Monday, August 27, 2012

Listening to nothing in the midst of everything

Things make sounds. Sound of an aeroplane, sound of thoughts, sound of angry dog.
Things also have their own silences, silence of potential and silence of completion.

Silent potential of an egg,
Sound of the chicken,
Silence of extinction.

With so many dead things in the past and so many living things to come we're wading in silence, it just takes a trained ear to hear it.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The past is present

When I paint the Australian landscape I see in my images the hand of my grandfather, when I sculpt I see the humour of my father and when I draw figures and patterns I can see the beautiful work of my mother.

Human beings like stars are sometimes hidden. Stars still shine in the daytime, we just don't have the eyes to see them. As the sun sets they become visible, when I make things the aesthetic of my family becomes visible. And I love that.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Geometry of self

I remember my geometry teacher in primary school. He was special to me because unlike my normal classroom teacher we didn't see him all the time.

His eyes seemed to bulge out from his face, I realise now it is because his brain was so full. Despite having bulging eyeballs there was a deeper calm that radiated in his quiet attitude and smile. When the whole assembly had their eyes closed during grace I used to watch how his eyelids would remain half open with his eyeballs rolled back. The whites would scare me and I would think he must be very deeply involved in the prayer to not notice how uncomfortable his eyes must have been.

He taught us that to draw a circle with a compass you need to start by drawing a tiny dot on the page. Then you spike the dot and twirl the compass using mostly your fingers, not your whole wrist. Every circle starts with a point.

I feel like I am a circle and also a point, the point is the part which came first, which makes the rest possible, which has no direction or magnitude or dimension and the circle is the chemical elements, the atoms and molecules, the systems and combinations, the body, the television, the family, the architecture, the history, the pet dog, the feeling of hunger, the role of the sister, the role of the mother, the chewed fingernails. All things seen and learnt, all skills gained, all ideas acquired, all feelings felt, all actions carried through... The circle doesn't have fixed ambit because it seems to grow relative to circumstance. I think maybe it's nicer to consider it as a sphere (just to make things a little more wholesome).

And one day the circlesphere will be erased, and I'll be a point somewhere in space with no magnitude, no meaning, unattached. At the heart of our circles we're all points, and points are omnipresent.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Yearning, longing, dreaming.

Desire is never with us, it's pawing with a past relationship or pushing its nose into a half-baked chocolate cake. It never looks through your eyes, it cuts out little almond-shaped holes in a sheet of paper and hopes that the silhouette of eyes signifies sight. It's not entirely convincing, but like the concentric patterns on a butterflies wings you habitually respond to the illusion and are lead into assuming that when you see the object of your desire, you're looking with your innermost eyes, your deep set eyes that sit in the sockets of your soul. I don't really dig that, most especially because being desirous is essentially putting love beyond your reach in the past which is dead or in the future which doesn't exist.

How do you curb desire? I've no idea.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Jesus and Krishna

I was reading through some old exercise books from my primary school years and came across this statement in a scripture book:
"My favourite person in the bible is Jesus because he never lies and he was born in a manger."
Basically, my criteria of value hasn't changed: if you're honest and generous in sharing your stories (everyone has an interesting story) I'm bound to value you.

Something else I thought incredibly funny as I was leafing through a Vaishnava Educational Alternative Publications activity book for children is this rule for a board game:
"You have actually realised that you are not this body. Take an extra turn."

How funny and wide and lovely was my early education!