beauty is a whore

beauty is a whore. relentless pursuit of fickle physical attraction is human yet cruel. transient attraction of subjective beauty, like food attracts hunger, is animal-like instinct that once satisfied is no more. or is it? Is there a higher plane on which beauty can be eternal? perhaps a work of art, a classical composition, or a novel of extraordinary passion and compassion? When God created heavens and earth in six days and declared it "good", what beauty did He conjure?

consider now the prostitutes in whorehouses that lined the streets in Red Light District Amsterdam, goddesses in devil strings, flesh and blood in full display. It is love for sale, and surely, it is as cheap and satiable to wandering passer-by as a harvest moon. when then? when the neon lights dim, marajuana smoke fades and the morning rays break through the horizon, are they not human who hope and dream, tire and sleep, age and die? travellers of the same road, we meet our ends all the same without a whimper.

take heart, y'all sojourners. a moment of passion can well disguise and foul oneself. "women are either goddess or doormats," Picasso said. I say neither. We are all water, flowing to lower elevation until there is no more. Leave beauty to the Higher ground, He who ordains the stars and the moonlight.

relevancy

It is the fear of every man, or perhaps the only fear, to be irrelevant. every artist strives to edge his name in history with a thousand strokes, and every statesman paints visionary pictures with charisma and oral artistry hoping only to survive as a footnote in the journals of mankind. if a writer loses his last reader, a musician relinquishes his last listener, one's existence, one's lifework, would be like sand in an hourglass, time slipping in a vacuum in deafening silence. you can scold me, hit me, hate me if you choose, but don't ignore me, and remember me till the end of time.

yet as time trots away at a steady pace, inevitably each man's relevancy is melting away like an iceberg. memory is like a river bank that over time, every drop of water is washed away by water pouring down downstream. all the joy and happiness, pain and sorrow, fades like rocks by the seashore, perpetually retreating daily and monthly and yearly until there is no more. then the question of when who did what at where will be meaningless. irrelevant. through forces of nature, once a great painting has been retored to a blank canvas. and the river continues to flow, the ocean continues to roar. not a trace was recorded, not a soul was disturbed.

but is that really so? behold, there is an audience of One. From the beginning, He watches. Till the end, He listens. We have only now: past is already gone and will never come back, and future is yet to come. Yet He has always been, is, and always will be. Through him I am made relevant. My heart beats once again.

basketball USA

Ok. So perhaps you have not accepted the imminent demise of USA basketball in the Olympics because you are a dogmatic supporter of US athletics at any cost. Or perhaps you are a wishful believer that like the movie "Miracle" this group of young college drop-outs / never-attended (minus Duncan, who should really have a statue built in San Antonio in his unsurpassed honor for being a model citizen and athlete, a non-drug user, and most importantly, a practitioner of fundamentals like SHOOTING THE BASKETBALL... but I am digressing) will rise to the hostile anti-American climate and claim the basketball gold that the Yankees have rightfully deserved since the dawn of day. In either case you are deluded if not completely brainwashed by the ever-present and subliminally ego-centric American media. Here is the objective truth if there ever was one from watching US throws passes into third row: this group can't pass or shoot a lick, and is not getting any better.

Not that I am an American basher or hater unlike many citizens of the world quietly inhabiting unfriendly if not hostile feelings towards the American way in remote outposts like France, Germany, Lithuania, Serbia-Montenegro, Peuto-Rico... and I am staying the heck away from middle-east. Politics aside, it is just that Americans, and I am narrowing my focus on them NBA ballers in this meditation, obviously have a vastly different notion of "respectus" towards the games and the participants in them than the rest of the world. Exhibit #1. Carmelo Anthony guaranteed a Gold medal before playing a single minute of international basketball. Exhibit #2. The US players were throwing half-court shots during warm-up before the Italian exhibition game (in which they got crushed). Exhibit #3. they are staying at the Queen Mary, protected by NATO, instead of the Olympic village like every other freaky athlete. Exhibit #4. Media and players kept referring every American loss as a "wake-up call". You mean u were sleep-walking the whole time you were taken to the cleaners, and once you wake from your sweet slumber, the world will suddenly be a beautiful place again?

Hopefully one message would get through to the US as we see the wall of American arrogance crumble before our eyes: "The Olympics is NOT a side-show for the NBA that they can just show up with their extended families, sign autographs and crush whoever shows up on the other-side by 20 and go home w/ the gold". What USA basketball needs is more than just finding a few sharp shooters; they, and by "they" i mean the USA basketball selection committee all the way down to the players and coaches, need to learn what everyone else is expected to do when participating in the Olympics: respect.

personal peace and affluence

trodding across the modern lanscape, it is disheartening to observe a generation lost in the pursuit of a myriad of mass-media-fueled imaginary oases. numbed by the constant bombardment of subliminal messages of omnipotent humanism, we live in a world where commercialism thrives on the lure of instant sensual satifactions of every kind, to the "higher" utopia of personal peace and affluence. on one hand, we are reduced to pathetic eternal slaves to our sinful desires (1), and on the other, we are doomed to wane through old age towards a groundless promise that in the end is ultimately empty and disappointing. Personal peace and affluence is locking oneself up in a asylum, filling one's head with imaginary friends while strapped to a strait jacket. one might indeed be happier by taking drugs to enhance the hallucinating experience (2) before stumbling towards the inevidable meaningless death.

for God's sake, why are we so scared to ask the big questions: why we are here, ethics, and how should we live?? is it not clear from our painful history, that with vague and never fulfilled promise of personal peace and affluence, the majority has and will continue to compromise on values, civil rights etc. to the occasional arbitrary absolutes determined by frigteningly desctructive elites (consider Hitler's facism, Stalin's communism and Mao's Maoism, which produced the imfamous Great Leap Foward and Cultural Revolution)? God has spoken. In God we have the true absolutes, ethics and personal meaning to our existence. if you love your neighbors, weep for a generation lost and straying further from a personal God into despair and self-destruction.


1. Romans 6
2. "Brave new world", Aldous Huxley

enter the dragon

june fourth 2004 marked the 15th anniversary of the Tienemen Square Massacre in Beijing. in the spring 1989, democratic movement led by young intellectuals was stirring in the world's most populous country. as university students poured into Tienemen Square to demand democratic reform, armed with nothing but peace and a desire to change motherland, overseas Chinese like us scattered across the world watched attentively with sympathy and concern. how can anyone fault a young though naive generation of believers of China, who despite its size and geographical advantages, has been nothing more than a three-legged dog bowing reluctantly to foreign powers for the entire 20th century? even Beijing police sent to maintain order were moved to tears, abandoned their posts and jointed their cause. local store owners donated food and supplies to applaud the peaceful deomonstration. a spirit of unity was in the air.

pulling ourselves from the daily grind in toronto, we gathered with our extended family every evening to watch its progress on television. we secretly held hope clinched tightly in our fists, however irrational it may seem knowing the long suffering history of our motherland. as I sat on the cold cement floor in Nathan Philips Square during a candellight vigil, surrounded by a motley of Chinese from all walks of life but shared the unique experience of displacement from our origin, we remembered our roots and showed support for our brothers and sisters fighting for our collective future. We prayed. Most of all, we hoped. We hoped that tomorrow will see a better and stronger China, one that we can show the world we are more than a nation of expendable railways slave yellowmen living hand-to-mouth, more than a nation of mocked immigrants barely tolerated as eyesore and denied basic human rights. We hoped with raw and towering anticipation, as history unfolded.

then came the fateful morning when the tanks marched in to color yet another bloody page of Chinese history. One must remember that leadership was occupied by a harder older generation: one that long endured the opium-sickened Ching-dynasty, the lengthy and weary Chinese civil war, then the ruthless Japanese invasion that resulted in generations of hatred and unforgiveness. The Mao-led communism was born out of desperation and survival. the tragedy-hardened leadership was not about to amend its ways. the result was an entire Beijing generation of educated young men and women wiped out simply because they believed. as mothers weeped, street workers scrabbed blood stains off the grounds and walls and nations around the world nominally denounced the military action, stunned and speechless, we returned to our daily chores with a stiletto stabbed in our hearts.

15 years later, as China succumbs to economic greed while stagnant in immoveable politics, the story of Tienemen Square is not lost among a body of surviving witnesses. With our fists still tightly clinched, in silence we continue to hope for a better tomorrow. we hope a return to rudimental ethics famed in the vintage Chinese thoughts. we hope forgiveness and love can once again revive and gather a dispersed people. what is not possible with men is possible with God. the dragon has been undully dormant for much too long.

how shall we then live?

pardon my stolen title (1) for i can find no more fitting words. waking up in a cold sweat just the sheer of dawn, i wrestled w/ my inner demons the implications of utililarianism vs. Christian ethics, pondering the world that is and that is to come. `to be or not to be` (2), that is the question we struggle daily drowning in a sea of relativism. to the gung-ho trumpets of man`s joy and happiness, lurking behind the curtain is the self-affirming self-standardizing egoism. should righteousness be deemed by one`s innate sense or census of the people? are we such fools to accept morals are but socialogical, statistical averages? and who is the tallying lord? He might as well be blind or deaf or both, swallowing in gulps the fate of thousands in misery across this land.

perhaps pursuit of happiness is nothing but ignorant bliss: ignorant of the world of evil and magnificent, or simply willfully ignoring the spirits of swift yet definite presence. even if i stand alone, i fight for a world of absolute, and in the end, be all my sins remembered (2).

1. How shall we then live?, Francis Scheaffer.
2. Hamlet, William Shakespeare.

homecooking

my mother started cooking for us after we moved to Canada. perhaps just a bit too pampered during modern living in the city that never sleeps, her cooking methodology was unorthodox; long wooden chopsticks poking at half-cooked meat and bak-choy on teflon frying pan, the germ-extermination process lasted about 20 minutes. we teenagers gobbled up whatever was thrown before us, usually in front of American television, while my mother sat with a half-smile and half satisfaction. when we got a bit older, we started to realize our relatives' teasings were not without merits, that mother's cooking was bland like the vastness of Lake Ontario. we laughed and continued to devour the coconut milk chicken and stir-fried spinach and the BBQ pork. the days passed by to the sizzling sound of mother's kitchen.

i started cooking myself when i entered graduate school. Strapped w/ a large-sized apron, 9-inch T-Fal pot in one hand and new-age cookbook in another, i experimented with mixtures of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil and twenty four Spicies of the Orient from President's Choice. like the accidental flame from the wooden stove that caught the newspaper, i was soon livid and burning in the myriad of over-zealous chemicals that were my own creations. was the sauce the seasoning for the food, or the food a bridesmaid to the now boiling monstrous liquid?

like tiny grains of sand in an hourglass, maybe life's happiness and sorrow are best taken in small portions. it is then we can fully intake the servings, digest the lessons behind the ingredients, and appreciate the workmanship of the maker. i see now that beyond the garlic shrimp and the bitter melon, there is unconditional and unspoken love, and tremendous wisdom in my mother's culinary ways. i am looking forward to my mother's beef stew my next trip home.

first meditation on human understanding

back to the subject of objective reality, or more precisely, the question of how we know and how we know we know. for newcomers to epistomology, first note that this is not at all an obvious question. when Decartes began his meditation, he could establish only that he exists, based on his famed declaration "I think therefore I am".

How pessimistic is it that when human tries to establish a foundation of knowledge, one cannot even methodically separate reality from fantasy (for example, awakened state from dream state)? note that years of science and mathematics development offered no advancement in this arena. Consider the following two great 20th century negative theoretical results:

1. Hidenberg's uncertainty principle: one can only observe momentum and position simuntaneously up to a certain degree of accuracy. This manifasts itself in time-frequency analysis of signal processing: one cannot observe the frequencies and location in time of signals to perfect accuracy. This establishes a fundamental limit in observation, and therefore observable reality.

2. Godel's theorem: that only a subset of all truths in an universe constructed based on axioms are provable using the axioms. This means the provably true truths (things we know for sure) will always be less than really true truths (things that are really true). This establishes a limitation in learnable knowledge. (1)

Returning back to Descartes, perhaps he erred not in reason but in assumptions: that the starting point being the observer/thinker -- himself. This is precisely the closed system of modern man that Francis Scheaffer mentioned repeatedly (2). Ironicaly, it is the famed agnostic Yoro Takeshi who brilliantly pointed out (3) that even the concept of true knowledge is impossible unless one permits an omnipotent, omniscient deity, for simply by definition, only He creates all, knows all and comprehends all, while each of us can know only in part. So are you dreaming when u r reading this? Or are you following?

More on Him and knowledge.


1. assumes logical proof constructs.
2. Trilogy, Francis Scheaffer.
3. バカの壁、養老たけし

and so it goes

"A journey of a thousand miles begin with a single step." Lao-Tsu wrote in Tao-te-ching. simple yet profound, Chinese wisdoms, though taught at early age, are often appreciated only after years of life's eclectic collection of experiences.

when i was an infant, my sanctuary was the wooden cradle, and my brave new world was the living room. concept of time goes no further than yesterday, today and tomorrow. as I grew, my horizon expanded in both time and space. the new frontier is either a superset the contains the previous reality, or a clearer image that replaces the previously distorted one. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1) Is there an end to this continual expansion of reality, and if and when it does, is it rightful to term it "objective reality"? I know not; I fear only that i am constrained by my own stubborn reluctance to fathom the inevitable vision, only in the end to stand speechless in front of my maker (2). That is a true tragedy.

so i seek, and the journey continues.

1. 1 Corinthians 13:12
2. "Till we have faces", C.S. Lewis

in the beginning...

God created the heavens and the earth (1). far inferior, who am i but a mere mortal destined to physical decay and destruction? in thoughts, what have i to speak that has not been already spoken? nothing but a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing (2). indeed, everything under the sun is meaningless (3). Yet created as image of God (4), and called to be imitator of God (5), though trapped in an asylum divorced from heaven and hell (6), i dare to reach for the heavens with my bare limb (7), if i can only brush the sandals of the Son of Man (8). so i write. not for eloquence or glory or pride. but because i am, and He is there and is not silent (9).


1. Genesis 1:1
2. Macbeth V:V, William Shakespeare
3. Ecclesiastes 1:2
4. Genesis 1:26
5. Ephesian 5:1
6. the great divorce, C.S. Lewis
7. part of ceiling of Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo
8. Mathew 9:20
9. trilogy, Francis Schaeffer