proof.

that nature inspires art,

is art.


[ . British Wildlife Photographer winner: "Damselfly silhouette" by Ross Hoddinott ]

[ . Urban Wildlife winner: "The ultimate flock" by Lorne Gill]

[ . Animals Portraits winner: "Gannet portrait" by Ben Hall ]
[ . Wildlife Behaviour winner: "Blackbirds Fighting" by David Slater]

from the timesonline photo gallery.

something i felt today.

[? . from whysharksmatter ]

(one of the comments)
Despite all the knowledge and technology we possess we continue to destroy things that we don’t fully understand.

us people always seemed to me more self-conscious than self-aware, more inclined to the strange Other than attuned to mapping our interconnectedness. and i'd always thought the devastation on plants and animals a tragic evidence.

there may be mtv* specials galore courtesy of al gore campaigns and wonderful mega-documentaries [see list of EXCITES to the right] out to showcase the world we could be losing, but so long as we only see in parts and in terms of Other..

sharks have been pretty much elevated and distorted in the consciousness of most singaporeans. they are exoticised sleek machines from waters far and away. they also make for delicious sharks fin soup. they are both mythical and part of tradition; a power combo hard to change.


those are two reasons why i'm anticipating “Why Sharks Matter: Using New Environmentalism to Show The Economic And Ecological Importance of Sharks, The Threats They Face, and How You Can Help", by David Shiffman (scientist guy in above pic). follow his shark-crusades here.


*by the way, mtv videos always hit the 'cool' mark..

MTV Global Warming Campaign from Justin Gedzus on Vimeo.

the real green engineering.

[ india, cherrapunji. rootbridges. all other images from theoriens ]

what happens when man can't build a bridge.

why, grow one of course. this northeastern bit of india is one of the wettest places on earth (monsoon winds from the bay of bengal ensure that), streaked by many swift rivers and mountain streams. it is also native to the rubber fig, its use as a bridge better explained by its scientific name ficus elastica.

for generations now, people have been splicing betel nut tree trucks and guiding roots of the rubber fig through them.



the literally named 'double decker root bridge' can hold over fifty people at a time, which already include quite a few tourists.

this just took my breath away. apparently it also takes ten- fifteen years to be fully functional; i'm glad that here at least, human patience (inevitable or not) has allowed such a feat testament to the harmony nature and man can achieve. tolkien would be proud.

the golden spruce.

[ northwest, united states. from STRIKE ]

i got alot more than i'd bargained for when i picked up the golden spruce. tree, land, wind, sea, air and man, -above all, man- i did not realise the combustable combination they were.

take a long look here: imagine how a tree could have grown through centuries to become so; imagine its place and what it fought, what it strove for, its comrades in the pursuit of life. imagine how man first came upon the giant; imagine how man saw how it could be used, and how he thought up clever ways to harvest it all; ruthless being conquering being-
[march 04, 1906, at rock pile creek, sonoma, california]


i'd turned myself towards rows of page-bound greenery. i was looking for an insight into the inanimate mass we both depend on and plunder. oil, water, air, fuel, crops.. then forests: stoic browns and proud plumes, quiet and relentless, all knowing, still, wilderness, i'd thought. how quaint my ideas were. but the story of a man in the middle of it all is indeed all wilderness, all madness.


from chapter 14, after the tree falls,

al wanderer, hadwin's former colleague from lillooeit, could have been speaking for all woodsman through history when he looked back over his own empty corner of british columbia and said, "good god. i didnt think it was possible to log this much."

"man", (George Perkins Marsh) wrote more than 140 years ago, "who even now finds scarce breathing room on this cast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to replace...the Eden he has wasted." That year (1864) saw the creation of california's yoesmite state reserve, which included the continent's first federally protected trees.

by 1919, just as a group of wealthy californians was forming the Save the Redwoods League, the first portable chain and circular saws began appearing on the cover of Scientific American.

einarson picked up his train of thought: "another reason i like falling," he said, "is i like walking around in old-growth forests. it's kind of an oxymoron i guess - to like something and then go out and kill it."

feel better when

[stonehenge. naturewhispers]
'd been looking and looking.
this time, the search was
not for an 'it' factor.
but hunger, to
know, feel, be,
how it must have been like-

and then. as always, others have said it first, and always the same.

i think and think and think,
i've thought myself out of happiness one million times,
but never once into it.
- everything is illuminated. jonathan safran foer.

..and it,
it never is what one thinks it is.


[ .telegraph ]

365,000 people.
4.58am.
the northern solstice is the summer solstice is the winter solstice, depending on.
when the sun directly sits above the constellation cancer ,






- or not.

seeing is inspiring/ god is in the details.

[ holland, keukenhof gardens. from yx]

i once heard, someone say, that god is in the details. more precisely, someone had given it as a quick, deliberate, advice to a young greenhorn, all too quick to dash impressive strokes. but good intentions, boldly executed, sometimes neglect the underlying lines that tie logic together.

god is in the details-

i had forgotten pleasures and ideals that express themselves on earthly plains; i did not see that ideas and wishes are delineated according to simple lines. a person of heart helped me realise the first, and im glad -to keep with fairytale- one of letters taught me the second.

to live and write simply must be the greatest challenge of them all. we must love, uncomplicated, unburdened and complete. we must learn to express with both ardour and clarity. and for each, im learning the importance of first receiving openly, without complications or burden. daily i find we live messily and speak too crudely; daily i wake up vaguely remembering and continue on blind.

-that god is in the details.



and in the details of now.
a book going into the in-betweens of the writer who spawned that quote:

Le bon Dieu est dans le detail

for every each that we do not even imagine,
let us be vigilant for every that we know of

?

earth day.

[candle light. ]

sunday contained among its twenty-four divides,
singapore's first earth hour.

given that the very dismal, very practical, (and put together, very singaporean) comments by the 'average person on the street' are not at all warm to "switching off" (for what!?), i wasnt expecting the eternal lights of singapore go half black. but im pleased that my home was among the darkened ones, and the large french restaurant i happened to be dining at also dimmed (well, the cooks needed to cook) its (many) lights. the few tables of us who were sitting in the restaurant at the quieter corner of clarke quay had ourselves draped in a very dreamy, disquieting half-light.

with our little pocket taking earth hour ("i'm sorry ah, but we'll be turning off our lights for earth hour at 830pm soon, i did say that right, right? earth hour." says very casual mina-like waitress) seriously, outside seemed preposterously dazzling.

it is primarily symbolic. like valentines day, a small, sentimental bit that isn't carried on, let alone fully actualised, much of the rest of the year, doesn't matter much, even if the symbolised meaning is potent enough. we live in the physical world, and that is often where wars and loves are played out and judged.

still.. symbolism stands strong because it can make aware, persuade, unite.

and. who can begrudge the small gesture when real changes are out of the question?

closer.

[malaysia. cameron highlands]

god is in the details,
gustave flaubert (1821-80)
(and perhaps, michelangelo, the architect ludwig mies van der rohe, and the art historian aby warburg.)

the tree and the building.

[singapore. tampines, construction site]

many, many

[ china, wulian, east shandong province. -the bbc]

gone past ten trillion debt dollars-

US debt clock runs out of digits

For the time being, the Times Square counter's electronic dollar sign has been replaced with the extra digit required.

... debt shade of green.

an x-ray photo, so to speak.

[ -taken from BBC News]

this is neither a picture nor a photo, but a visual and clear enough representation of our consuming the earth- our ecological footprints.

the cost of our rate and scale of living, to animals:

marine species ... saw their numbers plummet by 28% in just 10 years, between 1995 and 2005.

Populations of ocean birds have fallen by 30% since the mid 1990s, while land-based populations have dropped by 25%.
(quotes from) bbc news

and for a quick sound bite on how it is rebounding back unto us:

"Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply.

"No-one can escape the impact of biodiversity loss because reduced global diversity translates quite clearly into fewer new medicines, greater vulnerability to natural disasters and greater effects from global warming."

James Leape, director general of the WWF

...every mainstream finds its radical alternatives, and No Impact Man is interesting to follow in his attempts to live outside how we have been comfortably taught to live, and are pressured to live. his is an example in not simply leaving as friendly and small an ecological footprint as possible, but one that works with the ways of nature- quippily speaking, it doesnt trample, it treads alongside.

by uncanny coincidence, tis Endangered Species Day today in the U.S., where bush&co have listed the polar bear as endangered.