09-13-2016, 01:33 PM
(09-13-2016, 10:19 AM)just mercedes Wrote: This is a very, very specific poem. I can already appreciate it now, but the depths of it, I'll only really know knowing the places, the terms, perhaps even the concepts, intimately.
Make sure you visit
the Hall of a Thousand Pillars
in Chidambaram. Ask the monks Why is it that I can't really imagine monks in the more proper, contemplative sense -- that is, that I feel like this actual place has been turned into a tourist trap? xD
to take you to Shiva’s shrine.
The curtain opens daily to show
empty space filled by an entity
without volume. It flows Looking at the pictures, though, I see no emptiness. The center of the chamber maybe empty, but the walls and the columns are filled with idols (I believe each pillar in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars is adorned with a lion? or with a god), so that I don't get a sense of the appropriate emptiness.
as waves in a timeless dream;
unceasing, pure Akasa. Or is the emptiness the whole image of Shiva (and Parvati) themselves? Actually, it probably is, though it's a little weird, finding emptiness in horror vacui -- though weird in a hopeful way, or in an ironic way?
You know it already, as aether,
quintessence, Solomon’s Seal. I feel like the conflation of Solomon's Seal, a material sigil of mortal power over divine elements, with aether, which is the essence infilling the spaces between all heavenly (but not Heavenly) things, is somewhat wrong. Solomon's Seal may represent the same sort of force by which the aether moves and sustains all heavenly bodies, but by definition it is an object of earth, tied to the earth and made of the other four elements, while aether is made of heaven, in heaven.
This is the time and place between,
where Shiva dances. Emptiness I suppose this is the statement that made me somewhat conclude that there is emptiness in horror vacui. I suppose it's like hesychasm -- as one empties the mind, one can experience a knowledge of God. Or the devil, in this case.
is not the same as nothing.
But otherwise, I think everything's good. I can't really criticize it stylistically -- it all works. Very clean -- lovely. Maybe if I give it more time.
