Living with dragons

It’s one of those mornings when you know things are going to be okay when you put on your headphones and listen to music. Until then you blog. My ipod is charging.

And why the sudden dependency on the iPod – well because the guy in my neighboring cubicle keeps munching on something REALLY crunchy, and keeps making those crunch crunch sounds that make me hungry, jealous, and want to find out what he’s eating. Also, on hunger, me can’t work.
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While moving in as a housemate is a novel experience unto itself, what makes it interesting is that my housemates are not Indian. I live with 6 individuals. 3 humans, 2 dogs, and 1 reptile. More specifically, a brother sister duo, their bartender friend, all Americans, and 2 labradors – one golden one brown, and a bearded dragon.

It hasn’t just been interesting learning the nuances of how Americans do things around the house, it has also been interesting observing another species – I’ve been around dogs and thought I knew what they did. What wasn’t taken into account is that I made these observations about dogs when I was what – 11? I wouldn’t have know a she-dog could hump my shoulder because I didn’t know what humping meant back then. So yea, one of the she-dogs tried to hump my shoulder when I sat down on the stairs. The other she dog has the most amazing puppy face expressions – she walks around with a plastic box in her mouth all day asking for food, even if the lady of the house fed her before she left. And between two female dogs there is jealousy, competition for attention, and dynamics that try to figure out which one of them plays alpha. You can also almost sense which one of them is more secure and self-confident and which one of them has lower self-esteem.

Recently the bro and sis have become comfortable enough with the lizard to walk around the house with the lizard on their shoulder. To me it looks like a mini crocodile that will flare up and bite me with a venomous sting. Believe me, all this is only in and from my head. Apparently, bearded dragons are near dog-like when it comes to seeking attention and quite friendly.

The dragon sits in an acrylic tank all day, perched on his shoebox, basking under the lamplight focused on one corner of the cage. He sleeps inside the shoebox. Eats sparingly, and looks at you with a stiff upper lip, from the side of his face where his bulbous and haughty eye happens to be. Believe it or not, it’s one of the high points in my life at the moment.

The day I carry him around on my shoulder, I’ll ensure there are pictures to record the moment and will promptly enshrine it on this blog.

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So work-wise, things have changed. C H A N G E D. For people who know what I have been like in my past existence, brace yourself and find a chair:

- I wake up at 7 30/7 45 in the morning – on a bad day.
- On a good day, I manage 6 45 am.
- I walk to work.
- I also walk back from work.
- It’s 1.2 miles – one way. That’s nearly 2 kms.
- I cook at least 2 evenings a week.
- And I find time to travel to San Diego during the weekend.
- Here’s the best one: I sleep before 1 am every single day. Most days it’s before 11 30 pm.

Hahaha! And you know what, I’m not complaining at all. In fact, I love it.
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ZAMM

And while we are listing accomplishments:
I finally fucking finished ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE. I cried. I expected to. But I cried for reasons that I didn’t expect to cry for. It wasn’t just a book. And any attempts to describe it cursorily will be a decision of less quality than not talking about it; just basking in the glow of having digested it, page by page, and of having understood it – experience by experience.

Next I’m reading On the Road. J gave it to me for the birthday saying – For a trip that lasts longer than a day.

PS: Shiva, I know you said it will be better to read Dharma Bums first, but I couldn’t resist.
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Grudge of the day:
I want mood labels and smileys to indicate how weird I am feeling. I want a sign that says – I don’t know how to react to this situation because they don’t do it like that in my culture.

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Mood of the moment:
Desperately seeking hot soup and socks!

Discoveries of the Week

1. The Annals of Improbable Research
Where Apples can be compared to Oranges and hence the analogy is proved invalid. Where the scientists come together with flowing manes of luxuriant hair. Where navel lint matters. Where IgNobel prizes are given out to experiments that “first make you laugh, and then think.”

2. Segway
Go green! Go gas-less!
But first, overcome your vertigo of course!

At crossroads

I may have learned how to drive on the right side of the road, but I wonder when I will start looking left first when I cross roads.

Unlearning 3 years of programming vs unlearning over 20 years of survival instinct.

On depth and shallowness – Part 2

1: Won’t it be ironic if a whiskey glass tried to bear the depth of a beer glass?
2: How does the whiskey glass know how deep it is?

Time to opine: Enlighten Up

Last weekend I saw this film called Enlighten Up!

So what’s exciting:
- It’s on Yoga. A subject close to my heart.
- It explores the pop yoga culture that offers many variations that may work, may not work. But variations do exist. As do spas and beauty parlors and heated rooms and what not. In the US alone, billions of dollars are spent on Yoga every year, some spend cos its a fad, and many spend coz it works. But it may not work for everybody.
- I like the premise. The documentarian takes a non-believing journalist and exposes him to 6 months of regular yoga to see whether he transforms. The fact that he is a journalist is good coz it makes him objective about the experience.

What got to me:
- I didn’t like the premise so much after I saw the film:
The whole idea of shoving yoga down someone’s throat and hounding him about it is a bad idea. I would rather the director had sponsored his yoga, given him a camcorder, and let him shoot his experience. Self-introspection would have been best. Trying to give someone’s yoga experience a direction in itself is a bad idea. But then this is my opinion.
- The film made the subject do a full day of yoga – 3-4 hours a day, adjust his entire lifestyle around it, and then reflect periodically about changes it introduced.

Here’s what I say:
When I started yoga, I didn’t like it. I’m talking about school. It was boring. It involved being in the same position and breathing for ages. Or what seemed like ages to the young nubile restless mind. However, when I opted for it in times of stress and strife, a lot of that went away. The instructor made it interesting and fast paced. Power yoga did work for me. But I knew it was working for me not because I found it easy to do asanas with every successive class. My benchmarks were based on the activities I perform in everyday life: my job, my routine, my focus, my cooking, my eating even. Everything suddenly became better.

Now, take the routine out of the subject’s life, and he has nothing but his unsettling new atmosphere to contend with. How on earth will he be able to experience the transformation?

Even if a transformation does happen, there is a 50-50 percent chance of yoga getting associated with discomfort for no fault of the subject.

The experiment was set up to fail. But wait, it didn’t entirely fail. I happen to be understanding the meaning of Mu properly at this point in time. So put it simply, it was a Mu experiment. The wrong context of evaluating an idea and expecting results that hinge on a wider broader context of pillars.

So should you watch it. But of course.
The film has an interesting cross section of opinions by people who are affected by it:
- Instructors: BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, all the neo-converts in the US.
Here is a special Iyengar treat.
- Lots of yogis who speak of Yoga being a means to attain god and spirituality. This opens up an entirely different Pandora’s box.
- Norman Allen, the first American to learn yoga. He now lives in Hawaii and is into farming. I love the scene where he asks Nick (the subject of the experiment) to go fuck himself. Metaphorically!

So Englighten Up! – yahweh or no way (quoting Stephen Colbert here)?
I say – yahweh.

Enjoyable, and definitely emotion+ thought provoking.

tid-bits

Have consumed the following and enjoyed muchly:

1. South Park Season 13 – Margaritaville

2. South Park Season 13 – Fatbeard (Somalian Pirate We!)

3. Weeds – Seasons 1 and 2

4. Currently reattempting reading Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I will get thru it this time. Slow and steady.

5. Also on the bed side – South Park and Philosophy Why Flatulence is philosophical? and Can a saint really laugh at south park? are the questions being explored here. Morality – the south park way. The book is authored by a professor who teaches philosophy and had recommended SP as the basis of his students’ thesis.

6. Watchmen – Saw it, liked it.

7. Ma Vie En Rose It’s amazingly made. Softly. How a little boy comes to terms with his distaste for his Y chromosome and wishes suddenly he will get his period and turn into a girl. Until then he wears satin frocks, red shoes, and lipstick. And plans to marry the boy next door. Like I said, softly.

8. Super High Me – Must watch stoned. Absolutely must. A regular stoner stand up comedian gives up smoking pot for 30 days and stays high for 30 days.

9. Super Size Me – A man goes on a 30-day McDonald’s ONLY diet.

10. King Corn – How everyone in America is made of Corn. And everything. 2 guys from Idaho go back to their home town to plant 1 acre of corn and then follow it into their foods and bodies. Corn is everywhere here.

Art is in the flower

Art is in the flower; in the life energies flowing in the artist’s body that recognizes the flower as special.

An artist is a true artist when he doesn’t use “his” hand to create “his” painting of a flower. It is the flower, which wants to b drawn and painted and filters beautifully through that particular artist’s set of eyes; the flower seeds the birth of the painting. Those eyes must have been lying in wait for that moment of combined divinity and beauty to happen; it is the flower that has to be drawn – must be drawn- and come alive in another dimension and attain immortality until the fabric of existence (canvas) itself dissolves into nether. A flower, and every tree, bush, shrub, or plant has lived the current dimension in enough silent rapt attention to have heard all the beats and melodies and rhythm of the universe and can manage the onslaught of unsettling and the silent change of a far limited dimension that is strictly 2D.

It is not the form alone, for the form is only a fragmented mask of its brothers’ traits that it could wear off the shelf, purchased with genetic currency, and then share it with its environment. Nothing unique. Not as much. It is the esprit in the flower, the spirit bursting out, that which lives inside the flower, which spoke to – not the artists eyes or hands – but the heart and mind that will control the hand.

The flower can survive casual death. It can withstand the realization of the enormity of the empty and the non-rewarding infinity of immortality and not complain. Immortal resurrection in another dimension. It can give away some part of its essence to the artist in the moment. Just like that. Knowing for sure that some of it will never come back.

The flower in a sense is merely a naïve messenger of the beauty gods giving up its vital essences so that beauty may live. The flower then is noble. It is not manipulating. It does not know what it was used for and what message it has carried from the beauty gods. It only plays messenger and carries the burden and responsibility of being the flower in the first place. And then it delivers the message right at the eye of the artist and imprints him with a unique tattoo that is unique for every artist. Because all artists have different eyes and even more different skins. Because the skin underlying its stamp makes a difference.

Embellishments are heavy burdens for purity, his embellishment is purest and of most significance when it is not conscious. The artist must cleanse himself of his physical and corporeal barriers and paint merely by instinct. He must recreate the flower as it appeared in the vision, rather than how he would like to remember it, or how it would have been better if it had a bow around it. If he were to embellish the image, he has blocked it midway, and cornered some of its vitality.

The total corruption of art happens with such painters because they then impose their insecurity on “what was meaning to be expressed by making an arbitrary investment of trust in the integrity of an arbitrary artist’s ability, rather than waiting for the right painter to come along”.

In fact, to say the flower has a need to be drawn makes the flower manipulative; gives it an ego. The flower does not prefer an artist. It doesn’t mind the black and white camera or the color film. That is true egoless-ness. This one step of offering an opportunity to be worthy of drawing to tired and waiting eyes – without even the knowledge that it is playing this role – and to receive no sense of importance from the external environment that is the true dharma of the flower, it has been a fully formed flower all the way and been the best flower it can be. It cannot look at another flower and hold its petals just so. All it can do is flower. The flower therefore does not command the artist. it is in fact the attribute that the flower has no control over at all – its inherent beauty and its innate nature – that compels the artist.

The pursuit of the artist is therefore not to capture a flower, but the flower he felt in awe of. If he adds anything to the vision, then it would be embellishments only serving one purpose: of claiming his skill can somehow improve beauty.

It is the lenses of the artist that make a one among hundreds flower that “special” beautiful. And a yardstick of the artist’s integrity is when he represents what he perceives in the best way he can. Not to master the technique of drawing itself to be able to draw anything that comes his way. An artist doesn’t paint the view. A drawing and painting major does.

The artist paints “the love” for what he perceives. The stalk lifts the artist’s fingers, the petals imbue it with color; the central core of the flower, however, is the seat of inspiration: it is blank, and dark, and often a bottomless pit. It is when you stare down the core, though, which offers noting but a dark and safe space for yourself, that you discover your true self, your true eyes, and the true essence of the flower.

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I may have written this, but I cannot take credit for it. It happened in my ear.

We’re all made out of ticky tacky

I have to thank Weeds for introducing me to ticky tacky.

ticky tacky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticky-tacky

In support of Zen, Motorcycles, and Maintenance

Expression, learning, and limitations thereof

All expression seems to come from a void. Even as I type this sentence, I think I am only reiterating and fully understanding a statement from Waking Life*. One of my friends here is studying film making here, and she invited me for a film screening in a class for International Cinema appreciation. I went along for the experience. We saw The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, but that is not the point, of course.

One of the students in the class was deaf-mute. I don’t know her name yet, but she was of striking beauty and carriage. She was also noticeably dressed in clothes that she must have spent some effort designing. Interesting patchwork on her jeans, a cap with a big yellow feather sticking out of it, rather like Robin Hood. And she had turned the volume up on her make up. It was loud, but it was tasteful and fitted into the persona of a filmmaker. Bright blue eye shadow that extended way down below her eyes to her cheeks in a well designed manner. Loud rouge highlights on her cheeks. And not to mention dark outlined eyes. My first reaction was to say, wow, that’s something! My second reaction was, she must have spent a lot of time this morning getting dressed like that for class. She was colorful, and was definitely on talking terms with rainbows. And then I noticed the patchwork on her jeans. Definitely not something you would pick up in a chain store. Possibly something she designed herself or got it from someone who designed it to be special. Every cell of her being was screaming I am special, and this without a word or look exchanged between us. In a 30 second awareness of her presence, I already knew the kind of person she would be, and that I would love to hang out with her sometime.

My final thought: You turn down the volume on your trap, and the rest of your body becomes expressive. We are walking languages. Who says we need words to communicate? I believe it might not be an exercise in futility to deny oneself of talking privileges for extended periods.

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“Do I really need to know this? This isn’t going to help me!” My biggest learning barrier throughout my life, especially at my first job. What was missing was an informed and weighted cataloging system in my head. It took 5.5 years of technical writing to change that permanently. And it took the first few pages of Lila to help me identify and articulate the problem.

I think I know where it came from though. From the grade-oriented educational system we have back home. This is what it made out of me. If there was nothing to be gained from learning XYZ, I wouldn’t study XYZ. If studying AB over CD gave me more marks, I would study AB over CD. Hence, if reading 60 pages of information made me comprehensively informed, and 20 pages just enough informed to bullshit, I would do 25. I always got to second place. I never made it to first place in class. It would have taken 35 pages of studying some more. Now, given an infinite timeline, one can deliver infinite quality. Given a limited timeline, the successful person is the one who delivers satisfactory amounts of quality, faster and meets the deadline. I was great at that.

Now, taking stock, professionally, it makes me an ace. I have my bullet list of key points ready to attack a subject. Personally, it makes me shallow. I never felt strongly for anything that I didn’t read the latter 35 pages of. I don’t feel strongly about a lot of things.

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*Quote from Waking Life that I was referring to:

Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that. Or “Saber-toothed tiger right behind you.” We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say “love,” the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I’m saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we’ve connected, and we think that we’re understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.