Saturday 18 November 2006

Butterflies on Mobile

by Remigius de Souza

Red Mobile by Alexander Calder | Source Wikipedia


From an egg to larvae to caterpillar to butterfly the life-form passes through change. Call it evolution, creation, change, growth, rebirth, chemistry, or whatever you may. Does it happen to a person in human life? Being conscious of ‘person’ within inevitably could bring about change. Consciousness is helped by contemplation and awareness in oneself, and alert watching. Watching the real life helps attention, but while watching ‘virtual’ reality or an idol may lead to chains of conditioning and judgments that leads life astray and to decadence hence loss of creativity.

We have been witnessing it enough at societal level within individual and the society outside. At global level this situation is now more exposed than ever before in the age of Electronic/Information Technologies and transit systems. Rational thinking and senses together must be used until both come to their inevitable end – death –, i.e. end of space-time, for creativity to blossom. Within the bondage of space-time there is no liberation, creation, celebration of life. It is only a manipulation, repetition, and adjustment – readjustment, reaction – counteraction. End of rational thinking and senses does not mean their negation or denial, but on the contrary their full use.

The dance of creation (destruction) is continually happening in the Nature. Man is part of Nature but the intellect and senses that are divorced from it do not come to the end of rational thinking and therefore is caught by the irrational. It may appear in the forms of state, religion, philosophy, progress, development, dogma and what not. Evolution, creation, growth, rebirth etc. remain just the words on the fringe of Life. One cannot attach or decide any meaning or purpose or goal to Life; it is not a concept. Our living or routine has goals. But to attach them to Life is to demean it.

Alexander Calder’s mobile sculptures fascinate me. After him, when there was newborn baby at home, I set out to make a mobile with butterflies, to hang it on the cradle. But instead I mounted myself on the clouds and took a ride. Their colours, mass, density, shapes, velocities were constantly changing. Suddenly I come down with billion drops on the ground. There I entered the soil particles and watched a billion seeds breaking their shells. Calder left a lesson for me in his mobile sculptures.

Instead of making a mobile of butterflies in imitation of Calder, I mounted myself upon clouds, buried myself in the soil, and witnessed the dance of creation (destruction). Down to the earth, I lifted baby Rhea, sat under the canopy of the foliage and flowers that were swinging with breeze, real butterflies dancing, and the baby in my lap, watching with amazement, her whole body smiling.


Remigius de Souza
©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

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