I went back to the zoo again (this time with Jeremy in tow) to cover the right wing which I missed the last time. This time I took about 600 'postable' photos but decided to restrict myself to 20 of the best, forcing myself to trash the ones which are not as good or ho hum.
Go to my library of photos on the left panel to view or click here: http://disturbingcontent.vox.com/library/photos/
My favourite photo in the series:
I brought my photo journal to work today and showed it to my friends Michelle, Merey, Karen, Jessica, Kevin, Gerard and Lee Ching as well as two professional photographers I knew in a shop called John.
I just wanted to share. And I also wanted to know how they felt. Unfortunately, most of them were very reserved. I guess it's not so easy bringing the emotions back in the other direction. But I hoped that the photos touched them in some way.
Maybe it's because the photos were produced under such depressing circumstances that they couldn't include the more positive side of Life. It's also because being the creator of these photos, I'd not had the luxury of enjoying more positive moments for such a long time that I can't capture these at the moment.
Karen always said that having undergone what I'd gone through it'd help me to serve a purpose just as she was now able to understand how I felt (and thus able to take my bullsht about committing suicide). I had told her that that was just bullshit. But I guess not. Imagine carrying on a conversation with someone who'd never seen any suffering in their life. They probably'd just say that they'd sorry and you couldn't blame them either.
Her comments and also a couple of other's comments about the collection not being to depict Life completely was true. So I'm going to call the series: "The Depiction of Life...so far..."
I hope these photos do not make you depressed. After all, photographs capture moments of time and the feelings within those moments.
I am up at 4:17a.m. because I have been high on antihistamines (thanks to swimmer's sinusitis from swimming in the afternoon) and collapsed into bed at about 9. I rushed home after my brother called to say my mother had to be admitted into hospice again because she couldn't breathe. But when I got home, it was more like he had a bit of flu and was afraid to touch her.
She was lolling around in bed like a fur seal waiting for its mother to come back with fish. The doctor-on-call was beside her and had already administered nebulizers and morphine and she seemed fine.
She said: "Why are you home so early?"
I said: "Is everything ok?"
She said: "Ya."
I said: "Oh. Good." And then promptly fell onto my bed and fainted.
The drug Dragees (bright green tabs) don't work on me and I had to double the dose of antihistamines with Became. I regretted that soon after when I started getting chest pains in the taxi. I got to remember not to take prescription drugs too lightly.
At least I'm not up thinking about my friend's suicide. I had a look at his lists again, this time his suicide resources list, and was shocked to find that a lot of suicide information could be so easily obtained. I was even able to figure out the best method of suicide for someone in my given situation and available resources. I guess it's the downside of the freedom of choice and expression.
To be honest, I was tempted. I thought if someone who had everything could throw it all away I guess it would be even easier for me to do the same. These destructive thoughts of course always seem to be more alluring when you're up at night in the silence thinking about all the times you've been let down over and over again and still walking around when people around you have decided to quit. To take things on a crazier level, I prepped myself, even prepared my weapon of choice and even talked to my Dad about this possibility (I was thinking I shouldn't kill myself suddenly without giving my Dad some mental preparation).
Of course Dad flipped (but I didn't tell him about my weapon of choice otherwise he might have been desperate enough to call someone to strap me down in a mental institution). He said I didn't know anything about suffering otherwise I wouldn't want to kill myself. We had a heated conversation. Mostly with me talking about suicide like I was just making a major decision to switch jobs while he couldn't see why anyone in my situation would want to kill myself.
I thought: That doesn't make sense. If I knew anymore about suffering, I think I'd go plain crazy.
But then I think it was mostly talking with Karen that sort of made me feel silly for wanting to kill myself. It was like: "I've decided to kill myself." and trying to keep a straight face so that she'd take me seriously but deep down I was kind of laughing at myself for how ridiculous it sounded while being depressed all at the same time. It's difficult to describe.
And then she'd kind of distracted me with her story of how she and Peppy were attacked by a cat and replied to most of my declarations like I'd just told her that I was going to quit my job and sit at home. I have a feeling it helped greatly that she wasn't emotional and dramatic about it. If she was, I might have been spurred to continue on, She was just very factual and realistic... come to think about it, very much like why would I want to quit my job and sit at home? Are you sure you'll be happier being a loser?
And then there was also the spiritual side of things. When I'd prepared my weapon of choice, I went to my mother's bedside to check on her. At this point, she had been playing with this large stuffed toy seal that I had bought for her to hug. And she was smiling and contented and playing with the seal, like a child. There were a whole load of stuff hanging from my mother's bed, including a small ball which I'd begged from my colleague Damon and pretty photos of birds and flowers which I'd put all around her so that she wouldn't just look at the ceiling all day. She was playing with the seal and with the ball (punching it around and making punching noises... it's the second childhood I always say).
I guess it would be most cruel to meet the punch of having to lose someone you love by making sure that they lost you first.
I was feeling terrible but what she said next scared me shitless. She said: "Why is that thing following you?"
I said: "What?"
She said: "Something black and small like a cockroach. Kill it! Quick!"
I said: "Where? I dont' see anything?! Where?"
She said: "There! Why can't you see it? It's right next to your foot."
She screamed for my brother to come in and kill it because I was just turning around and around and not being able to see anything. My brother came in and he couldn't see anything either.
I thought she was high on morphine. But then I remembered she hadn't taken morphine at all that day.
And then the next day I was on the train heading to work when this man passed by and suddenly stared at me like he saw something on my face. He didn't say anything but his face expression scared me because he looked frightened and then it freaked me out more when he looked down at my feet and wouldn't stop staring at them. Two women who were standing beside me stared too because they couldn't figure out why this guy was staring so hard with that horrible expression on his face.
I don't know much about spiritual stuff. But let's just say that suicide no longer seemed as simple as quitting your job and staying at home. It suddenly took on a whole new terrible meaning.
I asked Karen whether there was a possibility that after you'd declared that you wanted to kill yourself that something or someone is suddenly there to make sure that you do.
Karen just said that dark things are attracted to negative thoughts and bad things happen to people who expect that bad things will happen.
I guess suicide is just not so cool then. After all, I love almost all of God's creatures except for cockroaches. And I don't like the idea of someone or something following me around to make sure that I do make the dumbest decision of my life.
One night some months back someone I knew swerved his car off the road and crashed into a tree and died on impact. We later found out that that was exactly the way he wanted it and that he had planned it for months. And his family found detailed lists and information of how he was going to do it and where and when and why. Like he was doing research to buy a new house.
The only difference that I could see between his decision and someone who would have done something like that on impulse was the amount of information both had put into making a decision like that.
I always thought people did something like that in a particular defining moment in which they were probably also not in any state to make any decision that they would not regret later. I thought such impulses would usually be triggered by an unhappy event.
But apparently it is possible to consider it in an as emotionally detached state as deciding whether or not to sell your car or buy a house. And he went on as he would on an average day, working, movies, sports, as if suicide was as mundane as going home at the end of a long day to kick back on the couch and watch TV.
But what kept me awake at night was his list of why. True he didn't have a perfect life. But he had a great family and healthy loving parents. He had supportive siblings (two brothers unfortunately one of whom had passed on from cancer which had affected him really badly). He had a girlfriend (whom I didn't know much about) after some years of hard luck in the romantic context. But no tragedy or unhappy event appeared on his list.
He said he couldn't find a reason to live. He couldn't find something worthwhile for him to hold onto. He actually wrote that life was wonderful and empty.
It was as if he had woken up one morning and was suddenly aware that there was nothing worth living for.
And it kept me awake at night. Being him. Walking around in his shoes, thinking about his lists, going to work as if I were him, coming back from work to a great family as if I were him. Driving his red car behind the steering wheel as if I were him, driving along that bend along that beautiful broad Australian highway under the blue summer sky deciding that this was where I was going to throw everything away.
I obsess whenever my mind would wander, driving my car off the road over and over again in my mind, turning that steering wheel hard off the road, hitting that tree over and over and over again.
And I wonder, what his last thoughts were? before I hit the tree again.
I guess his family and girlfriend does the same thing. Didn't he love us enough to stay? Was it clinical depression? Was it something that they didn't know about? How can someone who has everything want to throw it all away? How crazy is that if you think about all the people out there who can't even get enough to eat?
But as I drove along my imaginery highway in my non-existent red car, thinking about his reasons, there's a difference between a physical pain or craving that needs to be satisfied and something of a higher order that helps us to want to live to see another day.
Whenever my mother was in pain, all she could think of was dealing with the pain, making it go away. When the morphine had settled into her bloodstream, she would lie back and say that she wished that she would die. On the same note, whenever I had been starving all day from running around taking care of one million things, the only thing I could think of was getting some food so that I could stem my gastric. But as soon as I'd eaten and sat by her bedside, all I can see is a repetitive cycle of empty activity, waiting for the next round of pain to come.
In a different analogy, when I bounced from one unhappy relationship to another, I went from wanting to be happy to not wanting to be lonely in an endless pathetic cycle of self-torture. And when I'd been spent with emotional fatigue, I wake up one morning and realise that everything is a cycle of pointless activity.
Despite all of that, I couldn't say that life wasn't wonderful. There are a lot of things I enjoy in this life. Diving, the endless blue and gold stretch of sky and sand, the endless wonders of Nature captured so easily in a camera lens.
But driving in a red automobile with the top down and the sunlight on my face down a broad empty Australian highway, these beautiful myraid things are not enough to provide purpose. Maybe he drove enough miles down enough empty highways and tolerated enough pointless cycles of activity to realise that there was nothing that the world could offer to make him stay.
I've changed the URL for my blog in preparation for the publishing of "The Depiction of Life" and in light of the next series "Forever Love".
The Depiction of Life is a series of photographs exploring the nature of life and is not aimed at reflecting a 'balanced' view or whatever people consider a more 'complete' picture of life. It's not aimed to be accurate, fashionable or correct.
Watch this space for updates.
I went to the zoo today. By myself. Because I was impulsive and couldn't be bothered to arrange for other people to come along. And also because most of my friends were diving, the rest were f*cking off somewhere or probably already had plans.
Tiger, tiger burning bright. No bengal tiger so some stripes in the leaves will do.
And why not anyway? Just pack your gear, get a taxi and turn up at the zoo together with 1 million other visitors. I was tempted to take photos of people and their myraid gestures... mostly those of impatience, frustration and confusion.
"Where are the lions?" I heard a lady ask and it was then I realised I hadn't seen them all day either. The throngs of people must be covering the signs. And no matter how I walked today I didn't end up anywhere near the lions... nor the zebras... nor the giraffes... nor the raccoons... nor the rhinos... -_-
ZZZZzzzZZZZZ!!!!! No natural predators. Only noisy children. No problem.
It's not that I'm mad at the whole world going to the zoo today. More visitors means the zoo gets more revenue to take care of their animals. Who in turn sleep all day like this otter. Which is fine even if they are boring as camera subjects. Until the millions of children stand around the enclosure screaming at the top of their voices in a variety of languages (I assume they were all screaming the same thing):
"WAKKKEEEEE UUPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEEEEEE UPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
(What? You didn't think they were screaming something else like... well... "WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT THIS SLEEPING THING?! WE WANT ICE CREAM!!! ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!!")
Polar Bear: I can't stand it! I can't stand it! Make them stop!
Even the polar bears agree. They were so many people thronging the theatre during the show and pointing and saying "Polar Bear polar bear polar bear look at the polar bear" I'm sure that the polar bears have learnt to say their own species name in human tongue.
Bird: Fierce savage polar bear? Nothing compared to the crowd outside. Scoot over, bear!
Bear: Okaay... are you palatable as dessert? I just ate the main course
This mynah couldn't find a tree to perch on because there were so many people and not enough standing room that the adults have resorted to throwing their offspring onto their shoulders, ledges, branches and treetops so that they can catch a glimpse of something splashing in the water somewhere somehow even if it's not exactly the animal they had set out to see.
White Tiger: "Look at me! I'm fierce and terrifying... ZZZZzzzzZZZ!!!!!"
This white tiger was off duty. While its buddy was prancing up and down the rocks doing catwalk duty, this fella puckered down in the water under a few tatty leaves and fell asleep. I hadn't noticed it if it weren't for the thousands for fingers pointing in its direction. It's any wonder the tiger continued to sleep amidst the noise. Maybe there's invisible sound-proofing around each enclosure.
Tiger: "I need to retire from all this modelling business and get a desk job."
It didn't help that it was at least 34 degrees out in the sun. It didn't help that people kept trying to run into my camera lens. What gives? Mine's a really compact zoom lens. Everytime I put the camera to my eye, they must instinctively think: "She can't see us now! Quick kids! Let's ram past her!" I guess the people who were carrying Canon f2.8 70-200mm today (I saw a few) must already be suffering the damage of a broken lens and hundreds of ruined photos. Either that or they were using the lens to whack people out of the way.
"Look! Humans are fighting because it's crowded! Let's beat up this guy because we are intelligent and learn quickly from human behaviour."
"Hey baby... You want some of this?"
Another evidence of this is this particular monkey's spittingly identical gesture and behaviour of one of my most jackass-est guy friend, G.
Jackass Penguin: "I'm not a jackass! I'm a gentieman! I don't allow my children to run around and step on other people! Get this damn band off me!"
It was so crowded that when I happened to wander into the Splash Amphitheatre, the theatre was almost filled at 1:45 when the show was supposed to start at 2:30. Being confused after having been run into by so many people, I settled down into one of the seats thinking that the show was about to start in a few minutes or something (otherwise why would there be so many people, other than the fact that there is currently a boom in human population which is too large-scale for me to think of as a reason in an enclosed setting?).
Sealion: "You guys waited one hour to see this? HA! I'm made for life! A lifetime of free flowing fish for me!"
The sea lion and manatees entertained me no end. They were so entertaining I actually put down my camera and enjoyed the show instead. Even though particular aisle climbing/exercising children kept stomping on people because their parents condoned them getting some much needed exercise by treading on people's feet.
Hey waiting for one hour before the show in order to get a seat is a new record in kiasu-ism. When are they going to give us the world record title?
"Who are you callin' ugly? I'm not ugly! Kiasu people are ugly."
I wanted to take a photo of the throng of people who couldn't get into the amphitheatre but who clogged up the sides anyway because ... well... why not? There's no sign saying we can't. I changed my mind because they looked hot, bothered, frustrated, mob-by and possibly unfriendly to photographers.
Boy: "Awww Mum... do I really have to do this??"
Sealion: "Awww Man... do I really have to do this for fish??"
The parents were so eager for the children to have first hand experience with animals that I overheard a Mum tell her child (maybe not the child in the photo above): "Hurry up and line up. If you miss the chance to meet the sea lion, don't blame me for it."
Take a page from monkey upbringing. Leave your offspring at home. Or on a high rock.
Parents are so eager about this early childhood education thingy that there were few month old babies in the crowd (yes you can tell because their eyesight hasn't developed yet and they're looking at everything else but the animals on show) who were ironically being carried by their parents so that they were facing my camera lens (and wondering what the hell is that) instead of the stage. What the hell? I thought this was about educating your child!? Your child's first memories of sea lion is a lady photographer waving a zoom lens!
"You've had a bad day. Here, let me pose and give you the favourite shot of the day."
I missed the lions, zebras, giraffes, ring-tailed lemurs and much more. Guess I'll have to go back one of these days and brave the crowds again. But at least this photo made my day. What an adorable fella!
See the rest of my photos here will ya? (And don't bring your children if you suck as a parent.)
I went back to Chinese Garden today in an attempt to outdo myself. I find it helps to keep going back to the same place over and over again to see if it's possible to improve on certain shots.
Today was spectacularly sunny. So sunny I took my calatheas to the kitchen to put them in a spot of evening sunlight and they curled up their leaves as if to say: "I'm burning! I'm burning!"
As usual I took my Dad but he fell into a drain after this guy barraged down the pavement and Dad tried to get out of his way. The guy picked my Dad up, gave an apologetic look (as if out of courtesy) and walked away. Hey. Typical of most men these days. It's all about what the fashionable minimal standard of politeness but beyond that, they don't give a shit. I bet when their supposed loved ones (how can people who act with the minimal standard of politeness possibly go beyond minimal politeness to love anyone) die, they will stand solemnly in black and frown because it's socially acceptable behaviour at a funeral of someone you supposedly love. After everybody has gone back home, they heave a huge sigh of relief, take out their laptop and settle down in one of the funeral parlour pews to play some Warcraft like my brother would.
After that (and getting Dad to put on flavin, bandage, gauze and half an hour of cursing and swearing at the whole population of men, including my brother, excluding my Dad), we went back into the garden and found whole troupes of people there who interestingly said: "Singaporeans" in mandarin as they passed us and pointedly looked at us up and down like they were looking at polar bears in the zoo and the tour guide was trying to educate the tourists on our common species name. It was the first time I no longer felt at home here and I felt an instinctive urge to wander off somewhere in search of my natural habitat of an Artic ice slab.
Urgh. My irritation with people is quickly going from "damn people are so f*cking irritating haha" to "DAMN IT PEOPLE ARE SO F*CKING IRRITATING. PERIOD."
Maybe it was way too hot to think reasonably. Ordinarily that would have been a good thing. A good hot sun brings out the blue in the skies and gives the best colours on trees and flowers but I just wasn't in the mood after the $#@^%@#$ irritating encounter with the guy who barraged my Dad into the drain.
The sun was so hot it made the water sluggish and brown in some of the smaller bodies of water in the garden and I couldn't replicate the blue lakes I managed to capture during my first trip.
Thanks to a couple of new perspectives my Dad spotted, my irritation soon evaporated and we were soon juggling lenses and GNDs trying to cover new angles. Unfortunately the strong sunlight prevented me from reviewing my photos on the LCD screen and as it turned out out of about 80 photos, there were only 17 acceptable standard photos (and only one favourite).
I got three of my friends to review the initial 14 photos for Depiction of Life and this photo was immediately tagged as requiring reshoot.
This photo was taken from the inside of the room while Mum was asleep. It was raining heavily and the outside of the window ledge was drowned in a few inches of rainwater into which the rain kept falling.
Jessica thought it was a dead squirrel, Kevin thought it was a dead rat and Karen thought it was a dead something. Morbidity was achieved but unfortunately they couldn't make out the rain.
It didn't surprise me that only the friends who shared similar experiences 'got' most of the photos without much explanation.
The critic session shed some good light on the photos. People who didn't know my mother would not understand some of the photos. And it was better to have photos that people understood without requiring much explanation. But on the other hand, it was such a personal series I couldn't make up the photos or reshoot some of them. There were no models, no staged shoots, nothing. It was just life in motion, unfolding as it went.
This is an accumulation of photos taken while Mum was asleep in the hospice. Some were taken from the room window. Some were taken while accompanying Mum in the garden (when she could go down with a whole arsenal of machines, Dad, maid and wheelchair).
After spending so many months in and out of hospice and a harrying 2, 3 (?) plus weeks (I've lost track of time) taking half day from work to accompany Mum, I now know just about every staff, nurse and doctor working there.
The doctors and nurses were great. They were kind, understanding, patient and then you had the volunteers who came in now and then to try and counsel the dying, the kin of the dying, and you can't imagine doing the work that they do because counselling even Mum was hard enough.
Being in a hospice for that long has changed my perspective of things. I am convinced there are more people dying than there are being born, even if this feeling is unsupported by any evidence. I just walk in and out and up and down the compounds when Mum is asleep and count the number of babies in prams that I bump into (the hospice is connected to a hospital where mothers go for delivery..it's both strange and surreal to observe life and death at the same time.. ) and the number of people who 'disappear' every now and then so quietly that you hardly even notice that they were gone.
I've lost count of the number of people who 'moved out' since I was there. You usually find out when a whole group of people clusters in a room and then your maid comes and tells you the exact time and room where it had happened when you come in from work the next day or via sms a number of hours later when you're back home.
But the whole thing is done with so little drama, unlike those TV shows of people crying and sobbing uncontrollably, the survivors of the dead, dying and those who have passed on are polite, quiet, accepting. Dying is an everyday business here. Before long, you start saying: "There goes another one."
On some days it is possible to see a possibility of some normalcy amidst all the dying. The pair of squirrels that inhabit the mango trees with their bellies the same colour as the flesh of the mangoes, my Dad's (and generally the people around) fascination with the huge mangoes, the giant monitor lizard which comes out into the garden after a heavy rain digging the soil looking for critters, the myraid butterflies that flit here and there amongst the flowers and trees and the one particular territorial bee that keeps driving me away whenever I try to take photos of the squirrels.