Art.Suvro.Ghosh

P835 Eat or be eaten

Eat or be eaten

Smit or be smitten

Cheat or be cheated

Fuck or be fucked

Shit or be shitted

That's what it's all about

Large medium small smaller still

One eats the other until hunger fill

It's natural I say, let it take its course

Don't try to bend it with willful force

Just remember you stay alive in plural

Otherwise you're just shit on a coral

P834 Eating Shit

Tragic farce my life my ass

Pretty shitty turds in my yap

Oh what a twist on top of chance

A fair bit of dark and some romance

How vividly pale devoid of color

The disneyland is rotten malodour

Chewing shit with a shitty grin

I'm swell how are you doing

P830 Booger Man

Boogerman Boogerman

whatcha have ya got?

I've got 4 boogers

One's still a snot

Put them in a box, I will

Store them in the hold

Eat them later in the chill

When freezing in the cold

It's got the vits I tell ya

Lovely salt and tart

Gotta love the chew in them

And later the good warm fart

I see art as a therapy. It can cure a constipated mind, constricted by the limitations in language, and especially as in my case, as a safety valve. It's better than slamming the door, I've found. There's a lot we can't effectively articulate that finds expression in the simplicity, vividness, flexibility and strangeness that only art can provide, best tour guide when you're shopping outside the status quo. Those long muted conversations, the inarticulate madness, the silliness or some glimpses of the grief I carry, is what this eponymous blog is trying to capture.

I don't want to deny the darkness that's inside me, anymore. And it's my sincere wish that in screaming the clues and hints about my mental health, I might make a difference to many that don't have a voice and suffer silently. And perhaps in a way the imperfections that I try to delineate in characters are all part of me, that's how I know they exist, and this negotiated encounter with my fears and fragility may help someone else overcome their demons.

I, for one, don't usually have a future onlooker in mind, except for a future me. I draw because I like to draw. I cherish the "I" part of art, and my unconcern for the "we" insulates me from the emotional afflictions that encumber people who use art to draw attention to themselves.

In any case, I am much better off as a person misunderstood and an invisible, ignored nonentity who aspires to an ambition. Just like my limericks and verse, all amateurish gibber, except that, unlike other polite, conservative people, I'm quite intrepid. On the surface, what might appear to be crass and misanthropic has a deeper groove. The pain in my life as told by a contrarian and an iconoclast is still an oversimplification of what is going on in my head, but at least it's the beginning of a conversation. And like William Blake I'll go unnoticed till much later, when historians will start examining the discarded fossils with investigative lens. But again, it doesn't matter.

I know that the content isn't politically correct. I've always had an issue with being family-friendly, or with euphemisms. You can't please everyone. There are far too many egos in the world. There's always someone wanting to bloody your nose over something, no matter how soft your language. It's easier on them when I get into a character. An insult from a salacious cartoon distraction isn't that corrosive, especially if you can't think. People struggle incessantly with the truth, boxed in their views with the pastry layers of deceptions and delusions - the sociopolitical and religious, the economic and most importantly the moral. They have naturally reserved their love for mealy-mouthed spineless pleasers and would harbor large dollops of ill will against me, I'm quite sure. They'd rather be in the dark than put up with light. Light has the irritating habit of exfoliating the assumptions and revealing the stark reality.

But unfortunately, it's blood loss in vain. The world has become so incongruous that even the harshest lurid, satirical exaggeration of it fails to deliver the bitter irony of the reality I see around me. And people are so resistant to the truth that a comical inversion only serves to elicit a superficial, obvious reaction, thus failing to deliver the punch. In effect, cringe stays cringe, unable to deliver the payload because that requires a thinking mind, perhaps one that's a little bit mad.

Although some of the material in these posts are part of my extended inner monologue, there's no clear derivation of the deviant emotion, an autobiographical reveal, or a bona-fide sketch of the repressed feeling. Maybe in a very generous compartmentalised way, like the level of trapped mercury in a vessel. It could be measuring various things, and you wouldn't be able to tell "what" if the labels on the unit went missing. When I draw a grotesque face, it maybe an indication of my emotions, but it's not connected in a meaningful way, and taking it literally at face value and making a judgement would be silly. If we can't laugh at our own confabulations, then we risk misunderstanding our own place in the universe and starting to take things too seriously. And it may hurt our anthropocentric ego, but putting human faces to animals, can have lurid results, I've noticed.

I often use the expectation of revulsion as a way to distinguish myself from just another pastiche. It's an internal assessment foisted on to an imaginary critic and not a good justification for the darkness. But when you describe the dark, it's no longer dark.

The worthiness of art is a matter of consensus, usually and historically, something that the artist hasn't profited from because that appraisal frequently happens posthumously. More than the art, it's the quality of uproar that you are able to generate, or more appropriately these days, fund, that determines whether an artist, in his lifetime, is able to climb out of obscurity. Distance in time or space, as an amplifier enhances, often adds an element of mystery. If anyone pays attention, these are often grafts to bolster missing information. Also, when you're dead, whatever you are can be flexibly redefined to suit the fancy of the benefactor. You can't protest. Thus a caveman struggling with his art may be in the news for etching an alien.

And the reason is not so much that we don't care, but more pertinently, that we aren't quite sure if what we think in our head is really all that. Consensus, however you manage it, gives you the statistically kosher answer. The first one to complement something ill-defined could make you the black sheep of the flock. What dark meanings or ulterior motives lurk behind the patina of lust isn't always clear. When we see something that doesn't immediately make sense to us, being the practical people that we are, we immediately dismiss it. No one in Van Gogh's time believed his art amounted to much. And he constantly struggled with poverty.

You can often have majestic masts but get nowhere. Mine is such a ship. I've hit the doldrums, and without a wind beneath my sails, I'm as good as rotting. Incidentally, it seems I have a knack for driving into the doldrums.

And art, for me, is a sort of an expression of a compulsive tic, a compulsion to exfoliate what's beneath all the makeup. It's often whatever is itching my curiosity. It's something I have to force out of my head or risk a rattle or jingle that's difficult to cure. I just start a doodle and keep at it until I want to do something else. It's that simple. I'm not an artist by any stretch of the definition. I don't make a living off of it. It's just a tic that helps explore the ingredients in the constituent wandering thoughts, the mysterious vagabonds that visit my mind to console the otherwise lonely, barren, and empty landscape.

These are thought experiments that usually deal with the unpleasant and the unremarkable. It helps to distance myself from me, find the brakes, attenuate, soothe. Perhaps the art is the curated fulmination of a closet thinker presented as is. Filaments of figment, visualised babble, fiction concocted.And sometimes stranger than that. Or a discoloured montage of what my life has been.

And that is why I can't put labels on them with intellectual identification of what their meaning is without over-analysing them to shreds. Sometimes I do, and then it's just a posthoc postmortem of something that wasn't really behind the inspiration. Most of the labels do have numbers on them that express a sequence, although it's not always sequential by creation.

P828

P827

P826

P825

P824

P823

P822

P821

P820

P819 Need a rational mind

Believe in the stars
And they are yours
For that is just in your mind, you see
Our mind is a willing fool, full of foolishness

But come has the time to really wake up
And see what is actually out there
Unblinking blind, is as blind as blinds are blind
Unflinching mind is what it will take

To us it's the scales of medium, you see
Outside us those scales are free
Can we come out of the house of horrible horror
Can we make humanity dance a difference dance

If we are to survive this form, we must mend our ways
Rational minds are the only way

Only the thinking ones will hold the sway
And pave the way forward

P818

P817

P816

P815 तेरा दिल दे दे जानेमन!

P814

T1: The Sugarcane Fruit

Once upon a time, there lived a clever fox.

In his nature of cleverness, there was perhaps a flaw in that he drew upon conclusions that came to his mind as immediately true with jest and merriment, with no tests or proof.

In his walks, past the sugarcane fields, the fox had noticed what he thought was a fruit and, following his fault in conclusions, drew it as a fact.

Fruit it was not quite far from that. It was a hornets’ nest, fiercely guarded by a swarm of brave hornets who never knew there was such cleverness as they were to witness that day.

Thinking on the conclusion that if there was a sweetness connection, the sugarcane fruit might be even sweeter. Best in all collections of fruits tasted. Mesmerized in delicacies, the clever fox grew increasingly eager.

Since he loved sugarcane, the temptation forced him to the field where the hive was. In the way he practiced in his mind, the fox climbed the ledge from where he could reach it. Balancing on the hind and holding it with the fore, he prepared to take a bite. Time stopped, and there was a sweetness of anticipation, sweeter than the sweetest thoughts.

On biting it, all hell broke loose. The silence of sweet anticipation disappeared as the hornets attacked.

He fled, severely stung.

Later, in reconciliatory thoughts, he recovered the plan. If it were just a matter of insects around ripe harvests, a stirring would be all that was sufficient, he reasoned. The clever fox mentally stirred up the hornets’ nest and felt the satisfaction of his genius. Overcome with joy, he decided on a revisit.

The stick strung with ropes and twigs he assembled was long and quite strong. As his memories of the pain ebbed with the swelling, his confidence grew.

He traveled to the sugarcane field again. He had overseen his logic in his mind to be accurate. With no more ado, he hit the hornets’ nest with a swift hurl of his weapon.

That was a bad idea.

This time, the wasps rained their wrath in stings, and the clever fox didn’t have any part of his fur left unstung.

He yelped and fled, caroming blind with pain. As far from the hive as he could run, he did.

And as all clever foxes knew, the world in its geometry of shape was like a plate—flat. With an edge at the end, that you must not run too far, lest you slip off the edge of all cleverness and fall into the deep unknown, foolishness even.

So the clever fox kept running in concentricities, chased to his end by the rabid hornets.

P813

P812

Lost and lonely

If and only

I could find a home

No land in sight

No wars to fight

Not all is very well

I could I think

Be brave and blink

The Maya go away

P811

P810

P809

P808 Discussion on a cat

What should we do

The cat's mad

Says he'll do voodoo

Magic to make

All our cheese go bad

Let's think this through

We are wiser than he

Surely that worm in his brain

Is telling him what to be

He likes to nap

We'll keep him awake

He won't a wink get

And that a tired cat make

Once foggy and dull

We'll feed him ghosts

And on that diet

His nerves will roast

Then the mad cat

Will end his life

That's the plan

To end this strife

P807

P806

P805

Cut them in pieces boys

We want no fuss

Lives are toys

Useless blood and pus

Have no mercy

When you kill

Especially this lassie

Her voice so shrill

Kill Kill Kill

Let no honest or wise survive

Die Die Die

Ghosts and gods contrive

Then we'll drink their blood

And many a merry make

Then we'll eat their flesh

Oh how I love it fresh

Sweet gods to thank

Let magic prevail

Let us destroy them all

Truth is folly and frail

P804

Eat me not

Not an apricot

Eat me not

You can't swallow

I'm saintly hallow

It's a sin, a sin

If you swallow

On these dripping blood

Drops as red

As your lips, I swear

You'll die a trembling death

In fear

I'll choke you a livid pale

Until you let me out again

Can't you hear

Are you deaf

Do not swallow

P803

Zig zag ruse

Ulterior use

Several blown fuse

And short-circuit

Not very fit

Don't go, sit

I like you, you know

It's all a show

Dirty tricks

Swollen yardsticks

Beads of sweat flit

Don't go, sit

P802

P801

P800

P799

Sad bad mad had
Can't and won't
Lost and rusty
Tired and dusty
Time gone old song
Broken heart fond
Less and lesser
Faint and fainter
Rising and falling
Rising less and then
No more

This beautiful world...

The climate is changing. The world as we see it won't be like this forever. It's what you take for granted that you miss the most. Millions of people will be struck by poverty and disease. Millions will be displaced.

If ever there was a life that was worth preserving, a conscious life would be one, but our fictions that bring us together will cause our eventual extinction. Not just individual deaths, but the very prospect of being born, will become unavailable.

It's time to invent a more unifying make-believe story to replace the parochial and divisive ones. It should highlight, underscore, and italicise in giant bold fonts the fact that if the sky does fall on our silly heads, it will happen everywhere, and again with heavy emphasis of some sort, every time. If we can only get our minds together, there's a sliver of a chance, however miniscule, that this can be avoided.

But I don't see any proof of this realisation reflected in events around the globe, with leaders simply trying to shove the onus of action to another time, as if we already have it. COP26, the climate conference, was another shameful cop out. You'd think that they'd realise that it's getting rather hot lately.

I think, and I may be alone in this observation, that the COP was a designed flop, almost by definition: Sort of like expecting to outlaw rape by inviting all the rapists, excited juniors and experienced seniors, for a chat over tea. It's an event orchestrated for the camera, a flamboyant show of pretence and superficial amity.

It's just another way to shift responsibilities and blame, bury actions in kafkaesque policies, and perpetuate the status quo.

It's the developed countries that have to cough up the dough to provide transition for poorer countries, not simply to reverse the cruel historical injustice and crime asymmetry, but because otherwise it'll take too much time, which I hate to keep reminding you, the disinterested reader, that we don't have.

Climate change is a global, intergenerational issue.We are all on this planet, and there is nowhere else we can go, no planet B.

And while sea-level small islands, the areas near the equator, cities close to waterways, and the poor are the first to suffer, the rich and the powerful still live on this planet, albeit on slightly different islands, and these differences become less meaningful quickly when massive catastrophic accidents become ordinary. It will take an "x" foot wave a couple of minutes to wipe out an entire country along with all our vain differences. If x = 10, it may be the Maldives, if x = 100, it might be Australia. The scales are different, and the mischief is in the miscalculation. Undertelling the tale will only make the danger more apocalyptic and startling.

We mustn't forget that we live under the same sky, no matter how complicated the division story in our heads is. We don't have much time; it's already dire. After this short window of opportunity passes, it'll be too late to even pass on the burden of inaction to our progeny, for they will be sitting ducks, and generations after that won't exist for homo sapiens.

It's delusional to expect anything from a science-illiterate world where many still think the world is flat and the periodic table is furniture. With so little science education and so much oversimplification, dogmatism, and religiosity, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to get people to even "see" reality as it exists in the detail that is necessary, and until that time, there's very little that can be done at the crowd level. But that is the level at which I can operate with my limitations, and if I can get even one person to read this blog and realise that the stakes are high, I'd feel I've achieved something.

In a world fueled by selfishness, when situations get worse, people become more selfish, not less. The need for bread and the greed for knee-jerk, short-term solutions are going to dominate the thinking, not long-term, durable, wide-ranging, tough actions. Actions, not just a long list of policies and lies, is where I see a glimmer of hope. And without any action, that's where our storyline may end, abruptly, just like bad weather, without any further notice, unless we wise up to the warnings that are all around us.

While the utopian virtual universes are where technology companies want us to migrate to, where they tell you life will be like a fairy tale, you can't do that without your feet in a real universe, a wall socket for plugging in, and a place to keep the damn goggles.

We are already in a magical place. Let's wake up and save ourselves from extinction. Life is miraculous, and not in any ostentatious, metaphysical way. It's fortunate that we are here. These extremely improbable and delicate conditions, the thread of luck that life is, that which we take for granted, are fragile. If we abuse the ecosystem in which we live, the fate of our species is in the air, and all we have to do is watch the weather.

__________________________________________________

Carbon Capture:

A lot of people are of the opinion that we should use some form of chemistry to absorb all the offending green house gases. They feel that trying to reduce emissions may be an intractable, if not an obviously impossible goal, since there's no centralised way to monitor or control them, or hold any country accountable.

When people talk about carbon sequestration and capture, they don't realise that it's more than what appears on the surface. And the difficulty can be appreciated with some back-of-the-envelope calculations:

The main greenhouse gas that needs to be considered is carbon dioxide, which is about 400 molecules in a million molecules of atmospheric air, slightly more or slightly less. Although that's a lot as far as trapping heat is concerned, it's not enough molecules in a single place to be able to do anything with it with the kind of efficiency that's needed.

So if we are looking at capturing it, even if the idea is to react it with some other material (with a finite exposed surface area), we have to get it to where it can be in contact with it. Blowing in, storing, and compressing large air volumes to get to a higher concentration level of carbon dioxide is often the very first thing that's needed (removal of other gases, liquefaction, etc.).

Unfortunately, today, any electricity used ultimately uses some form of carbon-based production, distribution, or carbon cost. Operating a single bulb, or even driving to our carbon capture facility, has a carbon cost.

And this is why: Burning just 12 grammes of carbon adds approximately 600 million million million carbon dioxide molecules to the air (12 grammes or the molar mass equivalent has an avogadro number of carbon atoms or 6.022 × 10²³ atoms). If you need to pump in 1 million air molecules to capture 400 carbon dioxide molecules, you'd need to process 1.5 million million million million air molecules (1.5 × 10²⁴) or about 60,000 cubic cm of air, to get all the carbon dioxide from that pittance of 12 grammes of carbon.

You can see where this is going, if we are even talking about just getting started. Until we do this entirely on a renewable energy platform (that is, with no input from other grids and without spending any carbon anywhere else), the mathematics will simply not work out. This is along the same line of reasoning why an electric car or bus may reduce city pollution but still put out a lot of carbon dioxide if the electricity you are using isn't based on pure renewable energy. It hurts to know the truth, but carrying on with a dozen blindspots doesn't help anyone.

This doesn't mean we can't solve the problem or not have a practical carbon capture setup one day; it simply means we have to be honest about these discussions to be able to resolve it properly, and we are not there yet.

This is true for anything in science, but it's especially important for this climate crisis. If we are hiding some facts or not comprehending the underlying complexity, then we'll only exacerbate the crisis, since we'll be pouring resources into attempts that will dump more carbon dioxide into the air, exacerbating the problem we are trying to solve in the first place. And this is also why we need to retrofit everything that produces green house gases before the gases get a chance to get mixed up with other molecules in the atmosphere. We can't forget entropy in these situations. While entropy allows carbon dioxide to mix effortlessly, we need energy to reverse that to get it to a more convenient and concentrated form. Any energy that is generating more carbon dioxide is only making the problem bigger.