These Are The Things We Store

KOLO Havana Box

Following a discussion at Koloist.com's recent post "True Confessions of a Former Pack Rat", I'm to reveal my way of using KOLO's Havana boxes.  I own 3 Havana boxes, a black bonded leather medium, a red cloth medium and a green cloth large.  The 2 medium ones are in my office.  I use the black one to store name cards bundled by events, the red one is for storing postage stamps and interesting papers I collected from company mails.  So I'm not using these boxes for photos at all coz the hurdle to start get organized with ALL of your prints is simply too high I stalled.

KOLO Havana Box

The green large Havana box at home is used to store paper stuffs related to my son.  I limited the collection to paper and some photos otherwise 10 boxes would not be enough.  Here's the content:

1. A large Moleskine notebook: I write down key events and funny stuffs I heard from my son.  Sometimes I stick photos in it.
2. A Moleskine Japanese album in small size: It was unfolded and used as a decoration of our living room shelf.  It contains pages of me and my wife's baby pictures, wedding pictures and my son's baby photos.  It is like a story unfolded.
3. Photo copies of drawings I made for my son, postcards I sent to him when I was overseas for business, his first movie ticket, all these small stuffs.
4. A large sketch book: this is the most interactive part of my treasure chest.  I would pick up this sketch book once in a while and ask my son what he wants to see on a page.  Most of the time he would say McQueen or Thomas, he is never bored by them, but I would ask a few questions to steer him away from those thoughts.  Eventually we would end up with a very nice page we both like a lot.  In this picture you see a blue/red stripe box with a hole.  My son looked inside using a flash light and found 2 blue birds, so we went to a dark room bringing this sketch book and try to investigate further how they look like.  We used flash light, we inserted our little fingers to the hole to feel their feathers, we were pecked by them, they flew out in the dark room and our flash light went wild searching for them while we could hear them chirped.  We finally realized that we were actually in the same situation as these 2 blue birds.  We were in a dark room with windows, "perhaps a huge finger will push through the window and poke us like what we did to the blue birds!" And then we ran around the room to hide from the window.  I asked my son if that huge finger really poke us, what would he do, he said "hit it! hit it hard!", I said "Oh I see, we would do the same like those two little blue birds! That's why they pecked us, they were scared".  And "what if that huge finger belongs to a giant who's also inside a bigger box called Earth? …."  Our mind flew away and we had such a great time imagining, all through one drawing.  This I treasure a lot.

So these are things I stored in KOLO's Havana Boxes.  If you look at the content disregarding the materials, you get to understand you are storing connections, love, exploration, imagination, happiness.  These are things giving you smiles, motivations and inspirations when you open the boxes, these are things you pass to people around you too, they age well.

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Throwing Away Parts Of My Life

Having to move reluctantly, I had to throw away stuffs which tells a lot of my "previous life".

Chinese Drama Mask Drawing

Bought these blank masks a few years ago to play with my son.  I would ask him to tell me what to draw on the faces and did it in front of him.  It was great fun with lots of laughters.  Other times, I would draw something inspired by Damien Hirst or other classic paintings, or simply drew something out of the blue.  Search Google for "Chinese Opera Masks" to see how colorful they can be!

Chinese Painting Pigments, Dishes and Box

I remember a time in my secondary school years when my parents forbade me to be a photographer, artist, musician or painter.  My Dad's home was filled with great Chinese paintings and he talked a lot about these painters.  Under the radar, I had to secretly borrow a camera to take pictures, signed up for a Chinese painting class from a well known master and bought these pigments and brushes, etc.  Why this conflicting practice from my parents?  My Dad loves Chinese paintings and he made a living buying and selling them.  He spent a lot of time studying painters' life and how they evolved, authenticating them, putting them to auctions in Christie's and Sotheby's.  In his words "great painters lives terrible lives and only after they are dead do people take advantage of their talents".  Painstakingly sad and most of the time truthful.  I must show you some of my previous Chinese paintings later on.  These dishes and pigments are really important to me even though I haven't touched them for over 15 years.  They are the past but the image is forever.

Sand Block Scrupture

My little brother brought a sand block for sculpture and he only crafted the word JULY on it, it was also like 15 years ago.  After reading an English novel with a tag line "It's like touching fantasy" I took this sand block and crafted something out of it.  It was then placed in my Macquarium for a long time.  Wow, it was over 10 years ago since I made the Color Classic Forever web site and "blogged" about my creation and mis-fortunes.  New York Times even told my little story:

Exerpt of the New York Times article printed on August 24, 2000
Patrick Ng, an Internet executive in Hong Kong, has taken his obsession to more lyrical heights. A vice president at PacificDotCom, Mr. Ng has documented his self-diagnosed case of "CCFS" (Color Classic Fixation Syndrome) on his amusing Web site, Color Classic Forever (grus.hkstar.com /patrickn/colorclassic). The story began in October 1998, when Mr. Ng saw a photo of the Color Classic. He alerted a newsgroup to his quest for one and visited several shops until he found a dirty nonworking model.
After giving it a scrub, Mr. Ng rhapsodized in a diary entry on his site: "I now see the uncompromising beauty and elegance of CC even more obviously, it simply shines. As this mystic discovery continues, my super-ego seems to warn me the danger of the game, the emotional attachment to a physical object."
On New Year's Eve, while others were partying, Mr. Ng was otherwise occupied, as a later diary entry showed: "I embraced the dusted classic during the countdown. The rest of that night, perhaps I should say the rest of the millennium, I gradually slipped away and fell into a deep trance, everything went blurred except a single point of vision, I naturally put that point on the shining Color Classic."
He then decided that he wanted the machine to carry his child, "to give her life," he wrote. As it turned out, Mr. Ng's "child" is his Siamese fighting fish, Faust, who now swims in an aquarium installed in the Color Classic's chassis.
Cured of his obsession, Mr. Ng now keeps his Macquarium in his office, which overlooks Hong Kong. "I receive e-mails from all over the world asking about Faust," he said. "He's doing fine."

Macquarium 1.1 construction

If you want to create a Macquarium, check out my version 1.1 and version 2.0 instructions.  Hmmmm…. want to see me naked with Color Classic?  Here it is "Born Naked With Color Classic.

 

Physiology and Philosophy – First 2 Years in University

It was important to me and part of them still is.  Notes from my Psychology/physiology/research method classes and my Philosophy classes.  I particularly had a tough time in Philosophy classes being the only Chinese student there, unable to verbalize my thoughts and participate in discussions, I often got below average marks.  I enjoyed the late night studies particularly, there is a point when you give up trying to get pass and start to study for the real meaning of life.  Super fun!  Unforgettable!

Blackboard Mindmapping

I couldn't throw away my blackboard though.  I love the rawness, the sound of chalk on board reminds me of school life, the perfect circle my secondary school math teacher drew….. it is the essence of learning to me.  Simple tools to pass along knowledge.

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McQueen, Thomas, Elmo and My Son

Just before we went out for dinner tonight, I decided to show my son what's a straight line and he was able to draw a horizontal one.  To attract his attention about drawing/sketching, I just drew his favorite toys like McQueen and Thomas the train.

He Knows I’m Drawing Him 🙂

Because of the nice evening sunshine, I couldn't help but drew him once again as an "unstoppable crying machine", which he can also relate to pretty easily hahaha.  See he imitates the drawing like he would look into the mirror to practice crying.

After McQueen and Thomas, My son’s turn

I'm still waiting for some more free time to start the acrylic on canvas version, which seems not likely to happen until after this Xmas.  A few paintings are just in my mind waiting to come into existence.  Its hard to keep the balance between work/family and what you love to do, coz a balanced life is somewhat flat.  I guess I should find out a cyclical pattern that works for everybody, meaning sometimes I should immerse myself in one area and become a jerk for the rest…. I don't know, life is too short.

Elmo Talks

Sometimes he would ask Elmo the hand puppet to play with him and he would talk to Elmo in English.  Of course I will be the one behind Elmo talking but my son's responses to Elmo is really amazing.  I mean he surely knows Elmo is just a puppet yet he would engage in real conversation with the character like it is real.  The other amazing thing is that he can distinguish between people who speak English, Cantonese and Mandarin and responses to them differently, this is totally new to me, I didn't realize that because he had limited exposure to these 3 languages.

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Son’s Subconscious Fear, Demon in Half-sleep State

The past few days were tormenting, I'm not sure how long it will last.  Son's been crying whenever he is in half-wake, half-sleep state.  When he is wide awake he is perfectly normal and lovely and smile all the time, but he becomes an insecure crying machine demanding somebody to carry him even if we are carrying him like he is in trance.

I have a few theories about this state of him.  Maybe he is starting to aware of the urge to pee during sleep but doesn't know how to voice out, coz when he wakes up at night feeling hungry his instinct takes over by expressing through cries, there is no words in this state of mind of him.  However, we did take him to pee but soon after that he kept crying.  We made sure he was not sick in anyway.  So it must be some other causes.

Need to Dream: Son’s Subconscious Fear

I myself need to dream, I always remember my dreams but after my son's birth 2.5 years ago I can no longer remember my dreams due to all sorts of his interruptions, 2am, 3am, 4am, 8am…., it is tormenting to me coz I can't find clues from my dreams anymore to solve my issues, I can't meditate through these clues and my inner self has disconnected with my consciousness.

Tonight I got home earlier and started to paint without thinking and suddenly I found it a great way to let the flow take over.  In retrospect I drew the eyeglasses (means taking it off to get some sleep), I drew firy red from it and it grows (anger and frustration related to sleep/dream deprivation), I took the stamps out and stamped "I need to dream".  So it all became clear to me, I started to reconnect to my inner self.

On the left of the page, while I was painting the right part, my son requested me to draw "cat cat", "mouse mouse", "panda" and his Chinese name.  See he was perfectly normal at around 10pm, he said "cat cat so cute".  But then the past 3 hours he was tossing and turning in bed and when he reached that half-sleep half-wake state, he started to cry again!!!!!!  Yearning to carry him while his mom was carrying him… after 1 hour she gave up (normally she stays put)and it was my turn.  My strategy was to let him cry while I sang whatever songs distracted him from crying until he became so tired, then I picked him up and sang Edelweiss while he was crying … for 1 entire hour.  Finally after rounds of crying and falling asleep he dropped to deep sleep.  My shoulders and neck hurt like hell while I'm typing this.  Now at 2:30am I start to work my own stuffs, read or check mails.

Demon in Half-wake Half-sleep State

Tonight's drawing flow was great, soon after the first drawing I started to paint a green patch, added red and felt like going nowhere so I painted black over the colors and closed the book.  Reopened minutes later there it is!  A demon within.  I added transparent ink to make the demon appear and gave him a stamp on his face.  My interpretation is that both me and my son has this demon within.  For me he is the anger from dream/sleep deprivation, for my son I concluded that it was from an event occured last week…….

My wife took him to Ocean Park on a week day.  He went to a falling machine with several elder friends (that's a machine for children) and after just one drop from top, his face turned blank according to my wife.  The operator was smart enough to realize that and stopped the machine and brought him down, continued to operate for other children.  He was acting totally normal like nothing had happened.  But I'm sure deep inside he felt the unpreceedingly new fear of weightlessness, the unbearable lightness.

That explained why all these cries.  Whenever I held him to sleep crying I felt him grabing me when he suddenly realized that he was "falling" and "relaxing" to sleep.  The fear was buried and he doesn't show any sign of that fear in front of people when he is awake.  But that demon crawls out from his subconsciousness when he is in half-sleep half-wake state.  I am now 100% sure I found the cause of all those crying coz the timing after the Ocean Park visit and his new state of fear of the unbearable lightness matches.

My strategy to fix my son's problem – face it, play it again.
My strategy to be able to remember my dream again – fix my son's problem.
My strategy to reduce stress before I can solve the aboves – draw/paint even more.

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