Chapter One - Creation
16/10/1994 The apartment complex is called the Great Wall Building. Just like its name, the design of the building is long and narrow. There is a long corridor running across each floor. Outside each unit across the corridor, there is a balcony that some use as a garden patch. From unit 1101, there lives a 7 year old girl often gathering sand and mud using her tiny hands. She would put them into a bucket then pour them onto the balcony. That is her playground, her land, her Kingdom. She would construct walls and towers, then the entire castles connected by bridges. Of course, there would be a moat on the outer skirt of the Kingdom as the first line of defence and a canal for transportation inside the Kingdom. The intertwined topography is activated by the flow of water. What a sophisticated architecture! I know it was embedded in her mind then. There was this satisfaction. A masterpiece capturing a fraction of time and being.
10/1/2010
‘Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?’ was titled for a painting by French artist Paul Gauguin in Tahiti while he was searching for primitive answers. Many artists have gone through the same phase of contemplating on this big question of our being and our relationship to the Universe at some point. Ancient Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu (born 4-6th Century BC) addressed the start of the Universe in Tao Te Ching, chapter 42 being: The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are harmonised by the Breath of Vacancy.4
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Laozi and James Legge, The Tao Te Ching (Simon & Brown, 2018).
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