Thursday, August 25, 2011

Of Affinities and Distances…



Surfaces and depths burn. The body keeps itself in the middle. Somewhat known, somewhat loved, the rest revolve in a maze. Things fall into place here. The place too falls into place. Here there is no affinity. Here it is all about affinity. The body keeps itself simple in between these two contradictory sentences. It constitutes space and gets constituted by space. Can the body replace the space or become the space in some unknown way? There is always a tinge of distance in affinity.

In this world of white sensations, letters are composed with body fluids. There is a haze around the entire landscape. Dazzling light suddenly tethers the dark sprouts and the camera becomes an eye captured in its own gaze. The forbidden zones twinkle with interspersed implosions of the unfamiliar, the unknown and the unknowable. The body becomes a fetus on the surface of inscription. It is only the distance between two people that allows us to measure affinity. Can we at all measure affinity?

Teacups hide a smile or two and an evocative blankness surrounds the blankets in unequal folds. There is exhaustion in this endeared body-prattle. The camera sits pretty, sometimes hangs, and deftly disturbs the nipple. What about knowing the body? Can there be affinity there, in the body? The menstruating television hardly answers. The head is haught and mobiles ring silently where the moisture gathers on the looking glass. The torso is cut with glass—the smoke rings of affinity. Boots gape in the afterglow as cameras look forward to a journey among the faded leaves.

The body is under surveillance. The black cat blindly rotates in the vicinity. Bodies are taken over by slumber. It weaves its own shapes on them. The red flutters get stemmed by the status of the bare feet in the affinity. Does affinity have the power to control or is it only a spider at rest at a distance? The shrinking eyes have the answer but they will never let it out. Affinity is the secret in the boy’s indifference to the clawing eyes of the crow. Seen through the spider’s web, the darkness opens a pocket of light. There is a promise of shelter there: a space for affinity.

The leaves have become pages. There is a reading here. We are moving among wild books, a room for the dead, unread, and those alive continue to read each other. From the cleavage to the nipple, it is only the space of a bookmark! Affinity is the unreadable locket in this house of riddles. A fine rain begins to fall in the maze. There are no streetlights here. No umbrella. No going anywhere. Affinity has distanced you into motionlessness. But the shapes keep moving, curling, cusping and stretching on the mysterious axis of graffiti. Fairy tales are immune to dog barking. There is affinity for you. How to fill in? How to evacuate? Do we fill in? Can we evacuate? These are the little bombs in affinity. Perhaps, the greatest affinity is in the vanishing act. Let us coax the magician.



[For my dear friends Ronny and Twisha and their photographic journey]