beautiful things – The Skytreader

I Wrote a Poem

Adrift and without a schedule to really stick to, I wandered through the streets of Brera, Milan. In the past few years I have made a tradition out of spending Easter in Italy. This year, I found myself rather aimless and, for the first time, really just ticking cities off a list.

I was looking for an astronomical museum, aiming to reconnect with a past life. After detours and distractions, I found myself in a university, reminiscent of the one I attended three hundred lifetimes ago. It turned out the astronomical museum is not open around Easter—my plans to pass the time were dead before they could get even started. But that’s travel; you have to be flexible.

Instead, I found myself seated inside a moving art installation engulfed in the sound of literature read softly. As the sculpture rotated in its own solemn rhythm, you could, almost, see everything in the midst of the busy bustle of students and staff, tourists and travelers. Time, in dreams, is frozen, or so they say. And I was left to wonder just when—or where—the boundaries between dreams and my waking life blurred.

It was while seated here that my mind opened up and the words came. I have been trying to write a poem for the past few months with nothing really to show for it other than scraps of embarrassing drafts. I had a high-level idea of what I want the poem to be, how it would work, but ideas are not art until realized.

One cold December night, in the busy scramble of last year, I thought I had the words but I forgot them like a dream evaporating from the first rays of daylight.

But I did not feel the need to rush and write down the words as they came to me in Brera. The past few years, I have come to learn how to kill my babies, figuratively speaking. If you make one good piece for every ten attempts, the only way to be prolific is to keep attempting, get the bad out of your system so you can get to the decent much quicker.

These words are not precious if I could not still remember them by this evening, hopefully in my hotel, where they will be written down for the first time.

Fortunately, they came to be. There is at least one person in the world who found the formulation strong enough that he cannot forget them; they were worth remembering at least a bit more longer. And now he’s sharing those words, without further ado.

Shadows in Summer Skies

I drown
in a paradoxical sea of binaries,
of contradictions mutually defining each other,
of contrasts defining form.
Light and dark.
Plus and minus.
You and me.

(We are drowning
in a paradoxical sea of binaries,
whether you know it or not!)

The words have been drained
from this pen,
from my hands,
from the soul;
these are the last ones
and yet they fail my goal
to deify and sanctify
the very air you breathe
the very space you take
the very…you.

I drown
in waters uncharted.
I guess I am afraid,
that when all the words have been said
when all the praises have been sung
all the hallowed verses immortalized
I will find
inside
Merely you.
Beautiful. Still. As you are.
And yet, mortal.
Not an emanation of the Divine.
Not the ethereal resonance of the celestial choir.

From a whole divided,
Comes forth identities multiplied.
From the darkest night,
Breaks forth the dawn.
The Beauty Surrounds.
And yet all I have to remember your presence
is that sacred and terrible air of your absence.

Well, what else can I say? Over the years I have come to appreciate art for the abstraction with which it delivers messages. As such, I am not really inclined towards over-explaining my art. There is a message, yes, but much of it will be left as an exercise to the reader. No, there is no solution key either.

(How terribly author-is-dead postmodern of me. But I will leave my complicated thoughts on postmodernism for another time. Perhaps.)

This much I will say about this: I have been very deliberate about the form and the words. It doesn’t mean there will be no wrong interpretations; it just means my message, once decoded properly (for some definition of the word “properly”), will be very strongly supported by the poem. Who is it for, what is it for, etc.

I like the intrigue. My greatest achievement in this mortal plane will be to buy a decommissioned lighthouse that I will reside in. My greatest achievement from the planes beyond would be if people (hi Academia) analyze the bunch of writings and journals that I will leave behind, reading between every damn line, distinguishing the purposeful puns from the accidental, maybe subconscious, wordplay. I like to think that from my artifacts, it is possible to reverse-engineer the unwritten rules of my work, my life. You’ll chase a bunch of red herrings, finding patterns where none exist. It will be glorious. It will be crazy. Okay, mostly crazy. It will spawn at least a couple dozen professorial chairs, maybe in my Alma Mater if not elsewhere. You are welcome, intellectuals, I just gave a handful of you in the future purpose in life.

Okay. That’s a looooonnnngggg shot. But in our consumerist capitalist society, dreams remain free. I’ll leave that in.

Another thing about the poem, I mentioned above how I had only a high-level idea of how the poem would work. Well, the concept on which I wanted this poem to operate (and which, I think, it achieved) is contrast. Lately, I have had a lot of thoughts about art and I have come to the position that perhaps the baseline that distinguishes art from kitsch is contrast. Elaboration is left as an exercise to the reader but you can take my 0.02€ worth of advice. Contrast is the baseline of art.

Is this poem about me or my life in any way? The short answer is yes. The long answer is yeeeeeesssssss. The smart answer is that I find it disingenuous to respond any other way. One can write about, for example, war, without ever having personally experienced the horror, and it will be no less a mirror of the author’s life.

But maybe, for this poem, it’s more than a mirror. Maybe it’s a window.

Anyway, another strong influence for this poem is the critically-acclaimed intellectual game Disco Elysium. No, I still haven’t found my next Bioshock Infinite. As a matter of fact, my experience with Disco Elysium has been very confusing. This is not a detailed analysis of the game so, suffice it to say, the way the game was set-up dissonated very heavily with my idea of an RPG. Whereas, for contrast, I had some idea of how I would like to personify my Geralt of Rivia or my Dragonborn, I had zero idea how to roleplay renowned alcoholic and amnesiac Harry Du Bois. So I ended up choosing the most non sequitur choices for better and for worse. I needed the thinnest of threads to tie me to the character and, at least, that manifestation of chaos is something we could share.

All this changed in the final act of the game, its denouement. For the first time, I felt like I knew what Harry Du Bois would do in the situation. His character made some sense. I won’t spoil the game but I wrote this poem from the soft places between dreaming and waking that I, as a player, went through with Harry. It is definitely not written as from Harry Du Bois—I simply don’t think a renowned alcoholic and amnesiac-until-recently could be half as eloquent as me.

But maybe, what I had to confront in this whole exercise is the possibility that I might be more similar to renowned alcoholic and amnesiac Harry Du Bois than I’d care to admit.

Fun fact: I had a poem published in our school paper in my senior year in high school. It was exactly 100 words long, 102 with the title, purely out of coincidence. It was inspired by Star Wars, Norse mythology, and Tobey McGuire’s Spiderman 3.

Another fun fact, possibly related to the first: I was the layout artist of our school paper in my senior year.

TwentyTwentyPHOurTOS

I got ungodly swamped, busy, concerned, and distracted this year, mostly towards the end. It’s all resolved gracefully now, thank goodness but all the same, it’s the bad kind of busy, one where I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. Actually, it even ate into the good busythings, which must’ve just drained me even more.

I don’t really have much time for words right now but even in the busiest times, good or bad, I always have time for photos. And you know what speaks a thousand words?

First of all, I met John Romero, one of the creators of Doom, arguably what ushered in the whole PC gaming industry. I know this photo conveys a lot of things but it doesn’t convey my machinations and orchestrations to make my employer pay for my opportunity to meet John Romero. I am such a savvy guy.

And oh, I already admitted to my not-really-malfeasance. And since it is not a malfeasance, they can’t really do anything about it.

He even signed my copy of Masters of Doom, a book I brought with me all the way from the Philippines!

I didn’t get to travel as much, unfortunately, for reasons related to the annoying busythings I mentioned above. I don’t feel as hard done by the fact; after all, living in Hamburg has been a continuous five-going-six years of “vacation” abroad for me. And I get paid for it!

And I can visit the Schengen area basically. This year I went to Florence, cradle of the Renaissance.

I visited Prague in pursuit of the master himself, Alphonse Mucha. I like Prague. It’s my first Schengen-but-not-Eurozone country and it has its distinct charm. Plus, when I was there, it was not really crowded. I can’t believe it myself either.

And back here in Hamburg, Homeburg of five-going-six-years, I finally entered the hallowed premises of the Elbephilharmonie, the most expensive acoustics that money can buy and that German taxpayers paid for, and listened to the prestigious Vienna Philharmonic perform.

Can you believe COVID19 has been half a decade ago? Goodness!

I might write up on the annoying busythings that got me this year, and maybe more about this eventful year in general, next year. But for now, Happy New Year World! I don’t like the number 25 for reasons but let’s show next year who’s boss, okay?

Twenty Twenty Three

I’m writing this in a rush, in an attempt to beat the new year crossing into Germany in a couple of hours. Honestly, I kinda just took it for granted to even attempt to write something for this year. But, well, I got into the mood. After all, this will be the last alliterative year I’ll get for quite some time. I think the next one will be, what, Twenty Thirty? Hoo ha.

Well, what to say? That’s another year in the books. If I hadn’t updated this blog for a while now, it’s all because I am happily hands-full with other things. I’m touching grass, internationally too. I’m, you know, doing that thing they call life.

Honestly, Twenty Three could’ve been better but I survived it, without new injuries to my person. I lost some luggage. I made some mistakes but also some friends. I managed to start the year in a liminal space of being between Germany and the Philippines. Now I’m ending it on a Sunday, which is really a neat and strange day to have such a transition to occur.

Apparently, this is the year disposables and point-and-shoots are in-vogue again, which is a very head-scratching trend for me, given that one of the earlier story arcs in this blog is how much I struggled to escape that aesthetic. Kids, to recap: I saved up the money from my internship in order to be able to buy my first ever interchangeable lens camera, the admirable speed shooter, SLT-A35. And now you kids have the gall to say these grainy, never-properly-exposed shots are “more authentic”.

Kids. With all due respect. Get off my fuckin’ lawn!

This year, Netflix also adapted All the Light We Cannot See, which is, to my knowledge, the last book to have made me cry. The adaptation, incidentally, has become the last piece of media to have made me cry. Funny how that works. Louis Hoffman is great as a co-lead but, honestly, I’m kinda disappointed the adaptation treated Volkheimer’s small personal story arc very superficially. I understand the creative decision but he’s really one of the memorable side characters that, I think, helped drive home the treatment of war in the story.

Note: I didn’t re-read the book nor my review for that small paragraph above. Also, remind me I gotta watch the film treatment of The Light Between Oceans. You can really tell this blog has been around for some time now when story arcs like this go full-circle.

Oh lastly, this year, I also saw FC Barcelona play live at Hamburg Volksparkstadion for Champions League action, no less. They lost to the “home” team, FC “Giantslayers” Shakhtar Donetsk.

That’s it! I ended up writing more than I intended to. I have some noise/music to meet the new year with. Ciao!

Stars and Friends

The year is 2015. A handful of months fresh from a change of jobs that was, safe to say, not planned as thoroughly as I would have preferred, I (along with my sister who tagged along) joined a curious crew into the beautiful beach of Puerto Galera. This small vacation was both a temporary respite from the sweltering summer heat and an item of curiosity off a pipe dream bucket list. For as long as I’ve started taking an interest in photography I’ve always looked up at the night sky wanting to capture what my eyes saw and maybe even more.

Fast forward to 2018, a trip/adventure that I thought I would only make once has been a more-often-than-annual reason to take vacation leaves. I’ve met some very interesting people, some of them even became friends that I wanted to personally say goodbye to, given my then-looming departure for Germany. I have photographed the beautiful sight of a galactic core from the vantage point of a fringe planet several times—might as well be countless, considering that I thought I would only see this once, maybe twice.

And to my friends and coworkers, I’ve become that guy with one eye always at the night sky, who can be excused from immediate replies if there’s a super moon on the horizon, and who, with a bulky telescope, prove the science schoolbooks correct. Mars is red. Venus is beautiful. Saturn has a ring. Jupiter has spots, streaks, and satellites.

I remember in January of 2018 when a rare and curious phenomenon graced the Philippines: not only was it a super moon, it was also a total lunar eclipse. It was, of course, something I would not ever miss. What I did not count on was my reputation preceding me at work. In a few Facebook messages, Abie has persuaded me to organize a viewing for anyone else interested in the office.

Despite my aversion to coordinating logistics for just almost anything1, from a heap of inputs and suggestions, I’ve managed to scrap together a workable plan and conveyed those spur-of-the-moment schemes into instructions people could follow.

The night of the eclipse, the taxi we booked was unfortunately stuck in traffic so we had to walk to where he was to save time. On the radio the news broadcast covered the eclipse as it started to take place. We finally arrived at the park about an hour or less away before totality. It was crowded and festive in the pleasant January evening air; we might as well be shooting a music video for Toploader’s Dancing in the Moonlight.

After finding the group of my coworkers who have arrived earlier I prepared to mount my binoculars to my tripod. I remember saying out loud to no one in particular, “I am not prepared for this”.

“For the eclipse?” asked Aser.

“Emotionally,” I clarified.

This will sound kitschy as a German garden gnome but seeing the moon in shades of red is like seeing your lover on your wedding day2. You already know she’s beautiful but seeing her made up and extra pretty just for this one day is sweet intoxicating infatuation all over again.

As I expected, a crowd of strangers queued up to have a look through my binoculars. I normally tend to introversion but I love sharing and talking about things that make me wonder and smile and even more so when my audience appreciates why I am in awe and wonder. Needless to say, I think this passion for the sights of dark and clear skies is something I managed to convey that night.

Uncharacteristic of me, I did not get to take a lot of pictures that night. The reason being, this was still several months before I bought the compact A6000. By then I only had the A35; though already small for its time, it just doesn’t compare to the new generation.

Moving to Germany, I knew that I would leave more than just my astrocamping gear behind but also friends and this loose collection of acquaintances that’s become an astronomy family/club to me.

Still, you can strip a man of all his astrophotography gear but you can’t strip a man of his passion and resourcefulness. One of the first photos I took after arriving in Hamburg is, predictably, of a beautiful spring night sky.

That’s taken without a tripod and in the still-bitter cold of a Northern German June night. Not bad I would say. Not at all.

Hamburg, for all its virtues, is just not ideal for astronomical observations, unfortunately. In the spring/summer when the skies have slightly better odds of being clear, the days are long. In the autumn/winter, when the nights are an imposing presence even over people’s moods, the weather is cloudy at best.

Still, you make do with the circumstances. Experience so far suggests that spring is the best time for observations in Hamburg. For all the bad things that transpired last year, there were two astronomical events that I was able to observe.

The first is the conjunction of the lovely Venus with my favorite asterism, the Pleiades.

This was taken from my apartment’s window, blown up and post-processed from a 50mm f2.8 shot. I did not use a tripod and this would not have been possible if my unit’s heater was not directly under the window.

The second one was harder to observe and not only because of cloudy Hamburg nights. It was also fainter and the lines of sight from my apartment did not afford a direct view into this beauty. For what it’s worth it was visible for far longer as it was no mere coincidental conjunction of sky lights—though I only actively tracked it for almost a week . But for the whole time it was visible, it was also “moving” at least faster than usual for celestial objects.

I am talking, of course, about the Comet Neowise.

Hunting Neowise in late July meant that I had to take some very late-night (or early-morning, depending on how you want to frame things) bike rides. And then staying out in the cold night alone in a dark Stadtpark Eimsbüttel, with only my hoodie jacket. I even feared that I might be mistaken as a vagrant, and would have to explain myself in German (“Herr Polizei…leider habe ich kein Deutsch genug für eine Erklärung.”) but then what vagrant has an interchangeable-lens mirrorless digital camera and a bike with a smartphone for GPS guidance?3

That Neowise moved across the skies4 also meant that each night I tried to shoot/observe it, I first had to track it, a task that ate into the precious little hours of darkness—not to mention the precious few minutes of cloud clearance—that I had. In the picture I took above, you can already see the clouds creeping up on my view. I planned to take proper long exposures of this—I even borrowed a tripod from work—but I just never had enough time. Thankfully, I can stabilize myself pretty well and the A6000’s sensor is fantastic at low light to say the least.5

It’s not the picture I envisioned I would take but it’s something. At least until Neowise returns after roughly 7000 years.

In the midst of perhaps my busiest spell so far in my current job, another lunar eclipse happened in the Philippines last Wednesday. I wasn’t even aware of it; the first time it was brought to my attention was while my family was attempting to set-up and use Koopman-Hevelius, the German Equatorial Mount Telescope that I left in the Philippines.

I was actually rather indifferent to missing an opportunity to witness a lunar eclipse. Perhaps to my mind I had bigger fish to fry in the form of the tasks queued up at me at work; the past couple of weeks hasn’t exactly been smooth-sailing and a timely long weekend has been my only opportunity to decompress.

Imagine my surprise upon seeing a message from a friend telling me they took a picture of the eclipse for me, because I wasn’t there, and sorry they only had a phone, none of the fancy gear I might be used to. A touching gesture as much as it was unexpected. In the crazy reality that’s started in 2020, it’s also quite a nostalgic reminder of times gone by.

I subscribe to the idea that people won’t remember you for what you said but for how you made them feel. That’s why I always try to acknowledge even the smallest gestures of kindness. From a random “Hi” while I’m queued up at the grocery cashier with a heavily-bandaged left arm pushing my grocery cart to taking a picture of an eclipse so that I can see it even if I wasn’t there. They are all very appreciated and I want you to know, you lifted up my mood.

Here’s to the kindness of friends and of strangers, who are just friends we haven’t made yet.

And, as a matter of fact, it was Abie’s job to coordinate events. As usual I’m just your humble but well-paid software engineer. [↩]
Not that I have ever married. In this simile I am relying on Hollywood’s depictions of marriage. [↩]
A vagrant who just robbed a better-off citizen, that’s what! I apologize for my sense of humor. [↩]
Let’s not be physics-pedantic with the definition of movement here, okay? [↩]
And I never really updated the firmware so I don’t have to worry about the dreaded star-eater algorithm. [↩]

Schnee und Schade

February 6. Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf.

For the first time in about a week, my left elbow felt stable and secure. True, the arm was bandaged firmly to a cast but for the first time since the anaesthesia from Thursday wore off, I can truly say I feel no pain.

I was even optimistic I could be discharged soon. Maybe even tomorrow. And I was eager about it too; due to a gross miscalculation of my independence and recovery capabilities, I haven’t taken a proper bath since I got here. Thank goodness face masks are in fashion.

Of course, I knew that I still have to be extremely careful. Getting myself in this situation was already inconvenient enough. Overexerting during the long recovery process would be an even bigger setback.

In my phone I scrolled through a Trello list of things I wanted to do in Europe, plans for travels that have, of course, been put on hold by a global pandemic. A handful of activities in Hamburg—Asian restaurants, mostly—has been tagged as “POST COVID19”. I estimated that Germany would’ve reopened by the time I’m fully recovered. By then I could ride my bike once more.

And so I looked forward to that. It was motivation to hit my recovery milestones.

January 30. Beautifallage, pun intended.

Carefully, I start pedaling, making sure to regulate my speed. It’s the cycling equivalent of watching your step over shaky ground, except, should your footing give on shaky ground, a clever shift of body weight could yet help you. On a bike I pretty much have no idea how to adapt should I slip other than to fall gracefully; while most of my martial arts training is focused on striking, I’m no stranger to the concept of break-fall.

Note: Even with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m not sure how advisable a break-fall over ice is. All I can say is, do not expect it to be as effective as performed in training over padded ground.

After a few meters covered, a few crossings without issue, I gained confidence in my ride. Though still riding slow, I considered the snow crushed by my bike wheels as my contribution to de-icing the sidewalks of Hamburg. I didn’t plan to cover such a long distance; I planned only to spend some outdoors winter time in that beautiful autumn park near my apartment.

Of course, writing about it in retrospect, with a surgical scar for a souvenir across my left elbow, it just seems careless. But at the time I was really curious how it would feel to bike through snow. And it’s not as if it was a completely ignorant move from me either; I made sure to slightly deflate my tires for better grip, the one common advice in all the “biking on snow” articles I’ve read.

To anyone who somehow got here looking for advice on how to bike on snow, here’s mine:

Don’t.

Anyway, returning to my story, after spending a few hours enjoying snow like the first timer I am and slightly fearing frostbite, I decide one final glory lap around the beautiful park, a lap I’ve done numerous times already that day. Except this time, with the small bit of urgency on my mind, I forgot my embargo on speed.

I suddenly found myself flying from my bike. It wasn’t your usual fall; it all happened so fast. I rolled on the snow and somehow felt my left arm go wrong, for lack of a better term.

The only comparison I could come up with was an F1 driver misjudging the wet track on slick tires by a just an inch or two, sending them literally flying out of race contention. Or maybe I’m just making myself sound more heroic after the fact.

The first thing I realized, with a touch of irony, was the surge of adrenaline throughout my body, therefore taking care of my slight fear of frostbite.

So there I was, ass on the snow, perhaps three meters away from my bike. Though I wore a heavy winter coat, I could tell my left arm has rotated in a way left arms are not supposed to rotate. My brain went into a half-confused state. I remember being so sure that I must be bleeding, but the snow wasn’t red, ergo I wasn’t bleeding. Still I wanted to raise my left arm higher than my heart, except that I can’t move it. I must’ve broken a bone and maybe it even tore through my skin, and therefore I should be bleeding.

Thankfully, I wasn’t. It was merely a dislocation though I had to wait in the hospital to get properly patched-up and tested. Thankful as I am for a more-than-decent emergency response system as well as medical insurance, that day I realized why hospitals are such frustrating experiences.

If your case is not serious, they will not prioritize you and you will wait. And if they are prioritizing you…let’s just say it is not the best day of your life.

I have never been more thankful for being made to wait.

Which brings us back to present day. My arm is well but I still hugely over-estimated my recovery capabilities. I managed to keep my proudly-valued independence throughout but I still can’t completely extend my left arm. I can play the guitar though. And draw; I am right-handed.

With Germany currently battling a third wave of this global pandemic, it feels like playing a waiting game in multiple fronts. Waiting for my arm’s complete recovery as I perform my therapy exercises regularly. Waiting for my turn to get a vaccine. Waiting for everyone else to get a vaccine so life can return to normal.

In truth I have very contradicting feelings about the whole situation. On one hand the prospect is just bleak but on the other hand it gives me ample time to recover properly—I’m not missing out on anything. I’m not impatient in that respect.

It’s been quite a boon for my art too. Part of the circumstances why I bought a Wacom tablet is this “lockdown art project” I came up with where I’m basically illustrating stories I wrote. But having a concrete goal meant that I kept to a small collection of tools and techniques that achieves my goal, helps me produce the images I want, in more or less the style I envisioned. It didn’t leave much room for experimentation.

But thanks to having almost nothing else to do, I had time and enough ennui to actually learn the vast arsenal I had at my disposal, thanks to software. For example, with Krita I can add a dimension to my sketches I didn’t have previously. Not just that I am no longer constrained to grays of pencil lead, I can even emulate the texture of other media such as charcoals without making a huge mess.

A couple of notes:

Yes, I have previously tried charcoal in real life. I didn’t like it. Too broad, couldn’t get details in. Not to mention too fragile and expensive—traits that are never complementary in a product. I’m pretty sure I was using it wrong but I have neither the time nor the teacher to teach me properly
I know I could’ve escaped the monotony of gray in real-life sketches by using—wait for it—colored pencils (genius!) but colored pencils are simply a different experience from your typical Steadtler 3B. They are harder to erase, and that’s just the start of it.

Another thing you have to consider in real life is the paper. When you draw you are basically applying a layer of medium on the paper; add too much and it’s heavy, the medium could seep, even tear the paper. And when you erase, you are basically scraping the medium off the paper, and sometimes you scrape off fibers of the paper too; you can only erase so much.

Not to mention that art materials—high-quality paper among them—are quite expensive. It’s not really threatening my savings but I consider it quite wasteful to just pour money into this hobby when I’m not getting any financial value back from it. I might as well buy a Hasselblad camera.

But with software, the only real cost is my time and my patience. I can study different styles and try to execute it in a piece.

I can try a Sumi-e-inspired gothic watercolor and get it wrong as many times as I need to get a satisfactory result.

This wouldn’t have been possible with the small arsenal of brushes I’ve come to depend on. Simple as it looks, there was a lot of time spent on experimentation.

I can even feel daring and try out new palettes. Perhaps due to my extensive work with gray pencil, I noticed that my color choices tend to be dark. So, how about a vibrant portrait in false-chrome worthy of an ad campaign?

I think avant-garde is French for “I have no idea what I’m doing”.

Which, just to bring this post to a close, kind of sums up my current situation. I really don’t have plans or an idea what to do next other than wait. One day at a time until my path crosses normal again.

Avant-garde. Au revoir. Bis dann.