when words materialize before ears and eyes...

in many ways my process of uncovering things for airforms is like being a shortwave listener. one sits in a small corner of the world waiting for some phantom to appear and inspire. i don't enter my tiny room of books, photos, etc. seeking something i already know as much as i wander through various things hoping a voice will find me.

like turning the dials and waiting patiently for something resonant to appear to my ears, my hands and eyes flip pages, search stacks, shuffle piles, in an attempt to happen upon something previously unnoticed that sings.

this morning i noticed that ananda k. coomaraswamy's transfomation of nature in art has a sanskrit glossary in the back. being a junkie for any kind of word list that might resemble poetry, i was of course smitten with my discovery. unlike a dictionary, which tells of all words, coomarawamy's words are all somehow related to the theme of the book, and thus, mostly related to nature and art (or nature in art) and transformation.

i began my morning, of course, reading these words out loud to myself, and imagined sitting at the little home made transmission center above... these words slowly streaming and washing over me.

here are some of the nicer ones:

a-loukika - not belonging to contingent worlds, supersensuous
bha - to shine forth, appear
bhakti - devotion, self abandonment in love
caru - lovely
chandas - rhythm
deva - angel
dhatu - color
dhvani - sound, sounding; overtone of meaning, resonance of sense
drs - to see, look, consider, see intuitively
hrd, hrdya - heart, the entire being
kailasa bhavana - made after the heavenly pattern
kanti - lovliness
kr - to do, make
kha - space
likh - do draw, paint
madhurya - sweetness, grace
netramrta - elixer of the eyes, that which delights the eye
prana - spiraton, life breath
ranga - color
sahaja - innate, connatural, spontaneous, spontaneity; "willingly but not from will, naturally but not from nature"
sat - true, real
sravaniya - worth listening to, good (of music, etc.)
unmil - to bloom (said of a painting while being colored)
utsaha - effort, the spiritual energy exerted in aesthetic producton
vac - voice
varna - color, sound, scale, palette
vyaharti - utterance, spoken word