Bukit Brown: A fortuitous development

I recently came across another Bukit Brown article on a small website. Everyone seems to be talking about it nowadays.

I must say that while both camps (for and against) have brought forth rational, logical and pressing (that is, I believe in what they are arguing for, to a certain extent), I think it is quite fortuitous that our Government has decided to exhume the graves for future urban development.

Because without such a move the cemetery would have never received the media attention it did – page 1 and all. All the prominent pioneers of Singapore who were interred there wouldn’t be able to attract all that attention.

It also reminds us that all things passes. Nothing is constant.

Nothing to say today

I.
Nothing to say today
I poured myself a cup of boiling water
And soaked a bag of green tea in it
While my hair dries, imagining bokeh effects
Lighting up my surroundings.

II.
Nothing to say today
I made myself another cup of green tea
Surfed my Facebook, found a funny statement
Shared it with my friends
Hoping that they’ll read it.

Mad

A most fascinating quote that touches the wick of my soul.

The only people for me are the mad
ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a
commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman
candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you
see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!

– Jack Kerouac

Reflections

He who binds himself to a Joy
Does the winged life destroy ;
He who kisses the Joy as it flies,
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

–”Eternity”, William Blake

The Beginning

A waterfall first begins as a drop of water. Everything starts with a small step, even the universe.

The Moon Is Not In The Sky

She moved within my reach, burning within a lantern. Too late, I realised my short-sightedness while looking at the flickering lights of the  lanterns at the void decks, children happily running around and giggling, their voices reverberating off the concrete pillars holding up nine levels of accommodation. All the while as their parents and domestic help lingered nearby. The parents in one circle. Domestic help in another.

Two circles of language and dialects drawn apart from each other, mutually exclusive most of the time.

Glasses correct my physical short-sightedness but it did not my mental handicap. Everything had been in front of me. The moon in the paper lantern all along. Emotions. Compassion. Love. Hate. Flickering. Not-flickering. Waiting for me to see her. Inside the lantern with a candle. Inside the battery-operated lantern that is a Doraemon, with synthetic music pulsing at every silent moment. She is everywhere. And I thought she was lost.

I thought was devoured by our need for progress, for development, for money. I thought that the beautiful sky that I saw in Bordeaux had been lost from Singapore forever, the little piece of blue blocked by towering metal blocks. Here, the roads are never empty and the air never free of particulate. Smoke, soot, exhaust. There’s little hope of taking back the feeling of being in nature unless you venture to a nature reserve, where nature is unnaturally maintained, kept at bay. Nature, reserved only in this one spot.

But. Dear lady, I was wrong. I should not have encouraged you today by lamenting that the moon was gone. Now, I think that even in stone, there is hope. Even within the man-made there is Nature. (but will there be man-made within Nature?) I hope you realised my error. That after all these high-rises, we can no longer see it. Because, you see, she is still in my heart, blinking. I see her in your eyes, in the lantern, in the pictures, in the eclipse, in the sun. In every Mid-Autumn. And every other day besides.

The Greatest Thing You’ve Ever Heard

One can listen to this speech every night and not grow tired of it.

An actor who we only know in black and white passes a message that withstands time and space. Acting notwithstanding.

I don’t want to be an emperor. It’s not my business…We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. — Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator

Interbeing

So a habit that is repeated daily for years, coupled with a positive feedback loop, will reinforce that habit, no matter how bad, until it is a very strong urge that becomes hard to beat.

 There’s also negative feedback for not doing the habit: you feel like you’re missing something important if you don’t check email, and so you go through withdrawal. It’s exactly how drug addiction works.

- Leo Babuata, zenhabits

I understand now that this is how the writer/interviewer of The Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness, frames things in a context that is easier to understand for the Western mind: a rationalistic concept.

There is a scientific method to creating good habits. And also the implication that good habits don’t merely appear because we read about them and wish to practise them.

It makes me realise how everything is related and dependent on one another, in a way, interbeing. Or intertextuality. Or differance. So many terms for a similar concept. I cannot help but express my wonderment at how these different journeys with various starting points, ended up in the same destination!

That a text read elsewhere, is illuminated by something else I read online. And not necessarily a related text at that!

Which also brings to mind, no thanks to Borges’ “The Library of Babel”:

Take a random alphabet from every text
And you might just make a coherent book out of it.

Thought of the Day: Conflict

So one realises, conflict comes from expectations and desires.

When one expects another person to perform to a certain level, perhaps in the capacity of the person’s advertised capabilities, and the person fails to do so, confrontation is inevitable.

When one desires another person to perform to a certain level, perhaps due to love, familial or otherwise, and the person fails to do so, confrontation is inevitable.

Confrontation leads to conflict and results in suffering.

And this cycle can be found everywhere in everybody. All the time.

Then one question remains: How can we break free of this cycle of conflict?

Thought of the day: Money

People feel like they can get anything they want with money. And there are many of them in this world who would do anything for money.

There are all sorts of terrifying things swirling about money, things that a child wouldn’t understand. Things that even an adult wouldn’t understand.