Papaya

It's Gone Now...

Came back on my bike in the night. The lot is empty. Less visitors now that the Karaoke lounge has moved. The papaya trees like a couple of young lovers are gone. Left no trace except the freshly cut grass in the little space in front of the lot. Several days ago, the papaya tree which was beginning to bear fruit has its head of leaves chopped off, the fruit still clinging to the upright and headless trunk. The Male plant was still there, stoic, standing by its side -  not anymore I guess. It's raining again, heavy drops pelting down on the night. The last grass-cutter, with his wrapped head like a gypsy ninja paused when he came to the papaya trees. He did cut one down but stopped as he carefully cut the grass around the other two. Not sure why he let them live. But time has ran out I guess, this other grass-cutter has no such mercy.

Beauty surrounds us,

but usually we need to be walking

in a garden to know it.

~Rumi

;)

Quirky Quiet...

Quiet. There is a silent moment in everything. Shhhh... Stop thinking. Listen. There are birds chirping like surround sound, filtered from urban noise. Neighbor's chopping away incessantly at something (you wonder how many people they're cooking for), cars and trucks moving in and out, engine's idling, people shouting. Relax. Allow the breathing to become calm, foster that lightness of being.Quiet amongst the noise, even in the most mundane stuff... There are so many people who works so hard to leave a legacy behind. This baffles me. What legacy? Every moment is a play of patterns, of noise and clutter. The only legacy worth leaving behind is the way we live our lives - the most intangible things are often the most precious ones.

Angel wakes at 4:30 am, and like an ninja assassin, treads lightly on my sleep, exercising his claws on my chest, then sits, then lies, watching my consciousness stirring back to life. "Heya...", I said telepathically. Angel nods and replies, "It's time". I get up and open the door, and he promptly sneaks out. I'm back on my bed, shifting gears in dreamland when Halo comes in later in the morning. She finds my legs under the covers and promptly uses them as her pillow, shielding her eyes from the morning light with her paws. I remember when they were kittens. Another hour and I'll wake.

 catzophrenia 2006

The heart is a strange thing. It is a hard disk with seemingly unlimited storage space, cluttered and choke full of stuff, both remembered and forgotten. Once something happened, it's there. Cut it up and it creaks open like an ancient door with rusted hinges, and there's a rabbit hole, much like the one depicted in Alice in Wonderland. The natural instinct is to fall. It's a scary flight down the rabbit hole, but you'll soon get used to the gravity of it all; at the end of it, you'll find a pinhole of light that opens into a continuous universe of twinkling stars. The silent nature of each thought, of each experience is right here, within us.

I remind myself to slow my thoughts down so that when I fall, 

I'll catch myself and find that pinhole of light.

 My Sweetest Constellation

Break on through to the other side...

;)

Doing Time

WHERE'S THE MONEY GEORGE ? from oizo mr on Vimeo.

If you’re working in Singapore, time almost always seems to run out pretty quickly. It’s an easy excuse to say that you have no time because of work; in fact I think it’s a common excuse. You and I are both guilty of it but I suspect that deep inside, we know that there is in fact, time – time to call loved ones, send a sms, or just making an effort to do something. As we grow into a job, we should aim not only to become more efficient, but more importantly to see things in the proper perspective and that entails saying “stop”. It’s time to do that something else for yourself or your family. Finding something you love to do is crucial. Otherwise it's more like doing time and waiting for the special getaway once a year (mountains, trees, and a motorcycle).

 Photo by danny st

Life never ceases to be magical and interesting. It becomes more so when you’re able to step back a little from it. For me personally, life is really like a movie that you project in front of you. Much of it is fiction. In every of our waking moment, we can decide what kind of movie we wanna watch, sad or happy, depressing or uplifting, boring or exciting. The fun part is that it really doesn’t matter – it’s just a movie.I don’t think that each human being is that much different from another. All of us want to be happy. In the core of our being, we’re the same. It’s the movies that differ, that tell us that things should be this way or that. It’s like every being has a  box over their heads. In that sense, everybody is fighting for the remote control over these mind boxes. If more and more people get to see more of your movies, then you’re in control and therefore shape that world accordingly. It’s the same for Hollywood movies, the same for advertising, as it is for office or world politics.

 

  adapted from photo by Mio Cade

I read somewhere that if the earth’s resources are shared equally, there is more than enough for every single person. That's of course, one world view that will never materialize.  Eventually, each movie will end and we have to return to ourselves, hopefully to the center of our peace - without the projections, without the distractions. That is the truth - nirvana. Hopefully, we will find that center sooner rather than later. That is pure living without the highs and lows, and in learning to live, we inevitably learn how to let go and move on.

;)

Quirky, Quirky, Quirky...

Quirky, Quirky, Quirky...

Esencia de una Seducción
Uploaded by erecuenco. - Arts and animation videos.

Love this piece by Eugenio Recuen especially how the music fade in and out. I love the way he creates his mood pieces; It takes you away from here into another place, a fairy land where everything is possible, and time works in ways that you don't quite understand. At the end of it all, at the end of all the winding, we'll realize that it's enough just to sit with a loved one, and let everything else unfold  in its own time. If we get too caught up, we''' become just another wind-up toy lost in a make-belief world.

It's the facts that lie, never the stories....

;)

Impressions...

Funny how a little theory will appear at the back of your mind and it just does its own thing until it calls out to be expressed! Maybe the sudden change in weather triggered it. It was so hot the past weeks that it was as if an evil climate regime has succeeded in engulfing us in its fiery bubble, beating us down into a heated submission. Then in the last couple of days, it rained and the weather was cool and pleasant. People are more friendly and a stroll in the HDB heartland marketplace was surprising calm and refreshing. And just like that, we have gotten over the tyranny of the evil hot climate (and I guess awaiting its return sooner or later). Haha We also sneaked into Taiwan to escape the heat for a couple of days.

 Piece by Zhang Huan,
Museum of Comtemporary Art, Taipei

A lifetime of impressions - a simple way of putting life into perspective. Minus the impressions, and we're completely at peace. That's probably how meditation works, by cutting through the millions of imprints that we collect. Beneath the imprints is of course our true nature - who we really are - without the distractions. The "Who am I?", "Why am I here?" questions, of course, revolve around spiritual or/and religious arenas and are subjected to many different interpretations, but the essence is always the same. I mean, the truth is the truth, however you want to look at it. The "truth" however, is hard work and often requires a lifetime of commitment which seems incompatible with the values of modern society (blind faith to religious cause is the another extreme). So it comes down to impressions - We live via impressions. If we collect positive impressions, then life inevitably will be positive and vice-versa (the typical law of attraction theory).

 Another piece by Zhang Huan

One purpose of art is to break us out of this mode, as it presents to us another perspective of looking at things. It may not need to make logical sense; indeed it may serve to break us out of the logical mode, and allows us to experience a new phenomenon directly.

 Sensational work by Yoshitaka Amano,

Automotive paint and acrylic on aluminum panel

 Most of us are hopelessly in the middle, and hence we live average lives with our regular ups and downs. So if life as we know it is just a series of impressions, then really, they don't matter that much. Because they don't matter that much, it's easier to let go, and that's probably the first step towards a spiritual journey. Once we've become accustomed to 'watching' these impressions as they appear, that's when all the fun starts. We become more aware of our emotions, our  reactions and we are able to fine-tune them, and by doing so, become increasingly light-hearted.  Not that it is an easy thing to do, but it'll certainly add more spice to our lives.

;)