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

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.

The immersion of Ganeshas in the water have created a lot of environment problems, as the paint and some materials like plaster of Paris cause many issues. I do not know how green the process is in 2009. I have to find this out next time I visit this place. In the olden days, these statues were made from clay and they would be immersed in water with no issues.  This would represent the cycle of life and death.

Checkout the slide show for various Ganeshas in the making.

Thanks Papi, for the link.

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.

Frost himself had described the original poem as complicated and “tricky”, and to a thoughtful reader, it is still a gem of contemplation. Here it is in its entirety:

The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In the context of the entire poem, the last three lines seem to say something altogether different. The poet is wistful, almost melancholy, as he weighs his choices. He knows the two paths are not really different, they are just as fair and worn about the same, yet he is forced to make a choice. He justifies it with the thought that he will come back to try the other path another day but almost as quickly discounts it; knowing in his heart that way leads on to way, and that he will never be back.

So it is with life; every day we make a choice to tread a particular path, and that makes all the difference. Yet perhaps it is not so much the path we walk on, but how we choose to walk that makes the difference – whether we go shuffling along with our eyes cast down, or whether we walk tall, with our head in the clouds, treading lightly. As if walking on air.

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.