the more you have
It is all biblical. The more you have (or do) the more will be given you. The less you have (or do) the more will be taken off you.
History of drawing
In our Drawing class with Michael Collins I have been working on a series of ten paintings with ink wash, based on a comic retro theme labelled 'The Stalking Samurai' about a 1950s woman who is stalked on the street by a mysterious shadowy samurai. Then she escapes to a cafe but realises the samurai is still stalking her. Right now I am working on the scene in her bathroom as she emerges out of the bath tub. Care has been taken care that she looks hot, because she is hardly covered and her legs and back need to look good. Inspiration from film voyeurism (where the idea is to show off the woman's body to attract more attention to the story, which works obviously as seen in Bollywood movie Bobby). It is not pornographic so its alright.
Michael has been highly impressed with the paintings and last week as I was working on the third painting, he said, "You have done in three hours what my third year Fine Arts students cannot do in half a year." Because apparently one of his students was trying to finish a comic novel but hardly got anywhere because he was trying too hard to make the characters real and all that. (It actually is all in the head. No matter how much paper work you do, if the characters aren't real to you inside your head, they just aren't real.) But that was an awesome comment to get from a drawing teacher and one of my favourite teachers at that.
Then yesterday as I was brushing up my sixth or seventh painting, he came and looked at it and said she will call Janet Abbot (the head of department of Fine Arts department) and let her have a look.
Golly! I thought.
Janet looked at them with her fingers on her chin. She nodded. Then asked, "How long have you been drawing?"
"As long as I can remember."
"Ah. That's the way it should be, good."
She thought she would put the paintings up somewhere in the college. But she didn't in the end, thank goodness. Because after the submissions are done and my marks are received I plan to sell them (ten paintings in all as a series of paintings) and make some money. haha
And coincidentally Debbie asked me, "how long have you been drawing?", yesterday. And I gave her history of how I drew everywhere, on my uncle's bike, uncle's cupboards, drawers and so on.
So yeah, I don't think that drawing is any talent I have. Of course maybe I have an eye for creativity and ideas, but the ability to draw I was not born with. It is not logical. Afters about 18 years of slaving away, spending afternoons and nights drawing away, painting away, looking at books with beautiful drawings, I have come to where I have been. Nothing is acheived when nothing is done.
That gives me more reason to keep drawing. Else one day I'd be saying, "when I was younger I used to draw SO MUCH. Then I got busy and sort of stopped."
Acquired gifts take time but do wear off. And it is a gift, not a birthright. I can lose it.
Vespa Ride And A Day of Cafe Hopping In Rome (Roman Holiday film)
Audrey Hepburn acts Princess Ann who escapes from her Colosseum during her stately visit to Rome and disguises herself as someone. She is picked up by an American news reporter who reluctantly takes her in simply because she had gone nuts, talking nonsense and almost at a state of drunkenness. He lets her sleep on his couch (not on his bed, haha).
Next day Princess Ann comes to the realisation that she is in a stranger's house. She lies she is a school kid running away from school, and the American guy Joe Bradley pretends to believe though he knew by now that she is actually Princess Ann.
Now Bradley wants his boss to pay him 5000 dollars (or was it 50,00$) for an exclusive interview. And decides to accompany Princess Ann as she roamed the city as a normal girl.
I loved the scenes where they go riding on a vespa and upturn the market places, run over people's bags, displace street stores and had the police after them. I also read a review in the internet that the movie made vespa hot in vogue.
SOme quotes from the film:
Princess Ann: I could do some of the things I've always wanted to.
Joe Bradley: Like what?
Princess Ann: Oh, you can't imagine. I-I'd do just whatever I liked all day long.
--
Joe Bradley: Tell you what. Why don't we do all those things, together?
Princess Ann: But don't you have to work?
Joe Bradley: Work? No. Today's gonna be a holiday.
Princess Ann: But you want to do a lot of silly things?
Joe Bradley: [He takes her hand] ... First wish? One sidewalk cafe, comin' right up. I know just the place. Rocca's.
--
Irving Radovich (Joe's photographer friend): Joe, we can't go running around town with a hot princess!
--
Dr. Bonnachoven: The best thing I know is to do exactly what you wish for a while.
--
Joe Bradley: Now, come on. You're not that drunk.
Princess Ann: [laughing] If you're so smart I'm not drunk at all. I'm just being
[her head falls against his chest]
Princess Ann: verrrrry haaaappy...
--
Yeah its a very light hearted story. Some of the scenes are actually inspiring Sirion Diaries scenes now. New scenes popping into my head.
ugh
I went to class to work on my projects. Raj and Lina were there. I sat down at the computer. Lina had turned on the fan and it was sighing away. I started to feel very sleepy. So I decided to crash on the couch and take a nap.
Wasn't easy to go to sleep.
And woke up at 9:10pm. AN HOUR later. And it is getting late. And I know there is nothing I can do now. No use trying to do any more work, not for tonight.
FIne. Go home then.
Ten things about going home and what to do there
There is much to do when I reach there. First hug my parents and pat my brothers on their heads (like puppies that they are). Then I will eat Lay's and all the street food that I can see in the near proximity.
Here is brief list of things that I suspect will happen:
1. Meet friends, yes, meet family relatives. Tell them about New Zealand (if they ask).
2. Christmas Eve service, where all the international students are expected to put on a show of some sort, telling some story of life back in their countries where they study in. Uh, I am not going to do some cultural show like the Maori dance though that is the first thing that comes to my mind.
3. Style photo shoot with Sirawon and Bi. Hope this happens. But looking at how this sort of things turn out, I guess there will be other people like Asane, Thiu, maybe, POuchun, Alex, and it will probably turn out into food party driving around in narrow Shillong roads tucked with aloo moorie, Lay's and Sprite. Atleast that's what I care for right now. Photography.. anyone can do. Having fun, not everyone!
4. Youth guys, will be all abuzz for Christmas. I can't wait to step in and catch the buzz.
5. Home town galore, more food, more love, more family. More cheap street food in Tamenglong, more Christmas lujam singing and more meat! And of course walking about from cousin's place to another cousin's place and getting dusty.
6. Observing is what I did the last time I went to Tamenglong after a long time. Much had happened. Much will have happened even more now. I will try and write blogs and stories about what is happening there (on a more serious note).
7. MAKE A DOCUMENTARY FILM!!!!! That is more like a travelogue. OR whatever you call it. A documentation of travel. Snippets of random things that come my way. And edit them after I come back to Christchurch when I am missing home again.
8. Roam Police Bazaar and Laitumkhrah, try to merge in with the streets, keep a keen eye for details and be inspired all over again to start a new whiff of Sirion pages running again. Or if not for that, just for the sake of the joy of it, the streets that I patronise so much.
9. More family time. Thou shall not plan to have family times, because it is not even to be planned, it should THE thing to do. Bully POuchun.
10. Go through all my old stuff, old comic books I never finished, my old books and writings, and see if I should take anything back with me.
11. Play drums for Christmas at SBC.
You'll Never Walk Alone
You'll Never Walk Alone
R. Rogers/O. Hammerstein II
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk
You'll never walk
You'll never walk alone.
The Face
Not many people even thought he has a face. Not that he shouldn't but just that it was just better if he didn't. It complicated a lot of things. What wass the harm in overlooking a little of this fact?
Still the same, everybody in the travelling crew loved him.
But today he sat near the water's edge and just sat. He looked at himself in the water and someone sad looked back at him. Who is he that looked so sad? Someone so unlike himself or what the world knew him as. Someone so unlike what he knew himself as. Maybe it was just a ghost. Just a dream. Maybe just a ripple in the water that contorted his face so that his happy face looked sad.
He also painted the massive backdrops for all the drama that happened with the travelling show. And he painted with love from his heart. He drew out of happy memories when he painted. He went back to his happy past, his times of friendship and love, and drew sunshine and flowers and trees out of those thoughts.
People fawned over his creation. Sometimes he enjoyed it. But sometimes, when he was painting it, he felt himself getting colder. Like a bit of sunshine, a bit of warmth has escaped from him, and gone into the painting. That a bit of his soul has moved from his frame to that canvas. And he was getting emptied slowly.
He was just a frame anyway. Just a body. Where the soul chose to come and dwell and make its home. And where life could choose to leave whenever it wanted to.
Today he just sat on the water's edge. Untroubled and unbothered. Unhappy, unsad. Nothing. Like a cold stone that he was sitting on. Like the river that swept past. Like the reflection of the poplars on the water's surface. Like the smokes that lingered from the chimneys.
He looked again at the face reflected back at him, and wondered who he was. Who was this sad man and why does he have this strange feeling that he has seem him before but still looked very unfamiliar.
Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song
You are the sunlight in my growing - so little warmth I've felt before.
It isn't hard to feel me glowing - I watched the fire that grew so low.
It is the summer of my smiles - flee from me Keepers of the Gloom.
Speak to me only with your eyes. It is to you I give this tune.
Ain't so hard to recognize - These things are clear to all from
Time to time.
Talk Talk - I've felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go. I cursed the gloom that set upon us...
But I know that I love you so
These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall
hmmmmmm
I sat at the Cathedral Square drawing a few people there, hanging around to enjoy the sun. An Asian guy sat next to me drinking Starbucks and I kept feeling he was Soo Jern (for some reason). I got three pages of drawings in my sketchbook, trying out different forms and pose that people sat at.
I had the idea of going to library and sitting there and planning out the next few pages of Sirion Diaries in writing. But when I got there, it was closed. Library closes at 4pm every weekends. Damn early! I just grinned to myself and walked back home.
Now I am looking forward to a full afternoon of Sirion Diaries. Bliss.
But I am confused, would you call it a productive day or just wasted? Because what I planned totally didn't work out but then I also don't mind how it is turning out to be.
Ok, page 116 of Sirion Diaries beckons me.
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About Sirion Diaries
I have been inspired by artists who made art works that are just mind blowing and crazy that it does demand enough attention from people. That is fair enough. But most stories today that exists on the racks are stories that are other worldly. Like a child robot out to destroy a robot system gone out of control affecting all robots around the world, or people controlling 100 feet tall machines that walk about as vehicles. Or about demons and angels fighting over a soul. Or about strange weird things that are just strange as strange can be.
Don't get me wrong. I do respect them, and appreciate them.
But Sirion Diaries is a simple story about a person and his friends and his feelings and the places and his everyday stuff, living in a school on the Himalayan mountains. That is simply about it. No ghosts. No horror. No sex (haha, who knows, but thats pretty normal anyway). No robots. No UFO's.
I know people (who are encouraging me) will say it will stand out because of the quiet confidence it has on the story and attract attention because of its silence, rather than the amount of noise it creates. I believe in that. But it is a risk. Sirion Diaries is not a story. It is not just a novel. To me it is a mindset. To me, it is a way of thought that I need to get into. It is no trivial matter.
The opening quotation in Arundhati Roy's book 'God Of Small Things' sums it all up for me:
"And never again will a story be told, as though it was the only story to be told."
nothing much..
There is heaps of work to be done today. Some have been done already. And I have to say it's been good so far.
I just realise I have 20 days to go back to Shillong. Somehow it hasn't dawned on me yet. How much of Shillong will have changed? How many of the people that used to be there, will be there? How much of the places and memories will have lasted?
I can't wait to see Tamenglong too. Its dusty roads and the celebrating churches that come alive during Christmas and the traditional drums that resonates throughout the town's hills, enveloped in evening light.
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--
Or maybe not. Tomorrow might be different than I fear it will be.
Pauly
He is going to have heaps more stories to tell of God's greatness, when this episode is over..
untitled IV
Tonight is TRANSFORM at the Majestic. It will be good.
untitled III
But then as much as that, I realise I can stare at the face of ice and still remain warm. Flip side of everything, they say.
untitled II
And it feels like what used to happen in college and school when I'd snuck in a book and read or doddle all over the page while the lectures drone away in the background. And being bored in lectures is one of the best time to think up ideas and make use of the sketchbook.
Anyway, it's just a short break between two sessions of Business Studies class. And the second session starts in five minutes on the Mezzanine floor.
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Wrote this one then:
"I want to sit under a cool dripping fern in a light rain, feel the cloud brush against my face, see a mountain peek from between passing mists. Listen to a running brook and hear a glistening tree shift gently in the wind. I want to come away with You, somewhere new, somewhere deep."
It is a beautiful morning. Though I love summer a lot, it is a nice change today.
What Happened Between Then And Now
I remember he used to be a whizz kid, who boasted about his prowess in computer and those basic computer stuffs, and all these when computers used to be the rare unapproachable new thing that everyone marvelled. He would talk about how he played games in it and do quizzes on the computer.
Then I met up with him in Orkut again, apparently he is IIT Gurgaon now, which is like the hot spot for information technology, in India, and even worldwide because most good IT schools are in India.
But his profile picture was disappointing to say the least. He stood with some hand pose and sunnies with brown-ish shirt on. What happened to that smart fellow who threw the class in awe with his stories with computer? How did he become so....... lame and normal? His quotations in his profile page were hardly inspirational too, stuff about life being music and dance and love and those sort of.. stuff. What happened in the middle of then and now?
Bollywood?
cat walking meowwwwwrrrrrrr!
I think Colin McCahon is clearly one of my favourite artists. He was unintentionally mixing up graphic design and fine arts. And his spiritual references from the Bible were real intense works. Read my blog post on Colin McCahon in my other blog (ob-site.blogspot.com).
I'm busy working on Rwanda art piece these days. It is turning out well. Just need me to spend heaps of time on it.
posing away.... and all
the painting (below) is far from finishing and so no judging till ii is finished.
About Mountains of the Moon
It is a beautiful place there. The mountains are so properly hidden away and obscured by the rain clouds that only in 1890 was it discovered.
Imagine that.
Europeans had been there in that part of Africa since the 1600s when they divided the continent up in what was called cutting the African 'cake'. But for almost 200 years no one knew where the river Nile came from. Surely it had to start somewhere. It couldn't have started from the sea because, well, it is fresh water and rivers don't start from seas. It couldn't start from a normal mountain because the mountain had to be really high with enough storage of ice and snow to feed the river perennially. Europeans had been passing that direction within viewing distance but no one sighted these mountains that were the actual source of Nile because the clouds always covered them.
Nile, according to legends and mythology has its source from the moon. Therefore the mountains are called Mountains of the Moon, where Nile began.
African forests and mountains are landscapes I have never really thought about or been fascinated about. But the variety and lushness of it all intrigues me now.
Tomorrow I will return that book about the mountains. And I regret not having finished reading it. Or maybe I will return it day after and read it tomorrow night.
summer day
I will be heading out of my house soon to get my painting moving on again. But not to think of that. I can see the reflection of myself on the computer screen with lines of sunlight on my shoulders. And my flat mates are engrossed in a game of Pro Evolution Soccer - hardcore gamers they are.
summer
Glorifying The Past
That is because everyone sees the past through good memories. If his/her week was made up of 4 days of good mood days and 3 days of bad mood days, people, when they look back, remember only the 4 good days of that week. I guess it is a good thing. But it is not good if it makes people think that the past was always better than present.
It is almost like saying the music and movies from the past were far better than they are now, which is not logical because the music and the movies that we see now have been filtered by time and popularity, and hence we see only the good few that has survived all these times, and not the everyday random ones that people of that era also might have detested.
ping pong pang
"Got balls?"
Awkward silence.................................. She stopped.
"Uh yeah yeah, got them." I mumbled.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, real awkward.
things i'm finger crossed about
sowing and reaping
on creativity and new music.
about people leaving
Situations and demands of live can so easily and conveniently pull people in and out of one's life. That just baffles me. What about people I know now? Will I, one day say goodbye to them too?
Atleast there is this conventional (I have to say, conventional to be honest, because my 'modern' self tells me to find a better escape) and deep believe that one day despite all the tearing apart here on earth, there will a reunion for all people who believe in Jesus. This is not some exclusive club or party that only Christians are allowed entry into. I think there will be a lot of people. Provided they found a way to get there without being a Christian (I will not go into that for now haha. No blasphemous talk on my blog entry here).
Anyway, as I was saying, it baffles me that people I know so well have become just memories now. Its the thing about life I guess. Whether it's too blunt to accept it or not, I can only be thankful that they have been there for that time of my life (as much as I have been there for that time of their life).
--
The birds are singing outside. Summer came and hugged my window this morning. I hope it is here to stay. We will need that when we see people leave.
j.k. rowling
you might never fail on the scale i did. but some failure in life is inevitable. it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you lived so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. in which case you fail by default.
Frank Schaeffer
Sirion Beckons
Warm air shaded by the pine needles beckon again.
People I knew so well call me back.
Towers and lake, gleaming in the moonlight.
They beckon me.
No One Need Know
"Come in here, honey," I covered her little head with my hand and brought her in. She didn't say anything. She normally doesn't say anything. Normally she just thinks to herself, murmuring something, or in her happier moods whisper a song, a melody that she caught on TV. Sometimes I wonder what she thinks in that little head of hers.
The rain sang gently on the umbrella. She looked up, "Is the umbrella going to tear?"
"No, dear, it won't. Don't worry; if it tears I will make sure you don't get wet."
She looked at the umbrella. "But I want to go out in the rain!"
"And get sick? I don't think so."
Anna is going away tomorrow and that was my final walk home with her. Her mother will take her to her new school. She is young, yes. She will be alone, yes. But sometimes, things like this happen. Sometimes you've got to just do things that you never wish and hope to be doing. I don't want to talk about why she has to go. But tomorrow she leaves.
And today we went to the dentist's to get some paperwork done so that the school dentist can pick up from wherever her previous dentist left off. Every morning I force her to brush her teeth with earnest. She'd stand beside me in her pajamas, I would be in my boxers and we'd both face the mirror. She follow my every movement as we brushed ("and brush and brush and brush and brush..." she'd say).
"But you're no fun!" she said, putting her hand out in the rain. "I want to go in the rain. Don't you know about the frog who sat on a leaf in the rain and jumped into the pond?"
I smiled. I have a book of poetry with an old Japanese print that showed a frog sitting on a lotus leaf floating on a pond and it was raining.
I watched how the grass trembled as rain fell on them. I watched trees sway gently as rain fell on them. I watched how Anna's skin tingled as rain fell on them. I heard the purring rain all around me.
I felt sad suddenly. This would be the last time I went home with Anna for a long long time. By the time she finish her school, she'd be a grown up. She would have her friends dropping her and picking her up whenever she wanted to get anywhere. This would be the last time I would hear her murmur and sing softly to herself as we make our way back.
My eyes started misting up. So many afternoons spent walking back home from her school and dentist and paino lessons and church...
What will I do now in the afternoons after she is gone?
A fat drop escaped my eyes and fell on Anna's nose.
She looked up. And looked at me. I sniffed back immediately. And looked back at her. Then she looked at the umbrella.
"I think the umbrella is breaking!" she reported, wiping her nose.
I looked up.
"OH YEAH! You're right! We're going to get wet, oh no!"
She smiled. "It's ok! Let's go into the rain!"
I looked at her. Her eyes gleamed with joy.
I closed the umbrella. And folded it. Felt the rain take over my face. My glasses. My body. My hands.
She yelped and shrieked. I picked her up on my arms. She shrieked again and laughed.
I wished for that laughter to remain forever in my mind. That moment to stay as it was forever. That we never reached home but froze in that rain just as we were. That tomorrow never come to pass.
Maybe it wasn't all rain that ran down my cheeks that day. But no one saw it. No one knew it. The passers-by saw a happy father and his happier daughter having fun in the rain. Without a care in this world.
No one need know.
Outlook traveller editions
Rwanda
five posts about sunshine
disclaimer
update
on Lord of the Rings
It just takes to another place. And sometimes when you just want to be somewhere else, just away from what you are familiar with, you find yourself soothing to thoughts of a cool jungle and dark pool rippling in the twilight, gleaming stars creeping over the sky.
gold and autumn
New hobby
As I do this and that and this and that everyday on the Internet, I sometimes wonder and marvel at the varied ideas that people have about being 'cool'. Being cool has never been uncool. And it's always a laugh to see what people do to be cool.
The temptation to be cool led to the evolution of uncool people on earth.
American arts & entertainment
But again, there are a few who turn to entertainment not for the shallow sole purpose of being amused but also to be impressed, to be moved, and to be provoked and inspired.
Most times American entertainment makes you sit through it, gaping in wonder and awe and then when you leave that place, you don’t feel the need to be affected by it anymore.
Approaching it from the direction of arts and entertainment serving as escapist tools, yes, that is how it should be.
But then again, arts and entertainment is not merely an escapist tool. When you escape, you still want to feel like you belong there. You still want to be a part of it. American stories make situations where things are just a bit too high for you to reach, you can just gape and wish you were there doing what the people in their stories are doing. That is not only depressing but it is degrading.
Building gods for the mass is never safe. Something that people should not take lightly. It is good for the business. It is an easy way out in terms of marketing boost, but then look at what irresponsible portrayal of pop icons and movie characters have led to.
I am not an idealist and I don’t like the idea of speaking the ‘positive’ message all the time. I do not like to pressure the arts and entertainment because I believe freedom to express is something that is fundamental for its survival. And there is nothing anyone can do if people still decide to make crap models and heros for the pleasure of the mass.
My point is, just because we have the power to do it, we don’t have to.
flowers in spring
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Haiku by Christopher Herold
on Haiku
old photographs
It is sad to think that something as important as people can be so easily forgotten. His/her memory discarded as easily as an old photograph kept away at the bottom of a messy shack of papers.
Then that person gets a job, falls in love, finds hate, peace, children, family and dies away. While I live my life as though I had never met that person ever in the past.
It is very sad. I'd hate being forgotten from people's memories to be let alone to live my own life. Maybe I will just be an old photograph erased and replaced, made to gather dust in an unopened cupboard for years.
I shudder at that thought. I wish I can remember and relocate everyone I have met in my life. How beautiful it'd be to see the guy who ran away from school in my primary school, and what he is doing with his life. Or what about the teacher who was so loved and scorned by everyone, who got married to a rich guy and left school? Is she fat now? Does she still have that teacherly look with tinted glass and orange salwar? Or that fellow in college who kept following us around just because he liked a girl from our group? Or what about that girl in my class who drew a comic where she and a guy called Ben got married, who according to her story was a classmate of hers in primary school (haha!)? What music does she listen to? What kind of shoes is she wearing?
I'd love to know all these. I hate to let them pass into oblivion, these little details of their lives. But then I am only human and as much as I hate doing it, I know it is happening to me and with me too. I am being forgotten in someone's memory. And I am slowly forgetting someone tonight.
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Call me sissy. Call me anything. I grew up by my mother's side. She spun stories and imaginary realities for me. She called me names and made me think I could be anything in the world. Everything good I have (except my tendency to worry unnecessarily) I have got from my mother.
[A man who does not know her mother is not complete. A person needs a mother. Everyone needs a mother because everyone needs that love, that crazy insane running after (that annoys us so much sometimes), else we'd all be lost.]
I don't know why I said what I said. She was being a mother. She did nothing wrong. I didn't do much wrong too. But then my mother is too perfect. She wasn't wrong. And I hurt her.
the sepia tinted pine
of Jordi Duff Clinic
untitled binge
I don't like to think about my walk to class tomorrow. I wish I can discover a route to class that is not any more distant than the one that I am using now. I don't want to walk the same roads again, see the smooth flowing river and the grey ducks tomorrow. Maybe I should give those views a break and return to that later. They remind me too much of past events or things I thought about when I also walked to class in the past as I watched them. Seeing the familiar opens a trapdoor of memories that sometimes unnecessarily depress you.
Thinking about seeing these things already makes me no excited to walk to class tomorrow.
I do have a new route that I take, through Latimer Square down Armagh Street and branching into a perpendicular street via Worcester Street. It seems longer (as my mathematical mind tells me, according to the Pythagoras Theorem) but then for the sake of some new oxygen to breathe it seems a smart thing for me to do.
I will be singing and playing music at a Uni Ball happening in the next few weeks. To be honest, I don't know when the exact date is. It's been a long time coming, practising and catching the bus for jam sessions and picking songs and figuring out chords for songs (since apparently I am a 'chord identifier' haha. oh well always glad to know I could be of any use) and I hope the Ball wil work out well. The theme is Murder/Mystery/Crime. I should get inspiration from Film Noir and Alfred Hitchcock's films for dress-up.
What else. I should sleep now. It's damn late already.
Indian Fashion (bits of it)
Another designer I like is Malini Ramani.
And of course our own Naga boy Atsu Sekhose who is becoming bigger and bigger in the Indian Fashion scene. you cah check it out ( http://www.delhifashionweek.com/designer_showroom.php?d_id=4 ). His works are clean and mild. I like it.
And I discovered Vineet Bahl link: ( http://www.delhifashionweek.com/designer_showroom.php?d_id=26 ) and i really like it, especially this particular one in the link provided.
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1. Aneeth Arora & Chinar Farooqi
(the red-riding-hood look is so cool and the colour co-ordinates work)
2. Ashmita Marwa
(the traditionality and the red blossoms and of course the near to perfect shawl/scarf)
3. Sabyasachi
(my favourite guy, the patterns the patterns and the layers the layers like an intricate open bulb of a rose petal. He is also called Christian Lacroix of Indian fashion. Lacroix is the considered the king of couture design).
4. Sabyasachi
(note the exotic jewellery and the top layering to match).
5. Sabyasachi
(this has a rather unnerving model but the finishing and pattern on the dress/top is so good).
(photos from Lakme Mumbai Fashion Week 09)
what does love mean?>?
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its beyond what words can frame. in the silent halls of my thoughts, broods a silent storm...............................
f.
of inspirations
Well, today I watched the documentary called It Might Get Loud, a showcase of the muse, interest and conversations of three guitarists, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Jack White (The White Stripes) and The Edge (U2). And I have to say its the most inspiring thing I have seen/been subjected to for a long long time.
waiting for the water to boil
i believe in what i believe in because there is nothing to believe in
untitled
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do something. who? i dunno. whatever. just do something. lemme see something different tomorrow.
whatever. what am i talking to anyway. what-the-heck-ever.
its not funny anymore.
Spiraling Away From Me
The overwhelming darkness slowly convulses slowly across the heavens, a great mass of coldness and fear rushing in from all direction. She holds me, her arms warm, that reminds me of a summer morning beating through the window onto my sleepy bed; she holds me as the cold slowly but steadily grips us.
The thunder of the mighty darkness shakes the air. It moves the hair over my forehead.
But though I sense deep fear in her voice too, she whispers, "we will get through this. We will get through this. Something will happen."
Her voice trembles. I could feel her breathing stiffen as the darkness engulf nearer around us.
I see no escape. I see no answer. Only darkness that keeps pressing in every second. How long will her arms remain warm? How long til darkness take over?
"Something will happen," she repeats shakily all the time, "He has his own timings. It will work out."
As much as I want to believe her, as much as I love her and want to believe every word she was saying, all I feel is my faith wavering, slowly, slowly, something I once held so confidently now seem to have forsaken me. Slowly but steadily, just like this great cold tidal wave spinning and spiraling closer and closer around us, is my trust in deliverance slowly but steadily spiraling away from me.
And I cling to my mother as close as possible wishing, wishing, only wishing that I could find us a way out of here, to take her back to warmth and life again, undoing everything and back to what it should have been...
from Psalm 16
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I have set the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
dreaming of shillong
But it was raining so heavily in Shillong. And I was texting Debbie this exact words, Shillong is so pretty.. its raining so heavily but it is warm. But I hadn't sent it yet. I just held the phone in my hands and watched the dark pines wet with rain and the streets washed and the cemented walls at the side of the road that people scuttered around by ducking for cover.
I kept commenting to myself that Shillong is so beautiful. You know, the sort of realisation that comes on you when you have been away from a place for a while and tend to see that place in a new light. I tried to think of Christchurch and told my father it is even comparable.
Anyway, we drove past All Saints School and I think I saw Amanda who I figured moved from Bajoria to All Saints. I learnt that Suaihiampou and Chun (other cousins) will be at home too and I looked forward to seeing them.
Then when we reached we got out in the rain. I shared the umbrella with Pa. He smelt the same. He didn't talk much as usual. I told him how beautiful Shillong was, haha, I kept thinking about it. It was raining but it was not cold. I had to remind myself that it is summer in Shillong, unlike at the Southern Hemisphere. Then we rounded a bend and came upon a street like Lachaumeire's. It was small and neatly kept. I saw some shops overhung with boxes-signboards like the PCO-STD-ISD ones but it was red (Vodafone? Prophetic, me? haha) But the smell still was the same. Some incense burning and I ran my hands across a maroon gate, letting my fingers strum the bars as I walked past. I thought about how Thiu would respond (still stuck in Korea because I was going to change my facebook status to 'loving Shillong, every bit of it!'). He would be so jealous, of course. Glee.
We entered Akho's house, which i learnt was new. A dog sat at the kennel, his nose popping out of the door. The guard at the entrance let us in.
One of my uncles was there. Rev. G. Gangmei. Mama was there. She was drinking tea or something and I told her, can I have tea too? And she laughed, "its not tea, its a regular medication I am drinking." Oh. I laughed and I sat beside her. I wanted to see home already. And I still saw the shifting world outside and the swaying forms of pines moved by the rain, through the lace curtains that hazed the outside world from that cosy little room.
Then I frikkin woke up.
I thought I was in Shillong when I even woke up because it was so real. And I heard the music I had left playing J'ai Dormi Sous L'eau by Air. Then saw the reflection of the blinds of the window on the wall beside my bed. I checked my phone, no unsent text about the rain and pretty Shillong.
(I normally don't give much thought to my dreams even though they are about Shillong. But this one felt too real.)
isn't it..
can come crumbling down at a whisper?
Show And Tell
These photos I uploaded are not in sequence to my presentation. That doesn't matter however, because I didn't follow any line of story and sequence. Almost every slide is independent of each other.