Chapter Four: Along Eternity’s Road
“With the wings of imagination, we must try to fly into the Beyond.”
- Sri Chinmoy [8]
By June 5th, forty-six days had elapsed since the beginning of the third million series and Sri Chinmoy now estimated that his total was around 520,000 birds. His average output was around 11,300 birds per day. That afternoon he wondered aloud when he would finish if he continued at the same speed. The predicted date was July 17th – forty-two days hence. Sri Chinmoy’s second million bird drawings had taken him only seventy-nine days. Now it seemed that this million would be concluded with similarly breathtaking speed.
While the artist’s large-scale works dramatically escalated the bird count, he also relied on smaller notepads for his drawings in the car and outdoors at his tennis court.
Sri Chinmoy drawing birds on a small notepad at
Aspiration-Ground tennis court.
In addition, he had a number of Florentine-bordered parchments which remained from the second million and these he now brought into play. By Sunday, June 12th, his total had soared to 613,378.
Several of us observed a drawing in progress over a period of two evenings. Unofficially, we had given it the name “Marathon Runners”, because it reminded us of runners in motion. The artist confirmed our association. As the drawing neared completed, it bore a faint resemblance to the famous fragment of Greek pottery that also depicts marathon runners, except that Sri Chinmoy’s runners are surrounded by birds. His runners are blue and stick-like. He had depicted them in full stride – one arm swung high, one knee upraised, the other leg extended backwards. In perfect symmetry, they seem to be running along a shaft of green light, casting green shadows – strong, lithe, cerulean forms with an interlocking pattern of movement. The rhythm they establish is perpetual and soothing, reminding us of a prayer Sri Chinmoy had written more than a decade earlier:
“O Lord Supreme, may each marathon runner run along Your Eternity’s Road to receive from You Your Infinity’s Love-Light and Your Immortality’s Oneness-Delight.”[9]
