papirfugl

In return, some metaphors.

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:35:00 +0800

You talk to Sherin, and it feels like… lightning. Energized, it’s like you have been charged up, intellectually electrified. This girl, she can make analogies out of anything. Give her a mathematical equation, a rigid technical formula, and she could and will dissect it for you, turn it figurative, give it a visual landscape where you can travel around and onto the hilltops of even the flattest, most mundane idea. She picks up on words with metaphorical potential, takes them out of the sentence, and places them within a completely new structure: She gives them an image to live in.

Inside this new architecture of thought, there are different floors of meaning, which together form a building where your idea can grow, expand and be visited. Though still a trivial, and still “just” a thought, it’s no longer vague nor mysteriously abstract. It now has a shape, and that form is shaped and coloured by the way she talks: The way she gesticulates when she brings forth the metaphor from the back of her mind to the tip of her fingers; the firmness with which she hands them to me, flat on the table, or simply lets them go, gently releasing them like little guppies into our aquarium of thoughts. A fishbowl of ideas, it hold our sentences and pauses, it holds the discussion itself. Yet it also contains the assumption that the glass will only last for so long, before we start to go on tangents, before the guppies begin to breed, and the pressure of the water inside the aquarium eventually causes the glass to crack, to burst, sending the discussion gushing forth into new, unpredictable streams.

letters to crushes: S, I think you should let me sneak you out tonight. Not to go anywhere...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:23:56 +0800

letters to crushes:

S,

I think you should let me sneak you out tonight. Not to go anywhere special. Swing sets and benches. Planets, stars and planes in the sky. Wake up comes quick for both of us. Don’t tell your parents. Leave a note: “chasing stars with JL. Love, S.”

— JL

"The myth of the Cyborg tells us more about our aspirations (and our fears) than about the actual..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:05:28 +0800

“The myth of the Cyborg tells us more about our aspirations (and our fears) than about the actual form that new increases in human capacities will take when applied to man himself. (…) The aspirations that it fetishizes in technology (immortality, invulnerability, sovereign intelligence) are as old as humanity itself. But instead of them being projected into a divine sphere or concentrated in magical forces, they are (we believe) at our door.”

- Dominique Janicaud, On The Human Condition. (Yes, geek quote. But interesting!)

Photo

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:04:25 +0800

Photo

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:03:49 +0800

DO YOU RECKON IT WAS EASIER for people to forget about past lovers before Internet and Facebook came...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:03:00 +0800

DO YOU RECKON IT WAS EASIER for people to forget about past lovers before Internet and Facebook came along? Or is that just a notion, a failure to recognize how long our memories just linger, regardless of the kilometers, minutes, years dividing us from them, and now from then? A kind of inability to see how inapplicable that “out of sight and out of mind” mentality is to anyone who older than an infant?

(Mind you, I’m not blaming Facebook. But it’s not really helping, is it?)

I WAKE UP to the sound of my own voice. I’m talking in my sleep, again, waking up mid-sentence...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:17:00 +0800

I WAKE UP to the sound of my own voice. I’m talking in my sleep, again, waking up mid-sentence cause the sound of someone talking immediately wakes me up. I dreamt that he was calling. Recalled his voice and everything. If that is how he sounds like… Well, you know how voices sometimes are the first things you forget when people leave. Anyway, his accent there, he called to ask where I’d like to meet, rewinding my mind back nine months, to February 13th when I asked him in reality but also, in this dream, a sentence that I barely finish before I open up my eyes, a now rhetorical question spoken out into the echo of an empty room: “I don’t know, it’s up to you?”

Photo

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:23:07 +0800

Escaping the city

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:22:00 +0800

Each night, the possibility
of running off to somewhere else.

Someplace spaceless,
endlessly expanding into time.
Somewhere less confined,
restricted not by grids or lines
or rules we’ve put upon ourselves,
designed and named,
Reality.

A dreamed-up playground
made of clouds.
Or water.
Or just air, perhaps.
There, we fly, betray our bodies
by dancing with our minds.
So free, we wished we didn’t know
how to find the way back home.

Wide awake all the while,
the city watches this.
Waiting and anticipating,
it knows that soon,
the inevitable return
of our consciousness will come.

Soon, we will come home.

Indecisiveness

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:12:00 +0800

You were sexy when you seemed like you knew what you were doing, what you wanted, and why.

(via exergian)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:07:57 +0800

(via exergian)

“How to be a Texan” (Austin Kleon). Newspaper...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:59:00 +0800

“How to be a Texan” (Austin Kleon). Newspaper blackout poems! Just imagine, the smell of the black marker. Probably gives you head-ache after a while, but god, does it smell magical sometimes.

Photo

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:54:15 +0800

On quoting

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:31:00 +0800

Do you quote so as to show, to point to something outside of yourself, or is it an end it itself to point out how much you know, to show off in front of everyone else? Or is it yourself you’re trying to impress?

(via fuckyeahhlove)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:38:34 +0800

(via fuckyeahhlove)

The privilege of giving life to short-lived things

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:55:00 +0800

♫ “Miss Shanghai” by The Shanghai Restoration Project

Holding this song in my hand, I see myself walking upward, ascending the steep hill road which led me to his place last night. It’s eight o’clock in the morning I think. I said goodbye and left, let him sleep because I knew, and I guess I noticed, too, the way the street unwinded and unfolded like a lie, leading me into a dead-end street of self-denial.

I knew it, didn’t I? I knew this guy, and still, I couldn’t help but go. I guess I’m dumb like that, or weak. Or happy to think less about the way ahead and what it holds, or doesn’t hold for me. This holds. Yes, the present holds, however fleeting it may be. To have the chance to be the girl who walks this walk in blue high heels, carrying even loftier dreams is… The lightness of that burden does outweigh, ironically, the pain of falling later on. Besides, the fall is not that harsh. There are worse things in this world than watching suns rise over harbours, knowing that a night just ended.

Last night’s teal blue dress still on, uplifted by this song, I realise that short-lived things are often fun precisely ‘cause they do not last, do not pretend as if they will. The charm of doing futile things, or, having all this time to think about one’s short-term plans and dreams. It’s not too bad, this being young. Appreciate the privilege of giving life to short-lived things.

♫ “Miss Shanghai” by The Shanghai Restoration...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:34:00 +0800

♫ “Miss Shanghai” by The Shanghai Restoration Project

Now it’s said and done / Say goodbye to people we...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:40:00 +0800

Now it’s said and done / Say goodbye to people we don’t know
Go back to sleep / Let’s sail away to the beaches of Normandie

“Normandie”, Shout Out Louds

Little great things

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:17:00 +0800

paying only 16 HK dollars for a tasty dinner. Nick coming over and bringing häagen-dazs at 10 in the evening. knowing Sherin. living on the 21st floor in the middle of Hong Kong. looking out my bedroom window on nights when i can’t sleep, and discovering that in neighbouring apartment blocks, people are still brushing their teeth. lying in bed and talking about Lumet, life, lies, and feminine and masculine rhymes. closing your eyes. reading sontag. making plans (not for Nigel, but for me). getting cha siu bao for breakfast from a local dim sum place. sleeping and waking up to music. sunlight filtered through the linen now serving as curtain in my room. hoping that we might work it out, someday, that time and space can be compressed, and distances erased. a bookshelf full of stories, memories and possibilities. drawing, or pausing to observe. having time to draw, pause and observe. hugging Mart. reading on the MTR. learning to like learning about the Chinese economy. making lists about little great things when really, you’ve already brushed your teeth and should be sound asleep.

★

Shadows aren’t always black.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:46:00 +0800

Shadows aren’t always black.