So this is where you come to escape ...

Emily in Python

2010-07-10T09:45:00.006+08:00


#! /usr/bin/python
# Emily translated by Alex Martelli & Anna Ravenscroft

import math

class EmilyWasWrong (Exception): pass

def do_compare (item):
 action={sea:(hold,'blue'), sky:(put,'side'), God:(heft,'pound')}
 verb, attribute = action [item]
 return verb (getattr (brain, attribute), getattr (item, attribute))

def put (brain_side, sky_side):
 if sky_side in brain_side and ease in brain_side and you in brain_side:
  return 'wider'
 else: raise EmilyWasWrong ('put')

def hold (brain_color, sea_color):
 if absorb (brain_color, sea_color) == absorb (buckets, sponges):
  return 'deeper'
 else: raise EmilyWasWrong ('hold')

def heft (brain_weight, God_weight):
 if abs (brain_weight - God_weight) <= abs (syllable - sound):
                    return 'just the weight'
  else: raise EmilyWasWrong ('heft')

class Thing (object):
 def __init__(self, **a): self.__dict__ = a

sea = Thing (blue='deep')
sky = Thing (side='up')
God = Thing (pound=(1.0+math.sqrt (5.0))/2.0)
ease = 'easy'
you = 'xx'

def absorb (container, item):
 return item in container

sponges = 'absorb liquids'
buckets = [sponges]
syllable = 256.1
sound = 256.0

class Brain (object):
 side = 'up easy xx'.split ()
 blue = ['deep']
 pound = 1.61

brain = Brain ()

for comparison in (sky, sea, God):
 print do_compare (comparison),
print



********************************************************************
CONSOLE OUTPUT:

Python 2.6.3 (r263:75183, Nov  1 2009, 10:56:20)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646) (dot 1)] on darwin
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.

IDLE 2.6.3   
>>>
wider deeper just the weight
>>>


*********************************************************************

Original poem:

The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

-- Emily Dickinson (1924)

Horses and Zebras

2010-01-25T22:02:00.005+08:00

The Makers by Howard Nemerov

2010-01-15T19:17:00.002+08:00

The Makers

Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.

They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.

They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of

-- Howard Nemerov

Mary Oliver: The Summer Day

2010-01-13T14:30:00.000+08:00

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

Mount Kinabalu

2009-12-25T22:04:00.002+08:00

Mt. Kinabalu, View From Over Kampung Samuruh, Kundasang
22 December 2009

Naga

2009-09-05T09:20:00.000+08:00

Naga, Facebook Graffiti

TEDTalks: Clifford Stoll

2009-08-13T06:07:00.001+08:00

When I grow up, I want to be like you.

Desire

2009-06-29T05:48:00.001+08:00

To some extent, artists pose the order of sensuousness against the order of reason. That itself [...] is enough to link the experience with childlike qualities and to make us regard it as play. Society in general tends to excuse the artist’s pursuit of pleasure because the result, the drawing or painting or sculpture, is thought to be unreal. So we allow artistic vision as play.

But as play, it is serious business. Drawing is an act of self-control. It is also a form of personal growth, part of which is understanding desire and weaving it, in its varied forms, felicitously and usefully into the fabric of one’s own life.

--Peter Steinhart, "The Undressed Art: Why We Draw", p.198 (Vintage 2004)

Francis Bacon, on Travel

2009-06-14T04:08:00.003+08:00

From Essays; or Counsels, Civil and Moral, by Francis Bacon

18. Of Travel

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen, in the country where they go; what acquaintances they are to seek; what exercises, or discipline, the place yieldeth. For else, young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen, but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered, than observation. Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use.

The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities, and towns, and so the heavens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; libraries; colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities; armories; arsenals; magazines; exchanges; burses; warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable, in the places where they go. After all which, the tutors, or servants, ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to be neglected.

If you will have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, this you must do. First, as was said, he must have some entrance into the language before he goeth. Then he must have such a servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was likewise said. Let him carry with him also, some card or book, describing the country where he travelleth; which will be a good key to his inquiry. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay long, in one city or town; more or less as the place deserveth, but not long; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town, to another; which is a great adamant of acquaintance. Let him sequester himself, from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places, where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth. Let him, upon his removes from one place to another, procure recommendation to some person of quality, residing in the place whither he removeth; that he may use his favor, in those things he desireth to see or know. Thus he may abridge his travel, with much profit.

As for the acquaintance, which is to be sought in travel; that which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the secretaries and employed men of ambassadors: for so in travelling in one country, he shall suck the experience of many. Let him also see, and visit, eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great name abroad; that he may be able to tell, how the life agreeth with the fame. For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided. They are commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and words. And let a man beware, how he keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome persons; for they will engage him into their own quarrels. When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the countries, where he hath travelled, altogether behind him; but maintain a correspondence by letters, with those of his acquaintance, which are of most worth. And let his travel appear rather in his discourse, than his apparel or gesture; and in his discourse, let him be rather advised in his answers, than forward to tell stories; and let it appear that he doth not change his country manners, for those of foreign parts; but only prick in some flowers, of that he hath learned abroad, into the customs of his own country.

Szymborska: We're Extremely Fortunate

2009-06-02T04:32:00.002+08:00

We're Extremely Fortunate

We're extremely fortunate
not to know precisely
the kind of world we live in.

One would have
to live a long, long time,
unquestionably longer
than the world itself.

Get to know other worlds,
if only for comparison.

Rise above the flesh,
which only really knows
how to obstruct
and make trouble.

For sake of research,
the big picture,
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.

From that perspective,
one might as well bid farewell
to incidents and details.

The counting of weekdays
would inevitably seem to be
a senseless activity;
dropping letters in mailbox
a whim of foolish youth;
the sign "No Walking On The Grass"
a symptom of lunacy.

— Wisława Szymborska

fast, but not too much

2009-05-31T05:06:00.003+08:00

Allegro ma non troppo

Life, you're beautiful (I say)
you just couldn't get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaily,
more anthillful or sproutspouting.

I'm trying to court life's favor,
to get into its good graces,
to anticipate its whims.
I'm always the first to bow,

always there where it can see me
with my humble, reverent face,
soaring on the wings of rapture,
falling under waves of wonder.

Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps.
I would never have conceived it
if I weren't conceived myself!

Life (I say) I've no idea
what I could compare you to.
No one else can make a pine cone
and then make the pine cone's clone.

I praise your inventiveness,
bounty, sweep, exactitude,
sense of order – gifts that border
on witchcraft and wizardry.

I just don't want to upset you,
tease or anger, vex or rile.
For millennia, I've been trying
to appease you with my smile.

I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once,
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?

—
Wisława Szymborska (1972),
trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Rilke: 'Sonnets to Orpheus: I.3'

2009-05-16T03:56:00.004+08:00

I.3 (from The Sonnets To Orpheus)

A god can do it. But will you tell me how
a man can penetrate through the lyre’s strings?
Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing
of heart-roads there is no temple for Apollo.

Song, as you have taught it, is not desire,
not wooing any grace that can be achieved;
song is reality. Simple, for a god.
But when can we be real? When does he pour

the earth, the stars, into us? Young man,
it is not your loving, even if your mouth
was forced wide open by your own voice – learn

to forget that passionate music. It will end.
True singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.

— Rainer Maria Rilke (1923), trans. Stephen Mitchell (1989)

Sunset & Crow

2009-05-11T07:04:00.002+08:00

Sunset & Crow, Facebook Graffiti

Rilke: 'We Must Die Because We Have Known Them'

2009-05-10T22:50:00.005+08:00

'We Must Die Because We Have Known Them'
(Papyrus Prisse. From the sayings of Ptah-hotep, manuscript from circa 2000 B.C.)

'We must die because we have known them.' Die
of their smile's unsayable flower. Die
of their delicate hands. Die
of women.

Let the young man sing of them, praise
these death-bringers, when they move through his heart-space,
high overhead. From his blossoming breast
let him sing of them:
unattainable! Ah, how distant they are.
Over the peaks
of his feeling, they float and pour down
sweetly transfigured night into the abandoned
valley of his arms. The wind
of their rising rustles in the leaves of his body. His brooks run
sparkling into the distance.

But the grown man
shudders and is silent. The man who
has wandered pathless at night
in the mountain-range of his feelings:
is silent.

As the old sailor is silent,
and the terrors that he has endured
play inside him as though in quivering cages.

— by Rainer Maria Rilke (c. 1920s).

Office in a Small City

2009-03-29T19:37:00.006+08:00

I've been so busy lately, and only today found some time to catch up on hobbies. Only managed a poor knock-off of Edward Hopper's "Office in a Small City", I'm afraid.

September: Satellites

2009-03-12T07:18:00.001+08:00

Hi, I made Valentine Drawings!

2009-02-13T20:02:00.006+08:00

Homage to Archie Andrews (Self-portrait 13 February 2009), Facebook Graffiti

I met a girl who makes me feel this way every time I see her. Would you believe that in the dozens of Archie comics I went through since December looking for a reference, only one panel had this same expression? Guess it's as rare as that.

Valentine's is Pant(ie)s, Facebook Graffiti

... because The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women has an interesting ring to it...

The Painted Jezebel

2009-02-09T09:22:00.006+08:00

The Painted Jezebel (Delias hyparete metarete), a FaceBook Graffiti.

I'm excited I finally did a butterfly drawing!

I copied it—by sight—from a nature handbook I bought in 1989 (I was 10) at the Sarawak State Museum in Kuching. It's full of beautiful drawings like this by A. H. Burvill. The picture shows the underside of the male of a D. hyparete, common name, the Painted Jezebel.

This is the entry for "The Painted Jezebel":

The colours of this butterfly — white with strong black veining, contrasted with the bright yellow and red on the underside — together with its weak flight, are in this instance true warnings of its unpleasant taste.

At no stage of its life is any attempt at concealment made: the eggs are laid, about a dozen at a sitting, spread over an area the size of a five-cent coin, on a Loranthus (mistletoe) leaf. The gregarious larvae are an unpleasant deep oily yellow, with black heads and sparse black hairs. The pupae are a polished milk-white with black spots, and are conspicuous — sometimes several together — on the upper surface of a Lorantus leaf.

Uncommon on the hills, D. hyparete is abundant on the plains. On the hills the commonest Delias is D. Ninus, the Malayan Jezebel, which often occurs in localized colonies.

— From Common Malayan Butterflies by R. Morrell, a Malaysian Nature Handbook from Longman (1960, 1982).

Meow!

2009-02-06T08:24:00.003+08:00

Meow! Facebook Graffiti

(I'd like to credit the artist for the reference pic, but I forgot the source. Gracias.)

Marvin Gaye: I Heard It Through The Grapevine

2009-02-02T02:49:00.001+08:00

Gong Xi Fa Chai!

2009-01-25T09:56:00.002+08:00

Orange Delight, after Cecil Baird, Facebook Graffiti.

Mayakovsky: Past One O'Clock

2009-01-19T02:33:00.001+08:00

Past one o'clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I'm in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
to balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

Alphabeat: Fascination

2009-01-02T18:29:00.001+08:00

It was Christmas, then my birthday, then the muslim Lunar New Year, then the Solar New Year. Couldn't say I partied all the time, but what a week that was! And it's the weekend again.

Happy new year!

Philip Levine: Coming Close

2008-12-20T05:55:00.001+08:00

If you must know, poetry is my retreat, when I must move back and let another speak for me.

"Coming Close"

Take this quiet woman, she has been
standing before a polishing wheel
for over three hours, and she lacks
twenty minutes before she can take
a lunch break. Is she a woman?
Consider the arms as they press
the long brass tube against the buffer,
they are striated along the triceps,
the three heads of which clearly show.
Consider the fine dusting of dark down
above the upper lip, and the beads
of sweat that run from under the red
kerchief across the brow and are wiped
away with a blackening wrist band
in one odd motion a child might make
to say No! No! You must come closer
to find out, you must hang your tie
and jacket in one of the lockers
in favor of a black smock, you must
be prepared to spend shift after shift
hauling off the metal trays of stock,
bowing first, knees bent for a purchase,
then lifting with a gasp, the first word
of tenderness between the two of you,
then you must bring new trays of dull
unpolished tubes. You must feed her,
as they say in the language of the place.
Make no mistake, the place has a language,
and if by some luck the power were cut,
the wheel slowed to a stop so that you
suddenly saw it was not a solid object
but so many separate bristles forming
in motion a perfect circle, she would turn
to you and say, "Why?" Not the old why
of why must I spend five nights a week?
Just, "Why?" Even if by some magic
you knew, you wouldn't dare speak
for fear of her laughter, which now
you have anyway as she places the five
tapering fingers of her filthy hand
on the arm of your white shirt to mark
you for your own, now and forever.

— Philip Levine

Lulu: Love Loves to Love

2008-12-14T06:50:00.001+08:00

Found this gem from an earwig I caught from a Fatboy Slim mashup.

Elika (Prince of Persia)

2008-12-10T09:38:00.002+08:00

Elika & Prince, Facebook Graffiti (edited)

I've been raving about the new Prince of Persia game to my friends. I love the fluid gameplay, the art is gorgeous, and I've got a massive geek crush on the Elika character. She's not only a beautiful piece of modeling but also a very smart sprite — heck, every day has been a date since we met, leaping, swinging, scrambling, climbing, grappling our way through the world and battling monsters together, all the while making small talk. Check out the videos at the game's website and be amazed!

Robert Pinsky: First Things To Hand

2008-12-03T03:04:00.002+08:00

In the skull kept on the desk.
In the spider-pod in the dust.

Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves,
Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves

His house in the morning,
When he returns in the evening

He will find Socrates waiting
On the doorstep. Buddha the stick

You use to clear the path,
And Buddha the dog-doo you flick

Away with it, nowhere or in each
Several thing you touch:

The dollar bill, the button
That works the television.

Even in the joke, the three
Words American men say

After making love. Where’s
The remote? In the tears

In things, proximate, intimate.
In the wired stem with root

And leaf nowhere of this lamp:
Brass base, aura of illumination,

Enlightenment, shade of grief.
Odor of the lamp, brazen.

The mind waiting in the mind
As in the first thing to hand.

— Robert Pinsky

"... proximate, intimate." So beautiful.

* Illustration: Memento Mori, FB Graffiti par moi.

Crow & Hawk

2008-12-02T04:40:00.001+08:00

Crow & Hawk, Facebook Graffiti.

REM: Losing My Religion

2008-11-28T17:24:00.000+08:00

Aside

2008-11-22T03:35:00.004+08:00

Q: Why are your sentences so long? So difficult to follow...
A: I'm highly-sexed. Don't like periods.

{o_O} Too glib sometimes.

Pink Floyd: Time

2008-11-12T18:17:00.000+08:00

SP: Stand Inside Your Love

2008-10-29T10:35:00.000+08:00

Kurang Manis!

2008-10-27T06:07:00.008+08:00

I've been busy and sleepless. I never got around to blog about the time I got my first theatre job, with the Instant Cafe Theatre company as projection designer in "Hero", last August, which was truly an awesome experience. And now here's my second stint with ICT, "Kurang Manis"!

What a year it's been. I am loving it, just loving it! Come for the show!

ps An article in The Star captures quite neatly the philosophy behind the show.

New Recorded Poem Online

2008-10-20T17:40:00.004+08:00

In other news, my prose poem, "At The Doctor's Office", first seen here and has since been edited, is now collected with "Sempat" and "Left Incomplete" in the first volume of Voices From the Underground, an anthology of poetry from the Poetry Underground collective.

Hear me read "At The Doctor's Office" at The Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, with commentary. Want to see a live poetry performance from the Poetry Underground? Come meet us at Seksan's this weekend and get a copy of the very limited edition book!

Fun With Sharpies @ Tioman

2008-10-19T14:11:00.006+08:00

A couple of marker ink sketches while at Tioman a few weeks back, in a small moleskine notebook.

At Salang Dreams restaurant, while watching the sunset.

Tulai Island aka Coral Island, seen from Salang Dreams restaurant.

Sketches @ Siem Reap

2008-10-19T03:30:00.004+08:00

The cables for the scanner were lost during the move to the new house. Finally found them and now I can upload some new sketches.

I managed to find some sketching time while in Siem Reap a couple of weeks ago. It would have been nice to do some pieces with charcoal, but I only brought pencils and a small moleskine sketchbook with me.

At Bou Savy guesthouse

Bayon Temple.

Adrienne Rich: Transcendental Etude

2008-10-14T05:10:00.004+08:00

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
—And in fact we can't live like that: we take on
everything at once before we've even begun
to read or mark time, we're forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

— Adrienne Rich, 1984.

Wordsworth: The World Is Too Much With Us

2008-09-30T00:06:00.002+08:00

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. —Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

— William Wordsworth, 1806

I am visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia this week. Not quite the Sea, of course, but really, I can't think of a better way to spend Eid than to be where all has been lost.

Sneaky Sound System: Pictures

2008-09-23T10:16:00.002+08:00

Tina Charles: Dance Little Lady

2008-09-20T05:56:00.001+08:00

Out of Time

2008-09-19T06:20:00.000+08:00

"Out of Time", Facebook Graffiti.

Muru

2008-09-18T11:15:00.003+08:00

I have a new, strange recurring dream. Last night was the fourth time I had this dream.

In this dream, I visit some kind of technology centre where I am applying for some kind of course. It is very important that I apply for this course, because I was feeling that my education was incomplete. This was made clear in a conversation at the beginning at the dream. After seeing the registrar and playing with the gadgets on exhibit for a bit, I meet a guru at the gate on the way out, who takes me inside for tea. Everyone is speaking to me in a language I don't understand.

At this point I see myself from outside the window to the guru's room. I see a reflection of myself looking in (to see myself) so I have two bodies. I can't hear the conversation inside. I look around: it is wintry; I notice a tree by the building; some traffic, with Japanese license plates, on the road outside. From the architecture and cars I suddenly realise that I am in Japan.

Then there's some commotion. Someone is emerging from a building nearby. He/she is covered from head to toe with mud, or something similar. It's like Swamp Thing is coming out of the library. On an upper floor some people are shouting down to it. It is not clear if they have caused this. There are people around, reaching out to help the mud-covered person.

I turn back to the guru's house. The door is open, and there are a few people inside. They are all standing up and appear shocked. Something has happened out of my view. They are all looking at it in silence. I try to go in to see but someone stops me. I try again but am stopped again. A woman comes to take me away. The last thing I remember she says is "muru".

I looked it up: it is related to "maru" which means "circle".

Supercollide-her?

2008-09-14T23:38:00.003+08:00

OK, vote*: a poem or a drawing from me? Voting closes next Friday.

xkcd: Turn-On

* in celebration of Democracy, which Malaysia sorely needs. But I do wonder who's still listening.

Apneist & Squid

2008-09-09T04:42:00.001+08:00

Apneist & Squid, Facebook Graffiti (edited).

Skin Diving

2008-09-03T09:51:00.003+08:00

Probably not for long, but my latest graffiti made it to the top of this week's chart! See it here.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

2008-09-03T02:01:00.004+08:00

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them — ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, — seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd — till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

-- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1900).

Shout To The Top

2008-08-31T03:27:00.001+08:00

Moleskine Ho

2008-08-22T01:43:00.002+08:00

Nice shot of my moleskine taken during my speech at my sister's wedding ceremony. As always, I made her cry.

At The Poetry Blowout

2008-08-13T02:38:00.005+08:00

The Mighty Jah-Jay would put his birthday bash on TimeOut if he could, and noone should miss it. The brief bio George Wielgus stuck on the event flyer for me was "swoonster and dreamboat." I have no idea what he means. I am a straight-talker and awake to the world. I absolutely enjoyed reading Diane Ackerman's swoon-worthy, dreams-inducing poem, 'Ode to the Alien' to complete the set chosen to mark George's birthday, because I lost the one I wrote on a mosh of a night (I have reason to think it was well funny, because I was trying to do a Sean Paul). From the audience reaction, I will read it again sometime. Not bad for a first reading, but the way the poem fills my world, I know I must master it.

To Be So Eloquent

2008-08-13T01:40:00.004+08:00

Our own interest lay in relationships of animals to animal. If one observes in this relational sense, it seems apparent that species are only commas in a sentence, that each species is at once the point and the base of a pyramid, that all life is relational to the point where an Einsteinian relativity seems to emerge. And then not only the meaning but the feeling about species grows misty. One merges into another, groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air. And the units nestle into the whole and are inseparable from it. Then one can come back to the microscope and the tide pool and the aquarium. But the little animals are found to be changed, no longer set apart and alone. And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known as unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things — plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time.

from John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez (1941).

... and so it goes, from the stars to the tidepools; and the hurricanes within us.

I'm Practicing Your Name

2008-07-19T08:02:00.005+08:00

Sorry for the silence. My family has upped-sticks (again) and we have moved across town to a new home where there is no internet connection yet. On top of the disorientation that comes with a relocation, I'm also being rather busy at the moment, so I will catch up with you soon.

Looked up an old favourite for your listening pleasure this weekend. Enjoy :-)

Wordled Poems

2008-07-09T17:27:00.003+08:00

I Sing The Body Electric, Walt Whitman

City Elegies, Robert Pinsky

(Hat tip to Bibliobibuli)

Video: My Set At KL Poetry Slam 3

2008-07-03T12:56:00.005+08:00

I am not sure how many performances I have done since that first reading in Seksan last year... this is probably the eighth one, and I am starting to feel comfortable in my stage shoes. I was a nervous wreck during the first slam, but this time around I felt quite relaxed. After a year of writing, I have my basic set of material now from which more would certainly evolve. So let me work on my voice before I go on to movement, but progress is slow when night after night one works alone, always unsure of one's self until it comes to the final test. "Art is born out of humiliation", said Auden, and from this I take courage. I know that, one day, in time I would deliver the performance I know I am capable of.

There be pretty days ahead. Stay with me.

"Why I Am Not A Painter"

2008-07-01T23:33:00.002+08:00

Why I Am Not A Painter
by Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANCES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Hylas And The Nymphs

2008-07-01T10:29:00.005+08:00

This is 'Hylas and the Nymphs', based on a painting by JW Waterhouse in 1896.

And now we can embed graffiti out of Facebook! Click play and see this drawing being made.

\:D/

2008-06-30T09:08:00.004+08:00

Zoul, notch up one for the Brits!

p.s.

Poetry Slam 3: I know I'm doing it right when I heard that loud whoa as I stepped away from the mic. From only one person, in the dark room it came like a bark, but one is enough.

p.p.s.

OK more than one person :-)

Chris Mooney Singh, the slam co-organiser (credit is where credit is due, thanks also to Daphne Lee for bringing the slam to KL; it is a huge effort) said that my poetry is true... which is a high compliment indeed -- it's a paradox of poetry that much contrivance is expended to give it the power of a wordless thought, and the word 'true' always brings to me the image of an arrow, flying true, striking its target.

Paper Boat For Mother

2008-06-22T06:00:00.004+08:00

Mother, if you see a tiny white paper boat in your sleep,
do not wonder how it has entered your dream.

It was folded by your loving daughter, with tears in her eyes,
who begs it to carry home her love and sorrow,
over the endless mountains and waters

-Ping Hsin, b. 1902 [trans. Kai Yu-Shu]

This Is The Way I Know Love

2008-06-21T04:43:00.028+08:00

Midsummer's night, Kuala Lumpur.

"This is the way I know love," which I must say, I do not know if this is a confession, a flash of fiction, or poetry, only that I want you to know: this blog is ending, and I am preparing its closure.

While I wonder what I should want to say to you, presently I am examining a scar on my left wrist that I first noticed 48 hours ago. The centimeter-long scar is inflamed, a pink rash around its edges. It is infected. I shall have to treat it later.

I feel the scar stinging my wrist. It is a witness of a kind: for I had registered its presence when I had drowsily glanced at my wristwatch (I was in bed) only to see that it was missing, and there was only a streak of red at the joint of my arm and hand. I must have removed my watch sometime during the night because its strap had chafed against my skin. I have been searching for it frantically and now, two days later, having first overturned my room, my car, and finally retraced my steps to the place where I remember I last checked the time--a mamak in Taman Tun, the final stop before I went home that night--I am almost certain that I have somehow dropped it along the way home, and for I had worn it for a full decade, my faithful ticker, a going-away present from my parents as I was leaving for university, a gift for a lifetime of achievements, once-twice-or thrice-dipped in brine and blood: I am simply grief-stricken.

I do not want to dwell on the lost timepiece for now. Better to reminisce on what just happened one hour and fifty seven minutes ago, by the clock of my cellphone. I was exiting a bar, being led by my right hand by a comely lass (a professional computer engineer, no less) who had quite captivated me with her coquettish manner on several brief encounters -- and last night she came alone to find me. It was that moment when at the door, she: already stepped outside, I: sidestepping aside to let a bevy of girls in through the door, then suddenly found myself staring deeply into the dark eyes of one fair lady:-- 23-years old by dead reckoning, black one-piece, shouldered dress stopping two inches above her knee; three-inch heels bringing her eyeline straight to mine; shoulder-length wavy hair; no jewelery, no cosmetics. I remember vividly the straight cut of her fringe on against her forehead: dry, not sweaty and flushed as one would expect to see at a late hour at the clubs. It was at the last call at the bar and she seemed as fresh as a daisy. And: (this is important) she had stopped in her stride, impeding her friends, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide open.

I forgot about the computer engineer, released her hand.

Let us presently dispense with the computer engineer, whom I do respect and think of fondly: about half an hour later, at her car, she said, I am sorry for my behaviour, kissed my hand, I want what you just had. Closed the door. She didn't need to say it, I had read it as clear as day in her eyes, the quiver of defeat (or was it me who told her this to mirror; I am a clear pool if you had ever set eyes on one).

Back to the Moment. The new arrival and I, we stood there, locked in our stares. I can only conjure in my mind's eye her visage, but her body is indelible against mine. We stood there, and suddenly I was inside the club again, the both of us had moved with the flow of bodies in sidereal motion, our hands squeezing the other's, her gaze firmly on my eyes and mine on hers.

I am leaving, I said to her.

--But we just met.

--What is your name?

--Mimi, she sang.

--I want to see you again.

Then Mimi kissed me. First a chaste peck on the lips, then a full embrace, and the deepest, lushest kiss I have ever received... not one of lust, but of longing, of completion. The sweetest kiss I have ever known.

-- Trust we will feel this way, if I see you again, Mimi said. (Stunningly concisely, comfortably anglophone, not what I had expected.)

And then Mimi was gone, fled into the crowd, leaving only the flush of her cheeks, the flash of her smiling eyes as she retreated, and I stepped outside to my waiting date. I was breathless, heart-stopped, not wanting to leave, but she was driving after all. She had seen it all, of course.

What was it that happened? I want to believe that it was the coup de foudre I had always wanted to experience, but I am a cynic enough to think that it was just a girls' game, and I was just a toy, a pawn in some trivial power-play: who got to steal the kiss you thought was yours tonight? (I have been guilty of the same prank many a time, haven't you?). If not why did she go, if not why did I leave...

That is what I am thinking of as I am falling asleep now, as I consider my scars of my losses: the deep, throbbing, emptiness in my right hand, the wound that would never heal; and the sharp sting on my left where there is vacant space where there was once a treasured possession. The hands I held tonight, their balm and the missing senses. I know too well that my own hands lie to me.

I am thinking of the trust she left me... and if I could find the faith
to believe that it was true, that there is hope.

Scenes From Lolita I

2008-06-15T13:08:00.010+08:00

I am very pleased with this weekend's produce: four new graffiti*, two of which are scenes from Lolita, which I will show presently.

Breathless Garden — Scene from Lolita (1997).

The first picture is taken from the Adrian Lyne's 1997 Lolita movie starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain, the scene where Humbert Humbert first sees Lolita in the garden and is entranced. When I first saw the film many years ago this scene made a strong impression. Now, on a repeat viewing after reading the novel, I am still very moved by this particular moment of the film.

"O my Carmen, my little Carmen!" — Scene from Lolita (1955), Part 1, Chapter 13.

This second picture is an original composition, my impression of chapter 13 of the first part of the novel where H.H. discreetly fondles an innocently oblivious Lolita, who is eating an apple, on the sofa in the living room. Lo does not actually straddle H.H. in this way in the text (this expunged scene from the '97 movie is closer to how it went down in the book, albeit differing subtly from some details in the narration), but I was in a risqué mood. Firstly, the novel suggests that H.H. has an orgasm, which is difficult to imagine just by seeing a picture of Lo with her legs over his lap (it is merely "creepy", and I can't imagine PE at that level, I mean, seriously?), so I am using this pose to strongly suggest that this is in fact what is happening (at any rate, H.H. is fully clothed); secondly I like the idea that Lolita is actually the one in control, and I am hoping to convey that in this image... What do you think?

* I am overdue for some real painting, current circumstances being unfavourable, hopefully to be improved soon. Thankfully I am not short of inspiration.

'The Toilet of Venus'

2008-06-12T06:36:00.007+08:00

Another FB Graffiti based on a classic masterpiece, 'The Toilet of Venus' (or, if you prefer a less comic-sounding name, 'The Rokeby Venus'). It was painted circa 1650, by Spanish master, Diego Velazquez, and (to me) represents a moment in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque style. I regret that I had to omit the ribbons, which are a key element of the original painting, because I felt that they otherwise cluttered the compacted composition of the graffiti.

Picnic, Lightning

2008-06-04T21:28:00.005+08:00

By Billy Collins

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident
(picnic, lightning) when I was three — Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows

the limp roots of red impatiens—
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

Vase

2008-05-25T07:52:00.004+08:00

The above is a sketch of a clay vase I encountered last night. Origin unknown. I used ink brush on tinted paper.

Billy Pilgrim Meets The Tralfamadorians

2008-05-20T21:03:00.008+08:00

I haven't gotten around to read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, but when Dreamer Idiot asked me if I could make a picture for a poster he's making I jumped at the idea for a weekend project.

I started with making a few sketches, the aim was to make a composition showing both Billy and the flying saucer (which is 100 feet wide), some with pencil, some with neon ink on black paper... this one here with an inkbrush:

I had wanted in the end to try an extreme angle shot from the ground, but couldn't get my head around the distortions I'd have to do on the background elements, much less draw it, so I used this composition to make this drawing with a software called Corel Painter Essentials 2:

I've had CPE-2 installed for some time now -- it was packaged with the Graphire pen I am using now -- but have never liked it enough to use it. The interface is clumsy and I'd rather be play on paper with real materials, but after spending so much time with Graffiti with its tiny canvas I'm ready to grok some new tools. So I decided to try it out for this picture.

It wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be, and I'm intrigued with the set of challenges the software has. I think that drawing software are a medium in themselves, and I enjoy taking them apart (I also still enjoy making them of course). Despite its small drawing space Graffiti gives a lot of freedom to blend colours and cover up mistakes while CPE-2 has limitations which would make any Photoshop user throw up their hands in frustration and express disbelief that a piece of drawing software can be so recalcitrant — limited undo levels and rudimentary layering for a start — it is actually closer to a natural system. I still don't like it but I can appreciate that it's as tough as paper!

Hummingbird

2008-05-16T23:55:00.008+08:00

While the tree is a reasonable representation of one that exists in my backyard, I do not remember having ever seen a real hummingbird, which is disappointing. I am not even sure if there are any to be seen in Malaysia, but a friend told me that she had seen one before, nearby her house in Bukit Damansara. This friend has also told me that she had seen many other highly improbable things and I am not inclined to take her word (it was more likely to be a moth); nevertheless I am hoping that one day I would see one of these wonders of nature dance into my view.

There is much poetry that I associate with hummingbirds. The first is a much-loved poem by poet and friend, Sharanya Manivannan, published in Istanbul Literary Review. I still hear her velvety voice—dark, thick and as jolting as a cup Jamaican Blue [listen]—as she rehearsed these lines in my car on the way to a reading some months ago. Sharanya is herself a diminutive lady, fond of dressing boldly for the stage, and such is the confluence of subject, voice and body that made this poem resonate in such a way that I could not separate my thoughts from its words as I made this picture.

This Hummingbird Heart

There are gods in drums, just
as there are gods in ankle
bells and gods in the fine
reeds the women of the village
gather to weave mats out of.

But what god convulses
in this body of mine, driving?
She will love or she will die.
What god implodes in her
personal chaos and
seizes me in its storm?
A god like an artery,
who leads me, possessed,
further and further away from
the dark flame
of my interior.

And what god, out of what
time, is it who lives within
this drum – this hummingbird
heart – this undimmed undammed
untamed beast that beats down with
the hooves of a thousand horses,
floods my veins with
the blood of a thousand mercenaries.

I will love or I will die.

It seems unlikely that I would ever be able to hear the beat of a hummingbird's heart, even if I were in some way able to capture one and press its breast to my ear. A hummingbird is scarcely larger than a thumb, and its heart the size of a baby's fingernail. Among birds, whose demands for cardiovascular efficiency to support their metabolic needs for flight makes for larger hearts pound for pound—or literally gram for gram, as it were—compared to other mammals, hummingbirds have the largest hearts, corresponding to about 2.4% of their body weight. Consider a blue whale, whose heart is roughly the size of a car yet only 0.5% of its body mass. Consider the size of our own hearts, only 0.4% of our body—if humans had hearts like a hummingbird's, our hearts would be eight times larger!

I could imagine the sound it would make though. A hummingbird's heart ticks at 500 beats a minute at rest, up to 1,200 beats a minute in flight. It is the frequency range of a four-stroke engine at idle, and when I sit in my car waiting for its engine to warm after having cold-started it, I feather the throttle slightly and imagine hearing the thunder of a hummingbird's heart.

Then, of course, I think of its desperation. I think about Brian Doyle's description of these marvels:

Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles — anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures more than any other living creature. It's expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.

(From "Joyas Voladores", The American Scholar, Autumn 2004. The complete essay is beautiful, worth reading in full, and fortunately archived by other bloggers... or get this book!)

"No warm-blooded animal on earth uses more energy, for its size. But that puts them at great peril. By day's end, wrung-out and exhausted, a hummingbird rests near collapse," wrote Diane Ackerman in "Mute Dancers: How To Watch A Hummingbird" for the New York Times (who also, in her book Cultivating Delight, wrote some fascinating passages about the hummingbirds who visited her garden, including an astonishing factoid: some hummingbirds hitch rides on other birds when they migrate; they nestle in between the bigger birds' feathers on their backs for warmth and sleep throughout the ride.) At day's end, hummingbirds literally switch off for sleep: their hearts, so frenetic when awake, slow to what is effectively a mere tremble at 36 beats a minute, and it is with considerable effort that they must wake every morning for another frantic day of feeding once every few minutes. If a cold snap had come in the night, or a hummingbird was somehow denied its nectarean nourishment by an invader, they simply could not kickstart their hearts for lack of energy, then die in their sleep.

How much louder do I hear the drums of the poet's "hummingbird heart", feel the determination of her deceptively simple final line: I will love or I will die — thence primed, my complete immersion in the rhapsody of Diane Ackerman's "Beija-Flor", from Jaguar of Sweet Laughter, with which I will leave you tonight.

Beija-Flor (Hummingbird; Portuguese, literally "flower kisser")

When you kiss me, moths flutter in my mouth;
when you kiss me, leaf-cutter ants lift up
their small burdens and carry them along
corridors of scent; when you kiss me,
caymans slither down wet banks in moonlight,
jaws yawning open, eyes bright red lasers;
when you kiss me, my fist conceals
the bleached skull of a sloth; when you kiss me,
the waters wed in my ribs, dark and pale
rivers exchange their potions-- she gives him
love's power, he gives her love's lure;
when you kiss me, my heart, surfacing, steals
a small breath like a pink river dolphin;
when you kiss me, the rain falls thick as rubber,
sunset pours molasses down my spine
and, in my hips, the green wings of the jungle flutter;
when you kiss me, blooms explode like land mines
in trees loud with monkey muttering
and the kazoo-istry of birds; when you kiss me,
my flesh sambas like an iguana; when you kiss me,
the river-mirror reflects an unknown land,
eyes glitter in the foliage, ships pass
like traveling miracle plays, and coca sets
brush fires in my veins; when you kiss me,
the river tilts its wet thighs around a bend;
when you kiss me, my tongue unfolds its wings
and flies through shadows as a leaf-nosed bat,
a ventriloquist of the twilight shore
which hurls its voice against the tender world
and aches to hear its echo rushing back;
when you kiss me, anthuria send up
small telescopes, the vine-clad trees wear
pantaloons, a reasonably evitable moon
rises among a signature of clouds,
the sky fills with the pandemonium
of swamp monkeys, the aerial slither
and looping confetti of butterflies;
when you kiss me, time's caravan pauses
to sip from the rich tropic of the heart,
find shade in the oasis of a touch,
bathe in Nature carnal, mute and radiant;
you find me there trembling and overawed;
for, when you kiss me, I become the all
you love: a peddler on your luminous river,
whose salted-fish are words, daughter
of a dolphin; when you kiss me, I smell
of night-blooming orchids; when you kiss me,
my mouth softens into scarlet feathers--
an ibis with curved bill and small dark smile;
when you kiss me, jaguars lope through my knees;
when you kiss me, my lips quiver like bronze
violets; oh, when you kiss me....

(I fear you will now know that I am not thinking about hummingbirds at all.)

Athirah, Doodle Fish, and Alethia

2008-05-13T11:10:00.008+08:00

Two new entries from the graffiti gallery, the first made today, the next made on Sunday morning.

Doodle Fish

Athirah (my sister, the ditzy one. She's a cheerleader and is much stronger than I am.)

Both the original pictures above from Graffiti were tweaked in some way before I present them here. In fact, the original graffiti for "Doodle Fish" was actually quite dull until I tweaked it in iPhoto, then it became the much more lively picture you see above.

I question myself when I do this. It is an issue of authenticity. Am I being dishonest with my art if I take the original and then post-process it to make it look better? Of course, in my studies in digital art I have come across many arguments debating this, but I am not about to marshal them today—in my view, it is enough that I question, and by deciding either way I am indelibly the author of my work, however I derive it.

How far have I come now? This was a journey that started when I was making software-generated art (i.e. I "composed" programs that could in turn compose their own art, a field called generative art) for my degree. As a student I wrote my own drawing software, a kind of rudimentary graffiti, thence programmed it to draw on its own canvas automatically based on words that I fed it; a kind of computer-generated calligraphy.

Alethia (2002)

I dismiss this work now as juvenilia, but the word, "alethia" — Heidegger's "first truth" — has stayed with me; I have stayed with Heidegger, seeing the world by a darkening light.

Immersion

2008-05-10T05:20:00.010+08:00

Immersion

Ding!

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love

2008-05-04T21:05:00.002+08:00

"Excuse Me, Do You Speak English?"

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell.

Fishermen At Sea

2008-05-04T02:04:00.003+08:00

Fishermen At Sea (After JMW Turner, 1796) (edited)

It Can't Come Quickly Enough

2008-04-30T05:28:00.002+08:00

It Can't Come Quickly Enough
by Scott Hoffman & Jason Sellards

Sailing through the tunnels
In the morning by yourself
There's a very special feeling
True sensation all is well
If you stand and reach your arms out wide
Close your eyes and try to fly
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

We knew all the answers
And we shouted them like anthems
Anxious and suspicious
That God knew how much we cheated

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and left you so defeated

Skyscrapers rise between us
Keeping me from finding you
If the concrete architecture
Disappeared there'd be so few
Of us left to navigate and
Defend ourselves from the tide
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

There's no indication of
What we were meant to be
Sucking up to strangers
Throwing wishes to the sea

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and
Left you so defeated

... that's from the Scissor Sisters, if you didn't know.

Listen People

2008-04-22T01:05:00.004+08:00

Listen People by Kim Ch'on-taek (1725-1766)

Listen people, wherever you are,
please attend to these words:
Will your youth last forever?
Will your white hair turn black again?
Life speeds by like a dream,
Why not fill each minute with joy?

When I saw this, I came.

He Got His Hat Back

2008-04-08T22:31:00.001+08:00

From xkcd. Previously: 1, 2 (here).

Fitna

2008-04-04T19:02:00.003+08:00

No time to comment. I was only peripherally aware of this documentary, despite the brouhaha in Indonesia, until an IM spam prompted me to have a look. Fitna needs to be seen, not blocked.

Canola Fields & Crazy Skies

2008-03-27T06:51:00.006+08:00

Canola fields and crazy skies, a Facebook graffiti.

I couldn't find the website where I found the picture I was basing this on: it was about a hippie music festival in Canada I had randomly stumbled upon. The website was not what I was looking for, but the picture caught my eye, and I can only remember that it was taken in 1997, the photographer described it as a canola field, and something about seeing crazy skies like this every time they go. Yeah, I bet.

I remember I saw a sky like this once and I wished I knew how to paint it. Then I remember that I had written about it here, saying that it was a pretty day, and I went back into the blog archives to look it up. More than two years ago it was.

Reading the post again, I realise what a journey the past two years have been. "There'll be pretty days ahead," I wrote again and again. Such optimism, I wasn't sure if I believed myself, but there has been such days and today I am happy: I can make my own pretty days now, any day of the week, rain or shine.

Be A River

2008-03-21T17:09:00.004+08:00

The Warrior of the Light sometimes behaves like water, flowing around the obstacles he encounters.

Occasionally, resistance might mean destruction, and so he adapts to the circumstances. He accepts, without complaint, that the stones in his path hinder his way through the mountains.

Therein lies the strength of water: It cannot be touched by a hammer or ripped to shreds by a knife. The strongest sword in the world cannot scar its surface.

The river adapts itself to whatever route proves possible, but the river never forgets its one objective: the sea. So fragile at its source, it gradually gathers the strength of the other rivers it encounters.

And after a certain point, its power is absolute.

— from Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Silence is a way of speaking, but mine is lost in white water.

Bulgarian Idol Ken Lee

2008-03-20T23:27:00.000+08:00

No Rain

2008-03-19T20:00:00.001+08:00

Homo Florensiensis

2008-03-18T00:32:00.008+08:00

This was a little breakthrough with charcoal made sometime last year, based on a pic from National Geographic.

Heritage Mansion

2008-03-09T11:59:00.005+08:00

Sketch of a tree and wicker swing in the compound of Heritage Mansion, on a napkin. "12.15 a.m., 8/2/08", written on the reverse.

Earlier, a girl sat on the swing and talked on her mobile for a good half hour, until I wrote on another napkin, "Only fax machines stay on all night".

Get off it already, go play with your friends, it's my turn now, really, if you want to hang on the phone at a social event, then you should make some space for the scenery and go home.

As it happened, I balled up the napkin and lobbed it at her but it fell short and failed to attract her attention, and I just couldn't be bothered after that so she kept on the phone until her friends came outside to collect her. Then all was well.

Lengthwise Charcoal Stick

2008-03-07T04:51:00.003+08:00

More a doodle than a sketch, of nobody in particular. I was trying out ways to use the charcoal stick lengthwise.

Simple Talk

2008-02-24T00:58:00.018+08:00

A poem in three parts, which I performed tonight at a poetry slam. I came in second, after Georgie Wielgus. This is after John Keats' "The Living Hand".

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

"Voice"

This is the beginning of a simple talk
When it is you and me and I

Extend

This living hand now warm and capable
of earnest grasping as I stagger
alongside you in what I hope passes
for a swagger.

A broken arm, while the bone sets
Gives the aging man the stance
Of a Marlboro Man,
His fingers nosing the air
Like sidewinders tasting the sky.
But I'm no smokin' cowboy

I'm this drivelswigger
With an anchor on his arm.
Not a desert snake, but a briny crab
With the face of Rilke on his shell
Reaching out into the Vast Night:

I scale the mass of solitude
Against all the world's knowledge
Written,
And I wonder if
The voice belongs to the night
Or to the human.

"Refugee"

What if
I were to hide my voice
To sneak it away from the prying
Constellations
To leap and leap from hill to hill
To come here, into this room. My voice
Fleddened from the night
Inside my fists.

Beware the people you meet at
Poetry slams.

The one with the clammy hands
And sings fly
High
As you pass him by.

The one with the
Warm hand-
shake, the snuggled voice.

Beware when he takes your hand
and whispers, hush! and listen to the
scratching solitude. Anchoring
You to silence
While the dark nose
of the dogging night
drifts over us.

Beware the people you meet at poetry slams.
They thrust their voice to your hands and hide
from the night.

I am the one
with his voice clutching his
shrill shirt.

See: Here it is. (I hold it towards you)
There: It is hiding in my heart.

"Blotto Soul"

John Keats! What an honour to shake
Your hand.

This tag says:
I am not an alcoholic
I am a poet but misspelled it:
"Drunk". Alkies go to meetings
While punks like us go to readings
And slam at funky bars.

The day I heard Blake say that
Art is the tree of life, and
Science is the tree of death

I dug up a poetry

Guzzled its thorns,
Suckled its sap.

It tasted like the wine of words,
the bread of voice,

a bleeding larynx,
a pickled heart.

In my blotto state
I met a woman
and offered to let her
Sup on my prickled lips,
Ravage my rooting tongue. And

As I planted a kiss on her neck
She planted her living hand
Upon my face —

So now we shall see, if a poetry
Is a pain or a pleasure
Tree.

Poetry: Not A Flowery Form Of Writing

2008-02-17T17:33:00.008+08:00

It is the flower, the stalk, the leaf, the root of writing. Suckle the sap and guzzle the thorns; it is the wine of words, the bread of voice: poetry is a bleeding larynx and a blotto soul—not a flowery form of writing ~~dammit!~~ .

25.4.07, ed. 27.2.08

"First Suffering"

2008-02-12T01:24:00.001+08:00

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born in the moment when we accumulated
silent things within us.

—Gaston Bachelard

Yet:

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.

— lines from "Silence", Marianne Moore

Fuck

2008-02-02T04:33:00.000+08:00

So true it hurts.

A Backward Glancing Eye

2008-01-30T12:10:00.000+08:00

Another one from the pages of an old notebook. This one from 1999, scribbled among layout designs for a brochure, in those days when I was a neophyte graphic designer. I don't remember if I had taken note of this from somewhere, or if it was an original thought...

The real purpose of a backward glancing eye is to educate ourself constantly. We look at the past to learn from those who came before us. We begin by examining the mistakes we have made in the past, the ones that have most seriously held us back, and say: I shall never repeat such a mistake, I shall never fall into such a trap again.

If we can evaluate and observe ourselves in this way, we can learn to break the patterns of the past.

... but the phrase "a backward glancing eye" seems too beautiful, and the thought too wise, to have come from me, then still in the cusp of twenty, and in hindsight, yet to have made such mistakes. Most likely it did come from someone else; I do not remember, but it would be good to pass it forward.

Ut Pictura Poesis

2008-01-22T04:58:00.000+08:00

I was thumbing through an old notebook when I found this passage that I had noted down, circa 2001. I felt that it was ekphratic of a way of seeing the world that is worth knowing. And, perhaps, something I now understand —or, at least, beginning to see.

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank traveling at twenty miles a second round the sun — a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body. The plank has no solidity of substance. To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip through? No, if I make the venture one of the flies hits me and gives a boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly; and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain about steady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or be boosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, not a violation of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence....

Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

— Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1934), in The Nature of the Physical World

Words To Live By

2008-01-19T09:42:00.000+08:00

Look under foot....The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world. --John Burroughs.

And it is a good time to be reminded of Ithaka. Two weeks of the new year have passed, and I sense that I am approaching new harbours. New places, new hours.

Freestyle With Pencils

2008-01-17T05:51:00.000+08:00

Untitled, Pencil on Paper (A4)

A warming-up exercise that went on to consume my night...

The PCR song by Scientists for Better PCR

2008-01-15T04:16:00.000+08:00

Tabley blah siot.

Ayesha

2008-01-13T03:32:00.001+08:00

I just can't get over how weird her eye looks in this portrait; it looks better at this angle, but the actual drawing is a little wonky. When I go over the evolution of my portraiture, however, I'm quite pleased with this one.

Figure Drawing

2008-01-11T15:04:00.001+08:00

"We are poor passing facts". Aquarelle on paper (A4)

Epilogue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

—Robert Lowell

"I Was Never One Who In Love Or In Friendship"

2008-01-09T04:03:00.000+08:00

I Was Never One Who In Love Or In Friendship

I was never one who in love or in friendship
Preferred one sex over the other. Beauty
Attracts me in equal measure, wherever
I find it, in season.

The bird alights, looking only to its alighting,
Its desire to alight mattering more than the branch.
The river runs where it finds its repose,
And not where it is needed.

Thus I separate myself from distinctions
Of where and how I love or don't love,
And I don't offend the inherent innocence
Of when people love.

Love is not in the object but in the act.
I only love something when I start loving it.
My love does not reside in it
But in my love.

The gods who gave us this path of love
Also gave us the flower to pluck.
And perhaps we pluck with better love
What we seek for the using.

—Fernando Pessoa, writing as Ricardo Reis, ed. & trans. by Richard Zenith,
in Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems.

Readings in Art & Science

2008-01-07T02:46:00.000+08:00

"For there are 'made' laws, 'discovered' laws, but also laws — a truth for all time. These are more or less hidden in the reality which surrounds us and do not change. Not only science but art also, shows us that reality, at first incomprehensible, gradually reveals itself, by the mutual relations that are inherent in things."

Piet Mondrian, Figurative Art and Nonfigurative Art (1937)

———

It is only through science and art that civilization is of value. Some have wondered at the formula: science for its own sake; and yet it is as good as life for its own sake.... Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything.

Henri Poincaré, "Science For Its Own Sake" in The Value of Science (1913)

We Are All Rockstars

2008-01-06T22:14:00.000+08:00

Charcoal Owl

2008-01-05T03:40:00.001+08:00

Owl, Charcoal on paper (A3)

I'm starting to do larger pieces now, and although it is taking me longer to finish a drawing—I reckon this one took me about 8 hours to do, albeit at a very leisurely pace, with lots of breaks in between—the larger surface area is really much better to explore with charcoal, and I'm starting to develop a deep appreciation for this medium. The problem with doing pieces larger than A4 size is, of course, they don't fit my scanner, and I just don't have the right setup to take proper pictures. Anyway, if you're wondering what kind of owl this is, I didn't use a reference picture for this one, so it's just what I think an owl looks like.

Practice!

2008-01-03T01:20:00.000+08:00

Assailant. Charcoal in Moleskine sketchbook (Nov. '07)

His mouth is a bit too far south from where it's supposed to be, as if his jaw is dislocated, but I'm quite fond of this drawing, despite that particular defect.

It used to bother me that I can't draw very well at all, and it didn't help that every time I made portraits of friends, they'd make what I construed as snarky remarks. "But that doesn't look like me!" is still okay; "You can't draw for shit!" is just not on, and it killed me, because the proof was in my hands. Some friends right? I thought friends were supposed to encourage each other. Well, they're gone, systematically deleted from my life and I don't miss them. I'm talking about last century here.

I curse the stupidity of my youth. I did the worst thing I could have done then: I gave up. Perhaps the real tragedy was that nobody around me at the time was wise enough to tell me that I could do it, because I want to, and the rest is all about practice. Wise enough, even, to tell me that talent is a myth. So I gave up, but I never stopped wanting to, and even as I learned to be better at other things, I was just waiting for permission to try again, until somebody even wiser told me that the only permission I need is from myself.

To this wisdom I'd like to share a passage from José Saramago's The Cave which for me describes the challenge and pleasure of art-making. Admittedly, it's a lengthy text, and I transcribed it as it appears in the book — a single paragraph, and this is from the middle of it, at that — but I have learned, having read five of his books now, that Saramago's prose is best savoured slowly, and bears rereading. This passage starts as he begins to make the figurines for the first time, and I will leave you to it:

[Marta] just had time to say, Don't get annoyed if it doesn't come out right first time. Hour after hour, during the rest of that day and part of the following day, until it was time for him to go and fetch Marçal from the Centre, the potter made, unmade and remade dolls in the form of nurses and mandarins, jesters and Assyrians, eskimos and clowns, almost unrecognisable at the first attempt, but gradually gaining form and meaning as his fingers began to interpret for themselves and in accordance with their own laws the instructions transmitted to them by the brain. Indeed, very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the first phalange, the mesophalange and the metaphalange, there is a tiny brain. The fact is that the other organ which we call the brain, the one with which we came into the world, the one which we transport around in our head and which transports us so that we can transport it, has only ever had very general, vague, diffuse and, above all, unimaginative ideas about what the hands and fingers should do. For example, if the brain-in-our-head suddenly gets an idea for a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music or literature, or a clay figurine, it simply sends a signal to that effect and then waits to see what will happen. Having sent an order to the hands and fingers, it believes, or pretends to believe, that the task will then be completed, once the extremities of the arms have done their work. The brain has never been curious enough to ask itself why the end result of this manipulative process, which is complex even in its simplest forms, bears so little resemblance to what the brain had imagined before it issued its instructions to the hands. It should be noted that the fingers are not born with brains, these develop gradually with the passage of time and with the help of what the eyes see. The help of the eyes is important, as important as what is seen through them. That is why the fingers have always excelled at uncovering what is concealed. Anything in the brain-in-our-head that appears to have an instinctive, magical or supernatural quality — whatever that may mean — is taught to it by the small brains in our fingers. In order for the brain-in-the-head to know what a stone is, the fingers first have to touch it, to feel its rough surface, its weight and density, to cut themselves on it. Only long afterwards does the brain realise that from a fragment of that rock one could make something which the brain will call a knife or something it will call an idol. The brain-in-the-head has always lagged behind the hands, and even now, when it seems to have overtaken them, the fingers still have to summarise for it the results of their tactile investigations, the shiver that runs across the epidermis when it touches clay, the lacerating sharpness of the graver, the acid biting into the plate, the faint vibration of a piece of paper laid flat, the orography of textures, the crosshatching of fibres, the alphabet of the world in relief. And then there are the colours. The truth is that the brain knows far less about colours than one might suppose. It sees more or less clearly what the eyes show it, but when it comes to converting what it has seen into knowledge, it often suffers from what one might call difficulties in orientation. Thanks to the unconscious confidence of a lifetime's experience, it unhesitatingly utters the names of the colours it calls elementary and complementary, but is immediately lost, perplexed and uncertain when it tries to formulate words that might serve as labels or explanatory markers for the things that verge on the ineffable, that border on the incommunicable, for the still nascent colour which, with the eyes' often bemused approval and complicity, the hands and fingers are in the process of inventing and which will probably never even have its own name. Or perhaps it already does — a name known only to the hands, because they mixed the paint as if they were dismantling the constituent parts of a note of music, because they became smeared with the colour and kept the stain deep inside the dermis, and only because only with the invisible knowledge of the fingers will one ever be able to paint the infinite fabric of dreams. Trusting in what the eyes believe they have seen, the brain-in-the-head states that, depending on the conditions of light and shade, on the presence or absence of a wind, on whether it is wet or dry, the beach is white or yellow or golden or grey or purple or any other shade in between, but then along came the fingers and, with the a gesture of gathering in, as if harvesting a wheat field, they pluck from the ground all the colours of the world. What seemed unique was plural, what is plural will become more so. It is equally true, though, that in the exultant flash of a single tone or shade, or in its musical modulation, all the other tones and shades are also present and alive, both the tones or shades of colours that have already been named, as well as those awaiting names, just as an apparently smooth, flat surface can both conceal and display the traces of everything ever experienced in the history of the world. All archaeology of matter is an archaeology of humanity. What this clay hides and shows is the passage of a being through time and space, the marks left by fingers, the scratches left by fingernails, the ashes and the charred logs of burned-out bonfires, our bones and those of others, the endlessly bifurcating paths disappearing off into the distance and merging with each other. This grain on the surface is a memory, this depression the mark left by a recumbent body. The brain asked a question and made a request, the hand answered and acted. Marta put it another way, Now you're getting the hang of it.

from José Saramago, The Cave (pp. 64-66; Vintage, 2003; trans. Margaret Jull Costa)

The Promise of Malaysian Youth

2008-01-02T03:29:00.000+08:00

I am loving Vinod Nair's photography work for Off The Edge. The previous issue's cover photo of Siti Nurhaliza was absolutely stunning, and so is this month's cover featuring Maya Karin.

Early last year my gift to myself was to go for Sharon Bakar's creative writing course. It turned out to be a serendipitous move. I learned some really important things—fundamentals and first principles—about writing, of course, but the unexpected thing that happened was that I rediscovered a love for drawing when I was doodling in class. One thing led to another, and as I started reading my work in public, I was also progressing from doodling to sketching and to drawing.

I am leaving a lot of things out, for the sake of brevity, but suffice it to say that between writing and drawing every day, there is never a day without lines, and I am happy. This is from a person who only a year ago had trouble even to grip a pen, much less lay a line down. So to celebrate this, my birthday gift to myself this time around is a fountain pen—my first. This is the pen you see in the picture above, and there's the first sketch to flow out of it.

I actually botched the drawing up. It's even worse than the portrait I put up yesterday. I mean, dude, I really really fucked up. You can't even call it 'naive art'! Here's what I wrote overleaf:

... "Place this drawing on a table and view it upside down from at least 3 meters away," it's the only way she'll look like something approaching normal. I was thinking about just hiding the sketch away, consign it to the other botched jobs but then I saw something then it hit me... ahhh...

The Promise of Malaysian Youth, Mixed Media.

What do you think? If ever Maya ego-surfs and finds this, I do hope she appreciates irony.

Jasmine at Seksan's

2008-01-01T08:59:00.001+08:00

Jasmine S. @ Readings at Seksan's, Dec 2007. Charcoal on paper (A4)

Every month at the regular "Readings" lit-event the D-SLR camera-toting posse has a ball amongst themselves, taking photos of the crowd (as Hic Sunt Dracones also observes). They shouldn't be having all the fun, should they? The subject of my first drawing of the year is Jasmine Schmitter as I observed her, sitting against the far wall during Amir Hafizi's reading at last week's edition of "Readings".

A shout out for Sufian Abas for the splendid pictures which I used as reference; I'd have been lost had it been that all I had was this photofit sketch I cobbled together from memory on the day after (officially the last drawing of 2007):

... obviously wrong.

2008: Onwards

2007-12-31T21:55:00.002+08:00

Another cycle begins. Goodbye 2007. Hello 2008!

Onwards!

Indian Threadfish

2007-12-29T05:46:00.001+08:00

Here's a bar-top ink sketch of an Indian Threadfish (Alectis indicus), a.k.a. Diamond Fish, Diamond Trevally, Horse Mackerel, Indian Mirrorfish, Indian Thread-Finned Trevally, Indian Threadfin, Indian Threadfin Trevally, Indian Threadfish, Large Thread-Fin Jackfish, Old Maid, Plumed Trevally, Talakitok (Philippines?). The Malay name, Ikan Cermin, translates directly as Mirrorfish.

It Was My Birthday

2007-12-28T02:36:00.000+08:00

... yesterday. On hindsight, since my birthday falls during school holidays (and now since I don't go to school anymore, the holiday season), very few people knew when my birthday is—until Facebook changed all that and I recorded a 900% increase in the number of wishes received, online and offline. Thanks for all the wishes; it's an all-time high.

Times The Bookshop gave me a gift voucher, so I gave them some bookaholic love. The Damas Starbucks crew supersized my latte and gave me a cookie. On a whimsy after work I went to the aquarium, wandered in wonder, got myself a cuttlefish soft-toy (christened Godot) from the souvenir shop, then spent the rest of night playing Scrabble at a roadside stall, chatting about GM crops and turkey farming, doodling on the score sheet and writing up lists of words I wish I'd have the chance to put down, words like 'tenement', 'asymptote', 'sasquatch', 'vertex', 'flocculant', 'katydid', 'autodidact', 'breve', 'frenetic', 'multiplex', 'ordinate', 'supernovae', 'dendrite', 'ventricle'...

Simple pleasures, and I'm a simple guy. Best birthday ever. Tomorrow—tonight, that is—we party.