Thursday, June 26, 2008

Cleaning Up to Find "Love"

Sorry loklok. I didn't get your permission before posting this. woopsh.

I was cleaning out my laptop bag and I found a manila envelope with a few of your poems in it. I'm not sure how I got it, but I did. I like this one the best. It's called "Love." It's kind of appropriate at this time, since we've been talking on the phone and over gchat about such a thing.

Loklok, perhaps you should write more poems. I liked the ones you did for your portfolio.

Love

To Resolve bodies into planes and no further.

For, to suppose, that a body, a magnitude,
is divisible, through and through,
that division is possible, involves a difficulty.

What will there be,
in the body which escapes division?

Let it
have been divided.

What then will remain? A magnitude?
No, that is impossible. Since there will be
something not divided.

But, if it be admitted that neither a body, nor a magnitude
remain, and yet division is to take place,
the constituents of the body will be points or nothing.
An absurdity without magnitude.

For when the points were in contact,
to form a single magnitude, they did not make
the whole any bigger.

But suppose that, as the body, beign divided,
a minute section - a piece of sawdust, is extracted
evading division

even then the argument applies.

For in what sense is that section divisible?
For what came away was not a body but a separable form or quality.
Every contact being always a contact of somethings.
There is always something, besides the contact,
or the division,
or the point.

Friday, June 20, 2008

How much I hate Hong Kong and think everyone should abandon it's ship

As I was walking away from my driving class the other day, I thought of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. There are times when I cannot stand to look at all the ugly, ugly housing estates and apartment blocks in the lousier parts of town. I know I am of privileged stock, and saying all this can and will make me ridiculous and pompous, but people were not meant to live like this! If I have children, and bad luck befalls them, is this how low I want them to fall? Living in a Hong Kong housing estate isn't thoroughly hell, it's better than a slum, though there is still niggling at the back of my mind a constant sensation that I can't accept this for myself or any of my loved ones / progeny. This is wrong wrong wrong.

I want there to be a Second Coming for Hong Kong. I want there to be a crazy person, a person full of "passionate intensity" that would rip Hong Kong apart and cause a seismic shift in the whole damned city. I would like to feel that his thighs are lumbering towards Matilda International Hospital to be born. I think that she / he would be a bit like Shishigami in the Studio Gibli film "Princess Mononoke." If there could be somebody whose vision could explode over the whole of Hong Kong in a sort of idiotic death-sacrifice (there's this one scene in the film... ah, you should go watch it, it's lovely,) I think I would love Hong Kong again.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

China Quake Comics

Beijing based graphic-artist Coco Wang compiled newspaper stories of the China quake disaster and has turned some into comic strips. She hopes that her comics will highlight the human tragedy, not just the material loss, caused by the disaster. She hopes these stories could show readers "the love, warmth and courage of the Chinese people, also the sad and cruel reality of the horrible 5.12 Earthquake."

I am sure CCTV has been playing footage of the recovery effort nonstop. The stories they show of finding survivors are only small miracles amidst enormous grief. In a letter, she writes:
"I wanted to go to the front to help with all those people, some of my friends have already gone there, but I heard that the traffic needed to be kept totally clear for rescue transportation at the moment, people like me without knowledge of first-aid and experience of rescue operations going there now would cause choas and trouble... but I can't just sit at home and do nothing, I have been crying my eyes out in the past three days, I have never felt more proud of my country and people... their love, courage and kindness rock me to my core! I have decided to tell these touching stories by drawing comics."
I can certainly understand what she is going through. I personally experienced this after 9/11. My high school was blocks away from the site so we were not allowed to return to class. So instead of moping around at home, my friends and I went to volunteer at the Red Cross. I guess what was my way of coping, of contributing to the efforts.
Coco Wang takes a more artistic approach. The images are simple but the message is powerful and moving. Click here for the others.