Of Sentience and Dust Beams Dancing In The Sunlight

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That feeling of aliveness, of knowing that this body exists in this world at this unique moment where the sun shines upon the land, the earth rotates on its axis and also in a moving dance of planets revolves around a burning star. With it, this earth takes me along the ride. All the while that I sleep, laugh, dance, weep and participate in all the doing that is needed from this life - almost sleepwalking.

Sometimes, when I am very very lucky, the clouds disperse and a moment presents itself that diffuses the boundary between reality and magic.

Have you seen the way a sheer curtain lets strong sunlight pass through it - it filters, diffuses and spreads the beam around?

For that moment, I see the particles reflecting light itself and making themselves visible. Simple, mundane, day to day particles. Dust, pollen, skin cells, some smoke. The dust of everyday life presenting itself in a state of suspension. I know that is the very nature of fragile magic in this world. One click of a fan and I’ll lose sight of these. A little wind will make these particles go away. If I looked away for a moment, I might lose them.

All the attention, all the prayer, all the devotion needs to be paid to these dust beams dancing in sunlight.

Last year, I painted these watercolours imagining the dust beams taking shape over large landscapes. I thought about empty rooms of all kinds being illuminated by sheets of sunlight making visible dust, skin cells, pollen, particles that reminds me of sentience.

Treadmill Watches

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Who doesn’t know Tracey Emin.
Loved this deep dive with her.

Treadmill watches

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Wonderful documentary on ten artists, their practices, their struggles and joys and family and solitude all converging to a single art prize.

Treadmill watches

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Must have easily watched this documentary on Tove Jansson atleast 8-9 times. Can go back to it yet again! Its that good.

Treadmill watches

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I’ve been trying to do an hour long walks on the treadmill for over 3 weeks now. I usually pick an hour long vlog/video as an accompaniment. Watched Ruby Granger’s solo trip vlog today.

A New Kind Of Creative Poverty

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I keep returning to a line from Simon Schama’s “The Power of Art.” It is the book’s first sentence: “great art has dreadful manners.” Schama, a historian at Columbia University, tells us that art is a “thug,” “merciless and wily.” It will “grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality.”

A New Kind Of Creative Poverty

Three Movies From A Nine Hour Flight

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Recently, I was on a long 9-hour flight twice. On one leg, I slept through entirely but on the same flight back home, it was daytime and I didn’t want to spoil my sleep cycle, so I gobbled up three movies back to back. They were all so great that I wanted to catalogue them here.

Chopin, Chopin is a biopic on the life of the composer, Frédéric Chopin. Having absolutely zero training in classical music both Indian and Western, I only had a recollection of the name from my Classical Playlist on Apple Music. It was wonderous to follow along in his journey as he rises to stardom in the 1830s Paris. The part that I didn’t know was he had tuberculosis not considered a transmittable disease at the time. His diagnosis was quite clear by the doctors and he knew he was going to die from the illness (eventually passing away at the age of 39). This death sentence led him to produce some of the most exceptional music not understood in his time but made him a classic for us. His affairs, the Paris salons of the time and the scenes showcasing the flu were quite intriguing in the movie.

Here, I found a painting depicting Chopin on his deathbed. The colours and the sombre mood with him in all white and the rest of his attendants in all brown and black make for an arresting art piece.

Chopin on His Deathbed, by Kwiatkowski, 1849, commissioned by Jane Stirling. Chopin sits in bed, in the presence of (from left) Aleksander Jełowicki, Chopin's sister Ludwika, Marcelina Czartoryska, Wojciech Grzymała, Kwiatkowski.

The Delights of The Garden is a Spanish comedy movie that revolves around a painter who is now past his prime and has started working on a new Pollock-style painting because of his shaky hands. His ex-wife is his gallerist and his son has now moved from a trip back from India to live with him in his studio (that he is already sharing with another painter).

This was the first time I watched a movie that’s based on a painter and is ticklish funny. I am now thinking about my fellow passengers who would be hearing slight chuckles every now and then emanating from where my seat was.

PS: There are gorgeous paintings revealed in the last few scenes of the movie and I am still trying to find the artist behind them.

Los Domingos or Sundays (in Spanish) is a coming-of-age movie of a 17-year old who attends a catholic school. She is enchanted by the life of the nuns and begins to form a deeply religious fervor that culminates in her desire to join the cloistered convent instead of preparing for university.

I’ve been a product of a catholic school and the allure of the hymns, the fellowship of the choir (incidentally the protagonist is also part of a choir) and the quiet retreat from a very chaotic world was being felt under the skin by me. In my teenage years, I also loved to sing carols and hymns when I was by myself and conceptually nuns were quite cool in my head (they still are). It was interesting because in the last city, a shopkeeper told me the story of Mother Teresa and how she is a celebrated saint in Albania, his home country.

Hence, all my neurons fired up on reading the synopsis of the movie. I really loved watching it. The movie is made quite tenderly and the fierce resolve of Ainara comes through easily.

Your Most Improbable Life

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In the same way as cards, the self-improving system of life re-arranges random atoms in the universe into very improbable shapes we call proteins and amino acids. The same system arranges these unexpected molecules into very improbable organs, which are arranged into very improbable bodies. So long as they are alive, life maintains that improbable arrangement, keeping the whole body far from the dull sameness of entropy. That suspended relief from entropy is removed upon death, when the atoms in a dead body quickly revert to randomness.

From: https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/your-most-improbable-life

You are such a dummy for not writing more. Writing advice from a great botanist.

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Writing is seen aligning more towards literature and communicating the spirit of being human. Writing/journaling/note-taking has been equally working at the frontier of science where scientific ideas have emerged from notebooks kept by physicists, botanists, chemists and even alchemists.

Here is what Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist and geneticist who identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants implored a smart colleague on writing:

“You are such a dummy for not writing more. You have just the right style, and you know a fair amount too. You must write, you must put your ideas into words, you must break through the ice...You should spend three hours a day writing, just as you eat and drink everyday...Soon they’ll be watching you from both the North Pole and the South Pole. ”
— Nokolai Vavilov

Notebooks of Nikolai Vavilov

A 16th century lawyer's mid-life turn to his library

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In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [the Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, leisure.

This was the Latin inscription on the wall of a side-chamber of Montaigne’s library where he dedicates his rest of the life reading, writing and eventually becoming the reluctant Mayor of the city of Bordeaux.

The works Montaigne produced made the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty call him a writer who put “consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”

For us 21st century readers, Montaigne is widely credited for popularising ‘essays’ as a literary genre so his retreat into the bosom of the learned Virgins turned out to be quite useful spilling over to the later centuries.

Fun fact: His birthdate served as the basis for establishing February 28th as the National Essay Day in United States

Château de Montaigne, a house built on the land once owned by Montaigne's family. His original family home no longer exists, although the tower in which he wrote still stands.

The Tour de Montaigne (Montaigne's tower), where Montaigne's library was located, remains mostly unchanged since the sixteenth century.

Having committed himself to a life of reading and contemplation, Montaigne picked a perfect corner of his estate to be his library. He chose one of the two towers at the corner to be his all-purpose retreat while the other was reserved for his wife.

How To Live or A Life Of Montaigne

From the deeply and lovingly researched book by Sarah Bakewell

One can climb the steps today as a tourist and step into the same room that Montaigne would have spent days and nights in. One might not find the murals on the walls or any underfoot covering but that wasn’t the most splendid part of the room anyway.

The most striking feature of the main library room, when Montaigne occupied it, was the fine collection of books, housed in five rows on a beautiful curving set of shelves. The curve was necessary to fit the round tower, and must have been quite a carpentry challenge. The shelves presented all Montaigne’s books to his view at a single glance: a satisfying sweep. He owned around a thousand volumes by the time he moved into the library..

Also around the room were Montaigne’s other collections: historical memorabilia, family heirlooms, artifacts from South America. Of his ancestors, he wrote, “I keep their handwriting, their seal, the breviary, and a particular sword that they used, and I have not banished from my study some long sticks that my father ordinarily carried in his hand.”

Decorated in the ornamented style typical of French Mannerism style, the paintings and elaborate borders filled "every inch" of the available surface, including "ceiling beams, and ceiling." One of the central theme of the paintings gathered in the space seems to have been nudity, a question metaphorically at the heart of the writing project of the Essays.

Going further than the murals, he had the roof beams painted with quotations, mostly classical. As a daily reminder of his commitment to literature perhaps or perhaps because it was the interior design fashion that time.

“Solum certum nihil esse certi
Et homine nihil miserius aut superbius

Only one thing is certain: that nothing is certain
And nothing is more wretched or arrogant than man”
— Pliny the Elder

How can you think yourself a great man, when the first accident that comes along can wipe you out completely? (Euripides)

〰️

There is nothing more beautiful life than that of a carefree man; Lack of care is a truly painless evil (Sophocles)

How can you think yourself a great man, when the first accident that comes along can wipe you out completely? (Euripides) 〰️ There is nothing more beautiful life than that of a carefree man; Lack of care is a truly painless evil (Sophocles)

From the Montaigne estate website.

The beams would have served Montaigne as a daily reminder to follow the footsteps of Seneca who urged his fellow Romans to retire in order to “find themselves”.

A note on Isaac Newton's writing practice

With two and a half pence his mother had given him, Isaac was able to buy a tiny notebook, sewn sheets bound in vellum. He asserted his ownership with an inscription: Isacus Newton hunc librum possidet. (Latin for "Isaac Newton possesses this book")

Over many months he filled the pages with meticulous script, the letters and numerals often less than one-sixteenth of an inch high. He began at both ends and worked toward the middle. Mainly he copied a book of secrets and magic printed in London several years earlier: John Bate’s Mysteryes of Nature and Art, a scrap book, rambling and encyclopedic in its intent.

He copied instructions on drawing. “Let the thing which you intend to draw stand before you, so the light be not hindered from falling upon it.”

“If you express the sunn make it riseing or setting behind some hill; but never express the moon or starrs but up on necessity.”

He copied recipes for making colors and inks and salves and powders and waters.

“A sea colour. Take privet berries when the sun entreth into Libra, about the 13th of September, dry them in the sunn; then bruise them and steep them.”

Colors fascinated him. He catalogued several dozen, finely and pragmatically distinguished: purple, crimson, green, another green, a light green, russet, a brown blue, “colours for naked pictures”, “colours for dead corpses”, charcoal black and seacoal black.

He copied techniques for melting metal (in a shell), catching birds (“set black wine for them to drink where they come”), engraving on a flint, making pearls of chalk.

Living with Clarke, apothecary and chemist, he learned to grind with mortar and pestle; he practiced roasting and boiling and mixing; he formed chemicals into pellets, to be dried in the sun. He wrote down curses, remedies, and admonitions:

Things hurtfull for the eyes

Garlick Onions and Leeks…Gooing too suddaine after meals. Hot wines. Cold ayre…Much blood-letting…dust..ffire..much weeping..

Newton by James Gleick

A short yet illuminating biography of Isaac Newton by a brilliant science writer, James Gleick

Newton is a monotype by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake first completed in 1795. Isaac Newton is shown sitting naked and crouched on a rocky outcropping covered with algae, apparently at the bottom of the sea. His attention is focused upon diagrams he draws with a compass upon a scroll

[Read today] Approaches to writing two-sentence journal entries

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I'm a technical writer by day (a great career path if you want to pursue it), which means that work days are often spent tethered to my desk while I scrutinize documents on a computer monitor. When my eyes need a break from the screen – or my brain needs a respite from whatever task I'm completing – I spend a minute or two on my journal.