Gesamtkunstwerk

with 500gb of a mybook to fill, i'm suddenly burdened with backing up. my laptop's been on a couple hundred mbs for months, so that i can't do shit, on top of the fact it's already sluggish from nearly 7 years of service. oh and the hinge broke too, so the screen is always kept up now. very dusty.

first things first, the school stuff - amateur designs, amateur writings. historical artefacts, things from a different age. then, a complete library of photos, compiled from my laptop, thumbdrive and small hdd. now my laptop has this idiosyncrasy idiocy of having 1 usb port - which is not usb2.0. so... i have a card of 4 x usb2.0 ports, that... has not enough power to run the small hdd... which means it has to go to the laptop's cacat port. stuff transferring from the hdd to the mybook was running at the old usb speed.

it was a long night.

not to mention that i've been going thru a lot of old photos at the same time. fleeting moments, frozen laughter, bad angles, hairstyles that came and went, dinners and bbqs, trips and farewells, poseurs, artsy attempts, remembered stories unfolding when viewed in sequence. aaaaaaaaaaaand... the blue-tinged ghetto of 701 arachnid, where i mistook the darkness for coziness (until meng told me of wild mushrooms growing from the carpet somewhere - good thing i never found them). we came back from bintan to apple-green walls and wooden flooring, and even now that is going to be history.

it's funny how the multitude of little items i've packed, each has its tales to tell. scribbles on post-it notes, doodled namecards, limited edition ashtrays, a handmade and painted clay tag, an expired candy cane. u'd take one look, and write the whole pile off as trash, but if these things could talk.

it's funny how the inherited stuff, stuff that's been shared around, add on more history as they change hands. a lego set, 3 mini takraw balls, a purple cushion with a forgotten scent. (still in circulation are the moose, ever-available for abuse - and a very very very significant, yet deceivingly nondescript, packet of envelopes.)

it's funnier still how these memories are so easily... backed up. everything's so digital nowadays. i've photo folders named with just a word, besides the date, which should be easy to navigate by any nerd - single words loaded with meaning and mutual memories, like the debauched madness behind "broadwalk".

and what is really funny, is that this brings to mind a picture... of a seance with a hdd... and a tech-y engineer as the medium's assistant.

sometime this week, i clicked on a banner ad. now this is a great rarity, outside of course clicking the banners we recognize as our own, but it led to redroom, the site "where the writers are". it specifically led to this author's excerpt from a long-unpublished novel, from which i surfed on to erickalutz, that is deliciously littered with quotes: 2 or 3 morsels of bite-sized wisdom on every page.

"Talent is not talent until it is shared." -- Fortune cookie wisdom
(i do agree. if no one knows, who can say u are? it's not an adjective u give yourself.)

"There is no perfect time to write. There's only now." -- Barbara Kingsolver
(kingsolver! what a name! i'm writing now!)

"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living." -- Gustave Flaubert
(thanks, gustave. that really puts things in perspective.)

"The one who tells the stories rules the world." -- Hopi proverb
(speaking of which, i wanna write stories. and rule the world too, might as well.)

"When in doubt, tell the truth." -- Mark Twain
(typically twainesque irony, when juxtaposed with the quote above. i suppose it follows that when lying, u shouldn't doubt yourself... it's the liars who own the world anyway. i'd like to add one here: "truth well told" - mccann-erickson's motto.)

"Like the eye that sees but cannot see itself; Like the sword that cuts but cannot cut itself." -- Zen koan
(wtf? but. yea. i mean. yea! erm. it's true, right? wait is this like, advice? i think it's true. i mean. erm. d'u get it? i get it. i think. d'u? really?)

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down." -- Kobi Yamada
(always believed in this, yep.)

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." -- Colette
(rightonbingo! and may i add, some mistakes are too good to make just once.)

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -- Rudyard Kipling
(so subtle. so lethal. so inspiring. i shall rule like shere khan 1 day.)

those are the few gems. soooo... what's a zen koan, i hear u ask. well from more surfing, what i've surmised is, koan is simply an archaic term for faiwa, as zen is to the more modern equivalent of wtf. my take on it, anyway.

what distinguishes these are, as all things, the dilution of its discipline over time. observe: how we have to specify kurang manis for teh ais where before, they perfected ritual ceremonies in order to brew the perfect cuppa tea. we lepak at the raucous mamak for hours, they settled at silent temples for years. we encourage faiwa with more faiwa, while they spoke less but of higher quality. we indulge in faiwa in between banter, they meditated at length and spoke nothing but. we wtf ourselves in humour, while they elevated their zen into a high art.

u've been warned, but do check out some real quality wtf's...
like "what is buddha?" - 3 pounds of flax.

days and weekends whip by like arrows. like a recurring theme in a story, life is still short.

as i learnt a while ago, even my dad is a mortal. dad was always, consistently, the one thing u can be sure of. the one soul antithesis to mine, the one voice of wisdom i begrudge, the one constant in my life of variables. and one day he wound up in the hospital from a heart problem. i still remember mom's voice dull over the phone, while i sat in the heart of a great void, soles of my feet tingling, trusting the floor to give way. we stand on the shoulders of giants: when the giant falls, nothing else is solid enough. i looked blankly at the treacherous parquet, and in my mind's eye i looked into his eyes, him peering over his glasses, over the evening papers in the kitchen. and i finally realized that vision had also become a variable, he was immortal no longer.

but dad still lives and is since better. life's unknowns aside, here're some remembered lessons for the future me.

i've learnt the gravity of words. ironically i was just appreciating the permanence of pen on paper, favouring written word over type. but words are more permanent than just that. even in email, they are black on white. and especially when digital, it's all the more dangerous, prone to becoming recorded copies, volatile. a careless email has more consequences than i'd care to elucidate. copywriters: black and white is a serious business, so read Everything from Line One.

i've also learnt it's nice to be relied on. couple weeks back we had a slipknot steamboat night, and the rainy friday evening held everyone up. out of the blue i got a call from eunice, stuck at jam-locked bangsar with no cab in sight: "jooks what do i do? i can't go anywhere. there's no one around. that's not very helpful." while there was really nothing helpful i could do, i called chokyan and smsed yenc (both of which she could've done well enough) and in 10 minutes i was something of a logistics co-ordinator. out of nothing i'd concocted a plan - and as it turned out she had boarded an lrt for just-as-jam-locked kelana jaya.

irony. oh well. and Then a week later, another out of the blue call: "kaling's not feeling very confident for her exam, could u give her some pointers for aurals?" so i did, although at the end of it i probably did more harm than good... it's still nice to be relied on. that u can be expected to deliver. i'm usually not like that, out of no other reason than sheer laziness, but i kinda like it.

i suppose i'm growing up, real quickly.