O Mio Babbino Caro

Maria Callas, 1973. "O Mio Babbino Caro" from Gianni Schicchi (1918, Giacomo Puccini).

Gardener of the Artificial Landscape

I just watched 展覧会の絵 (Tenrankai no E) or Pictures at an Exhibition, 1966, an animated short film by Osamu Tezuka. He's most notably known for Astro Boy... but I realized that he's actually extremely unconventional and, just pushing boundaries with his stuff (see here for description of some of his short films)

Anyway, I came across this particular film while reading about Pictures at an Exhibition, a famous musical suite written by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874 in remembrance of his friend Viktor Hartmann.

The film has this segment called "Gardener of the Artificial Landscape". A grasshopper was flying through a city at night with his belongings on his back, thirsty and tired, and wanting to find some water to refresh himself. But, he could not find a single drop. All the flowers were artificial, even the dew were glass beads. Not a singe organic thing was in sight or reach. Daybreak came, and the 'gardener' came out together with the pedestrians... and the gardener pruned the artificial plants and perfumed them and admired them; the other people also admired them. He then put a flower in his shirt pocket then admired his own reflection in the glass of the artificial pool. Then he saw the grasshopper lying dying on the ground, picked it up, looked at it, and flicked it away with disdain. It ended up outside that perfect artificial city, in the dirt, underneath a dirty-looking weed-like plant. As it lay there dying, a drop of water slid down the plant's leaf and landed on his head, and he closed his eyes.

City Connection

Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1!!!!!

I've been searching for this since forever... I played this game when I was a little kid, on an old dusty nintendo console... the background melody has been haunting my mind ever since, and I was just thinking about it recently...

You can play City Connection here

3 = π = √10

When you see √125 in your life, solve for √121.

- Charles Bailyn, Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale

Open Yale Courses

sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt

"These are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart"


The term comes from line 462 of Book I of The Aeneid, an epic poem written in Latin by Virgil, one of Rome's most distinguished poets, in the 1st century BC. Aeneas, while crying, says, "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" as he gazes at one of the murals found in a Carthaginian temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen. - Lacrimae rerum, Wikipedia

“Think about how powerless a mayor is,” West says. “They can’t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can’t be managed, and that’s what keeps them so vibrant. They’re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It’s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.”

A Physicist Solves the City, The New York Times

カキゴオリ

『カキゴオリ』上田竜也





「いつかまた　季節が巡り　君に会えたとしたら
同じ気持ち　同じ思いで　また笑えるように・・・」






笑いアエルように・・・

Maybe a New Year Resolution

Whenever I see photos of crit sessions, the students definitely look tensed, or worried, or frightened. Me too. I don't remember a crit session where I was relaxed and eager to learn. It was just frightening, the thought of being critiqued and possibly insulted. The possibility of cherished ideas being crushed and thrown away like trash. And humiliated in front of your peers.






I want to be a happy student. I want to be a happy student in a crit.


It's definitely not easy, but I want to work towards that. There's just no point being stressed and frightened. I know it's not easy, but I dislike feeling like that enough to want to try going the other way. Hopefully. Hopefully, I will be able to try it out, come next September... I want to genuinely get into it, not to take it like a farce or a disconnected event, but as part of a whole structure of learning. I know it's not easy.

late morning

The sunlight, splashing across the buildings





I can almost feel it

我说过，
下雨天会伤心。
你应该已经忘记了

当我们的心都不再倍受折磨的时候
如果，真的有那么一天来临

希望能再见到你
和你一起，走在太阳下

Thank You so much, Father...

祈ってます

Ah! It seems like Gintama will be returning next April!!!



Hopefully, at that time, I will have another reason to be happy...

My heart is feeling heavy...




but I trust in the Lord.

grateful

It's a thunderstorm outside right now




I'm really fortunate to have a roof over my head




and three warm meals a day

Dust-filled sunny days

Like I said, I've been hit with waves of nostalgia these past couple of days... even when I'm brushing my teeth, washing my face, or doing anything seemingly ordinary.





I wonder why. It might be because of my period. In the past, I always had this 'homesick' feeling before my period. Not really missing my home as I had it too when I'm already at home, but something 'like' it. Nobody understood what I meant, of course... it's just this feeling.





But this time, it's slightly different... not really the 'homesick' feeling but full-out nostalgia. I could recognize this feeling... it's like something I would feel when I step into my old high school. I could even smell the air... the air of days gone by. Especially sunny, warm days. The kind where you can spy specks of dust twirling in the thick, balmy air.





And also, the smell of the air when the exams are almost over... Almost, not quite but almost there, just a few papers to go, and those that you're confident of doing well in too... I get a little of this kind of feeling. Maybe... maybe it's because, I'm nearing the end of the current 'exam' I am facing?








And because of these feelings that I have been having, I've been recalling a lot of things from all over my life... Judo days, the smell of the dojo, after training, school days of course, and the exam period, and then sometimes university, the clueless afternoons, warm sweet milk tea, then sometimes the days in Japan, and sometimes those in America, and sometimes, and quite strongly, the days in Europe... There really is something so romantic, so romantic, about Europe... I recall the cloister corridors, Monticelli and Van Gogh while wandering in Marseille








I remember also, the secondary school days when I was fourteen and sixteen, triggered by a letter I found at the back of the drawer, safe from the 'purge' I subjected my room to during one my my zen moments when I felt that I didn't want anything anymore. That was when I just returned from New York. I tore up and threw away almost all the letters I have kept from that time. After reading through some of them, one last time. I don't have that sharp an image of what I was like back then, but I could recall roughly. Some of the letters were hilarious. Many were written in classes. I still remember we really had a hell of a time not paying attention in classes. I was not a model student from year 2 onwards. Copying assignments was a way of life, and cheating in tests was a normalized skill. Nobody bats an eyelid over that, or at least among the people I knew. I was intensely scornful of 'good' students. Anyway, I made it through somehow...

In some of the letters, I was told that I wrote really well... I remember one where Serene told me I should make use of this talent and make Singapore proud, and someone else told me my poems were much more interesting than those in literature class. And the way I bound my own out-going letters were pretty creative, I couldn't recall them now but I remember I tried to always make it different. I couldn't stand normal things back then.

And many of those who wrote to me told me that somehow they could open up to me and tell me things that they don't reveal to other people. Somehow, I looked like I would understand. One told me about her family troubles and her dad having a mistress, one told me about how she is really depressed because it seems like she isn't good at anything at all, one told me about friendship troubles... well, in general secondary school was rife with friendship troubles.





Somehow, we all made it through... didn't we? I hope so... there're so many that I haven't met since then... I hope they are well.


I feel a little regret at throwing everything away... so as atonement and some sort of final note, I've written this down... hoping to remember a little of the spirit of those letters.