The Art Sabbatical at Ann Arbor

Random thoughts on my Art sabbatical @ Ann Arbor ;)

I love weekends and the way I choose to spend it - quiet, unto myself.  Weekends remained pristine  until I finished high school - the Saturdays and Sundays in my possession, Once into medical school, things changed..my idea of weekend took the first beating. Saturdays were meant to work. And so it continued, with no respite.

There came a time when I chose to work even on Sundays. Solitude is a choice but loneliness is not.  Life is an (oxy)moronic irony, isn't it? Unable to bear the pregnant silence of loneliness with the truant mind endlessly bickering unto itself, it was my choice and I had no complaints.

One needs to lose something to appreciate its worth. I have reason to rejoice. I have time to indulge myself. I have the luxury of having my weekends all to myself, again! My work no longer expands to fill the available weekend. I fill my weekends with creativity, weilding the pencil.

There is something magical about holding the pencil - el lapiz! Peace runs in my veins as I hold el lapiz. (Pun unintendedly intended)

What started on the eve of Holi of 2009 as a desperate act to counter my loneliness and to kill time as I sat in my lab, has evolved over the years and grown into a passion. It all started with my sketching isolated eyes, noses, and lips. Then came pairs of eyes. I stopped with sketching the eyes. I was happy and contented. I looked at eyes; so, I sketched eyes. That's what I told people. Honestly, I was just too lazy and unsure of my true potential!

I once tried sketching my friend Ad. It turned out like that of Bhagat Singh - disastrous "A 2 B"  i called it! Didn't have the courage to show him nor the doggedness to attempt again. I was too tired to attempt; was myopic to see beyond and risk a walk in the beauty of the woods. Those were the times when i remained tied to a tree, the family tree.

As I learnt to fall back on this innate passion to soothen my frayed nerves, I took up the pencil a little more often. I had to prove myself to no one. I didn't have to be perfect. I had myself to call my own. I felt more confident about making mistakes, to fumble, to try again. Voila! I could sketch a full face with so much of life!

 Life is full of surprises and I am thankful..one step at a time!

 Now, with the certainty of my weekends, life has become perfect with its own imperfections. Life is always perfect in the artist's imagination, especially with the realisation that I am getting better at it, with regular practice - "The Art Sabbatical at Ann Arbor".

How effacing is self-effacing?

How effacing is self-effacing? Let's face the truth.

Nobody likes to be in the company of someone who constantly blows his or her trumpet. I would not, honestly. Would I like the company of a self-effacing person? Again, nope.

I like to be amidst humble people but definitely not with the consciously modest kind. There is a discerning line betwen being modest and self-efffacing. Or maybe, even a glaring line. Being a trait of the pretentious, it is particularly tiring to keep the person's ego soothed and buttered. One has to blow the trumpet for the other person. Not that I am faced with such a predicament that i chose to pen my thoughts. This thought surfaced on my mind, and took over like a water hyacinth, ever since i talked about it with a friend yesterday.

I use this portal as a scrapbook to jot down my distracting thoughts. And life goes on...Thoughts may come and thoughts may go, but life goes on forever, like the little brook.

Now that the overwhelmingly distracting thought is well on its way to getting itself effaced, it is worth the effort to dwell on "self-effacement", isn't it? ;)

Never a pittance for the puissance!

Random musings of the fortnight gone by. 

There was this entrepreneurial gentleman who spoke to me about his impressions of his humble self and his life. I listened politely. He thought he was a good match for me!!?? He impressed upon me how I need to respect my mother tongue. I was still patient trying to OHT (overhead-transmit) his horrible diction; not letting my auditory areas process any of the zoosemiotics(or homosapiens-semiotics). I paused the conversation to talk to my landlady. And then he tells me, "You WAS bayangarama peter-ing". Even my polite hmmm-ing petered out! A pittance for the puissance? Nay, never! Si, soy así.

Strangely familiar!

I donno how to react. I see strangely familiar similarities with this random stranger I spoke to, during my long trip from Moscow to India. He had an Oscar Wilde to read and I had some deadlines to meet. I saw in him, something of "the bunch of randomness" that I was, a couple of years ago. I put the deadline aside, to lend a ear, to feed my own curiosity. Feed my curiosity I did, with intriguing conversations and the typically atypical Oscar Wilde stating, "All art is quite useless."

 There have been recurrent tides of evanescent deja vu hitting me everyday. Just a few random threads of words to pen down this strange feeling and help me unclog my mind.



The fidgety fugitive from yonder,
Made my memory wander
In time, to ponder
Of the own self more fonder.
As I was left to wonder
Of the decade gone longer
I took a gander at the outlander
Labelled as gone goose
In a tight noose
With a dozen goose eggs!

Hither and thither
Yes, i went into heather
And bad weather
With fear always near
It took away the ones so dear
My mind was my fear
My thoughts weren't clear
The fidgety fugitive, tearing me ear to ear

With another year, came the salt and pepper
And the bellwether
Of the goose hanging high and nigh.
Turning all stones that lie
On untrodden paths to the unfinished goal
Hitherto dared not touch with a barge pole.
I go up the greasy pole
The way to the highman on the totem pole
No, not dole
But sweat, holy soul!

While I open my eye,
Into the deja vu I try to pry.
Srangely familiar
Far, yet so near.
Again, it is the fudgitive figitive!
Breeds curiosity, than contempt,
At every attempt.

Every word rings a bell
That all is well
This very moment - The present -
Is more a "present"
Of a future that I see, from a past
Forever lost!


P.S." A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one." - Oscar Wilde

Now for the deja vu. Is it art? Is it a flower that blooms to wither? Accidental? Well, the subject is a long one....

Manners maketh a man; what about the woman?

Manners maketh a man. Charity begins at home.

I don't know why i kept parrotting these age-old adages in my mind until i could no longer hold back but had to ink it in black and white.

It's a small world. I am impressed. More so, by the impressions made by a few small minds.

Myopic attitude by a high myope,  if i have to sound euphemistic and precise, both at the same time. How would one react if one were to bump into a college senior, albeit an acquaintance? I have a great memory, touchwood! I could recall right upto her name.

And there she acts - as if she has never ever seen me. Speaks for her poor memory - still acceptable; while I'm running my mental search engine, matching the features of those unmistakably popping eyes...I remember every detail of the eyes, bcos I'm an eye mechanic you see! ;) I ask her college of graduation and Madame says - - -. Now i know!!! Then i ask her a leading question, "MBBS from...?" ! She had to blurt out, "KMC". There, I gotcha! I am sneering in wicked mirth! ;)

Then i try to find out if my first impression (made more than a decade ago) still holds true. Nudge her with another question, about her PG college. Now, that's a mofussil centre. No wonder she chose to say - - - to my very first question. One's formative years are the MBBS days - the memories of those six years you carry all along proudly.

Hahaha.. well, people never change.  And first impressions seldom do.  The inferiority complex, guised as a pseudo-superiority complex, stays put!

Now, the best part comes when I ask her something related to baking my clay. She seems to suffer from selective auditory impairment. Wait, is it selective auditory processing? Maybe, we'll have to put her through some functional MRI studies. Good for her that I am thinking of fMRI - no radiation exposure. Well, you see she is already handling too much of radiation!
She left without an element of elementary courtesy. God, why don't some people grow? Small minds! Do manners really maketh a man? What of the woman? The woman was already made! ;) Move on, I say(to myself).

Single ladies and armchair daters, this one is for y'all!

What's on my mind? Some random thoughts for my single lady-friends.

You may be the no-nonsense girl but expect your man to be "the man". He cannot be an armchair dater. You know what i mean by that! 

Happy with Whatsapping, wants you to come over to some place closer to his workplace not because it is an extraordinarily mushy place but bcos it saves his petrol costs; wants you to pay for the date bcos you chose the place and the menu (Yes, I am old-fashioned). Isn't he supposed to be a gentleman wooing you? He is not expected to sleep through the date, for you are not looking for the frustrated insomniac.  If he suddenly gets busy with his appointments, do remind him that you have better jobs (better paying, as well) than does Mr.Busy. 

P.S: Please do not extrapolate any of the above gyaan to my personal life. If you do, rest assured that you will get a piece of my mind, absolutely free! ;) :Pwink emoticontongue emoticon

The pain of pregnant silence

The pregnant silence between  people can be more painful than the pains of labor. One is laden with the the burden of the memories of the past. Suddenly, all those lighter moments lose their buoyant spirit and sink to be drowned by heavy emotions. Every spoken word mocks at the heart and every unspoken word gnaws at it. The ego's selfish need to maintain societal riches wilfully betrays the alter ego.

Why does a poignant piece of writing  always have to emerge out of a deeper sense of hurt?