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!