He walked like everyone did and spoke like most should.
He smiled quite honestly and sang without any falsehood.

He rose to leave and enter the world with all its display.
He calmly clambered on, rebuked for his nude entree.

Why are you kind? Why are you just? Why are you so singular?
He heard and wondered with them, for he knew not the answer.

He asked that one and then another to help him live a life.
Where people wondered less and teased him not in his strife.

He doned the mantle of a sage and kept his eyes half shut,
And half the world he saw thus, to the other he was a bigot.

He draped himself in an artist’s dream and beauty he beheld in all,
Painted he, and sang he, and laugh did they in his ‘poverished fall.

So a merchant he became and ride did he, the many tumultuous seas,
A jade out here, a diamond there, myriad gold shackles for his knees.

A scholar shall you be, for respected they are who knows the worth-
Of written words with little truth or relevance to men on this earth.

And thus lived Arthuran, who wore their garbs, many hued,
At dusk he walked back home, more enlightened and nude.

8 thoughts on “Self

  1. Beautiful sketch and a matching post! Reminds one of the Aesop’s fable though, of the father, son and the donkey.Hmmm. Arthuran should have stuck to his own way of doing things and faced the consequences thereof, because any way of living is foolish or smart to someone or the other. And at least there is a satisfaction of doing as one wills/wishes…

  2. “And thus lived Arthuran, who wore their garbs, many hued,At dusk he walked back home, more enlightened and nude.”Arthuran didn’t actually become like the other people. As long as he didn’t change, conducting like them or not shouldn’t matter, but I think wearing their garbs and remaining nude at the same time creates a conflict. Doesn’t it? I think it is hardly possible to remain like that after some time. At some point, it most possibly will turn the man into them. This is beautifully depicted in “Sidhartha”, me thinks 🙂-S

  3. Dear P, Glad you liked the combo! 🙂 Hmmm, you raise interesting points.Dear Anon-S, Siddhartha didn’t quite change half as much as he metamorphosed into someone complete and clear. I hope we are talking about the same Sid. Arthuran, didn’t wear the garb and remain nude at the same time. He simply realised that nudity is what he is.

  4. Love the skecth! A great poem .“He rose to leave and enter the world with all its display.He calmly clambered on, rebuked for his nude entree.”In this world full of people with guards/disguises , it would be heart warming to meet a man who is unaffected by all this drama.

  5. How refreshing to view an unfinished sketch.And how revealing of you to post one.You have chosen a difficult gesture (assuming this is your drawing)…not every artist would chose to work from this angle (given its extreme foreshortening). The use of line (to hint at underlying bone and muscle), the ambiguity of the pose itself (what are those hands doing?), the exact nature of the gesture (is it restful or erotic?), the title of the post (as if to suggest a self-portrait of sorts?)…all these elements present unanswered questions that trail behind the viewer’s eye as it moves through your composition from legs to face to chest and back again in a sinuous path that repeats. I am curious about the title and wonder what part of this drawing is autobiographical. But more than that, I wonder why you chose to couple this drawing with the accompanying written piece. The drawing makes its own statement, stands alone quite successfully and even needs the silence of its own space. The accompanying words don’t really connect to the drawing (other than to emphasize the word “nude”). This is just to say that both works stand alone quite successfully without any supplement.But then, visual art is a wordless expression that needs no written supplement.All this to say what an interesting drawing.

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