the phantasmagoric heart begins sending you visuals of your soul, catch it and articulate everything in poetry, visuals and sound. The illustrations rich with that sunset-edge, defeating the purpose of the mundaneness of constant striving...
Benaras, back to here and now, life and death, side-by-side, like lost friends meeting again by the river...

The River (Polly Jean Harvey)

And they came to the river
And they came from the road
And he wanted the sun
Just to call his own
And they walked on the dirt
And they walked from the road
'Til they came to the river
'Til they came up close

Throw your pain in the river
Throw your pain in the river
Leave your pain in the river
To be washed away slow

And we walked without words
And we walked with our lives
Two silent birds circled by

Like a pain in the river
And the pain in the river
And the white sun scattered
Washed away this snow

And we followed the river
And we followed the road
And we walked through this land
And we called it a home
But he wanted the sun
And I wanted the whole
And the white light scatters
And the sun sets low

Like a pain in the river
Like a pain in the river
Like a white light scatters
To be washed away slow

Like a pain in the river
Like a pain in the river
Like the way life scattered
To be washed away slow

When under ether

----

Dashal, Himachal Pradesh, Oct, 10

----

The silence that broke the noise was a violet-green on her eyelid as it made the great journey into ether and then all the surrounding space, bringing a sort of peace and closure on the inherent stillness that is the essence of us petty humans. Its nocturnary now, the owls are making their appearances on the trees looking at the moon and wondering about patterns and pictures, the wildernests of our earliest subconscious mentalities...ingrained like cups of rice...harvest in full bloom.

Now, the winter has arrived to bring a sort of whiteness into the hearts of us Himachali's metaphorically through snow. The illusion of black on white, now wiped clean, like a clean slate waiting for a new word or a drawing of a bird perched on a tree.

Dream Brother (Jeff Buckley)

There is a child sleeping near his twin
The pictures go wild in a rush of wind
That dark angel he is shuffling in
Watching over them with his black feather wings unfurled

The love you lost with her skin so fair
Is free with the wind in her butterscotch hair
Her green eyes blew goodbyes
With her head in her hands
and your kiss on the lips of another
Dream Brother, with your tears scattered round the world.

Don't be like the one who made me so old
Don't be like the one who left behind his name
'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine
And nobody ever came...

I feel afraid and I call your name
I love your voice and your dance insane
I hear your words and I know your pain
Your head in your hands and her kiss on the lips of another
Your eyes to the ground
and the world spinning round forever
Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over...

PS. Was walking back, the moon was full power staring at the mountains, the snow was a brilliant white, shining back... :)

Epiphany

Jai Rumsu Devata and then Snow.
A white Vashisht.
An important day.

Sky over 11

On. All systems go. Hinterland is home.

Excerpt: Ardh Satya

Chakravyuh mein ghusne se pehle,
kaun tha mein aur kaisa tha,
yeh mujhe yaad hi na rahega.
Chakravyuh mein ghusne ke baad,
mere aur chakravyuh ke beech,
sirf ek jaanleva nikat’ta thi,
iska mujhe pata hi na chalega.
Chakravyuh se nikalne ke baad,
main mukt ho jaoon bhale hi,
phir bhi chakravyuh ki rachna mein
farq hi na padega.
Marun ya maarun,
maara jaoon ya jaan se maardun.
iska faisla kabhi na ho paayega.
Soya hua aadmi jab
neend se uthkar chalna shuru karta hai,
tab sapnon ka sansar use,
dobara dikh hi na paayega.
Us roshni mein jo nirnay ki roshni hai
sab kuchh s’maan hoga kya?
Ek palde mein napunsakta,
ek palde mein paurush,
aur theek taraazu ke kaante par
ardh satya.

----

Before entering the circle of deceit, who I was, and what I was, I would not remember. After entering the circle of deceit, (there was) between me and the circle, only a deathly intimacy that I never realized. After leaving the circle of deceit, even if I am set free, the design of the circle of deceit, will hardly be different. Whether I kill, or die, am killed or kill (the other) these questions will never be decided. When a sleeping man awakes and steps forth, then the world of dreams may never be seen again (by him). In that, the light of Decision, will everything be level? On one tray (of balance) is impotence, and on the other is Manhood, and exactly at the needle point, a half-truth.

----

From a scene in the film "Ardh Satya". Written by Vijay Tendulkar. The image emerged because of S's WH Auden poem... so makes for good accidental poem tennis.

The Labyrinth

Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperment for getting on.

The hundreth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.

"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in minature.

Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?

All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.

Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?

Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.

His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.

The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.

My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.

If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.

All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."

Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.

The real living, breathing, seeing Hinterland becomes a possibility.
Today. :) Purpose, finally. Purple. Its all purple in this blue in green, colours collaborating, artists collaborating, phases of colour with Reich's score on top, the seeds are sown, the intagibility of the fruit is like the brook's morning raga...

Girl (Soil, Himachal Pradesh)

Blue in green, nature with the intervention of mankind, brought to life in Soil. Of those extravagant moments in a time out of time, lapsed in a momentary unconvention, breaking the little metallic pieces of our snazzy homes, the twinkle in her eye brought back time...and then brought back hope. Time to come home...

Hearts Adjacent

Shot through the Fog
Breaking Winter up by shooting numbers from the clock/The cat sleeps on the atlas in Alsace Lorraine, dreaming long grass and birds on the wire/I have memories no deeper than this glass and some besides that stretch history twice/In a super 8 film colour haze, a scratched nostalgia that runs through my cogs - shot through the fog; time taking care of whatever I cared about/ So you are lost somewhere in here - your body, a raft,spinning towards the falls/Your death claimed me too - there were two throats in the noose but mine now swallows whiskey, mine is not now bruised/The black mouth of this month, bruised lips, black ice, forms a sickly smile across London's sky.
----
Certainty
There are more people alive now than have ever lived - I read that somewhere and instantly thought it impossible but if it were to be true, I wonder that, if we keep living this fast, no-one will have time to die/I've met people whose lovers died in war and I've wondered what this helplessness could be like - one minute there's a whole life entwined with yours and the next, just a space and scattered clues/When I watch old films in which animals appear, I get sad because those animals are certainly dead now - and that certainty prompts my private epitaph and I have to say it out loud : "That dog is dead, that cat is dead, that horse is dead..."
----
Piano Magic, a wonderful new discovery.

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Animated Poetry

Start. Point the six lines to an arrow, bring the curtain down with a flame insignia at the centre, point of kilter, the name of the sound is given to the blade of grass, that cosmic messenger, our hearts pointing heavenwards, like trees waiting for some sort of sign from a being that can only speak and understand Visra, the language of the dead. They came with dafoodils on their collars, pelicans in their wallets and white hinterlands in their hearts, they looked for a home, they looked for a refuge in the hills, and those autumn-time tea's on the verandah looking at the Himalayas without perspective.

The Probability of an Epiphany. Cues - Joy, Charlie, the age of aquarius, once in twelve years, the remergence of If and its infinite possibilities, India Fraterna, Improbable Fire, Instant Friendship, Impermanent Feedback, Idiot Face, Imperceptible Future, Ishtaaq Firoha, dot dot dot. Really...how weird all this is, the way life moves and time moves always revealing new shapes and colours, new probabilities, new failures and new hope. Its the age of aquarius, I am connected in a lunar sort of way into the whole once-in-twelve-year's epiphany-thing. Which road, which path, which way forward, why which, why how, why when?

The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

The Amphibian

And ten more kollisions for 10.10.10. / p

Accent of Time

The quirky world of Gemma Correll.

None in words.

VS Arts declares...

VS Arts opening his heart (art) out in protest to the common declarations by scientists the world over, about the world getting over. He declared that the earth will continue to live on and on and we could go visit him and his stall of paintings in Vashisht in 2013. Its his guarantee. How he spoke on camera, theatric denouements thrown in for effect, silences, those eyes looking away to Sai (as he cleans the xillum). It came as no surprise that I am now in the heartland, Hinterland is omnipresent, visceral, like the soul's last look back at the illusory world of the mind. It was 11.10, then, its 12.12 now.

Circular Inconsistency, Vashisht

Life is back. Vulnerability is back. Inconsistency is back.

More Kollisions

Look here, K.
And today I dedicate the Kollisions to M, for her wonderful spirit, for the stories she told me today, for that constant shaking of her ponytail, her ragas, her showdown with a gay Hitler-fanatic, that punchline, the beers at Satya's, remembering Athlete and Trading Air, those moments later at her place listening to the wonderful Kalapini Komkali, her stories in New York, her two weeks of magic, my one week of magic, how cosmically it all came together, one day before I leave for the hills.

Eyeless

Lyric - Slipknot

And then there were those things, the other things, the things of the mind, the nothings of the heart, the camera-tilt of the supereye, the threadless machine we once called Industry, that white-lining on the satin that never untangles from its source, that limitless light within a drop of water, the rain pouring down for ten seconds, and the water looking at the sun in macrovision remembering the moon's sudden disappearance in the last four days of summer...

The hills come rolling this time of the year. :)

Life is too short to wait for things that might never come.

XX1008

It is never easy to put words to what is essentially a subterranean process, or to speak about my work as though I am separate from it. To me, the act of creating these works is a process of evolution, a process that I go through along with the materials I use. And I use the word evolution, not in a linear sense of development, or progress, but as a tangled process that involves chaos, contradictions, emotional fluctuations, transformations and tangential leaps.

Is deterioration as beautiful a process as creation?
Is reality less real than artifice?
Is chaos the perfect symmetry?
Does death point a knowing finger at life?
What does a malignant bloom look like?

I go in search of the answers to these questions, and my sculptures are born along the way. - Sakshi Gupta
---
I'm enjoying the inconsistency of Sakshi Gupta's wonderful art.

01.10.10

A good start to 10.10. Today I think of the minds limited ways as opposed to the hearts unlimited ways, like that duality in nature, the consistency of the seas as opposed to the inconsistency of the hills. Its 01.10.10. Consistency of the clock throwing everything else out of balance.

Sans Soleil (Opening Shot)

The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I'll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don't see happiness in the picture, at least they'll see the black.