Seeking an accord: Consonances to the rhythm of the rails

Drawing begun on an Amtrak/ Rail Canada train

Two round-trip journeys sparkle in my minds eye: New York-Chicago Albuquerque, and New York-Toronto. Dad, an engine driver ferried freight from Mumbai's docks to the holding yards. His stories still impact me, catalyzing my thoughts arriving in the stillness. An Amtrak Residency, I feel would realign my soul; moreover certainly to the rhythm of its rails. Here, the American landscape would be a backdrop to my being — as a naturalized American. 

It is the shaping line moving though space that shapes my mind, relays meaning, conveys an essence of something which in turn extends/ unfurls/ amplifies it. Embarking on a journey is essentially about being synonymous with a line wrought by the behemoth running on tracks, moving through space, shearing it yet in engagement with the ground against its own image and of the traveler. A line represents the intent instilled through it as it spans two or more points. My search is for possibilities in phenomena that pass across and within my senses.

The geography of my imagination reflects on phenomena as experienced. Language informs my work, and I would like to continue using my dual path of  expression, which also includes drawing at a complex level. So I straddle text and image, buttressed by meaning sought through writing.

Pulsation: theologies of line, and of journey. The train denotes and connotes line, and linearity, yet in no way is limited to linear thinking. A train journey, enacted by the engine, the cars, its staff and passengers runs along a finite route as far as the eye can see, a seeing that would surely collate expanses, vistas, undulations in topologies, into thoughts.

Writing expands my reasoning, both analogous to my character and fortitude. I arrive at meaning via encounters I seek. I imagine that the residency would provide for various forms of interaction: with the train, the journey, the day sweeping by, thoughts as they reveal themselves much like ephphata (Aramaic, “an opening”) to mean awareness.