A window into the soul

Sunday night in Singapore
Primitive people, so I’m told,
Feared photography because
It stole their soul.


In civilised countries,
Like Singapore and Australia
Kalashnikov cameras


Shoot holes in everything -
Capturing images
Like there’s no tomorrow.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit more reality

I rode my bike to school for the first time this week. It was beautiful: good for the soul. Mornings in Singapore are a gentle space. The air feels fresher and the hint of the heat to come gives morning a note of preciousness – like the last mouthful of a favourite cake. My bike glides along with the rubber whispering to the asphalt and the pedals turning quiet circles. There’s no traffic in the park and no need to watch too hard for others on the path. My mind can drift with the rhythm of the ride. Somewhere I read that this state can be described as “flow”. Reflecting more on my last post, I think I’d describe it as the space outside of language. It’s a place where one simply is and there is something inherently paradoxical about trying to write about it. Who am I when I can’t use language to describe who I am? Wittgenstein made the assertion that "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." I think he meant something a little more specific than the state ...
Read more
Image
The Overstory by Richard Powers My rating: 5 of 5 stars This novel reads like an epic poem to the beauty and complexity of the natural world; an invocation to understand how little we know and to know how little we understand. "Life will not answer to reason" Powers reminds us, "and meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." In the understory of this wildly branching narrative are the humans who live within the systems of the natural world. Trees, and nature more generally, form a metaphor for human interdependence and the slow, primitive evolution of human reason. Powers voice is clipped, precise, almost scientific, but unambiguously poetic. This is undoubtedly a text where meaning trumps reason - but never fails to acknowledge its debt. View all my reviews
Read more
Image
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very simple prose with some hints of poetry and an artfully polished narrative that shines and shines until it is blinding. The moral dilemma of the novel is built in layers that remind us that good and bad are often neither simple nor self-evident. Stedman tells the story of Tom, a survivor of WWI and a good man who, as a civilian, must make choices as morally complex as those he made in the trenches. A compelling read. View all my reviews
Read more