Ma Kali, or The Goddess Kali

She is dark. She is Kalratri. She is the black night that existed before even light was created. She is Kalika - all of time - past, present and future. She is the fundamental power, the Adi Shakti. She is Para Prakriti, beyond nature. She is the ultimate reality. She remains unchanging, while the Maya of creations effervesce from her and pass away into nothingness. She is the creator and the destroyer of all manifestations, all worlds.

(I've been trying to ideate on Ma Kali - something different - to depict her as the description given above. This is a water colour, which I want to make into a big oil or acrylic painting on canvas. Still thinking about it - whether to make her face the primeval source of light, as I have done here, or make it fully dark, as the darkness that existed before even light was created.)

colouring my mind, in an art gallery

my fingers are twitching. i've been away from my canvas these past couple of days. my arid mind wants to be suffused with colour. colour that drips in thick globs of oil paint. or washes in the fluidity of acrylic paints. since i wasn't painting, i needed to go and find some paintings. just to look at. swim through colour and form depicted on canvases. my mind sends out its feelers and licks all that paint off the canvas, and stores it in some part of the brain, like bees storing honey – to nurture my soul, shriveled up somewhere inside. my restless soul. it flies from canvas to canvas trying to decipher these universes created by hands that have no need of the spoken word. transmogrifying everyday visions into subliminal messages. indelible impressions of folklore, idyllic depictions of landscape, exuberant renditions of ordinary people caught in their everyday lives. inarticulate abstractions of the paintbrush’s random meanderings on its mute realm - a stretched canvas, a board, a piece of paper. every rendition, no matter the genre, a palpable conduit of subconscious energy. coloured offerings to the gods of the senses, swirling with the lyrical nuances of poetry. colours strong, vibrant. colours speaking a language that have no need of punctuations, or standard grammatical structure, but are a dialogue of the senses. perceptions of metaphorical renditions of similarities and oppositions. unities and polarities. harmonies and tensions. embodying the enigmas of passions that merge into my being in subtle definitions.

-by Rita Putatunda

Of Writing, Poetry, Mostly

Writing – poetry, mostly – is like I become Humpty-Dumpty. Who must fall down.

And break apart. Revealing all the messy innards – the mucous of the mind, the

gelatinous soul, the yellow yolk of the heart – all lying there spattered on

the street, for people to stare at, examine, trample over. Should Humpty-

Dumpty then be put back together again? Or just let herself be dried out by

the sun, or, as more likely, licked up by some passing hungry canine.

Writing also feels like I become the clumsy cow that dares to leap over the

beauteous moon – so high up and remote in the dark sky. Where the stars gather

around her and worship her. What am I, I sometimes wonder, a graceless bovine,

who really ought to be loitering about in some deadbeat brown field, chewing

cud, doing in this rarefied realm? Should the moon protest then, for having

this ungainly cow, its smelly udders brushing against her fair face, jumping

over her?

Is creativity the mind bubbling over? Or am I just a bumbling charlatan using

it for cover? Why am I obsessed with this world of words words words? And what

if these words dry up? As they must do, sometime. What when words

abandon me?

What do you want to write today? The monitor questions with a blank face

everyday. And, unable to bear its smug blankness, I plunge in, my fingers

feverishly pounding the keyboard, like an engine pulling its long train

through the night, blowing its lonely whistle. The tracks glinting dimly ahead

– disappearing into nothingness. How much more of the track is left? What is

my destination? What will I find at the end of the journey? A station called

Satisfaction? Fulfillment? Achievement? Or just a plain wooden sign which says

– STOP – This Is The End – There is no more track ahead.

What is it that I want to say? And to whom? Am I talking to myself? Am I

sleepwalking myself over an edge? Am I rolling around in my own muck watching

myself squirm? Like a worm swallowing soil as it burrows in deeper and deeper

into the earth. How deep will it burrow in? And how much earth will it swallow

before the earth runs out? And it emerges from the other side. What is on the

other side? Blank space?

"One dark night
Fired with love’s urgent longings
--- Ah, the sheer grace!
I went out unseen,
My house being now all stilled." - St John Of The Cross

-by Rita Putatunda

Tulips, In Abstract - With the leaves added

Wow, can you see how rich the colours are of the flowers, and I haven't touched them, just added the leaves. The picture I took yesterday of this painting (sans the leaves) was indoors, with low light. Today I decided to take it outside and click it, hence the colours are showing true now.

Well, I decided the painting looked too bare, the leaves just had to be added, and though I was hesitant, I'm so glad I did. It does make the painting look more complete. I also strengthened the stems a little, wondering if I should do more of that. Seriously, I never feel a painting is complete, the more I look at it, the more I feel I need to add to it. But no, I must not, or I'll just overwork it and it will lose its spontaneity. That's also part of creativity, or creation - knowing when to let go.

I remember when my son was born, looking into his innocent, wondering eyes as he wriggled and looked around at this strange realm he had come into. I was really not ready to have a kid; I didn't know how I would take care of him, raise him, teach him... And no, when they say that it all comes instinctively, I know it does not - not for me at least. This much I knew instinctively, that it would be a learning process, both for him and me. And it would be a continuation of the creation that had begun in my womb. So I learned, while he learned too, and the years went by. Mistakes were made, sure, but so were right things.. Some came from instinct, but most came from trial and error and corrections.

But as he grew, he chafed at the mother-son relationship... and I came to realise, though it took a while, that it was time to let go.. that he had become a person in his own right... and that too was part of creation/creativity.

Letting go applies to most things in life, whether it's a child you've brought into this world, or a painting you've created... or, ultimately, one's own existence on earth.

Tulips, In Abstract

I'm back working in oils, and I must say, though I do enjoy acrylics, oils is my favourite, will remain so. I just like its feel... its sensuousness. Though acrylics do create vivid colours too, but I feel oil colours are deeper.. I can't quite put my finger to it... must think more about it..

As for this painting, I like how the flowers have come out, though I think the stems are looking a little too weak and spindly - needs more highlights, and just a little thickening. I'm still pondering whether I should put some leaves in - my plan had been to put the leaves in, as it is in the picture I painted it from. But, at the moment, I feel I don't want to clutter it up. Besides, the leaves will cover up all that beautiful background I've created.

I've been working on this one for quite a while. In fact, I made the background and sketched the tulips, but just didn't know how I wanted to approach it - whether to attempt a realistic look or go totally abstract. Finally, I just took the bull by its horns and let my brush do what it wanted to.

And now, another blank canvas awaits me, which always fills me with trepidation and the fidgets. Talking about this with one of my artist friends the other day, he agreed that he too got the jitters when faced with a blank canvas. He thought that the fear of failure, of botching it up, is what makes us fearful. It's like taking that plunge into an unknown pool of water - you know you can swim, but you don't know the water you are venturing into. You wonder what unknown creatures lurk there, whether they would allow you to swim peacefully, or pull you down and drown you.

The travails of a born tomfooler

("be serious" I was told by a fat, gnat-brained, hypocrite - (hypocrite, because he pretends to be a goody-goody.. but that's another story.. maybe another poem about the hypocrites of the world who are hailed as gurujis) - so a poem about me, myself, the bad ole' perennially non-serious tomfooler.. heh heh heh!)

I am a bad girl. As far back as I can remember, I have always been a bad girl. You see, I have this terrible affliction of perennially non-serious tomfoolery (I think it’s such a sexist word don’t you – why is there no jillfoolery?? I mean, if tom can fool around, so can jill, right? But I'm going off-track). Cogitating on the matter, I began wondering, are some people born tomfoolers? – oops MS Word asks me with an angry red squiggle have I gone out of my tomfooler senses permanently or what? there’s no such word as ‘tomfooler’ you nit, it oughta be ‘tomfool’ you crawling li’l twit – but I think I like it so much, I’ll keep it anyway – so here, one-min while I go and zit that red squigg out of existence – there, done it – slurp-burp-glurp – felt good – but, like I was saying, are people like me born tomfoolers (zzzzit!) like there are born gnat-heads or artists, or for that matter, those that are congenital untomfoolers (hisssszzzit! – oh I give up – I’m cold shouldering all red squiggles henceforth), you know, like cold dead serious sober gnat-head types? I think so. You’re either born with the tomfooler bug, or you’re not. That’s a fact of my sad tomfooler life I don’t always remember, to my frequent coming to grief. (Add that to my permanently compulsive competitive habit of wanting attention – a pathetic hankering for wanting to be the ‘centre of attention’ – it makes for a case of creating a bubbling cauldron of much-much-grief-formyselfonly tomfoolery.)
The tomfooler bug – let me warn others who are thus afflicted and are desperately seeking a cure (always the kindly helpful type as I am – (blush) – (a quick look in the mirror which every self respecting attentionseekingtomfooler carries about her person – and near panic – so red in the face? – is it another attack? – a haemorrhage of tomfoolery? – relieved realisation – nah – only a blush) – er, where was I? (can’t seem to stop looking at my cute li’l tomfooling face) aah yes, the tomfooler bug – having it is like having the ebola virus. And can cause you painful mortification, especially if you happen to bump up against a diehard unbending untomfooler type in your peregrinations – which you will, often – and have one of your haemorrhagic tomfooler attacks. The world’s full of that kind -- who quite definitely lack the bug and have no intention of catching the infection from you. So, you better watch out if you’re planning on going off on one of your tomfooler jaunts happily blithely. You’ll be squished out of existence – or a major attempt will be attempted to do so – by the bugless nontomfoolers.
And like the ebola, there isn’t any antidote in the market yet – and none forthcoming in the future either – so forget it if you’re looking for a cure. There are palliatives of course, like the ebola has -- which I recommend highly if you’ve got a bad case of the tomfooler attack -- a heavy dose of hardboiled humid humourlessness is said to work like a bit of embolus in the jugular of your tomfooler head for a while. But only for a while. For, like the ebola, the tomfooler bug refuses to be exterminated, and lurks about in the dark, roiling corners of your psyche dryly chuckling and biting, just waiting for a chance to erupt in wild contagion.
And if you’re under the misplaced misconception – like most tomfoolers I know do – that “tomfooler and the world tomfoolers with you” – forget it. It doesn’t happen in the real world. And if you’re stubborn – like most tomfoolers I know are – and insist on pursuing a career in diehard tomfoolery, be warned -- tomfoolery is not considered an honourable profession these days, especially by the nontomfoolers, who seem to abound in this holierthanthou planet, henceforth to be referred to as Homo Humourless. Earnest earnesty is the way of the world of Homo Humourless. Mockery, as an honourable means of state of mind, went out of fashion since Homo Humourous came – laughed – and left. It’s an extinct species now. We tomfoolers, I know, have vestiges of those genes – but members of the Homo Humourless, as is their wont, don’t find this kind of monkey business funny at all. Extermination of tomfoolery is the order of the day. So, if you’re a bad girl, a tomfooler, a Homo Humourous, like me – you’re in deep shit.

-by Rita Putatunda

A Still Life (yep, ironic, I know) idea I just thought of while I cooked and fed this fish to my cats.