Stories of the Pygmies

From 'The Forest People' by Colin Turnbull

"These stories grow until it is difficult to tell the difference between

what is meant to be a straight, factual account

and a traditional legend. 

And there is always the element of the two way process in which 

face becomes legend, and 

legend becomes accepted, though constant repetition, 

as fact"

Chapter: The forest and the stars

"There is the material plane and there is the spiritual plane. 

The two domains are never confused, not are they kept apart. 

The mediator is the shaman, 

and it is his ability to slip between spheres that allow for the maintenance of 

the sacred balance, 

the harmony of social, religious and political life. 

The shaman is the one who swims in the mystic waters the rest of us would drown in" 

(Joseph Campbell)

Watching a leaf fall at Fort Canning park

It was different from the others. 

it was more beautiful, and its long, 
curved and spiral contour made it 
move differently. 
It fell so slowly, 
but not in a way that I was waiting for it to reach the ground, 
but the manner and grace of which it fell so slowly,
was how I noticed it. 

As if descending from the heavens, 
taking its time, 
turning
over 
and 
over, 
experiencing the world from different perspectives, 
knowing that the time will come when it will reach its destination. 
I know that its journey does not end at its fall, 
but that it falls only to rise again, 
because it lives 
within 
the circle of life. 

Souls do not die. We are reborn. 
To think that we exist once, and independently of the entire cosmos is a thought that 
disregards all the bubbles of possibility around us. 

It was different from the others
because this time, 
I was looking. 

When I watched a construction site of a new building I thought:

A memory,
the best moment of your life, 
taking place in a box in the air. 
The world is changing so fast and yet so 
quietly
each second, you don't even know what has changed and you think that that building has always been there
all along. 

Thoughts in a bus

Looking around at all the people. 
Saw this middle aged man on my right,
blue office shirt, black pants with his Samsung galaxy phone, wet combed hair-
or whatever was left of his hair. 

I wondered what his story was, 
where we came from, his childhood, how he looked like as a little boy, whether he likes his blue and black attired job. 
And then suddenly I thought, 

everyone is made up of stories. 
Everyone on this bus holds so many stories and memories. 
The best moments of their lives, 
and their worst. 
Their first love, their first kiss.

We're all on the bus of life. We all get on, people leave, just that 
some stay longer than others. 

Adrift between realities

Tonight I watched a video by photographer Simon Christen called 'Adrift' (which won a Vimeo Staff Pick nomination). To quote Christen, "Adrift is a love letter to the fog of the San Francisco Bay Area to capture the magical interaction between the soft mist, the ridges of California and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge". 

I read this description after I watched the video, and it's interesting how I have a different take on what the video means to me. I definitely see that magical quality of the mist, no doubt, because it is just so beautiful (and beautifully shot too). 
My interpretation of the video is different though. 

When I watched it, I was captivated by all that mist in all its vastness, and how the strong current of that sea of mist completely washed over everything -  all the buildings and giant monuments and infrastructures. It was as if it was nature's way of silently subtly making its presence known. Nature is always going to be there, flowing on by, every morning to every night (as seen in the video which starts at dawn and ends at dusk). I know we humans always talk about saving the planet because our Earth is "dying", because of global warming, over-industrialisation, and so on, which are undoubtedly valid points. But I think that the earth is not "dying" but that the earth as we know it is changing. Nature always reinvents and rejuvenates by itself. 

Over a month ago, I was in Sumatra, Indonesia, doing reforestation work with the Sei Betung, Restoration team in Besitang. While explaining the process of reforestation to us,  Rio - who is heading the team there, said that while our reforestation work is good because it speeds up the process of rejuvenation of the (degraded) forest, the forest actually has the capacity to undergo this process of revival and rejuvenation by itself.  

So when I saw this video, I saw it as a subtle statement that nature was making - and that its power lay in its flexibility and ability to adapt to change. 

Another thing that I thought about after watching this video was the whole idea of documentation of moments. In this case, it would be the time lapse visual documentation, and to give another example, it would also include all the sound recordings of songs and conversations that I took during my trip to Sumatra. I remember after I reviewed all my recordings, after listening to each track repeatedly, I realised that each time I listened, I was listening to something new. I was pretty struck by the whole idea that during the moment when I was there recording, I was not aware of what exactly the person behind me said, or of the lyrics of the song in the background, and was only made aware of such things after reviewing the recordings. And similarly, this video constructs these visual images of what we cannot see with our own eyes, but of visual images that are completely real and happening right now, as we travel across that Golden Gate bridge, or sit in our office cubicles overlooking the San Francisco Bay. And doesn't that make life so much more interesting, knowing that there are phenomena right in front of you that is waiting to be discovered, experienced and shared? 

My friend also shared a link with me on the discovery of rivers under the sea, and it stirred in me the same feeling that I felt when watching Christen's 'Adrift'. Reading about or watching phenomena like these two reminds me that there is so much more to the world that what I choose to have exist in my life. There is so much that I haven't seen, and there may perhaps be so many beautiful and exhilarating places and experiences such as these that I may never know of during the course of my life. 
And while that sounds slightly sad and depressing, it really feels very humbling, just knowing that these amazing spaces in the natural world exist and that I am living in the same world as it. It's humbling because it makes me realise how incredibly small I am in the big scheme of things, and small here not meaning insignificant, but just small. 


Links: 
Video: https://vimeo.com/simonchristen/adrift

Undersea rivers:

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2012/07/11/is-river-sea/)

We begin with the Prologue.

"Far out 
in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy 
lies a small 
unregarded 
yellow 
sun.  
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is 
an utterly insignificant 
blue green planet
whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea" 

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)