i had drawn a zebra onto julia's jeans- something i had been saying i would do for a while - and mateia had regaled everybody with estrafalarious tales of her travels in mozambique and senegal. we had drunk a copious quantity of ginger and jaggery infusion, and now mateia and i were back at the wwoofer's house on the hill, sitting round the bright blaze of the fire on my last evening.
verde que te quiero verde - these words floated into my consciousness while we were speaking about colours in spanish. i said them aloud, verde que te quiero verde
"federico garcia lorca", responded mateia. yes! federico garcia lorca. verde que te quiero verde - green how i want you green. mateia told me about the time she studied spanish poetry at ljubljana and wrote her own poem, which began...she recollected slowly in silence, then looked in her notebook and recited:
este no es un poema...
that was the refrain (the only part i remember): this is not a poem. i said it reminded me of the words of some other author. oye, conoces el escritor norteamericano henry miller...? no sooner had i pronouced his name mateia exclaimed i love henry miller, i could read his books again and again. and have you seen his bathroom monologue on youtube? and do you know pynchon? similar to henry miller, but miller's writing is made to look innocent compared with that of pynchon's. she was radiant with her enthusiasm for pynchon, and i made a note to look him up sometime
miller's tropic of cancer famously begins:
"This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . "
i did not warm to miller's writing the first time i read it. his swaggering egocentrism unsettled me, but now i can say that i have grown to love the unashamed honesty of his self-presentation . i love his freedom of thought, his exuberance of thought, his ability to weave his words in such a way as to convey his untrammeled exuberance, his love of words and the rich meaningscapes revealed thereby. but there remains that one thing that checks my love of his writing, one thing that checks what otherwise could be a smooth continuous enjoyable reading experience...
it is the way he only thinks about himself, his towering egocentricity...
"he does not see the Sacred", added mateia
it was a good way of describing it. earlier we had talked about religion and mateia had mentioned mataji's sacred presence in front of the alter when she chanted and moved the incense sticks round in circles.
her sacred presence. i liked those words.
"but what does it actually mean to have sacred presence? what is the difference between having a sacred presence and not having a sacred presence?"
ah - just let the feeling be, responded mateia softly.
i reflected on my tendency to feel things and then immediately try and understand them with the grasping claws of my logical mind.
what is the cause of our thoughts and the things which we decide to say and write? ideas traverse our minds, and whence do they come?
the idea traversed my mind that it is so good to travel. i said it out loud and mateia agreed, and it seemed to me then, as it does now, that it was as profound and true a thing to say as it was simple.
it is so good to travel.
yes, said mateia, but nothing beats the feeling when i am back in ljubljana in summer cycling around the streets listening to my music yeeeah
yes, but after a couple of weeks, i always grow restless...
then, a similarly simple and profound and true thought traversed my mind, begot by the pleasure-seeking machinations of the body sensations: it is so good to eat food.
i set about doing this a little hesitantly, making some popcorn in my pan over the fire. that was all we had left to eat. hesitantly because in my mind were the ayurvedic guidelines to healthy eating given to me by Premnidi: your stomach should never be more than half full. it is good to eat something in the morning to give you energy for the day ahead, and again at midday when the sun is hottest and so is your internal digestive fire, but you don't need to eat much in the evening maybe just a bowl of soup. why eat anything after dark when all your body is going to do is sleep?
however, it was my last evening around the fire and i had no desire to sleep. it wasn't hunger which drove me, it was appetite, the desire to break up time with a little entertainment for the mouth. i cut up an orange and stirred in the last of the cocoa powder to make a paste. it was all we had left.
mateia restricted herself to making another pot of boiling spicy ginger and jaggery.
mateia arrived at the farm one day, a little surprised to find herself wanting to stay for "a few days, maybe a few weeks" she had spotted the temple marked on her map, and on the steep road up from kollur had decided to leave her bicycle and luggage at the side of the road and continue walking. at the moment when i met her she was in the process of deciding to go back for her stuff and settle down for a while. the meandering path she followed across india by bicycle sounded similar to the path i might have envisaged for myself, before that plan was hampered by visa restrictions, and before i became interested in exploring community living, influenced not in a small part by reading Tobias Jones' book Utopian Dreams before i left Scotland.
i spent one day alone at the wwoof house in between sara's departure and mateia's arrival. sara became impatient with the cultural differences regarding how woman should dress. she did not want to have to cover her shoulders while eating in the temple, and, especially, when working outside in the sun.
sara was one who had no time for religion. she said that she respected religions, as long as (on the condition that) they respected her. i think she felt that humanity would be better served if all religious beliefs disappeared. when i listened to her i found no inclination to disagree with her. religions are narrow minded. they impose a narrow vision of life with their creeds and rules, their exclusive possession of the truth, which excludes other religious interpretations. let's make love our only religion, says sara, whenever anybody asks me what is my religion i say "Love"
tattva left too, on what he called a book distribution mission in korea, which i discovered was a substantial source of income for bhaktivedanta. previously i had asked tattva about this and he had responded enigmatically, "krishna provides" then with a wide smile and wide eyes "i don't know how he does it but krishna always provides"
later he explained to me what he referred to as his "book distribution" activities, which involve accosting people on the streets of Seul, and other south-east asian capitals, and asking if they would like to donate some money for their hare krishna community and the education they give to local children. editions of the bhagavad-gita, or the srimad bhagavatam are then given freely to the donators, both translated and with extensive commentaries by AC Bhaktivdanta Swami Prabuphada, the founder and sustainer of the Krishna Consciousness movement. half of the money donated goes into the pocket of the collector.
i later told him that i did not feel a calling to distribute the books (/collect the donations). i was feeling really eager to hit the road again, and not feeling so eager to dedicate any more of my energy to the whole bhaketivedanta scheme. instead of trying to paint to the very best of my ability, i told myself to be content to simply finish, to a level of semi-decency, the painting i had promised tattva.
finally i left too. it feels very good to be on the road again.
to paint is to apply a colourful substance onto a surface.
the basic action of being - constructing a vision of the world - is inherent in the action of painting. a world - an image of the world - is created according to painter's predisposition.
tattva gave me some very liberal outlines: "paint some images of krishna, but you can surround them with whatever you want - you could include lots of plants and animals, maybe get some lotus flowers in there, and - oh - a white cow as well would be good"
the script at the top are the sanskrit words which begin the srimad bhagavatam:
Om namo bhagavate Vasudevaya
translating as: Om, I give my respectful obeisances to Lord Vasudeva, or Lord Krishna.
the infant krishna is depicted here having broken into the food parlour and is devouring a pot of ghee just before his mother will come and catch him. acts of naughtiness by infant deities are celebrated in hinduism.
the mountain depicted is the nearby kodichadri.
after taking the photo i extended the size of the white clouds, then it got dark and i declared the painting finished. the next morning i caught buses to hampi.
india is swathed in a vast array of swaddling deities, each one incarnated - made manifest- in myriad multiform effigies, and venerated by countless millions of indians. i stand alongside them and attempt to embrace their vision and believe, as they do, that i am standing in front of a real deity - not merely the representation of one, but a real living god, pulsating with divine energy. try as i might, i cannot look beyond the posed circumstantial elaborations of the human mind encapsulated therein. i try to see the image as simply a symbol representing the pulsating Life Force found (in fact) everywhere. bafflement. ma non ci capisco niente.
i must have inherited the way of thinking of the Old Testament prophets who rallied against the worship of idols. how difficult it is for a modern day child of Abraham to not believe that God is not a single omnipresent entity exterior to the self.
Who can tell us whence and how arose this universe?
The gods are later than its beginning: who knows therefore
whence comes this creation?
Only that god who sees in highest heaven: he only knows
whence comes this universe, and whether it was made
or uncreated.
He only knows, or perhaps he knows not.
(however, i defy anyone to read the bhagavad-gita (mainly i defy myself) and not be filled with an awe-inspired Certainty of the Greatness of the Universal Spirit.)
(but isn't it just like a human, with her intricate inventive dreaming devious mind, to fabricate such elaborate meaning stories?)
(but just consider the incontrovertible enormity of the human heart, pulsating with infinite love and boundless joy!)
aye.
here in hampi the landscape is clothed in countless monumental stone temples, many consisting of simple unworked rectangular granite pillars and many others carved with the myriad shapes of the gods. their solid monumentality is dwarfed only by the natural monuments of enormous rounded granite rocks piled up hither and thither, bedecking the low rolling hilltops as far as the eye can see. the bulbous swollen shapes of the rocks speak silently of their strong erosion-resistant longevity, only smoothly eroded around the edges, caressed by time. they must be heavy (i reason) but they emanate lightness, a soothing sense of strength and calmness. they radiate such a soft tender light. they are neither dark nor shiny. the molecules of the rock slowly accept the light molecules, warmly embracing them before radiating them back out to be beheld by the eyes of the beholder, who cannot but be pleased by their sight and the feeling of peace and stability felt in their presence.
these rocks remind me a lot of the landscape surrounding the town of tafroute in the morrocan anti-atlas. there then, as here now, i am overcome by a monumental sense of my own freedom, but a freedom which begets, a la Jean Paul Sartre, the distant disquieting question: what to do then?
i am free, unhinged... thus what to do?
maybe it is necessary to be hinged, to be attached, connected, to have roots and stability. necessary, or maybe it just feels good.
i sit on top of the rocks as the evening glow steals over (this portion of) the world. the rocks emanate an even softer, warmer, homlier hue. the sun is moving on to illuminate another part of the planet. the rocks stay warm to the touch long after the sun has gone. they never stop irradiating good energy, which is to say, it feels good to sleep in their midst.
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