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...

;)

Raining cats and dogs

Caught this view yesterday evening. Dark clouds were blowing in from the left and these were the last rays of light before night took over. These fighter planes were on their way home probably after dropping their bombs on some unfortunate passer-by who would then buy lottery and curse a second time when the expected "luck-exchange" didn't materialize. Well, one thing was for sure - weather exchange - raining cats and dogs in the middle of the night.

Haha what a strange phrase actually, given that only small creatures like frogs and fish occasionally get scooped skywards in freak weather and dumped somewhere else. A phrase like raining frogs and fish seems more appropriate although I don't think we'll experience such a phenomenon over here. Well, my favorite origin of the phrase would probably be witches taking the form of cats and riding the winds and obviously forgetting their umbrellas (my designer will go 'Ella' here), got beaten down by the rain. And dogs being attendants to the god of storms, Odin sometimes lose their scent and find themselves stranded on the streets. So treat strays with respect and kindness! What goes around comes around!

One thing in exchange for another. Life is always a duality of sorts. Yin and yang, good and evil, black or white. And everything it seems, has its price. It's only a matter of how much we are willing to pay for it - that's the exchange rate. I have this story in my head that's been there so long I'm sure it has given up on me! The premise is about a person who laments that his life is not worth living. He asks for a special charm to change his life but receives a 'non-returnable' gift from a fortune teller. The gift is an ordinary white envelope nicely framed in glass. Inside the envelope is a letter that states his exact time and death. While he sits on his chair and contemplates the framed letter, the exchange rate is fluctuating day to day according to which way his heart beats...Haha The choices are simple yet they are difficult. If he wants to find out, all he has to do is take the letter out. Hahaha Will that change a person's life? I wonder... but its sure makes a good story!

I remembered the story in my head when I read Murakami's "Birthday Girl". A twenty year old girl working as a part-time waitress couldn't get the day off on her birthday as her replacement has taken ill. As it happens, the manager who brings dinner to the owner on the sixth floor every day without fail, has also unexpectedly taken ill. The birthday girl is tasked to perform this duty and the owner, recognizing the special quality of this chance encounter, grants her a wish. The owner was in turn surprised by the girl's wish, as it was not about wanting more beauty, money, etc. Twenty years later, she was telling her friend what happened and asks what he would wish for if it had been him.

'I can't think of anything,' I confessed. 'I'm too far away now from my twentieth birthday.'
'You really can't think of anything?'
I nodded.
'Not one thing?'
'Not one thing.'
She looked into my eyes again - straight in - and said, 'That's because you've already made your wish.'

Haha And we never get to hear of what the birthday girl wished for... Perhaps, that's the special quality of this story!

A recipe for a cake...

"Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with." -Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.

"Time weighs you down like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there - to the edge of the world. "- Haruki Murakami

Are we what we believe? We are all made differently. We have our own poisons and of course, what doesn't kill us make us stronger haha. We concoct powerful poisons for ourselves - that's the most amazing thing - and it's either we become addicted to them or we find ways to get better. Whether it's nature or nurture - it really doesn't matter. What matters is that we can never live somebody else's life, and that we know this to be true. Any sort of comparison then become superfluous, and we can begin seriously to live the life that we know is meant for us.

Two

"Two" by paul of paulMysh painted 2003...

There was a very old black man, a hotel employee, who would walk across the courtyard each day with almost painful slowness to water the plants and inspect the fish...
'Hello,' I said.
'Suh,' said the old man.
I thought about asking him not to call me sir, but I couldn't think of a way to put it that might not cause offence. 'Nice fish'.
He nodded and grinned. 'Ornamental carp. Brought here all the way from China.'
We watched them swim around the little pool.
'I wonder if they get bored...'
He shook his head. 'My grandson, he's an ichthyologist, you know what that is?'
'Studies fishes.'
'Uh-huh. He says they only got a memory that's like thirty seconds long. So they swim around the pool, it's always a surprise to them, going "I never been here before." They meet another fish they known for a hundred years, they say, 'Who are you, stranger?"' - Neil Gaiman, The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories, Smoke and Mirrors .

We can see the same person everyday and still haven't a clue who he or she is....

;)

Catmasutra smile!

There's something about Nara Yoshitomo's paintings and Haruki Murakami books that got me hooked. Maybe it's that oddness, the feeling of not really belonging anywhere and that nothing is at all what it seems... If you dig deeper, walk between the raindrops, you can find something else in between. Only you can find what's hidden from you but first, you must start looking. There's this flow of energy that vibrates in between, that blurs the line between reality and myth, between the power of everyday and the power of imagination. Catmasutra paintings are part of this in-between world. The irrepressible wide grin of the cats is representative of that energy. haha it's a good place to be in when everyday realities take a toll on us... Moral of the story, when you have a running nose or a headache from everyday life - take a break, read a good book, be like the catmasutra cats - there's always a smile for everything!

Catmasutra - Mirror mirror on the wall...

Mirrors are wonderful things. They appear to tell the truth, to reflect life back out at us; but a mirror set correctly and it will lie so convincingly you'll believe that something has vanished into thin air... Angle it right and a mirror becomes a magic encasement; it can show you anything you can imagine and maybe a few things you can't... - Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors

In-between time

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I've just bought the latest book by Haruki Murakami. I think I've read all of his fiction and stories. It started out with "Kafka on the Shore", and i've just finished "Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World". If you always felt that you're outside of the system and trying to create your own world in-between time, then I'm sure you would love Murakami's books... "In-between" time -haha, I call it that because it's so apt. It is the time that you give yourself between work and the hundreds of other activities you think you have to do (in order to survive and retire comfortably to travel the world and so on and so forth kind of precept). And this often neglected "in-between" time disappears just as easily as the sun rises and sets. Yet, it is this in-between time that makes my heart skip, see, hear and feel things differently - the real pulse of life. Sometimes you have to tread lightly so as not wake anything up from its deep slumber; sometimes you just wanna scream and shout and wake everything up. So be careful what you wish for; Here you can hear your dreams more clearly than anywhere else...

paulMysh - Sleep!

There's this very interesting story by Haruki Murakami about a housewife who suddenly discovers that she didn't have to sleep. She could stay up all night without feeling the least tired, but instead feel more alive and energetic. The implication of this is that she suddenly gains an extra "day" everyday, time that really belongs to her... think about it and see if you would prefer such a situation... haha "Sleep", one of my earlier paintings and it was actually the first painting I sold! I need sleep man!