catmaSutra cat art gifts and collectibles

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Sara Lov - Fountain
animated by  Seonna Hong.

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Been raining crazy the past days... but then again, I do like the rain and its music. The sound of rain falling is  like a grand symphony, the chorus followed by the melody...the air cool and moist with birds chirping their little songs one after another. It's all seamless, one blending into another, the waves of thumping raindrops, a strong outpouring and then fades and softens. We take for granted the passing of each day but the rain makes us stop and we should stop for a while. Maybe rain is like music, our little music videos that allow us to swim in its melody... In the grand scheme of things, our time here is short; it's as if we're living on borrowed time.  Every thing fades and softens...

How I loved the rain-
Used to be
because it felt like
redemption
for things we did
and didn't do.

The comfort of rain-
because it seemed cold
but  it's warm within.

It tasted bitter-sweet,

 this hidden smile

this fateful tear

I still love the rain
but now only as change
from a sunny day..

A limited collection of selected  catmaSutra cat art collectibles are now available locally in Singapore. These cheeky catmaSutra cats are 100% charming and happy and they make purrfect gifts! Go take a peek and browse through the different designs  for tote bags, keepsake boxes, and tile coasters. Hurry as there's   only one of each design while stock lasts. They're for local purchases only and there will be a 10% discount if you purchase them directly ;)

Everything is soul and flowering...
~Rumi

;)

Standing the test of time

The greatest thing a human soul ever does
in this world is to see something
and tell what he saw in a plain way.
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one.
~John Ruskin

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Hundreds of thousands of impressions
from the invisible are wanting to come through you!

I get dizzy with the abundance. When life
is this dear, it means the source is pulling us.

Freshness comes from there. We're given the gift
of continuously dying and being resurrected.

catmaSutra cat art exhibition, From the Depths of My Lullaby:
Lotus Lullaby

He was an elderly fellow, tanned, sporting an earring, and carrying two bags, each sling across the shoulders. He walked with a limp towards us, but stopped half way as he spied a black and white cat in the furniture shop before the eatery. He made eye-contact with the cat and with his body gestures, which must be a language in itself to the cat, he strained to bend over, and putting his hand into one bag like a magician, he released a handful of dry colorful cat food pellets into a plastic bowl (seems like these two are already acquainted). Breaking into a little smile, he proceeded towards the eatery where I was eating my prawn noodle, and he started gesturing to the people in the eatery that he needed some money to feed himself. He went from table to table and met with the usual response. People averted their eyes and shook their heads. I've prepared a two dollar note and that would be my gift to him if he came by but he didn't. Randomly, he moved from table to table and before long, limped away...

I've "met" a few cats in my time (especially as i started when I was a kid), in some alley or by the road side. It is a language without words, an understanding of our inherent natures, almost. There are, of course, cats who are afraid and ran off the minute you catch their attention. One can only imagine how the fear got into them. Then, there are those who recognize the language, and like many similar instances, I find myself sitting on the pavement by the roadside stroking a purring stray cat. I would then run off to some 7-11 and buy a packet of cat food. That was my chance meeting with a cat, and by this chance, the cat was going to get a tasty meal. What is interesting is that some of these cats are already quite well-fed and it was there spending time with you simply because it wanted to.There was one black and white cat at Empress place that I remember quite fondly as it loves to sit on the lap... It's hard to leave them once you made the connection.

Our street cats

I have no name for what

purrs so perfectly

from out of our urban wild...

The elderly man was begging for food
and he feeds a stray on the street.

There is an understanding of
what it's like to be on your own,

or what it's like to be alone,

or what it's like to be poor and old

Take your pick

the one that purrs on the street

purrs straight into

the poor little heart.

And only the ones with

the heart can see.

My colleague and I were walking back from lunch one day when we almost bump into an old lady. She was trying to sell tissue packets to passers-by. We walked past her but turned around. We gave her $2 each and asked her to go have a good meal. We didn't need the tissue so we didn't take any. She was surprised and stood motionless for a while before saying her thank yous. That was our chance meeting with the old lady, and by this chance, she was going to at least get a decent meal.

Reason has no way to say

its love. Only love opens

that secret.

If you want

to be more alive, love

is the truest health.

~Rumi

;)

That ingredient of Life

"Someone said Brecht wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike... Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way." Andy Warhol commenting on social mechanization in 1963.

 Tomato-based catfish Soup

Makes me wonder how we are all the same and more interestingly how we are different. Seems like there is this special ingredient that is hidden in a capsule (so to speak) that is buried within us when we are born. Our goal perhaps is to find this capsule and unravel it before it dissolves away, or gets hidden by tons of other things that mean much less to us. Our body and our senses are very much the same. They are subjected to all kinds of distractions, temptations and naturally, an operating system that program us to be whatever nationality we are and all the associated quirks.

Adapted from Obedience School 101

 It's easy to see the special ingredient, it seems, if we are artists, musicians, or writers; whether we follow our 'calling' or give in to the 'programming sequence' is another question. Money, and security comes with the operating system especially if it's made in Singapore. It may be quite baffling when the special ingredient is not quite so apparent but it's there nevertheless. That's probably the main reason why we are different. Some people simply love watching TV above everything else (why not go into that industry one way or another), others may be gregarious in nature and the service industry may be a perfect match. Bottom line is, we have to consciously search for that buried capsule with our very own x-factor, and find a place in the world where we can fully utilize it, unravel it. That, I suspect, is part of the secret to happiness. When we are in our element, we can only get better.

No Parking on Rooftops

If we allow the operating system complete control, then inevitably, we'll get lost somewhere and we'll start to wonder where we're heading, and whether it's worth it. Many things that we seemingly need are not worth the trouble. Life can really be better with less, if what’s left is what you love.

;)

Time...

"No need to announce the future.
This now is it. This.
Your deepest need and desire
is satisfied by the moment's energy
here in your hand."
~Rumi

Time - a curious thing. Seems like it was from a dream... time as a stream where you can touch and take a swim in. Swimming backwards seems easier than forward, but each time it gets so shallow that you just stand up and walk out, realizing that you have just wasted your time. The future's like an open sea - it doesn't seem to have a point, nor does it need to have one. It's just that, the open sea. The present is the future. Slowing time down to a standstill... the ultimate bliss ;)

Love this video...
(Makes me think of time...)

Lifetime Spring/Summer 2010 from Trevor Fleming on Vimeo.

;)

Sunscreen

EVERYBODY'S FREE (TO WEAR SUNSCREEN) by BAZ LUHRMAN (edited)

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth;
oh never mind; you will not
understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.

Don’t worry about the future;
or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.

The real troubles in your life
are apt to be things that never crossed
your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday

Do one thing everyday that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts,
don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss Don’t waste your time on jealousy;
sometimes you’re ahead,
sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end,
it’s only with yourself.


Remember the compliments you receive,
forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters,
throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know
what you want to do with your life…
the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22
what they wanted to do with their lives,
some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees,
you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry,
maybe you won’t,
maybe you’ll have children,
maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40,
maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…

what ever you do,
don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either –
your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body,
use it every way you can…
don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it,
it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own...


Dance…
even if you have nowhere to do it
but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines,
they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.


Be nice to your siblings;
they are the best link to your past
and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,
but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle
because the older you get, the more you need the people
you knew when you were young.

Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise,
politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do
you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse;
but you never know when either one might run out.


Be careful whose advice you buy,
but, be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past
from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts
and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…
&
magic beans...

;)

Follow your bliss

Haven't written for a while. Am a real sucker for a balcony. It's a way to be and breathe. Don't really like watching TV, and let someone else project images into my head. We're such suckers for distraction, as if afraid of our own thoughts, we while ourselves away doing things we would never care to remember. Now, I'm in my little yard, 1.5m in length, 0.5 m in width, with a bottle of hoegaarden and some doritos. Angel, as usual, took first licks at the beer and the chips. Facing my lime plant, and half-chewed palm-like plant, watching the sky and our foreign talents playing cricket in the field across me. Used to write when it rains, half-wishing it would rain now.There's the litter of kittens who grew up on the roof next door. They've grown now but still trying to sneak beneath the fence.They're wondering why they're not able to squeeze through. And the territorial white male cat who have tried to establish territory in my yard has taken to a staring competition with Angel complete and their own version of karaoke; he has now decided to take me on leading me into a anxiety-filled dream with sinister overtones. Woke up next morning stoned. Sat on a blue Ikea plastic stool, back against the sun-bleached wall, watching the sky with eyes closed, soaking up the sun, and the chirping of birds. Thank god for a balcony...ten minutes and then it's time to leave for work...

The soul is always ambitious in its desire to know itself.

Go to a garden and just stand in it.
Recharge your inner batteries ;)

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
;)

Eyes-wide-opened!

Eyes-wide-opened. Life is so personal and yet impersonal. Remembering the movie, "Accuracy of Death", it is indeed a wonder how death in general is "nothing special", and yet to the individual, it means everything or everything else. If you look at our history as a human race, and simply by the number of wars we have fought, the death toll must be a staggering number. Yet it means almost nothing to the living. We may watch some really bad news over the telly, but as long as it doesn't really affect us, life goes on as usual. It's as if nothing changes. Young people become old people, new generations replace old ones. Nothing lasts - it is just another drop in the puddle, another wave in the coming and going of the tide. Nothing really matters. So how to live?

Death is a good way to learn how to live. That should be the first rule, because it takes away most of our problems. Faced with death, everything else seems trivial, and the seemingly little things that we take for granted become important - the simple beauty of life becomes apparant. This is our the spirituality regardless of religious inclinations. To understand our own true nature is the road towards spirituality, and for that, nature is the best teacher (personally it's the cat, the sky and currently a lime plant haha ;)! The second rule, for me, is the practice - that's one of the hardest thing to do as we're caught up in so many things. So take time to stop (and that includes playing your PSP when you have nothing to do, or fiddling with that i-touch). Visit with nature. Have faith that you will find yourself, and you will.


We all walk two paths. One is based on physical reality and the day-to-day. The day-to-day has a big hold on us. It grinds us down with the same old things, make us weary, impatient, and will leave us complaining and frittering our days away. It becomes important then to break that hold in whatever ways you can think of!

The other path is the inner journey (or the spiritual path), and that is always a great adventure. It'll take you to places you'll never dream of...

Collect catmaSutra zen-inspired cat art collectibles!

;)

Catmasutra Cloud 9 Journal!

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else,
and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes I wonder if time is linear at all? Everything arises and passes in cycles. Perhaps time is made up of layers, layers of good and bad, happy and sad, success and failure and when one peels away, the other appears. And so it goes... round and round , from cloud 9 to the fall. If only we can let go into this change, we will be able to trust in the greater cycles of life, that whatever it is, it is perfect in its good or bad. And for the latter, most of the time, it is only our illusions and inconvenience that are being threatened!

“It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.” ~ Donald Miller

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” ~ William Somerset Maugham

Cloud 9 journal - one for the road!
Haha I'm experimenting with cafePress!
Check it out at
www.cafepress.com/catmasutra

:)

Cleaning my glasses once in a blue moon...

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children of humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller

All our life, we're taught to chase after or buy security one way or another. That's the way to freedom - everything in our society tells us that is the reality. We don't have to think about it. It's like we're in auto-pilot mode or something, almost second nature. It's like wearing a dirty pair of glasses for so long that you begin to believe in that reality (I never clean my glasses and I only use them at night...Wahahahaha). So it happened (as it would once in a blue moon), I wiped my glasses with my T-shirt and put them on and for that moment, I realized how clear and crisp the night is! So think about your second nature for an instance - perhaps our second nature is not really us at all.. Our second nature is our karma, the stories that we keep repeating to ourselves that we believe them to be true. And we will keep doing the same things, and as a result keep getting the same things.

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” *

And so here we are again, finding a thousand aversions and resistance to the way things are. We always think about the future, how nice it would be if we could do this or that, or what if we couldn't do this or that. Our fears and cravings mingle and feed us, drive us to do battle with ourselves continuously. And there are just so many layers of ourselves that our first task must be to stop running, and find out who we really are. We are good and bad. The line is so thin that we can be an angel in one circumstance and a devil in the next. So Stop. Rest. Take a break. Have a kit-kat! Where should we hurry to before our death?

“Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.”*

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”*
*Quotes by Anais Nin

Excerpt from my short story, "foolish things"

Anguish rises and squeezes my heart in His palm. Silently, from amongst the images, a cat jumps out and sits on the table beside me. It gazes at me with its sapphire eyes. I stroke its shimmering fur. Then the cat begins to speak inside my head. It says, as if in response to my anguish:

"Space is a matter of perception."

"I do not have enough freedom"
"Freedom is a fool's concept"
"I do not have enough time."
"Because you make time your enemy"
"I need money to buy freedom."
"Freedom has no price. You are buying the wrong thing."
The cat, having said her piece, jumps away to pursue her dreams of sleep on my dirty laundry.

“The secret of Happiness is Freedom,
and the secret of Freedom, Courage.”

~ Thucydides

;)

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.

Get this print "art of Levitation"!

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...

;)

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...

;)

Catmasutra - true stories

"[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real;
they form a world of potentialities or possibilities
rather than one of things or facts."
~ Werner Heisenberg

How do we know for certain that the sun will rise tomorrow? Is that a fact or a potential? How do we know we will be here tomorrow? Is that a fact or a possibility? When everything is reduced to its fundamental basis, everything is change, everything is energy, energy contained within ourselves. How we use these energies shape each potential to its natural conclusion, for good or bad. It's funny how we can say with absolute certainty that the sun will rise the next day. There are so many things that could happen and yet we are cocksure that for us, the next day will be another day just like all the other days. By the same token, if we feel we will succeed in a certain endeavor as surely as we know we can walk downstairs, we would never have any doubt. Our energies are already being used to shape a new potential and awake a new possibility.

There is no discovery without risk and
what you risk reveals what you value
~ Jeanette Winterson

Then again, there is 'reality', a world made up of facts rather than possibilities, a world that reminds us of our place, our inadequacies, our limitations, and all its impossibilities. At the end, we all make a choice between what we believe to be true. At the end, we are all the same; we will draw our last breath and let go.

We are more connected than we imagine. There is this great big canvas, and our art work (good or evil, sad or happy, love or hate, war or peace) are all painted there - on this earth in this universe. We can never abuse, kill or ensalve what we really love. And what do we really love?

“Peace is not something you wish for;
It's something you make, Something you do,
Something you are, And something you give away.”

;)

Catmasutra - travel as far as you can!

"Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend." - Mark Twain.


It's funny when you finally recognize who you are. That's when you realize that you have been doing remedial lessons for who knows how long, repeating in each class until you finally pass the exams. I think we learn about life in two stages. First we have to grasp the lessons intellectually, and with time and more remedial lessons, we will finally understand them emotionally from within ourselves. Then we'll be able to move as one and that's when we know whatever decision we make can never be wrong.


There are always two journeys that we take on the road – one internal and the other external:) At the end of the road, it is the former that matters the most as it leads you closer to who and what you really are. So don't be stuck with what you feel you can outgrow. If the old methods don't work anymore, it's time to graduate to the next class. Travel as far as you can, and you'll realize there's no such things as coincidences! Everything is happening for a reason and a purpose. We have been creating our past without really knowing it. Haha Perhaps, it's about time we create our future knowingly. There is always a choice.

:)