Neurowners

A river’s incessant flow, ethereal beauty, and unconditional support for life had endowed it with a rich metaphorical place in literature. River’s flow is often likened with time due to its irreversibility and a sagely indifference it exudes towards everything around. On an overcast late summer afternoon, while hiking by the river Huron, I chanced upon an abrupt transformation of the river within a short stretch of only a few hundred feet. While flowing in a gentle meditative mood, young Huron suddenly finds herself in the embrace of a group of feral rocks and pebbles. She responds with the passion of her fierce current and wild rapids around the lush green offsprings of a fertile summer. The result was a beautiful display of courtship between a seductive wild river and the world around her. I was able to capture a few of those moments and put together an edit with one of my all time favorite cello pieces - The River Cam.

An 8000 mile wide rock is hurtling through space at 19 miles per second. The rock endured over 4 billion years of geo-chemical unthinkable, and accidentally produced our experiential abstractions like the fragrance of a Jasmine, pain of losing a sister, or the exhilaration of touching a newborn. We, the rock-dwellers, are indescribably fortunate to be able to experience that bio-chemical process, we call life, on this moist rock! Images on this page are about that rock we call home.

They came long before we did. Learnt how to feed the world by capturing energy from photons. And all that while enchanting us with their magical friendship with the butterflies and birds and the blue sky with pelican-white cloud. The images on this page are about those Green Sages.

The word opacare in Latin means dusk. That makes Opacarophilia the addiction to sunset. The addiction started for me since when I was a child. I remember spending many late afternoons staring at our setting orange-yellow star over a concrete laden horizon from the roof of my childhood home in Kolkata. It was not until recently that I learnt the word Opacarophilia, and started noticing it in me. Especially while looking at the sun setting over mighty Lake Michigan through various camera lenses on and above ground. Every sunset is unique in its colors, and the emotions it evokes before, during, and after the sun goes below the horizon. As my addiction deepens, a sunset appears less and less about an end. Rather, it projects a cortical bonanza of experiential windfall in our fleeting existence in the midst of eternity. I learnt to see a sunset also as a moment of renewal just about 8000 miles east on the planet. This page contains a few sunset footages out of countless that I was able to record over the years.

All major languages relied on our moon as a metaphor to create odes of dream, love, and softness. Its liquid yellow-whiteness covers oceans and mountains while mellowing human emotions into expressions. The cycles and phases of this rock had provided cultural references and influences for human societies throughout history. Its influences can be found in language, calendar systems, art, and mythology. Moon also majorly influences our climate by stabilizing Earth’s axial tilt, which is responsible for the seasons. Without moon, climatic extremes caused by seasonal irregularities may have prevented life from evolving on this planet. From a distance of quarter of a million miles, moon also contributes to our oceans’ tidal cycle, which transports heat around different parts of world’s oceans and impacts evolution and speciation of life. The satellite is receding from us about 1.5 inches every year, making the days and nights increasingly longer by slowing down Earth’s spin. This page contains a few images of our Dreamers Rock!

It worked on the primordial energy fields, bit by bit, to form all that we see around the Universe today. Like an alchemist, it first transformed energy fields into particles. The particles are fused into elements to create stars, nebulae, galaxies and us, the sentient beings on this moist rock. The alchemist then worked as a sculptor to chisel out beauty, the very notion of which it also formed within our neural chemistry. It is Time, the great sculptor, is continuing to transform and sculpt nature in front of our eyes at a scale that our brain was not evolved to fully comprehend. We can perceive the sorcerer’s work only after millennia are passed over its creations. Never have I felt Time’s work more intensely than while standing in a sea of magically sculpted red rocks of Northern Arizona during a recent trip. This page captures some of my experiences of Time’s work there.

There come moments when physical constraints of existence are dissolved by cortical simulations of reality, we call imagination and desire. Like the desire to fly over a swan river. The shot on this page was an unexpected gift during a late-winter hike by the river Huron.

When the snowflakes give in to Earth’s gravity and start covering its surface with their soft unique ice crystals, the planet transitions into a monochromatic wonderland. Immersed into a meditative silence created by snowflakes soaking up the rustling sound of lonely winter leaves, and the creaking noise of the yearning branches of hibernating trees. Nature renders an image of its past ice ages, and what is to come for the Universe after its inevitable heat death in a distant future. It reminds, water exists only as ice everywhere in the Universe except on this precious moist rock. The landscape in monochrome magically blends one’s senses of impermanence and eternity together into the present moment of one’s existence.

Subir Biswas, Michigan, USA, (6th April, 2021)

He saw the rhythms and patterns in all beings and inanimate objects as parts of a connected web of infinity. He promised the comfort of permanence through his odes of impermanence in nature, in us, and in the infinity of this universe. Much of his seemingly endless amount of poetry is about finding limitlessness in the ephemeral rhythms and patterns we experience everyday. His work instruments a unique way of mindfully observing existence, moment by moment, and identifying it as part of a calm and comforting eternity. This page contains a few of Gurudeb Rabindra Nath Tagore’s songs. The audio is overlaid with some of my images and footages that captured emotions evoked in me while listening to those songs.