The polarity between the sensational and the mundane is also the dichotomy between the sensational and the sensory in which the latter is left unmarked, unvoiced and unattended to, as a banal element of the everyday.
i lost my mp3 player on my way back home from KL. was a tad disappointed in myself for not being careful with it, but then thought, what's meant to be, will be. i will be able to read more now, i thought. which happens to be true: two books in a week.
Drown by Junot Diaz
something about reading really stunning short stories. it chokes. it must be what being hanged feels like. to be painfully grabbed away from breathing. the throat's passageway deemed useless - folded and twisted into a cut that engorges the body, whole. his stories are like that. the first one is a heart-stopper. it kills you into an awaking.
his stories also makes one feel like a trespasser, strolling stupidly into a world you know nothing about, and yet are trying to stake a claim upon. what a fool. and in the end, the stories do just that. it fools us and we cannot do anything else, but accept it.
at the same time, i find myself silently searching for parts of the characters in me. sadistic, almost. but such a beautiful yearning.
a must read.
afoot. work. it brings out the true value of a 'friday', the TGIF. i spent mine walking. my temporary workplace overlooks a gorgeous sky and often i wonder what lay beneath it. so this morning i planned a route. it was two train stops away, a route i had never walked before. Tiong Bahru to Tanjong Pagar. it would take 5 mins by train but about 1 hour 15 mins on foot. worth it though.
stories. the characters have been born. time to breathe air into their limbs. o heart. stop feeling. let the mind do her work. shoosh.
the new year has been awesome so far. submitted the thesis. have been productive every day. drawing. typing. storytelling. have yet to clean up my room. will do it soon. sent out over 40 letters, locally and globally. postage is pricey. i guess that's why emails are convenient. but nothing beats the sheer pleasure of receiving an actual, tangible piece of mail. at least that's what i feel. that's why i'll be starting up my Snail Mailers again. yaay! will be looking for a job soon. yes, will be 'selling out' and will be applying for a government job. need the money. the new nikon models are tempting me. will be retiring from academia for a bit. switch off.
the horizon, erased. she paces, back and forth. placing feel before feet. stumbling silently.
the horizon, erased. she searches for something else to hold.
the photo fair went well. learnt a lot of things. the most important being how i never seem to ask for help whenever i need it. bad habit. ought to be changed. new year resolution. noted. also learnt how to actually talk about my photographs. not an easy thing to do, despite my love for talking. also happy to have met new people and other photographers. had a lovely time talking to dennis about photography as art. but that's a different post altogether. note to self.
also feel blessed by the number of support bras that i have. my friends. they constantly keep me lifted, despite gravity. love them, laces and all.
interesting conversations. categories. commercial photography. fine art. questions. did you go to art school? what's your philosophy? some easy to answer. others, a tad hard to verbally express. that's why i have my photographs, right?
end of the day. got a tad sick. gastric. typical. but had fun and am looking forward to new projects and collaborations. hell yeah!
the disembodied genius. the idea that our creative processes involve an other-ly intervention or contribution. that it is not fully our own. that we do not own it. that it comes from nowhere and everywhere. and would leave when the work is done. to be passed on to another. for another creation to be manifested. across time and space.
i've always believed in the idea of the cosmos and how inspirations, ideas, dreams, aspirations, and messages of the many exist within it. released. let loose. or sometimes lost. and i believe in the presence of the divine who artfully crafts opportune chances for the meeting between these floating specters and their medium, the artist. a collaboration, as Gilbert beautifully puts it. collaborations that can happen anytime. anywhere.
interestingly, i find my meetings with such specters mostly contained within the four walls of the toilet. restroom. bathroom. pee-pee place. whatever it is called. i never linger long in the loo. for good reason. but i would be in the midst of sorting out laundry for the week when, POOF! in the middle of a shower. POOF! in the middle of the blessed* act of shitting. POOF!
*i consider shitting a blessing as i believe the human body would not be able to contain itself had it not been given an outlet for release. as the saying goes, what goes in, must come out. so that more can come in. again. and out. again.*
hence, i consider myself lucky for being chosen for collaborations without having to wait it out for centuries in that one space. waiting to be hit by the apple in the head. or having to travel to the end and back. but then again, i have been told that some of my ideas are crappy. shitty. but i suppose, it's better to be crafted as a vessel than a plastic plateau that simply allows for everything or anything that wants to latch on, be wiped away. the important thing is, to become. to become a vessel for something. anything. and then to act with it. accordingly. poetically.
last night, as my 9-year-old brother, ammar, was preparing and packing his bag for his exam today, he took out three rulers and showed them to me. i simply went 'wow' and said nothing else. this was part of my 'i-don't-want-to-ignore-you-but-i-can't-give-you-all-the-attention-coz-i'm-doing-something' routine. evil me.
later this morning, my mother told me that as she was checking his pencil box to make sure he had everything he needed for his exams, she found the three rulers and asked him why he needed so many.
he replied saying that last year, during the final-year exam, one of his friends forgot to bring his eraser. in the middle of the paper, out of desperation, he started begging to borrow an eraser from the other kids, but nobody helped. everyone was engrossed in their exams. and some, for fear of being caught by the teacher. ammar however, did.
so this year, he told my mom that the reason why he wanted to bring an extra of everything is so that should any of his friends forget something, he could lend it to them. my heart melted.
there is so much to learn from the young. even as we're teaching them.
there are certain things in life that are just hypnotic. mechanical. like staring at the moon. it gets brighter and brighter. as everything else around it diminishes in sight. like watching fish swim in a tank. around and around. becoming blurs of colors floating around a landscape of blue. like the flailing arms of fire, etched onto a stove. its unachieved potential to soar. blue. orange. mild tints of pink. licking the bases of pans. limited. like peeling off dead, dry skin from a nasty cut. can't stop until it's all gone. even if it's bad to do so. scars. like a face in the fan. sitting in front of it, on a hot day. the constant wind, blowing secrets into the eyes. closing to contain. closing to contain. ruptured blinks. like waiting for the moments. the perfect moments. when they come. will they come?
the sit & stare routine newly developed it involves the act of sitting at any random spacethat is permitted in both public and private spheres. although. in private, you can sit anywhere you want. worst case scenario: you'd be compromising your own comfort and staring at anythingas long as it does not stir chaos or uneasiness of any sort to the person or object being stared at and although I have been in a state of utter ugh this new sit & stare routine has become effective for me let me explain because I have been trained to never waste time a trait I believe most, if not all of us, have been taught to instill in our everyday seize the day! it is because of this very socialized trait, idea, thought that the sit & stare routine is successful as I sit & stare, I subconsciously realize that to merely sit and stare is a time waster and yet I sit & stare why? because I can I must but after a while I snap out of it because I actually realize how much time I’m wasting engaging in this very act and so guilt crawls in and I snap back into work I become a more productive worker in doing what I know I must do making up for lost time having sat and stared
there lies a huge disjuncture between the person she would like to be, to that of the person that she is. a self of the past, to one awaiting the turn into a future. the ever vigilant to change and the world around, to the myopic individual who casts merely side glances to those around her. hair in the wind. the fan blows. it is constant. each strand suspended in the air in accordance to an exact timing. methodical shifts of the blades. how fast per second? how much wind artificially created per rotation? maths. method. there is no uneven rhythm. waves have begun taking up a pattern. too much certainty. the old man could predict the next wave in its exact moment. where is spontaneity? no more messages in a bottle. he reaches in but falls behind. the landing is uneven. like the bumps on his skin. do two unevens make it even? she toasted the tip of her bottle to the sunset sky. plastic against the now virtual sky cut up by the rectangular window. the disjuncture is forgotten, forgotten for a while. sirens on the road. someone is dying. they sit in the dark. the people are coming.
i wonder. if you grow 5-10 years within a year itself, does this mean that as you actually grow (chronologically & physically) older, you won't grow (metaphorically) anymore. or perhaps, the growth process decelerates. learning lesser things. merely a stoic squirm amidst the world of the happening. i've seen that. i've lived through it. that, is life. degrees of inaffection. stagnance. you can die now. you've seen, done it all.
or perhaps, our inner growth far surpasses the 'life expectancy' number limit that chains our bodies to 'mortality'. perhaps, our inner selves encompass a more accentuated concept of the immortal. a 26 year-old with a 70 year-old soul. a 70 year-old with a 218 year-old soul. she dies, but fragments of her self survives. the photos she's taken. the cameras now in the hands of great-great grandchildren. stolen moments with the people she loved. pieces of words embedded into cracked walls. fibres of world she existed within. even as her body perishes under the laws of mortality, she continues to grow. a growth that is not dependent merely on the memories of the people she knew (because people are never really enough), but within the entities - even the intangible - that she had created, touched, breathed, owned, discarded. because, in a way, nothing is ever really gone. nobody is ever really lost.
it merely transforms. pocketed, from one form to another.
bodies, into earth. persons, into memories. memories, into objects. objects, into other objects. living amidst one and all.
and for those gone from our touch, may they linger in our thoughts. and just because tears come easily, it doesn't mean it brought sadness along as a partner.
a friend told me she finds magic in the moments when she is alone. moments of the mundane, which she transforms into magic. making them as she is living within each moment. skipping to a soundless tune. the breathe of color from the wind. an orchestra of leaves tapping to the beat of the forest. plunging into civilizations of the alternate through uneven surfaces of a puddle. playing narrator to lives of the bodies that float around. people. beings. she is thinking of getting plastic surgery but her husband actually prefers her 'flat'. he goes home each day at exactly 7.08pm to polish his furniture whilst tuning in to songs from the 80s. they have sex every single night. and so, the lives of the mass of meaningless faces become a little more interesting, a little more magical within each concocted moment. the narrator is pleased. imagination is magick!
nuruL H. is in the midst of peeling the psychotic postgraduate from her pensive photographer persona. the former has however, greatly influenced the conceptual and contextual makings of the photos concocted by the photographer. she illuminates aspects of the liminal, intangible, and the unvoiced as mouths and methods of telling stories about the everyday. each piece, a biographical account of something or someone. and as the power of the unvoiced lies in its visual presence, it is here this textual bio ends.
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