The romantic salmon

My sister's fiancé Phil, is an American who fishes wild salmon in Alaska. Once we had a conversation around these delectable creatures. He told me the apparent absurdity of their life.

They hatch in the rivers and streams of Alaska. Their body will grow and adapt sea water before embarking on the journey of their life time – swimming across the Pacific Ocean all the way to Australia and heading back ultimately to their birth place. This is the brutal struggle you often see on the Discovery Channel – how they re-adapt back to fresh water, swim and toil up the stream, with miles and miles of rapids and even waterfalls to leap. Not all make it. Most arrive hurt and shattered. In the end, they breed, lay eggs and die. Then the next generation relive the same cycle again under the blessings of their fathers and mothers – their nutrient-rich remains, to be exact.

"What a poor sad little fellow." my sister quipped.

"No, I think it's rather romantic!" I said.

They were baffled. I can understand why. To most people, the word "romantic" means nothing more than the sentiment and feeling associated with love (a candlelit dinner or two lovers walking on a beach being the top romantic cliche). It's the first definition you find in most dictionaries. But look closer, it's actually a tricky word. Here is a list of the definitions given by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: consisting of or resembling a romance

2: having no basis in fact : imaginary

3: impractical in conception or plan : visionary

4 a: marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized
b: often capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of romanticism
c: of or relating to music of the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities and freedom of form ; also : of or relating to a composer of this music

5 a: having an inclination for romance : responsive to the appeal of what is idealized, heroic, or adventurous
b: marked by expressions of love or affection
c: conducive to or suitable for lovemaking

6: of, relating to, or constituting the part of the hero especially in a light comedy

Language can be a tedious matter. Too much analysis can kill off any...romance. Exactly! So I'm not going to make a linguistic fuss about it. (I'm not competent to, anyway.) All I want to do is to sing out my deep down yearning to be a romantic, roughly in the sense of definition 4th above.

Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th century largely as a revolt against the rise of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Briefly put, Enlightenment makes rational thinking absolute, while emotion and other sources of gaining knowledge obsolete. Industrial Revolution projected a whole new model for social advancement which many at that time feared the prospect of machine's dominance over human and ultimately our "humanity". I can sympathize with that.

While I don't take in all the Romantic doctrines, especially the glorification of a misunderstood heroic artist, I do cling to the importance of individual autonomy against the zeitgeist of the time, and the emotional aspects of us as human. We are each an unique individual who thinks, loves, cries, has dreams to chase, and is moved by beautiful things (oh no, I don't mean a LV bag!); not just 1 rational task-accomplishing executive in a corporation, 1 single-minded status-anxious wealth-seeking member of a social class, or 1 out of millions of targeted customers in a "market segment". But I'm afraid that's the sort of person (or specimen) our present world is shaping us to be.

Out of the window and onto the shimmering stream, a parrot was seeing for the first time a salmon leaping out of the water. She realized there's an alternative other than a caged life – a monotonous, calculative, cynical life in a materialistic, consumeristic, pragmatic and utilitarian cage. Breaking free became her pressing desire that no rational exercise could deny. Even that also meant the beginning of worries and risk of losing stable supply of food and all that. But what not.

"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." – Erica Jong

When we think the salmon's life sad, of course we are asserting our values and judgement on them. We think if I was in their shoes – work and toil the whole life but to go back to square one and sacrifice for nothing but a cycle of the same recycle, what's the gain? I cannot answer for the salmon. But that's the thing. We were brought up to be ultra-utilitarian. The question is: Is everything a matter of utility? Even so, a step back, isn't the same cycle happening to us? Only ours is in the shape of a rectangle – waking up in a [bed], going into a glass-adorned [office-block], being stuck in a [cubicle] for hours, working on a [computer], back home exhausted and staring at a box called [TV] before burying ourselves in the [bed] again, day in day out, until our final burial, in a [coffin].

So at the end of the day, death makes us all equal for that matter (the sum of the balance sheet). We are pondering the life of our reflection in a mirror. Do I want to be a romantic salmon believing in a higher calling or a pragmatic parrot selling her soul?

Am I wandering too far? Sorry, that's the problem with romantics.

Sketches on iPhone

I have had my iPhone for few months now. And I've been playing with all these wonderful and useful apps ever since. But not until recently, it dawned on me that there should be one for drawing. It's like remembering there's such a thing called pen upon seeing papers. Couldn't be more obvious.

If we human came so long to click, drag and type on a piece of glass, how more primitive and imperative to just scribble with our index finger, albeit it's not steamed.

A search word "paint" brought me a dozen such kind of apps in the iTune store. I found MyPaint Free so far the best among the free ones. Simple and quick. So now my iPhone is also an "iPad". Sketch on the go. Few samples above.