The image: A person sits alone in front of a computer screen, waiting desperately for someone -- anyone -- to reply to their previous post and acknowledge their existence.
In the book I wrote a while back to get the Rama-monkey off my back, I included a couple of sections devoted to an obscure artform inspired by a Tibetan one, but absconded with for my own purposes, by moi. As for what tsakli are and why I like them, I rely on the description of them I wrote in that original rap: http://www.ramalila.net/RoadTripMind/rtm09.html <http://www.ramalila.net/RoadTripMind/rtm09.html> Tsakli struck me as a wonderful visual way to capture "cool moments" from one's life. Or imagination, because some of the subject matter of Tibetan tsakli can be legitimately attributed to either. They're an attempt to capture as much as possible of isolated moments in time, and what made them special or memorable to the artist trying to capture them. The monks of Tibetan tradition did it visually, via miniature painting. I tried to do it in words. The attempts -- not to mention the supposed value of them -- were vastly different in terms of culture and subject matter and tone. But I think that the intent was similar. To try to record or share something meaningful, to others who may or may not find it meaningful themselves, and without giving much of a shit whether they do or not. The primary intent of the exercise is to "re-access" the moments themselves, to "replay" them in your mind and senses, and thus to shift into the mindstate you were in when you first experienced or imagined them. Anyway, I found myself thinking about tsakli today after seeing an exhibition of Tibetan art here in Leiden. And I found myself thanking the gods of luck for providing me with enough such moments to want to capture myself, in the limited ways in which I was able. Shortly afterwards, I felt a similar wave of compassion for those who don't -- judging from their output on the Internet -- to have *ever* experienced enough similar "cool moments" in their lives that they wanted to even try to re-capture them. Try to imagine how SAD that is. A whole lifetime without adventures that you yourself experienced, and didn't just read about or hear about. A whole lifetime thinking about or following spiritual teachers, without ever meeting them or getting to spend time in their auras. A real-time, here-and-now life in which *nothing* in your life inspires you enough that you want to share it. Now *that* is sad. It almost deserves a tsakli of its own.
