The Reminiscence of a Sunbather

I went to swim during my lunch hour.
I didn't feel like pushing myself too far and opted to lie down after few laps.
The sun is not particularly strong.
As I closed my eyes and was soaking up the heat,
I realized I hadn't sunbathed for a long long time.

Blood red, orange, yellowish brown, blood red again.
I loved how we could still "see" the sunlight getting stronger or less through our eyelids
as blankets of cloud, thin and thick, in and out, was sheltering.
My mind went completely off for like eternity before a sense of happiness woke me.
It's in the shape of light.
The light that was dancing in the pool water.
You don't need to go to black hole to see how light was bent.
Swirls of light twisting and turning, onto the side of the pool, and off swimmers' flesh.

Then I thought of my past, good times, happy times.
I thought of what my first experience of beauty was...
Is it a picture of Mount Huang I saw on a calendar,
the singing of Karen Carpenter,
or rather my first experience of ugliness
when I was forced by my mom to "inherit" my sister's pants?
It's a hideous orangey brown.

I thought of my wife's face,
how one late afternoon light caught her face
and the outline was golden.

I thought of sunset
(our shared symbol of sublime beauty).
One time me and a friend were completely captivated by a beautiful sunset on our trip to Cornwall.
We felt it's an imperative to savour that very moment.
We pulled over on the side lane of a hectic motorway,
(it's meant for broken car, maybe lovers' fight, but definitely not taking picture!)
It's a risky romantic thing to do,
as cars and lorries were shooting past us (possibly with swearing).

I thought of this thought itself.
I thought when one was thinking, the world seemed to revolve around us.
I recalled at the age of 18 I think, one day I was on the backseat of a bus after school,
I looked, in the frame of my eyes, was a picture as banal as any other day –
some twenty to thirty people's back wobbling in front of me.
But time froze at that moment. A sense of awe, or the sublime beckoned.
A question was asked. But I wasn't aware of what exactly.
Later I figured it was something like this:
"Why everything exists, rather than nothing?"
"Why I am not that guy or that girl or he or she but a 'me' opposing all these otherness?"
From that day on, a part of me was awaken (or newly born).
Thought wakes up thought wakes up thought...
I realized, all these thoughts were reminiscent of some of the best time in my life.

I opened my eyes and sat up.
I wanted to know what the time was.
A piece of paper writing"out of order" on the public clock.
I knew anyway it was time to go.
Cool!
I thought,
Happiness cost exactly HK$19.
(The pool's entrance fee.)

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 2)

So it's a guessing game. Love, art, poetry, even the art of story-telling in novels and movies. An affair of seducing. A balance act between disclosure and cover-up.

I have this habit of always preying over everything that's happening to me, the street I'm walking on, the man who's sitting next to me in a cafe, the sky that's changing every seconds, hoping that I can perhaps, just perhaps, catch something extraordinary. But of course that's not very often. Most of our days (which consists most part of our life) are just plainly mundane. But from these exercises, something unexpected shows up, at first I cannot quite make sense of what it is. The longer and harder you look at things, the stranger and more beautiful they become. Like a window opens, and you peep into the secret and heart of what you see. It became a "vision", as I've said in other posts.

Maybe Nature is the same. She's hiding something from us. She want us to give time and attention to her. We must give before we take. That is the Natural Law. But our time is fast and limited. We have better things to be occupied. We seldom "see" anymore. We lost the ability to savour things. To "waste" our time on things or people by observing them, talking to them, discover the unfamiliar in things with which we thought we are familiar. So painting maybe just an excuse for me to "waste" my time seeing. (Much like we "waste" our time watching craps on TV as an excuse for doing nothing.) Since the wasting process has this end-product called painting, it can serve as a signpost to the thing itself. Just to say "hey, look at this, it's worth your second look (and thought)."

Having said that, of course a painter is never a passive courier of the "vision" which was bestowed on her/him. Art is personal.

The next day, as the little melodrama between the lovers dies down, anger is replaced with regret. The girl now feels sorry. "Why am I such a petty person? Can I be less egocentric and self-indulging. Why all the trouble when I can just tell my true intention straight away?"

I kind of feel the same. So I've said it, or I haven't?

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 1)

Finally, I finished my first serious painting in thirteen years. Titled "The sign, the light and the other side", 610 x 762 mm, Oil on canvas. As I pondered what I could say about it, my thought was quickly drawn into a dilemma before every little words were gathering and forming a queue.

To ask a painter to write about his/her own work, is to place s/he in a paradoxical situation. When one paints, s/he has picked a particular medium over others to express (or simply just to "put down") something s/he "sees", feels, thinks or whatever has in mind. That is the best way. To do it other way would be self-defeating or self-deflecting (if there's such a word).

In a relationship, a girl (mostly girls, agree?) has certain desire in mind that she wants her admirer to know, say having a romantic night out this weekend, or as trivial as noticing her new lipstick colour ("No, that's nothing trivial! it's bloody important!" You can almost hear her screams). The last thing she wants is to spell it out. Instead if her admirer can see through her mind, by her subtle moves and signs, apparent unrelated suggestions or just telepathy out of his wholehearted devotion to her (Yes they believe it exists!), that will be immensely satisfying. She has found the proof of his love.

But when all her maneuvers go unnoticed with every minute passing, she gets more and more agitated. How can my masterful Van Gogh get no appreciation? Doesn't my beholder see my beauty? Where is his attention on me? In the end, she can no longer contain her desire (and temper), and reveal the mystery (indeed the revelation comes in great enigmatic magnitude as its decibel).

"Oh, Darling, why didn't you just say so!" Her lover complains, doesn't realize he has asked one of the greatest philosophical question about love, and also art.

The Clearest Moment