Pattern 25

Pattern 24

Pattern 23 

Pattern 22

Pattern 21

Pattern 20

If we could choose the life we'd live
Like a book from a library of shelves
Categorized by genre, complete with commentaries and reviews
So we could better decide if it would be worth our energies and emotions,
I would suggest you choose to be
An accidental hero.
You would not need to strive
But you will bathe in the glory and smell of fame,
Having been born at the right place and time.
Your very existence would be a landmark in the history
Of an eternity of souls regretting their turns.
I'm not sure if you can call that
A life worth living,
But it would be easy, and that's what you'd want.
I know, because I have always noticed you
Picking out biographices of those who have been through the pain
But in life you would always choose the Safe Way Out.
You always tell me how your heart bleeds when you enter their world
But honestly, I cannot grasp the shape and weight of your heart
When you say these things.
Perhaps one day you will prove me wrong.
And I hope you do - and perhaps one day
We can finally sit down and talk
And you would weep me warm tears
When I bare to you
My pains that have no speakable name.

Pattern 19
山


水

Pattern 18

Waiting

Patience could be life's greatest lesson
because there is always so much waiting
it is tempting to think
what we call life
is a ritual of repetitions
to which we attach a Meaning
that is its orbital period, a prime number
refusing to meet Time at its cadences,
as if this very tension
is the very consciousness
that created the experience which is the human life;
this consciousness,
spinning itself into a restless energy
clenched in hands afraid to open
knowing that should ever its spin connect with Time
Time would pull it into itself
And at that fearful angular velocity
of one Second per Second -
one Eternity per Eternity -
Time would not exist; neither would
this consciousness
that would choose to learn patience
between distractions in its unstable spin
and call it waiting.

Pattern 17

Disagreeing elements cannot naturally reside together, but there are many ways to make it possible for them to do so. Just as living and dying are never good or bad, acceptance and rejection in their different forms are neither good or bad - they just reflect what everything alive does to remain alive.

- Organic integration / aka bound by Chemistry
Host and guest elements find a way around each other and find a part that allow them to click together. Many functional marriages are probably a kind of organic integration, but a good number of those probably go under "cooperation".
(being/balanced,being/additive)

- Synergy / aka aligned by a Vision
Host and guest elements put differences aside and focus on co-operating towards a goal that host and guest elements cannot achieve apart from each other. Host and guest elements need not be intimately related; they can have functions separate of each other.
(doing/additive)

- Cooperation / aka united by the Task
Host element invites guest element to participate in its effort towards a common goal. Host and guest elements need not be intimately bound together; they just need to be functionally complementary.
(doing/balanced)

- Submission / aka bound by Power
Host element invites or forces guest element to participate in its effort towards its own goal. Slavery in all its different forms will come here.
(doing/unbalanced)

- Compartmentalization / aka agree on the Rules
A box is drawn for the guest element so that it does not come into conflict with the host elements. Buffering disagreement elements with mutually-agreeing elements is a form of compartmentalization. Territorial lines, urban planning would come here.
(rejection accepted)

- Cognitive dissonance / aka Escapism
Imagine that the guest element doesn't exist. Or, imagine that conflict doesn't exist. Societies and families are full of this.
(rejection rejected)

- Assimilation / aka trained through Conditioning
Where a guest element is slowly changed so that it fits in among host elements. Brainwashing would come in here.
(being/unbalanced)

- Reconstruction / aka one in Homogeneity
A guest element is taken apart and reconstructed so that it is exactly like the host elements. Digestion?
(being/destructive)

- Rejection / aka there can only be One
Host element rejects or destroys guest element. Eg, antibodies fighting foreign particles; war on a country with a different religion.
(doing/destructive)

Pattern 16

Pattern 15

Pattern 14

Pattern 12

Imagine that we lived in a world where costs are measured by the total impact of our actions and consumptions on the sustainability of the planet, and the perceived environmental costs of transportation become so expensive that almost everything is produced and consumed in the same region. The only thing that really crosses state and country borders are electronic money and information. MNCs and Franchises exists but only in payments and in contracts - knowledge and technologies, expressed as specifications and manufacturing data are provided, no goods are actually moved.

The most accessible transports are the bus and the train, and buses are run by a highly optimized scheduler that allows them to come to your doorstep within 10 minutes of booking. High speed transport is provided by trains. Air and space travel are available, but prohibitively expensive, not just in terms of money costing, but in terms of environmental costs.

And in this world, every human being is entitled to two trips by air, to anywhere you want to go on the planet - either that, or one single trip on a rocket to another planet human beings are living on - without a return trip.

You could take the trip to leave the society on the planet.

You could use it as one single holiday of your life.

Two people could save their trips for their honeymoon.

You could experience live abroad and return to your country and make use of your experience abroad.

You could take the flight to another country, and try to live there and have the second ticket as a back-up plan, in case you want to return.

You could take the flight to another country and live there, and then take the other flight to yet another country, settling down wherever you go.

Or you could just be where you are, and offer your tickets to another person who would want to use it.

Or you could be collecting tickets from people who do not want to travel in their lives, and use them to fuel holidays.

Or you could live a migrant life, moving from city to city with tickets that people around you bestow on you.

Where would you go?

Pattern 11

Pattern 10

Pattern 9

Pattern 8

Pattern 7

Pattern 6

Pattern 5

Pattern 4

4th floor


3rd floor


2nd floor


1st floor

Pattern 3

Pattern 2

Pattern 1

ten thoughts on quality time

1. quality time is any amount of time spent not thinking you'd rather be somewhere else.

2. if every moment in life is a new experience, why should you be thinking about another experience that you cannot yet fully know?

3. while holidays create a period that increases the probability of quality time, do they also decrease the probability of quality time occurring while not on a holiday?

4. 100% quality time should really be the minimum we should aim for in any situation.

5. when we predict what a situation would be like we also define for ourselves the boundaries in which we allow ourselves to experience that situation.

6. my guess is that courage is not calculating risks and going into the situation knowing what will happen, as much as it is being in the situation and simply knowing what needs to be done there.

7. too much of life is lived looking back at the past and into the future. i suspect it has to do with the idea of living life and wanting to look back at it like it's a masterpiece of art.

8. evaluating art, is what a curator does. the artist moves on. once a piece of work is created, it should be already outdated, in the artist's time-frame.

9. in the curator's world, money can buy you quality time. but in the artist's world, quality time is as abundant as the air that you breathe.

10. you can either find time that has more quality in it, or you can put more quality into the time that you have. given any instant, everybody alive has the same amount of time. if that time isn't quality time, by elimination, you must be the problem.

In the face of Struggle, there are those who are resigned to their fate, those who try but don't manage, and then there are two camps that cross the Mountain.

First are those who tear apart what binds them to claim Victory, crossing the Mountain and growing from strength to strength. They are celebrated in history, because when they stood on the mountain, they were standing taller than the mountain. It is always inspiring that a man so small, can be at the same time so tall.

And there are those who struggle. Because when you struggle until you have no more strength left to continue struggling, you can find a place where you can reach out and feel with your hands what had been binding you. And you will know its true nature, precisely because you had so struggled with it. And you will no longer see the Mountain, but the flowers and the trees on the Mountain. And when you reach out to touch the mountain, the mountain will cross under you.

But then Age presents a different mountain. It had always bothered me what would happen when Age decides to take away my strength, take away my sight, take away my hearing. How can i scale a mountain like that? How do folks live with the constant pain in their bodies? How do you come to terms with the permanent handicap?

It is there that I remember our blind and deaf friends. If everybody is unique, what is a handicap? If we cannot see, how much more will we be able to hear?

Age must be life's greatest Justice. It gives everybody one chance to live a struggle you cannot conquer, so that once in your life, you get one compelling chance, to come to terms with yourself. It is not life wanting have the last laugh, but life, telling you, in case you never managed to see, that the biggest mountain that you have unknowingly been struggling with all this while, is really yourself.

Photography, when paired with Tourism, is a very frightening thing. It does not speak of experience; it speaks of conquest. That is why I don't really take photographs anymore. When I do, I try not to be part of the picture - so that my photographs would not tell a story about what I have conquered, but the story of what conquered me.

The premise of photography shouldn't be about what you can capture on film, but how the world around you had so captivated you.

fashion

Give me anything, anything at all, and I can tell you what I like about it, and why. But it would be my own perspective, run through my own design sense; I cannot really say I understand fashion - at least not in the sense of being able to give you a reason why I would love a prada and hate an LV. But I think Fashion, is one of the most important industries in recent civilization.

For a lot of people, glamor is the heart of Fashion. The Runway, the price tag, the Names. Fashion has this power to infect people with its own sense of design - why one color is "correct" and another is "wrong". It creates an idea about what a bag or a shoe is, packages that idea into a product, brands the product into a merchandise, broadcasts the merchandise through the media and retail to create a sensation, and finally runs it through Society's set of values and mechanisms and filters it into a Desire. Fashion transforms an Ideas into a Desire - the dream of every industry with a commercial focus. Other industries tend to squeeze every last drop of commercial value out of each Desire, cascading less desired products down to more budget-friendly lines to present a "fuller" range of products, but Fashion, doesn't recycle. It creates new Ideas all the time.

In Fashion, new ideas supersede old ideas rapidly. As much as each idea creates in its own right a unique desire that shapes people's shopping lists and budgets, old ideas get thrown out like it's worth nothing, all the time. This change, to me, is not unlike the change of the times. Every time a new world order comes into play, the old one would be worth nothing from its perspective. Some choose to persist in the old order - many would view these as not coming to terms with reality. For most people, what reality is, would depend on the size and shape of the Desire that created it. Just like how gods in ancient times were defined by the shape and size of the demographics of their worshipers. That's right - through the times, so much has changed, yet so much more hasn't.

I'm not trying to saying that Fashion is the new Religion. What I'm trying to say here is that, all history has one single theme - constant change. And as far as I can understand Fashion, no industry rests its whole existence on constant change, as much as Fashion. If I could be given two words to sum up what Fashion is, it would have to be "changing glamor".

Yes, Fashion represents how our lives are run and how the seasons weave in and out of the times. It's a way of life. It's my way of life. That being said, I still hold that buying branded is, strictly optional.

f(action) -> reality
f(style) -> action
f(character) -> style
f(development) -> character
f(ambition) -> development
f(inclination) -> ambition
f(self, reality) -> inclination

我如是海。有水而满，却不可满。有水而是，却不是水。无水而空，却不是空。取尽其水则见不得，换尽其水则灭不得。如水滴，滴入海则见不得，分不得，取不得。反问何是海何非海？无海既是海，分不得是海与非海。无我既是我，分不得是我与非我。

你看到空，还是看到色？

Perhaps one of the great mis-accidents of the English Language is its differentiation between "hearing" and "listening", "looking" and "seeing". It creates in the English-speaking psyche an awareness of the cognitive mind that interprets the signals sent out by the senses. Fortunately or not, it makes us always eager to seek out the intention in the words and the meaning in the sights, so that we can perceive what is critical, and understand what is important. We want not just to be hearing, but to be listening, not just to be looking, but to be seeing. We interpret sights and sounds once we sense the slightest indicators - and pigeonhole them into our library of experiences.

But sometimes, we get so caught up with this business of experiencing that we forget to feel what's really around us. Once we match what we see or feel to our experiences, we don't hear the sound in the ears, but the sounds in our minds; we don't see the sight before our eyes, but the visuals in our heads - we try so hard to listen to that "inner voice" that we become deaf the music of the spheres.

Our vocabulary of experiences is both our greatest ability and our biggest handicap. When we attach words to experiences, we give meaning to them. We become able to contain all our experiences within the framework of a language - and words, in representing our experiences, become our experiences.

That is when we need to take a step back, and feel what is really around us instead of rushing into finding meaning in it. We need to learn to hear the "white noise" our brains so conveniently filter out, we need to smell the air, and we need to see the circle in the letter "o". We need to connect back to reality, and not let language remove us from our surroundings. We need to be here now. We need to be "here" in location, and "here" in time.

And I hope you don't manage to read this far. Because if you do, then you are here with me, and that's not where I hope you to be. Words have led you here. Words have created for you Meaning for being here. Words have created Questions. And Questions have created the Need for Answers.

Don't come here searching for answers, because there is none. Go, go back to where you are and find the reality around you. When you sit on the floor, don't ponder. Feel the floor, and feel yourself sitting on the floor. The floor you sit on is not asking you a question - why should you try so hard to find an answer on it?

Listen to the noise
-------------------

Our brains cannot handle a lot of things at one time. But the brain does very clever tricks. It learns to attach meaning to things. It then categorizes, prioritizes and filters out unimportant things so that we need to pay attention only to "important" things - things that threaten our survival, or things that can ensure our safety. I think it's all part of evolution, and the peak of our survival instinct. Attaching meaning to things keeps us in the game; it makes sense of the world - it makes sense of fear, it makes sense of happiness, and it makes sense of desire, and of sadness.

But the problem is, sometimes, the brain decides that so many things are important that we have everything in our face and nothing we can ignore. In trying to minimize the amount of noise we hear, our brain as a result gives us more noise - noise created by meaning - and we fail to hear the real noise - we stop hearing noise as it is, and stop seeing the world as it is. Reality gets filtered by our perceptions, and I think the opinion of most people is that there's nothing you can do about it.

But i think if you try really hard, and listen to the noise - you will start hearing the noise as it is. Your inner noise will be stilled. And you will find the place where meaning is made. And if you can stop that meaning from being made, I think fear, happiness, desire, and sadness can disappear. But I had a lot of difficulty listening to the noise - my mind tries to form images to match the noise i hear. That would create meaning. But my unfamiliarity with hearing the world, did make it easier to hear the world as it is. I wonder what it is like to be profoundly blind. Would hearing be as sight? Or is there no blindness where there is no sight?

I'm sorry this is written with such an assuming voice. I just need to put down what's in my mind.

It's the second time we met
---------------------------

Ten years
In the galaxies' history
Would be a single momment, held still in a thought
Like us now
With my body curled up in the orbit of your embrace.

I have seen your thoughts from afar
Radiating like light from a sea of flames
Dancing to a rhythm I had taken for granted to be
The ticking of your mind, until now. I am surprised
By this warmth near your face,
Surprised by these full lips
And the gentleness of your gaze - it is strange
How an hour could put away
Distances separated by time.

In a while we would be back each to our own orbit
And it leaves me wondering,
How the math of two orbital periods
Shall let us meet again.

Give me a song
  for the feint hearted
  when the night stretches itself out too long
  and the noise of day long departed
  in the darkness that swallows up every word
  written in the sand
Give me a song that dives below the surface
  and gently lifts
  fallen notes with its chords into a harmony
  that puts the beating back into the heart
  in the night of disappointment and fatigue
  the heart cannot speak

And I will wrap it around myself
Like a down blanket in winter
And learn to believe again
In its promises of Spring

Read me a poem
  not weaved with words but with pauses
  in between words that just happen to be there;
  Words are always eager to spell out every sin the mind can conceive
  but broken lines can fit together
  the sky and the sea
Read me a poem
  and breathe it into my ears
  and let it embrace my being
  like a cocoon wrapping around a caterpillar
  eager to know 
  the smell of the wind

And I will sleep like a baby in the cradle
I will learn to forget the future I know
And perhaps when I wake up in the middle of the night
The breasts will be there for me to suckle.

the morning i die

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will there be quarrels left unsettled
last minute goodbyes
i love yous left unspoken
will it be a rainy morning with mozarts requiem playing in a chapel
will it be peacetime or war among the debris
the morning it is proclaimed
eddie is dead

will dad and mum be still alive
or will i outlive them and be able to spare them of such deep loss
will the languages of capitalism and kindness still be spoken
the morning on the day
i exist no more

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will this text be read
by who and to who
and what memories should it invoke what legacy should it recount
on the day dear ones gather in my name
because i exist no more

will they be there
those who knew my soul
and those who knew my body
who saw how exitement tingled through my whole being
and breathed the same air
that kept me alive in my darkest hours
will they be there
those who had been there the day i arrived
who celebrated thence giving thanks for every hour eddie was there

(still editing)

想念以前 -- 想念以前的将来，想念以前的梦。

happiness, i think, is a response to an exciting energy.

when you hit a drum with a mallet, it makes what is usually called a "sound".
perhaps happiness is like this "sound" thing.
when some invisible mallet hits you, you vibrate and emit "happiness".

happiness is not an emotion. happiness is not a motion.
it is a response to an exciting energy.
it is the product of an energy in motion rather than an objective or a feeling.

happiness is not love. love may end in happiness. but it may not.
different people vibrate to different energies, so not everyone
vibrates to love.

that is why nobody can tell you what happiness is, or how you can be happy.

happiness is not a specific manifestation, but manifestations add to
describe what happiness is. happiness is a class of manifestations. it is a template, a virtual class, an idea, rather than a particular instance.

some people find happiness in purpose. some people find happiness in being together. some people find happiness in discovery. some people find happiness in being able to hold together ideas and make sense in its totality.

some people find happiness in roller coaster rides.

but since happiness is the product of an energy, sustained happiness would require a sustained source of that energy.

of course you will first have to figure out what that energy is.

perhaps conditioning and religion can help condition you to resonate to a prescribed energy.

but everybody is different.

some people may find happiness in disrespect, in unbelief, in putting people down. is it fair to say that their unfortunate past made them so?
you are just as unfortunate that your past made you whatever you are.

ideas evolve because ideas get shared. we are all part of some brainwashing.

so let's have a little respect for other people's happinesses, and see how we can fit them in.

Make your mbox attachments searchable in Thunderbird.

#!/bin/perl 
# filename : mboxtagattachments
# usaage   : cat Inbox | mboxtagattachments > newInbox
#            searcch tag "X-META-01" in thunderbird

$OUTPUTENCODING = "UTF-8";

use MIME::Base64 qw( encode_base64 decode_base64 );
use Text::Iconv;
use Data::Dumper;

$STATE = "INIT";
$LASTLINE = 1;
while (($_=) || $LASTLINE) {
        if (!$_) {
                $LASTLINE = 0;
                $_ = "From -";
        }
        s/[\n\r]*$//g;
        $_ .= "\r\n";
        if (/^From -/) {
                if ($RAW_PROLOG) {
                        ## -------------------------------------------
                        ## HANDLE MAIL THAT ENDED
                        ## -------------------------------------------

                        %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                        $CHARSET = $subvalues{"charset"};

                        # print STDERR "$CHARSET\n";
                        # if ($CHARSET) {
                        #        $MAIL_BODY = Text::Iconv->new($CHARSET, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert($MAIL_BODY);
                        #}
                        #print STDERR Dumper(\%MAIL_HEADER);

                        print $RAW_PROLOG;
                        for (keys %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS) {
                                $fn = $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$_};
                                if ($fn =~ /[^[:alnum:][:punct:][:space:]]/) {
                                        if ($CHARSET) {
                                                $fn = Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $CHARSET)->convert($fn);
                                        }
                                }
                                print "X-META-01: $fn\r\n";
                        }
                        print $RAW_HEADER;
                        print "\r\n";
                        print $RAW_BODY;
                }
                $RAW_PROLOG = $_;
                $RAW_HEADER = "";
                $RAW_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_HEADER = ();
                $MAIL_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS = ();
                $STATE = "HEADER";
                $KEY = "";
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "HEADER") {
                if (/^\s*$/ && ($MAIL_HEADER{"From"} ne "")) {
                        $STATE = "BODY";
                        if ($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"} =~ /multipart/) {

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_boundary = $subvalues{"boundary"};

                                %partbody_headers = ();
                                $partbody_count = 0;
                                $partbody_filename = "";
                                $KEY = "";
                                $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        }
                } else {
                        if (/^X-META-01:/) {
                                next;
                        } else {
                                $RAW_HEADER .= $_;
                        }
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        $KEY = $PREVKEY;
                        $VALUE = $_;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                if ($KEY eq "Subject") {
                        $VALUE =~ s/^\s*//;
                        $VALUE = decode($VALUE);
                }
                if ($KEY) {
                        $MAIL_HEADER{$KEY} .= $VALUE;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/$partbody_boundary/) {
                        {
                                ## -----------------------------------
                                ## HANDLE COMPLETED PART
                                ## -----------------------------------

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_filename = decode($subvalues{"name"});

                                if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                        %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Disposition"});
                                        $partbody_filename = $subvalues{"filename"};
                                }

                                # if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                #         for (my $c=0 ; $subvalues{"filename*$c*"}; $c++) {
                                #                 $partbody_filename .= $subvalues{"filename*$c*"};
                                #         }
                                #        $partbody_filename = decode($partbody_filename, "url");
                                # }

                                if ($partbody_filename) {
                                        $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$partbody_count} = $partbody_filename;
                                }

                                # print "PART $partbody_count\n";
                                # print Dumper(\%partbody_headers);
                                # print "FILENAME $partbody_filename\n";
                                # print $partbody;
                        }
                        $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        $partbody = "";
                        $partbody_count++;
                        $partbody_filename = "";
                } else {
                        $partbody .= $_;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-HEADER") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/^\s*$/) {
                        $STATE = "PART-BODY";
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        if ($_) {
                                $partbody_headers{$PREVKEY} .= "\n".$_;
                        }
                        next;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        if ($KEY && $VALUE) {
                                $partbody_headers{$KEY} = $VALUE;
                        }
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                $MAIL_BODY .= $_;
                next;
        }
}

sub getSubValues {
        my $value = shift @_;
        my %subvalues = ();
        my $initial;
        my $oldvalue = "";

        ($initial, $value) = $value =~ m/^([^;\n\r]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/sg;
        $subvalues{""} = $initial;
        while ($value) {
                ($key, $value) = $value =~ /([^=]*)=(.*)/s;
                if ($value =~ /^"/) {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /"([^"]*)"[[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                } else {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /\s*([^;[:space:]]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                }
                $subvalues{$key} = $keyvalue;
                if ($oldvalue eq $value) {
                        break;
                }
                $oldvalue = $value;
        }
        return %subvalues;
}

sub encode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift @_;
        my $charset = shift @_;
        if ($charset eq "") {
                $charset = $OUTPUTENCODING;
        }
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn = "$charset''".URLEncode(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
        } else {
                $fn = encode_base64(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
                chomp($fn);
                $fn = "=?$charset?$fn?=";
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub decode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift;
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn =~ s/([^']*?)''([^;]*?);/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(URLDecode($2))/eg;
        } else {
                $fn =~ s/=\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?=/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(decode_base64($3))/eg;
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub URLDecode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ tr/+/ /;
        $theURL =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9]{2,2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
        $theURL =~ s///g;
        return $theURL;
}
sub URLEncode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ s/([\W])/%".uc(sprintf("%2.2x",ord($1)))/eg;
        return $theURL;
}
exit;

And remember that you're a star.

If there are so many people on earth past and present
Then surely every star must be special to someone;
Someone, who will look up each night
To whisper his thoughts in a voice so soft that
It can only be heard by the very star he is talking to.

Surely every star has a story to listen to each night -
The story of a busy day, the story of a day lost in the streets,
The story of a sudden joy in the heart, the story of deep grief -
Surely, in the wide vacuum of space,
Someone is out there to paint your universe with the colors of the earth, because
Space is so cold, it's hard to stay alive
Out there all alone, trying to shine
If there isn't a someone to shine for.

Yes, there are the brighter stars
Who have a larger following
But remember that you are less bright
Only because you are a little further away,
A little more special,
And a little more precious,
Casting your light through the distances of space -
The same distance that stretches out your light so thin,
Is the only ruler long enough to measure
The inspiration you give that someone, so precious,
You had chosen to shine all your life for
But just haven't met.

見送りの　朝はどうやら　肌寒い

I always come to the
Same dark corner and seat myself so deep
Into the darkness
Scribbling into random pages
Of my memory sentences
I do not really know how to punctuate though
I do break the lines so I can breathe
In the fragments and the air in between
One dark corner and another perhaps half
Hoping some transcendence can bring
All the corners of the earth
Into a room I hope
Will have a window or two
So we can let in a little air,
From the outside.

Fragments

I always come to the
Same dark corner and seat myself so deep
Into the darkness
Scribbling into random pages
Of my memory sentences
I do not really know how to punctuate though
I do break the lines so I can breathe
In the fragments and the air in between
One dark corner and another perhaps half
Hoping some transcendence can bring
All the corners of the earth
Into a room I hope
Will have a window or two
So we can let in a little air,
From the outside.

途切れそう　スカイプで聞く　母の歌

Butterfly Fridays
E.E.K.

Friday evening
No date for the night
Feeling sorry for
My single life
Gonna hit the pool and to see if I can
Cry with my face
Hidden in the water
Following the deep blue line

I'm gonna swim my twenty laps
And work'em tired arms
Flippin' right and left and wonder
Why on every lane on a Friday evening
There's another sweet faced boy
Chasing flipping abs

Summer nights are
Kinda cooling
Still the water
Calls to me
Every muscle feels the rhythm
Of the music in my head
Melted in the water
All along the deep blue line

I'm gonna do my crawl and breast
And maybe butterfly
Flip on every lap and wonder
How I would describe the heat under my skin
If the summer heat is killing -
This is even hotter.

Friday evening
Is just the night
For a date with
some random guy.

I'm gonna swim my twenty laps
And work'em tired arms
Flippin' right and left and wonder
Why on every lane on a Friday evening
There's another smiling boy
Ready for his lap

I don't know if I am swimming my laps
Or my laps are swimming me
But does it matter?

(preliminary recording of tune available on request)

Going in, Alone

Maybe some like boys like girls
Maybe some like girls like boys
And maybe some going into life need to unlearn Loneliness
In a world that cannot match them to a similar passion.
If everything were arbitrary,
Let's assume that life equals happiness
And then invent the theories that can help us make
What's left right.

Another weekend
spent.
The nights filled with endless laughter
And conversations that do not add up.
You down the drinks as if you're trying to fill
The Emptiness that'll come the day after;
Let the drinks keep on coming
So Tomorrow would delay
To bring on you his fierce daylight -
Lonely nights, shredded and remolded, now new, shining and empty -
Oh bother,
Another brand new day.

リサイクルできないもの

朝。日光にまだなれてない覚めたばかりの目で見上げてみたら、空は細かった。灰色だったけど眩しかった。そして見えるところまでほど太い黒い線が、上から下へと引かれている。まっすぐな揺らぎのない油性マジックで描いた線は、色をなくした虹のように、虚しかった。この世界の虹は、使い捨てだね。なんてもったいない。

Tonight the moon is neither full
Nor wearing her crescent smile
But she shines, bright like a star, at mid-height
Against a starless sky, layered with
Watercolored clouds, each layer fading into another.
But the winds are so strong
The clouds that frame the moon into a picture
Do not stay still long enough for you to figure out
What's on her mind.

风，吹不动风铃，今夜雨声不相伴，本意欲听雨声吵，不吵更不静。日恨春雨来的早，夜卷夜长思绪多，坐待丑时；恨睡意敌不过心情。

笔，写不出书信，独对电脑打律句，千言万语话不清，断句的心境。幼时常说好学好：红尘如烟不惜要；手伸出去，才发觉自己捉不到。

between breezes
everything is still
and a little warm, even,
just warm enough for mum to walk through the streets
feeling cooled by the air
familiar, yet strange.
this is her forth trip, i think -
it's been so many years since i started going on my own trips and
we stopped traveling together.
the last trip we went on together must have been China.
Five of us. That was before sister got married
and we were still living in the same house.
Eighteen years I was in the house,
(we moved there when I was twelve,)
now that I've moved out, 
I learnt that it's called the "Real House" over here -
the house of one's parents. Indeed, life back then
seemed so real, yet,
here,
now,
"Real" seems like a passing breeze
A motion, even just an idea
     that i trade
for something similarly transient, until
I have nothing left and trade myself in, I guess.
It's strange, how it feels to be living so far away -
But this is what most of my relatives do -
I see it as a rite of passage, though
nothing now seems "right" or "wrong".
Everything just seems so far away -
The breeze that used to cool me in the tropical sun,
And the breeze that i hope will come and cool me through the grilling summer
but for now,
between breezes,
everything is still.
The world outside must still be running.
The new flu, must be causing quite a stir,
but for now,
just let me let everything be a little far away
while i hide for a little while
and pull myself together.

心里有数

那么简单却又那么复杂
好像一般却无人能解答
谁能明白这心理状态
又有谁能看见我藏在心底的无奈

其实从头我心里有数
只是不想看得太过清楚
看破了红尘我依然孤独
不如让我选择这生糊涂

爱我的人我也留不住
尝试去爱也是晚霞朝露
瞬间依在，瞬间幸福
瞬间永远只剩一霄一宿

还没开始就忽然结束
每次走到这里我就不服
看见周围双对谈笑啼哭
我也会想体会平凡幸福

有时想起谁曾让我喜怒
好想永远都不要醒悟
就是无缘能够遇见
能骗我到入土那天的诱人谎言

那么简单却又那么复杂
好像一般却无人能解答
谁能明白这心理状态
又有谁能看见我藏在心底的无奈

词/曲 逸励 (c)Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.

the world is held together
by a piece of string
its ends tied together
with a butterfly knot inside you
and sometimes you feel like
everything is just going to fall apart

the nights are long
when you lie alone in bed
with a sore throat
and there's nothing really interesting on TV
on nights when all your friends seem far away
and you cannot remember what made the other day so fun
you can't sleep
but that's what you tell yourself when
you can't get yourself to turn the tv off
afraid that once the last lights go out
whatever presence you are left with might also disappear just like that
as if the remote control would switch the whole world off
and leave nobody to switch it back on
in the morning

columns of wood planks
lined up into a beige wall
stand tall, unmoving,
and the smell of sawdust
fills the air in front of the wood dealer.
every time i pass by i would stop
and try to fit this image of the wood dealer
into my memory of the smell of sawdust
balming the cool air in the Old House
that i cannot anymore recall in detail.
but this smell of raw wood
calls to me to go in and sit
at its feet, like your cat would,
curled up beside you while you stroke her fur
promising to protect her from storms of the world;
but no, the walls of wood themselves do not speak
and this is private property -
but i would always steal one breathful of the fragrant air,
breathing it in deep,
and cycle on.

どこかで嗅いだにおいの空気が
肺に満ちる。
早朝のちょっと寒い
すがすがしさの中に
異国の匂いがなく、懐かしい元気さが
肌から染み入る。
そうだ、中学時代のセントウサだ。

そして上で広がる
雲の無い星空も
あの時のまんま。
テントの中があつくて、
みんな懐中電灯をもって
星空の下で
未知の大人の世界のことを論じ
夜を更かしーー
あの頃の時間は
永遠に流れるように感じたな。
卒業なんて、永遠が終わってからのことさ。

なのに今は社会人人生6年目
永遠が終わった今も
どこかに
永遠が続く僕がまだいる、
今日星空を見上げて
そう感じた。
そうだ、中学時代のセントウサだ、
いまだに元気をくれている。

tired eyes
and ears that want to hear again
the songs that make my mind wander the distances
and make the repetitive calls of cicadas suddenly quiet;
songs that remind me there's a sky and a sea farther than the horizon
and worlds that spin each with a different pulse, waiting to be discovered again -
if, and only if,
the child within is still capable of curiosity -
songs that remind me why i so struggle to keep alive
that child; songs that
breathe life into moments
and make it seems that
the past and the future have come together again.

Walk,
When the walls on your left, and your right are cold,
When you're not sure if there's a hand in front reaching out to hold yours,
When the only place you still hear the song is in your head.

Walk,
Even when you seem to be going in circles,
Even when you don't see a light in miles,
Even when you're not sure if you're going to make it.

Walk,
And recall the song that warmed you and sing it,
And let your voice reach out like hands into a darkness feeling just as lost
And remember the light that bathed you, is inside you waiting to be born.

Black walls, under a black ceiling,
Not like the four walls of a room
But like a maze
Just a little too tall for one to see what's on the other side.
The windows covered with opaque paper,
Black too, but now full of holes;
And in the morning these tiny holes light up
With a light that seems to be the only thing that belongs
To a world where time still moves.

Black Box

Black walls, under a black ceiling,
Not like the four walls of a room
But like a maze
Just a little too tall for one to see what's on the other side.
The windows covered with opaque paper,
Black too, but now full of holes;
And in the morning these tiny holes light up
With a light that seems to be the only thing that belongs
To a world where time still moves.

淡淡的
酸酸的
深深的
茫茫的
难道这就是乡愁？
也不是想什么
但是好像忘了什么
生活有点暗淡
一份孤单，一份疲劳，
难道这就是离乡的味道？
爷爷尝过，爸爸含过，
现在我应该要牢牢记得这味道，
就好像玫瑰包在花蕾里面
花瓣的味道是苦苦的
涩涩的
但有了苦苦的花瓣
才那么香醇。

in the end, we're really all just information. very evolved information. if we let digital version of "genes" evolve, they'll end up just as evolved, someday. but in between all the things that what genes do, the resulting chemistry makes us feel this thing called "emotions". I wonder what kind of "emotions" digital genes can end up feeling.

I find it difficult to finish the day
Because the hustle of the day leaves me
With little change, but i still dig hard
To find that one-cent coin I don't have
So that tomorrow's change won't come in all sorts of odd shapes
That do not stack up properly in my world.
So i let the minutes run by
My eyes open, neither asleep nor awake
Tired from navigating, having brought home
The rest of the body, now collected in a pile
Until some strange courage tucks me into bed and whispers in my ear
That it's alright to leave the rest of everything left undone,
That Tomorrow will come to me as generously as today had -
And the thing is,
I already know that
From the countless nights I had watched
The nights deepen into mornings that do not
Leave me any more comforted.

saw/heard the most inspiring piece of art/thought about art in years.
Arthur Ganson: Sculpture that's truly moving

"...all of these pieces start off in my own mind in my heart and I do my best at finding ways to express them with materials and it always feel very crude, and it's always a struggle, but somehow I manage to get the thought out into an object and then it's there; it means nothing at all - the object itself just means nothing - (but) once its perceived and someone brings it into their own mind then there's a cycle that has been completed and to me that's the most important thing... and that is the complete cycle, coming from inside, out to the physical, to someone perceiving it." - Arthur Gansor

To me, that's a beautiful way of saying something that seems to hint at the the most fundamental difference in approach between the engineering and the arts - to engineering, the object, or the thought behind the object is everything, but to art, the object is nothing - it's the thought after the object that counts. And it's really inspiring how the language of engineering can similarly be used to say that sweet nothing that means everything.

悲欢岁月

悲莫悲呀生别离　　乡关路远渐无迹
昨天的脸又浮起　　那是我曾青春的证据
欢莫欢呀重相聚　　岁月路上尘烟起
迷路的人又迟疑　　将那过往收藏在心底

命是一片烟　何处堪凭寄　落地生根根已密
爱是一阵风　忘却人已去呀　盘旋心中多少季

悲莫悲呀生别离　　擦肩的梦长思忆
曾经拥有又失去　　给我欢笑泪水就是你
欢且欢喜终相聚　　轻轻拨开来时雨
总要重回到最初　　才能回忆心碎的相遇

何时风又起---

悲莫悲呀生别离 红尘烟又起
欢且欢喜终相聚 岁月不停息

CALL FOR SPONSORSHIP FOR CALL FOR SUBMISSION

Taking eco-living to the next stage, eco-living should not just be about recycling unwanted material or cutting down on resource usage, but also maximizing the use of "wasted" energies and turn them into useful energies. This call for submission is a step towards a lifestyle which wasted energies may be turned to do useful work.

The Challenge CAT A : To design a room or an entire house that makes use of air movements generated by the movements of its inhabitants during urban-living related activities to naturally collect dust in places in the space that facilitate easy cleaning. The design should reflect how our everyday lives interact with our living spaces through activities that satisfy various needs which are integral to urban living. The design should also reflect manufacturing processes that do not consume any more energy resources than is needed to put together a current-day living space that satisfies the same needs.

The Challenge CAT B : To design an office space that makes use of unwanted heat from machines and radiation in the air to perform tasks that make the office environment more inhabitable. Any new facility introduced should not consume additional energy or resources in its usage. The manufacture of any new facility may consume energy resources up to the amount of energy resources it is able to recycle within a 5-year period. Designs may assume the existence of mass-production facilities for the production of any new equipment needed to create this office space.

日本住久了，好像會忘記全世界的存在

深夜惊醒
梦见泪的温度
妈妈的拥抱

Loneliness is not so unfamiliar as it is difficult;
Difficult because whenever I try to put a name or a face
To the restlessness of my heart,
I come to the frightening conclusion that there is nobody
That I actually miss;

And between busy days,
When I stop to slowly sip my morning coffee
I can't actually remember
Who my best friends were -
Only procedures, patterns, places,
As if I have become a case study for a thesis that is eating up my life.

And yet there is this great sense of being alone,
Like an old monument that has witnessed a city change,
Only to find itself the only familiar view on the landscape,
Its yellowed white hiding under another skin of paint.

Perhaps it is the blessing of a line of kindred spirits
Who had been with me for a little while, and then gone,
(We shall not debate who has outgrown who,)
But now my heart
Will not be satisfied
With anything less than a soul
Similarly burdened,
That it can no longer remember
The faces of even those
Who have bothered to come by
And put moisture to my cracking lips
In a desert of lonely souls.

Here i sit, longing, wanting,
Afraid that the same emptiness that drives me
To want to be wanted by beautiful strangers,
Is the only companion I must learn to live with
Until my heart gives up its beat.

it's amazing how little the country could have changed, given how much it has been engineered in the past 60 years. the trains are still operated by a captian who stops the train, opens the doors and closes them with a control box, rings a bell, and then starts the train. then he announces the train's journey on the PA system. it's all very nostalgic, and very puzzling, yet intriguing, how this country decides which jobs go to people, and which go to machines.

what the mind does to resolve the two "stereo" images that fall on the retina to triangleate them into a 3D visual experience is beyond me. but putting on a new pair of glasses just makes what the mind does even more, mind boggling.

the mind probably has a mega-database of experiences that it aligns information from the senses and attempts reconstruct for us a copy of reality, much like animators make a 3D-model of the world inside the computer. but what impresses me so is the brain's tolerance for error and change. changing specs is like introducing a systematic error to your senses - and amazingly the brain takes care of that. somehow it has a mechanism to "normalise" the newly skewed data and still make sense of it. it's like it doesn't "hardcode" anything. and it's amazingly fast.

amazing that we have brains built-in, ain't it?

e:if meaning in life comes from books, then which came first, meaning or books?
e:^nvm
h:meaning! because there would be no books if there was no meaning to writing them. or at least something along that line
e:ya
e:so reading about the meaning of life is second-hand-knowledge.
e:someone already put into his/her mouth, chewed, and then put it into a bowl.

supper!

play

work

thread the dotted line

Factory Girl

I have been reading about contemporary art, and my brain seems to have been pondering so much over what I have been reading that I even dreamt about art, but it is also my reading that pointed me to this movie Factory Girl.

I had wanted to spend an evening at the museum, but finding nothing worth my time, I turned over to the movies and this seemed to be the only thing I would watch. Just before I entered the cinema, I was somewhat worried that this might have been a hollywood-styled rip-off that wants to talk about the glamorous girl and all, and make it float on Andy Warhol's fame, but was somewhat comforted that it was a pretty small screen, with an even smaller audience.

My worry did not end there - the film started with the grainy desaturated film that many art-house-wannabe films overuse, but it soon became apparent why it was done that way - the film talked a fair bit about Andy's films. And from the beginning on the screen was Edie's beautiful face, charming the audience into the movie.

I found the film very experiential. It showed what glamour was, what popularity was, what fame was, and how flimsy the whole thing was, yet it made me believe that it was worth it all - and I think that is pretty analogous to pop culture.

Andy invited Edie to star in his film, and just before the shooting scene, Andy said on the screen that he didn't usually tell his actors what to do - something puzzling until the next screen rolled in. Five men were supposed to approach a horse sexually, and the horse was angered. Edie just walked into the film, kissed the horse and calmed it. Not telling his actors what to do was pretty much choosing the correct group of people and allowing them to be themselves and respond to one another's dynamisms - putting that on film would allow the audience to experience, as close to firsthand as possible, that same excitement of good dynamics. This says two things - that the superstar is one who, on film, lives on your behalf; and that Andy was really using the lives of people as his canvas. At about that point in the movie, Andy declared that he would stop painting and make movies instead. In this light, this all made much sense.

Reading about Andy and his voyeuristic inclinations makes me think back and realise that the movie did a pretty good job to portray even this - he was always behind the camera, just watching. He had shades on just about all the time, and this seemed to help accentuate the fact that he was there, watching. And whenever Edie felt uncomfortable about something the other participants wanted to do to her, she looked at Andy, making one feel Andy's role in relation to the film - he was always outside, but watching.

Towards the end of the film, there was this particular scene in Edie's room, when she was all broke and just doing all she could to get drugs - soft lens and warm lighting really made the point. She was just giving herself to drugs, her judgement was heavily affected by the drugs, and just allowing anyone to do anything they wanted. The soft lens gave a dreamy and helpless feel to the whole scene, allowing the audience to understand what she was feeling. I thought this was really good cinematography.

I think this film's greatest power lay in how it experientially explained the power of pop culture. There was one scene, just before Edie was "disposed of", where Edie was saying how she had to live in Andy's world - this was when you have sat half way into the film and grown to love the rhythm of pop culture - and this handsome cowboy (Edie's romance interest) came in to tell Edie in her face that all this that she was living for, was not real. I could not help but empathise with Edie, and believe too that this glamorous life was really THE life, but when Mr Cowboy musician came in and told her that she was being made used of by Andy Warhol, it felt so like life, when we are told something that we know is true, and that we will choose to live to regret not listening to that piece of advice.

Just before the final turn of the film, Edie's old friend and admirer appeared and showed her a photograph of her, just before she flew to New York into her high life - and what followed, to me, was really skillful judgement - Edie lept out of the car, and ran. Instead of having her cry and talk about how she regretted everything, she simply, ran. This makes the audience feel her desire for change. And it also allows the movie, to spend more time covering what it should - the life she had been through that led her here.

Perhaps it was my reading on contemporary art that set me in the right mood for this show, but I really think this is worth watching. All the people who need to look good are good looking, those who need the correct cup sizes have the correct cup sizes, and all you need to do is just to sit there, outside, but watching.