Dogs and Zombies

I love Dogs.
When I came back from Africa Max was so happy to see me. He bounded around the yard, his long cocker spaniel ears flapping, ecstatic. He's getting on in his years, is old max, and is almost eleven now, which is quite old for cocker's, but he showed a huge amount of physical enthusiasm, including sleeping outside my door instead of in his bead, for a week. One thing I have to say is that he is a very very faithful friend, and unchanging in his attitude towards me. His eyesight is fading, and sometimes I wake him up as I come in from town. Typically he won't recognize me, and bark, but when he hears my voice he will look very very embarrassed, his eyes and ears will drop, and he'll slink back to his bed in shame. It is a great fallacy for a Dog to turn on his friend/boss.
I watched a movie called I am legend the other night.
I was really expecting to be bored by a typical, if well done, zombie movie, but had been recommended the film by a few friends, so watched. I found it, unlike some people I've talked to, quite deeply moving. Now I won't give away any plot details (as I am notorious for doing), but the story began very simply about a man alone as the only human in Manhattan, and New York for that matter, who hadn't been infected by a terrible virus. Alone that is except for his faithful dog. The two spend their time together, and he, of course, is trying to crack the virus in a lab under his house. It is basically about a man who gives up his family, his friends, all his life to find s cure, and his absolute humanness- he almost gives up many times, but in the end stays true to his cause. There is a surprising number of acknowledgments of God or as Will Smith (the main character) says 'The God', about how God could ever let a thing like that terrible virus exist which virtually wiped out the human race. He ends up saying, rather powerfully I think, 'God didn't do this, We did this.'
Anyway, the relationship between Will Smith and his Dog is the most moving aspect of the movie for me. She is a German Shepard, and obviously a very intelligent dog. I spent quite a bit of time with German Shepard's in Tanzania, some puppies and some guard dogs, and they are now my favorite dog. After max of course.

My 21st Birthday was awesome to all those who came, thanks!

Thin Red Line

Have you watched The Thin Red Line directed by Terrance Malick?
I really like it, its my favourite movie in fact, and a major reason for this is the narrator's philosophical exploration of war with a monologue which runs throughout the whole movie, and sometimes merges into other men's voices.

There is something very deep and searching in the few seconds of this video clip, and propels me to want to know more of God, who he is, how he continues to overwhelm me in wonder. As a Christian, will there ever be a time when I don't feel like there is so much more to him that I have barely begun to know who he is, although I've named myself his follower for most of my life.

Square

I'm currently reading a book called Sons of heaven by Terrence Chang, which is about Tienanmen square, and the massacre there in 1989.

These videos speak for themselves.

William Faulkner's nobel speach

In the middle of the 20th century William Faulkner recieved the Nobel Prize for literature. In his speach upon recieving the reward he said the following:

It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his own puny inexhaustible voice. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he along among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilage to help man endure by lifting up his heart, by reminding him of the courage and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I think Faulkner, here, is saying something significant which is in constant jeopardy in our time . I very much agree with him that there are elements of our Humanness which are significant and lasting, somethings that cannot die. The history of our courage against the odds, for example, is something unique to humankind. Yet will we prevail, merely out of the power of this soul, this spirit within us? I acknowledge that we each contain this immortal thing, this power of life, this soul and spirit, but will it prevail? I think not.

And if it is there, where did it come from? Is it another habit of chance, a game of randomness? Who will account for it's presence in us? Why do we have it? There must be answers to these questions. In the airport in Bangkok a few thoughts came to me. Why haven't ants developed their system of Monarchy into democracy? Why don't monkey's build cities? Why don't dogs launch organized attacks against the kingdom of cats?

Faulkner is right. There is something powerful in us, something everlasting. But will it last? The dichotomy of good and evil is definitive, so if we are to account for our actions, what will become of our souls? Will all our good deeds (courage and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice) make up for our bad deeds (violence, hatred, lust, impurity)? I think not.

In Faulkner's reference to a writer's & poet's responsibility, I agree that there is something that needs to be held up, to be remembered in this age. How long is it since I heard someone use the word courage in a casual conversation, or the word purity, chastity, honour, compassion. I believe when we as a society forget these ideals, we are in danger of forgetting/loosing our souls. And the soul is dangerously forgotten.

Online Sketchbooks

This is a long overdue post which links you (whomever that may be) to my online sketchbooks. The first, older one I started quite a while ago, while the new one I've only just started a week ago.

The main-course sketchbook (new SB)

The entree sketchbook (older SB- now no longer being updated)

please enjoy and keep an eye on the new one if you wish, as I will be updating it regularly this year.

My latest project for my degree

This is a little 9sec video about me. It is a combination of flash animation and hand-drawn stop animation. The content should be self-explanitary after a few watches, but it's basically about creativity. It was a long process and I had to say a lot in 9 seconds, which is hard work let me tell you. But great, great fun, in the end.

Mad TV- crazy crazy date

Only in Asia

History

It is amazing how disconnected our contemporary 1st world culture/post-modern culture is from history in a knowledgeable sense, yet is still linked back in to history through stories, narrative, books. For many of us a history book is a closed book, while novels (and movies, the like) are open accepted, so long as they connect with us right 'Now'.

At a time when history still made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator's tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the overfamiliar banality of private life.

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting -

Quote taken from http://ofblog.blogspot.com/

Borges

I've been reading Jorge Luis Borges.
Have you heard of him? He is a deceased Spanish author who sets many of his writings in Buenes Aires.

He is concerned with mirrors, labyrinths, mysteries and books, with repetitions in reality, in remakes and renaming.

He only wrote short fiction, never a novel. But each short piece seems to contain world's of it's own, stories of it's own, a history of it's own. When I read them on a sleepy, sunny afternoon, as I drift to sleep his stories enter my dreams, and suddenly I am the writer or these labyrinthine glimpses of infinite imaginations.

Highly recommended.