POSTCARD #260: New Delhi: I’m now upstairs for most of the day, the art room is a catastrophe of pieces of masking tape, cut tracing paper flying around and skittering across the floor in gusts of air from ceiling fan. Stuff everywhere, hardened acrylic paint mixings on my palettes and smeared on the table. The cleaning lady gives me bad looks, can’t understand why I’m doing this – it’s got to do with the social hierarchy here; dirty work done by people whose job it is to do that. The logic is if I do it, those workers don’t have a job, no work, no money, starvation. But anyway, foreigners break all the rules, clean up their dirty floors themselves, say sorry, please and thank you very much, so often it loses all meaning.
I find her disapproval on cleaning day intimidating. Art has no meaning, defeated by the perfumed smell of cleaning agents which amplify my headache and I can’t do anything till the next day. After that, all effort with the canvas self-destructs over and over… I don’t know where I am these days, thought dwelling in the darkness; the impact of 59 cruise missiles, shot to pieces, fighting a war with myself, heat and concrete dust from demolished buildings.
‘How to escape from the horror of Trump?’ A question without an answer. Repeated on loop cycle until it becomes an enslavement. A passive allowing locked into place. Escapees become the fringe, hunted down, arrest on sight. But no, it’s not over yet. I have Russian TV (RT) and Arabic, Al Jazeera TV in English, also the French and Chinese TV channels in English. RT says specifically that it wasn’t Assad who dropped the first bomb, it was the ‘rebels’ who planted the chemicals to draw fire from Trump – or maybe it was all staged by the unseen roots the West have everywhere… everything is fiction.
And although Putin is what he is, I have to respect him for holding back from the obvious reaction when US and UK ambassadors came with their untruths to the UN Security Council. Weapons of Mass Distraction, their baited untruths – two of them, one placed on top of the other so it appears to justify itself. A simple trick, we fell for it before – their long term goal is a kind of colonization of the world, but not this time around. We see through the facade…
There are birds in the early mornings here. As the day begins, heat rises and it gets quiet… chirrups in the trees from time to time. Sometimes the artwork I’m staring at suddenly is seen. Is what it is, and I wake up to that… is that what I thought it was? I get so totally lost in it sometimes, pondering possibilities, forget to wake up. Large areas of it have to be painted over to allow for the new direction it’s taking. Constantly refining and refining. I’m inside the Mystery, working the canvas with mixed-up acrylic on palettes, hardened and lumpy, like landscapes and mountains seen from the air. Small pieces of cut tracing paper race across the floor in gusts of air from the ceiling fan…
“It’s all dry land to the shipwrecked…” [Jac Forsyth]
dhamma footsteps 
Read this a few times, seems to be where my mind is too. Ego and the architecture of entitlement.
Such a great piece of writing, my friend.
Thanks for these kind words Jac. Trump a clumsy illusionist owns the space he is in (although there’s nothing there) and creates ownership of other countries, in people’s minds.
Aah, fearful times indeed. There’s a saying that when half the world is mad, it’s even more important that the other half stay sane. Or possibly move to Canada.
ah… ok I’ll bear that in mind
I’d take the Canada option if I were to hazard a guess. It depends on the act and getting-that-together so it’s in context, at least, and kinda take it from there
MAKING ART
Everything breathes
As if but as a fiction
As is even a notion of time
For all this roaring
This Trumpetting horrorscope
Is in Truth both quite illusory
And also long long past
Long fixed in sticky time while
Fixed as the Mona Lisa
I step back to reflect
Or else lose myself
In my imaginings
Of the meaning
Of her smile while
While death creeps
On tiptoes nearer
Thanks Ben for the poem; slightly sinister ‘… death creeps on tiptoes nearer’. I see that Mona Lisa smile separated from the face and placed in a war ravaged landscape, a dreamscape, and one wonders how it will all end.
Sinister is probably quite appropriate I think.
white man speak with forked tongue, that kind of thing…
And, sadly, much else too. 😦
Is that painting what you’re working on? It’s great! Really. Trump is becoming more and more impeach able but Pence is horrid, too. Such hypocrimes! Such horrors! I hate America and my fellow Americans. What is going on is so appalling, so sickening. Keep painting and send some loving kindness this way please!!
Thank you Ellen, the act of painting is like a war with successes and failures. What remains is the peace of hostility relaxed. The regime is grim looking, inspires hate, but it is a performance let’s not forget. Comic book heroes and villains, overly dramatic, inept, Trump stumbles in his address listeners pretend not to notice.
Your words paint pictures. Looking forward to reading more! Cheers!
Thank you DharmaFish I try to keep within the 700 word limit, and posting about once a week these days. Welcome to dhamma footsteps.
That sounds quite fine. Feel free to add insight to anything i’ve posted. Your words carry wisdom sir. Thanks again.
Yes I will DharmaFish I will look in from time to time…