baby raccoons

It was dark outside, and I heard rattling of the feeding bowls, meant for the cats.  I knew the raccoons are here.  Raccoons seem to be surreptitious, nocturnal animals.  They are rotund, and wobble a great deal when whooshing all over the place in my backyard.  They ARE fast, but not as flexible as cats, meaning -- not much of a leaper.

I pulled the curtain apart and peered into the darkness.  I could make out their outlines pretty well.  There were five of them.  The day before yesterday, I saw eight.  New kits have been born this year.  The babies are like little round fur balls, following their mother, huddling over the feeding bowls. 

I don't normally leave food for raccoons, I let them scavenge whatever is left by the cats.  And usually, there is some leftover for them. 

I know how I feel about cats.  They make suitable pets and companions.  But Im not sure how I should feel towards raccoons.  I think they are cute, but they are not easily domesticated.  When I saw the baby kits huddling eagerly over the little scraps of catfood, butting heads, I knew they plucked my heartstring.  But I also know too many of them can become an infestation.

This evokes a long time gnawing dilemma of mine.  Our relationship with animals.  I suppose its become especially relevant to me since the day I decided to quit meat, most types of meat.  Do I have a position on this?  Sure.  Am I entirely happy with where I stand?  Not really, but for now, this will have to do.

I quit meat for a number of reasons, the one I'm most reluctant to mention is that I found it harder and harder to take bites into animals that I would like to pet/caress/hug.  So I stopped eating beef, veal, pork and birds.  I mean, how do we find it in ourselves to exclaim how cute calfs, piglets and lambs are and then serve their pa and ma on our dinner tables? 

But then again, where exactly DO you draw the line between the edible and the pitiable?  Thats why I found it hard to condemn the Japanese for eating dolphins, because what makes people think cows, sheeps, pigs (maybe not so much birds) don't have the same level of sensitivities and intelligence?  Is it really justified for one group to be pointing finger at another? 

So, yes, I'm starving, more or less, the raccoons, and spoiling the cats.  And these are just some of the decisions I have to consciously make.

mourning

~。~。~。哀悼 ~。~。~。

我不會哀悼，起碼，我不會在人前哀悼，更做不到在儀式上哀悼。
我不會哀悼，起碼，我不會在任何人勸慰我的時候哀悼。

當有人拍拍我的肩膀、給我一個擁抱、說一些重復許多遍的寬慰的話語，
我完全沒有哀悼的心情，我只是敷衍你們，露出一個親人過世的人該露出的表情。

當然，我感謝所有人的這份心。

但是，就像我不會在人前祈禱，不會在任何神殿真正的祈禱，更不會和一群人一起祈禱一樣，
我與我的神，
我與我的小心痛、大心痛
我與我的小思念、大思念
are for my eyes only,
they are for my heart only~~~not for anyone else

所以，如果當我遇見你，請不要問，也不要說，更不要裝，我們誰都不要裝，誰都不需要客套，這些還不夠多嗎

只要，

給我唱一首好聽的歌吧
給我彈奏一首動聽的曲吧
給我介紹一本打動人心的書吧
我們一起暢飲一杯
一起笑一會兒吧

這就是我的哀悼。

Savage Beauty -- special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In my almost two decades of visiting the MMA, I have never heard or seen of such a throng, the line waiting to get into the special exhibition stretching all the way from the galleries of the Impressionists to the halls of Asian ceramics.  I suppose it takes a proper genius to turn an exhibition into a phenomenal event for the whole town, and the untimely death of that genius to secure his legacy til kingdom come.

My mind is triggered by images, weaving tales based on what I see.  The exquisite artworks, for to say otherwise would be gross understatements, by the late Alexander McQueen transcend the realm of fashion into the worlds of fantasy, brimming with notions of ornithic fever dreams, fairy tales, romantic encounters, legends uttered in secrecy.  Admittedly, there is a dark undercurrent throughout the exhibition, and some pieces certainly border on the fetish and the grotesque (the spine corset, for example, immediately called to mind the creature in "Alien"), but after all, the theme of the exhibition is "savage". 

The exhibition included different chambers, each showcasing a unique collection, together making up the highlights of the artist's career.  The viewers stood in awe, wide-eyed, gawking this way and that, not just at the pieces on display, but at the chambers themselves, completing the atmospheric effects created by the curators.  What incredible curating!  Every chamber fit McQueen's artworks as aptly as a tailored story fit a designated character.  What a memorable ensemble!  I was mostly impressed, mesmerized almost, by the romantic gothic chamber.  Simple black and white were the predominant colors used, materials ranged from leather straps (fetish/cult), intricate and extravagamt lacework(dark filigree) to voluminous silk cape, masks and, last but not least bird feathers dyed black and gold.  The pieces were propped up on platforms surrounded by rusted frames showing seemingly age old patina.  I felt I was whooshed back in time, to a period of Byronic heroes and dark knights and dames shrouded in mysteries and secrecies, to a time when vampires and fiends roamed the earth in luxurious capes and satin, silk and velvet (getting carried away here)~~~

This was a hopelessly romantic designer, and how delicately yet powerfully this collection of his magnum opus, the embodiment of the artist's soul, pulls on the heartstrings of those also possessed with the notion of romance. 

My absolute favorite piece of the entire exhibition is, as the piece is so aptly named, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!  Yes, thats exactly how I felt when I saw this jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, soul-wrenching of a thing.  (And of course, the "raven" is absolutely stunning as well!)

picture time~~~

First, pictures of Tigress and Yutou taken this morning:
Tigress, the incredibly friendly (if not somewhat cloying) female calico kind of grimaced at me because I didn't give her any canned food, only dry food. Her favorite is "Chicken of the Sea", the kind we eat, but I only give her that very sparingly, human food in general are not good for cats. She loves canned food for cats too.

She loves rubbing against people she knows well, and is very easy to get along with. She does scowl if the food is not to her liking.

This is Yutou (芋頭). I believe Yutou is a he. Yutou is sweet tempered and shy, I somehow have the hunch that he is the most intelligent of the lot. He has grown up so much since last summer. He loves to lap up icy cold milk. I was hesitant about giving him milk at first because many cats are not lactose tolerant, but Yutou definitely does not have that problem. He sometimes lingers on after finishing his daily canned and dry food, this is his cue that he wants some milk -- his comfort drink. Yutou has become more relaxed around me lately, he lets me scratch his ears and back and message his furry and soft limbs with both hands now. He meows loudly when I approach him with food in my hands.

Now, as mentioned a long long time ago, I said I would post some of my sketches. At this point, I am not capable of drawing (tolerably well) from memory or imagination alone, so all the sketches I did are from photographs (not taken by me). I will try to find the original links to them.
The one to the left is a quick sketch of an Eskimo mother with her baby and a puppy. The original photograph can be found here. (scroll down)

This is actually a failed attempt, because the Eskimo woman in my sketch ends up looking like the baby's grandmother, instead of his mother (=.=). But I decided to post this piece because this was my first experience using Derwent's sketching set.
This is the same Eskimo woman with her son, now sleeping soundly. The original link is the same as the one above. This little sketch was completed on impulse. I wasn't planning to sketch that day, but somehow I saw this photograph and I felt like giving it a try. I used normal printing paper and a very average green color pencil. I think I was in the right drawing mood, it turned out a lot better than I expected.

This is my most recent sketch. I used Derwent's Drawing Pencils for coloring, and Derwent's Sketching set for outline. I absolutely love Derwent's Drawing Pencils. The colors are solid, somewhat subdued, and generally have an earthy tone (in other words, the colors are not too loud or cartoonish). This sketch took about 2 weeks to finish. The old guy's hat took some special effort, it was a pain in the neck to create those crease and folds, shadings and lighter areas. I messed up his mouth actually, in the original photo, the man has a bigger mouth. The original post where I found the photograph is here. The photograph is on one of the pages, but I really don't know which page anymore. The post, by the way, has fantastic photographs and the writing is simply heartrending.

This little caricature of a sketch is for you to laugh at and for my amusement. I am not really a fan of 黑豹(black panther), but I do like their debut album. As you can see, I sketched it from the cassette tape cover. I was sorting my old cassettes the other day, I thought it is about time I get rid of them. But I got into such a nostalgic mood that I ended up keeping most of my old cassettes. I am not even sure this cassette by Black Panther belongs to me. But anyways, I just can't find it in me to throw away BP's debut album.

My drawing tools. I hoarded lots of drawing tools, especially color pencils, ever since I started having this thing for color pencil drawings, and ever since I first set foot in Blick art store. Its a shame I have completed very few sketches but my drawing tools will last probably 50 years. But anyways, this is the 12-piece Derwent's Sketching set, the ones I use the most are HB/2B/4B graphite sketching pencils. The gray play-doh-like eraser is an excellent artist's eraser, you can knead it into any convenient shape of your choice. It erases tough marks. The white pencil-like things are paper stumps used for blending colors. They are INDISPENSABLE, especially if you need to create shading/gradation effects. And of course, you need sandpaper.

This is Derwent's Drawing Pencils. I can't say enough good things about them. They are some of the best drawing pencils you can get.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - halfway thoughts

I have been making mental notes to pick up the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because everybody was either reading this book or one of the others (the Girl who Played with Fire, the Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) --together making up the crime trilogy by the late Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson.  The trilogy received tremendous publicity and fanfare in major bookstores and the media and drew rapt attention on Swedish crime writers in general.  So finally I picked it up last weekend. 

Reading the Dragon Tattoo meant, first and foremost, overcoming a learning curve, because I knew almost next to nothing about Sweden, where the story takes place.  Incidentally, about a month ago, I had dinner at a Scandinavian place for the first time (the food, by the way, was absolutely superb, right up my sleeves), and the place also had a gift shop selling Scandinavian souvenirs and next to the entrance on a wooden rack were complimentary tourguide books on Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Holland, and we took one of each.  The guidebook on Sweden really came in handy.

I had a hard time with the names of people and places mentioned in Dragon Tattoo, and since at the center of the story is a very extended family, and the author enjoys writing about the layout of Stockholm, there are lots of names.  So I had to do some nutshell reading on Gamla Stan (which by the way, sounds fascinating!!), the tunnelbana, the archipelago, Södermalm and all the other names I still can't remember.  So in this respect, reading Dragon Tattoo feels refreshing, it is something very new to me, informative and educational.  But as I read on, about half way through the book, there came a curious sense of deja vu.  Inexplicably, I sensed a Japanese presence in the way Stieg Larsson tells the story (or maybe there is a Swedish touch to many Japanese mystery books, I simply don't know). 

Aside from the social/political issues and other digressions discussed in the book, Dragon Tattoo is, at the center, a mystery novel.  The initial setting of this mystery uses one of the oldest tricks (and probably the favorite trick of many novelists) in the book -- the "locked-room" technique（密室殺人）, the room, of course, is unconventional in the sense that it is an isolated island.  An established and powerful family is involved.  The family keeps a respectable public facade, but is in fact, rotten to the core with members who can be summed up as inept heir, incompetent drunkard, loose and lewd socialite, and stark raving mad Nazis, among others -- in short, almost a funny-farm.  It takes the author a while to traverse the history of this family and generate a panoramic view -- but as soon as the big picture became clear, the setting immediately reminded me of some of the better known mystery stories by Yokomizo Masashi (橫溝正史), such as Inugamike no Ichizoku (犬神家族) and Yatsuhaka Mura (八墓村), and other stories by the more recent Japanese mystery novelist Ayatsuji Yukito (綾辻行人).  I have been a huge fan of Yokomizo Masashi and I enjoyed reading "Murders at XX Mansion" books (XX館の殺人)  by Ayatsuji Yukito, so I was very pleasantly surprised that Stieg Larsson's style somehow reminds me of these authors: an almost uncanny crime committed in a remote place, an extended family of high social standing, dark secrets that go way back -- the ingredients are all there. 

I also love the way Stieg Larsson writes about the everyday things, especially through the protagonist Mikael Blomkvist as he becomes settled down on the island--the "scene of crime": the mundane chores, the daily routines, the simple but hearty lamb with potato meals, the stray cat Tjorventhe, the windfall lovemaking with a neighbor...etc.  There is something chilling yet comforting about this kind of writing, something I can relate to from writings by Murakami Haruki -- one of the things I like the most about Murakami's novels is the way he writes about the everyday things and almost out of the blue, takes unexpected turns into "twilight zones" and all things go bananas.  Somehow, I'm getting that same vibe in Dragon Tattoo.  The female Protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (I have to resist calling her Salamander) has yet to join path with Mikael Blomkvist.  Her role in the mystery is still obscure but will soon be revealed. 

Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig in the 2011 film adaptation of this book.

近所の猫たち

星期天，在小區附近往返了數次，一次是去公園晨跑，一次是去圖書館閑逛。看到了起碼十只貓。有一戶住家門口，經常性地看見兩只體型瘦小的貓在等食吃：一只全身土黃，另一只是咖啡色和白色相間的奶牛貓。有一次我沖著奶牛貓叫了叫，小東西竟然充滿期待地跑了過來，當時真想一把把他撈起來拐回家。看到的其他野貓也多半瘦小，難得的是還看到一只全身灰藍、基本符合British Shorthair特徵的藍貓。看到一只和肥大很像的四蹄踏雪黑白貓，懶洋洋地趴在某戶人家的門口，一點也不怕我。看到一窩大概是今年剛出生的小貓，比奶貓大些，但體形都還是幼貓，都是虎斑紋，聚集在一輛破車上，那個附近大概沒人住，這些小貓就把這裡當窩了，看起來不像吃得太好的樣子。

一圈看下來，得到的結論是，我家那幾只貓的日子真是太好過了，每只貓都敦敦的像個小肥豬，吃東西還挑三揀四，最喜歡吃人吃的tuna關頭，最不愛吃沒加關頭的乾糧。大家都明顯長大了，尤其是芋頭，骨架子和四肢都比以前大了不少，或許因爲芋頭酷愛喝牛奶？而且芋頭現在也不像以前那麽害羞。虎妞比冬天瘦了一些，不過骨架子還是大了很多，記得以前虎妞的體型比肥二小，現在已經明顯大過肥二。肥大還是最大的一只，膽子還是很小，但其實他很喜歡有人撓撓，又害怕又期待的樣子很可愛。