into 2012, a new mandala cleared out
another year, another mandala. featuring another of my game boy experiments. sound is pretty shitty, but i’m hoping to make it get better with time
i’m quoting here what i wrote for the garden blog, the community i participated in for my first 7 months in australia
a mandala for the goddess
i left the garden yesterday with the sobering feeling that it will be gone soon
it was perhaps the most successful and beautiful of all events we ever put together (thank you Sara). everything worked perfectly, thanks to the months of devotion, hard work and generosity of everyone involved in the garden project: residents, guests, friends, and Ash’s guiding vision
it is hard to see it go, especially when we are ending on such a high note. but i’m not left with a sense of loss but instead with a sense of exhilaration. in tibetan buddhist tradition (of which i’m not a follower), there is a ritual called the sand mandala. monks gather around for a very long period and draw a symbolic circular sand picture. when the picture is finished, the sand is swept and poured into moving water, to return it to nature
during the last few months, we drew a giant warehouse painting, colored with the life stories of over 100 people that visited from dozens of countries, contributing and donating their creativity and work to the space. these contributions were driven, among others, by the natural desire of human beings to be part of a purposeful meaningful space, where beauty, art, music and conversations intertwine every day. a desire, i’d argue, to step out of the concrete boxes we live in every day and to let out what these boxes won’t allow us to: our songs, our colors, our sights and dreams for a better world
as we wash away the life from the warehouse and return it to the goddess, we will also be making a statement on how nothing lasts forever. this being both the shepherd street garden and the concrete boxes it questioned while it existed
so here’s cleaning this one and start drawing the next
物の哀れ
i already found a place and am living alone at the moment. what we did was very well received so i imagine there will be more. for now, i’m taking a break
p.s.: some stats:
total guests: 116 (including entries with missing country info)
distribution by country (duplicates removed, missing data removed) data here