'Tentacles' of Octopus Remi: Art in Metafiction

'Tentacles' of Octopus Remi: Art in Metafiction (Self-portrait) published on ARCHETYPES INDIA

Srishti – Mother Nature – has Plenty to share; Nothing for sell; Nothing to buy. That's 'Reunion with Mother Nature' – Srishtiyoga (SRISHTIYOGA July 7, 2011)

‘Tentacles’ | Remigius de Souza| 1987 | water colour on handmade paper

Octopus Paul one day suddenly came in limelight.

The cause? It predicted results of the international hockey tournament. That took the First World Nations by storm.

Twitter was crowded by some million twits.
That crowd blocked the site for few hours! Such a craze... blind faith! That too from so-called advance societies! Amazing!

A European nation was even ready to buy that animal.

'Tentacles', Remigius de Souza's self-portrait was published on Net, but none was moved. Not even his friends!

Remi generally does not look in to mirror. Because he notices 'octopus' in the mirror! What, then, could be his misery while wandering the streets of Mumbai metropolis?

He notices millions of people (his aborigine and peasant kinfolks) in the glass-clad multi-storied buildings mushrooming in the concrete jungle. But that never stops Mumbai!


Octopus Paul was a baby, lost to its community and natural environment. After a few months it died. Relieved!

Did anyone ask Octopus Paul before it died, "When this modern Industrial Civilization, which has become powerful within few centuries, will vanish?" We have not heard.

Oh, what do you ask!
The very strength of the powerful is their weakest point. There is a mythological Indian story of Bhasmasur that repeats again and again.

In reality the mighty industrial society has gone with the octopus.
 
In this self-portrait, 'Tentacles', Remi notices himself swallowing Natural Environment by his tentacles spreading and reaching across regions far and wide.

Call it is his misfortune, or call it his fate of unwanted share, or call it a ruthless criticism on Industrial Civilization.

Remi, however, laughs at himself at his cost.

Note. 1: As we write this post, there comes news about, Shuttle Atlantis docks with space station for last time! What a relief for the hungry masses of the world!! Better late than never!!!
2. Remi de Souza doesn’t watch cricket, hockey, football or such events as Olympics, World Cup etc. for he believes that any game must be played for leisure, and such mass events consolidate the centralized powers, and waste finite fossil energy.
~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves.

RAINBOWS

RAINBOWS

1

On my last lap my meek feeble body
Surrenders on the operation table
For a surgery on my right eye.

While getting ready my body is covered.
My left arm moves. Someone questions,
‘Any problem? Tell us’. ‘No problem.’

Yet again the same action and same question.
‘A fly on my nose; my mind’s trickery.’
A young voice sings a famous tune.

My nagging mind keeps poking at my body,
‘You have a constant cough these days.
What will happen if you cough now?’

The surgeon works like a sculptor
with her delicate fingers and fine tools
on my untimely ageing eye, on a living body.

My right eye reveals vibrant spectrum
in many a rainbows in many shapes
moving, changing in a lost space – time.

A tiny part of my body dies. sooner
than I realise, a grey flash for a while.
Than once again ‘similar’ rainbows appear.

My arrogant mind now is stunned
by the power of homeostatis:
as if by miracle no sign of cough.

Seeing this and the revelations
of rich abstractions of colours
my mind is humbled before my body.

My dominating mind had bullied my eyes
– my body – to toil for decades –
O, ages – for its own limitless ego.

One mind pushed an organic part to decay,
another replaced it by one made of Earth:
Both could have been saved by some sanity.

2

At an early age mind could only reach
out to know and understand the world
through body, her senses, sensitivity.

Unadulterated then by civilisations
it was united with body. O, it’s but
now forgotten, or is lost in the forest.

At an early age my mind adored body
at her zenith as Mother Goddess;
it now elevates her by beautifications:

with perfumes, pigments, ornaments, attires
to appeal the public eye, and confers upon her
selectively with world beauty pageant titles.

By acquisition of civilised cultures
mind has now becomes brainy, and wants
to rule me as my self-coroneted master.

It considers itself of a superior race,
exploits my body as an inferior ugly object
for any use at will, than its abode and a mate.

It invents exotic cuisines to feed its ego,
and stuffs my body like a garbage can,
or starves her. It doesn’t know hunger.

It invents drugs, transplants of organs
from other bodies to keep its own going,
or breast implants for public sex appeal.

Like cuisines sexuality occupies mind.
It invents assaults on sex in private
and public places and in cyber space.

Mind has forgotten that sex is the seventh
sense dormant in the genitals for the survival
of spaces in human, animal, and plant worlds

Unlike an aboriginal mind that adores
yoni and phallus – fertility and vitality,
my hedonist mind misses the essence of sex.

3

Mind mummifies dead body, builds tombs
over indifferent bones and ashes and the Earth
in its vanity, for non-existent future.

Mind condemns its own abode a hundred
ways and continues its tantrums further
upon the mass of body of the collective

to its fragments that drift away from each
other, sends vibes of alienation to gain
power and control over them; to exploit

the weak and the less privileged;
and finally turns to abuse and rape Mother Earth
progressively for the applause of crowd.

How the evil designs of demonic mind
Spread fast across the oceans and land,
become global epidemic unabated!

But the young minds, their body and soul
spontaneously celebrate the coming of spring,
rain and harvest, join in the dance and song.

Why can’t my mind come down to earth,
and join innocent joys and dance along
the pathway of the Sun around the globe?

There’s a soft whisper,
‘No soul, no body;
No body, no mid.’

4

Now I know at my final go
whatever may be the cause
it shall be a joyful bliss,

just as now, for liberated soul.
To narrate I’ll not be there.
That’s everyone’s sole privilege.

I bless her that shows the way
Silently within touch her feet
one personified Sat-Chit-Anandam.

* * *

Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
11 Nov. – 3 Dec. 2004

~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves.

Caterpillar by Rhea

Caterpillar by Rhea

Rhea quickly draws a caterpillar on a notepaper. Then goes on, takes another paper, drawing several of them: Mummy Caterpillar, Daddy caterpillar, baby caterpillar… she, perhaps leant to draw it from the blackboard in her KG class, drawn by her teacher.

Now she made it her own. She has added several dimensions to it. The sizes of her caterpillar are according to the designation. The sources, of course, are coming from her surrounds, which we call environment – personal and social. But what is her input from natural environment?

We shall come to that later.

-----------------

© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves.

रेमीची मराठी बोली : Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

रेमीची मराठी बोली

.

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue
(Translation of the original - above - by the author)
.

Remi’s one more blog: language is Marathi, or English, but different in Remi’s vernacular tongue.
In a family there may be 10, 5, 3 or 2 persons. Their accents and manners of talk may be, or seem to be, similar, but each one’s vernacular is independent. It’s like finger prints. It’s like out of countless leaves on a tree, each leaf has unique impression of veins on it.

That doesn’t happen with countless cars on a large parking lot though effort is made to bring variety by different colours and designs. It’s the same story with apartment blocks in cities.

But all the mud houses built in a village/s in vernacular style do not fail to enchant us by each one’s uniqueness and their variety.

That’s the fun in the natural variety.

How could the sixty years of wanderings fail to make impression on Remi’s vernacular tongue – words, meanings and sound?

A person who wanders whole his life moves on margin. But his wandering is not like a blinkered buggy horse. Or it’s not like a railway that runs on tracks. Or it’s not like aeroplanes that fly on a drawn line from one point to another. Or he has no obligation to any caste-religion-class-race.

His wandering is like honeybee’s dancing journey; her hive too moves with her. His wanderings are like an aborigine moving happily at will in the wilderness.

His wandering that started at the foothill of Western Ghats is yet to fulfil, if alive, in reaching homeland – Gondwana.

Remigius de Souza
21.06.2008





© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves.