BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Monday, October 02, 2006

Have been conditioned to read Aldo Rossi's Architecture and the City, and to talk intelligently about it during my seminar sessions. The seminars is conducted by a tutor who seems to be able to read Rossi's mind. He speaks of how Rossi writes with such nuance that I imagine he must have been Rossi's best friend. He is one step short of calling Rossi by first name. I recall Aglie in Foucault's Pendulum.

Anyway, about Rossi, even though he invents new terms, we are told not to dwell on the definitions; even though the book sounds rather pedantic in the way it reads the city, we are told to forever hover above it with a sense of intellectual doubt; even though the book is written in the long rambling Italian style that forever knows no end, we are told to read it in 2 weeks; even though he casually mentions other writers/thinkers/works, we are fed this network of thinkers and a succession of events and happenings which is completely out of my world view, because my tutor cannot summarise things and he goes from one thought to the other, while telling us that Rossi mentions them just so to acknowledge a prior/contemporary body of work. (this last part is nice, though baffling at times)

That paragraph was besides the point. What Rossi mentions about the city is that the architecture becomes to containers of memories, where past and present reside. The past IS the present in a city, where old buildings stand as testaments to an era bygone. People carry their past around as well- in the creases on their foreheads or in the stride of their walk. And like the case of the toaster, sometimes, the past makes itself rather obvious.

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oomoo [ 7:05 am ]

1 Comments:

  • and here's to you mrs robinson
    jesus loves you more than you will know
    wo wo wo

    god bless you please mrs robinson
    heaven holds a place for those who pray
    hey hey hey

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:25 pm  

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