I love you. Be Still.

 Stillness is Meditation #3

Photo by Huper by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Stillness is the nature of the source. 

Activity is the nature of the surface. 

Stillness is super dynamism. 

Every activity with any intensity will exhaust you. 

Stillness is building a bridge between the physical and non physical.

With super dynamic activity by being absolutely still. 

Yoga is a form of meditation and meditation is a form of yoga. 

Yoga simply means union. 

It is the union of all of our sense perceptions with the inner being or the cosmos. 

It is intense and relaxed at the same time. 

Access stillness through Meditation. 

Maintain a certain tension in body. Stare at a space then breathe slowly relaxing your breath, eyes, moving from the top of the head down to the toes for 11-21 minutes. 

Life is about enhancing perceptions. When you build a bridge from the physical with the non physical - core of who you are, you are not prejudiced with life. 

You will see everyone as an aspect of you. 

I love you. Happy Birthday Zane.

For Zane in October.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

"Music is the sound of emotions" ~ Victor Hugo 

That must be true because no other medium can evoke so many similar emotions with so many different compositions and instrumentation. 

What I am referring to is the ability of music & musicians to evoke the feeling of love in so many different & endless ways. 

When we pay attention & listen to them we are transformed into the ether in tune with the cosmos. 

Yet we don’t listen to music near enough. 

Like we don’t spend time with nature near enough. 

 Zane seems to have a set of earphones permanently plugged into his ears. 

 He has arguably the best music sense in the family. 

He has diverted my love for commercial jazz deep into mainstream jazz. 

I am thankful our music filled family home was instilled early in his childhood. 

He taught me how to listen to the emotions in music. It started with Mulgrew Miller’s classic; 

“it never entered my mind”  I will never forget it; he told me to listen to the emotions Miller was trying to make us feel. I did. And ever since I was hooked. Who could imagine? It never entered my mind...!

I now have the ability to appreciate true Jazz music & history through Zane. 

As a result I am in bliss every night. 

Thank you son. Happy Birthday. 

I am so proud of how you’ve turned out and who you have become. 

Courtesy of www.PaulCezanne.org

You are a true artist. A person who wants to excel in the arts. 

I named you after Paul Cezanne, whose father was against him being an artist. I love his art and I wanted you to be an artist.  His artistic style has been described to as having "spectacular depth of feelings." 

Picasso said this of him; "Paul Cezanne was my one and only master." To other artists, "his compositions were akin to god's."

You are living testimony. You appreciate art to the depths and you are also an artist to the depths. 

You have and will continue to live the promise you made to the family- That if you want to be a cobbler then be the best dang cobbler there is! 

Thank you. 

I love you. Son. 

Be well. Be conscious just the way you are.

P/S. You look really good. Sharp.

I love you. Wherever I live.

 Where I live now at the farm. Our ancestral home.

I have the pleasure of spending my resting days and nights in a pair of a 100-year old concrete shophouses with wooden floorboards, staircases, partitions and ceilings. This is our ancestral home, built by grandfather Mr. Gan Swee in 1919 by Chettiar craftsmen from India. 

The two adjoining shophouses have broad concrete five-foot ways supported by large pillars that are as old as the building.

We walk into the main one through the wooden door frame holding the tall heavy wooden doors at the main entrance , one of which is about to come apart, to the main reception hall. This space houses the antique mother of pearl furniture that line the walls of the main hall fronted by the family altar of solid dark rosewood carvings sitting high on the front wall separating the inner living ground floor quarters from the immediate courtyard. The wall is dominated by a large scrolled paper painting of Guan Kong, the god of war. At the far end of the wall, there's even a small window that opens out to the inner courtyard which has been neglected. Apart from this and the leaks everything else in the house stands solid. 

The unusually high ceiling, mosaic tiled flooring, wooden door frames, inner courtyard and outer kitchen fresh water well accentuates this century old building. 

Upstairs is reached by very steep stairs situated in the middle of the house just after the courtyard. The upstairs landing area is the living area which is a vast hall as broad and wide as the width of the shop lot. The dining/work table occupies a quarter of the room at the far end from the staircase, lined by a 3-step-case of glass fronted shelves housing the alcohol, books, tobacco and work paraphernalia. The back extension of the living area leads to an ample kitchen that looks out through a window to the farm at the back of the house. It's a good vantage point for viewing people coming and going to/from the farm.

Back at the living area, a large window opens out to the inner courtyard below revealing a patch of sky that floods our living room with light- sunlight by day and moonlight at night. Here is where I spend most of my time working on my mac or resting & reflecting staring out the window at night. 

We now cross-over to the lot next door which we also own, through an arched doorway purpose built to connect the two lots upstairs and downstairs. Both doorways are identical. This brings us to the inner living quarters, the TV area, the cupboards space, the ante-bedroom for  the bedroom of the lady of the house- my step mother. She's the undisputed queen of the roost. She keeps house to very high standards. A seasoned veteran of 80 years she has told me stories of her life to make mine pale in comparison. The inner living quarters lead via a walkway over the open courtyard to the main sleeping area at the front of the shop house. There are three partitioned rooms on this upstairs on the front of the shop house next door. 

I occupy the right partitioned room with two french windows fronting the main road of the small town of Johol. Which means I get to hear the goings-on the main thoroughfare below. The modified motorcycles are most incessant, occasionally overwhelmed by huge tanker trucks that grind by like a storm.

A large queen sized wooden bed greets you at the entrance from the flimsy wooden door that cuts short the wooden walkway to the front window. Apart from the largish bed there's a low side table for my smokes & crystal glass, another low table front adjacent to the foot of the bed sits the table fan that works hard all night to air my testicles under my sarong. A white plastic permanent recliner is parked close to my bed. I lounge in it smoking and drinking while listening to music from my beautiful bluetooth speakers made in China, positioned at the foot of my bed. At the corner near the right french window, the ceiling had somewhat partly collapsed revealing a damp and dark attic that drips water from leaking tiles at the century old roof, down to a large basin laid on the floor near the front right corner of the shop lot. 

With the frequent rains this time of year, my room will receive drips and drops of raindrops to the basin and the floor boards. Drip, drop, drib, drab....! All day and all night. And I love it. Sometimes.

This is where I live. For now. 

Come sit with me or roll around the bed with me. I'm here most of the time if not, I'm probably with you. Giving you pleasures you never thought possible. 

Not necessary physically but emotionally and spiritually for sure. 

See you soon? Meanwhile...

Be happy wherever you are.

Stay tuned. Literally.