flower seller.

March 13, 2020March 12, 2020 by Ajmal

This is a photograph from 2014. While we were hanging out at a coffee shop in Istanbul, there came this ethereal little flower-seller selling flower bouquets to the cafe market. There are many experiences in this world to gift you a smile. It can be a cafe or a shore or aids of the sun or the wind or moments of bliss or the love of the season of sunset. This dream of the day does not last. Memories are fickling as seasons change. Poetry is oozing in 🙂 I’m always overwhelmed by the power of images. I’m delighted to preconize that I’ve discovered a treasure trove of some of the old photographs that I have carefully preserved and I’d like to share it with the lovely people here. Sign up for emails subscriptions so that you won’t miss them, and keep exploring 🙂

innocence

March 12, 2020May 30, 2020 by Ajmal

When I put forward my vision for The Border of a Mind Studios, I had written:

“Au fond, this is my vision of a virtual studio of arts, ideas and minds built on the idea of embellishment of childish curiosity that we’re born with and to manifest it through fine writings, arts, visuals, and moving images. It’s to articulate that novelty visually in the best way possible without any slack of any form.”

This new video is a perfect manifestation of this very intent true to its core. Albeit short, I am trying to convey the nuances of childish innocence that gets lost in us. We get buried in our daily lives and often completely disband the child in us. Patrick Rothfuss writes in ‘The Name of the Wind‘: “When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” May we be nurtured in our souls to cultivate this benign childlike profundity in thought. God bless and don’t take things too heavy today 🙂

Music: Madrona by David Lanz.

mosaic lamp eloquence

March 11, 2020March 11, 2020 by Ajmal

All of us who have traveled through the wider Middle East in all probability would have stumbled across one of these beautiful lights. These are Turkish mosaic lamps. Turkish lamps have a long history, the technique of producing these lamps started 5,000 years ago in its earlier forms. They had their early debut during the Ottoman era. Until the 19th century, candles and oil lamps were predominantly used for illuminating palaces and mansions. Before the spread of electric lamps, these lights were important symbols of rich heritage and civilization. Oil lamps were produced in the form of glass bottles or cup-shaped jars suspended from a chain. Bathhouses, mosques, and arenas of Istanbul were lit with these oil lamps. Over time, colored glass panes were used artistically with these lamps and they turned out to be even more beautiful. These are usually handmade and are an important element of Turkish and Anatolian roots and culture. We’d find variants of these types in other cultures as well. It’s an art and a skill to prepare hand blown glass which is cut from large sheets of different sizes and colors. A transparent, permanent but slow drying adhesive is applied to a small section of the base with a noticeable pattern through the adhesive to direct the artisan’s hand and there are several other steps to completion. Each one carefully crafted is a piece of art and expertise. I picked one from a journey to Istanbul in 2014.

“The Circle” – Drone Expedition

March 10, 2020May 30, 2020 by Ajmal

We spoke of our drone expeditions recently with AR’O’Dynamics (That’s just a fancy name I made up for dear friend AR who is the pilot of these videos). Both of us are learning and hence the shots aren’t as cinematic as we would love them to be. However, contrary to my earlier convictions of waiting for the fine-tuned version, and on a firm realization that waiting for the ultimate perfection would be like a day that would never come, I’m putting up some of the footage here. Some of the awe-inspiring video creators whom I have been fortunate to have listened to always reiterate the importance of putting up the work into the open once we have an inspiring one. If we wait for the chiseling and polishing looking towards a day of perfection, that’s not gonna come. This is something that I’ve learned the hard way over the past few years. And that’s the reason there is a plethora of video footage that stay buried in my archives. Let’s pop them out for our wonderful audience.

The video is titled “The Circle” inspired by the green and beautiful traffic roundabouts at the University of Sharjah. That’s where we took many of our baby flights. And I’m thankful to AR for meticulously and patiently sharing those huge volumes of drone video footage with me.

wholly alive.

March 9, 2020March 5, 2020 by Ajmal

There’s a toll with superfluous consistency in writing. At times, it can slither from its very intent. It’s imperative to be wholly alive.

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

― William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories

panda cram.

March 8, 2020March 5, 2020 by Ajmal

It’s one of my favourite pastimes to graze through old photo archives and to relish and hark back to the stories and memories that evoked them. Recently, I discovered a treasure trove some of the old photos, notes and illustrations from my 2013 archives. I’ll be trying to share some of those nice memories here in some of the subsequent posts, God willing. After all, this is my wondercrate. Photo narrations are something that I never get tired of.

Panda cram is such a little chucklesome memory. Back in 2013, only a few of my colleagues had personal cars. So, a dear friend of mine had a sedan car with him which can carry 5 people max. So, we used to hop in this car for our lunch trips. So in total, we would be 5 people and the car would be almost full. And then, someday, he got this huge stuffed panda as a gift from somewhere and he had put this in his car. The panda is considerably huge and is tad bit almost the size of a grown-up boy 😀 And as usual, during a mid-noon when we were about to go for lunch on the car, we had this unusual co-passenger inside the car taking the size of an almost full-size adult, and I still remember all of us had to cram inside the car to accommodate this amigo and we laughed our heads off. Visualizing this would make me chuckle every time I think about it or see this photograph. Good times.

filling frame.

March 7, 2020March 3, 2020 by Ajmal

This is a photograph from a visit to Princess Islands in Turkey sometime in 2014. It’s a frame that still fills and imbue my mind. Grateful to Almighty for such visual treats for the soul. Having endless horizons is a sanctuary for the wandering souls. Just as a small piece of salt melts into a large glass and becomes part of the sea, in the infinite horizons wayfarer souls too melt and blend into eternity. Journeys often confer fulfillment upon crafting these membranes of memories. Share your stories with us 🙂

“ Watching the infinite horizons gives you infinite dreams, infinite ideas, infinite paths! Choose a great target and then you will see that great instruments will appear for you to reach that target! ” ― Mehmet Murat ildan

ornate blossoms

March 6, 2020March 5, 2020 by Ajmal

Petals are something I’m sort of eccentrically inquisitive about. In some of our earlier writings, we’ve wondered about their ethereal quality and have read on how beautifully they edify a lesson of transience. Here’re some photographs that I look from University of Sharjah gardens last week during an evening stroll. These are jewels we fail to appreciate when we are in the hustle and bustle. I’m not sure about you, but I’m totally to the hilt, blown away by the spectacular art and magnificence in their intricate subtleties. Look at the brilliant layering and the patterns that are a treat for those with eyes to relish them. Before we relegate them to the quotidian normal realm, we can relate on a very small allegory that came to my mind. If we see a painting of a tree or a flower prepared by someone, we definitely know that it is done with intent and meticulous planning. If we are told that somebody threw a bottle of watercolors and brushes randomly into the air and that when it came down, it turned into a perfect painting, that’s totally preposterous and defies sense. Or if someone came along and say that some paint boxes were overturned by wind and storm and they mixed with some rain and in a long period of time changed into a perfect painting, that is so illogical to conceive. Now, if we look at these petals, we see a plan and an order, a conscious design, organized patterns and a beautiful harmony of colors. They bide their time for us to think about them. They are not randomness around us. Neither are they desultory existences around us. They have a purpose in making us ponder about them. They have a story to tell you. They’ve something to show you. They’re locks of thoughts waiting to be unlocked by you. They’re not looking for a monk. They’re looking for me and you.

This write up is a part of Ponder Series of The Border of a Mind Visual Studios that we have been building exhaustively over the past several months. When we think about the world around us and also when we look within, it might seem usual and ordinary. But ponder series, as you might have already guessed, is all about thinking deeply and delving into the details by going beyond the ordinary perceptions. It’s a very humble endeavor towards unlocking extraordinary in the ordinary by opening our eyes of wisdom and insight. Hope you enjoy reading them. God bless friends 🙂