Tentative

 Hello.

I'll be back here. Probably.

Slow Sonic Saturday: You're The One That I want

And my heart is set on you
You better shape up
You better understand
To my heart I must be true

Talking to the moon

Rummaging around my phone's memory bank I rediscovered this old photo and immediately remembered Li Po's poem.

- 

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon 

by Li Po

Amongst the flowers I

am alone with my pot of wine

drinking by myself; then lifting

my cup I asked the moon

to drink with me, its reflection

and mine in the wine cup, just

the three of us; then I sigh

for the moon cannot drink,

and my shadow goes emptily along

with me never saying a word;

with no other friends here, I can

but use these two for company;

in the time of happiness, I

too must be happy with all

around me; I sit and sing

and it is as if the moon

accompanies me; then if I

dance, it is my shadow that

dances along with me; while

still not drunk, I am glad

to make the moon and my shadow

into friends, but then when

I have drunk too much, we

all part; yet these are

friends I can always count on

these who have no emotion

whatsoever; I hope that one day

we three will meet again,

deep in the Milky Way.

-

Photo taken at Passage Across The Universe - MOCA, Bangkok Thailand / 2014

-

And some mellow track to boot:  

A Handful Of Anguish

Tucked in what seemed to be an innocuous chapter of a book I'm currently reading is an intriguing proposition on sorrow and its implications/correlations to art. I will probably revisit it with a corresponding blog post but considering my inadequacy with finding proper words I will probably not overreach and promise it will happen.

-

Speaking of sorrow here's a few flashes of it this week:

01. GONE TOO SOON. We photographed a very young (24 years old), brilliant executive for a corporate publication we have been working on some months back. Today I learned he passed away due to colon cancer and I was quite stunned. Looking at his frozen image onscreen I was close to denial and disbelief: he looked so active and full of life and the glint in the eyes can be decoded as "I'll do so many great things!"

02. GONE PEACEFULLY. GONE FOREVER. A friend's father passed away due to liver cancer. At the wake I was told he closed his eyes without preamble - no last words, no painful moans, no nothing and was gone.

03. EXTINGUISHED ASPIRATION. A distressed friend sidled up to me during a business summit and told me that a young man, her (and her husband's) college scholar decided to quit his pre-Medicine to shit to liberal arts course and it cased her so much anxiety. She genuinely wanted the young man to succeed but the illogical manners of the young compounds the betrayal and wasted opportunity.

04. HE CALLS HIMSELF PHOENIX. Someone in my Facebook network bleeds in pixels. He recounts a failed relationship, getting retrenched at work without valid reason and due process, among other shades of anguish.

05. DIGITAL DIARY VANISHES. Blogs make us live vicariously through other people's experiences, they make us see different perspectives and probe their thoughts for something alien or recognizable. One of the thoughtful travel blogs I was lurking on vanished today.

-

The movie Dark City argues that we are our memories. If we erase our memory we will have no sense of self, no sense of identity.

I remembered it today while humming Sting's "Fragile" off-key.

Raise Your Love

Overdue And Brilliant

Minted recently: Couple of brilliant, beautiful tracks from two creative sparks hailing from an era of making proper music. Looping till my ears bleed.

What Must Be Done

Eternal Duality

Stumbled upon "Together We Will Live Forever" from Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain." A very melancholic piece by Clint Mansell.

Easing Into A Wistful Weekend

Salve for a crappy day

I still believe I hear
hidden beneath the palm trees
your voice tender and deep
like the song of a dove
oh enchanting night
divine rapture
delightful thought
mad intoxication, sweet dream
in the clear starlight
I still believe I see
in between the long sails
of the warm night breeze
oh night...




And here's six takes on a classic:

Recess

Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, in my book, at least, qualifies as God being in a good mood. I simply shut up my mind and wallowed in dreamless limbo, pacified by large, restless waves and the angry hiss of a stormy night.

This was a rare occurrence for me, this state of delicious vacancy, made possible by a friend who, towards the tail end of a working day, brightly announced in the middle of a conversation: "Go to the beach house this weekend with me!"

For the first time in many many months that have come and gone, I felt restlessness dissolving. The afternoon melted into evening, evening drifted into midnight and I was without any passing disturbance of work-related thoughts. It's as if my mind agreed with my goal to crack my head open and aerate my brains, allowing endless priorities to simmer and trail off like the salty air.

I was calm, and for a short while, lucid.

A moment of exhilaration and creeping sadness.

However, exhilaration was the clear victor.

I started to read again. And immediately lost myself in a parallel, comical universe of a thin volume of essays:

Shakespeare Wrote For Money.

And everything seemed just right in the world again.

+++++

"Are you comfortable?" the friend who owns the beach house interrupted my reading with a tone that's quite concerned for my welfare. "Please feel free to find a spot, anywhere in the house where you'd be more relaxed."

"I've found this to be the perfect spot." I smiled back.

Both reassured, an elongated silence bisected us.

"You know what?" I suddenly blurted out. "I've always believed that us humans, being creature of habits, whether we are in a new town, a new city, a new house, a new place, will always have that first goal of finding the spot where we will be at ease, at home. I'm not sure if that's what birds are hot-wired with, an innate homing instinct. And when we have tagged the spot as home, where we are perfectly settled and happy, every other spot immediately becomes a point of curiosity, a place of exploration. But first we have to find that spot to signpost as home, a vacuum to occupy, a point of reference. Only upon finding it can we compel ourselves to wander, get lost and then once more crave for that sense of familiarity. Am I making sense?"

I stopped to catch my breath, slightly embarrassed by the amateurish streak of pseudo-philosophy  that's palpably growing into full-blown silliness.

The host smiled, returned to own book at hand and drifted off, lost in a pulp of horror and suspense.

"Yes," came the slightly-lagged reply, but the suddenness of the delivery made me jump a little, startled."

"Just a passing thought," I murmured. "Go back to reading."

On the way home it dawned on me.

I wasn't embarrassed by thinking out loud.

In fact it was one of those happy episodes of unfiltered streams of thoughts where an editorial streak wasn't vigilantly present.

And I was sober. And I have no excuse for such fumbling, sloppy platitude.

Unlike before, when I was babbling, drunk, incoherent and quite free-wheeling above the din of truants in the crowded Ho Chi Minh street many moons ago. Unlike when I was in similar drunken state a few weeks ago in Hong Kong, where, downing San Miguel  Pale Pilsens with a friend I haven't talked to in a while, rationalized about life, clarity, the pursuit of purpose, identity and happiness, the burden and traps of expectations, the heroism of petty struggles and why Nick Cave could sum up the human condition in a song.

I miss those two episodes. And up to this day, was quite incapacitated to write about them properly.

Caffeinated Conversations

"Why are people online so addicted to over-sharing?" a friend, downing a shot of espresso so ever casually, openly blurts out. He says this with a tang of contempt, bewilderment and bemusement. "Need we see another update on what flavor of cupcake she had?"

"They are asserting their existence." I reply half-bored, partially intrigued as to where the conversation will skew.

"Don't you think it's too much?"

"Depends on your present mood. Some days it gets tedious scrolling on stream  of the most mindless, banal updates. Some days you feel bad that people would rather connect on the most impersonal way, online, than actually meeting up in person, having actual conversations and listening to someone like you whine about people online while downing overpriced coffee."

"Ass. Seriously. It can get annoying. Here take a look."

His phone's social media feeds appears like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians got cloned and all erupt into an updating spree.

"Well?" He presses on trying to extract a reaction or a sweeping manifesto on the sheer mindlessness of online life.

I continue reading my book.

He continues downing his coffee grimly,  his sulk rising every second.

"They are asserting themselves." I say, half mocking his bratty high-mindedness. "The more you are sad and feels that there's nobody who'd ever fully see through your carefully-crafted facade, the more you'd hunger for some kind of recognition. You should be more indulgent to these mindless updates. It's a plea for love. Someone wise used to say: 'The most cruel thing you can do to another human being is to make him/her feel s/he doesn't exist.'"

"Really, Socrates?"

"No, it's actually my Microbiology professor who said that."

"So the people who are not updating a lot are so secure and happy?"

"They are equally sad. They just do not see the need to hang their sadness for public viewing."

"Are they? Who is the happy person then?"

"Finish your espresso. Then take a sedative."

This freak of a friend is giving me equal measures of headache and existential crisis.

 


P.S.

I still need to finish the Dimsum Chronicles. Argh.

Packing for another trip, singing my lungs out

Is the kindness we count upon Is hidden in everyone

He'll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy

Three Days In The Land Of The Dreamweavers

DAY 01

- Fear of missing very early morning flight. Traded sleep with reading online Manga.
- Airport. Strong coffee. Hot cinnamon roll. Humans you'd genuinely want to be around with. Animated talks.
- Vertigo plagued a friend. On-air vomiting (not projectile vomiting. All the throwing up happened in the cramped bathroom)
- landed. Vertigo hasn't subsided. Compounded by motion sickness on the road. Massage said friend's back while she's agonizingly curled, face buried in the roadside restaurant's latrine. Missed breakfast.
- Made a dent on Dave Egger's The Circle. Gripping read.
- Hotel. Vertigo worsens. Rushed friend to nearby provincial hospital. Missed the scheduled cultural tour.
- Gripped by all the suffering and hopefulness surrounding the ward. All shades, stripes and sounds of bodies plagued by diseases and poverty.
- Finished Dave Egger's book. Feeling partly horrified and angered by distorted idealism and loss of humanity.
- 5pm friend's stable and was discharged. Back to the hotel, tucked her in her room and rushed down to meet two more friends who arrived in the latter flight.
- Governor's Ball. Skinny black denim, black shirt. Red Andy Warhol Campbell Soupcan pocket square. No tie. Feeling reassured on the not under-dressed department.
- Post ball beer-guzzling, drowned in the throngs of quiet revelers. Oddly overdressed in a sea of casually dressed festival goers. Not in the last embarrassed for the out-of-place attire.
- Buzzed by beer. Nerves from lack of sleep. Dove to bed and passed out in a minute.

DAY 02

- Mildly hung over. Hotel breakfast. Vertigo friend recovered and in high spirits. The Sun blazed. Good day.
- Missed the festival parade. Proceeded to the provincial stadium. Almost dozed off from all the long speeches. Cultural show. A blast of ethnic colors, choreography, cants, beats and movements.
- Sister of Congressman smuggled us from the festival proceedings to her house. Served grand lunch. Strong coffee canceled the hang over.
- Artisanal hopscotch. Brass artisan demonstrated antiquated process. Displayed local ingenuity. Felt bad for his living conditions despite his heroic struggles to eke out a decent living.
- Met a living artist. The last of the few authentic T'Nalak weavers. A woman whose creases can fill the pages of a novel yet remained with quiet dignity and detachment. The women in the design mission contingent went crazy buying rolls of fabric she's woven. Her face still haunts me. Regal and sad, submitting to the ravages of old age, yielding to the histories of poverty yet triumphant in its gift of skill and artistry.
- Women went crazy part 2 in the center where crafts are displayed and sold.
- Dinner with the governor. Instant presentation. Very promising development discussed.
- Festival street party. Strong beer. Danced with kids. The four of us getting wasted, guzzling alcohol, flailing hands like wild spasms, not giving a flying fig about the lack of dancing skills.
- Ambled back to the hotel drunk, slurring words, negotiated the grand staircase up to the third floor, not tripping or tumbling down. A triumph of motor skills.
- Threw myself to bed and passed out.


DAY 03

- Drifted in and out of sleep. Tried to ignore phone alarm. Tried to think that if I ignored the day it will go away. It didn't. Bastard.
- Quick shower. Frantic packing. Gone to the lobby to check out. Hung over but managed to smile to the counter clerks and the rest of the group seated calmly on the lobby.
- Breakfast at the Congressman's house. The local sausage wiped out tiredness and sluggishness. Strong coffee, is and will always be, my best friend. My stomach automatically disagreed by instantly producing acid. Ignored and had a second cup.
- Travel to the pineapple plantation headquarters for lunch. Calming, rolling, sweeping hills of pineapples. Pineapples as far as your eyes can see. Passed proud pine trees. A gold course. Rows of american type bungalows. Quick lunch of fern salad, raw tomatoes and dried anchovies.
- Rushed to another district for a quick meeting. Sealed the deal. Feeling buoyant from the progress. Feeling much lighter. Dozed off.
- Airport frenzy. Exchanged hugs and kisses with the hosts.
- Unexpected gusts of wind. Flight delayed. Path leading to the plane flooded. Unzipped boots, rolled up jeans. Boarded the plane barefoot. The cold rainwater sent shiver up the legs.
- Dozed off.
- Landed.
- Friend who had vertigo whisked three of us to an authentic Burmese dinner at her home. Noodle dish. So rich. Explosion of flavor. Feeling less mortal after finishing it.
- Home. Downy white sheets. Sleep racked by unremembered dream.


- An aftertaste of dread upon waking up.

The Dimsum Chronicles - Prologue

Hong Kong, you have changed.

That is a big fat understatement so let me rephrase.

Hong Kong, you unabashed mecca of shameless consumerism, I am both disenchanted and enthralled!

I must have hoarded and gargled on the naivete cocktail because of my stupid assumptions that a decade will not lend significant dents on your topography and personality. Familiar pockets of neat little discoveries are now gone. Alleys of cheap beers and exotic souvenirs are but faint wisps, landmark ghosts, and in their places now stand the proud winking temples of global greed, seducing, pouting, cajoling the impressionable into mindless consumption.

The grit is still there, no doubt, but I am a perverse optimist in my belief that chance encounters with fascinating strangers are the most welcome outcome, and, I suspect, the very core of many expectations on why people can't sit in one spot two years in a row without getting butt sores or yield to the inescapable famine for adventure.

Yet, my naive assumptions notwithstanding, my three days in your dizzying labyrinth of unapologetic sleekness, is one of the brightest spots in a dreary blur of deadlines that has so overtaken most of my recent days, fogs spilling into midnights, swallowing new dawns, that I have totally forgotten that all it takes is to pop a bottle of beer with a friend and unlock a stream of refreshing conversations and inconvertible truths.

I am exhausted today. I had to hit the ground running when I got back. Yet some stories cannot be abandoned or contained.

They swell from the recesses of memories into proper rivers.


-

Speaking In Spheres

In the immediate future I shall learn how to make films and I'll write one with conversations revolving  entirely around this piece:

Looping x Three Tracks

Wait
Send your dreams
Where nobody hides
Give your tears
To the tide
No time
No time
There's no end
There is no goodbye
Disappear
With the night
No time
No time
No time
No time
No time

Light Test Dummy

An alternate career as light test dummy. Very hard work especially if you've been up till three in the morning four nights/days in a row. But someone has to do it. Caffeine made this snap looked vaguely human :)))