awareness

am falling into an old pattern again, that of blame. i am feeling frustrated that so many of my multiple talents, skills etc. are not getting used and a feeling of defeatism accompanies any new attempt at starting something or getting something accomplished. i cannot understand how my husband is never concerned about any of this. how he can live with someone day in and day out, knowing that so much capability is going waste, and not doing anything about it. at most times pretending that nothing is wrong, occupying the other with trifles and endlessly playing mind games.

MR. i did not "think" that you were happy when i failed my driving test, i knew it. i was aware of it a visceral level like i am aware of your hunger when you do not eat on time (and sometimes get confused and assume that it is i who am hungry). so maybe it is not blame after all. that is just how it is. you need my energy to succeed and you can get it only when i am not engaged in my own ambitions. so you are happy that i do not get a job or am not successful in any external ventures. you are nervous and afraid everytime i go out of the house. you feel relieved when i come back home and are pleased when i spend my time in front of the tv.

you know that i know this and am therefore resentful and bitter and i fantasize about leaving you and breaking free of this stranglehold of a relationship. so you live on edge, dreading this possibility and doing what you can to avoid this situation, everything other than actually allowing me to be free. so you try and pamper me, cook for me, letting me spend money on shopping etc. etc. but not that which is truly essential for me.

is this my blame game or is this my reality? a wave of self-pity there and i breathe with it. i have spent too many hours crying and feeling miserable hoping to get to the bottom of the sadness and being free of it once and for all. and that is the reason i stick on in the realtionship because i know it is a causal connection; one that has the possibility of liberating me from the cause-effect karmic cycle?

or is my current situation a mix of both? it is my reality because that is how i think. how then to change this way of thinking while being surrounded by the evidence of such a 'reality'? i am shivering inside, like in intense cold but it is not the outside temperature that is cold, it is my loneliness, my misery, my inner reality. i breathe with it, long deep conscious breaths. a change is coming, surely a change is coming. it has too, it is high time. if i close my eyes i see hundreds of tv images...will smith re-inventing himself from being an irresponsible teen-ager of "the fresh prince of bel-air" show to being a responsible father of "the pursuit of happyness".
my feet are cold the inner shivers continue. shall i just turn on the heating, better than continuing to feel miserable - needlessly?

my task for today is to feel the sorrow without giving in to blame or self-pity. my task for a longer term is to be the highest self that i am. i do not call it my life task because i don't want to fall into the trap of being a life long seeker. i also intend to attain - within this lifetime, or atleast to keep the possibility open.

i have put on a jacket and socks. let us see what happens with the shivers. it is not just my husband (hubs from now on) who i am aware of at a visceral level. i am also aware of samuel (ex-lover cum teacher, a true love?) - watching me aware of my internal states as i am, and he becomes more present when i become more aware at a deeper level. daniele (samuel's life partner) too now and then and my father and my father-in-law. the latter rather more than i would like.

there is a tussle of sorts between hubs and his father. often what pleases one does not please the other. it pleases his father immensely when i cook and do house-work and eat on time and think about the members of his family with affection and/or concern. it pleases him when i cover my head with a piece of cloth or feel devotional. it also pleases him when i am irritated by hubs and think of his faults accusingly. like when i am grumbling internally or externally about hub's untidiness or uncleanliness. his father seems to feel vindicated in some manner.

hubs feels rather pleased when i grumble about his father internally, about his conventional expectations and traditional ways that are out-moded now. he is also pleased when i go without food for a while or am intensely involved in something that makes me ungrounded. samuel too enjoys my energy when i am non-grounded. i guess there is a sexual-sensual charge. it makes me sad when people in general respond to me like that even when noone does anything inappropriate. and breathing through another wave of sadness, the breath is going deeper now all the way to the soft belly.

so many secrets that the breath can reveal to us. secrets from our past, emotional secrets, little blocks and holds and locks. and the key is to continue breathing through it all, through the inner twirls of the energy wheels -chakras, but then the breath becomes oh so subtle and almost disappears....and a door opens to other levels of awareness, or alternate states of reality, if you will...or just the 'here and now' clearer and more intense than ever.

so it is that the outer reality reflects the inner and vice versa....

catching up

spent the day watching you tube videos of my favourite singer sinead o'connor. i used to call her see-ni-add but apparently she is sheen-aid. so one learns something new everyday. also learnt today that AB has a blog. yes Mr Amitabh Bachchan also blogs, hmm not bad, not bad at all.

so many things have happenned in my life since my last post. i changed apartments - the main reason for not writing for ever so long. i also travelled to san diego by amtrak bus and train. my new place has a fireplace and a high beam ceiling, the two reasons for taking it up. the glenbrook apartment complex to which it belongs has won some well-deserved awards for landscaping etc. so there are seven swimming pools, many many trees currently resplendant in fall colours and a few brooks with ducks, and several squirrels swarming the place. the squirrels here (as in the US) have not been blessed by Sri Rama and hence do not have the three black lines marking them and so do not look quite as pretty, but they are cute nevertheless.

the day has been gray, the rain relentless, ideal time for curling up in a blanket in front of the tv or the internet, or with a book or a man. but the man has to go earn the bucks, so an intricate jigsaw puzzle will do. i love the designs offered by sacred spaces based on native american indian themes.

what else is there to catch up on? tomorrow being thanksgiving and perhaps another day of travel let me say thankyou to all of you for visiting me, now and then, frequently, whenever....

jai arunachalam shivam!

some pics of the mountain from here and there. even in pics arunachalam has the power to make my thoughts stop and allow me to travel into the land of stillness and Being.

"burn after reading"

a delightful caper, a total lark of a film. atta boys cohen bros. quite a departure from 'no country for old men'.

with an impressive star cast - must say the males (george clooney, brad pitt, john malkovich) did a far better job of it than the females (frances mcdormand, tilda swinson). clooney and pitt have engagingly entertained us earlier in the ocean's series with their implicit understanding and tacit communication. here they (plus malkovich at most times though not always) amuse us with their comical almost caricaturish parody of their own characters. mcdormand is a lttle too empathic towards her character and swinson swings.


pitt and clooney play their roles once removed and spoof themselves with such aplomb that they carry you with ease into the spirit of the film. but if you can't get into the burlesque lampoonery (at the risk of over-stating) then you might as well walk out for you will get nothing. but if you manage to slip into the farce then there are laughs galore and the kind that make you fall off your seat while holding your stomach.

as the film's caption states 'intelligence is relative'. sometimes you have to lose it to get it. get it?

frida oh frida

frida is one of the finest transpersonal artists i know. she looks at herself in the most uncompromising way possible and depicts what she sees with her consummate skill and artistic ability. she does not shirk, she does not flinch. does she glorify, does she exaggerate? i do not think so. but she is looking at her self under a magnifying glass of sorts, so the focus is clear and unequivocal.

an attractive woman with her unconventional personality shining through and making her look strikingly handsome. in her paintings she often presents herself in traditional dress and hairdo. her inner states of torment, desire, longing, resolve, determination, stoic suffering, endurance, pain, love, connection, tenderness, conflict, acceptance, rage, violence, passion, pride, hope, nurturance etc. etc. are expressed in the most nuanced and detailed strokes of her brush. her unflinching portrayal of her most intimate subject - herself gives her both the opportunity to distance herself from her expereince and the ability to integrate it in such a way that she emerges larger than the subject-object duality. to see her work is to see a testament to the courage and resilience of her spirit.

at the risk of sounding grandiose i must admit that i was very pleasantly surprised to see several common themes and modes of expression in her work and mine. however i must also acknowledge at the very outset that her skill and her craft, her talent and her concentration, her command on her brush and tools is far superior to mine, my attempts in comparison are raw at best. she is a modern day master, i a novice awaiting recognition...

nevertheless i too love to portray both the sun and the moon in one painting many times, i often show the man in the tree and the tree in the man and am prone to depict physical roots on people. sometimes the colours are similar and often the emotions...
i am concerned about gender roles, i see myself primarily in my intimate relationship with my man, i strive for equality on all levels, i am conflicted about my identity in terms of traditonal values and modern ideas, i recognize i am larger than the sum of my expereinces although my expereinces are what constitute me and i need/attempt to look at them with utmost attention and awareness.

frida reassures me that such attention is indeed possible and inspires me on my journey as an artist and contemporary woman...

i am grateful to sfmoma for this opportunity to see her original works though i do wish she were not being peddled quite as much, her status as an icon of our times notwithstanding.

some links on frida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kahlo.html
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kahlo_frida.html

link to my art works
http://www.digmeart.com/contemporary%20indian%20art.htm

split level poem

i marry one
and love another;

i live with one
and long for another;

i copulate with one
and commune with another;

i wed one
and bed another;

i cook for one
and eat with another;

i clean for one
and mess with another;

i wash for one
and dress for another;

i knit for one
and am warm with another;

i comfort one
and reassure another;

i keep house for one
and feel at home with another;

i am aware of one
and appreciate another;

i taste one
and savour another;

i survive one
and thrive with another;

i complete one
and fulfill another;

i satiate one
and sublimate another;

i entrust one
and have faith in another;

i make a home for one
and belong with another;

i am in fact with one
and fantasize another.

long time no write

i thought with my h'band away i would write and paint and generally flourish. instead i watched films on dvd and tv serials and read. occassionally i checked emails or played games on the internet - favourites being word games like text-twist, bookworm and puzzles - mahjong is up there on number one then bejeweled, jewel quest, tetrus etc. i used to be a big fan of ceaser-III but have not got around to that in a while.

anyway one of the reasons for not blogging was that i wanted more anonimity. the kind of thoughts and feelings i was going through i did not really want to post them up there. but that is the whole idea of the blog to be honest with what is. yet thoughts and feelings are such ephemeral beings i may not feel the same tomorrow but it will be up there on the blog and if tomorrow's feelings have not been written and put up then people will assume that is the way i still feel. not that that many people read the blog anyways, but even then more anonimity would mean i could be more honest. contradiction in terms? i wonder!

i saw a wonderful film called 'adaptation'. it is about the adaptation of a book into a film. the screenplay writer is a fat balding socially-challenged guy, who is kind of stuck in his life. so he wants the film to reflect that where nothing much ever happens and his twin brother is staying with him and writes a script for the first time packed with hollywood cliches and churns out a successful potboiler and our film too incorporates all of that while spoofing it in such a subtle way. i find the ouroborus comment very fitting. it could have been too self-explanatory but the way it is done, it fits. the film stars meryl streep as a new york journalist and nicolas cage as the script writer. but the exceptional acting comes from chris cooper, the orchid hunter, who got an academy award for his performance.

another film i enjoyed watching was 'jane austen book club'. i guess i enjoy most films where life reflects fiction reflects life. for example 'stranger than fiction' and there was 'eternal sunshine of the spotless mind', though not quite the earlier theme of fiction/life being one, but it sits on the edge of reality and questions it or looks whimsically at it and that is fun. that finds a parallel with my inner reality and both reassures me and challenges me at the same time.