Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

yesterday was guruji’s 92nd birthday and about 200 people came to celebrate at the shala. in typical indian fashion, nobody was really sure when then party started. a group of us a the shala had been told to come at 11, others had been told around 11:30 and one friend was even told to come at noon. we went around 10:50 figuring it would be crowded and were the first ones there. we were also told that things “will start at 11:30, so come back in 15 minutes” …

when we finally did go in, the room seemed to fill in behind us really quickly. there were lots of yoga students, a full film crew and many local indians who came to pay respects. guruji seemed happy, but also really tired and skinny. there were a pooja, dance and music performances from yoga students and then an opportunity to pay respects to guruji. after that, we all went downstairs to eat and guruji probably went to bed. pictures are below …

last year the shala asked people to stop using photographs of guruji without permission, but my understanding is that it was mainly to limit commercial use of the photographs. blogs, being a news outlet, are exempted … i think?

ohh sherry left last night and brought 13 rolls of film back to bangkok to be processed for me. i should start posting by end of this week.

in the spirit of hot-or-not and other such rate-me sites, the saatchi gallery started a rate-my-artwork site called showdown. each week artists submit work to be rated, and eventually pieces go head-to-head, with the final winner being offered for sale at the saatchi gallery. voting lasts for 7 days, and you can rate any piece 1-10.

i submitted my piece “not a flower, not an arm” … if you like it, go vote for it. actually in the spirit of things, if you don’t like it i guess you could give it a low rating. if you really like it, email all your friends and tell them to give it a high rating. if you really hate it, i guess you should probably tell everyone you know to give it a low rating.

if you just don’t care, then check back soon … i’m working on some more india posts.

after our boat safari, we had breakfast and packed up to head to vythri resort in kerala state (one state over). the first two hours we drove on a muddy, rutted unpaved road, going no faster than 10 km/hr. the roads were horrible, but we were pretty much the only car on them which meant no need to honk the horn constantly.

the dirt road ended at the karnataka / kerala state border and then got significantly better for the last two hours of the trip. vythri resort is perched on top of a mountain, wedged between tea and coffee plantations and while we were there, doused in rain. for two more days, it didn’t stop raining. well it would occasionally for about 5 minutes, and then promptly start back up again. the resort is bisected by a river, and this time of the year the noise of the river bouncing off the rocks could be heard all over the resort.

we mostly sat around, ate really good food (much better than the food in mysore, or maybe i was just excited to have something different), read, had massages, ate good food … didn’t really take many photographs, but i did manage to shoot some. i shot a bunch with my panoramic camera, hopefully those will be online by the beginning of next month.

i’m back … i was in the jungle for four days, and before that i guess i just had nothing to write about. that’s partly due to the fact that nothing super-new has been happening, but mostly i’ve been busy showing mom and earl around.

ok, so the trip our trip out of town was amazing. both places, while wet, had that remote serene feeling that i often feel i’m missing in mysore and bangkok. i’ve written here before about how i can get stuck in the city. it used to happen to me living in san francisco too, sometimes six months would go by and i’d realize that i hadn’t left the seven square miles of san francisco. the same thing happens to me in bangkok, i get into my routine and often months pass without me getting away from the concrete and into the greenery.

this trip really just plunged me into greenery again. there was no internet access, my cell phone didn’t work, there was no television and besides looking at animals and trees, there wasn’t much to do. on thursday, we left mysore in the morning and drove two hours to the kabini river lodge (still in karnataka state) and checked into an amazing cabin on the river. the rooms were huge and had plenty of space for us to practice yoga on friday morning. the first night we went out on a jeep sarafi, and managed to see peacocks, gaur, wild elephant, spotted deer, sambar deer, wild boar and probably some others that i’m forgetting.

we went to bed around 20:00 (as usual) and got up at 3:30 to practice yoga before going out on the 6:00 boat safari. the boat ride lasted about two hours, and this time we mostly saw birds. loads and loads of different birds. there was this dutch couple on the boat who seemed to know the name of every type, and would literally jump up at each sighting and let us know loads of details.

the weather up to now was a bit cold, but still pretty nice. it would occasionally rain, but generally only for 15 minutes and then stop for a few hours.

finally gk vale sent over the last of my photographs. this time, they apologized over and over, and even sent the photographs and scans to my house with a messenger.

these photographs are from two rolls that i shot at the lake i keep returning to with russell. actually with my food poisioning, picking up my parents in bangalore and now my mom’s very mild case of india-stomach, i haven’t been back since the middle of last week. hopefully i will go tomorrow.

i shot these with my holga on kodak pro 160 negative film and processed them normally. the day i shot was really overcast, so i set the camera on B mode and opened the shutter for around 3-5 seconds. any blur is due to my hands shaking.

this sunday is a moon day which means two full days off of practice in a row. i’m planning on skipping practice at the shala on friday and heading off for four days with mom and earl. we’ll spend thr night at the kabini jungle lodge in karapura and then friday and saturday night at vythri resort in kerala. i doubt that i will have access to the internet during that time.

“loose motions” is indian english for diarrhea. it’s also what i was dealing with (along with a pimple on my left butt cheek) during the 10 hours i spent in a car driving to and from bangalore yesterday.

my grand plan of doing lots of sight-seeing was mostly turned into napping on the backseat of my tata suv. i did make it to see the fortress / mall like ISKCON temple (quite pretty and also a major scene), and this back-alley shiva temple. i also walked around mg road and brigade road, looked at all the western shops and of course listened to endless horn honking, a rather mellifluous cacophony which served to make my headache even more intense.

i did pop into mcdonalds in bangalore (to use the facilities, not eat) and noticed that they sold no beef. not really surprising in this country actually, but interesting to notice.

i do feel better today, probably no need to go into details about my stool but things seem to be getting firmer. i had some tylenol and this nasty smelly japanese medicine that tomoe gave me. mom and earl made it safely here, and brought me a big box of film and this really cool panoramic camera.

my friend toni in chicago sent me a link to a photography exhibit by jeff wall, which he raved about. the image online looks beautiful, but since most of the work is mounted on lightboxes, i’m guessing that seeing the real version will be much more intense.

the saree is a 5-6 meter long piece of fabric that is wrapped and folded around the body to form a full outfit. there is generally a matching shirt and petticoat underneath, and a belly hanging out. after being first in los angeles and then thailand, it’s interesting to see how the indian ideal of female beauty doesn’t include emaciation. i just got back from watching (part of) a bollywood movie, and even the leading ladies were rather rubenesque. it’s very normal for a woman in a saree to have her stomach hanging out a bit.

when i watch my friends struggle to get around in a saree, it amazes me how indian women are able to do anything in one. women cook without letting the fabric dip into the sauces, last year i saw women picking vegetables on the farm in a saree, this woman is taking a break from her construction work. i love how the bright red stands out against the drab gray of the concrete.

i’m off to bangalore this morning to pick up my mom and step dad. they arrive around 22:30 tonight, but i’ll head up early to have a chance to finally see bangalore. from what i hear, the traffic is supposed to be much worse than bangkok which should be rather interesting to see.

when sherry came, she brought me this $20 pinhole camera that she picked up at the grocery store in bangkok. the camera comes as a kit that you have to assemble, with the lens being nothing more than a piece of foil with a hole punched in it. the instructions said to use a needle to make a really small hole if you want clear pictures … so i used a pencil to make a big hole. my digital camera takes clear pictures, but i was aiming for the slightly blurred, almost dream-like pictures that are possible with a pinhole. my first roll was really out of focus, but when i went back and made a new “lens” with a smaller hole, i got some great shots. the lens needs to be opened for at least 3 seconds, maybe as long as a minute or 15 depending on the amount of available light. i shot these on fujicolor x-tra 400 asa 35mm film, most exposures were around 5 seconds. I guessing that the blur in the pictures probably comes from the fact that i had to hold the camera with my shaky hands.

they are some of my favorite shots of india so far, mostly because they capture a side of india that isn’t often photographed. at the lake where russell and i do evening walking meditation, there are very few people, it is quiet, there is no pollution and it’s green. india in pictures is often full of people, polluted and every color of the rainbow mixed together. i think the blur in the pictures captures how i feel when i’m walking much more than a clear photograph would. or maybe i just feel like my memories are generally blurred, so this way i can get photographs that match.

as i walk towards the lake, my mind is often running like crazy, focusing on the car horns as i cross the road and the general craziness that driving in india often can be. as i start walking though, that all fades out and i start relaxing to the beauty around me.

the pictures look better big, so click to see a larger version.

ohh, i just realized yesterday was july 4th … happy holidays …

well the drama with gk vale continues … i’ve been promised that film was ready only to have it not ready when i show up, i’ve been promised that film would be delivered to my house, i’ve been told that the film would only be released if i brought the manager sweets … lots of things that never ended up happening. well i did bring them sweets thinking it would help matters, but it hasn’t. at first i figured i would just put up with it if it let me get photographs developed while I here, but today was the last straw. i went in to pick up the first roll i processed with a pinhole camera and the manager says “so why don’t you buy a digital camera from us, your stuff on film doesn’t look very nice”. when i told her that i liked working with film better she says “ohh you must have lots of money, you should give it to charity instead”. it really took all my patience to not yell at her, which is probably a good thing since i still wasn’t able to pick up the four rolls of 120 film that i’ve been promised since sat.

sherry is here now for a month and i think i’m just going to save up all my 120 film and sent it back to bkk with her to be processed and uploaded. i’ll keep working with my new 35mm pinhole camera and my digital camera … just need to find a new place to process and scan my 35mm film, i think i’d sooner start drawing pictures than head back to gk vale. hopefully at some point i’ll get back the remaining film they have.

i haven’t really posted much in a week or so, i guess i’ve fallen into that familiar routine that i can get into here. i practice in the morning, have breakfast, eat lunch, fight with g.k. vale, study sanskrit … hang out friends some and also spend a good amount of time with my books.

four or five evenings a week, russell and i have been doing walking meditation around the lake and then going to chanting at the ramakrishna ashram after. we started out just walking around the lake, but after a few days decided to do it silently. it’s interesting how i notice different things when i’m not talking … some days there are more birds, some days the wind blows the trees differently .. today the light through the clouds was much different, and i think the recent rains made for many more ants than normal.

things are the shala seem to be picking up, when i got here the latest start time was 6am, not it is 6:30. it still doesn’t feel super crowded, but the number of students is definitely increasing.

here are some digital pictures … more film shots to follow …. maybe.