Another.... /  by Bindaas

.....moment of scrounging and searching...
...of those harmonious elements that seem to fit well together...

Confessions.... /  by Bindaas


While searching for a pearl in a rocky shore with his curious barbels, an adventurous catfish got caught.......between a hard place and a really really hard place....with its body getting seriously serrated by the sharp corners of reef and drift wood as it struggled to escape. 

Finally, after much strife in skirmish anxiety, a friction between its flesh and the rock resulted in having its guts just spilled out. 

A beach wanderer in search of hermit crabs under the rocks saw this unexpected body of turmoil.

So...

She cleaned off the sand, hacked off the fins, snapped off the head, excavated the innards, chopped off the whiskers, popped out the eyes, scooped out the gills, sheered off the fat and finally.... slowly.... and carefully sliced pieces with precision the fate of the very flesh found in muddy waters. So then after rubbing salt, chopping mint and coriander, crushing garlic, squeezing lemon and adding the garam masala. 

The fish was left to marinate.

The Law, the Agent and Confusion of Nothingness.... /  by Bindaas


 
"It is a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient, operative cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, according to which an agent proceeds it implies a power: for it is the order, according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing; is nothing.”
- William Paley Natural Theology

A Special message for a special someone who is embarking on a great journey.... /  by Bindaas

..currently fast asleep in DC.




There is, indeed, a distinction between creative art and visionary art. It parallels the difference between the artist who is an observer, or reporter, and one who is a participant in the creative process - a matter of investment or soul involvement. 

All artists are able to display their craft without the exertion and engagement that marks a performance from the soul. An artist can simply project his or her persona while remaining detached from the performance and the audience. But if you are "working sounds" - if you are involved in something that engages you; confronting your own prejudices, fears, and limitations, rather than merely presenting what you already know, feeling your own discomfort and taking that discomfort into the terrain where the truth exposes you- then you are quite possibly in the territory of the vision. You are close to grasping the mystery of the healing. You are then, only then, within the reach of the gift that you can bring back to the world.
- Cultural Pilgrimages and Metaphoric Journey by Suzanne Lacy.

All the best!

Encounters with an Apsara /  by Bindaas

 
She lands atop the Western Ghats reveling in their vastness, eyeing the river beneath relishing her newly acquired physical avatar in her wild mustard grandeur. “How this river ebbs and flows saturating the valley with its natural elegance” she contemplates. 

Meanwhile a wanderer chances upon this ravishing rhetorical beauty, he is instantly smitten. “What an uncommon sight to see a princess all by herself by this Shiva temple, she must be an Apsara” he thinks.

 



Her beauty bathes him in magical light, as he finds himself at her feet in the humble worship of her enchantment. She cringes in pleasure upon his touch, her awkward hand revealing the effect of this admiration on her transcendental being. Unable to maintain the calm demeanor that physical beings master, the clouds beckon with tropical thunder and this celestial nymph is soon distracted as  charismatic mist surpasses the moment.


She is after all a free element of the volatile whole.  Suddenly her bare feet accelerated by the slippery moss ejects her into the very oblivion that made her. Her mogra scented hair leaves the lovelorn wanderer reminiscent of the extravagance of her enigma. She slips away no sooner than she appears and he remains lost merely dreaming of the prior moment. 


Hours go by, still tantalized by her enrapture, he goes to the gomukh to find refuge in the very water in which her existence flows. 
In this way at least he will be able to feel her touch again.

(Apsara :Goddess of Clouds and Water) 
 

Kalidas and Shakuntala: Studies on Love Part 1 of many... /  by Bindaas



KALIDASA

An ancient heathen poet, loving more
God's creatures, and His women, and His flowers
Than we who boast of consecrated powers;
Still lavishing his unexhausted store

Of love's deep, simple wisdom, healing o'er
The world's sorrows, India's griefs and ours;
That healing love he found in palace towers,
On mountain, plain, and dark, sea-belted shore,

In songs of holy Raghu's kingly line
Oh sweet Shakuntala in pious grove,
In hearts that met where starry jasmines twine

Or hearts that from long, lovelorn abscence strove
Together. Still his words of wisdom shine:
All's well with man, when man and woman love.

 Shakuntala pretending to remove a thorn from her foot, while actually looking for her lover, Dushyantha by Raja Ravi Verma 1870.