When worlds collide

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
~Rumi

Truth tell, anywhere is a life, once there is love...

Is this the universe, lying across the knees of one who mourns? Things dying...things new-born. There will be a story of a world held in a walnut shell, cracked open by love's finger and thumb. There will be a story of a planet small as a ball, and a child threw it, or a dog ran away with it, and dropped it on the floor of the Universe, where it swelled into a world.


How we think about our world... not just this one but the many worlds that live within us. What we love, we keep alive or else we die not knowing what we've lost. Everything has a lifespan... If only we could see the beginning and the end, we would treasure the time in-between even more. And at the designated time, we walk away and there would be no need to turn back. The flowers on my lime plant bloomed and fell away, each leaving behind a tiny green dot which, with a little blessing will grow into a whole new world. There are kittens playing on the roof, kittens being themselves wholeheartedly, in the present moment, open to whatever happens. And there is a woman who happens to comes by in the night to feed them. A new world opens...

A quantum universe - neither random or determined.
A universe of potentialities, waiting for an intervention
to affect the outcome. Love is an intervention.
Why do we not choose it?

~Jeanette Winterson
;)

Bird-wings

"...Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding...

...the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings."

"... Some nights stay up till dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into light..."

"...You knock at the door of reality,
shake your thought-wings, loosen
your shoulders,
and open."

~Rumi

The cycles never stop turning, do they?
But stop, and they stop.

;)

Lives no. 7 to 9 of a Catmasutra cat!

Rule #7. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality. Only a few things in life really belong to you. These are the things you can never find or buy from anywhere else!

Rule #8. Be gentle with the earth.

It's part of us and everything else in it.

Rule #9. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before. Find different things, see different things, feel different things. If you haven't notice, the problem with the middle of life is "if".

Rules in bold are quotes from the Dalai lama

See photo Journal - 9 lives in Singapura!

;)

Lives no. 3 to 6 of a Catmasutra cat!

Nine lives of a cat!
Nine Rules to Rule Them All...

Rule #4. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values. Halo never compromises on sleep. Perhaps we shouldn't too...

Rule #5. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. Given that the human heart, mind, and soul can distinguish an infinite amount of emotional, psychological, and moral shadings, from the blackest of black to the whitest of white... yes - silence may just be the best answer.

Rule #6. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. If you really want it, you'll have it. Maybe, for most of our life, we just don't want anything hard enough.

:)

Lives no. 1 to 3 of a Catmasutra cat!

Nine lives of a cat!
Nine Rules to Rule Them All...

Rule #1. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. It makes you more focused and determined to find an alternative route. Either that or learn hypnosis...

Rule #2 : Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

In every system, there are always unexplored spaces, another angle that you can make yours. Remember Spoon Boy, "Do not try and bend the spoon (system). That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself...".

Rule #3: Spend some time alone every day.

They say time is the fire we burn, or perhaps they are memories that we burn to stay alive. "Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record..." -Memento. Change your interpretation, change your life?

to be continued...

;)

Kids of the temple

The temples are like labyrinths. I don't remember their names but they're like physical manifestation of the passage ways inside your mind. There are entrances and exits, one path leading to another. The color of the rocks and the texture of the temple landscape while you're in them is really fascinating. Each temple seems the same but they are different. They look like they're part of nature (perhaps they have been around for so long that they are), and yet they are man-made.

There are not as many kids around now as a friend (who has been there before and acts as our resident tour guide) suggests. And of course, if you wanna take photos of them they would ask for "one dollar". The landscape is changing rapidly. Roads are being built; Grand hotels are appearing everywhere; I think the innocence that my friend saw a few years ago are rapidly losing its grip to syndication and commercialization. Everything, it seems, has its price.

Angkor Wat

"We have rooms in ourselves. Most of them we have not visited yet....From time to time we can find the passage. We find strange things...old phonographs, pictures, books...they belong to us, but it is the first time we have found them.” - Haruki Murakami.

We collect things when we travel. It let us get out of ourselves for a while...

Angkor Wat. I wanted it to rain. For the three days it didn't. On the fourth, when I decided to return to the hotel as opposed to visiting Angkor Wat again, it poured like crazy. The dark clouds swam across and engulfed the entire landscape. It has been nothing but hot and humid. It's strange when it rains. It changes things... reflections become vivid and the scene changes right before your eyes. Here, the kids came out to play... Some walked nonchalantly letting themselves soaked to the skin. Others were running and laughing. A kid and a young lady continued strolling with their push cart of pirated books. The ice man continued to saw at the ice blocks in the rain. Women on scooters continued riding. When was the last time you walked in the rain? I mean really walk? Not running to escape from the rain but walking to enjoy it?

Shop House

Always liked shop houses! The dream is to be able to have a studio gallery/cafe one day.... called what else - "catmasutra"!

Just the three of us on that rainy day...

It rained heavily that day. I ran all around with my camera. From above, I saw the three of us standing steadfastly in the rain. The flowers were all beaten down... but it was a beautiful day.

In the mood...

I was walking back to my bike parked in the opposite alley when "Yumeji's Theme" song began playing in my head. I stood and watched the scene for a while...

Photos from the past

Been a while since I ran about taking photos around this island of ours (probably since my last collective exhibition - "non-collectibles"). This was taken in October 2005 in a lane off Mohammed Sultan Road, where a row of shophouses seem destined to meet its end. I'm not sure why, but the colours, its demeanour and probably its finite form seem to tease "Destiny" to take its final stab. need to go back now and take a look at the shape of destiny. Hopefully it has been restored somehow. Been feeling restless creatively. All the talk about making our nation an Arts Hub. Hahah.. All these notions about hubs seem to be a joke. Somehow the powers that be have no idea what they're talking about. Years of reading the Press and growing up here probably did something to our wire frame. Just this big lethargy in the air. . . Really need to do something to clear the air...