Natural Analogues

I had to post this image by Ed Kashi (note the match with Varanasi's most ancient name) for Corbis in today's New York Times: the ropey back of an old man against the soft texture of his hair and the placid reticulatedness of the sea. There is resilience and comfort in patterns like this one, familiar from river currents and tree trunks and rooted plants and, yes, the skin of experience. With a little effort we can see in such patterns cultural traces as well. Here is an analogue of Indian civilization, or at least the aggregate of historical cultures we clumsily call India, written in flesh. Here are grooves and rivulets that become tributaries and branches and alluvial paths for exploring, a footprint of becoming in time. It puts me in mind of something an old friend, Mike Adams, says. He argues that the profoundest psychological engagement with the deep pattern of life is imagistic. Without denying the power of seeing (honored, after all, in the title of this blog ), I wonder if any less intensity attaches to patterns expressed audially and proprioceptively. Still, this iconic image relates, as Hindisum does, the individual to the larger reality with which we are--shall we say, cosmically--imprinted.