Night Flares
Descent of Night
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Love beautifies Love beautifies everything and if we learn to love everyone, all our imperfections can be washed away, especially by loving kind words. Sant Kirpal Singh (BooK excerpt from: Spiritual Elexir)
On Portraiture
Portraits reveal a desire for human connection;
a desire so strong that people who know they will never see me again
open themselves to the camera, all in the hope that at the other end
someone will be watching,
someone who will laugh or suffer with them.
Kashmir
Yemen
Afghanistan
What could be more simple and more complex,
more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
– Charles Baudelaire
Kashmir
Yemen
Baluchistan, Pakistan
A good portrait is one that says something about the person.
We usually see parts of ourselves in others, so the
good portrait should also say something about the human condition.
Afghanistan
Kabul, Afghanistan
The most difficult thing for me is a portrait.
You have to try to put your camera between the
skin of a person and his shirt.
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
Philippines
Pokhara, Nepal
Lambari, Brazil
Madhya Pradesh, India
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Photography and the genre…
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Visions of Summer in Winter
Apparition
Temporarily immortal
Sue Vincent’s magnificent piece on her Daily Echo is an amazingly beautiful set of visual and verbal truths…
Morning lights the east with liquid flame as the earth and I shrink into ourselves, frozen and pensive. Even so, with such beauty as this you almost wish you could live forever so the memory of it would never fade. The dog, dismisses my philosphical mood and with her usual abandon, races across the field with every evidence of selective deafness. Ignoring both blandishment and command with her lopsided grin, she chases her breath in circles and greets the birds. Why, after all, would she want to come back to a nice, warm house and breakfast when there are moments like this to be had?
The sky changes, moment by moment, fierce flame and pastel softness vying for attention. It is, of course, incredibly boring for her to sit inside when there is a whole world out there to explore. Ani would far rather chase the morning than curl up…
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finding suññatā in Lucknow
POSTCARD #249: Lucknow, North India: A short flight from Delhi brought us here, hired car to the Ambedkar Memorial Park. A vast space of nothing but polished marble flooring – no trees, no earth left uncovered. Two and a half acres of marble paving rising in a gentle slope, with some monuments and an avenue with hundreds of life size elephants carved in stone.
The panorama of it, an oasis-mirror-like flatness as far as the eye can see; a heaven realm… hold that thought, from two thousand five hundred years back in the distant past, comes rushing towards us now, into present time, 2017, the Buddha’s First Noble Truth – as valid as it was all these centuries ago.
‘The Noble Truth of Suffering’, yes, I was wondering what that bad feeling is, gnawing away at the innards… the urgency of the human condition applies to everything I can possibly…
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A Barn in Winter
Bare branches
yearning towards
turquoise sky
with fast floating
sunlit white clouds
white above
white below
the snow
hides the land
of insects
and mice
and moles
and snakes
and in the vernal pool
next door
turtles sleep
in their hernaculum
while frogs lay
dormant in the mud
I sit in sleepy
surrender
glad to be
in our little hideaway
in the woods
of our young dreams
wondering
if we will all
awaken
to another Spring.
A Procedure
A brown bag
so fragrant
full of presents
and the smells
of India
crammed full
with treasures
fills me
with such desire
I inhale deeply
and go “under”
falling into the ether
of the subcontinent
Machines beeping
the anesthesiologist
himself an Indian
calms me down
speaking softly
plumping my pillow
a routine exam
so much kindness
as he pumps
anesthesia
through my veins
I awaken
fresh from the arms
of Mother India
in the land
of Morpheus
as I lie before
a wide expanse
of grey sky
over the Hudson
and see God
as boats drift by
Beep… Beep…
Oh to always
see the sky
and the river
and God
and to breathe
the intoxicating
smells of
the India
of my dreams.
