for those who cant do, at least teach well.

[ .lee hae seong ]
the only pic of my elusive student.

today, a kid commented this other kid in the passage was probably wasting too much time 'wrapped in her own thoughts, daydreaming'.

"that's not good right? to daydream only"
"mm. to do things without thinking is not good either right? the best is to think well, and then do."
"yes. you're right."

it might have been tough if he'd asked, "like, how?"

.

id started many, if most only in mind,
a thousand teeming ghosts,
- screaming truthward -

i became weary,
found blind comfort in
daily loves and solo hopes.

still, they were.
never quite raised by my hand.
and i, still am.
seeing nothing beyond.

the tree and the building.

[singapore. tampines, construction site]

is all belief

[singapore. ]

a girl among christmas decorations set up on a square outside a mall.

now tell me, is all belief make-believe?

santa or god, the love of your life or your coming promotion. tell me, how are they different?






but we must always make-believe, to have in our lives, as our lives, a little more than bricks and mortar, toothbrushes and suits.

through the square, past the wall, across the threshold, into the next

[ singapore. boon lay food court]


was sitting there waiting for the other to return to the table, all around was chatter, noise, consumption, motion. a convenient outpost set in a blank wall, half bodies moving, making, giving, in a continuous captivating production. one in uniform would flit to the post, picking up and taking away, a well-practiced manoevre, a confident assignment. warm sustenance appears, swooped up for its destination, nameless, one of many.

so was the inside, one of many. concentrate. and each was an individual amongst many. hands, hips, waists moved to different beats, but all keeping within the same rhythm- making, moving, giving.

and the uniformed making their rounds.

the other returned, and those not to be seen receded.

sustenance magically appears. and all that mattered, and very lovely indeed, was one's chatter, noise, consumption, motion.

a heads up.

[masjid mosque. near bussorah street, haji lane. singapore.]

impending.

lace of leaves.

[singapore. chinese gardens]

every once in a while comes the thought, we tend to forget- to look up, as do we neglect to shift, even if just for a breath of fresh air, the perspectives we hold, which form entrenched sediments over a lifetime.

almost by chance i turned upwards.

and then tried to frame off the rest of the mundane earthly world, to peel former associations and understandings, to take away taken-for-grantedness. leaves of a tree obscuring sky became dark patterns across a blue-white patch. and it seems i could appreciate them anew.


... and by the way, for skies further than current latitudes and longitudes,


[ . from http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/ ]

october's cloud is the contrail. man-made, but still a cloud.

before this was the no-idea-how-or-why-it-is-formed clouds,
...............the mamma;

a memuse.

[singapore. malan road]
how does memory work;
what gives rebirth, what causes death.
the inexactitude of love and life,
you just laugh, and smile when you do remember.

"... and a mould. a mould carries the imprint of those once passed- and it reproduces its sentiments from that perfect first copy, according to its needs and wishes. it does not mourn, it simply bears, it simply has. ..."

flight.

yes. there are helpful people out there who put their talent and info on youtube and their own blogs, like creature comforts.

... looking at rounded corners immediately made me think of this series ive been keeping for a while.
i dont usually alter or decorate my pictures, preferring to leave them as clean records of a place/event in time
- with both aesthetic warts and technical flaws (both photographer and camera, usually due to ineptitude of former to exploit to advantage the latter).

but borders here isolate and frame the relationship between crane and temple, a foreboding process of construction and reconstruction threatening the obsolete and uneconomical. borders give nostalgia, and importance.

borders remind us to close in on to, pay attention, and draw its meanings imbedded within its delimited area.

looked up and saw contrast.
contrast hints at mutability and change;
inter-influence,
or that one would dominant the other.



[singapore. bugis. kwan im thong hood cho temple]

too much stuff.

[singapore. bugis, opposite kwan im thong hood cho temple]

after a while, there was too much to snap. too many sights and wonders and trivia to put a frame around and ogle and muse at.

then- a nondescript alley, marked off by a tree laden with birds.
huh, what's that?, i asked.
nothingness.

... its interesting how cordoning off random stuff immediately focuses attention on it.
im glad annie leonard decided to do exactly that with her story of stuff.

have a look for a real perspective on the stuff in our lives.

-if you can go out shopping within 24hours of that, you are truly hardened.

urban tales.

we attempt to make tangible and concrete that which we experience and seek to render meaningful.. and what is more real- in that it confronts and dominates the senses - than the concrete structures we erect around ourselves, altering our conscious landscape and building our selves into existence.



[ hamburg, germany]
if we built this city,

what do our manifestations of rock and mortar tell of our values and beliefs?
how do they influence and coerce our lifestyles and living?


[luebeck, germany.]

we are,
we make,
we become what we make.


[luebeck, germany.]
the perceived and believed, once realised, dominates.


[luebeck, germany. ]
cloistered in our urban claddings, we may feel safe and protected,

urban tales urban tales or stifled,

"The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows, the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning-rods, the poles of the flags. Every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls"

- Italo Calvino, Cities & Memory

[chinatown, singapore. old shophouse staircase -taken by hc.]
,but perhaps we may also be enlightened ,but perhaps we may also be enlightened, by keeping trend of our physical developments as an organic society... to be confronted with what we were, are and are becoming.

all around is indeed a sensual education in what we are.

chinatown.

most posts here run on a photo-to- thought philosophy;
visceral images provoking latent truths and ideas we all hold within us.

but i thought this quote from Mary Oliver so relatable and beautifully simple with its use of verbal imagery in its universal metaphor of a bride and groom*, that i wanted a place to immortalize it, preferably a place which could give earthly evidence to to it.

All my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom,
taking the world into my arms.
- Mary Oliver

( ..take the female/male aspect metaphorically, perhaps as a yin/yang, which we all have, whichever gender we align ourselves with )

- it's easy to be swamped by the magnitude of alpine mountains, flooded with a sense of magic by the unworldly, but after casting around for a tangible behemoth to match the quote, i realised it had already been exemplified by ...


[along chinatown street market.]
... the quiet awe i held walking around in the chinese new year chaos of chinatown, the childlike rapture gained from seeing the familiar for the first time, realising there exists a force holding us who created it in its sway.




artifacts calling our attention: sign, lamps, lights, speakers, institutions.


the human horde below, their dominant creations above.


does one too many diminish meaning?


modern pillars built around chinese-style shophouses from colonial times:
imposing structures, built to contain lives, to entertain lives and to imbibe life.




waiting for whom and what?


the gods above us, accorded with illumination and omnipotence-
of religion,
& of consumption.
our governments,
& our binding traditions.

did we create them, only to pick and choose who to defy and obey?

... if the knowledge of god is the most necessary,
then why is it not the most evident and the clearest?
-p. b. shelley.

both entranced by their surroundings.
father documenting, son washed away by exotic displays.


objectifying yourself comes true.

... look upon familiar faces with renewed love,
go over once more to check what you have missed,
and re-examine your idea of magic.