There is something about facing the sea

click to enlarge image

There is something about facing the pushing curtain of wind at the face of the sea. The same wind that causes ripples in the sea causes creases on your clothes, causes your hair to flutter and causes a hurricane in your ears and an earthquake for your eye lashes. There is something therapeutic about being thrashed with the waves of the sea. Perhaps it is in these places that one finds their strength. Strength , I said the word aloud at this juncture to check if I had written it right. The sky is more clouds than sun and an airplane full of people is piercing its way through them. So many people could be on this plane with so many stories. There's a man in bright red shorts and a pale blue shirt fishing in front of me in the distance. I wonder if he sings. There are as many crows as there are plastic bags in the sea. It's filthy. The sky is a yellow blue grey and the water is a silvery blue grey. I'm a blue grey too. But inside, in the corner of myself, I've found a bit of myself. This afternoon another wave crashed on my stone and then went back into the sea. I watched another wave, another airplane, all at my very own splendid sky.

dance, dance or we are lost.

What about the dance inside my body

That which never stops or rests; only changes.
From manic to frantic to excited to
fatigue to buzzing with life and bursting with smiles
to coiled up and shivering
tossing in restlessness
as a boat on waves
loud as a feather
floating as a cloud
as lazy as an ant.
What about that dance inside my body

dance, dance or we are lost - Pina Bausch.

I can open my eyes, and see so clearly~

Friday, Aug 5th, 2011 -- You are tempted to throw all caution to the wind and risk your current security for the possibility of greater pleasure. Unfortunately, your eagerness to experience something wonderful can lead to an awkward situation when you realize that the fulfillment of your desires won't necessarily bring you long-term satisfaction. Instead of taking a chance for a fleeting moment of fun, concentrate on doing something that will last.

Yann Tiersen:
I can open my eyes
And see so clearlly,
Flowers on the curtains and
The old days to come,

Anyway it's bubbles in brain,
It's mossy under the rain,
I'm wandering in some endless fields of goo.

From the book I'm reading: ' A person may choose what he cannot see', he said as if explaining something to a very obvious to a foolish individual.... To give a thing a name, a label, a handle: to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it- well, that's a way of bringing a said thing into being.

I'm having my time wasted by a Disconnector Thief who will not trust in what he can't see. How much have you seen, eh, Thieflet? Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there? And submarines? Huh? Also hailstones, baseballs, pagodas? Goldmines? Kangaroos, Mount Fujiyama, the North Pole? And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come? Believe your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess'.

(I'm adding this to my favourite monologues)

see with eyes shut.

photograph part of the Diana F+ series.

Diana~

One summer afternoon a boy called Akshay Bhoan walked into my house and handed me a Diana F + which is a tiny little super light camera. These are pictures from my very first role. I have been super excited and wanting to draw it out, because it's the cutest, most curious little thing you'll see. But with finishing page layouts and the usual roller-coaster that my life is, that has been a bit difficult. Soon enough though, more shall appear here. But in the mean time I thought I'd say a little THANK YOU AKSHAY. Here's a song to Diana by Fats Waller.

On watching a play in SoBo.

Bombay has been a strange city. I watched another play tonight in what they have begun to call Sobo (South Bombay). We used to call it Town.
We took a drive on the Worli Sea Link, and I saw it for the first time.
At the theatre, I met a lovely couple. The audience was much younger than it used to be, or well, I've grown up. The chutney sandwiches were still the same. I said some awkward things. The play was interesting, funny and star studded. Needless to say, everyone looked crisp and freshly baked. I personally loved the script, and it overshadowed the performances. At times I forgot I was watching it because I was lost. Great soundtrack and effects.
I felt as if everyone was on a different frequency from me. I spent a good half an hour after the show, wanting to listen to myself- but you are never alone in Bombay. Much of what I said about the play has been true about my interactions with the people. Exciting, glossy, lively and yet something is always rotting on the innards. You know the feeling, when the packing is prettier than the gift.. There's craft and there's money, there's talent and entertainment and fun and a thick coating of self love, but something doesn't come through- something simple and honest and something doesn't feel right.
I don't know what it is, what it is that bothers me. I can't lay my finger on it. Perhaps its just me who is uncomfortable with this glossy picture. Perhaps it's the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of being an outsider in the very place I grew up. There could be more, to the play, to the performance, to the work, to the very foundation of the city and our motivation- why are we doing what we are doing. It was charming and fun and I enjoyed it but at the same time I expected more, I wanted more than what we already know. It was hence, an interesting exercise into myself - I realised I want to look into places we don't look into because they are far too painful or exciting. In places where our lives are unknowingly taking us and expose these wounds and places to the many people who come to the theatre. A performance is no less than a ceremony. A performance is no less than a ceremony.

life's like that only... what to do?

You know sometimes you are just thinking about somebody. Ok, not just anybody it would have to be somehow a special somebody. You could just go on and on. You could have an imaginary conversation, in the dark reflective surface of your laptop, in the bathroom, in broad daylight with no one around, which leads to my point - then you pick up your phone and as an extension to your silliness you text them. Something totally not related, totally off-topic and absolutely 100% loony. I will refrain from giving you an example. Now, I have spent several times in different phases of my life -from the time where there were no cell phones and landlines were used to give blank calls, and then in college when lame conversation was the norm to now when everything you want to do, say or seem has got to be intelligent or somewhat double meaning. All this time I was wondering if I'm the only woman to do it. (yes, it seems so men rarely do things like this, or at least it wont be the man you are thinking about, but some other who is thinking about you)
I am, very much, aware that this such an escape route from a boring present- painstaking page layouts or hours of transcription work for example... but why? Why do we do this endlessly? In a loop again and again and again?
And this morning, in one long session of transcription work, it came to me. We just have to be in the present. I know, I know, we have heard this, seen it, attempts have been made to stuff it down our throats but we've been too busy talking to ourselves through all of this and not felt it. But this morning I did. It just felt right, every little peice of the room I sat in, was suddenly brighter, clearer and nothing outside the room was important. I did, however, at this juncture take the oppurtunity to have an imaginary conversation, with an imagined female tarot client and tell her about leaving her cell phone, forgetting her facebook, twitter, what-not and all these escape routes and doing the stuff she needed to do.Face the boring room, the dull laptop screen and then making time for that glorious sun set hour Tai Chi session on the sea side.
phew!
Life's like that. Up and down like a wave. Even the sun isn't spared. Up and down. Morning and Evening. Day and Night. Clarity and Confusion. The wave of life. Something surely stands constant though we think, the witness of these waves? perhaps the particle and the wave?
... they say light is both particle and wave...

and then I finished the first tape of my transcribing assignment

That which is and has been and will be in full detail with dates...

Bandra is where my life meets its end- that places that blurs and becomes the beginning. Not a day is spent here without bumping into somebody I knew about 6 years ago. School friends,people from college, people who wouldn't know me anymore, people who wish they didn't know me. Perhaps, this is just that time of the year, folding over, creasing into the pages I was turning 6 years ago. The last 3 weeks have been the most peculiar. Not that life is ever boring, or empty- juiceless, but this is the simplest most honest proof that life is only spirally deeper. It is the same circle moving a level lower into itself with mild increase in understanding perhaps .(or not!)

Collecting here, classic Chamki style excerpts of the Daily Babble, the stream of consciousness writing:
1. Beware. Extremely long and fragmented.
2. For best results read in bite-size portions.
3. Hello my friend Adrian Mole. we be alike!

1 June 2011.

On Moving to a new house and setting up today said the I-Ching:

The cooking pot symbolises nourishment and rejuvenation. Sooner or later, good comes to those who bring humour to others, oppurtunity comes to those who persist in their dreaming. Rejuvenation is a returning to innate desires- and a re-charging or batteries through the fulfilment of these wishes. Only when great vitality is present can a breakthrough be achieved.

2 June 2011.

Today, came the sweetest email in my mailbox since email was probably invented.(And it was from a woman!) I will cherish this as inspiration and a pat on my back for life, to trust in the things I do.
excerpt:

Dear Chamko,
You might think this message is weird but I will write it anyway...
I have known you since you were 16. The first time I met you, you were wearing a dress and had a flower in your hair. I was struck by how attractive you were but dismissed you a pretty young thing at that time.
But over the years I got to know you better.. On those bus rides we talked and you told me very personal and intimate things and I remember you said you wanted your own house someday and were collecting things to put into that house. You used to collect them under your bed. The story amused me no end.
I have a demon memory... and I just looked at some of the stuff on facebook and realised you are living your dream, of that independence that you yearned for in Bombay. That home you wanted with pretty things that you had collected, is a home you have discovered in so many different cities and countries. And, I'm really happy for you. Your sense of freedom and passion is palpable. Keep it going :)10th July 2011.

Not much was written, since the HOUSE WARMING WEEKEND was happening with Jitu and K. We spend several days warming this new house I have. Actually, warming is not something it required. Jitu had to get on the roof and I handed him buckets of water, so cool the walls. Several tarot readings, power cuts and even Osho and No-show videos later, the house began feeling like a home.

12th July 2011.
Relations. Fondness and Attachment.
Our lives have their own paths and sometimes they meet, intersect with the path of other people, institutions, groups but essentially our journey is our own. There is great joy in crossing paths, meeting friends again and sadness in leaving them but one must remember that none of this is who we are (wholly) or what life is.

13th July 2011.

Waiting till Tuesday for electrician and plumber and holding the dream of a kitchen garden. Waiting is only listening, while someone else is busy, talking.

26th June 2011.

Subject : On the lines of - Don't laugh.
But I believe I'm on the path to enlightenment.
WE ARE PARTICLES
We are as free as an atom is, as an electron is. The other day when I said this to a friend, he said even electrons have personalities - it is in their unique number of spins.
WE ARE PARTICLES growing aware of other particles - wondering what they do and how they behave.The Earth's unique rotation governs our time. Perhaps the earth is just another electron. It is where the minute meets the gigantic perhaps where the trivial becomes the fundamental. The electron and the earth. And I thought, this thought made our social life sort of purposeless, meaningless. A huge waste of time. But perhaps, just as an electron must life a lifetime in a hundredth of a milisecond of a reaction, just as the house fly does in a day, we live our lives in what we can perceive. ( this we have begun to call time?)

28th June 2011.

The smell of olive oil reminds me of the time spent in Ibiza and spanish love. In all its myopic difficulty, it was a great experience of freedom and solitude. Love blossomed with the sweetness of the melocoton and turned sour with the fruit.

30th June 2011.

Today, while working on the illustrations I played Mercedes Sosa songs that the Spanish gave me. But this one song, seemed to have a special pull, a spiral tugging me deeper, so I put it on repeat. I understood some of it on the first hearing, not all.

2-3rd June 2011.

Yesterday, whenever that was, has been 4 days in one. flight. migraine. a part of me long frozen and blocked, just melted. new ways of remembering past memories. just like everything else memories are also constantly transforming. One is remembering and forgetting details within the same memory, and something that happened a good 6 years ago in a 24 year old life is a good 1/4th of that life. The file of such a memory long sealed and closed, sat like a rock, part crystal, part love, part rock, part block of hurt. Stirred.We inhabit similar spaces, once again. It would be surprising if we are not stars which circle the same sky together and then grow apart only to co-exist, and inhabit a close space, a ceremony of a performance that stirs our hearts in unison.
We are all one.
On returning home, I realized a hurt long crystallized makes no sense anymore. I should have spoken to them after watching Blue Mug. Perhaps they don't know where to start. Neither do I. Feels strange to write their names, even say them aloud in my head. Well, if we don't know where to begin, we could begin with a hug. An embrace.
Perhaps, there is a reason for this delay in closure. A time to consider, to relish and understand finer meaning.Its far too easy to apologise on an impulse. One must nurture this feeling of openness and acknowledge that we are truly stupid and will always be.
Met another time, the beautiful soul I long cherish. Let peace replace fear within him.

4th July 2011.

Tarot reading for performance reveals love.
cards: Ace of Cups. The Hierophant - for raj. The Sun.
Ace of cups: love. That which inspires us to create and share, that very essential beginning of life.A cup full and brimming. Liquidity- that which is fluid and flexible.
The Heirophant - for Rajyashree: Rockstar. Position of influence. Knowing one's forte using it in this time of need.
The Sun: The joy of victory. An innocent joy of a baby. remember that. (may be I'll need it) All is full of love. Fullness, acheivement, beauty, accepting gifts.


5th July 2011.

Childhod conditioning "Chee chee"
GOOD GIRL - BAD GIRL.
The kind of stuff that takes years to unlearn. The fat earth isn't suddenly sitting on a tortoise. 360 degree- ness of things. Gravity, a subtle wind that surrounds us always.

6th July 2011.

Gracias a la vida. Thank you life.

10th July 2011.

On leaving Bangalore by sunset flight.
Watching shadows of clouds stretching endlessly in space. A shadow is in some aspects like water that takes the shape of its container. A shadow must fall on something. Soft white clouds and shadows stretching back into oblivion, vanishing point of time.Neither in earth ,nor in sky, in a thin membrane of an air bubble, life breathes life.
In slices of the night hours, one fights the ego in correcting old games and mistakes.
A think blue fog. As if, nothing exists. There is no distance in the heart and the body doesn't end. There are no borders, yet there is a box. You have made a box and put your name on it. You show me this box once again, but never let me open it. You keep it shut. From time to time, you pull out a cap, a pair of glasses, put back your lenses but it is yet concealed what you really feel.
I attempt to leave a bag of hope in your heart. I know that box will open and its contents you will share, someday. That bag of hope is love and in the simplicity of a rose love triumphs.

11th July 2011.

कहीं तोह यह दिल कभी मिल नहीं पाते ,
कहीं से निकल आये जन्मों के नाते ।

12th Jul 2011.

Remember Humility.

13th July 2011.

This trip to Bombay is to give shape to the work I began with Suraag. An understanding of myself, my truest desires, my values and how I confront conflict, how I stand up for myself and my beliefs and reconcile with my family in the larger sense. All through this paying attention to my artistic voice that is my truest desire in tangible form.
To solely run after any man isn't the balance of life - such severe outward movement only drains that which is within. Hence one has to move slow and find a meeting point. No chasing. The wait is far more challenging than the chase. Hang in there. Do what the moment requires. Love and respect yourself and trust that the situation, the man, the place will show up and meet you. Amen.

14th July 2011.

Spoke to Yusuf. He reminded me and this I publish for the whole of humanity:
You are a diamond in disguise. Let not immediate temporal pleasures muddle your light.
Men can be hunters fired on instincts, women can be seductress fired on instinct.
Keep working on yourself and delve deeper each day.
The saying of the old Shaman who shared it with Yusuf -
Love, is how you feel inside when you are with the other.
A million dollars!

15th July 2011.

Just like a flower opens and shuts as soon as its purpose of attracting pollen through the bees is achieved. We could as women too wilt away and let the bees that are our men running on instincts and hormones run till their seed dies out. An unconscious evolution would continue till the end of time. We are such particles with our fundamentals locked inside us as our instincts. But that isn't the sole purpose of our existence. We share our capability with the star dust that is us. (remember become aware of your possibility, your potential and limitation)

16th July 2011.

Horns induce a state of emergency. Exposure to this on large basis put us on a crazy buzz.

17th July 2011.

Everyone has a weakness. The universe found mine - You.
This wouldn't have happened if it was anybody else.
We can only think back and forth, but the universe is the thinker and the thinking - knowing all at once. Synchronising.
I wonder how much of this- I may be brave to call it - LOVE is between you and me, and how much is between me and the universe.

24th July 2011.

Astrological influence of eclipse on 1 July 2011. from a website. Interesting to observe in hindsight if these correspond to the changes happening.
Sun: Stay purposeful. Be yourself and appreciate yourself.
Moon: Use your intuition and heart to guide you toward what you want.
Saturn: Keep working hard, even when things are discouraging.
Pluto: Use your will power to let go or transform what is no longer serving you.
Uranus: Use your inventive mind and never be afraid of change or being different.

I- Ching: Consistency is important in matters of mutual attraction, for this is what separates courtship from seduction.

25th July 2011.

To which my friend Suneel says : Bring on the inconsistent seductions anytime I say. Consistency is for chocolate mousse and mashed potatoes.

xxx

WE ARE PARTICLES

26th June 2011.

Don't laugh. But I believe I'm on the path to enlightenment. While, if you think like me do- enlightenment is inevitable. Just like water flowing down a slope.All through our individual lives, we are busy knowing - one way or another through mistakes or safety. Why, I can bring myself to say that I am on the path to enlightenment is because each day something marvellouw reveals itself to me, and it only feels like meeting an old friend.
WE ARE PARTICLES
We are as free as an atom is, as an electron is. The other day when I said this to a friend, he said even electrons have personalities - it is in their unique number of spins.
WE ARE PARTICLES growing aware of other particles - wondering what they do and how they behave.The Earth's unique rotation governs our time. Perhaps the earth is just another electron. It is where the minute meets the gigantic perhaps where the trivial becomes the fundamental. The electron and the earth. And I thought, this thought made our social life sort of purposeless, meaningless. A huge waste of time. But perhaps, just as an electron must live a lifetime in a hundredth of a milisecond of a reaction, just as the house fly does in a day, we live our lives in what we can perceive. ( this we have begun to call time?)
WE ARE PARTICLES in an event called life.
Perhaps our social life then, is our means of understanding the chemistry, the nature of the particles we are. When we speak of a mysterious energy of a space, energy/ aura of a person - then we are talking of nothing mystical but simple properties of the particles we are and the kind of transformation we are capable of. Mysterious events are those we cannot perceive- because they are so stretched in time or so quick- like our bodily processes.
Everything is an event. Even a rock is transforming, even plastic, the earth, the universe.

Makes me think it does make sense to pray to plants, to the rocks, to plants, to planets, to rain because they are particles as we are particles and we can move each other through our intent. Just as performers can. The earth can respond and so can the universe. A life lived in fear, moves all the particles in our surroundings into the cause of our fear and aids in creating it.

The embrace

Writing fresh from an embrace,
I feel, had this happened a few years ago,
I would have still reached the realization-
There is nothing but love.
The rest is all that stuff, the stuff that keeps us
from seeing it, from feeling it
and from being it.
6 years ago, when I began writing this blog
it was to grieve the lack of love,
the love that was torn away from me,
that which was incubating me taken away
and I was left lose into the world...
on my own, to face myself
and the truth that everything around me
was pretty much a decomposing white lie.
I love you, I trust you, I value you,
I am your parent.
All fundamental truths,
those on which I had based my self,
shook, broke and left me.
There weren't any pieces to pick
and continue
but a whole new beginning.

I stood there alone, knowing all the people I loved
knew these truths as true all along,
and the lies and lies all along.
I couldn't handle it.
I had given up.. I saw no way out of it.

Today,
6 years and an embrace later,
a fearless sort of love, a return to yourself,
or someone you have seen always in the mirror
but never met.
In the meeting of the eyes, a curiosity so simple,
that no will or moment could pose its awkward threat.
Love truly is
Where there is nothing else.
Just a calm place, a sort of zero,
from where we could hold a conversation today.
I had the strongest feeling of entering into your heart
a hot yellow flash of light and disappearing.
The surest physical sensation that we are one.
we are all one, sujay. we are all love.