Camera doesn’t capture everything that is beautiful. When I 'actually' discover (appreciation is somewhat like discovery, isn’t?) beauty, I do nothing but see and feel it. That's a moment of absolute oneness with the subject. I lose my sense of meta-reality(read meta-consciousness). For a moment I am too engrossed to feel even joy. That's when I discover; I see the beauty, our beauty. In other cases when I know that something is beautiful, and everyone knows this, I lose my interest in that (at least partially), perhaps because there is not much opportunity for me to discover anything there. I find my eyes, my subjectivity absolutely redundant there. Everything is known, studied, researched, documented, pictured, said and heard. There I take my camera out. For instance I asked my friend to take my snap with Mona Lisa in Louvre, Paris. I don’t remember myself looking at that painting even for a minute.* For me it is just famous, not beautiful. For me Mona Lisa is a symbol of this-is-what-an-artist-can-do-with-a-woman or this-is-what-a-woman-does-to-art, period.
But when I took my usual post-dinner walk along the river** in Aschaffenberg, I cannot tell you how profoundly enchanted I felt by her*** divine beauty. Wrapped in the inexplicable mystery of night**** she dynamically assumed mysterious colors and insane dimensions. I would sit and stare at the river and would rejoice in her company. I looked into her eyes. She appeared to alter her expressions according to the shades of my moods. And then she slowly engendered a whole spectrum of illusions in my poor besotted mind. God knows how many unearthly ideas sprouted in my mind. I am scarcely able to recall all of them now. But each one of them seemed to be so ineffably strange, even to me.
Good Heavens! Could reality be so beautiful? She rendered poetry, music, art, everything superfluous. She made the reality richer than the dreams. How singularly surrealistic everything seemed to me in the warmth of her tender embrace! Every sensation seemed too fantastic to be true. The experiences I had were so novel to believe and so elemental to express. My conscious seemed to float blissfully in a wonder-world where reality mingled with the imaginary. I either was dreaming or was more awake than I’d ever been in my life. Perhaps people feel this way when they are intoxicated or when they are on the verge of death, I don’t really know.
I felt a strange lightness of being, as if I was just a soul without any form, any body. And I seemed to see then what was otherwise invisible, not only to others but also to me. I saw or I think I saw a horizon slowly rising from beyond the dark curtains of the background, luminous with a dim whiteness, making everything visible in the pitch-ebony of the night.
Surrounded by an impregnable serenity she showed herself more clearly. Her contours, nebulous with mist and foliage, triggered so many imaginations. Imaginations, by numerous, awestruck and earnest eyes, curiously caressing her curves peering from behind the translucent veil of darkness. Sometimes later the quivering images of the trees, arrayed along its sides, caught my attention; trees hesitatingly bending over her as if begging her permission to kiss her moist lips, the delicate petals parted by the dark glowing nectar! And then I saw the mischievous sparkles in her numerous eyes and the million moons melting in them... ohh as if she had chosen me to know her innermost secrets, as if she had been eagerly waiting for me since eternity only to bless my ignoble life with a meaning, as if she herself had been craving for me with her outstretched hands trembling with a burning passion, throbbing with a living desire. What a flattering delusion! Or was it true? Whatever, she was dangerously, mortally charming and nothing else seemed to matter. I eagerly drank her fragrance that was generously wafted into the secrecy of nightly atmosphere. Perhaps I was getting insane with ecstasy. I held myself for a moment and pondered over the compulsion that made me go to her every night. Was it a command of my destiny, my inner longing that had brought me there? I let myself sway with the tune she played; I dropped my defense. Pouring her ethereal beauty into my hypnotized eyes she stripped me of my sanity as well as my innocence and even my sight for a while. Looking into her eyes almost made me feel vertigo. Her unexplored and unfathomed depth invited me deep within her. I was not sure how long I would be able to resist that temptation though I knew I had to pay for it by my life. But my heart felt overwhelmed with gratitude and awe; just like, I ventured to imagine, someone would feel after committing the first original sin with an unknown village belle under the mask of anonymity and in the veil of darkness.
What a celebration of unadulterated sensuality it was! An uninterrupted orgy of senses! Life seemed to be utterly vulnerable after witnessing such divinely a spectacle, and life seemed to be more worthy to be lived than ever before.
Apprehended by an unknown foreboding, I closed my eyes. For a moment everything came to a standstill. But before I could return to my consciousness I heard a soft whisper in my ear. I felt that she said something to me, perhaps something deeply meaningful, or perhaps something utterly flippant and playful. I didn’t know exactly. Perhaps she didn’t say anything at all. She usually surprised me with her moody behavior. And that's what made me her slave. I heard the lost tunes of many unheard serenades in that silence that seemed to hide so many untold tales in the inaccessible alleys of her timeless memory. I took a deep breath to restore the lost rhythm of my heartbeats and opened my eyes. Turning my head upwards, I looked above in order to escape her sight and return to normality. I didn’t see many stars in the sky. I saw a large school of white clouds swimming across the sky as though they were moving purposefully to some destination. Suddenly I felt as if I was lying at the bottom of a huge ocean gazing at the gigantic tortoises sailing at the surface. What a weird thought! I closed my eyes again and visualized myself lying on the bed of my beloved and looking up at the sky. I saw colorful fishes running over and stars dancing at the wavy screen creating delightful patterns. After a while I saw myself dead and my hairs undulating by the gentle strikes of my beloved. I narcissistically reveled the sight of my dead body but then my sense of morality reproached me. What a morbid thought!
The first one or the chosen one? I reflected on that. Now I can't and I won't say this beauty to be untouched or unseen and I am sure that many before me must have come and felt the same illusion of exclusivity. But this uninterrupted illusion seemed to be more real than reality itself. She surely knew the art of making love. She knew the indispensability of the elements of spirituality for the fulfillment of the senses. She knew the significance of unconditional surrender. She knew the importance of the illusion of unassailable exclusivity.
I saw even myself coming to her in different times, as different beings. Sometimes as an old priest, fallen in his own eyes, who sought atonement with his own stained soul. Sometimes as a young soldier, kneeling down before her, stained with tear, sweat and blood, who vowed to win his dignity back in the next battlefield. Sometimes as a frustrated poet, sometimes a confused philosopher but always as a seeker. And she had always provided the courage and strength to find the answers of the questions the life essentially poses to every seeker. She had always inspired life in my dead soul. She had always showered affection like a mother when I needed it the most. She had always sent me back more energetic, more vigorous, and more capable to face the death inherent in life. My heart felt deluged with reverence for her.
A sudden flapping of the wings of the ducks broke my trance. God knows what made them panic; perhaps I might have made some movement though I am not sure. I admit I was alarmed by the noise. My heart would have skipped a beat. I stood up dazed and shaken at the steps and watched them sailing across the river. I looked at my watch, it was quarter past one! I sat there for around one and a half hour! It was high time that I go to bed. The next night was to be spent in the bus to Paris so this sleep was very much needed.
While coming back the distinct swoosh of wind flirting with the leaves echoed, nay, haunted in my mind for long. The horror is still vivid in my mind. I felt that she was sending her envoy to keep me from going back to my world of light and levity where everything had a universally understood meaning. The world of unanimity where there was no place for imagination and multliplicity of meaning. I turned back to see the last image of my fading dream. I saw her receding with a self-assured smile. As if she knew very well that I secretly harbored a vague wish to die in her arms as dictated by my unalterable destiny. As if she knew that I had to come to her for the final atonement. As if she knew that she was the only way to my salvation.
I entered my room where my roommates were enjoying some movie.
- had your walk?
- hmm…
- took so much time? met someone there?
- yeah..
- god knows what do you see there?
- god. What else?
Next to next morning I found myself in Paris. I saw the famous Eiffel Tower. We took a lot of snaps there though none of us could remember a single minute when we actually appreciated its beauty, just by looking at it, mesmerized, spellbound. We just took pictures.
*It was this observation which prompted me to write this essay. Nobody was seeing Mona Lisa, everyone wanted to be seen with her!
**Main. Read 'Mine'. This is a tributary of the river Rhine.
***Please allow me, the 'kafir' lover, the personification of the river, the beloved.
****I love night! I am absolutely in love with it. But please, let it be clearly understood…my night has nothing to do with the night of 'nightlife' which I hold with utter contempt. What a waste! What a mindless underselling of the sublime!
But when I took my usual post-dinner walk along the river** in Aschaffenberg, I cannot tell you how profoundly enchanted I felt by her*** divine beauty. Wrapped in the inexplicable mystery of night**** she dynamically assumed mysterious colors and insane dimensions. I would sit and stare at the river and would rejoice in her company. I looked into her eyes. She appeared to alter her expressions according to the shades of my moods. And then she slowly engendered a whole spectrum of illusions in my poor besotted mind. God knows how many unearthly ideas sprouted in my mind. I am scarcely able to recall all of them now. But each one of them seemed to be so ineffably strange, even to me.
Good Heavens! Could reality be so beautiful? She rendered poetry, music, art, everything superfluous. She made the reality richer than the dreams. How singularly surrealistic everything seemed to me in the warmth of her tender embrace! Every sensation seemed too fantastic to be true. The experiences I had were so novel to believe and so elemental to express. My conscious seemed to float blissfully in a wonder-world where reality mingled with the imaginary. I either was dreaming or was more awake than I’d ever been in my life. Perhaps people feel this way when they are intoxicated or when they are on the verge of death, I don’t really know.
I felt a strange lightness of being, as if I was just a soul without any form, any body. And I seemed to see then what was otherwise invisible, not only to others but also to me. I saw or I think I saw a horizon slowly rising from beyond the dark curtains of the background, luminous with a dim whiteness, making everything visible in the pitch-ebony of the night.
Surrounded by an impregnable serenity she showed herself more clearly. Her contours, nebulous with mist and foliage, triggered so many imaginations. Imaginations, by numerous, awestruck and earnest eyes, curiously caressing her curves peering from behind the translucent veil of darkness. Sometimes later the quivering images of the trees, arrayed along its sides, caught my attention; trees hesitatingly bending over her as if begging her permission to kiss her moist lips, the delicate petals parted by the dark glowing nectar! And then I saw the mischievous sparkles in her numerous eyes and the million moons melting in them... ohh as if she had chosen me to know her innermost secrets, as if she had been eagerly waiting for me since eternity only to bless my ignoble life with a meaning, as if she herself had been craving for me with her outstretched hands trembling with a burning passion, throbbing with a living desire. What a flattering delusion! Or was it true? Whatever, she was dangerously, mortally charming and nothing else seemed to matter. I eagerly drank her fragrance that was generously wafted into the secrecy of nightly atmosphere. Perhaps I was getting insane with ecstasy. I held myself for a moment and pondered over the compulsion that made me go to her every night. Was it a command of my destiny, my inner longing that had brought me there? I let myself sway with the tune she played; I dropped my defense. Pouring her ethereal beauty into my hypnotized eyes she stripped me of my sanity as well as my innocence and even my sight for a while. Looking into her eyes almost made me feel vertigo. Her unexplored and unfathomed depth invited me deep within her. I was not sure how long I would be able to resist that temptation though I knew I had to pay for it by my life. But my heart felt overwhelmed with gratitude and awe; just like, I ventured to imagine, someone would feel after committing the first original sin with an unknown village belle under the mask of anonymity and in the veil of darkness.
What a celebration of unadulterated sensuality it was! An uninterrupted orgy of senses! Life seemed to be utterly vulnerable after witnessing such divinely a spectacle, and life seemed to be more worthy to be lived than ever before.
Apprehended by an unknown foreboding, I closed my eyes. For a moment everything came to a standstill. But before I could return to my consciousness I heard a soft whisper in my ear. I felt that she said something to me, perhaps something deeply meaningful, or perhaps something utterly flippant and playful. I didn’t know exactly. Perhaps she didn’t say anything at all. She usually surprised me with her moody behavior. And that's what made me her slave. I heard the lost tunes of many unheard serenades in that silence that seemed to hide so many untold tales in the inaccessible alleys of her timeless memory. I took a deep breath to restore the lost rhythm of my heartbeats and opened my eyes. Turning my head upwards, I looked above in order to escape her sight and return to normality. I didn’t see many stars in the sky. I saw a large school of white clouds swimming across the sky as though they were moving purposefully to some destination. Suddenly I felt as if I was lying at the bottom of a huge ocean gazing at the gigantic tortoises sailing at the surface. What a weird thought! I closed my eyes again and visualized myself lying on the bed of my beloved and looking up at the sky. I saw colorful fishes running over and stars dancing at the wavy screen creating delightful patterns. After a while I saw myself dead and my hairs undulating by the gentle strikes of my beloved. I narcissistically reveled the sight of my dead body but then my sense of morality reproached me. What a morbid thought!
The first one or the chosen one? I reflected on that. Now I can't and I won't say this beauty to be untouched or unseen and I am sure that many before me must have come and felt the same illusion of exclusivity. But this uninterrupted illusion seemed to be more real than reality itself. She surely knew the art of making love. She knew the indispensability of the elements of spirituality for the fulfillment of the senses. She knew the significance of unconditional surrender. She knew the importance of the illusion of unassailable exclusivity.
I saw even myself coming to her in different times, as different beings. Sometimes as an old priest, fallen in his own eyes, who sought atonement with his own stained soul. Sometimes as a young soldier, kneeling down before her, stained with tear, sweat and blood, who vowed to win his dignity back in the next battlefield. Sometimes as a frustrated poet, sometimes a confused philosopher but always as a seeker. And she had always provided the courage and strength to find the answers of the questions the life essentially poses to every seeker. She had always inspired life in my dead soul. She had always showered affection like a mother when I needed it the most. She had always sent me back more energetic, more vigorous, and more capable to face the death inherent in life. My heart felt deluged with reverence for her.
A sudden flapping of the wings of the ducks broke my trance. God knows what made them panic; perhaps I might have made some movement though I am not sure. I admit I was alarmed by the noise. My heart would have skipped a beat. I stood up dazed and shaken at the steps and watched them sailing across the river. I looked at my watch, it was quarter past one! I sat there for around one and a half hour! It was high time that I go to bed. The next night was to be spent in the bus to Paris so this sleep was very much needed.
While coming back the distinct swoosh of wind flirting with the leaves echoed, nay, haunted in my mind for long. The horror is still vivid in my mind. I felt that she was sending her envoy to keep me from going back to my world of light and levity where everything had a universally understood meaning. The world of unanimity where there was no place for imagination and multliplicity of meaning. I turned back to see the last image of my fading dream. I saw her receding with a self-assured smile. As if she knew very well that I secretly harbored a vague wish to die in her arms as dictated by my unalterable destiny. As if she knew that I had to come to her for the final atonement. As if she knew that she was the only way to my salvation.
I entered my room where my roommates were enjoying some movie.
- had your walk?
- hmm…
- took so much time? met someone there?
- yeah..
- god knows what do you see there?
- god. What else?
Next to next morning I found myself in Paris. I saw the famous Eiffel Tower. We took a lot of snaps there though none of us could remember a single minute when we actually appreciated its beauty, just by looking at it, mesmerized, spellbound. We just took pictures.
*It was this observation which prompted me to write this essay. Nobody was seeing Mona Lisa, everyone wanted to be seen with her!
**Main. Read 'Mine'. This is a tributary of the river Rhine.
***Please allow me, the 'kafir' lover, the personification of the river, the beloved.
****I love night! I am absolutely in love with it. But please, let it be clearly understood…my night has nothing to do with the night of 'nightlife' which I hold with utter contempt. What a waste! What a mindless underselling of the sublime!
musical mood:
- tujhe bulaaye yeh meri baahen (Ram teri Ganga maili)
- lag ja gale (Woh koun thi)
2 comments:
Nothing has been 'exhaustively' researched... absolutely true. Here you have a valid point. All the parts of the world are then 'equally' unexplored coz mathematically exhaustive study of anything natural, even the most basic thing like atom, would require infinite research. Nobody can claim that at a particular point no more observations can be made in any topic.
This point renders everything under the sun at the same level, that is ~zero, we can drop it. We'll not start with the end point but the starting point coz then comparision becomes possible. Now we can say that Mona Lisa ia more studied than ur whistling :)
Now I'll attempt ur question-
"How can you link beauty with both the real and the unreal? Are nt they mutually exclusive?"
Mutually exclusive?? Did you forget ZMM? Or you dont believe in it anymore?
"My conscious seemed to float blissfully in a wonder-world where reality met the imaginary."
What is reality but a perception?
So is the illusion. Is reality objective? No I dont think so. It also involves ur senses. So why would we tolerate the arrogant superiority of (vulger) reality over (beautiful) illusion?
Ilusion is beautiful to me coz it is MY illusion. It gives me a feeling of involvement and satisfaction. I dont feel like a mute spectator. So I judge in favor of illusion, which is my reality too... Where is the confusion?
I ve said 'our' beauty - remember sugar is not sweet but its interaction with our taste buds. and I would never know ur sensation which u say u have when u eat sugar. even our 'sweets' are different..individual. So is our sense of beauty. So where does reality come into picture, beauty is anyways an illusion.
Meta is a prefix. It is used before words. I didnt coin a new word.
Webster defn- 'Of higher order or level'
By meta-reality I mean the consciousness of reality. For ex-Being happy is one thing and being conscious about being happy is another... the latter is at a higher level, the knowledge or realization of ur state of mind. I can say that the former is one reality and the latter is another, the higher reality.
"coz firstly i am tired, secondly i am too amused by the thought of how so many men have given birth to these strange animals( of the types of metareality) "
u r tired... but that is not a reason to be so intolerant to words. So many men have given birth to so mnay animals. How else would they come to world? the world is over-populated with such animals of thousand species. I dont see any novelty in that. May be u've noticed sth which u didnt write here.
I think most other point u've raised are result of some unknown frustration. I really dont care whether you believe in ZMM or not. That was just a reference to save my energy coz I know that u've read it. I KNOW books are incomplete. they have to be. I mean its silly and tautological. How can some pages contain the infinite truth? But that is no reason to IGNORE them.
By criti-logic everything is EQUALLY new! I shud be as amazed by my key-ring as by a sunset!
Contradiction. yes there was. Instead of my pre-disposition of not spending time with much-studies Mona Lisa I attributed this to not having 'opportunity'. I agree to you though I can defend my stand of using the word opportunity. May be I like to see the unseen things. May be I dont want to or may be I dont have time to discover the hidden beauty. May be that I dont think that the juice is worth the squeeze.
"you can not establish the following:
'that your natural lack of attention towards Mona Lisa as an object of beauty was because of your theory of discovery' "
BULLSHIT!
It might be due to INABILITY (to discover the hidden beauty) or some aversion to that object due to childhood trauma or any godforsaken reason resulting in lack of interest (to discover anything), whatever, but in the end, it is NOTHING but this lack of personal touch, lack of what I say discovery that lead ppl not to 'love' the object. You can go into the psychology of why ppl cant or dont discover if u r willing but I'm sure that discovery of beauty precedes realization of beauty. Otherwise its a farce.
--Kindly explain this- "It may well be random,,, or may be a self-fulfiling analysis... you think it is in your nature to be like X,,, and you keep behaving like X to fulfil your analysis ( but may be your nature is really not X)
"
In the end I'ld say that I'd not written a treatise on beauty. It was a narration of an experience which doesnt promise to be logically consistent. But that doesnt mean that I wont take up ur critical comments. lets keep fighting.
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