From 'The Logic of Images'

As a boy, I often used to ask myself if there really was a God who saw everything. And how he managed not to forget any of it: the motion of the clouds in the sky, every individual's gestures and footsteps, the dreams ...I said to myself that while it was impossible to imagine such a memory existing, it was even sadder and more desolating to think that it didn't and that everything was forgotten. This childish panic still upsets me. The story of all phenomena would be infinitely great, the story of all surviving images infinitesimally small.

- Wim Wenders

Basic, administrative updates

It's been awhile ! I keep wanting to blog but then other things come along, so of course I wait till I'm at work and need a little break : )
Just an update/summary of my life and happenings:

• I finished my internship at L end Feb and started working at a consultancy/research company the week after. This group S needed someone with an Asian background to help out with the chinese consumers in a big report they are doing for another L company (very big, make-up and skincare and haircare...) So far I've done a report on R/L perfumes with lots of statistical (dumb) crunching.
• I still have not finished my mémoire but honestly I am very close to the end !!!! Reduced my analyses from 8 to 10, just have to read through and correct them, write my third part (about 5+ pages) and finish the introduction... I just need like an entire week with nothing else to do except this stupid piece of shit and I would totally finish ! So far I work mostly during the weekend, but friday night is out because I'm just so happy it's the weekend I want to chill/see people, saturday I start working but we end up running errands etc, and when i finally get into the swing of things it's Sunday night and I need to sleep not too late or i'll be hopeless at work the next day. At the same time though, the mémoire has been a pretty cool experience because it made me realize to what point i love the cinéma ! Plus, I've been reading a ton of books on directors, cinema history, image analysis etc which are super interesting ! On the other hand, it has made me super intolerant to bad movies (ie big budget hollywood films / pretentious little films). Midnight in Paris, for example. I wasn't even watching it - Gaetan (D) was - but just the little that I saw in passing and especially the conversations, it makes me feel nauseous. :( Also, what I've realized after watching so many historically 'great' films (not that I'm always a fan, but the magnitude is almost always resonant) is that most of the films I've watched almost all my life were kinda shitty. There were some good films, but good in the sense that they're entertaining, fairly tasteful and/or original, not stupid. But very few (if any!) that were Great. Also realized that I like Nordic directors quite a lot. I'll probably put up my personal list of greatest films soon.
  
• Renewed my student visa for another 6 months yesterday -- i'll definitely be in Paris till 31 october ! woo, another few months of relative tranquility...
• Watched two amazing moves recently: The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman and Seven Samurais by Kurosawa. Can't wait to have more free time after the mémoire so I can watch moremoremore ! D is completely seduced by the idea of getting a video projector so we can watch movies in style : )
• Part of a writing/installation project that will be put up for one day in a new media/technology festival in June... here's the link, it's in french though, but google should be able to translate it ! http://ener.ensad.fr/2012/04/real-time-poetry-game-1-conduit-daeration/
• Started a volunteer programme with D early in the year where we visit a lady in her 80s who can't really independently leave her apartment. We have tea and chat with her - I've been getting really fat because we always bring many cakes and share them ! Went to a group programme lunch on Sunday with many old people (both the volunteers and the people in the program were reeeally old) and it wasn't that easy actually, haha, difficult to really converse because one thing that I've noticed about some old people is that they don't like to hear certain things and they don't like it when you disagree with them also. The meal lasted almost 3 hours... and the lady we accompany, A, was a bit touchy that day. Complicated ! That's why I like working with kids more in a way, although I like old people a lot too, but life is a lot simpler with kids...
  
• Had a small election 'celebration' with D and 2 other friends where we watched the results of the first round voting process and the speech of the candidates who had had the most votes. I am sad that the candidate I support most didn't get as many votes as he seemed to be heading towards for awhile... (extreme left candidate, very very funny and charismatic, he could charm a snake into turning vegetarian :)
• I think that's about it. My job contract will probably be extended til end of July, which means I'm financially covered till then : ) Need to finish my mémoire, then really start deciding what I want to do career wise - so difficult ! There are so many jobs in fashion that don't have specific titles/well known descriptions... And part of me is still interested by advertising... bla bla bla. I think I do prefer fashion though. Or make-up/perfumes. Have to run a self analysis soon.
  

anti narration

Flowers only love fools. They’re the only ones who buy them for being flowers. Other people buy flowers to give to someone, to put a little color into their living room, to jazz up the blah. This is having a vested interest. This is not true love. True love is when the existence of the other matters enormously to you, not because they make you happy or they look good or they carry your groceries for you in the snow. It is like keeping a piece of paper when you have no pen and you know you will never have a pen and you don’t know how to do origami and the paper is dirty and you really have absolutely no fucking need or use for a piece of dirty paper. Or when an anorexic cooks for herself. That is true love for cooking.

more ways to pass the time

play!
by the way, that's a hyperlink. click on it !

and so the time passes

Idea #4: Different surfaces of projection for the cinema. My one big idea is of what could be a set up of hell. You enter a cinema theatre and you see super steep concrete steps leading incessantly upwards. You make the climb all the way up to the top, to see one wooden chair on a small platform (just a bit larger than the chair). Seated on the chair, you bend over (like in the airplane when you feel sick or as a safety posture during a crash) and deep, deep down below, where you entered, is your life projected on the ground. You watch all your existence from that lofty seat. Other less contextualized variations : film projected onto a lake, or film made entirely by reflections in puddles on the ground and windows.

Idea #5: Story about a world where mind-reading is normal life. All thoughts are projected. People learn to 'mask' their thoughts by projecting another thought (pre-calculated) forcefully forward, thus drowning out the other thoughts. Thoughts can be symbolized as sound. Augmenting the 'volume' of one thought to drown out the other - ie in the metro where there are too many strangers.

Played 'The Dark Meadow' on the Ipad with Darkie last Sunday afternoon/night... I is such a geek/nerd, the shame ! But it was a good game - chilling, you wake up in an abandoned hospital without any memories. The room that you are in is decorated with colorful confetti 'IT'S A GIRL!' letters on the wall. You see an old man in a wheel chair right when you wake up but he runs away saying that 'SHE' was here ! Subsequently, he speaks to you on the loud speaker in the rooms where there is a sun drawn on the door - rooms with sunlight, where you are safe. In the other rooms there are strange monsters that you have to fight. In the sunlit rooms, you find gold in drawers and loose sheets of papers. Books, journals, legal documents. You try and piece things together - you read about random characters, what happens to them, their genealogy... you start to realize that most of these people are in the same family. That tragedies have befallen most of this family - the oldest character leaves his wife and daughter without money on some mysterious quest... the daughter who is a governess ends up dying in a fire with a famous architect's family, her son who survives has anger issues and has a labotomy... his son is in the hospital for awhile when he was 7 (he hates the hospital) later grows up, and has a daughter who disappears from the hospital shortly after she was born.... There are many references to the devil, on both a theoretical and folkloric level...

We start to realize that many of these characters are connected to the devil. They have made some sort of pact, and he has claimed his price.

There is a room on the first floor where there is a ghostly girl who you must kill. Apparently she is the soceress/ enchantress who is holding you, and the old man in the wheelchair captive. After killing her you faint and wake up in your room. But in the room where she was, there is a staircase leading to the second floor. The old man talking to you through the loud speaker tells you that you must kill the enchantress to be free. You proceed through the second floor the same way as the first floor, compiling more documents giving you more and more information - but nothing clearly indicating your identity. Are you the baby daughter who was lost many years ago? You find the enchantress again and you kill her again.

You wake up in your room again. The old man talking to you through the loud speaker has began to change his tone. He taunts you, as if he knows something you don't. He knows who you were, before you lost your memory. He finally reveals that you are the boy who was in the hospital for awhile when you were 7, and he, he is the devil. You made a pact with himbecause you were scared. You offered your own soul, in 17 years. When the devil came to claim your soul, being scared, because you are playing the role of a very frightened man, you give up your baby daughter's soul for 17 more years. But he has tricked you - during the 17 years, you lose all your money, your wife leaves you. The 'enchantress' you have been trying to kill is this baby girl. Apparently she has a pure, incorruptible soul - the devil can do nothing with her. He wants you to kill her, because you are her father, and have more power over her.

You go to the second floor, in the room where you have killed the girl, there is an elevator. You take upwards (we don't know which floor) and find the old man in the wheelchair, you fight him, he transforms into a monster, you slay him, he re-transforms. You try to slay him again. Finally, he tells you that he cannot be killed. But if you kill the girl, you will get 17 more years.

You have two choices:
1) you try and kill the devil again. he tells you that he cannot be killed. you faint and wake up in your room.
2) you kill the girl. you wake up tied to a bed, with crimson drawings of the devil, the 'trickster' covering the walls. you are in a mental hospital. you have been for awhile. it is here where you will spend the following 17 years that have been awarded for having killed - for the second time - your daughter.

THE END

creepy, right?? but very intriguing... we would like to make a game like that !

guess who's back

I haven't written for so long I actually sort of forgot my blog address and it took me awhile to orientate myself.
Have decided to start a list of Whimsical Projects that I think about when I'm cutting up cardboard at work

Idea #1: Pictures of broken things found randomly in the street
(the most interesting one that i've seen was a broken onion... how is that even possible one might ask? I have no idea, it was shredded and cut up in this pile by the sidewalk.)

Idea #2: Start a boring metal accessories supplies website (like carpentry things, or hooks, small metal pieces etc.)
When people ask for images of these pieces they can choose between: impressionist, surrealist, abstract, watercolor, etc.

Initial Idea #3: Construct graphs of movies to indicate where the most exciting/engaging moments were with a timeline on the x-axis (indicating specific events in the film) and the level of interest of the Y axis
Apparently this already exists in a software that cinema people use (so informed by Darkie) - sad.

That's it for now! If anyone thinks of anything to add to the list, feel free to let me know !

I just trolled a discussion on the T & Co. commercial that you can find here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1421107812847
or here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apX4Dog-OAU

It's filled with comments (the fb version) of how beautiful and romantic etc the commercial is...
My comment:
this commercial sort of makes me sick with how fake it is. what kind of lies are they selling? does buying ridiculously expensive jewelry for someone mean you really love the person? maybe you're just rich...? plus, new york is a lot more ...than a fountain, a carousel, a street and a tiffany's store. the commercial reduces it to a pretty setting. and let's not even talk about the massacre of the breakfast at tiffany's film...

ok, not so mature. i didn't feel like writing an epic analysis for this yet (i will have to soon for the mémoire) but oh dear, i'm such a grouch! haha

from the one on the inside to the one on the outside

Dear you,

I hope you don’t think its weird that I’m writing. I know, it seems a bit formal, we’ve known each other for so long…

But time can be a barrier.

You understand that it can be hard for me to say certain things to you when habits have been established like rules and insidiously? I don’t know when, didn’t notice and so couldn’t object. Would I have objected anyway?

The thing is, I’ve been feeling a bit

Hmm

Grey

And slow

These days

Why? Can’t quite say

Where? Well, my ankles have been feeling a little strained. And I have a blister or two on my right foot. Arthritis on bad days. Humid days. Cold days. Everyday?

What? It’s true, I’m digressing. So what I really mean to say is…

How? Floating, except that has connotations of dream and ethereal. Drifting, like a cigarette butt in the sea, dirty, rejected,

aimless,

searching some sort of destiny that was never in the plans.

You see what I mean? If I believed in God, I would say he forgot me. He made you, and me, but then he forgot all about me, and it became just you.

What I want to say is a lot like “you’re selfish” but not exactly. I don’t want to start this finger-pointing, it always comes from me. But you don’t let me sing when sometimes, randomly, a melody just wants to burst out. And you know I want to, but it embarrasses you so you stand your ground, keep me silent, and wait for it to pass. It passes quickly now I’ll have you know. Happy?

I know you’re not.

No, you’re not.

Well because I’m not, you can’t be either.

Who’s the selfish one eh?

The singing, I’ll let it pass. Fine, if I thought about it rationally I would realize that it might be difficult for you if I burst out in song in the cinema. It’s not the first time you’ve stopped me from having fun though. And I know it won’t be the last.

What is it really about then?

Not the dishes that you made me wash

Nor sleeping early when I wanted to be out

That was all a long time ago anyway, I’m pretty ok with your geriatric lifestyle now

What is it really about then?

Can you guess?

it’s him.

yes, i will talk about that if i want to and i do want to.

i had never and still have never had that sort of obsessive compulsive joy since, in those 70 years since. it's time that asshole that allows retrospective regrets. i was furious then, but it didn’t last that long. it's time that tells you twenty years later paf! that wasn’t a small mistake. like missing punctuation in an essay. it's paf! you had the golden fucking fleece around your shoulders and jason, you thought it was from gap.

you see what i mean?

just because you thought he was ugly. lucky one of us can appreciate inner beauty. he was so kind, i didn’t realize how important kindness was until the years passed and there was less and less of it.

and your other argument? he was too short? he was eight fucking years old ! he would have grown. obviously. he was very helpful. can’t say the same thing about the three husbands you finally chose and then discarded, one after another. that’s a little like having a pet, and then buying a new pet straight away when the first one dies and then giving it the same name. control-freak Fido, alcoholic Fido, boring Fido. beautiful, kind, helpful danny.

it seems that even rancor is tired with the years. i’m going to finish up since it’s almost bedtime. just to tell you i resent you and that i can make better decisions than you sometimes, and you should let me choose too sometimes. and you do, sometimes. it wouldn’t be fair to say that i never get a say. but more often. you’d be happier too – you know you regret it when you don’t listen to what i say and what i want. you know you want to say and want the same things as i do, i just realize it several hours (or years) earlier. just keep that in mind, we don’t have much time left to be in disaccord; the years keep drifting by; aimless and searching.

good night and love you always,

me

There is a wall between us.

I will not compare this to famous history, of empires and dictatorships, scale, sweat, blood.

You will not see this demarcation of where I end and you start

It is perhaps nothing but a fat space

But distance can be a wall, when it is insurmountable

No one dies in trying to get across.

We throw up our arms bearing white lies

Defeated in our mutual respect:

I will watch you cry (I’d rather leave the room)

And silence steals your tongue (it cannot touch your eyes)

We know. I know, anyway. You might have felt, informally (unconfirmed)

I will never know if you know because questions form a ladder that i – we – would rather not climb.

Between us are gap bricks, heaped and towering mutually exclusive beliefs.

Except bricks can be broken and do not resist anguish like that time.

*

We do meet, often. The wall runs on then falters

into a common garden,

fruits planted on solidarity afternoons.

the heart of human existence

yesterday we had an exercise in photography with a dude quite famous who has done many magazine covers etc (you can find his site here: http://jonathandevilliers.com/ ) - the aim of the exercise was to take 10 photos between the train station near my school and a garden not so far off. this is one of the photos that my team mate took. the photographer said it was his favorite photo, that it was poetic, but that it didn't make sense if we tried to explain it.

instinctively i disagreed (silently :p ; my discreet asian character restrains me from outbursts or prolonged arguments using a microphone and in front of the rest of the school.) but i just felt that there was so much in the photo that could be explained. firstly, simply, the ubiquitous presence of nature, in the midst of an artificial construction. emotionally, visually, the sparrow embodies an innocence, a fragility, the sole spot of color that is perched in all tranquility upon cold, harsh, dead wire, in the middle of a monochrome nowhere. isn't that the crux of our existence? in every story there is at least a conflict - always the juxtaposition of opposing elements that shouldn't co-exist, but do. and their co-existence is the spur that provokes endless suffering, whatever the scale. the sparrow could stand for any range of virtues and blessings, poetic joy - the wire the relentless, unforgiving, invasive, prosaic reality of ugly.

that's what this image whispers to me anyway (slightly sadly)

out of the wilderness

metaphorically speaking, of course.

i have been a lot less busy the past 2 weeks - started optional modules on perfume and cosmetics, which after 2 weeks of technical, commercial and economical classes on the universe of perfume culminated in creating my very own perfume ! which, to quote gaétan, is "interesting but clearly made by an amateur". it also resulted in me stinking of perfume (we had had a factory visit the same day, sniffed perfumes constructed by a synthesis of molecules, and were surrounded by 34 different fragrances during the perfume making session), and rolling around in bed feeling nauseous for hours haunted by wafts of different perfumes.

things are going to pick up possibly more than ever before (i'm pretty sure i'm behind already...) the mémoire (equivalent of a thesis in the US), 4 exams and 1 huge group project for L'oréal has to be worked on in the next... hm, 2 ? weeks. i should be stressed but i'm feeling strangely tranquil. or tranquilized. the calm before the storm, etc. i woke up at 2.30 this afternoon and napped 4 hours later...

it has been quite an awful week. but at the end of it, what i'm left with, is a sense of wonder that i can look at someone and be this moved by the beauty of his being. gentleness, harshness. curves and sharp edges. intransigence, forgiveness. the magic in banality. i seem to be making a list, but "everything", is what i really want to say. because that's what it is when you love somebody, the reasons aren't bullet pointed, there aren't any arguments. you might know why you were so inclined, but after a certain time it encompasses and then surpasses all. the feeling just surges like a wave, sometimes hard enough to knock the breath out of you overwhelmed. also, overwhelmed by the way things turned out. if i calculated the statistical probability of the events that led up to all this... it'd be a lot closer to 0 than 1. when i start thinking about it i get lost in that curious retrospective fascination. do you know what i mean? when your universe overlaps so fiercely with another's, that sometimes the edges of you and the other (almost you, or you almost he) blur, i assume it like a path trodden all my life. but thinking about how 8 months ago we were a big question mark, 10 months ago almost strangers? and even a year +++ ago, reflecting on our relationship, it seems like an alternate reality, a semblance of him or us that never reached beyond a certain stage. a blueprint unrealized, a sketch, an idea, a ghost, a shell. it's that profound change that fascinates - how one person can change everything, the air one breathes, the way one breathes. that's probably the most apt metaphor i can think of - it's almost unnoticeable, but crucial, fundamental. that discreet, grinning gap between before and after. the little things - what i buy when im at the supermarket, the brewing of tea for two, the smell of the apartment. hints and traces of a shift in existence; the metamorphosis of a world, a soul.

aaaanyway. enough mushy ruminations. tomorrow will be the unwilling revival of the spirit of diligence in hibernation. lotus-ing to the max : )

i have three things to tell you

1) HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUNGRYANI !




Thank goodness we don't have to sing loudly, out of tune, with customized song lyrics in McDo this time...


























Many more good times to come ! Come home! (singapore)
And of course, us being retards, and then you ling and mandy being retards. :P































the most active musk8ter :P




















2) i cut my hair ! (ok that was in singapore, which makes it... almost a month ago)
















3) i made a video! (ystd) -- my first upload on youtube ha ha ! the words are in french though, but the music is really nice (kikujiro - the rain) and i have michelle to thank for the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcwxSXUa7Dk

phantom update from paris

hello !!
i'm not sure if anyone ever reads this anymore -- not surprising since it's been consigned to the depths of obscurity for over 3 months...
well, well.

Ruminations (While Suitcase Packing)

I just put up the "Lotus Potato Super 6 Class" poster that the children and I made together in Nepal. It's been more than a year now, how does time sneak around like that? Everytime I see it I feel giggly, vaguely remembering our group name-choosing process (I think Monkey Boy suggested "Alu class" at first ... that's potato in Nepalese right??) and after some convoluted brainstorming process (which I admit to probably manipulating quite a bit) all the kids chorusing (esp Biparna) "Lotus Potato! Lotus Potato! Super 6 Class!" ^^ Aiya, so cute! It was one of the least cloudy periods of my life, I don't think I'd ever felt so clean (metaphorically speaking; hygiene standards left some to be desired), so uncomplicated, so content, so present in years.

Then I think about how they took this poster off the wall in the common room; I'm not sure why actually. One of them gave it to me, and told me to bring it home, to put it up in my room. So typical of most of them, a furious generosity scattered out like confetti in all their little presents - 4-colored pens, hand-woven friendship bands, the flowers on our last day. On one hand, the common, shared, unindividualised environment of an orphanage made them fiercely possessive over what was "mine" in order to own anything. On the other, what was "mine" was precious partly also because they could afterwards give it away, and we would have something that was theirs. Do you see what I'm trying to say? I never really delved into the logistics of gifts with these children before, only marvelled previously at how eagerly they pressed, slipped, their rare, weary treasures into foreign hands and pockets.

I remember Ling dissuading some of the children in her class from parting with a keychain, a pencil, other random knick-knacks that acquired a magnitude far beyond their function. The kids usually ended up un-giving the presents when asked a few times if they were sure they wouldnt rather keep it, and that the intention was lovely and well stored already. It was the act of giving then, mostly. I can't navigate clear paths in my head to explain or elaborate how these little ones thought or what prompted them to act exactly as they did, but when I remember, I am (as I was then) just floating, lulled off my feet by waves of their beauty, amazed. Awed and uncomprehending, the smallness of my soul reiterates how little they have, assembling the somber background against which their open hearts glow like fireflies or candles. I'm not saying they're angels, they were definitely insufferable at points, but only as children inevitably are. And then there were other moments like when I opened Round Face Boy's letter to me, and saw that he had put rabbit and giraffe stickers on the cover ( he asked me what my fav animals were earlier that day) and that the inside was full of the stickers I had given to the kids the day before, that they really liked and had been playing with all day... It just made me want to be a better person, to be worthy of children like that, who deserve, and more.

And then, I didn't go back this year... and, I need to write them letters.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

"The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."

- Arundhati Roy

i forgot

the gentle words, the soothing hand. soft, sweet.
the lessons i tried to engrave , not yet inked
perspective, hope rising from ashes.
more lists and ramblings, more of yes, yes, i will and exclamat!on marks replacing full stops because there were not to be ends only surges forward.
kind

for the moment, i forget, how i feel.
that is not true. it's easy to forget when youre alone, but when you're with people again it's okay. you remember. one remembers. i remember the resolve, i dont remember how to talk anymore. i wish i remembered how i feel, it's very quiet inside. try to guess the contents of an opaque black box without shaking it around at all. toss up a few options, but we'll never know, and right and wrong are equally quiet (or loud). a banana, two paper clips, i hate you, it'll pass.

is this the ocean or a glass bowl?
...i need to know if we'll meet halfway if we set off on separate ships.

Sad Brad Smith - "Help Yourself"

what i can't put my finger on

is why everything seems to be unraveling even as i have seen and heard and breathed more consciously more profoundly than ever before. where i believed a whole, there are cracks and spaces minute, but there is also a zoom function and helplessly i'm transported into further into deeper these pockets of empty until i no longer know where i am and 'it' is no longer representative of anything because there is no means of identification.

do you see what i mean?

what i really mean to say is, i'm lost.

what i really mean to say is, i don't know why.

what i really mean to say is, i've lost the why.

what i really mean to say is, i thought i got past all this and was somewhere else all together. but this somewhere else is suspiciously looking like the there of before, the here and the then confused and merging.

maybe not having furniture and 20 boxes to unpack is affecting my sanity. or maybe pulling out dusty, old faces of love is tipping a perpetually precarious equilibrium. or maybe silence to an unreasoning need is stirring clear waters murky.

I still need to write about Rwanda. I haven't forgotten. it's still processing, still. Maybe it will be forever. but what do i know of forever?

tu me manques

c'est tout

(c'est un message prévoyant si tu peux voir l'heure, en fait c'est 21h48 et j'ai recemment retrouvé michelle et on a pris nos billets!!!!!! ^^ )

^^

Nat

come to thailand

fun fun fun

ive spent so much

but so fun

12:24pm Me

o_O

spent so much doing what??

what have you been up to !!

12:25pmNat

haircut, face treatment

karaoke

movies

and eat!!!!
-----------
aiya, so typical nat !