Snow

My Habitat Big Mouth Bear experienced his first snow filled morning.

Flickr Update

Snow January 2007

Déjà vu

It was a bright, calm morning. There were flowers in the bathroom from B to LP for her birthday bash the night before. The light from the frosted glass window proved to be a nice backdrop for the photo. A picture but not a thousand words said. As I sat on the can looking at the flowers, I thought about the night that had just passed. A memorable birthday party at Smiths but I could not describe the encounters and emotions. How do you capture moments? In a photo? In music? In words? How do you describe the drift of a woody muster from cigars in the atmosphere, apprehension in a face, the feel of the skin during the first seconds of a handshake, the scent of another human being as you draw them close to your space. Sometimes all forms of semantics escape me. Pictures and words have such ability to empower. But presented with such empowerment, I am sometimes pressured by an inability to truly document the essence of something, to uncover unknown mysteries and share these subtle discoveries with the people around me.

The month has flown pass so quickly. Much has happened in little bits and pieces which I am trying to piece together and make sense of. I’ve been trapped in some repetitive cycle of walking (in the rain), work, eat, sleep. Walking (no rain), work, eat, sleep and stealing time for special events outside work and time to myself.

It seems I can’t escape long working hours, working late into the night and working on weekends no matter which continent I pluck myself from. Past memories of work, memories of pain, memories of happiness. Where do they all go? Are they gathered in some hauling zone to be dragged out in another time and space? Have you ever come across a picture, a song, a smell, a feel of something that drew out something from deep inside you?

Most mornings when I walk through the park, I meet a group of about 8-10 dogs resting outside The Serpentine Gallery with their owners, barking noisily in friendly batter with one another, presumably after their morning walk. One day last week, I was lost in the crowd of these dogs in my path even before I had reached The Serpentine Gallery. At the moment it occurred to me that I was earlier then usual because I had met the dogs before I reached the gallery. Amongst them was Willow, a golden retriever blocking my passage together with a few other smaller dogs. I nudged Willow slowly with my knees as I moved forward and drew my hand through his fur. I was surprised at the texture of his fur as it glided through my fingertips. It reminded me of Chopin, the feel of his fur, the feel of his hot breath on my face when I gazed right into his eyes, his little manic dance after each bath and a whole well of emotion I had buried deep inside me. This brief glitch of time in my daily cycle and soft fur at my finger tips had drawn out so much from me.

The first cake I baked this year brought out a whole entourage of emotion as well. There was a vaguely familiar taste of custard on cake and I couldn’t remember immediately where the gingery taste with custard sauce had lingered into my mind from. Then I remembered the desert at Buku Nero with W. We had waited a month for the table. The meal was satisfactory, but the real highlight was the desert which was a simple warm cake with custard which I will always associate with an entirely pleasant evening well spent.

A friend of mine use to tell me that he believed in karma, in cycles of life. What goes round comes round.

This morning, as I lay procrastinating in bed, I tried to draw out memories I wanted to remember from out of myself. Yet, I could not remember them anymore. It was scary because the harder I thought about them, the less I could remember

I do hope, what goes round, comes round again and again. In some time and space. Something vaguely familiar. In particular, the nice things.

On Player_'Reason Why'_By Rachael Yamagata

Nouveau

We all try to preserve beauty. We put photos of precious people and moments in our homes, in our office, in our wallets and on our phones. But many of the times, they mean as much as the mind can remember of the moment.

I received a lot of gifts this year at Christmas. And they were mostly exceptionally useful gifts. Among them was a book from A. This morning when I woke up, I picked it up from the pile of books on the floor and curled up in bed reading it. It was a book called ‘Kitchen Diaries’ by Nigel Slater. It is a diary of a Chef, of what he cooked and ate over a period of a year. The book doesn’t just include the recipes but also descriptions about how he felt. All the photos of the food were also taken in real time. The forward talks about the natural timing of food for the body. Like a thick slice of watermelon oozing with cold juice on a hot summer’s day or a bubbling hot stew on a rainy evening. He talks about the food like a gentle lover. About buying food from people truly passionate about their produce ie farmer’s market, butchers, fish mongers, delicatessens ie never stepping into mega marts like Tesco and cooking the food simply to compliment its real taste. It was very inspiring to hear someone talk about something so passionately. As I read the book, I thought about how awesome our God made this world, creating four different seasons, with certain foods available only at a certain time of the year for our consumption and how we had screwed everything up through genetic engineering and making so many types of food available throughout the year. Through abundance and excessiveness, we loose the true meaning of so many things.

This Christmas and New Year were especially significant because I spent it with people I am still trying to get to know better and haven’t really gotten down to doing so, not even after almost more then 10 years. We hardly really spend time together, even for some of us who live under the same roof. It’s still strange and awkward for me because I have largely forgotten how being with people really is. My inner timing is generally out of synch with the cosmos. I spent the last few years working frantically, the years before that silent from a family member who terrorized us and the years before that reading non-stop to get over a person who had forgotten about me and the years before that battling illness. Its so easy and convenient to be by yourself, but its better to learn to and enjoy being with other people. I’m learning all over again, even though very often I feel like a kid with knobby knees on the first day of school not knowing what is the right way to behave with the other kids, when is the right time to speak, what is the right thing to say and mostly how to say it. Sometimes I have a feeling about something, but I don’t know how to say it precisely in spoken words and it comes out insufficient to describe the thoughts in my head or at worse, all wrong. This makes me feel very frustrated, but I will keep trying because I know no one will understand me if I don’t try to say it.

I will not be making anymore resolutions this year with exception to bringing my own grocery bag to the supermarket from now on. I think I’ve always known the things I’ve needed to do. Not always clearly and in which order, but its there somewhere. For this year, I just want to enjoy the moments, the road, the inner mechanism of the human spirit, of what it wants, just like a good memory or moment, just like the passing of the four seasons is something we already recognise deep in our hearts.

May all our hearts desires be fulfilled this year. God Bless.

Hey guys, it was good. The Christmas of 2006.


On Player_'Seasons Change'_By Corinne Bailey Rae

The Flaneur

Flickr Update

Paris December 2006