Shadows

Like a Giacometti; Shadows on the floor.

Happiness is where you find it,
Not where you go in search of it.

Trees

Heads up.

I like looking up. I find the act particularly liberating; in defiance of gravity and circumstances. Often, I am rewarded by what I see and the ensuing clam that fills me. I like looking up. It starts with the head and works best for those who don't know their place.

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
~Invictus, Henley

Relativity

Where the streets have no name.

I have a soft spot for overhead power and telephone cables; the kind that dangles from poles or that cling to the side of buildings. I can't quite explain the origins of this electrifying attraction but looking at the countless photos of street side cables that I have, I am very sure that the attraction exist. Perhaps it has something to do with the notion of connectivity, that these cables are symbolic of the journey, linking a start point and a destination. I guess to me, the cable is relativity embodied, in that it forms the relational link between a known fact and an assumption; the premise. And our lives revolve around the numerous premises that we make, some for good, some to our detriment.

Cheer

November Rain

不愿放开手，不要让你走
疯狂的梦没有了你 还有什么用
不愿放开手，不要让你走
不愿眼睁睁的看你走出我的生活

Cherie

Beirut Balcony - Clair de lune

A reminder. That even though we may be so far apart, not just physically but with all the various distances that we put between us, we are still under the same sky, looking at the same moon. The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming.

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
~Verlaine

Feeding

Helping hands.

The perfect way to spend a day out of the office.
And baby Etienne is such a gracious host, guiding me as I try my best to feed him.

Picnic

我的心是一杯调和过的咖啡

Coffee and carrot cake,
brightens a rainy Sunday.

Choose

Beirut bedroom.

Sleep, strictly speaking, is but a matter of choice. Do you choose to sleep or do you not. But in the event that your body's choice is not in sync with that of your mind, there is always heavy reading that will help to stir up some Zzzz, although you do run the risk that it might keep you up till day break. My choice of late for these fun filled evenings is Adam Smith. Everyone knows Mr Smith for the Wealth of Nations and as the Father of Capitalism, but he also wrote A Theory of Moral Sentiments which was suppose to underpin all his other works, including the Wealth of Nations. An examination of modern capitalism shows that somebody forgot to draw upon this underpinning and hence the mess that we are in. But that is another topic for another sleepless night. What I found interesting upon re-reading this book is Mr Smith's views on choice:

"The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour whihc drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice."

Prayer

A new leaf.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

~Prayer, Carol Ann Duffy

Artifacts

But all the clocks in the city, began to whirr and chime:

Its not so much that we tell lies.
Its that we speak easily words that have become empty;
And empty words have no value beyond their utterance.

Artifacts

O let not time deceive you, you cannot conquer time.

What does one do,with all the words left unspoken?
They are no more than scraps or wilted flowers.
Box it up. Take it out; Together with the trash.

Artifacts

In headaches and in worries, vaguely life leaks away.

Living with someone new is never easy.

Architecture

Shadows; Light, stonewalled.

Architecture is a story, told through its hard materials.
It is a story of a struggle against improbabilities.

Rubicon

Alea Jacta Est

The threshold has been crossed,
its pointless to look back.