Lion

Where angels fear to thread.

The French essayist Charles Peguy tells a story about a man who died and went to heaven where he is met by the recording angel who asks, 'show me your wounds.' The man replies 'wounds? I have not got any.' And the angel says, 'Did you not think that anything was worth fighting for?'

Illuminate

To sit and contemplate.

Dissonance
(if you are interested)
leads to discovery
~William Carlos Williams

Martyr

Downtown Tehran

Remember,
on this very day
blood stains the
streets of Tehran.

Our memory,
will be a sanctuary
for all imprisoned
by this injustice.

Gutenberg

Press. In Words Lies Deeds.

相信你只是怕伤害我
不是骗我

Humanity

Just Faces

As the year draws to a close and we begin to sit ourselves down for the ritual devouring of turkey and festive goodies by the plateful, I can't help but wonder how easily some events fade from our memory. Of late, the papers have been silent about the fate of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (although National Geographic did a good article on the Uyghurs) nor has there been any news about Dafur, Somalia or the displaced from Afghanistan. Even the plight of the Palestinians in the refugee camps seems to have evaporated from the headlines. How about our Millennium goal to end poverty, 10 years in the making? Sure, there is plenty of talk about bringing the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq and the Copenhagen summit but these are largely vis-a-vis first world countries.

I am sure that your past couple of days have not been very different from mine, where the main agenda is to get the best Christmas presents to evidence our commitment and love for our nearest and dearest. But is there more to Christmas than this? Are we able to expand our vision of humanity beyond our horizons, beyond our family and friends? As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ every Christmas and by being born He becomes man, a member of humanity. But taxonomy seems to have eroded this concept of humanity (even amongst us Christians), splitting us into, haves and have-nots, first world and developing, religious and secular, Protestant and Catholic, gay and straight, Jew and Muslim, Tan family and Lim family etc etc. and to what end? It seems that we have become a world that relishes our differences instead of celebrating our humanity. I highly doubt that this is the true Christmas message. So as we sit down to enjoy the festive season with our family and friends, we should remember that there are fellow humans beyond our horizons who have not had a warm meal or who cannot enjoy the liberty of gathering in groups. People often ask me what is the point of remembering? What good is it to just remember and not do anything about it? In fact, I often ask myself these questions too. Well, at this point, all I can say is that it is better than forgetting.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Bread

Is nothing sacred?

I love bread. Anyone who knows me well enough can attest to that. I love the honesty and simplicity of it. I like how a few simple ingredients can through attentive kneading and heating become a satisfying meal. Perhaps I am reading too much into the baking process as I supposedly do with most things. After all, much of the bread we eat these days come from the mechanical arms of computers and machinery rather than through the expansion and contraction of sinew and muscle. Call me a luddite but I can always taste the lack of human input. And I bemoan the absence of sweat of the brow (possibly in a literal sense) from most mass produced loaves of bread. In some Middle Eastern societies where bread is still made in the kitchen, bread is sacred, to be revered, savored and never wasted. When served at the table in the home, only one of the family members, usually the woman of the house or a daughter distributes the bread as needed.

"In our house, whenever anyone dropped a book or let fall a chapati or a 'slice', which was our word for a triangle of buttered leavened bread, the fallen object was required not only to be picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butter-fingered as any child and accordingly, during my childhood years, I kissed a large number of 'slices' and also my fair share of books. Devout households in India often contained and still contain persons in the habit of kissing holy books. But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed Enid Blyton novels and Superman comics. If I'd ever dropped the telephone directory I'd probably have kissed that too. All this happened before I had ever kissed a girl. In fact it would almost be true, true enough for a fiction writer, anyhow, to say that once I started kissing girls, my activities with regard to bread and books lost some of their special excitement. But one never forgets one's first loves. Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?"
~Salman Rushdie, Is Nothing Sacred?

自由

阳光替房间开了灯

解脱是肯承认这是个错
我不应该还不放手
你有自由走我有自由好好过

Casket

In the absence of love.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.
~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Munchen

A familiar face in the crowd

Some travel to remember,
some travel to forget.
I travel to reconnect.

Evora

明白是寂寞