[ s e e n + h e a r d ] Dreams & Reality

This year will probably go down in my personal history as the “Museum Year”.  I dropped by SAM to see the TransCool Tokyo Exhibit in January, June saw me visiting the ArtScience Museum for some Dali goodness, was fortunate enough to go for the opening ceremony of the ABBAS Photo Exhibit last July, and went for the Night Lights Festival in September!

After my stint volunteering at the Singapore Writers Festival on Wednesday at SMU, I crossed the road over to the National Museum. They were having an Open House because it was Deepavali. Even if I was tired that my knees were literally jell-o, I just couldn’t pass up the chance to see the Dreams & Reality Exhibit.

At the National Museum of Singapore website the exhibit is described as:

“From the collection of the world renowned Musée d’Orsay, over 140 Salon, Realists, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists paintings, photographs and drawings from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century will specially tour to Singapore this year. Titled Dreams and Reality: Masterpieces of Painting, Drawing and Photography from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the exhibition explores the reaction of man towards modernity at the turn of the century from 1848 to 1912. The changing social and industrial landscapes of Paris in early modernity forced artists and photographers to rethink their approach to the visual world around them. Their varied responses generated new ways of depicting reality and a proliferation of styles.”

Since it was an Open House, the queue to this exhibit was reasonably long, I waited in line for almost twenty-minutes. I didn’t manage to grab myself one of those headset thingamajigs that would provide audio commentary on the pieces though as I was having tunnel vision and becoming giddy with excitement.

I liked the blend of mythology and “real life”. I once again have failed to procure myself a decent camera, so all the pictures you see here on this post was taken by my Samsung Galaxy SII phone, and it barely had twenty percent of battery power left at that time so I only managed to take a few pictures. Anyway, onward to the paintings!

[ p o e m ] The Confession of an Apricot ~ Carl Adamshick

I love incorrectly.

There is a solemnity in hands,
the way a palm will curve in
accordance to a contour of skin,
the way it will release a story.

This should be the pilgrimage.
The touching of a source.
This is what sanctifies.

This pleading. This mercy.
I want to be a pilgrim to everyone,
close to the inaccuracies, the astringent
dislikes, the wayward peace, the private
words. I want to be close to the telling.
I want to feel everyone whisper.

After the blossoming I hang.
The encyclical that has come
through the branches
instructs us to root, to become
the design encapsulated within.

Flesh helping stone turn tree.

I do not want to hold life
at my extremities, see it prepare
itself for my own perpetuation.
I want to touch and be touched
by things similar in this world.

I want to know a few secular days
of perfection. Late in this one great season
the diffused morning light
hides the horizon of sea. Everything
the color of slate, a soft tablet
to press a philosophy to.

[ 1 0 0 * s o n g s ] International Love Song – 검정치마

oh my eyelids are heavy
but my heart’s filled with bright lights
sleep all day to see you
you’ll be in my arms tonight

I really really wanna be with you
I’m so very lonely without you
I can hardly breathe when you are away
without you I might sleep away all day

I admit my interest was piqued because of the name “The Black Skirts” when it is obvious that The Black Skirts is only made up of one member – Bryan Cho, and it doesn’t look like he wears black skirts to me . But I found the songs from the album, Don’t You Worry Baby, I’m Only Swimming an easy listen to the ears, reminiscent of my obsession with Death Cab for Cutie or She & Him (yes, I want to be related to Ben Gibbard or Zooey Deschanel) .

The honest simplicity of its lyrics and the languishing feeling that the singing gives me is enough for me to attach myself to it. This describes the stage of loving where nothing else matters except the object of your affection. Like time is in a standstill and you have lost all interest in everything  but your lover.

I tend to listen to this song when I have lazy afternoons to myself, especially lazy afternoons when I am at home and it’s lightly drizzling outside. Sinking myself into my favorite novel.

I hope this week has been good to everyone!

[ i n s p i r e d ] Love Song for Lucinda

Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.

Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.

Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.

- Langston Hughes

[ r e f l e c t i o n ] A Simple Wish

from laineylamonto

Yes, this blog has been awfully quiet lately. There have been so many things that have happened – some enjoyable while some are just so frustrating. I was watching the news yesterday and they said that we have 62 more days till Christmas, that means today we have 68 more days until 2012. Roughly two months and a week till the new year. That’s quite fast, don’t you think so?

This year has been filled with ups and downs, but I have to admit the DOWNs  were so intense that it has clouded the memories of my UPs. I have been sicker a lot of times this year, the one thing that really frustrates me a lot is how my physical condition restrains me from doing what I want to do. And there area lot of things I want to do.

Last Friday, despite the rain I was able to help out at the opening ceremony of the Singapore Writers Festival. It was a good experience for me, and I would have attended more sessions if I weren’t injured. Tomorrow is Deepavali, and I will be fully booked as a room manager at one of the seminar rooms at SMU. I will have to get some sleep tonight to be fit for duty.

But most of all it’s been ages since I did some crafting let alone touched my supplies. I am thankful that if I were not in charge of making cards for my friends’ birthdays I would totally be not doing anything creative.

So here is my year-end list of things to do:

1. Attend a showcase by one of my favorite bands

2. Take a hike through MacRitchie Reservoir, but before that;

3. Buy running shoes

4. Finish a collage

5. Finish a roll of film from Siobhan

6. Release a zine (I am excited for this)

7. Clear of my letter back log

and after all of this, I can relax and sleep to my heart’s content! I hope that I will finish this year with a  great big BANG! Having no regrets about what happens.

[ r e f l e c t i o n ] Lessons From A Fall

If you follow me on Twitter you would have known that last week I tweeted a lot about me falling off a bus. I kept thinking about it, replaying the incident over and over again in my mind, and here’s what I learned from falling.

ONE: I am stronger than I think.

Eight years ago, I went through rigorous physical training as part of a special group of students in my school. One of the things that we were commanded (not taught) to do was how to “drop like a log”. As the phrase suggests we were supposed to drop on the floor from a standing position upon an officer’s command. The first few times I attempted to do this move, I was scared that I would break my wrists or fall flat on my face (and possibly crush my already flat nose). But because I had to do it everyday for several times in two months, I had become pretty adept at falling. When I fell last week, even if I wasn’t aware of what was going on, my body was. I think there’s such a thing as muscle memory, as my head turned slightly to the side, my knees bent, my arms stretched and out and my palms hit the grass. Yes, in the process ezlink cardholder and my phone flew out on to the grass, but because my palms were free, my wrists were not broken and my face was undamaged. Even if I probably forgot the exercises we did, or my memories of those two months were hazy, my body automatically responded because of the training. In spite of my dwindling self-esteem, the way I handled falling made me realize that even if I do fall and fail whether physically or through decisions I have made, there is something inside of me that is more than capable of dealing with falling.

TWO: The world still has a few good people left.

When I fell, I heard somebody behind me scream, and I felt other people walking away from me, but the hand that stretched out to help me belonged to a lady’s who was already a few feet away from the bus stop. Suddenly I found myself at the receiving end of help and my first thought was, “Thank God I helped those people who I saw fall before”, I’m a firm believer that what you sow you will indeed reap. But most of all, even if it’s only that ONE person who held out her hand, at least it’s enough to convince me that there are people in this city are still capable of compassion to a stranger.

THREE: Life always moves on.

Thinking over the falling incident, even in my moment of pain, the world didn’t stop for the rest of the people. Now I’m not saying that everyone should’ve dropped what they were doing to attend to me, but more of that I was worried that I just humiliated myself in front of a lot of people. Thankfully, everyone was in a state of continuous motion, the feeling of shame slid from my shoulders. Whenever something embarrassing happens to me, I always think of what other people will think or say, but last week’s incident taught me that others are too preoccupied with their own problems or own circumstances to remember something as trivial as my fall. I think it’s the same when I royally mess up, the guilt and the shame would stay with me while other people would probably have forgotten it. So from now on, I’ll try not to be hard on myself.

…and probably look not just twice but thrice where I step!

[ b o o k ] The Housekeeper and the Professor

Title: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Author: Yoko Ogawa

Comments:

“My memory lasts only eighty minutes.”

This is the most promintent scrap of paper among those pinned to the professor’s suit by binder clips (Post-its were not the rage in those days). This novel explores the special relationship between a housekeeper, her 10-year old son nicknamed Root and the Math professor she works for. There are a lot of elements that I liked about this book.

1. THE MATH: Ogawa includes real Math problems in the novel. Concepts like prime numbers, amicable numbers, deficient and abundant numbers are mentioned in the novel. She also included Euler’s Formula, Artin’s Conjecture, and Fermat’s Last Theorem. It was very interesting how she incorporated Math with ease into the story without inducing sleep from me .

2. THE CHARACTERS: There are some plot-driven novels and there are stories where the characters are the only reason to keep turning the page. All of the major characters are well-developed. From the Math professor whose memory doesn’t go beyond 1975, the single mother Housekeeper who has gone through a lot and even her son. They are believeable characters. I liked how the Professor’s character was so developed. Like how he answers difficult Math problems from Math journals and winning the prize money for most of them. And his talents are awesome too, like how he can find the first sigh of the evening star in the afternoon or how he can instantly revers the syllables in a phrase and repeat them backward, how he devised the perfect phrase for Root’s homework, “I prefer Pi”.

3. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHARACTERS: If this was a drama, they would call it chemistry, the way the characters grow closer to each other is so sweet, it’s in the mundane things, the ordinary ways that they form a bond, that even the loss of memory can’t break. How the Professor asks the Housekeeper every monrning her shoe size because he doesn’t remember her, and he talks about Math whenever he feels unsure on what to do. And how he connects seeming random numbers like the Housekeeper’s birthday and his watch. When the Housekeeper cooks for the Professor she tries to sneak in carrots or camouflage them so that the Professor will eat it. The time that she convinced the Professor to get a haircut. How both the Housekeeper and Root agreed not to upset the Professor by not saying anything about current events, respecting his memory loss. The most striking thing is the relationship between the aging Professor and Root – the Professor gave him the nickname Root because the flat top of his head resembles the square root. When Root comes to the Professor’s house he takes of his hat at the door and points to the note on the Professor’s suit where he drew the Housekeeper and “her son, Root ” and then the Professor will rub Root’s head.Their love for baseball especially the Hanshin Tigers. The time that Root cut his hand and the Professor hoisted him on his back and carried him all the way to the clinic despite his own apprehension at being out in public. The Professor helping Root with his homework while the Housekeeper cooks dinner. I like those rituals they had.

4. THE EVENTS THAT PUSHED THE STORY FORWARD: Eventhough the Professor hated crowds he still went with them to a baseball game, his crush on the girl selling food and drinks was just adorable. The way he protected Root from the ball, how he blabbed about Math and Baseball even though no one was really listening to him. The last time they were together when they celebrated the Professor taking first prize again for solving a math problem and Root’s eleventh birthday. The agony that the Housekeeper and Root went through to find the perfect Enatsu baseball card to add to the Professor’s collection. And the Professor remembering the date and giving Root a Little League certified baseball glove. How the Professor stood up for Root when his sister-in-law accused them of going after his money.

This is a heartwarming, beautiful story, the pace is just right and the characters are lovable. It shows us that family doesn’t really mean that you have to be related by blood, and also the power of human bonds despite of illness.