I will try to address what I have been observing and experiencing in the past few years. Since the complete domination over attention and will was established by the techno-hegemony of social media and its ilk, the act of conversation has either vanished or has taken on a sinister shape
Banyans, and Neems, and Mangoes, and Jamuns. A forest called Northstar. I was once lost in a forest, in a manner of speaking. Dawn turned to dusk in a reversal that came without warning. Aranyaka. What is the point of a forest if it is not enchanted? Where dreams are
A melody, a harmony, a rhythm, and a poem. A Veena called Northstar. A sequence of chapters forms a book, a sequence of classes forms a school day, a sequence of units makes a curriculum, and a sequence of musical notes makes a melody. And when there are underlying notes
A Phantasmagoria of colours, and sounds, and smells. A reverie called Northstar. "Where we come from, the birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air..." The dance of the little man from Twin Peaks is a mad, surreal phantasmagoric scene from David
The exiles and the renegades The merchants and the usurpers The givers and the takers The noblemen and the plebeians The brown and the black The stone and the gossamer The Jaisalmer yellow and the Iznik blue The Damascus dagger and the ultramarine dust These pilgrims without shrine. ~mk
A lullaby to put us to sleep, so that we may dream. A song called a Northstar. The gesture of sleeping - where does it occur? Head bouncing on the window of a bus; hands folded on a bench and the head resting on it, a class perhaps; a baby
A tale was once told Of journeys and pilgrimages Of penance and repentance Of redemption and absolution There were many in that wagon to purgatory. A scholar who lost his mind A priest who lost his faith A general who lost his command A consul who started a war A
I write poems for kids, for trees, and some reflections on the trees. Trees of Northstar. Our guardians. Custodians of memories. Listeners of our tales. They will be here when we no longer are. This is my attempt to share the beauty and grace of our trees. SIRIS A giant
My recent photo exhibit made me think about and revisit some ideas that I have about images and text. Roland Barthes had much to say about text and image. I have been thinking about text as technology and photograph as a medium, alchemical almost, for imagination. The photograph, or the
The teleology of architecture is ruin. The fate of empires is to lay waste. Those cities turn to dust, By the marauding armies of horses, And elephants, and men in armour. Armour of greed and hierarchy, Of memories of loss. The granite boulders carved into monuments, Only to be ground
Silent runes and arabesque Tell a story Kafkaesque Of a riverman When the river dried A doorman When the doors closed A clergyman When lies arrived A swordsman When they won A spokesman And lied some more An everyman. Silent runes and arabesque Tell a story Kafkaesque Of found treasures
I had nothing to give to that old woman. Who begs at the lights, She gave me instead, Embers and cinders; Decay and suffering; A life unredeemed; Infinite infamy and inquity, I have it all She gave me more, and old poem too. Yanked out like a spasm. A poem
essays
There was a time when I found pilgrimages to be an unnecessary exertion. One could find all that is to see within one's self. And perhaps that may be true. But I have found myself to be going on pilgrimages. Sometimes, I know I am going on one.
essays
Like a child has tools and objects to play, I have words, images, and dreams to play. Words and images come to me from somewhere, and I am a mere vehicle. They flow, rarely and spontaneously, triggered by a phantom or a spectre. They come, at times like a neatly
essays
It is perhaps wise to turn to Friedrich Schleiermacher (a German theologian and philosopher) occasionally. He is one of the founders of pedagogy as a discipline. Pedagogy, as it is used and understood in common parlance, is merely the “technic” of teaching. The content of these technics is prescribed by
poetry
Part 2 Or The First Zombie The bottomless pit Of content and horror Deterritorialising My eyes My mind. In the consummate fangs Of the fiddle device Everything is a spectacle A performance, a caprice His voyeuristic instincts Blindingly perverse Not unlike my doggerel verse. Every blade of grass Every drop
poetry
By the will of magick, I found myself in the company of a great old book. Signed anonymously, I decided to keep the name of the book anonymous too, for you, my brother, my sister. One day you will find it too, I pray. In that book was the art
poetry
Part 1 A New Age of Mystery is upon us. At the helm of this great cosmogony There will be new vanguards. At the pulpit of this hermetic church There will be new abbots. And in the dungeons from whence the rule emanates There must also be an Autarch. And
poetry
Part 1 Or The First Zombie Acamar, sitting at the bank Oblivious to the sound of water As the river stones sank In his hands was the demon's device A black slab for slaughter Slithering through every crevice. He saw in it, the lives of others A hundred
noema
From the Preface of Noema What was it you haunted so far that we must dream of it always, dying of our dreaming? And of what other state do you speak so low that we cannot remember it? - George Seferis This poem has haunted me for as long as
noema
In this book, text and photographs are in harmony; a window to each other. The totality of the experience is carried by two different mediums: the poems, and the photographs. Both of these mediums, for me, are more than just representations of reality. Half of my life is behind me.
architecture
It was drizzling lightly that day. I have walked on this unpaved path many times before. But it was the dampness and the silence that made me stop at a particular bend in the pathway. It is completely covered with trees from above. This spot made me feel something that
noema
Here is my first book. Noema - Spaces of Refuge. Some things cannot be put in to words. This is one of them. I have put together my poems and photographs, a harmony of my two passions. A window in to each other, and in to me. Some things cannot
borges
We are reading The Circular Ruins for the next class of my course “Labyrinthine Dreams: A walk into the dreamscapes of stories and poetry by Jorge Luis Borges” This story is a part of Labyrinths - Selected Stories & Other Writings. Edited by Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby.