Monday 7 May 2018

It's Been A Long Time Coming


Greetings From The Triple Spiral! 

And special greetings from Incognita. After over a year I feel drawn back to this space and I have Priya Desikan to thank for the inspiration.

With a "post about a post", I'm hoping to re-energize this space.
My creative fields have lain fallow these past few months. Over the years I've learnt to read this emptiness as a signal to wait calmly rather than fret and be restless as I am prone to doing.  There are energies at work beneath an apparently lifeless terrain. And I need to hang in there.

This morning new life signaled to me unexpectedly through a series of pictures - photos of skies over Chennai accompanied by a seemingly simple poem on The Sky. I saw the quintessence of our concept of travel in the mirror of Priya's creative channel.

Priya's words, pictures and the ensuing conversation are leading us to crossing points or maybe crossing zones where we straddle realms and our energies flow in and out through porous borders.
As she paints with words and pictures we travel.  Here is a picture from her collection. (This belongs to her and is not for use without her permission.)



I could reaffirm to myself that much of our work on CTT is about opening new and different portals of perception to places we visit in person or indirectly. While it is fun and important to be on the road for a part of the time, it is even more fun to gain new insights when beholding a familiar sight.

I've always loved to photograph the sky. An ugly rash of structures is eating away mercilessly into our Kolkata skyline and one needs to stretch body and vision to their limits and beyond, to capture "a little piece of sky."

The best part of the sky is blocked out

I find myself increasingly needing to crop and edit photos to convey any little bit of what I experience in person - the mind blocks out what it finds disturbing and enhances and interprets what the eye beholds. The camera alas is no longer able to do that as effectively.

Priya is the kind of traveler who magically transcends those physical limitations and opens us to what we find difficult to reach on our own. Thank you Priya for being a catalyst, a trigger, a channel.



I will leave the readers with a few words from your poem on The Sky

"Is it where light goes to die every single day,
or where darkness comes alive?
is it where horizons are dreamed?

where visions stream from emptiness?
or is it where everything turns and rolls
laughing on its side?
"


And a cloud from my own sunset collection that invites you to ride it to any destination your imagination conjures. 



There are times when it is beyond possible, maybe unaffordable to reach somewhere physically.  Lately I have been through too many of those challenges. And letting the mind fly free has been a tonic. Maybe we could say "Save an airplane, ride a cloud" :) 


May you all travel far and wide and deep too. And dare I promise more regular posts now?