Spectral Quicksand -Nepal 2 (Phaplu trek), 3 (Kathmandu again), 4 (Pokhora), 5 (Kathmandu again)

Every time I have planed to leave Nepal/Kathmandu and return to India, something has come up which has kept me here. It's a strange phenomena as it's my 8th week and I was about to leave (yet again) tomorrow, but my plans have had new air breathed into them...surrendering over and over...the past weeks have been filled with crumbling monastaries tucked into nature you can only get to by foot...chaotic city streets full of the smell of death...back to nature, lakeside with trancendental views of Shiva's domain...city again for creative experiments...and new friendships...and old haunts...and now what???? I have no idea....

Kathmandu Nepal 1.dogs

Today my visa expired, and I got an extension...in the flow here....begining to know how to navigate the arteries of shop lined streets...I feellike when i was 12 and would wander around Cannal street...window gazing...feeling like it was possible to create anything...and here are the places that sell such specific raw materials.... of course now its changed, but these streets of Kathmandu inspire me (on comming trafic to keep your awareness on the present, and shrines tucked down every alley way for inspiration)... I have some little projects starting to simmer....no rush to return to India, plus I found my dance floor past-life.... going to local clubs and cutting it up to the most amazing (or at least novel and fresh crisp feeling experience generating) scene.... The english translation of the name of the genre of music is "Teasing". There are girls on one stage with mics, and boys on the other, and its like an improve jam free style where one sex makes fun of the other.... where hip hop is fast, this syle is sing song slower, but each sex makes word plays on the same word (as its been explained to me screamed in in broken english during a performance)...every song is atleast 30 minutes long, with harmonium, flute, tablas and drum machine as rhythm providers.... there are also girls who just come out and do these dances behind the singers, which is joyful (in a chinese princess breakin' in the 1300's sorta way...).... Nepali people are so open and friendly to begin with, and when they see me at the club they get so psyched, and drag me up to dance if I'm sitting, and hug me, and can't stop smiling....and its all smiles.... been practicing some chi gong moves in the morning that Kori showed me, and reading Chogyam Trungpa during meals, so in one way I'm putting awareness into moving energy with my body, aswell as understanding buddhism and non-duality in a new way, which is liberating... feeling very open... and of the moment....

















































































You can help street dogs in Nepal here:
http://www.katcentre.org.np/help/

India *10.5 Madhubani 2

Kori and I were super blessed on this trip... We had a home stay with a tantric brahman painter family (Krishnand Das and his son Golugi's family), and Ishu (the nephew of the mystic lover painter Santosh Kumar Das -work shown bellow w/ stripe gren background) as a friend and translator... Each day we visited artist studios, explored villages looking for the roots of the tradition, and learned about local techniques. At the end we gave a workshop and invited all the artists we met to come play collaborative art games....































































































Kathmandu or Bust!

India *10 Madhubani 1

For those of you who have been following this blog from the beginning you may remember that my intention in 2006 was to go to Madhubani/Bihar, home of my favorite folk art... 3 years later......

India *9 -Reflective traveling with Kori (1)

We began our art pilgrimage with intention over 2 years ago, but it took till now that we could finally meet in person again...what unfolded over the next 5 weeks was for both of us a reawakening where art practice was the transforming vehicle... our journey took us from the Arabian sea on the south west coast, all the way to Madhubani in Bihar in the North East with stops in the middle at two of the most amazing caves Ive been in in my life...many exhausting 30+ hour travel stints, but we had our art supplies and everywhere was our mobile studio...using found photos, ripped street posters, antique photo mounts we found, henna, incense burns, gouache, pens, pencils... There was a special quality to our coming together and collaborating... sharing so much interests and intentions it seemed like the work was just making itself through us in a very seamless way... The Ellora and Ajanta caves blew me away....cut directly into cliff sides of stone...an act of revelation...subtraction as the artistic process instead of addition.... remarkable craftsmanship...exquisite design of form... the stone danced...pushed and pulled into space...cave after cave just humbled by the intention and dedication of man to create these living shrines from inert matter...definitely been reassessing the hype of the renaissance and Michelangelo when India was such a center of artistic fertillity hundreds of years earlier...at Ajanta there were amazing flakes of frescos 15 hundred years before Picasso where buddhas were sitting in cubist landscapes....and mural size scenes that looked like Bosch's garden of earthly delights on steroids....I felt injected for sure, directly into my heart this needle of the psat pumped inspiration into my system...every spare moment we worked on art...hotel rooms, waiting for meals, train stations, beaches, damp bat filled caves, fields, hills.....anywhere and everywhere...Both feeling so gratefull for the journey we were on together, that took us all the was up to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal....

India *8 petitte P

Learning to surrender to needing to surrender....independant desires manifesting as depedancy lessons....and then healing in joy and in nature...sharing love and allowing creativity to kindle...It was and adventure traveling with my friend P....many lessons as always...much beauty as always....the ups and downs of life are here to stay...how else could it be?

India*? hunh???????...uh..... BLACK RASPBERRY!

Friends,
life in India unfolding its beauty, captured on memory and memory cards...wish i could upload my brain and spirit to share with u all what has been passing through my experience....someday soon i hope to find a fast interned connection and free time to post some pix from the insane beauty i've been exposed to.... in brief I spent a month traveling with my friend P, from ocean to mountains and back down again...a time full of lessons and creativity and playing in the healing arabian sea, now i am with my friend Kori, a brother cut from the same cloth...artistically collaborating our way to Madhubani Bihar to work with some village artists there...a long held dream about to fully manifest after 40 hrs of travel starting tomorrow at 6:00 am...In the past few days I have been blown away and humbled by the ellora caves and the ajanta caves...will go into detail and share images later...but my two new favorite spaces in the world are Ellora cave 15 and Ajanta cave 19...truly magnificant creation/revelations...
love to you all,
O

India *7 what the folk?!

Dancing.
Drumming.
Costumes.
Face paint.
Channeling.

All things I'm in affinity with...so when I had a few days to play with in Kerala before meeting a friend I decided to track down some Theyyam performances...an ancient folk tradition specific to this area of Kannur in northern Kerala. The landscape here is lush, and the people seem to have a high standard of living, with an unscrolling view of gated middle class homes tucked into palm trees on bus rides to jungle temples. The performance was like witnessing a childhood favorite Metropolitan Museum of Art ethnographic instillation come to life...The dancers and musicians come from a specific caste and have been practicing for thousands of years embodying snake and other such deities...while the squad of drummers were unleashing some amazing tribal vibrations which you could feel cleaning your energy, I was skeptical at times that there was actual channeling going on, but I caught the mind at work and silenced it will a game ending: "surrender to what is with out judgment." and literally right after that one of the Theyyam dancers came over to me and planted a rice filled blessing on my head with his red hand....so it goes...Performances can last up to 24 hours and unfortunately (or fortunately) I was napping during the part where the chicken got its head bitten off...Theyyam season lasts from November to March, with performers traveling from Kavu (like a temple) to Kavu. These are modest spiritual structures compared to the sprawling metropolitan temples of Tamil Nadu, but here the whole community comes out to watch the divine come to life instead of strictly accessing it through stone...

India 6*

Hampi is an archeological graveyard, and while jumping from fossil to fossil and imagining the flesh and its goose-bumps can be fun, I have been drawn towards a living community I caught glimpses of on the outskirts of this cultural bulls eye... Indian tee-pees and other makeshift homes... Nomadic dwellings rising and falling through space and time... One day a circle of nine, the next day three circles... Some seem to be communities of truckers, and others quilted homes for those without... the beautiful haphazard patchworks like human sea shell patterns.... weathered and aged... like a fine wine for appreciative eyes... I offer you each a sip of this ancient blend... get drunk on life... and love that emerges from simplicity... everything is perfectly perfect...

India 5* finding the egg

Where do I pick up the thread? Surely a chronological dispatch is the most rational, yet least inspiring way... When time dissolves, fixed forms loose their space/place.
*exhale....
I have heard that when the student is ready the teacher appears.... my being ready was being desire less I suppose, because a major teaching has come into my life... even talking about it now my chest swells with an egg of light, dissolving everything it touches as it grows...erasing all separations till there is nothing but being, and the awareness and bliss of just being, and not needing to do anything with it, just surrendering to that sensation that exists in the center of all of us, from which we and everything comes from and goes to....
*inhale.....
Art for me has always been a reflection of where my mind is at as it ingests spiritual concepts and tries to transform them into a visual language to be shared... and in this new state of not needing, that inner critic voice that worried about being original is gone...there is just a playful freedom to express with-out expectation of results....
*exhale.....
India continues to enlarge me. Sandwitched between two men on a motorcyle, who are giving me a free lift from a Philip Guston hamburger boulder strewn lake to a monkey temple for sunset, we pass a man crosslegged in contemplation on a rock in the middle of a rice paddy shaded by palm trees...as we zip by I make eye contact, nod my head and bring my hands into prayer position...he looks back and touches his hand to his chest in a moment of reflection-recognition.... This is why I love India... the eye contact and intensity of being which can be shared so fluidly...
*inhale...
I am in Hampi now for a few days, then back to Tiruvannamalai for a bit...just letting life unfold naturally...The me that desires has been quieted by the pleasure of just being. Magic pops out of the stillness....

India*4 -Meanderings with Baba Saravanan

"Surrender" is perhaps an apt description of the best state of mind to maintain while being led around South India (Tamil Nadu) by a holy man who has renounced worldly possessions. Trust in the universe and acute awareness of intuition are also helpful tools to posses (not to mention a sense of humor). I had met Saravan one day at a shrine on the holy mountain of Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai, and then the next day bumped into him at the main temple, and then it turned out he was staying at the same ashram I was. This tiny man's face seemed to be made up of deep brown eyes, and a jolly smile, hidden behind a massive beard. His spirit seemed kind, and through several conversations of broken English I gathered he wanted to show me around different holy sites. Not as a tour guide mind you, just as a duty, and because he knew I was an artist and wanted to share with me the beauty of his country. After a few days of hesitation, I accepted the magic carpet that the universe had materialized for me.

The first morning of our voyage via public bus I was rewarded with green rice fields and palm trees un-scrolling with the wind...we were headed to his ashram in his home village, a place he referred to several times as "home protection." I figured this was a good way to start the journey...with some kind of blessing. After several bus changes we arrived in some little town where we borrowed a motorscooter from some repair shop and headed down the main road, further and further away from clusters of shops and the cacophony of human intersections, toward and then into the agricultural back roads, and then dirt roads...till he eventually tells me to turn into a plot of land with several mounds of gravel (on one an old man sat, hammering larger rocks into smaller ones), and the foundation of a home under construction shaded by palm trees and snuggling with rice fields. I wondered what this stop was we were making on the way to his ashram.

We walked around the one structural element built on the foundation, and he pulled back the plastic canvas that served as the door/4th wall of the rectangular brick structure. There was a metal bed frame with a wooden mattress at the front, and then tools and stacks and stacks of what would serve as window and door frames for the future structure filling the rest of the space. "This my ashram" he says to me. Uhhhhhh..... my mind thinks.... and a smile of surrender spreads across my face, as I realize there is no way out of spending the first night of our journey there and I just have to give in to what is. It turns out what I understood as "protection" was really "production," and I realized I was in for an interesting adventure....

Before the day ended we drove to some backroads 1400 year old back road shrine, care taken by a disabled teenage monk, whose curved spine and hip looked like Shiva the lord of dance in his most exquisite pose. Flowers laced listening to Om echoes in ancient stone we caught peach sunset dissolving like sugar into horizon, and back up the next morning after night of little sleep and much observation of geko gangs. Slow living out there in the green fields..naturally unfolding daily..clone Gauguin a hundred time and unleash them into the nature of Tamil Nadu to fill museums for eternity...mob of school boys squealing with joy as I pull out a camera to photograph them...day long bus trip to Chidabaram in time to observe night time coo-coo-clock prayer rituals of rotating priests on stone stage revolving fires down dark shaft with flower laced deity at end, giving glows like coal engine of spirit train. Devotes below going mad a curtain is pulled and carnivalesque monk jazz of drums, cymbals, trumpets and bells ignite the crowd into a frenzy of hands in prayer...ashram floor as bed, and next day back on the buses...giant multi armed red gods with moustaches cracking with time in dusty cricket field...thousand year old thatch huts reborn...Ganesh shrines next to polluted lotus ponds...saddhu compass leading to more temples off the map...

Third day we ended up in an abandoned yet operational sprawling temple complex/ashram with a lineage of gurus that went back to the 1200s...grass and moss grew over the cobble stone courtyards which would have normally been stomped out by Pilgrims and elephants...I was left to wander through the quiet and peaceful courtyards...exploring the inner dark labyrinth, seeping with fermenting bat piss, and lion dragons frozen atop every pillar that put to rest any notion of Greco-Roman dominance of that art form...too blissed in just "being" there that I have no inspiration to do sketches...just happy to watch the sun grow dark on my skin and float off like a nocturnal butterfly...

More evening prayer rituals involving main guru, out of control jazz train, fire, swimming lessons in flowers, and foreheads to floor. Guru blessings, bus rides, new cities, more examples of south Indian style temple architecture...Tanjore and then off to Madurai...bus stations like orchestra pit for operatic dante's inferno... Techno bus ride from hell...Saddhu vs. drunks over who had their best interest for me, the foreigner , on the bus heading the wrong direction into the night...sitting and peacefully waiting for it to resolve...arriving late at night in several towns on holidays where all hotel rooms were booked..wandering for hours and having some graceful door open for us at the last minute so we didn't have to spend the night outside...over crowded train rides, and mad dashes around town to catch all the holy sights...

One week with Saravan felt like a month... Pretty easygoing to begin with, I now feel more smooth, like clay on the potters wheel of Indian time...all the bumps and abnormalities erased into a more streamline vessel of reaction...Back in Tiruvannamalai to decompress...and decide whats next..

India *3

At 3am faint music tiptoed through my mosquito screened windows...the sounds of an errie carnivalesque parade...comming from blocks away, or maybe another pocket of time which likes to stretch its wings when everyone is asleep??? It re-merged with the night as I fell back into my anti-maleria medication dreams. And this waking dream of India, full of cows tied to barbedwire fences eating piles of garbage, little childern bundled in neon zipping by as motorbike prow pinochio figureheads, buses wide as streets plowing by with king kong trumpet horns deafening all stray dogs, wandering monks, and western tourists in sight... Days spill into each other here, washing back upon themselves like motorcar oil rainbows on parking-lot scalps after rainfall... I climbed to the top of the holy mountain barefoot a few days ago to watch the lighting of the masive torch that can be seen for miles...the top was black and slippery from burned holy ghee, drugging my tenderized feet...monkeys having sex in the sunset as the black smoke is carried off by the wind like an infinite flock of incense crows....dissipating into the night...and then descending in the blackness, buffered by shouts of indian children "carefull, carefull," "slowly, slowly"... We needed their feet's experience, and they our flashlights. Somehow we all made it back down from the peace and magesty into the christmass tree light spider web and hearbeat of car horns of Tiruvannamali below.

India *2

It's been one week since I arrived in Tiruvannamalai, yet time here has taken on a different feel. I'm enjoying wandering up this sacred mountain full of butterflies, monkeys, spiraling hawks, and incredible views. There is an overwhealming spiritual feeling here which draws many westerners (yet hardly any Americans). The strange thing is, most of these westerners avoid eye contact and rarely smile. Perhaps they are so caught up in the struggle of their spirit quest they forgot all of life is a waking meditation. The Indians on the otherhand honor your eye contact and smile back. The main Indian teachings profess that all is god/ultimate reality/Self/Truth/Coinsciousness. That explains the loving respect eyecontact, as well as the trash everywhere. If 'All is One' there is no difference between nature and garbage. I just wander around town with my sketchbook and camera, capturing little moments of this colorful life. I'll probably stick around a few more days and move on. I have met a magical little sadhu who wants to show me around...

INDIA *1

What if Jackson Pollock, instead of using paint, used car horns, sewage, colored fabric, moustaches, and shrines..... no, no, that still wouldn't come close to explain what you catch in one second of observation here.

I write from Tiruvannamalai, in the south east of India. Site of Shiva's holy mountain where many gurus have attained enlightenment and set up ashram base camps. I arrived with 2 million other pilgrims a few days ago for an annual full moon 14 kilometer circumnavigation of the mountain. The street was replaced by a thick human river. Unlike one old man pulling a giant orange paper traffic cone on wheels (hooked by wire into a football size growth on his back), one had better be going with the current instead of against it. Despite the beatific banging of the little drummer boy with the contageous grin leading him into the devoted crowd, the waves did not yeild.

At six they lit a fire on top of the mountain and fire works erupted all over the city producing an obscuring grey cloud. Later they burned smaller fires visable from below, which spread out of control and looked to me like 3 stacked circles, symbolizing two intertwined snakes I had seen on ancient stone carvings softened by the hands and time. I joined the flow at about 3 a.m. for the circular journey. I had been on the mountain earlier, where I could feel an undenyable presence in my skull at one of the sacred caves. There have been several places here where I have felt this same energy vibrating from an ancient site. Is the stone the source, or is it a recepticle for the devotion of the believers which echoes off the love? Hard to say, and I'd rather not let my rational western mind try to discect it. I am aware of the presence, that is enough for now.

Despite wanting to leave the intenCITY of NY, I have wound up in a little country town which seems even more intense. I offer no resistance to what is, but I will seek some more quiet and nature time for my next destination... until then I walk among ripe orange sadhus, full family motorcycles, lazy cows, heart breaking beggars, and westerners in clean white robes...

Love
O

The unknown

The earth is spinning me towards a new day, the night comes, and when it passes I will get on a plane for India. While I have beckoned this day for so long, I must admit I am nervous about this leap into the unknown. Perhaps it is just the horror of the attacks that happened recently, which woke me up from my post Obama victory dream state, where I believed we could all be safe to be seen as Americans again in the eyes of the world. On the flip side, I am definitely feeling the unbelievable love and support from my family and community of friends. It is humbling to know I am so cared for, and I feel so grateful to all of you who have sent me your positive thoughts and blessings. Thank You. I can't wait to share the old tales waiting to be lived again. Here's to safe travels for all of us!
Love
O

INDIA

After a two and a half year wait.....

leaving next monday

Thanks for the ants...

At the tail end of the Paris trip we took a quick jump into the Dali triangle in Spain... Figueras, Pubol, Port Ligat...

Black Cabbage Labyrinth

Paris becomes a shadow echo, fading into the light of the moment, gently blowing off like grains of sand...
carried away to become another surface on some other form...
sweet memories of these last 4 weeks will always have a home in my heart, living with a thousand other red pulsating smiles...
and now New Jersey:
...back in the maze of boxes that contain the past..
-piggybanked the one that holds all my sketchbooks from 2001 till now...
looking for old notes on places to go in India ...
-I find them, and all the history that has been sandwitched
between then and now...
-beautiful and strange doodles,
depressing and uplifting journal entries.
ideas completed and those yet to be fulfilled...
-and the India info which has been slumbering, fermenting, hibernating till now..
Internet research reveals glimpses of intoxicating shattered rainbows,
..the land of holy cows fertilizes my creative soil
new idea seeds take imaginary form
future sun shines
lead to bloom,
expansion,
sharing,
and
mystery.

and the moon....
and the company she keeps
how I've missed my old star friends that live far from the lights of big cities...
how my soul thirsts to drink them in by the millions.
little suns,
feeding flowers
in the dark.

wanderlust paris

Magnum opening and after party

living art

Paris show press

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/fisheye/2008/11/oliver-halsman.php
http://blogs.lexpress.fr/fisheye/2008/11/top-15.php
http://www.stiletto.fr/article/6-unknown-halsman/
http://www.photosapiens.com/Unknown-Halsman_4306.html

ParisParisParisNormandyParis

I think my ancestors have lined up my stars in the shape of a heart or a smile. Everything unfolds with joy....

MAGNUM gallery show in progress

no words just smiles and little sleep

breaking straight lines on eggs

singing bear and painted feather

Last days in NY

...forgot how good it feels just to wander around the MET...

Paris

Back in NYC....
bag of croissants to hold me over for the next few days...
Many beautiful experiences, wanderings, wine drinking, and seeds planted for future projects...
(returning late October for book launch and exhibition)

My camera is a piece of shit...

Time to send it in to be repaired, so it will probably be text based postings for the next 4-6 weeks..

Love
O

Haunted belt (Switzerland)

Lots to say about Switzerland, but on limited internet connection time in Europe I want to get the pix up first. Cliff Notes version:
Stomach problems the whole trip due to a haunted belt I bought in SF on 24th street before I left (as soon as I took off the belt I felt better). When I wasn't in bed with cramps I was wandering about with my friend/hosts Jens and Eva. Met some cool people including an artist in Zurich named Mark who took me around for my most adventurous day, meeting an old wizard in a tower who was trying to re-invent time, and happening upon an amazing artist's squat...

Now in Paris, the only city in the world I can actually gain weight in...

...and this

review of my book on-line
http://anthemmagazine.com/story/858

Dusty lillypad

Ahhhhhh.....so refreshing and healing...So many words, that I'll fall on the side of fewer words for now...I'm already in Zurich Switzerland, and new adventures replacing old ones...Downloaded many lessons out there in the desert..supercharged and inspired by friends and family...being of service...emptying myself out and being refilled...so much love

SFnow

Golden skeleton keys spin above head like
halo at 33rpm

back porch fresh crispfoggy colored air

to be back in the Mission

in the bosom of my West coast family of friends

so grateful for the generosity

art gifts for them

a cleansing...

a releasing...

from the roots, from the past

from the underground..the dank heavy air..thick with soft warm dust

I re connected with the eyes of a giant baby bird made by crust and dirt

and I connected with pondscum, lovely and playful as ever...

and dust...who my heart feels good around

all these spirits I know,

here
and
there

good people. kind people. open people. creative people. blooming people. moving people.



The last two years in NYC sealed...stamped in the hot wax...an impression, a castle of sunlight, a heart beat that ends the song

a bird flying from the window, keys in its claws....

Taking off...... sweetgoodbyes

2nd to last jump shot in the Halsman studio

This chapter is complete....

Spirit of Play (bonus round)

>

The weight of infinity

more
of
the
same
beauty
knocks
at
my
door.
stress
too
overwhelming
at
times
.
.
.
.
moments
of
connection
bring
me
back
to
the
present.
burden
and
honor.
elated
and
exhausted.
here
now
me
I

getting close....

I threw many darts at the map of India to see where to go, and none of them landed even on the continent... I believe in windows of opportunity, and 2 years ago was my Indian window, and I didn't jump. Now the window is open on other places...and I'm about to jump... I'll still be in NYC for another week or so, closing this cycle...working on _everything_ up until the end...

24 hours in the life of....

I guess when you spend your life living in a photo studio, everything becomes photogenic... Friends dropping by to take household gifts... and play in the moment...