It was early September morning. The last few days of the summer and the Sun here in Vancouver. I was having coffee at the chain coffee shop and getting ready for a walk in the fabulous Stanley park. I saw a lot of people jump out of a truck. They took a  lot of huge sculptures and were placing it on a patch of ground.

I went closer to have a look and found out this is a temporary art installation in Vancouver. They were funny!

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I keep seeing the incomplete Ganeshas on my way to, well, nothing. I am only bumming around right now. I decided to go inside this place to see how Ganesha is being made.  Ganesha Chaturthi is only a few weeks away, the biggest Hindu festival in Bangalore and most other places in India. Ganeshas were being made from clay and hay. I am not sure what else they need to finish the statues.  It takes about a month for the people to finish a large Ganesha. Some of them are really huge. The interesting part is that, these Ganeshas being made won’t be around for long. They will be around for just a few days. After the festival, every one of these Ganeshas will be immersed in a lake or some water body. Impermanence of it all does not make these statues any less beautiful. They are all perfect.

The people who are making the statues are very talented. Each one of them is a masterpiece. They have to be so careful while making these, there cannot be any flaws. Gods must be perfect. I even saw one Ganesha in a perfect padmasana. The fingers, the toes, the face are all so beautiful. As of now, most of the Ganeshas are white. I like them like this. I was told by the people who work there, that they will start painting next week. I will visit the place again to see the difference.

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I absolutely loved this film by Nina Paley. I agree with Nina, why is Rama the perfect man? Awesome work, Nina!

Thanks Papi, for the link.

In keeping with the topic of change and impermanence, I’d like to take a closer look at one of the most quoted poems of all time. I refer to the “The road not taken”, a poem by Robert Frost that is more commonly, and mistakenly, referred to as “The road less traveled”. The mistake stems from the portion of the poem that is most quoted -

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Shorn of their context, these lines hang in the air like some vacuous inspirational slogan, vaguely self-congratulatory in tone. Here, look at me, I took the road less traveled by, and look where it got me, they seem to say. And indeed this is the most accepted meaning of these lines. It is precisely in this sense that these lines have been quoted in wall hangings and self-help books, in greeting cards and wrapping paper; they have been repeated and reproduced until they have been leached of any semblance of their original meaning. Even the most profound truths will be reduced to inanity by endless (and mindless) repetition – witness the “Serenity Prayer” – and so it has been with this poem as well.

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The art of letting go, impermanence and being in the now taught by Andy Goldsworthy. This is a clip from the documentary Rivers and Tides. He makes these intoxicating fragile creations which have such a short life time, but extremely beautiful. His art is similar in concept to the sand mandalas created by Tibetan Buddhist monks. The mandalas are painstakingly created over days. They are destroyed when they are finished to mark the impermanence of all that exists.

I like this quotation of Andy Goldsworthy.

I find some of my new works disturbing, just as I find nature as a whole disturbing. The landscape is often perceived as pastoral, pretty, beautiful – something to be enjoyed as a backdrop to your weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it’s not like that. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn’t walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.

Figure of a woman at Albany Waterfront Park apparently sinking into Virabhadrasana. Even scrap art needs yoga to stay limber.