Author: Anna Aysea

Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in the distance he discerned
A palace window where a candle burned
And went no nearer: back again he flew
To tell the others what he thought he knew.
The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim,
Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.”
A moth more eager than the one before
Set out and passed beyond the palace door.
He hovered in the aura of the fire,
A trembling blur of timorous desire,
Then headed back to say how far he’d been,
And how much he had undergone and seen.
The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs
Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.”
Another moth flew out — his dizzy flight
Turned to an ardent wooing of the light;
He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance
Both self and fire were mingled by his dance
The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head,
His being glowed a fierce translucent red;
And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze,
The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays,
He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek,
That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”
To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind,
And you can never gain the longed-for goal
Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul;
But should one part remain, a single hair
Will drag you back and plunge you in despair
No creature’s self can be admitted here,
Where all identity must disappear.

From: “The Conference of the Birds” by Farid ud-Din Attar
Translated from farsi by Afkham Darbandi & Dick Davis

This week, we have a piece by Anna Aysea on the topic of “What are you waiting for?” In it, she reflects on the human condition as depicted by Beckett, in his play Waiting for Godot.

The theme reminded me of the play “Waiting for Godot” by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Together with “No Exit” by Jean Paul Sartre, it is considered the most iconic play of the 20th century on psychological human suffering.

In “Waiting for Godot” the two main characters, homeless vagabonds Vladimir and Estragon, engage in a variety of discussions and encounters on a deserted country road while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. The play is set on an empty stage with a single leafless tree. The characters find themselves in an alien universe devoid of any purpose or meaning. Left to their own devices they appear selfish and callous and treat each other with cruelty. In act two of the play, a few leaves appear on the barren tree, apparently as a result of an act of compassion. It has been suggested that Beckett was hinting that it is the arising of compassion the characters/humanity are waiting for, to free them from alienation and the resulting suffering.

I read “Waiting for Godot” in my early twenties and could very much relate to the dystopian view of the human condition. As a sensitive young adult, I felt heavily burdened by the sheer amount of human suffering and cruelty I saw in the world and which Beckett expertly conjures up in his stripped-down, minimalist play. As someone who has experienced the horrors of World War 2, Beckett knew first-hand the depths of the human condition.

A few decades later not much has changed in the ways of the world, cruelty and suffering still very much abound. Yet I do not experience the hopelessness and despair of my young self any longer. The sensitivity to the suffering of the world is still there, but that in itself does not result in fear or despair, these are related to the question of birth and death. That question is now absent as it has been fully settled.

To settle the question: “Who or what was born and is going to die?”, if the answer is “I, this body-mind”, with that belief, others too are reduced to body-mind entities. When the self is understood to be “I awareness” not subject to birth and death, with the same token, the true nature of all beings is not subject to birth and death, not subject to suffering and inherently innocent.

 

Continuing our theme of Spider Web, this week, Anna Aysea discusses spider webs as an art form, and in so doing revisits the common feature of all of our blog pieces, this month, the interconnectedness of all life.

As a maker, I am utterly fascinated by the web of a spider and its construction. The architectural design is mesmerizing.

This time of year, the garden is full of spider webs. Last week I saw one hanging from a base thread which was spanning more than six meters, a whopping distance for such fine yarn to hold. The thread was so fine, it was visible only when the light hit it from a certain angle. An on looking neighbor may have wondered why I was bending in strange angles while going from one side of the garden to the other as I was following the thread, trying to find its beginning and end point.

The silk of a spider is one of the strongest fibers in existence. According to researchers it is five times stronger than s­­teel, if human-size, it would be tough enough to stop a large aircraft. Interestingly, spiders feature in many mythologies. Also, spider divination and asking questions from spiders are still being used today in indigenous cultures which can teach us a lot about communication across species and between species.

Visual artist Tomás Saraceno who has a background in architecture, takes the fascination for spiders and spider webs to the next level. As the initiator of the Arachnophilia Foundation, he cohabitates in his studio with one of the largest collection of spiders consisting of over 7000 eight legged creatures. His large scale installations and sculptures are informed by his extensive study and close observation of how different species of spiders live, work, collaborate and build intricate structures as artworks, cohabitating with one and other and with humans.

Drawing parallels between spider webs, cosmic webs and the webs of interconnectedness, Saraceno presents the necessity to reevaluate how we perceive and operate in the world and often overlook the sentient beings we coexisted with. His work focuses on interconnected, nonhierarchical collaborations between humans and nonhumans. Tomás Saraceno has a large body of facinating work inspired by spiders and their webs, I like to briefly mention two projects.

The installation “How to hear the universe in a spider web” is a sonification of a spider web. Tiny microphones placed in the web detect vibrations in the silk threads plucked  by the spiders to communicate and make these vibrations audible to the human ear, as the music of the spider web.

The project Webs of Life  in the Serpentine Gallery, London, includes monumental spiders, towering scary monsters who write to us humans movingly in the “An Open Letter for Invertebrate Rights”:

Dear inhabitants of the worlds,

We would like to start by thanking you for your time, by recognizing our rights to inhabit and participate in this exhibition and for not labelling us “urban pests” as many others do. We hope that after this exhibition ends, you would consider allowing our continuing but threatened, unlimited existence.

Many of you are frightened of us in the real world. To overcome this we hope you might interact with a digital version of us.

Your scientific names for us are Bagheera kiplingi* and Maratus speciosus, though we call ourselves differently in our vibrational language. This summer, you will be able to spot our augmented presence around the Serpentine.

Now, after this exhibition ends, you will need to find us in the real world and show a good will of co-existence by not sweeping us away. We could grant you in exchange a certificate of co-existence for a perpetual loan of our avatar friends to be exhibited permanently, under the terms agreed to respect our rights!

We have lived on earth for more than 380 million years, while some of you humans, only 200 thousand years. Can the minority learn to live with the majority of us? We are the 95% of all animals on planet earth asking for the right to weave webs of life, yet we are threatened into extinction by such a small number of individuals.

Do not be afraid. Let us move from arachnophobia to arachnophilia by sensing new threads of connectivity, or else face the eternal silence of extinction.

As part of our Something Done in Small Moment series, Anna Aysea writes about a very poignant experience and her response to it.

As I turned left, into the long aisle with the detergent, I walked in on the heated brawl between mother and son. The boy could not have been more than five or six. Standing a few feet away from his mother, his little body was shaking with heaved sobs. Tiny fists clenched, and in between sobs he was yelling “No” to his mother at the top of his voice. She stood half turned away from him, without looking at the boy, she spoke to him in an undertone, without expression. Her words were like soft dripping poison, she was taunting and humiliating him. She told him that everything was his fault, that he should be ashamed of himself, that everyone in the store was now looking at him thinking he was a bad, foolish boy, that I was looking at him, thinking he was a stupid fool.

The mother spoke in a foreign language and was clearly under the impression that I could not understand her words, not realizing I happened to speak that language.

It was a battle of wills. She told him she needed apples and if he wanted to make himself useful, instead of making a fool of himself, he should stop making such a fuss and go and get some apples. Fists clenched, still shaking with sobs, the boy stormed off through the aisles.

Witnessing the drama up close, I had been pretending to be immersed in the various detergent choices. My mind on the tormented child, I made my way to the produce section of the large supermarket.  Still sobbing, the boy had found the fruit on the low display and started putting apples in a plastic bag.

“Hi there sweetheart, can I help you with something?”

Not looking up, continuing to shake with heaved sobs, there came a vigorous “No” shake with the head. I followed him as he walked to the self-service scales with the bag of apples. He tried to put the bag on the scales but the counter was way too high for him.

“Would you like me to help you weigh your apples sweetheart?” Again a vigorous “No” shake.

“You like to do it yourself, don’t you?” A vigorous “Yes” shake. Such determination.

“Shall I maybe lift you a little so you can reach the scales and weigh the apples yourself? Would that be okay?” A curt nod.

I lifted him, apples and all, and hold him high enough so he could reach the scales. Shaking and determined, he put the bag on the scales, found and pushed the image of apples and then the price sticker button. I carefully lowered him again.

“Well done, sweetheart! Yeah, I get you, I also like to do things by myself” A wan smile. The interaction seemed to to be calming him somewhat.

“Can you remember something for me, sweetie?” A nod.

“You are very brave, and a good boy. Never forget that. Always remember that, okay?” A nod.

I watch his tiny back as he walked away, returning to the battlefield. I felt powerless, wondering about the kind of adult he would become after the long war of childhood.

Traditionally, sense perceptions have been explored extensively by artists. Highly developed perceptual sensitivity is the talent and field of expertise of an artist. Their explorations and discoveries hold valuable lessons about the nature of reality. This series is about artworks that resonate Buddhist teaching.

Alberto Giacometti, Hands Holding the Void, 1935, bronze cast, MoMA

 

The statue expresses the artist’s recognition of the inherently empty nature of sense perceptions.

 

O Shariputra, — in this pure there is no form, sensation, thought, activity or consciousness; : No eye, ear,  nose, tongue, body,  mind; no form,  no tastes,  sound,  colour, touch or objects;

A dying man asked photographer Erwin Olaf to make a farewell portrait. He died a couple of hours after this final picture was taken, photographed at home as he was already too ill to come to the studio.

What strikes me is the powerful presence and the unflinching peace that is emanating from the face, shining brightly through the frail body that is about to give way. The artist managed to capture both the impermanent and the transcendental.

 

At the twilight, a moon appeared in the sky;
Then it landed on earth to look at me.
Like a hawk stealing a bird at the time of prey;
That moon stole me and rushed back into the sky.
I looked at myself, I did not see me anymore;
For in that moon, my body turned as fine as soul.
The nine spheres disappeared in that moon;
The ship of my existence drowned in that sea.

– Rumi

Divan, 649:1-3,5

Continued from the previous post and contemplating further on the power of words, I was also reminded of the line from the bible:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In essence, this is about the power to create.

As I went to buy groceries today and I was looking around, I had to acknowledge that everything I saw, the streets, the pavement, the buildings, the supermarket, the aisles with food, with products, money, the clothes I was wearing, my house, the tap I use to wash my hands, everything, started as a concept, a word in the mind. The world as we know it started as a concept, started as a word; our world is the result of our innate power to create. We can use this power for self serving goals, or use it to create a world that is inclusive and beneficial to all. Now that we are collectively forced to a halt and forced to reassess our unsustainable way of life, an enormous creative energy rises to find alternatives, to consider choices that take into account our interconnectedness.

Through the formidable effort that is being made, through the anxiety, the grief, the uncertainty that is palpable, still this creative force shines more brightly than ever. Alternatives are found, things previously thought as impossible are carried out. Our power to create does not diminish in the face of adversity, on the contrary, it rises to the challenge and shines even more brightly.

I am currently experimenting with batik for an assignment to make a batik design for a kimono, consisting of writing / words and using indigo blue.

I had the following contemplations on the nature of words.

Words have great power, both to obscure and to reveal the truth, to divide and to unite. We can use words to create stories, stories about us and them, and believe these stories to be the truth. It takes the reality of a pandemic to eminently bring to the fore the truth of our shared being, of our interconnectedness, the truth of what is essential and what is redundant. Words that express this clarity have the power to unite, to heal.