Crayonstain

2011-11-18T16:04:00.001+08:00

-- Daniel Hui

2011-11-04T06:59:00.001+08:00

struggle breeds creativity
a fair trade-off

满天星

2011-10-02T22:59:00.000+08:00

天上看，满天星。地上看，有个坑。
坑里看，有盘冰。坑外长着一老松。
松上落着一架鹰，鹰下坐着一老僧。
僧前点着一盏灯，灯前搁着一部经。
墙上钉着一根钉，钉上挂着一张弓。

说刮风，就刮风，刮得那男女老少难把眼睛睁。

刮散了天上的星；刮平了地下的坑；
刮化了盘里的冰；刮倒了坑外的松；
刮飞了松上的鹰；刮走了鹰下的僧；
刮灭了僧前的灯；刮乱了灯前的经；
刮掉了墙上的钉；刮翻了钉上的弓。

只刮得：星散坑平冰化松倒鹰飞僧走灯灭经乱钉掉弓翻还不停

something of an otherworldly experience

2011-09-21T00:54:00.000+08:00

a hallucination, an all-too-vivid nightmare, voices others cannot hear, a spiritual calling, a déjà vu, a time paradox, an irrationally intense emotion that seems to come from another body that is not one’s own, a memory that seems to slip out of grasp the more one tries to remember it...

2011-09-12T22:40:00.003+08:00

"I make a lot of stupid appointments that I make sound important. I am always afraid I'm not going to know what to do."

-- Frank Gehry, Sketches of Frank Gehry

2011-09-07T00:04:00.001+08:00

night after night pleading with an unknown higher being, take me out of this malaise

2011-08-14T19:02:00.003+08:00

"Hey, could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but, I don't wanna be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another continuously on ant autopilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. Here's your change. Paper or plastic? Credit or debit? Do you want ketchup with that?

I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up."

-- Tiana Hux, Waking Life

2011-07-07T08:31:00.002+08:00

His friend Sandro Delmaestro taught him how to hike and they spent many week-ends in the mountains above Turin. Physical exertion, the risk and the battle with the elements here supplied him with an outlet for all the frustrations in his life.

notes from Primo Levi's short stories

2011-07-05T08:19:00.003+08:00

"... We were at that age when you have the need and the instinct and the immodesty to inflict on others everything that is seething in your head and elsewhere; it's an age that can last a long time, but ends at the first compromise. Yet with him, even at that age, nothing had slipped out of his wrapping of restraint; ..."

"... But all was in vain: it was not enough to overcome the insensitivity to pain and the primordial strength that, for a few moments, nature grants us in a time of dire need."

"... Carlo, in perfect bad faith, said with a few harsh cackling syllables that my proposal was fine but, then again, 'by the easy northwest ridge' we could reach the Tooth of M. in half an hour; and that it wasn't worth being twenty-one if you didn't allow yourself the luxury of taking the wrong path."

"... Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head."

Schrödinger's cat

2011-06-11T16:40:00.001+08:00

"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks."
-- Erwin Schrödinger

2011-05-18T10:22:00.001+08:00

Shaun Tan was born in 1974 and grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In school he became known as the 'good drawer' which partly compensated for always being the shortest kid in every class.

2011-05-15T10:13:00.002+08:00

I have not always or entirely been faithful and true to myself in my craft. Guilt may evade me but time will take my life away

the absence of

2011-03-25T01:10:00.000+08:00

2011-03-13T01:04:00.004+08:00

2011-02-27T01:58:00.006+08:00

2011-02-20T22:09:00.001+08:00

2011-02-11T08:49:00.000+08:00

The scene where Joel and Clementine watch the circus go through the streets was made up on the spot, as the film crew and cast happened to be working nearby and Michel Gondry decided it could work well in the film. The part where Clementine disappears suddenly is one of Gondry's favorite moments of the film, as Jim Carrey didn't know Kate Winslet was going to disappear and Gondry likes it because Carrey's face appears so saddened. When the sound blanks out in the final film, Carrey is actually saying "Kate?"

Undertones

2011-01-31T02:59:00.005+08:00

"It's patently clear that I have a complex about my parents. I don't feel adult when I'm with them. And I don't think they consider me adult either. Our relations are somehow tortured, complicated, unspoken. It's not straightforward, any of it. I love them dearly, but I've never felt at ease with them, or their equal. I think they're shy of me too, even though they love me."

-- Andrei Tarkovsky, diary entry for 12 September 1970, Time Within Time, p. 21

---

With great certainty I am safe here

discretionary proximity

2011-01-25T02:59:00.004+08:00

shelter, impulse, and most of all magic, in the spaces between us (and the lack of)...I can't quite remember when the last time was that I felt like the ground beneath me was disappearing and that the value I attached to things around me were entirely arbitrary

you can come home to me

2011-01-21T19:15:00.009+08:00

and even though the streets, the fringes and the past have taught us that all of it will remain impermanent no matter how hard we will them not to be, we will acknowledge this sincerely; we can coexist in equilibrium, unafraid, spontaneous, freely flying but anchored to home, the closest possible to constant, always

spontaneous reaction

2011-01-16T03:06:00.013+08:00

Le Chatelier's Principle
Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system

Apart from justifying the creation of a new playlist,

2010-12-31T00:50:00.008+08:00

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji), color woodblock print, 19th century

"...part of what is enchanting about them is simply the fact that they cannot be held beyond their brief, fleeting moment..."

you remind me of the golden hour; beautiful (always, irregardless), recurring, never lasting

So this is...

2010-12-23T19:40:00.004+08:00

"For example, say we have a triangle drawn on a blackboard. A triangle is a polygon with 3 sides. The triangle as it is on the blackboard is far from perfect. However, it is only the intelligibility of the Form "triangle" that allows us to know the drawing on the chalkboard is a triangle, and the Form "triangle" is perfect and unchanging. It is exactly the same whenever anyone chooses to consider it; however, the time is that of the observer and not of the triangle."

aspatial, atemporal...perfect because they are unchanging

2010-12-22T04:56:00.003+08:00

I don't remember what we talked about then - did we really have that much to talk about?

Phoned Iffah up today to which she greeted me with "to what do I owe this pleasure of you calling me" and I said, I was just thinking about you

2010-12-20T06:48:00.002+08:00

We will remain seated across the table neither a giver nor a taker
And our words will bounce off walls

d(f(x),f(y)) > exp(aτ)d(x,y)

2010-12-16T05:35:00.007+08:00

What has become of us? We act as if the present moment vindicates the past, as if the tangible space between us justifies infidelity, as if each other only exists in relation to the other by virtue of seasonal proximity

They who never saw the light of the day to be addressed like they deserved to may no longer be necessary or relevant or logical but they are there, all else aside they are nonetheless nevermoretheless indisputably unmistakably there, quietly making themselves heard in ways beyond where we can see or do anything to stop them

2010-12-13T00:32:00.000+08:00

the inability to access another frustrates me so...

2010-12-06T20:40:00.000+08:00

a wire, a branch, a tree and a tree
trying to find its way home

Now we're talking

2010-11-29T01:30:00.003+08:00

Whirlpool

2010-11-22T03:10:00.005+08:00

Who paid the city a visit one lonesome night and silently took the magic out of every living soul
Today we are scientific, systematic, corporate, fiercely guarded
The morning sunlight no longer hits the sheets at all the right creases
The fog on the glass clears before you finish tracing out your name
Conversations are incomplete, half-heartedly initiated and prematurely terminated
Nothing right is playing on the radio, at the bar or in your head
And the girl who sits next to you in class no longer listens to the same music as you do
And all the king's men and all the king's horses
Couldn't put the city back together again

2010-11-16T01:58:00.003+08:00

How much are my sincerest, most earnest images worth
A dime, a penny, or a forgiving heart that sees beyond the lesser of my being, all of it

2010-11-10T02:44:00.003+08:00

Which parts of ourselves can we truly call our own, can we then possess the rights to give away to another in faith, in hope, in trust

2010-11-05T00:47:00.001+08:00

Access denied

I feel...

2010-11-03T04:27:00.001+08:00

how easily we fall prey to health
and then not much else seems important

We never quite seem to have all corners covered

2010-10-29T23:07:00.002+08:00

Here is the closest to truth I have ever been, and I will continue to pursue it earnestly, fervently

2010-10-26T22:54:00.008+08:00

"Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste. I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a 'work', as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations."

-- Lars von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg

Unplan

2010-10-12T22:45:00.007+08:00

---

"Look however in Kapo, the shot where Riva commits suicide by throwing herself on electric barbwire: the man who decides at this moment to make a forward tracking shot to reframe the dead body – carefully positioning the raised hand in the corner of the final framing – this man is worthy of the most profound contempt."
-- Jacques Rivette, Of Abjection

2010-10-02T02:02:00.006+08:00

a recent work

2010-09-26T01:54:00.009+08:00

Liken you to vapour on glass, the best kind you wake up to see light reflecting off from. Promptly you vanish

I don't know how, or when, but all of my being has become watered down. I am certain a part of myself that used to be able to speak instinctively of my simplest, sincerest sentiments has gone. I concede that I have become afraid to feel or speak intensely for anything any longer. You remain beautiful, so beautiful it bruises me but I permit myself no room to linger. There might truly be none left in me that I may muster up to respond to these instances. Quietly I gather up my limp, makeshift frame that takes me through tangible dimensions unnoticed. I can see glimpses of the end of this tunnel of non-progress; it comes full circle back to exactly the same spot I stand upon now precariously. I cease all resistance

Learner

2010-09-23T04:34:00.015+08:00

"In time,
No one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave"

"From the bottom of your heart, pray to be released from image."
-- Blue by Derek Jarman

2010-09-17T07:25:00.009+08:00

I miss you terribly. I miss you so much it rings and beats against my skull every waking moment. I wish more than anything else to be next to you in presence and in mind, to run my fingers over the familiar relief of your features, knowing that at even so much as the slightest whiff of a threat we would safeguard the interests of one another fiercely irregardless - an agreement unspoken, or needed not be spoken, the day we came together as an entity. My arms find their way around the contours of the shape I hold now only in memory.

2010-09-11T05:00:00.000+08:00

There is little love, strength or joy left in me to give

2010-09-07T11:58:00.002+08:00

I run peacelessly through the woods
The wind takes shape around the contours of my neck, shoulders. Between fingers
The search is incomplete..

Letters in faith

2010-08-26T04:39:00.004+08:00

2010-08-24T02:12:00.006+08:00

Dreamcraft

2010-08-14T00:09:00.000+08:00

2010-08-11T00:44:00.000+08:00

when love departs, reason returns (or, notes to self for next time)
an idealized moment when everything is simple and secure

Give me truth

2010-08-10T01:57:00.003+08:00

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth -- Henry David Thoreau

2010-08-05T00:03:00.004+08:00

How easy it would be to give in to weakness right now, to make known a desire for some unattainable want and demand it regardless, all while being fully aware of all that is at stake. But to lose the essence of my being as a rational, independent entity would be too much more painful a loss to bear; this I will remember, this I will carry with me at all times to anchor and safeguard the truth I can call my own. I have decided that perhaps there really are people who deserve a special, different kind of love

Ad infinitum

2010-07-29T04:35:00.006+08:00

"Phenomena are śûnya or unreal because no phenomenon when taken by itself is thinkable: they are all interdependent and have no separate existence of their own."

-- Japanese Buddhism, Charles Eliot

"Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality - call it an alternate reality - to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are what they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?"

-- South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

2010-07-22T03:04:00.001+08:00

this firm belief in self-sufficiency, this refusal to express a need will one day destroy me

Love from London

2010-07-18T19:43:00.005+08:00

Battles with half-realities

2010-07-10T20:05:00.004+08:00

Today is an illegitimate, misplaced block of time belonging to some other week of the future pretending to be a perfectly ordinary Saturday of the now

One of the rare few I can remember in as much detail as a week-old memory

2010-06-28T21:16:00.014+08:00

In a distant reality I wake up to a long, resounding hollow deep in the core of my skull, the overpowering scent of longing I once inhaled so fondly despite toxicity, now subdued and shoved back down the bottleneck of my throat by a savage disciplinary force, a ringing silence pounding away behind my eye sockets

Back here, back in front of a solid door, solid walls and looking straight down into a solid kitchen sink with acid dripping off my hair and eyelashes I am certain, I can last this, as I always have

But the fleeting instants of beauty that I had to try and commit as much as possible to memory simply because there might be no other grounds with which I could affirm their reality upon, these I am allowed to keep, these I am allowed to bottle so they may forever be contained within those ten, twenty seconds

2010-06-20T00:57:00.007+08:00

Tonight my brand new copy of The Last Laugh will pause time for me

x

Several levels of lovely

2010-06-16T02:19:00.012+08:00

Found some time in between moons to make some images of someone beautiful and mysterious, we have big plans to travel somewhere secret and document on digital tape multicolored electric shocks, frothy liquid chiffon and bare feet in the sky, me the teller of tales, and she, my voice amplified in line, color and light

Otherworldly

2010-06-05T21:00:00.004+08:00

Shelly Love

Goodness gracious...

2010-06-03T16:52:00.006+08:00

It takes this little, as little as the quiver of a finger, a lock of hair gently grazing, the knit of a long sleeve

Free spirits

2010-05-31T00:29:00.003+08:00

wandering streets in city of nightlights with not a single cent to our name only the perfect makeshift sunrise

Primal instincts

2010-05-28T15:14:00.004+08:00

I am my own person, even in my feral state of complete irrationality I will be self-protecting by intuition

There are easier ways to channel this

2010-05-17T02:15:00.002+08:00

These low ceilings will continue to offer rancid reminders

Not for all the tea in China

2010-05-15T04:07:00.002+08:00

This is the third layer

2010-05-06T23:36:00.007+08:00

"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."

"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. No, don't mind the cigarettes--I have some. Basil, I can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."

-- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (via Olivia)

---

I feel...out of context. Like a misplaced object

2010-05-03T14:10:00.003+08:00

Might we be thrillseekers and hedonists living on the verge of peril, poverty and death, in risk, in uncertainty, in wild spontaneity, might we find it in us to leave this all behind, throw ourselves off a cliff in a blank spot on the map and find or create our own versions of beauty and peace in their crudest form

2010-05-02T21:43:00.004+08:00

-- Into the Wild

出殡

2010-04-27T13:35:00.005+08:00

the whirring of the sewing needles on your well-rusted machine were the first human voices I heard

2010-04-18T01:58:00.000+08:00

I like the word specific. It has a reassuring presence, a confident sort of certainty

2010-04-11T13:21:00.002+08:00

手心中紧紧握着发黄的回忆

Residual shadow

2010-03-29T00:27:00.005+08:00

No one would see this, and see it like it was the fresh demonstration of an eager, hopeful mind. Will we be forever stained by the soles one foot ahead of us

To my surprise yesterday I turned twenty

Cold, Dark Matter: An Exploded View

2010-03-18T10:52:00.003+08:00

Cold, Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), where she had a garden shed blown up by the British Army and suspended the fragments as if suspending the explosion process in time. In the centre was a light which cast the shadows of the wood dramatically on the walls of the room.

I resurrect things that have been killed off... My work is all about the potential of materials - even when it looks like they've lost all possibilities.

-- Cornelia Parker

Rainbow Hunter

2010-03-12T13:21:00.006+08:00

Alice in Wonderland

2010-03-08T22:19:00.009+08:00

My favorite scene is where Alice leans in and holds the Hatter's face and tells him that he is absolutely bonkers, and that all the best people in the world are

Pyramus and Thisbe

2010-02-06T18:02:00.001+08:00

As they stood, Pyramus on this side, Thisbe on that, their breaths would mingle. “Cruel wall,” they said, “why do you keep two lovers apart? But we will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the privilege of transmitting loving words to willing ears.”

Joker's Daughter

2010-01-21T15:13:00.007+08:00

You think we are a waste of time

2010-01-19T15:08:00.003+08:00

I had hoped you would not pick the worst of me to shine harsh lights on

Rather grand supporting chords for the quieter nights and rides

2010-01-09T23:44:00.006+08:00

"...which have both a documentary clarity and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence. It occurred to me that photoalbums are really just another kind of picture book that everybody makes and reads, a series of chronological images illustrating the story of someone’s life." -- Shaun Tan

"Even the most imaginary phenomena in the book are intended to carry some metaphorical weight..." -- Shaun Tan

"...You read this book in no doubt that Tan's research and personal history has given The Arrival the hardest thing any novel can have; a soul."

Picture perfect

2010-01-01T23:20:00.004+08:00

I now know what easily puts me in a terrific mood

Hermit

2009-12-30T03:26:00.012+08:00

Feel-good tracks amidst duct-taped wrists

2009-12-24T02:19:00.014+08:00

Throbbing limbs dissolve to a low, purring hum beneath my playlist

Daymakers

2009-11-08T04:21:00.002+08:00

love from Olivia

Today

2009-11-03T22:25:00.005+08:00

Lynn: So you really killed your baby
Me: I didn't just kill it, I cut it in half and pulled its insides out

You think I'm in love with the Continental Shoemakers

2009-10-28T01:38:00.005+08:00

A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.

"I'm going to the opium dens. Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals' hangouts, Mother. I've joined the Hogan Gang, I'm a hired assassin, I carry a tommy gun in a violin case! I run a string of cat houses in the Valley! They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I'm leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother. I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye and a false moustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers."
-- The Glass Menagerie

Nice hall kids

2009-10-24T22:31:00.003+08:00

Project Wire Poetry

2009-10-21T19:41:00.005+08:00

Fred Eerdekens

I'd like to write for you in sculpture

Could this be, could we be

2009-10-21T02:27:00.010+08:00

"It's kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to a point where none of it seems real."

"And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people.

It’s like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too."

-- The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stay

2009-09-30T19:10:00.000+08:00

Something else other than time is running out

I am losing you

2009-09-22T23:42:00.005+08:00

I am in control

There is so much to lose this September

2009-09-20T17:33:00.006+08:00

But now I just want to get to my pop-up book

When people run in circles

2009-07-12T18:20:00.005+08:00

Surprises everyday and change being the only constant

Hardly feels like July

2009-07-06T02:09:00.006+08:00

I'm still up every midnight eating margarine straight from the tub and feeling like an overdue library book that needs to be returned someplace where organization is in existence and my nametag is parallel to my school badge

2009-06-29T23:47:00.004+08:00

More evidence of Facebook inactivity...

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T21:57:00.004+08:00

Well

2009-03-07T03:07:00.004+08:00

Suddenly, almost worthwhile now