In Which Everything is Illuminated

On looking through the camera I often recollect the moment when I really looked at Monet’s paintings for the first time.

If it must be told, it was a dinner, in some year when I was barely in my twenties. The main attractions of the evening were mutton and beer. Being vegetarian and a borderline teetotaler my mind gladly drifted to other things. As it is the mind needs very little provocation to do so. Framed on the wall next to the entrance to the kitchen was a photocopy of one of Monet's gardens. The painting shall remain unnamed to protect the identity of all those concerned. My eyes fell upon it. Thankfully I was not under the influence.

In that unforgettable instant I had an epiphany and everything was illuminated to me. Objects appear as they are because of how light falls on them. As the nature of light in Delhi, where everything seems to exist behind a thin layer of dust, is miles apart from that of light in the Pacific Northwest, where the clouds reflect as much as they absorb, this fact gets reinforced constantly. More so when taking photographs. So one starts to read light all over again. And, in my case, fall in love with a entirely different color palette. 

However, just because something isn’t illuminated, it does not mean it is not there. As Goethe observed: Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. But more importantly if the eye does not want to see it, neither light nor glasses will help. *  Thus light can take us only this far and no further.

*German proverb

The Hint of a Heron

The Owl and the Pussycat

              Deep within the arboretum a napping owl is woken up by the crows. They circle the branch it sits upon cawing their disapproval. Without skipping a beat the owl looks up, looks down and looks around. Except for a couple of uncomfortable crows there is no one in sight. The wind gets entangled among the branches and whispers a garbled song about a boat and a ring. The leaves flutter sympathetically. The sun peeks from behind the clouds to offer a warm word but it melts away on the tall shoulders of the trees. And all are silence once again. The only sound that penetrates the silence is a distant, incessant buzz. Cars and more cars slicing through great lakes, chopping through the forests, gurgling and puffing but never quite making it to wherever it is they want to go. Will they ever go? But this is not what the owl awaits. It closes its eyes and goes back to sleep.

                 In the heart of Haight-Ashbury a white cat maintains its lonesome vigil. Without skipping a beat it looks up, looks down and looks all around. Nothing is happening here. No change. All the voices are from a past that is all but dead. Only the ghosts are smoldering. The ghosts piss on the sidewalks. The ghosts spit on the doorways that disgorge shining eyes and bright smiles. Eyes that flash plastic and lo! Dreams come true. All is happiness. Or so they believe or they dream. Those eyes and what is behind them. The cat doesn’t know. The cat doesn’t dream. It only awaits. But has almost forgotten what. It’s been that long. There were so many roads. Which one was taken? Which way did they go? Without blinking its eyes the cat waits and watches.

  

Dark star crashes

pouring its light 

into ashes

Reason tatters

the forces tear loose

from the axis

Searchlight casting

for faults in the 

clouds of delusion

Shall we go,

you and I

while we can

Through 

the transitive nightfall

of diamonds *

*Dark Star a song by Grateful Dead.

Sunday

A blue, blue sky to sail on for ever after.

A fistful of clouds–to blow on, blow off and blow in again.

Timed to a sparrow's gentle serenade.

Sprays of grass–summer's sweet scent.

A butterfly's invite to siesta and sun-kissed dreams.

A wreath of wildflowers for the greatest glory of them all.

The breeze carries the hymnal–The ocean whispers Amen.

A point upon a map of fog

Careful now.
We're dealing here with a myth.
This city is a point upon a map of fog;
Lemuria in a city unknown.
Like us,
It doesn't quite exist.
– Ambrose Bierce

Summer on my windowsill

Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.*

*from Mother, Summer, I a poem by Philip Larkin.

Wonderland

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding,
But when I walk I see it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.*

For Virginia it was a pencil. For me a pint of milk, a freshly baked baguette and a box of cherries (that almost elusive fruit, a few days late and you miss its short and sweet season) are a good enough reason for putting on your shoes and going out for a walk. The art of writing maybe becoming redundant but food, especially good food, never will. Two blocks and a short climb up the hill is all it takes to reach the local co-operative. But it seems like journeying into another world.

To the tamed eye it is nothing but some modern apartment buildings, a handful of independent homes, a couple of restaurants and lots of cars parked on the roadside–a staple in American cities. However, it’s not quite American suburbia with all its attendant horrors. It is the 21st century version of big city living, with a glimmer of hope.

To the untamed eye it is, well, a walk to remember. After saying hello to the neighborhood pugs, all three of them, one takes a left under the watchful eyes of our resident crow and past the blooming rhododendrons and walks right into a wonderland- two “unkempt” gardens playing host to all sorts of wild things. There are masses of blue, white, yellow and orange wildflowers dancing cheek to cheek with giant peonies and poppies. There are bees, butterflies and hummingbirds darting from plant to plant. The house sparrows are feeding their young; the robin comes to take a look-see and whistles a tune. The chickadees are heard but not seen. The worms are busy digging and the creatures too small to be observed by the human eye are doing what they do best. Ten steps are all that it takes to move in and out of this world. Timed well it is ten steps enough.

Further ahead smoky-white clouds hang above the mountain tops that dwarf downtown's towers. Two young girls are picnicking over a bowl of salad on a patch of grass by the roadside, pink and yellow ribbons tided to their bicycle's handlebars. Stapled onto the wooden pole is a poster of a man with a ukelele held before his face. A little girl is discussing, what one supposes are, her big plans for the summer with her grandma, as she pushes her wagon along. A couple walk by hand in hand carrying a pot with a flowering tomato plant. The graffiti on the petrol pump wall reads PREPARE. For the end of oil the mind adds. There's a party on the second floor across the street. A kid on a skateboard swerves to the right. The cashiers from Trader Joe's are splitting a can of beer while the homeless man straightens his dog's bandana, smiles and asks, how's it going? It's 5:16 PM. The sun is at it's highest position in the sky and a walk is always well worth getting out of the house for.

*Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things

When I paint my masterpiece

Someday, everything is gonna be diff’rent
When I paint my masterpiece*

Until then I spend hours at an end
watching light play tricks...
And it's not too bad a vocation. Until then.

*When I paint my masterpiece a song by Bob Dylan.

The Reading List

A book is opened that hadn’t been touched for some years and out falls an old reading list. Here is a select sample, in no particular order,

1. Levi-Strauss, C. 1986. The Raw and the Cooked
2. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice
3. Trautman, T.R. 1981. Dravidian Kinship
4. Taussig, M. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
5. Saussure, F.D. 1966. Course in General Linguistics
6. Focault, M. 1971. The Archaeology of Knowledge
7. Barthes. 1967. Elements of Semiology
8. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer Religion
9. Beteille, A. 1977. Inequality among Men
10. Braithwaite, R. B. 1953. Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Functions of Theory, Probability   and Law in Science

The first thought that crosses ones mind is: wow! Did one really read all these books? Then comes the second even more amazing thought: All in the span of 7 days!  The third is a quiet little thought that sneaks in and out of ones head even before one can fully get hold of it. The fourth is almost redundant and not worth pointing out. The fifth is what one might address here.

Carefully considering all the evidence and taking into account the present state of affairs one is almost certain that these books were read. Quite simply because they had to be read. It was mandatory. No
matter what Prof. Uberoi said during the only lecture one remembers from that point in time, despite being volunteers, by virtue of choosing to join the course and then further on choosing to attend the
lectures, when it came to the reading list one had to complete it before the next tutorial; that dreaded event when a handful of us, like the proverbial three blind mice, ran after the farmer’s wife, so
to speak. What followed was in accordance with the theory, probability and law of science or mythology or proverb. The only difference being that we didn’t get to run around much and the farmer’s wife, though her knife was quite sharp, didn’t manage to cut off our tails. Everything about that exercise seems to be so dispassionate and far removed that one can safely declare one has no memories about it. But that wouldn’t be quite truthful, would it?

How did one do it? One may have been a volunteer but that was simply a manner of speaking. The reading list wasn’t voluntary. One had no right over choosing what to read and when to read it. The books were prescribed and were to be read within a certain (insanely inadequate) time limit. Sometimes it felt that even the sentences, the words that people walking up and down the corridors uttered, were also prescribed. There was a formula and the one who followed the prescription was sure to master it.

So, how did one do it? Nothing is impossible, in the world of speed reading at least. Anne Jones took 47 minutes 1 second to read 759 pages of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. No mention is made of whether her pleasure of being the first to finish the book equaled the pleasure (she had 47 minutes before) of having another Harry Potter book to read. Well, speed-reading can be put to other mundane uses too. But the sixth and final question still remains: did one enjoy reading these books?

Fade I unto divinity

"Twould ease – a Butterfly –
Elate – a Bee –
Thou'rt neither –
Neither – thy capacity –

But, Blossom, were I,
I would rather be
Thy moment
Than a Bee's Eternity –

Content of fading
Is enough for me –
Fade I unto divinity –

And Dying – Lifetime –
ample as the Eye –
Her least attention raise on me –

'Twould ease a butterfly a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Rainful Days

                                                                               
Outside my window it rains. A thin, wispy blanket blows across the hills, the airplanes approaching land, the tall towers named after men long gone. Everything is melting into little droplets sliding down the windowpane. Pandora skips to Beirut softly playing:
All these saints that I move without
I lose without a name
All these saints, they move without
They moved without again
Well, all these places will lose without
They lose without a name*

Nice. How everything ties up neatly.

Five years, four cities, three continents and I could be an expert on rain. And umbrellas. Only I have traded all my umbrellas for a sturdy rain jacket.

There is a silence that accompanies the gentle rain. I have known this rain before. This rain that is not like the Indian monsoon, which tends towards extravagance, but much quieter. There are no peacocks dancing or children splashing around in the puddles or young men and women rushing to meet the giant waves with only an umbrella in hand. This rain isn’t a short-lived heady celebration. It is the thing that remains when all celebrations are over. Here there is a kind of certitude, not like that of London, but something that comes when one understands what this too shall pass really means. Or, maybe because just yesterday this rain soaked view was bathed in a beautiful light that exists only in spring. And there is always a chance that it may happen again. Even today.

I hear the chickadees call from the blue house next door. The rain has stopped. No, this is merely a pause. And this too shall pass.

I reach out and pick up the book closest to my hand. I open a random page it reads: The beauty of a fleeting moment is eternal.**

*St. Appollonia from The Flying Club Cup by Beirut.
** The Monster Loves his Labyrinth: Notebooks by Charles Simic.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec (1975)

On the last day of our first time in Paris I sat on the grass watching the lights turn on the Eiffel tower noting down all that I observed. But as it was our first time in Paris, I was easily distracted. Observations of the yellow lift going up and red lift coming down are punctuated by recollections from the days before. Dotting the margins are words, sounds, scribbles perhaps inspired by Paris, or perhaps by Vienna, our previous destination. My attempt to note down the “non-touristy” details of life in Paris was naturally not the intended kind of success. Had I put thought to it my choice of place would have been much more conducive to the task at hand. Though I suspect watching Paris with “non-Parisian” eyes would have still lead to certain unintentional biases. But then, can one ever really observe a space in time in its totality? Can we ever exhaust– as in–describe everything?

On Saturday at the neighborhood bookshop my eyes caught a slim volume in a white and grey cover. A year before I was born, George Perec set out on the quest of the “infraordinary”: the everyday, or as he puts it, “what happens when nothing happens”. For three days, in a square in Paris, he sat behind Cafe windows making a note of “that which is not noticed, that which has no importance”.  He progressed from strictly visible things, to conventional symbols, to slogans, to objects, to the color of things, to buses going back and forth, to gestures and conversations between people, to dogs running, and pigeons flying all at once across the square, to people carrying things, to the Japanese tourists in buses, and the apple green Citroen van.

However, even though he is sitting in one place, every coming and going of people or buses and cars, even within the field of his vision, which in itself is limited, is marking the passage of time. Every event, or rather nonevent is altering that which is being observed. From merely observing things before his eyes Perec moves on to noting the differences: what has changed from one day to the next? Though seemingly nothing has changed, in essence life has moved on.

This unimportant, humdrum nothing that we barely record is what fills up our days and years. However, when we start focusing attention on these nonevents they become unreal, almost surreal, and even poetic. Here’s a random sample:

A bird settles atop a lamppost
It is noon Gust of wind A 63 goes by A 96 goes by An apple-green 2CV goes by

The rain gets fierce. A lady makes a hat with a plastic bag marked “Nicolas” Umbrellas sweep into the church


Moments of emptiness


Passage of a 63 bus


The resulting effects of attempting to exhaust, or observe in totality a place, can range from mere unease at the near impossibility of the task being undertaken to an overdose of reality, which in turn may alter our understanding of the nature of reality itself. Leaving us with a sense of melancholy that comes with the acceptance of the fact that what we consider to be extraordinary is merely a collection of ordinary acts. And that something will always remain indescribable no matter how detailed our observations. Even when we think nothing is happening time is taking away second after second from our lives.

Afterthoughts on books: part 15

Sunday evening, 5 PM

Do look back

It is mandatory to keep moving on. For life is elsewhere and that elsewhere is somewhere in the time yet to come. Or is it? There comes a moment when one realizes maybe this is all that there is to it. At times that moment comes more than once in a lifetime. So, sometimes, especially when the mind has taken leave even though the rest of the body is immersed in endless work, one needs to stop and look back. Here is one such occasion from the not so distant past.

One rainy day at Hyde Park seven young people, lets call them friends, were brought together by randomness of fate and contrivance of chance. Caught in the oft-cursed ‘unpredictability’ of the London weather they sat and sipped their coffees and beers. Casting desultory glances at the ducks in the lake while mouthing customary inanities that pass as conversation these days.

The lake framed by the dark clouds, the trees gently persuaded by the wind, the raindrops softly passing by-the intricate play of nature fell apart before this unappreciative audience. The words framed within neat categories, the gently falling level of the beer in hand, the softly approaching time to get up for a refill-this intricate balance of social convention was silently appreciated by all. Maybe more so by the one sitting alone at the table by the window. Lets call him the old man in the grey coat.

He could be seventy or eighty years old. The point being of an age when no one especially not the individuals concerned care much for years and birthdates and time. Or even for how they look or what they wear. At least that is how it seems to people who are young and by that I mean not yet thirty. So let us not get into descriptions and just call him the old man in the grey coat. There was nothing exceptional about him (again I mean from the point of view of the abovementioned youth) except that on that one evening in Hyde Park he happened to be listening to seven young people blow words in circles in time. And not even notice the years fall by.

For today you are twenty-eight and the next thing you know you are thirty. “To have reached thirty,” Reginald* said, ‘is to have failed in life.” And anyone waking up on the fateful day to acknowledge the agony of turning thirty would, if they have any enthusiasm left for life, wholeheartedly endorse his sage words as they watch their world rapidly turn to a miserable shade of blue right before their eyes. But one has to live to be thirty to experience this brutal truth, which can’t be revealed to the innocent youth. And since our friends are young and carefree and not yet thirty let us let them contemplate their half full glasses.

Instead lets turn our attention to the old man in the grey coat who has lived more than twice that fateful age. But showed no sign of wear and tear to those who cared to look. Finishing the last of his lukewarm coffee he got up to leave. Then stopping by their table he softly said, “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.” And silently slipped away into the gathering darkness. Almost unnoticed.

Seven days later no one remembered the old man in the grey coat's words except for an old man sitting down to write the story of his life and a young woman celebrating the thirtieth year of her life.

(For Mr. Jamshed Mirza living somewhere in London. Maybe we'll meet some evening in Hyde Park.)
 *Reginald on the Academy a short story by Saki.

First posted titled as 'People you meet in Hyde Park' here.

A memory

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

A memory a poem by William Allingham.

Feeding time

Once there was a time when bird song heralded the beginning and the end. Of days and nights. As resolutely as the hands of a clock, but much less painfully. All that remains now are ghostly wisps. And a memory slowly unraveling, thread by thread. Did the robin sing that tune? Did the titmouse sit on this branch? Once we were so young and green. Where did the time go?

It is not quite an attempt to catalogue what time has done to us but a measure of what we did in our time.