Perch

The Amsterdam Scrapbook

 

Tot morgen meneer

The eyes catch these words on your wall and life becomes a paper boat floating down the canal. 80’s disco music being optional. The mind asks, “Hoe gaat het met u?” as the boat glides by Lauriergracht passing under the bridge with baskets of red geranium hanging on the rails. There will be snow. Then there will be school children walking in pairs. Then there will be families dining out; the tables with fine cutlery set outside their houses on the curbside along the canals. All the time the coots will be patrolling the canals. Everything will be gezellig.

De appeltaart

There’s you, there’s me, there’s F and there’s D and we are always looking for something. Or more precisely, many different things but often they can all be summarized in one simple word– food. This Saturday we come looking for de appeltaart (met slagroom). Yes, the one. We find it somewhere near Noorderkerk. And we feel akin to the little golden haired boy on the back seat of a bicycle shaking his head in the gentle breeze, and the sun gets in our eyes.

Not the last supper

There are twelve of us sitting down to dinner. And that’s where the similarities begin and end. Later, in the early hours of the morning, I write in my diary– no two people (besides us) were of the same nationality. Isn’t that incredible! English is not the language of the world. Though it is English that in a large part helps our evening flow along.

M is flying back to Sao Paulo the next morning. N is going to ride his bicycle all the way to Barcelona. From Amsterdam to Barcelona! Someone is handing G a Heineken coaster. She flips to the plain side and in a few pen strokes sketches the gist of the night. Chicken and conversation. Food and friendship. Soon all the art people join in.

Some hours later while clearing the table the waitress places the upturned coasters side by side. They form a square 4X4 grid. There’s a story in it somewhere. She stares at them for a few minutes. But the opening sentence, that all too crucial beginning, eludes her. She goes back to wiping the tables.

I look at my plate. Still life with crumbled feta and asparagus. J too is looking at my plate. In fact has looked at it more than once. Aren’t you going to eat that? His Swedish side asks a question that is a precursor to another more pertinent one that his Argentinean side is waiting to ask (or is it the other way round?). But it remains unsaid. Go ahead, I smile.

We will meet again a few days later when the city is painted orange. Compelled by who knows which side, he’ll try to push me into the Prinsengracht. But that’s a different story altogether.

The Bench

There is wine, there are two wine glasses, there is takeaway in paper bags, there are three swans gliding past the houseboats, there is the canal burnished gold, there are the seagulls flying above the spires of the Westerkerk, there are boats and more boats, there is the sound of bicycles going down the cobbled street, there are girls in heels on the bicycles, there is a young man whistling a song that one has heard many times before, there is a glorious day coming to a close; it is summer in Jordaan and a hundred steps away from our front door a bench, the best seat in town, waits.

The Moonlight

Tiny bulbs sparkle along the arches of the bridge. The water is pitch black. Tiny yellow drops of light drip softly and melt into the dark. The streets are full of people. The people, the streets, the gingerbread houses all meld into black. Just to the left of the Westerkerk tower the moon hangs like a silver bowl. An enormous silver bowl. Unreal. This could be a dream. This is a dream. The bells of the church chime the midnight hour.

End of Summer

An agitation of the air,

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.



End of Summer a poem by Stanley Kunitz from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz.

Cyclamen

What mortal hand or eye, 

Dare frame thy delicate symmetry?

Nothing

He asked her, “Tell me what is your most priced possession?” He meant, of course, an object– a thing. Spring came by and went away. The blooms of summer are turning to dust. Autumn is primed for its grand entrance. Winter is starting to prepare its brooms of steel*. The earth shifts on its axis, as it has done time and again, and still her answer remains nothing.

...

She sends her quotes in the mail. “We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust”**. And she sends her poems.

She sends essays on Parmenides, Sartre’s être-en-soi (the brute existence of things) and être-pour-soi (consciousness), and Śūnyatā: Phenomena are śûnya or unreal because no phenomenon when taken by itself is thinkable: they are all interdependent and have no separate existence of their own***. She quotes conversations between Ananda and Buddha, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?" The Buddha replied, "Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.”

She sends her all this and more. In reply she gets nothing.

...

She runs her fingers through sheaves of paper, clicking back and forth through tabs, Google searching her name; there are figurines in gold and silver on the bookshelves. There are no diamonds in the mine. “What have I got to show for it all?” she slowly mouths the words. The reply is heavy in silence. It sounds like nothing.

...

My mother dislikes the dark, not because of the things she can’t see but because of the things she can. My mother likes to be left alone. She is happy when there is nothing.

...

He looks at himself in the mirror and tries to frame the question again. What do you want? What are you looking for? Every question begs something in reply. He looks in the mirror again. This time he imagines the vast blue sky. Someone far away seems to be saying, “Was there anything you wanted to ask?” He can come up with nothing.

*from a poem by Emily Dickinson:
Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street –
**Rumi
*** Eliot, Charles (1993; author); Sansom, G. B. (edited & completed). Japanese Buddhism.

Kerouac

And I am an unhappy stranger
grooking in the streets of San Francisco–
My friends have died on me...

If I get drunk I get thirsty
–if I walk my foot breaks down
–if I smile my masks a farce
–if I cry I'm just a child
–if I remember I'm a liar
–if I write the writing's done
–if I die the dying's over–
–if I live the dying's just begun–
–if I wait the waiting's longer
–if I go the going's gone–
if I sleep the bliss is heavy–
the bliss is heavy on my lids–
–if I go to cheap movies
    the bedbugs get me–
Expensive movies I cant afford
–if I do nothing
    nothing does*

*From Mexican Loneliness a poem by Jack Kerouac. You can listen to Matt Dillon perform it here (It is one of the best poetry readings ever.) Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness is a must listen/buy for anyone whose mind has been "blown away" by Kerouac.
The first three photographs are of Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco.

Who art thou?

Mystic shadow, bending near me,
Who art thou?
Whence come ye?
And – tell me – is it fair
Or is the truth bitter as eaten fire?

Tell me!
Fear not that I should quaver.
For I dare – I dare.
Then, tell me!
  
Mystic shadow, bending near me a poem by Stephen Crane.

Click

Or on seeing one too many cell phone photograph with burnt-out pixilated skies and yellowy clouds.

Or the camera may or may not be the issue, but your photography just sucks. Period.

Or "Don't do it. There are way too many photographers."*

I’ve heard there is a (not so) secret code

That Bresson, Capa, Adams put on record

But you don’t really care for photography, do you?

It goes like this

You gotto take your pick

40 fans on Facebook

Or 40 hours (or years) to get to that place, that light, that look–

There’s no other way, that’s how it’ll be for ya.

Baby, others have been here before

Felt the same way, gone through all this before.

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself,

not of proving or asserting one's own originality.**

It’s not that “awesome!” or that “like”

It’s not as if you’ll get any real insight.

True photographs can’t be explained or contained in words***

I just wanted to be the one to tell ya.

Maybe Photoshop is your saviour and God above.

But all I’ve learnt and seen in the real world,

If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough****

And no God can then ever hope to save yea.

You may post it on Facebook, or tweet it all night

200 comments on Flickr but you do know the next line:

It doesn’t mean a thing, if the photograph isn’t good.

That’s all there is to say to ya.

I tried my best to tell you what I know

Even though my words are always easy to ignore

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

And I know it will all go wrong

The seduction of the "likes" on your Wall

The ego lift, the inevitable (painful and lonely) fall.

You’ll stand alone before the mirror one day

And then whom will you look up to, to save ya.

After Hallelujah a song by Leonard Cohen with apologies.

*Nan Goldin in Guardian– Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art. Read the rest here.

**Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

***A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. – Ansel Adams

**** If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough. – Robert Capa

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