2/29/08

Free Wallpaper and 20% off Catmasutra 4 prints!

*Prices will revert back on March 16th.
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Catmasutra 4's Sniffing the Kenzo Flower Wallpaper!

Free wallpaper: 1280 x 1024 | 1280 x 800


“It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal...
one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.”
Theophile Gautier

;)

2/26/08

No Country for Old Men

"Like death itself, Anton operates without discrimination, without the guidance of reason and with the force of inevitability. The equation is hauntingly simple. In order to illustrate the point with clarity, Anton offers one of his potential victims mercy with the flip of a coin; In Anton’s universe, one which we inevitably share, life boils down to chance, to making life and death choices regardless of whether we’re ready to stare death in the face or not." - Read Tom Hall's review.



If there is a personification of Death in recent cinema, then it must be Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old men. It is a strange movie (as it doesn't fit with what we're used to especially the ending) but it is intimate in its treatment of life, death, fate and human nature.


There are many things in this world and they mostly involve one kind of addiction or another. It is the way of our modern society. We use our addictions to deny our own insecurities (it can be anything from loneliness to boredom to unfulfilled desires), and everything "negative" becomes a catastrophe. We don't want to face them so we keep running away, always needing to keep pace with everything else, to earn more money, to get the latest gadgets, just to cover up our own little stories - that we need that something else - just to be happy. Truth is, our life will never be how we would like it to be. If we're not happy now, we can never be happy later.

There are two great disappointments in life.
Not getting what you want and getting it.

~Sir George Bernard Shaw

Llewelyn Moss and the Pandora's Box

Anton and the satchel of money are inextricably linked. It is a Pandora's box, the apple in the Garden of Eden, it is blood money from a drug deal gone bad. If you find a bag that contains two million dollars in unmarked bills, what would you do? It promises to make your dreams come true (much like the lottery but with less dramatic side effects), but Death never makes any promises. He comes as and when he wishes, and no matter how far Llewelyn Moss ran with the money, or how much he believe he could make it, his life was stretching thinner and thinner. Haha Death and his satchel of money. Throw the bait and they will bite...

There are many things in this world; there is beauty and happiness and there is the present. The only time to be happy is in the present. That is the age of happiness, the time when children are children, fully in the present (Haha sometimes you wonder if children are growing up a little too fast these days). And of course, we are all addicted to speed nowadays. Things just get faster and faster and we never really have any time to stay still. If we stop for a moment, we can feel the constant pull of our thoughts and reactions that takes us towards what we fear and what we crave. Both are just different faces on the same coin. Both are dissatisfactions with little or no bearing on the present...

;)

2/22/08

Of Angels and Demons


I've just started on the book, "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and some of the lines are already tickling my funny bone.... Of the demon Crowley, "Oh he did his best to make their short lives miserable because it was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought of themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. " Wahhahahaa That is so humankind, from A to Z, it seems, we really have a talent to always want more, to complicate our lives. What if everything just stop. Nothing new to distract us, just what we already have now. Will we see things differently? Sometimes I don't think we need any more new inventions or innovations (reminds me of the innovation IBM ads) .



Everybody is trying to come up with something new, not that we really need anything new. They just create new needs and of course, more ads to convince us that we need them, so that the world can go round - the rich gets richer, and correspondingly the poor gets poorer. Do you really need to be entertained via your mobile phone? Do we need to be so distracted all the time?

It is strange, this life. We are born to innocence, but live as if it is our duty to taint it. Childhood buffers us with enough innocence, and tries to shine with enough light so that we can find our way back again. It is strange that we spend half of our adult life collecting ghosts and conjuring demons, and the other half trying to get rid of them. At the end, we still have to let go of everything. Haha So kudos to Bill Gates who decided to devote more time to his foundation. Rather that than a third-generation Nano.

It is difficult when we feel we do not have enough. We don't feel rich enough to give. And it's never enough. Perhaps, the social worker should have their salary pegged to the private sector, in terms of their value to society. Then again, perhaps politicians should not not have that luxury...


;)

2/18/08

Catmasutra - In-between Love


"In-between Love" refers to the tick-tock of whisperings behind love's closed doors, all the things we thought was love, all the things we didn't know about love, and all the things we mistook for love. It's a tick-tock of butterflies, and round and round it goes, eternal and ever-changing. We take off on different flight patterns and go to battlefields, but ultimately we cannot own love, we can only give it away...

“There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”


“I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy me and be destroyed by me.”

Quotes by Jeanette Winterson



;)

2/11/08

Catmasutra- Garden of Eden - Painting Exhibition


CATMASUTRA ~ The Garden of Eden
Online gallery :

Opening Reception:
15 February 7pm
@ café domus
124 Owen Road

(off Race Course Road in Little India)
http://www.yebber.com/review/cafe-domus/

Mon-Thurs: 7pm to 12 Mn
Fri, Sat, Eve of Public Holiday:
7pm to 3am
Sun & Weekday Public Holiday: Closed

Paintings will be displayed till 24 February 2008


The garden, as a symbol, has accumulated many meanings in its journey through the ages. If we dig deep enough, we may discover a natural affinity towards a garden and what it essentially means. It is a reflection of nature, albeit a tame and protected version. As only nature knows how, it soothes the soul and perhaps reminds us of a lost paradise, and in particular, the garden in Eden that we have been cast out of! Perhaps it's about us dreaming to return to the innocence of childhood, away from responsibilities and anxieties of modern life, to an eternal blissful present where everything is provided for, with no sense of time, birth, or death. And this idea of eternal present seems to suit the cat just perfectly, and hence, Catmasutra - The Garden of Eden!


This collection showcases the Catmasutra cat as an embodiment of innocence basking in the dreamy ambience of flowers, butterflies, water snakes, enchanted apples and mysterious cat women (The 'Eve's). There is an innocence of time and space that is loosely woven together with symbolic objects to capture the prime center out of which we become aware of our sensibilities. The paintings move us quizzically from Eve as a girl to a woman, the physicality of the cat to the different 'Eve's, the water snakes as temptations ("Love and Other Temptations" inspired by Klimt's Water Snakes), the "Age of Happiness" paired with poppy flowers, innocent desire with sunflowers ("Summer of Desire"), the tick-tock of whisperings in "In-between love" or an enchanted butterfly offering the much maligned apple in the "Apple of my Eye".

2/5/08

Catmasutra- Garden of Eden


14 - 24 Feb 2008
@ café domus, 124 Owen Road

Opening on Valentine's Day, Catmasutra presents Garden of Eden, an exhibition of new works that will leave traces of love, romance, desire, fantasy and temptation in your heart! Garden of Eden beckons us to explore more intimately the different stories we write ourselves in, the different seasons we experience in our lives, from spring to summer, autumn to winter. Life is never as serious as it should be - so take a bite, let yourself fall, indulge, find your favorite piece and say, "Be Mine!" Haha None better than the season of love to own a Catmasutra art piece!

Summer of Desire
“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”~James Dent

"Summer of Desire" is the perfect summer day, where spoilers come as disguises for something better. Haha Can you remember what its like? The freedom that comes as a great big open space, the wind on your face, the smell of freshly cut grass, the open sky with its entourage of puffy cotton balls floating in the sky? And sometimes, you just wonder how simple everything is. The lawn mower is out of order, but everything else is just as they should be!

"...the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone - but never hustled” - Henry Brooks Adams.

Garden of Eden
"Images are the food of the soul. The reason to paint is to make tasty images for our souls to savor... The ever inexplicable, unresolvable mystery of the image is the source of magic and power in art... Art is not just an exercise in semantics or a tool of social criticism. It is a way to commune with mystery."~Marion Peck


Find out more @


;)

2/1/08

Unfinished stories... Masks

Found some stuff that was from long ago, unfinished stories that i wrote. It's sometimes strange to read your own work. Sometimes it feels so foreign, like you have left yourself for another self, unwittingly letting time come in between...

m a s k s
________________

Now, here -
we have known eternity
through scented air
and the feel of your lips
on the nape of my neck,
whisper in my ears,
our worlds be buried
to release its splendour.



This is a city surrounded by concrete blocks and clean streets. There are signs that reassure you, equip you with the tools of navigation. Miss your way, which is easy to do, and you may find yourself living the same life over and over again in exactly the same way as you begin it. Find your way, and you may meet a familiar stranger at your doorway. She will tell you your fortune if you choose to hear. But this is a city of predictability, finding is often mistaken for losing and losing for winning.

What does it feel like to be travelling through space, if space is not ‘empty’ but a semi-solid celluloid dream? Riding a bike is like this, it is beautiful. You concentrate on the road as you need to, yet somebody else is projecting images in your head. It flashes in front of you - a different skyline, a different sun, different shadows, different faces, different emotions - as you move through something more than empty space. Without faith in this city of predictability, all things loses its clarity.

The dark is like space, never empty, but full of shadows, ghosts. You can touch the darkness, hold it in your hands. You can breathe it in and let it sink into you till it squeezes a tear or hardens into stone. It’ll touch you, blind you, drown you, and take you if you let it. And there is no darkness like space trapped within closed doors - doors that are closed but always open. And the dark is like that - you can open it like a door.


Maybe love is like a modern day ‘Holy Grail’. We grow up hearing about it, we watch it happen to others, we watch it on TV, we think it exists. We hope, we pray it comes to us and if it doesn’t- ? We pretend, turning the same page over and over again, hoping that the word will come alive but it stays in exactly the same way as we begin it. We are a lukewarm people, we are so starved for love that we will pretend for love. Maybe. Maybe not.

When you meet your familiar stranger, she will tell you your fortune. She removes her mask. An angel’s face. A devil’s smile. A broken shadow falls across her face. Is it possible? Is it possible that she’s the one? The one you make up in your mind, the one who will conspire with your mind to deceive your heart…the stranger who is as familiar to you as the one you see in the mirror? And she draws the card from the pack I use to cheat. She kisses me on my lips and offers me her hand. Am I to take it? Am I looking for love? Maybe, but I don’t know much about love, only that she draws the wild card from a pack that has no Jokers.

Is love the same as death? I used to think that death is the absence of self. That death is nothing more than losing one’s self completely and eternally. That the feeling is passing but pervasive like the last heartbeat. One breath, one thought, one beat and the air stops. The mind stops. The heart stops. Nothing means anything anymore. Just this merging with the darkness, - this complete formlessness.

Is love like that?
How would you want to die?
If I were to die, I would do it watching the sky.
I love the sky. It’s different every time you look at it.

It’s vast, massive, limitless, all encompassing, and it’s concave. It makes my heart spin; it makes me get up and dance, it changes but it always stays the same. From one corner of the earth to another, it’s the same sky. I need the sky. I need the sky to know that everything is still brand new and the same. I need the sky to carry me away.



;)