links , poetry ,philosophy

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/29/anton-chekhov-8-qualities-of-cultured-people/

“If you want to become full, let yourself be empty. If you want to be given everything, give everything up. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich. When there is no desire, all things are at peace. In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added; In the practice of Tao, every day something is dropped.The Sage’s power is like this; He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results, thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed, thus his spirit never grows old.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“I am wild.
Dirty feet,
I run barefoot through woods and rainforests,
open fields and secret water streams. Alone with the sound of my breathing and the wind roaring in my ears.
I am wild.
Knotted hair,
brushing gently across my face, it dances in the wind and rain.
Twigs, leaves and flowers hitch rides across the country side.
I am wild.
The stars call out to me, a part of me is out there, my essence, my purpose, my divine connection.
An infinite sky, forever changing, flowing, being, stillness.
Solitude.
Icy hands and a smokey breath,
let my bones charge in the morning sun light.
Always alone, but I will be free anyway.
I am wild.”           by   Tribe ☼f Gaia

dementia, dancing with the divine and kochi biennale

http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/01/08/12-things-you-should-never-stop-doing/ –  Start doing these things now and never stop…

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/memory-plays-truant/article4324629.ece – Memory plays truant – Despite the rising number of people with dementia, awareness of the problem and support for caregivers is abysmal,………….. Where will we get nurses/helpers we can trust and who are also trained in dementia care?

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/crime-and-punishment/article4324619.ece – Guilt and shame, inevitable human emotions that usually serve a constructive purpose, can sometimes assume pathological proportions.    (had  read Crime and Punishment  Fyodor Dostoyevsky – mentioned in this article – eons ago – shud read it again…………..)

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/great-statesmen-great-lovers-of-books/article4303270.ece – The weather and temperature in Kerala imparted a special smell to those magazines. The heat, the golden light coming through the windows, the smell of mangoes and the silence broken only by the tick-tock of a clock on the ground floor: the summer of 62 is a summer never to be forgotten. My passion for reading grew stronger with every passing day. Very soon I agreed with Logan Pearsall Smith, “They say life’s the thing, but I prefer reading.”

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/wellness-read/article4303279.ece

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/dancing-with-the-divine/article4349452.ece

Dancing with the divine

The dance I dance becomes more beautiful each day,

When I can open my heart and swing both ways.

To feel for the ones I like and even those I don’t.

What a blessing to be shown,

That I can dance better being connected yet detached.

Involved in the music yet matching step

With the one I’m dancing with.

Being aware of the other’s grip

And of my hold, I was told,

Not to cling tight, but relax.

Yet fear of falling and failing can impede grace.

I also know one can be consumed in the race.

Of getting to some other wonderful place

That promises peace

And I start to relax right now into a space,

Where, my emotions do not make me ill at ease.

And in that softening

I find the opening to slip away

From grips that are hard

And hearts that are cold

The more I dance the less I fear

I glide away from the familiar

And yet it all seems the same

The dance where I twirl

Not afraid to unfurl

Into all my glory

I see myself entwined

Dancing with the divine

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/treasures-of-spain/article4349453.ece –    Massive stone foundations and medieval ruins, dating back two thousand years, lie along the town’s plaza and now serve as a meeting point. The interiors of homes, cafes, restaurants, bars and even banks, are still adorned by Roman arches; their own personal souvenirs from history. The oldest shop that stands in the town dates back to the 1700s, and has been continuing its legacy of selling candles for almost 300 years. The cobbled streets culminate in the colossal Catedral de Tarragona, which is perhaps the only evidence of Moorish influence on the town; Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance eras are equally reflected in the cathedral’s architecture.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/blueprint-for-a-life/article4349446.ece  –  Mukund Padmanabhan looks back fondly at his days in the small and unusual Blue Mountain School, Ooty.  ……………was pleased to see “the school beginning to smarten up a bit and the children looking a bit less… wild.” I was extremely pleased to learn that it was Pearce who thought up asthachal , that simple but beautiful practice where children collect on a hillock in the evenings to watch the sun go down in quiet reflection.

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/the-great-tech-party/article4344353.ece

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-fridayreview/an-interface-between-art-and-heritage/article4342146.ece

Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and currently preparing to host the Sharjah Biennale, expresses the same sentiment. “The city of Kochi with its layers of architectural historicity has definitely been tapped by the project hosts. The biennale has used historical heritage to a very good sequence,” she says, adding that on her first visit itself the biennale gets the viewers right into the different aspects of the city. In most other biennales she feels that the dialogue with the city goes missing.

To commence and continue this dialogue, is what Bose says, has been his main aim. “We have intentionally stressed on the cultural aspect,” he says. Driven by the wish to extricate art from the white cubes and open it up was one factor that comes across in the KMB. The Let’s Talk programme, its Educational Outreach programme, the cultural programmes that include theatre, music, performance arts and so on clearly take art to the people in a way never accessed before.

Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern, senses that openness when he says: “What IS different is that this biennial functions as a perfect vehicle for ‘performing the difference’: a public friendly ‘diy (Do It Yourself) platform for visual culture’ initiated and organised by artists, with and for artists. As a platform it unites and re-unites Indian contemporary artists who are showing an intellectual and visual ‘togetherness’ as never before. As a visitor, everybody can step in and make up one’s mind.”

Art critic and culture theorist Ranjit Hoskote believes that the curators of the biennale have given credit to an audience ready to accept the changing face of art, showcased here. “Exhibitions, especially biennales, are opportunities to expand one’s mental and experiential horizons as viewers – they should not be reduced to fit the size of one’s assumptions. A great many of the works are geared to affect the viewer at a primal, sensory, sensuous level even before their conceptual strategies came into play – through smell, shadow, sound. Today, viewers are more willing to experiment with new artistic experiences than before.”

Poet of the Revolution

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-literaryreview/the-story-of-a-man-searching-for-himself/article4278327.ece

While being tortured, he is conscious that he should cry out “bravely”, not like a coward. “When I heard my first cry, I was not disappointed. It was like a bull’s angry bellow. Anyone would have recognised it as the cry of a warrior.”

The poems are sparse and it is possible that some of the raw cadences of the original Punjabi have been lost in English translation, but even so one feels the pain when reading, for instance, a piece that begins on a sweet, idyllic note, with young girls picking berries, and eventually transforms into a cry of horror for what their lives will become — a cry of indignation directed at humanity itself.

More than the story of a man immersed in a specific movement or creed, Poet of the Revolution is the story of a man in constant search for himself.

One sees a trace of this in Dil’s intriguing decision to convert to Islam, a religion in which he finds greater tolerance of “low-caste” people (but also greater sense of purpose — “the Muslims considered it a virtue to teach their religion, unlike the Hindus who did not do so”) and which he somewhat bizarrely likens to communism.

It is Dutt who really puts Dil’s life and times in context, especially for the reader who does not know much about him beforehand. She supplies a few incidental details, comments on the frequently contradictory aspects of his personality and describes his unfailing gallantry towards her. In a reminder of how ephemeral even the most intense revolutions can be, she presents a poignant view of a man who had once been in the heart of a maelstrom, but who went on to lead an unassuming life as the world around him moved on: “The comrades of his revolutionary days were now editors, executives, professors, businessmen or expatriates. The sprint thunder was over and everyone had returned to the comfort zone of their class structures.”

poetry

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-literaryreview/pauses-performed-on-the-go/article4278322.ece

In his poem ‘Face’ (translated from Korean by Brother Anthony of Taize), Kim Ki-Taek describes a brief moment in the life of a tired office worker who is sitting at his desk with his face buried in his hands. In a surreal transcendence of an otherwise ordinary moment, the speaker becomes aware of his face, “stuck to the skull’s shell”, forming expressions. The skull is watching the face, “the face that blooms briefly then fades”. When the face finally comes to, the speaker, recovering his eyes, begins to “focus on the figures in the document”. ‘Face’ makes one think about the brief, un-policed spaces that spring up from within a tired, dead bureaucratic environment. A poet of daily life, Kim Ki-Taek functions as a quiet fly on the wall observer, a recorder of the moment. In an e-mail interview, he says: “I became a poet after winning the New Year literary contest of Hankook Daily Newspaper in 1989. I was 32 years old then. In Korea, the literary contest is a crucial route to becoming a professional poet. I had been writing poetry since the age of 20. The reason I turned to poetry is that all I needed was paper and pencil. That was easier than anything else for me. I was a poor man. When I graduated from high school, I had to work in a factory. After three years of factory work, I made enough money to go to college. I was very shy and had difficulty communicating with others. Poetry was attractive to me because, in my imagination, I could meet many people without my shyness getting in the way. Poetry also opened out a better second life that I could enter through my imagination.”

That Fay speaks in a voice that is direct and immediate is largely a function of the audience she is reaching out to: “immigrant, working class and not highly educated, but who were open to learning and new experiences”. In fact, it is this embedded sense of a very different audience that is perhaps the key to understanding her work. Equally important is Fay’s understanding of art as deeply transformative, an art that is for everybody.

The hopeless human predicament

 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/the-hopeless-human-predicament/article4324615.ece

Nothing much is happening in their wretched lives. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.” All they can do is to wait with anxiety and trepidation the arrival of Godot.

As Vladimir states: “But that is not the question. Why are we here; that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.”

So the two men, doomed to one another’s company in desolate surroundings, pass time bantering and bickering, singing and reminiscing, laughing and crying to relieve the monotony of their endless ‘wait’. They voice profound metaphysical questions interspersed with small talk. Their emotions change in quick succession, as if to reveal the contradictions that the human self is steeped in. Vladimir and Estragon desperately need one another in order to avoid living a life of loneliness and alienation. “Didi” and “Gogo” — their nicknames — demonstrate the intimacy of their relationship. Yet, every now and then they feel compelled to leave one another.

Estragon: Wait! (He moves away from Vladimir.) I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off alone, each one for himself. (He crosses the stage and sits down on the mound.) We weren’t made for the same road.

Vladimir: (without anger) It’s not certain.

Estragon: No, nothing

The pathos in Didi and Gogo’s need for each other and the anguish in their desire to escape their plight are palpable just as the absurdity in the situation of pointless waiting is evident. They do not know who Godot is. They are neither sure about the time nor the place of their appointment. They do not even know what will happen if they stopped waiting. Lack of this basic knowledge makes them powerless and insignificant. The tramps cannot but wait for Godot.

Ironically, the much-awaited Godot is never ever going to arrive.

Each day is a return to the beginning and each day passes in circuitous conversation.

Will they forever keep circling? Will they ever find closure? Perhaps not, because the universe that Beckett presents before us is devoid of design, purpose or care.

The intermingling of absurdist comedy with black humour redeems and lightens the inherently tragic theme. The spectators break out of their self-imposed inertia, rock with the rhythm of the play, pity and fear, laugh and cry. Waiting for Godot encapsulates the human condition brilliantly. It connects with our life and our situation. It seems to echo our deepest fears, confronts us with our naked self and our predicament, our stark loneliness — conditions not imposed by any outsider but by our own selves.

The play ends on that very note of bleak desperation. The unhappy vagrants, their questions unanswered, their hopes dashed, speak the final lines “Well? Shall we go?” Estragon answers, “Yes, let’s go,” but neither moves. The curtain falls over their immobility, over their inner paralysis.

I have spent two and a half hours balanced on a gossamer thread stretched between tension and excitement, astonishment and pure wonder. I have just witnessed a dramatic masterpiece, a timeless tale — a philosophical quest that is universal and eternal. I am out of the play but still in the play, haunted by the hopelessness of the human predicament.

As I walk by the meandering Liffey and the quays in downtown Dublin in the cool December breeze, I feel humbled by my own insignificance and an overwhelming sense of waiting for something undefinable in ‘the cosmic waiting room’.

Flamenco , Pina bausch etc.

16th Jan , 2013 – – GZ – impressionism vs expressionism……….dark-stark-diagonal lines-post world war1 -low self esteem- easy target of criminals – first speaker -impressive- 2nd one -on dance more expressive , which brings me to the topic of bausch- here expressionism is at once raw and moving – all that dance shud stand for ….but as i saw more of her slides – ballet totally disappears – is that the reason they call it “Tanz  theatre ? ” , i wud prefer her innovativeness but the structure of ballet-   i think  ‘structured rebellion ‘or disciplined rebellion – as paradoxical as it sounds  – is always better than rebel without a form – ‘coz  u atleast give an idea of what form u r revolutionizing – ballet or not – her dance is true dance – free expression of raw emotion – ballet i feel is more emotionally guarded.

Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost!” -Pina Bausch

 8th jan 2013- Learnt  flamenco dance @work shop with  Sheila Schroeder –  Flamenco- Sevilla –Paseo – grace+passion .

Trent’s Last Case – by E. C. Bentley

I am blown along a wandering wind,’ replied the voice irresolutely, ;and hollow, hollow, <br />
hollow all delight.

Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?

He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp noseand narrow jaw gave him very much of a clerical air, and this impression was helped by hiscommonplace dark clothes and soft black hat. The whole effect of him, indeed, was priestly. He was a man of unusually conscientious, industrious, and orderly mind, with little imagination. His father’s household had been used to recruit its domestic establishment by means of advertisements in which it was truthfully described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible kindness of heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed nothing to humor. In an earlier day and with a clericaltraining he might have risen to the scarlet hat. His austere but not unhappy life was spent largely among books and in museums; his profound and patiently accumulated knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects which had stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of research; at their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most himself. His favorite author was Montaigne.

So much being determined, Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment of the view for a

few minutes before ordering his meal. With a connoisseur’s eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the distant moor. Mr. Cupples delighted in landscape.

. ‘An enormous great breakfast, too—with refined conversation and  tears of recognition never dry.

She said that the worry and the humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up appearances before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my advice.

I said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his way of treating her. But she would not do  that. She had always taken the line of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanor, and  nothing, I knew, would persuade her to admit to him that she was injured, once pride had led her into that course. Life is quite full, my dear Trent,’ said Mr. Cupples with a sigh, ‘of these obstinate silences and cultivated misunderstandings.’

I know that he was making a desert of the life of one who was like my own child to me. But I am under an intolerable dread of Mabel being involved in suspicion with regard to the murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, if only for a time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not fitted for it. It would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today which would carry them through anything, perhaps. I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed up’—Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture—’with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my wife’s child.’

A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his twenties achieved some  reputation within the world of English art. Moreover, his pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a habit of leisurely but continuous working, broken by fits of strong creative enthusiasm, were at the bottom of it. His father’s name had helped; a patrimony large enough to relieve him of the perilous imputation of being a struggling man had certainly not hindered. But his best aid to  success had been an unconscious power of getting himself liked. Good spirits and a lively,humorous fancy will always be popular. Trent joined to these a genuine interest in others that gained him something deeper than popularity. His judgment of persons was penetrating, but its process was internal; no one felt on good behavior with a man who seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a  task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of  his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry.At thirty-two he had not yet passed the age of laughter and adventure. His rise to a celebrity a hundred times greater than his proper work had won for him came of a momentary impulse.

‘It had been like that,’ she ended simply, ‘for months before he died.’ She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing her body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent was hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at the frankness of Mrs. Manderson’s story. He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it.

. . . what I want to  say is that along with it there had always been a belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place in society, and that I should throw myself into it with enjoyment, and become a sort of  personage and do him great credit—that was his idea; and the idea remained with him after other delusions had gone. I was a part of his ambition. That was his really bitter disappointment, that I failed him as a social success.

the sort of girl I was, brought up to music and books and unpractical ideas, always

enjoying myself in my own way. But he had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honors of his position in the world; and I found I couldn’t.’

 

quotes , links , e from fiction

http://24.media.tumblr.com/4ae375104634dde15213e7ee6afa30ba/tumblr_mf3ad6vodI1qksquzo1_500.png

My absolute favorite thing is finding a book I can’t put down

And reading it until really late at night

And only stopping when my eyes start to hurt and my vision gets blurry from either sleep or strain

And when I put it down I realize how tired I am and fall asleep instantly.

In the morning, I wake up, and the first thing I do is pick up the book

And I read until I’m hungry.

I just love that.

http://exp.lore.com/post/40839657205/alan-watts-famous-recently-resurfaced-lecture-on

e FROM FICTION

I recall those years there is an unreality about them that I am unable to dispel. The problems discussed—the theories maintained of life, death, art, poetry, and any number of other unfathomed subjects, appear to me now so preternatural—the conceptions of his wonderful brain so startling, that I can hardly realize having ever been a part, even though but a faint reflex, of that dazzling and unsated life.

There was the long-barreled and elaborately ornamented gun of the Arab—the scimitar of the Turk—the blow-gun of the South American Indian—the bow and arrow of his northern brother. At the bottom of this array was a pair of French rapiers of the seventeenth century. The blades were crossed and rested upon a brass-headed nail, and upon this nail there hung, point downward, a jewel-hilted Italian stiletto or dagger, suspended by a silken cord.

“The insect has a true instinct,” he said, gently; “it has no fear of capture.””No; I should only hurt it and destroy its beauty.”

“Butterflies,” said the artist, “are like beautiful thoughts. They hover mistily about us, flitting away whenever we attempt to capture them; and if at last we are successful we find only too often that their wings have lost the delicacy of their bloom.”

“Good and bad are relative terms only,” he said, as one pronouncing a text. Every man fulfills his purpose. I can put a stroke of paint on my canvas, and you will call it white. I put another beside it, and by contrast the first appears gray. Still another, and the second has become gray, and the first still[Pg 46] darker. And so on, until I have reached the purest white we know. It is the same with humanity. Men are only dark or light as they are contrasted with others; nor can they avoid the place they occupy on God’s canvas any more than my colors can choose their places on mine. The world is a great picture. God is the greatest of all artists. His is the master hand—the unerring touch that lays on the lights, the half-tones and the shadows. Each fulfills its purpose. Without the shadows there would be no lights.

“What is true of masses is likewise true of individuals,” he continued, after a moment’s pause. “In a landscape, every blade of grass, every pebble, has its light and its dark side. If you see only the light side of an object, it is only because the shadow is turned from you. It is so with men; one side is sun, the other shadow. Sometimes the light, only, is presented to view, but the darker side is none the less there because unseen. Nature is never unbalanced. Whatever of brightness there is toward the sun there must be an equal amount of shadow opposing, with all the intergradations between. If the light is dim the shadow is soft; if the light is brilliant the shadow is black. Some of us are turned white side to the world, some the reverse; some show the white and the black alternately.”

“You believe in fate, then, and the absence of moral freedom,” he said reflectively”I believe nothing. Belief is not the word. What is, is right. To assert otherwise is an insult to the Supreme. He is all powerful, hence—wrong cannot exist.”  “I should be glad to hear your argument in support of that position.”

“Argument! It is a self-evident truth! Argument is not necessary! Argument is never necessary! If an assertion is not true no amount of discussion will make it so, while the truth requires no support.”

“Oh, they have! And how do you know that anyone has crossed over? You do not believe in the mortality nor the slumber of[Pg 49] the soul; no more do I; but time exists only with life. A man dies and in the same instant opens his eyes upon eternity, and yet a million of years may have been swept away in that instant. As a tired child you have fallen asleep. A moment later you have been called by your mother to breakfast. And yet, in that moment of dreamless sleep, the long winter night had passed. Adam, the first man, closing his eyes in death; you and I, who will do the same ten, twenty, forty years hence, and the generations who will follow us for a million years, perhaps, will waken to eternity, if there be a waking, in one and the same instant of time, without a knowledge of the intervening years. There were no years. Eternity has no beginning, no end, no measurement.”

I read some lines once that seemed to express the idea:

“I sometimes think life but a dream

Of some great soul in some great sphere,

And what appear as truths but seem,

And what seem truths do but appear.”

 

He repeated these words with slow earnestness, adding solemnly, “Who knows? Who knows?”

“But a man must stand somewhere. He that stands nowhere stands upon nothing.”[Pg 53]

The artist paused before the open window and stood looking out upon the dusk of the little scented garden. A faint reflected glimmer from some far-away lamp dimly illuminated one side of his face, silhouetting his striking profile sharply against a ground of blackness.

“If you mean,” he began, slowly, “that I should have some opinions, then I will tell you what they are.

“I believe neither in tariff nor trade. Currency nor coin. Traffic nor toil. I believe in nothing—but the absolute freedom of every living being. Freedom!—freedom from the curse of creeds, the blight of bigotry, and the leprosy of the law. Freedom to go and to come, to live and to die. Life without loathing, love without bondage. To live in some sunlit valley, where the bud is ever bursting into flower, the flower fading to fruit, and the fruit ripening to sustenance. The untouched bosom of Nature would yield enough for her children had not the curse of greed been implanted in their bosoms.”

Goetze had turned away from the window and was again striding up and down the floor in the dark.

“A beautiful poem, Julian,” said the other, dreamily; “but a sort of delightful barbarism, I’m afraid.”

“Barbarism? No! A higher, purer intellectuality than we have ever yet known—a civilization that knows not the curse of avarice nor the miseries of crime—the weariness of wealth nor the pangs of poverty. The garden of Eden is still about us, but we have torn up the flowers, and desecrated it with the lust of gain. Man was never driven out of that] garden. Greed was planted in his heart and he destroyed it.”