Moti, Kathy & Lamo: Friends from Zenpark

What a wonderful day. Moments captured out of time in the realm of that superhuman Kundalini power. Five senses, five elements, plugged in, uncoiled - open environment. I watched "The Bear" with a little 6-year old boy called Lamo. His father is Iranian and his mother is half-Polish/half-German. Shiva-power all the way, what a jam. Friends straightaway like some karmic connection mercurial wheel. Later I met Lamo's father and mother. What a family. Part of the absolute, just being part of that pure consciousness, that earth, that timeless personal denouement juxtaposed with the sky, the earth, the stars and the sea. Free spirits part of no cliche, part of no society, just wanderers tasting the earth, feeling the air, living in Gokharna sometimes, sometimes in Hrishikesh, sometimes in Vashisht. Anywhere is home as long as nature is in control. Lamo is taught by his parents, a real living experience. A wonderful fresh look at the way 24 hours is spent. Then we ate at the local Himachali wedding some wonderful dal, rajma, rice and khadi. Over dinner learnt that Lamo is vegan, nature boy, offspring of his matrabhoomi, of his uber-conscious parents, his internal spirit riding the crest of the waves of what them wannabe city-kids call cool.

The Birth of QuroBear™

...and another chapter begins. Dara Okat in and as the curious QuroBear™ from Hinterland.

The sun, the sea, the sky, the clouds

Its the closedness that causes that spot of plastic in the sun, that military headway before the meadow, that acquisition-driven set of ideals, that connectedness with the external. The bardo will come and get you and sweep you from the concrete floor into the grass, barefoot, silken like the shine of the web in the summer sun...

Kheer Ganga & the presence of God

I stepped into the spring, looked up at the moon and smiled. I am in the hands of God, in the womb of life. Kheer Ganga, je taime.

Ashokan's letter

A Day of strange serendipitous events (Pt. 3): "Why?"

What a day? Serendipity on Mt. Hinterland with the introduction and felicitation of the young Nitin Gopi, film-fanatic, English-humour friendly, young 21-year old version of my good friend JP. Serendipity # 1, so Shanks him and me are sitting in my room, Sai Baba working the chillum to perfection and Shanks says he plays with Hypnotribe and Nitin says he has been to one of their gigs and Shanks says he was the flutist, violinist and Nitin goes, "Fuck" and remembers how he loved Shanks the most in the band. A cauldron of kinpa. Suddenly the images meet, the trajectories connect and the heart loses a beat. Later over dinner, he asks what movies I have done and I mention Kunigunda and suddenly Serendipity #2 kicks in. He says he has seen it and describes the scenes in the film. Of how Mark walks towards the camera in jump-cuts, and suddenly he remembered the point of contact from KP's facebook page and from there mine and from mine and introduction to me through pixels and for him also an introduction to Kiarostami from my favourite films section... woah, I couldn't believe it. Shocking even more for him, young boy out in the Himalayas looking for the point of least resistance and voila, torrential proverbial rain pouring. Two more minor offshoots from the evening, one when I said I didnt like Kill Bill and Shanks and Nitin go "Why?" in unison and in similar high-pitched frequencies, and two those four Sony batteries looking up at Shanks from the same angle, those close-call frequencies disrupting the monotony of forward thinkers. A time for silence and concentration. Listen and watch closely, there are many intervals God uses to come into contact with humanity and their ridiculous ways. Sensational, really...but I wonder. Why?

A Day of strange serendipitous events (Pt. 2)

A very strange day. Strange in a good way. I decided to head out to Naggar. Home. Took Sumatra out after a few spins with a peculiar black herb extract. Connected, ethereally, root chakra full power. What a ride. Then I decided to take the pedestrian path to my house in the hills. Took the wrong one, got completely lost in the wilderness, forest everywhere, tall tall trees, that wonderful smell. I wasn't scared, I have heard the bears sometime come down to the valley. Maybe I should get the XY costume out and in working condition, full nature, herbal power. While I was wandering and terribly lost, panting like my heart was going to burst out, woah, and then it happened. I think Guru Vasisht sent someone to help me find my way back home. I bumped into this very bizarre american violinist, someone I met in Benaras in Feb on that first SR-visit. I didn't really connect with her so I wasn't really excited to see her, but she was there to help me find my way back home. Well, how weird? Utterly and totally like Lynchian bizarre, no? Then I sat in my veranda. To enjoy this you really got to earn it and that's what I like about it. You then realise how valuable that space is, in silent oneness with trees, above everything, looking, just looking, standing still. Not thinking. Its good to earn it. Body and soul, totally and completely in union with the motherpower. Electricity, cosmic electro-hyrdrologically brilliant...

Sumatra came home. :)

Home, Hinterland

Nutshell

Just read a review of Doshi, probably the best so far. Feels great to read that and remember the times Bijoy and me had going to all those places and just being together observing those wonderful landscapes without perspective. And now I am living that dream slowly, that dream of being with nature, immersed in it. Its all coming together well, slow but really nicely. I have a really good feeling about this move and this house is really like from some fairytale book, appletrees outside my window, apricot trees, fig trees, surrounded on three sides by the mighty pines and in front opening out to the valley, looking from above, and onto the Beas river and onwards to the himalayan panorama. And all those bird sounds all talkiing in that visceral language, so many wonderful different frequencies then finally merging into the frequencies of my tibetan bowl resonating through the wood in the veranda and in the house...
In so many words that's where I'm at. :)

...and to quote Osho Ji

Human consciousness has not grown for centuries. Only once in a while someone blossoms - but in millions of people, the blossoming of one person is not a rule, it is an exception. And because that person is alone, the crowd cannot tolerate him. His existence becomes kind of humiliation; his very presence feels insulting because he opens your eyes, makes you aware of your potential and your future. And it hurts your ego that you have done nothing to grow, to be more conscious, to be more loving, more ecstatic, more creative, more silent - to create a beautiful world around you. You have not contributed to the world; your existence has not been a blessing here but a curse. You introduce into the world your anger, your violence, your jealousy, your competitiveness, your lust for power. You make the world a battlefield; you are bloodthirsty, and you make others bloodthirsty. You deprive humanity of its humanness. You help man to fall below humanity, even sometimes below animals.

So many wonderful things, little things, big things, people, moments, silence, space... all in one day. Vashishta, je taime.

Image (Circa 2001)

It begins tomorrow. But, It could end tomorrow. It could end now. Right now. Like gone.

The Last Calligraphers (May, 2010)

Medusa at the Optometrist

Who is X, who is Y?

W# (Full film)

W#: Victor Wooten's language of music. Divided into 4 parts. Please see it in full screen, queue it up and watch them one after the other in HD.

----

W# (1/4) from Hinterland Films on Vimeo.

W#

Victor Wooten is an American solo bassist, composer and author.

Born to Dorothy and Pete Wooten, Victor is the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, the other four being Regi, Roy, Rudy Wooten and Joseph Wooten, all of whom are highly regarded musicians. At age two, brother Regi taught Victor to play bass, and by the age of five, Victor was playing in front of crowds with his brothers in their family band, The Wooten Brothers Band.

Wooten is most often seen playing Fodera basses, of which he has a signature model. His most famous Fodera, a 1983 Monarch Deluxe which he refers to as "number 1", sports a Kahler Tremolo System model 2400 bridge. Fodera's "Yin Yang" basses (designed/created for Wooten) incorporate the Yin Yang symbol - which Wooten often uses in various media - as a main focal point of the top's design and construction. It is often mistakenly thought that the Yin Yang symbol is painted onto the bass, but in reality, the symbol is created from two pieces of naturally finished wood (Ebony and Holly, for example), seamlessly fitted together to create the Yin-Yang pattern.

Though Wooten's basses receive much attention, his most frequent and consistent response when asked by his fans about his equipment (or equipment in general) is that "the instrument doesn't make the music ... you do". He'll often go on to state that the most important features to look for in a bass are comfort and playability. During a question and answer session at a 1998 concert, Wooten stated that "If you take a newborn baby and put them on the instrument, they're going to get sounds out of it that I can't get out of it, so we're all the best." This philosophy seems closely related to Wooten's approach to music in general, which is that music is a language. According to Wooten, while speaking or listening, one doesn't focus on the mouth as it is forming words; similarly, when a musician is playing or performing the focus shouldn't be on the instrument.

As well as playing electric bass (both fretted and fretless) and the double bass, Victor also played the cello in high school. He still plays cello occasionally with the Flecktones. This is the instrument to which he attributes his musical training.

A Bear Film

a bear film from kris anka on Vimeo.

Sumatra, 300410

Hemu said, "Thinking of you, the way your hair looks... trying to remember the fabric of your hands."
Heru said, "102hands of you and me at total."

Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutang slow dance.

by Anna Quindlen

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD in February 2008.

----

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
 
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
 
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
 
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
 
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
 
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
 
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
 
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
 
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".
 
 

Five, five, one, zero

One week to go. May the 5th onwards, Hinterland will come alive. God bless the idea of togetherness. It should be like coming home. Coming home to the absolute law, coming home to you, your heart chakra. :)

luluwolf.com

W# (Victor Wooten and the language of music)

Sumatra's Diary: 220410

So now that Sumatra is with me let me take you through the corridors of what. Route three-not-three, no? Today on my way back from the lake I saw the lonely faces of the, er what they call the middle-class, their routine, templatised life, their morning walks, their corporate talks, those "got to up those stocks" talks, living room crocs, dotdotdot. You know what I mean. The routine of things, that sticking to and of time, those boundary lines, those same hello's, flirting in the pantry over morning tea before the Monday morning catch-up meeting which happens after the timesheets are distributed and we begin working our mechanical hands and brains on auto-pilot fearing that one day we might die alone and poor. The feeling that I was not on that side of the fence comforted me. That bardo thing brought back of how we got to go through the hell of one thing be it greed, lust, pride to come out to the top and see the other side of the spectrum. You reach that atomic interval. But no, nuff said, they are there, I am here, everything is everywhere. And that's it no? We could be finished this very second.

Tx S, you really seem of the earth, of the sky, of the clouds, of the leaves, of the seas, of the rivers, of the oneness that is us and that one-in-all, all-in-one thing.

Sumatra, Hinterland

Sumatra xx2-1804

Born in Hinterland: 18 April, 2010 (Original date of birth - 1988)

Type: Motorbike

Impermanence in Benaras

Thezenve, Hinterland

To touch the earth, feel the leaves, smell the clouds,
To walk the earth, smell the leaves, feel the clouds, love the earth...

100handsofHinterland :)

May

Few more days to May,
So, I quietly stay
and wait to break that transient ray
into permanent daylight, day after day...

Maternal Shift

Like those old storytellers weaving stories of those long gone days when the sun shone brighter, the grass looked greener and the water happier. A tonal ascent in a certain life. A discovery of that path, that visceral path, that intangible pattern, that randomness...

They spoke in that peculiar language called Viscera. It sounded like the trees laughing. Suffixed with "ha's", following their idols of pataphysics with their twisted yet deconstructionist views of life, their unformulaic ways of being nature itself, being the experience rather than experiencing. Here, Hinterland is born, in irregular numbers, uncertainties and Wabi-Sabi. Zen, too. Slow, still, like that moment by the stream when the cherry-blossom flowered on me and I could almost hear the water dreaming. Hinterland is here, hinterland is you. Hinterland is one, that motherpower absolute, that one truth, that "dharma".

In that stillness there is that point in time when nothing is heard. Nor is anything said. Everything is understood. Everything is simply everything. No labels, no you's, no me's. Just that simple nothingness that no one makes a fuss about. Its now time to be. Just be the experience of nothingness, that zeropower. That is hinterland. This is hinterland, too.

The grass that day made me cry. I felt the earth's heartbeat next to mine. I lost the I-carapace completely. The concept of time disappeared. A maternal shift happened, that nature thing you know? And when those falsetto's echoed in the wilderness, I sensed transcendence swooping downwards like the Mother of God, at that moment deep into the night when all life somehow seemed asleep and unconscious.


* Wabi-Sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence, specifically impermanence.

Development of the "Viscera" script

Hinterland is for everyone and no one,
Hinterland is everywhere and nowhere,
Hinterland is you, Hinterland is me,
Hinterland is xx, Hinterland is xy.

----

Sun, sky, clouds, hills, river, earth...
(Finally the start of something new, arriving somewhere but not here...)

AbstraKt Kollision

Ft. Dryday, Rebel, Womanturningaway, The Servile, Mixedfeelings Pt. 1 and 2... among others. The pieces are nearing completion. 100handsdotcom will be freshfreshfresh from Hinterland very soon.

Holyyy Shittt

varanasi from isaac niemand on Vimeo.

Pilu

Time of play: fourth quarter of the day (late afternoon before sunset)
Expression: she does not know herself what she wants, she is satisfied yet longing for something else, sometimes gay and sometimes sad, ever changing.

Barbara

She knocked, I opened the door.
We spoke for hours about life and love. Somehow the questions I had were answered by her. A very awakened woman who has seen a lot in her life. Finally she has landed up in Benaras and here sitting in my room talking to me about what could have gone wrong over the last couple of months. I found answers and now I feel a lot more lucid. A sense of clarity. Now I can move on and stand on the edge, like that piece of wire in "Edge-less" (Artery, Hinterland, Vol. 001).

I'm through with this whole circus.

Shyam

Back in Shiva-city, a roaring rampage of heat;
Evening, Balu's tea shop and wonderful love story of Shyam, the pocket-size boy
He told me of his 9-year long relationship, his undying love for Madhumita (tattooed on his arm), how he used to go every evening to see her at her balcony (the signal of two coughs to make her know he is downstairs), how he would end his life if she didn't marry him, how she used to call him everyday at 7am, 2pm, 7pm and 10pm to check if he has eaten anything, how she used to throw notes to the ground, he told me about all their loveletters (thousands of them), about the concept of "true love waits" and his own idea of "if the crow bites your finger, will you look at your finger or the crow", simple philosophies that have guided him so far and kept him in everlasting love, about how she refers to him as her child, how he stopped drinking, smoking and all such things after he met her, so many other inspiring stories of their love. He spoke, I just listened to everything he said. He told me his story in total sincerity, I listened in total awe. So much to learn, so much to learn...

Bliss is
legs in steaming hot water, back against stone.

I feel fresh and delicate like a rainbow in the sky.
Stillnessisnice

Still




real still.
Nothing, just nothing.
Vashishta, heaven within my fingertips, the world in my hands.

Tristeza

She cuts the ribbons on the floor,
draws letters on the wall,
she also paints the eyeliner on her heart.

She is the ellipsis
Macrovision in definition
she is the little green light beside the bright blue wall.

She is Tristeza.

Used

Diffused,
Like the height of light.

Infused,
With the unkind mind.

Bemused,
In the throw of to-and-fro.

Confused,
With the way of the paragraphic day.

I miss you from isaac niemand on Vimeo.

Abstrakt Kollision

A funny day.

A day spent
on the houseboat, chillum with Bengali baba,

A day spent
in those recurring walks in the gulleys, then back to Assi, surprise visitor Marco Italian trumpeteer, like a boy discovering a new toy, lost in the sounds of my mini-xylophone, Aurobindo breathing through every note in the minor scale. Doodling away with Viswanath and Dhrupad singer Amar, minutes and how they flutter through air pressure, then McDonalds followed, my western heart happy, back on cycle rickshaw to Assi, a fun day, surprise moments and then the icing on the cake. The Black Cherry, that moment when I got off the cycle richshaw, paid the guy, walked onwards and trying to avoid a dog fight, crash into cyclist from behind, dog jumps towards me, bites. A little blood, now I am on the grid, I was the collision point, abstrakt kollision, the victim, the one who got hit and hopefully, the one who got away...

...and the poem that followed...

That moment when the points collide
On the trajectory
When the orbits intersect, the x meets the y,
the Bite is done, the needle and the damage done, the moment passed.
Stillness followed...
Like that time, deep into the night, in the silent wilderness when the tigers come out
That stillness

Feeding Fish

Panchganga Ghat, the narrow lanes behind it, like walking through the streets of time, chai in a small shop with green and blue walls, then bought some dough with MohanDanger and Viswanath Baba, went down to the ghats, added water to it, fed the fish. Took the boat back to Manikarnika, fed some more fish, lit chillum under submerged temple near the underground path that has been blocked off for over 2000 years. Up on the cantilvered section of the temple, two dogs playing. While I quietly fed the fish. Back to Balu's tea shop, a cigarette and on the cycle again, back home... a wonderful day.