*

i had a dream in which i had a dog named Bach.

# 662. the one in which the naked voice emerges..

No. Just writing great words is not enough. Making art is not enough. I'll even say even being a doctor is not good enough. Great! you could inspire people that way, you could perhaps take care of them, but that consequence I think not much for. To live in a body that doesn't just serve as a machine carrying the mind from one place to another. The brain would just be pulp if the whole of you wasn't around. To live the moment you write or paint about, in the presence of your worldy siblings and thus heal. Write with your body, make the whole of you the art and the artist. porous. transparent. Not with an act of pretense with lines rehearsed to create reactions, not within theatre that creates an unreal believable world. But just to experience a certain oneness with the audience, of taking them with you somewhere, because you're going. there. Not through roles. Not through fingers typing on plastic keys, through the wholeness that is you. Don't underestimate the limitless power that you are.

a line from On The Warrior's Path by Daniele Bolelli.

the 63 day cycle

This is what we started 30 days ago. Look deep into yourself with eyes closed. Into the right brain and find nearby truths catching dust while you continue to believe the critics in the left brain.

Test: you either think you're no good or on some special days your self image meets the sky. Perfect, you're the candidate for this project.

List Talents, Qualities, Empowering values and Dis-empowering Values you already posses, and may or may not be aware of. Understand what each of these packages hold within them, translate them into possibilities of actions eg: combining research and performance: self searching lead me to designing a performance of dancers in the dark with lights on their heads.
Observe at the end of each day, whether you did them or not. Merely observe and watch the patterns emerge over 3 sets of 21 days. total 63 days.
Why 63 days? On average it takes 21 days to learn a new habit says a legend in advertising. unprogram your brain of forced programs and watch yourself as entertainment.

disfruta, enjoy madi.

maps spam

you know that the world is going to be a better place when you get spam that says:

Be a LONG - man. Enhance your penis with this Herbal Formula.

this is why we dont have an equivalent of "bon appetite" or "bon profit" in hindi.

for best results: read aloud in sweet and sour sauce.
don't forget to relish and garnish.
bon appetite, bon profit

An afternoon trip
to the wholesale vegetable market
in North Delhi,
could be more adventurous
than looking down at the earth and
finding uncharted plastic islands.
On the carved wooden floor of the local bus
stand many more doers of anatomical grafitti,
than all of the sufis everborn combined.
At the red light
jumps in a man,
in police uniform,
a policeman with a walky talky
antenna raised.
He claims in perfect rhyme and urgency,
holding a cut-out of Krishna from a greeting card
pasted on a beach-ball racket
"a 3 yr old has gone missing ,
and he who finds him will be awarded fifteen thousand."
for a minute you buy into his story
as the new street theatre
but then you hear the bus conductor
talk about his diligent dementia.


At the blessed market,
seas of sweet smelling
rainsoaked
mashed and soiled vegetable spares
await your arrival.
Table fans drying onions of the colour of brinjal,
are being sold at the price of gold.
On such a day,
everybody is looking for onions.
Men lie on mounds of cauliflower leaves
tossing soggy tomatoes into the sea
of uncooked vegetable curry,
splashing sprinkles on your back.
Some claim with all their pride accumulated
that the spinach is hybrid,
joy as wide as their pan-stained smiles.
You decide to alter your menu and leave
out the saag.
Dreams and bubbles of seasonal fruit,
fresh green vegetables,
Gajjarella, sweet carrot halva
burst for ever and ever more.

You return to stitch your grandma's
old and tearing saree into
tiny bags of glee.
tiny bags of lentils
stay
soaking
and
sunbathing
and
sprouting
against the larger picture
of the highway traffic
at Mangolpuri.

feeling good?

Somebody asked me to list 20 things that make me feel good..
when I think about them, talk about them or do them.
Just as a resource. And I began.
But what is 'feeling good' to me? What is the feeling of feeling good.
Perhaps, it has many colours.
Feeling good doesn't feel alone any one of the following:
Feeling good isn't just feeling happy or feeling pleasured.
feeling desired or inspired. feeling cared for, or satisfied.
not anymore.
feeling good isn't being in a good mood. in a state of excitement,
or thrill or emergency. a hint of feeling good still exists in surviving a mess.
or solving a puzzle i battled with. but just a hint.
feeling good isn't about success, popularity or even creativity anymore.
not in the dance performance or the applause after, not even the drawing.
feeling good is not a heightened state of being anymore.
feeling good is not about winning, conquering, progressing, or succeeding despite the hazards, risks, or hardships.
a good feeling not in successfully convincing anyone, selling or marketing myself either.
a good feeling isn't when people think i'm good at what i do, or judge me as good.

a GOOD FEELING is something more constant now. in the plain moments of the day.
when nobody is even there to notice it. or appreciate it. a good feeling is subtle and constant.
i associate a good feeling with nerve impulses firing themselves to be alive. just like when you get a chill down your back. a good feeling is alive, pulsating and so very personal that love even is distant. a good feeling is so natural and so uncalled for, yet constantly present as if it is the very nature of my being. this good feeling, when i understand it in language is just two words, alive and true. this good feeling is a combination of alive and honest, true. and everything can be true. love, emotions, happiness, cities, civilization, money, psychology, family, events, and everything can also be untrue. to itself.
notice your good feelings. is it in chocolate milkshake or lemonade or with lying in the sun with eyes closed, or in reading and gaining knowledge, in a task or in meditation.
what do you associate with feeling good. how does feeling good feel, taste and smell.

recent thoughts

1. Unlearn.
Unlearn images and identities
benevolently gifted as education, as culture, as cuisine, as entertainment.
even love.
See with eyes shut. With eyes own.
No newspaper, no television and no google.
What is it that we know without any learning
How is the baby taught to breathe and cry
unlearn.

2. There are no pegs, no dots.
You are floating about aimlessly.
resting at unmarked spots.
momentary homes.
and then the womb opens and you fall out.

3. conversations are futile.
what the heart speaks, the ear cannot hear.
and that which the ears hear is the word of the art.
that which the skin feels knows no rainbows
and no deep blue sea.

intuitive drawings, Eivissa.

Ibiza was devastating and miraculous at the same time.
One of the good things, I began to make some intuitive drawings. Not guiding the pen.
No idea what I will bring onto the paper. Just following the line till it said something to me.
Sometimes it said, "Look I'm a face" and well.. I added the mustache and sometimes it didnt.
Made first thing in the morning, inviting a person's presence onto the page, visions, memories and object that would be healing, some times fish, some times olives.
I used an old dip pen which makes these drawings more meditative. the pen in the picture is not the one i used.