Smile

“Hey, who let in all these elephants?
Did you know that elephants are made of elements?
Elephants are mostly made of four elements
And every living thing is mostly made of four elements
Plants, bugs, birds, fish, bacteria and men
Are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen

Come on come on and meet the elements
You and I are complicated, but we’re made of elements
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are”

Meet the elements from the children’s album “Here comes science”; Artists:They May Be Giants
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They all kept saying
How much we look alike
I don’t think that we look alike at all

But I’ll admit that I look more like a chimp
Than I look like my cousin the shrimp
Or my distant kin the lichens
Or the snowy egret or the moss
And I find it hard to recognize
Some relatives of ours
Like the rotifer, the sycamore
Iguanas and sea stars

My brother the ape
My brother the ape

My Brother the Ape from the children’s album “Here comes science”; Artists:They May Be Giants
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Navratri Kheer Craving Crack
http://www.nanakfoods.com/upcoming.htm

All hail Guru Nanak.

Lost and 2BuckChuckAnna

I was feeling really strongly about something before I came here. Now I forgot. So much for strength of thought.

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Confession: I am addicted to Lost. I seriously believe that if modern day fiction has shifted to the visual medium, then Lost is the best fiction I have ever encountered. It’s got a lot of bullshit of course – like radio hookups that won’t happen and will happen when you want them with a piece of red twine and can call London from a frikking freighter which is causing people to time travel to a Royal Scottish Regiment and a mouse dies trying the same —–. What I am REALLY happy about. Netflix has Seasons 1 through 4 for online streaming. For the past two weeks, barring a few exceptions, all my evenings have been spent planning a departure from the living area without being noticed by my roomies and then crawling into bed and watching back to back episodes of Lost. Things came to a head yesterday when I took half of the day off from the indulgence hangover that consisted of sore swollen eyes a headache and a general inability to stop thinking about what would happen next. I was even dreaming about John Locke and Kate Austen and Jack Shepard in a flight and on an island.

What I am really grateful for is that I started watching Lost at a period of time when I have access to 5 full seasons. What I hate about this is that I don’t have access to Season 6 yet. The waiting and anticipation for good fiction is unbearably nail hurting and cuticle peeling.

With that purged out of my system, I strongly encourage anyone who hasn’t had a good time in a LONG time to invest in a few DVDs and give their mental stimulations a healthy boost. I mean c’mon – if you could believe and enjoy and relive Gondor and Elves and Gandalf and appreciate a good story with a twist every second, Lost is totally up your alley. Brilliance I say.

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My roomie Anna – she wakes up at 6 45 am – is at work by 7 45 – works till 4 30 pm – comes back and goes for a bike ride or a speed skating expedition every evening – comes back all sweaty and high from an endorphin orgasm – and then showers, cooks, smokes, up, and drinks between 1 to 2 bottles of wine – and finishes her day with a Haagen Daaz ice cream stick at 1 am. The same time as when I have been falling asleep in the days before Lost. However, on a day I get less than 8 hours of sleep, exercise or a walk for me goes right out the Dee-Oh- Oh- Are.

This morning I look at her looking up at me grumpily in the morning as I left for work and I asked her what did I do to earn the stare. She said she was sore from the 20 odd miles of speed skating she did yesterday.

I asked her how does she do it- that after the 2 bottles of 2buckchuck she sent the previous night.

She said, in truly Annaesque style:
Coffee, carbs, supplements, vitamins, ice cream – whatever it takes!

It’s Friday morning at 9 45 am and I am thinking when was the last time I wanted to do whatever it takes for anything at all. I’m chewing on it.

Baby Squirrel Rehabilitation

So our new roomie – A – majorly into biking hence knows lots of mountain biker friends – brought home this little thing yesterday.

Behold! A baby squirrel:

Because I don’t have the actual pics handy as I type this – and I did take pics of course – we’ll use one from the web.

So anyhoo:
Apparently – this little critter needs to be fed every 2 hours – even thru the night – crawls around – and hasn’t opened it’s eyes yet. And after feeding you need to take a wet cotton ball and rub its genitals – to make it pee and shit.

A of course thinks her friend is nuts. She asks him “S – what happened to your biking morals. Squirrels are the guys who try to jump under your wheels when you are biking at high speeds and cause you to crash. ” But that’s only A’s way of having fun and making fun of the situation.

What S has done is:
- Put the little guy in a moving box.
- Put a heating pad under 2 pillow cases.
- Put in a meat thermometer that measures the temperature of the box so we can maintain it at a steady 90 F.
- Made a box of dog puppy formula.
- Given us a box of Gatorade.
- One syringe minus the needle is the titties the little guy feeds off of.
- Put in a warm blanket on top to protect him.
And called it a day. He’s off to Nevada to see a biking show while A sticks around out here and takes care of the little guy. This house has one new species taking our time and attention now.

The dog in the house – Molly – freaks out every time we open the box.

So I went online to do a little bit of reading on how to take care of a squirrel. More reading for anyone who cares – Baby Squirrel Rehabilitation. Supremely interesting I say.

From the fact that we just aren’t equipped to take care of this little thing and how we can only try – baby caring is a journey of immense discovery.

Two things

“You talk when you cease to be at peace
With your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the
solitude of your heart you live in your lips,
And sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking
Is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a
cage of words may unfold its wings but cannot fly.”

-Khalil Gibran

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Someone thought of Charles Babbage:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=5

I feel immense respect for creative genius that feels compelled to visualize and explore the dark crevices of the defining pillars of history. It’s after all informative of where we come from and also don’t come from.

Deifying the dei

Deifying the dei

Maybe this is what de-i-fying really means.

Removing the ‘I’s in expression and then re-evaluating what will remain expressed to get an non-”self adorned” measure of the value in the expression. If the sentiment and expression doesn’t fall apart, there may be some value in expressing it. It might even make it to aphorism of the day.

It’s so mathematically obvious.

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PS: This is an opinion.

this needs a title?

There is inherent beauty in the art of making choices. A choice is a measure of care. Be it the file format and zip format that supports streaming or miso soup over steak. If we are the product of our environments, the only real influence the environment has on you is what you end up choosing for yourself. Steak? Man from outside your religion? Yoga? I’m stating the obvious but we all know anyone who chooses things that are not the convention exercises more brain muscle than the average joe, stands out, has more to contribute by way of conversation or example, and can stand the test of novelty more often than once.

I think Choice is beautiful. And dangerous. And fun.

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Confessions of an efficient communicator:

Having lived with Americans for 3 weeks, my subconscious communicator self has begun to rotate Rrrs, and “D”fy “T”s. Like later is laderrr. Hahaha and Vodka is being converted to Vaadka – just so the bartenders do not hear it as wodka and interpret it as water. Really.

Sometimes I twirl em RRs even with J. I could choose to speak in Indianese, but then I would never be understood and get way many blank stares as compared to now. There is some amount of ego at play when I think I am giving up my real accent personality. I’m all for the dissolution of the ego when it comes to getting things done.

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Fun facts that one wouldn’t know if they sat inside a cubicle for most of their life:

- Ducks lift one of their legs and stand sometimes. Sometimes they even shit like that. It makes them graceful.
- They also eat grass – for roughage I guess.
- They get cold in cold water and shiver too.
- Their shit is green and white, solid distribution – 70% green 30% white.
- Lake water turns into mercury during dusk hours.
- Watching the sun melt away clouds is like watching the war in Ramayana. Eventually everybody succumbs to the sun’s whims.
- Pine cones can be as small as 1 inch tall.
- Lake Tahoe – restekpah!

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!

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

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.