“Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

The most arresting sculpture in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans is Do-Ho Suh’s Karma. A faceted, polished steel man stands with another squatting on his shoulders, with his hands over the man’s eyes, blinding him. Another squats on the squatter’s shoulders, and one on his, so on and so forth. They get a little smaller as they go up and curve a little. The sculpture is only twenty three feet high or so, but it looks like it stretches to infinity.

I discovered it is hard to photograph properly. Especially, since I had ridden my folding bicycle there from Downtown New Orleans I had not brought any extra lenses (no wide-angle) to save weight, space, and danger of damage. I should have known – I have seen it before.

The sculpture looks very different from different angles – so here are a few: