Great teachers and friends

The experience I had with my Gayong Instructor while practically living with the family helped to groom me for my spiritual future as a Muslim, however in the years ahead i learned about why he had been reluctant to be the one who initiated me into the spirtual side of the martial arts, I had no religious discipline. I became agnostic who challenged the Creator by pointing my finger at Him, or cursed His name for having created me and caused all the crap to happen to me for no good reason. I took a 360 degrees turn and headed for damnation after i left the East Coast of Terengganu. I hated everything about my life and family by the time I left secondary school and as soon as i found a job and was able to buy a motorcycle I scooted out of the state. The last thing my teacher asked me in front of the rest of the martial art students was, What did i ever do to you?, when he learned that I was having an affair with his oldest daughter who was two years older than I was. I felt like a bastard then but today i can only understand it was just me. It was who I was and still am. Incorrigible!
I had a couple of great teahers and frieds who helped shape my life later on while attending the UNiversity of Green Bay, Wisconsin when I moved to the United States. They were instrumental in getting me to become an artist. One of them was a gentleman who was a computer sales man for IBM who took me into his home and in his own way kept from getting into too much trouble than I really could have been. I used to live in his basement with his sons who were then also students at the University. Mr.C.Sule and I became closer friends than I was with his children through whom I had met him and as time went on shit happened when I introduced hin to one of the waitresses at a restaurant I was a frequent customer. He decided to fall in love with the lady and the rest was history. I was accused by his children for being a home breaker and my relatioship with the family came to a bitter end. The wife and the children never forgave me especially when their parents divorced. I left Green Bay after my gradutaion from the University and headed for Alaska. Chuck as I used to call him left his IBM job and took up professional photography a hobby that i had helped talk him into when we were hanging out together. He seemed contented when I last met him, free to do what he wanted instead of taking care of his grown up children. When I offered him my oppologies he brushed it off and told me that it was the best thing that happened to him having met me.
There was my landlord Leon P. Lodl who I might have talked about earlier in my writings cannot rmember anymore after having wrote this blog over the years. However Leon or Lee as I called him was a bachelor whose life was a bachelor's dream and when I was living at his farm house on Humboldt Road in Green Bay I was indoctrinated into the life of wine, women and music, for Leon was a a perfect gentleman who loved classical and Jazz music, who dated elegant ladies and worked weekends on his church up north in Michigan turning it into a ski lodge. Having been much younger than he was I was inflienced by his style and his take on life. We would shoot the breeze by the fireplace through the Wisconsin winter when snow would pile up to six feet high along the Humboldt road making leaving the farm almost impossible. We'd read books and discuss philosophy and shared our thoughts on art and music and drinl good wine and ate great steaks and mushrooms which Leon was an expert at making. Come weekends we would drive up north to work on his church.
The late Bill Prevetti, Mike Kazar and Clarry Nelson Cole, they are all three gone now, were my art instructors at the University, however they were also friends who treated me like I was special. I was often invited to their homes and most of my art materials were through their generousity. It was what they impressed upon me as man to man that I valued most, their thoughts and philosohies, ther beliefs and dreams which they admitted every so often that they seldom shared with others that made me felt special and taught me to think about who I was. These were highly respected individuals in the Green Bay Community for their years of dedication towards the art education at the campus.
In Alaska I met one or two great individuals who helped shape my life while i fishing in the Aleutian Ilses. One such individuals was a pilot who flew a Cessna plane as a delivery service for the Aleut community delivering goods from island to island and would take me along for the 'beer runs' as he called it for company. I learned alot through our conversations while in the air or sitting at deserted makeshift runways waiting for someone to claim the delivery. Dwight Blackburn had flew all over the Baring Seas delivering passengers and groceries to small Aleut communities for many years and he had many tales to tell about the Aleutians and I was a willing listener. But most rewarding of these talks we had was his tips and advice on what i aught to do and not in order to survive the rough life of Alaska which I later applied to living anywhere I ended up. He taught me how to stand up to the big and ugly fishermen who were to him numbskulls underneath all their rough tough demeanor and how to not let them intimidate by breaking through this mask. He made me understand the Aleut mentality and how to tackle them instead of becoming their victim as I was allowing myself into becoming. Sammy, you are far more superior than ten of these Assholes so dont let them fuck with you, he would say. Dwight Blackburn gave me some of the most heart rending scenes that I would normally watch on National Geographic of Alaska from the Air. The small Cessna would fly us along side the tips of snow covered mountains and at one time a volcanoe that was spewing out mudlike clouds into the sky. I will never forget the feeling i had as we flew around the volcano in a complete circle close enough to see the red larva oozing out from its crater.
In San Francisco I met with many great minds especially at the SF Zen Center where I spent for almost two years as a Zen student. One of these individuals was my close friend David Carlson whose life before he joined the Zen community was a computer programmer for IBM and had helped installed the Bank of America Computer programes. David was one of a kind individual who was full of life and love for just about everyone he dealt with. He was very intelligent and was into everything thought provoking like the practice of Zen and Yoga or the interest in alternative lifestyles. We both got married at bout the same time and had our children within a few weeks of eachother. During those years raising our children David and i spent alot of time together at the Golden Gate Park where we would take our kids for their walks. David was a very good father and I was influenced by his ways and gentleness in dealing with children.

I

All the Great teachers

It is rather ironic thaton the way here i was giving the spill to my daughter all about having self confidence as opposed to self doubts. However i did also informed her that this is one of my illnesses throughout my life and have been paying for it eversince. I tried to explain to her the Islamic teachings of remeberig who we are and the fact that we were put on this planet to be the rulers not the slaves, the masters not the servants, the Kaliphs for the Devine Ruler if omly we understood. It is easier said than put to practice but try it to our best capability we must esecially now that she has been informed at an earlier age. I lso tired to share with my practice of self motivation through auto-suggestion, the I AM WHOLE, STRONG, POWERFUL,....AND I CAN DO WHAT I WILL TO DO...ISHA'ALLAH, Which i have been practicing most of my adult life for what it is worth and I hope that it will shed some light for her perhaps in her adult life when the need or questions arises.
I had many great teachers growing up and one of them was my eldest brother who was also at oe time my English teacher in the secondary school. He did not talk to mee so much about life itself or provided much verbal motivation but he opened my eyes and senses through examples that he himself set. He was an achiever and excelled in just every activity he had put his mind to. He was the school's gym teacher, the disciplinarian fearedand resected by just about every student. His private life was a model I emmulated for thanks to him I got to taste Jazz, and read books that normally one would not get in the small town of Kuala Trengganu back then. he would buy all the DC and Marvel comics as they come out without fail and had they been kept till this day they would have cost a fortune as well as worth hell of alot more in the collector's market.The best times of my life growing up as a teenager was going to the movies with him, he loved to take my twin and I to the Chinese and Japanese action movies. I felt a sense of pride everytime we walk into the theater where in the small town everyone nkew who you are and we were 'adek Cikgu Razali' or Spike's brothers to his colleague. These were the good old days and i was blessed to have been raised by him as a teenager although there were times I had to pay the price when he was not too happy with my idiosyncracies as a teenager.
The next great person in my life whose ways and teachings had affected me was my martial arts instructor who was also back then in the sixties the head of the Religious Department for the state of Terengganu among his other posts. He was educated in England, a rare achievement in those days and was at one time or another was also the Districr Officer at one time another for the district of Kuala Brang. A very intelligent and highly respected individual whose peers included the Chief Mejistrate, the chief of Police and so on. I came to know these individuals quite personally because i had spent so much time beating them at the game of scrabble whic they enjoyed and I was vwery good at even as a teenager. I just listened offcourse and said very little, talked only when addressed to otherwise my job was to defeat them as best i could at time till the wee hours of the morning. It was at these scrabble tournaments that i learned about life as an adult, the dos and donts and about being a gentleman, spirituality, in short how to think like an well educated intelligent adult. No amount of education could have taught me this.
We called our martial arts instructor Pa'Cik Johan and he was formerly from Perak. Cik Johan taught us the Silat Seni Gayong, the Malay Art of Self Defence and the 'Gelangang' or Dojo was at the yard of his house which was a government quarters located by the sea at Batu Burok in Kuala Trengganu. Here i learned about Islam and the the Islamic myticism which involved spiritual rituals which were not commonly practiced among too many local Muslims themselves unless there was proper guidences. My experience of being given a spirit guide through my martial art instructor was an experience that I will never forget. This event took place in one of the rooms of Encik Johan;s home and the man who initiated the procceding was not Encik Johan but another of my isntructor who was a Tengku. Tengku Azmel was a wild character and was feared for his temper and the fact that he was a fighter who had no fear of anything or anyone so long as I had known him. He had accepted the resposibility to initiate me becuse Encik Abu Johan had had doubts about getting me involved into the spiritual side of the Silat Seni Gayong which demanded strong discipline in the religious sense and which I lacked without doubt.
After reciting certain verses from the Quran I ws told to empty my mind and my teacher stroke my hand asthough sending some energy into me in the process while he invoked names of his spiritual guides which I could not nake out. As soon as this was done I felt silence and darkness feel over me like i was in a vacuum. The sound of the telivision that was goint on in the living room next door was gone, I could not feel the floor beneath me, I was floating in darkness. There were about ten people sitting around me while this was happening and they were all tapping the tiled floor louder and louder and this loud slapping sound too was snuffed out. A diiferent sound came which sounded like the sharp whistle of a jet plane landing or what i thought was the TV next door going on the blink and it came right up to one side of my temple and ended with a snap that i felt like someone snapped the fingers close to my remple enought to feel it. Them I felt a tightennign up of my neck and shoulder areas and I felt like I was loosing control of my physical body as it began to stretch in every which way that i never knew i could do before. I felt every joints in my body popping especially my neck bones as my head finally started to spin sideways uncontrollably. Then as suddenly as it began it stopped dead and I was again in the dark limbo. Suddenly flashes of light began to pop out into my vision and i was staring at thinf I had never in my life seen before most of them although some i did recognized like my recently deceased mother and my grandmother in strange dresses. I felt tears runnimg down my cheeks I was crying out of sadness and regret for some reason watching these movie like flashes. then I need to clean my self and asked for a bucket of water. I could hear voices arguing about where to find the bucket and i saw a bucket behind a blues door and told them so and I washed myslef with the water when it came felt myself again returned to the room and the people around me calling to me asking if i am alright and so on.
I wrote this once in a class for Cutural Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay but it was dismissed as a made up fantasy by my professor back them, Thank you Daniel Rosenberg. There were teachers that I wished I had not met in my life too and this was one of them.

Why is two of my last entries missing?

I rambled on for quite a lengthy nothing in the past few days however they seemd to have disappeared or was not posted as they should. Perhaps they were not meant to be as there was not much of great interest really they were just filling up empty spaces or killing time for the sake of justifying my existance. Justification as Lao Tzu once said , does not convince not to myself much less to anyoneelse. I keep telling myself that I need to keep to my practice no matter what the situation may be and to keep on creating my art as it is the only act that means anything at the moment, to be creative despite the feeling of depression setting in. Who am I kiddinbg? All the talk of being one with the Creator and being positive and not to let circumstances mopolize my thoughts is just another deeper illusion within an illusion, and it seems like this deep rooted Karma has kept me running in circles most of my life, its like weeding the garden with the weeds regrowing eachtime the job is completed.
Perhaps like the MIlarepa story this Karmic circle has a lesson to offer and untill the lesson is learned it will keep on manifesting. The Tibetan story of Milarepa who was responsible fo the killing of his entire families of relatives who were at a wedding and later repented invovled serving his Guru Marpa. As part of his repentance Marpa made Milarepa work very hard and one of these task was the building of a temple on top of the mountain. In then process marpa kept changing which mountain top he had Milarepa build this temple, Thus as soon as Milarepa had set about moving stones for the structures to the top of the mountain Marpa would arrive the next morning to tell him he had a chnge of mind and wanted all the rocks moved to another mountain top and this went on untilol MIlarepa broke down and had his awakening experience... something like that.
Whats the comparison here well I feel in someway I am like Milarepa who has been carrying my burden of rocks from one mountain to another only there is no Marpa to tell me otherwise. My art has never bought me anything materially that I can speak of but it has been the one thing that I have felt a positive about throughout my life and when I am facing my dark days or nights I can always turn to my sketchbook or canvasse and spend a few hours forgetting all the negativity that is haunting my mind. I know that when I am creating something no matter how insignificant my mind is somewhat free from entertaining anything destructive or loosing itself into a stupor in a limbo of never never land. I hate feeling like my time is wasted even for a minute whyen I am awake and often enough if nothing else i wuld sit Zazen or as many of my friends would say , he is doing Yoga. When I am lost in my sitting and my mind has found its center I often feel revitalized or recharged often followed by an inspiring thought or idea that would be the next task i would myself to, like writing this post.
I was at the USM Printing studio bright and early this morning wnet there after dropping my son off at his school. It was a decission I had to make between going righ home to continue my interupted sleep or go to the printmaking shop and do some work and I chose the later more out of a sense of justification rather than for the sake of art. But I felt the choice i made was neither right nor wrong as there was none to judge but me for had I chose to go back to bed there is no one who can make an issue about it for at 58 who gives a shit what others have to say about what i aught to do or not. Another need to justify myself and I might as well forget about who I am or what i have learned all these years, I will have not only let myself down but also all those good friends I have had in the US, in Japan and here in Malaysia. My journey tedious as it seems is about finding who I am or what I am and my retionship to my Maker and thus far all I have done kept on regressing. My doubts have increased about my own abilities and my own faith and my sense of being is as shaky as dry grass at the mercy of the breeze. I need a wake up call badly.

My mother said there will be days like this...

Decided to visit the USM Museum and check up on the transcript delivery from the unversity in Wisconsin which according to the Student clearinghouse has been sent on the 16th. of August. With my luck the letter most probably is sitting somewhere in the garbage can of the Post office after being opened and found that there is not much worth taking from it, or it could be at the Muzeum Director's desk and being held in ransome for some unknown reasons, it was not there when I checked for it. Bummer! But i opted to visit the Assistant Dean of the Arts faculty instead just to touch base and show him what I have done so far at the printmaking studio. He was not at his office so I sat in the lobby to take a break and read Depak Chopra's Knowing God, I had just borrowed the book from Hasnul the Meuzium Director.
Late last night i had watched 'The Matrix' by myself perhaps for the fifth or sixth times, my effort at trying to make sense out of the movies on a deeper level for it intrigues me almost at a spiritual level the question of 'Reality'. Although a work of science fiction the movie raised in me the questions that had long been nagging at the back of my mind, especially on how much control do i really have over my own destiny, why am I always feeling like I am at the mercy of some other higher authority and helpless most of the times to navigate my own course in life towards my own destination.
After having read Ahmed Hulusi, the Turk Sufi writer and his perspective on Islam and the modern sceintific views, I am beginning to have more Dharma Gates oppening in front of me for me to venture into but these gates seems to jump out at me from such diverse sources like finding this book By Chopra on Hasnul's book shelve. Although I have hardly began reading it the first few paragraphs has already seen how the author is struggling with calling God a He or she or It, which Hulusi had cleared by the use of the word 'Hu' to stand for Allah when a pronoun is needed. It does not seem important enough for Chopra to deal with the word God itself which all good printmakers would right away realize that if printed would appear as DOG in the final image on paper unless the word is reversed beforehand. But these are small matters where God is concerned and I highly bout that Hu would mind it that much because its the though that counts as the saying goes which reminded me next as to the phrase which Chopra uses hardly his own but acknoledged almost as his " to change the world you have to change yourself". Before I read his first book while i was in the US I came upon this saying by J.Krishnamurti in one of his books on 'toughts'.
Recently on a visit to malaysia Deepak Chopra charges 3000RM for a seat at his talk show which made me made my heart sank to the floor upon reading it in the news Papers. The first comment that hasnul made when I asked to borrow Chopras book was the fact that the author is a salesman, he knows how to make money with words and ideas better than anyone. Enough said about the guy or i will be accused of being a sour grape or worse sued by the India man! My thoughts for the day was triggered having watched 'Matrix' last night and the whole idea of man against machine is a very concerned topic for my mind of late. Movies like AI ( Artificial Intelligence) and even "The Terminator" for last few years since their debut on the screen spawned from Holy-Wood has raised some unsettling questions in my mind about the power of our collective creative thoughts hurling us into creating our own self destruction by creating into reality a bogeyman that can wipe the specie from the face of the planet.Movies like Aliens and Predators are becoming an accepted phenomena among our younger generations as though these creatures are not farfetched and in time can be part of our accepted reality to deal with in life , at for the later generations or Movie and Tv addicts. As Hulusi had spelled out these are part and parcel of our programming towards the final acceptance of the influences of Jins and Demons into our lives. However these characters are not as sinister or diabolical in their threat to man as the whole idea of the man against machine conjures. The mchine or artificial intelligence created by man is a whole lot threatening as it can be accepted logically and in this day and age of knowledge and computer based technology virtually nothing is sacred anymore where creation is concerned.
If I were to be the Devil himself or the Anti Christ hell bent on winning the souls of the children of Adam before the End of days where would I put myself stratigically? Holy-Wood, yessir! feed the minds of the minions on this planet with thoughts and ideas, choices, options and possibilities of what it is that is there for us humans, why or how and when are we ever to learn the truth about ourselves without loosing our souls in the process or as in the Matrix, forever existing in a dream created for us, existinf no better than slaves to some unknown and unseen manipulator. One of the causes of our suffering in this life the Buddha said is Ignorance the opposite of knowledge. The devil's greatest trick is to make us believe that he does not exist, 'The End of Days'.
It feels good to be able to offload these crap onto the blog otherwise they would just be a bunch of ramblings sitting in my head for the next who knows how long untill something else comes along with more tempting baits to hook my ever greedy mind. Much of what I have rambled about makes as little sense as a bad story line in a low budget movie but try to read between the lines every so often there is hidden the truth in there where your mind might be triggered to dwell upon for itself.

Green Bay, Wisconsin Revisited

Where to from here? I could have gone to the University and do more printing but I am also bound to end up jammed in the traffic congestion bevcause of the convocation going on there over the week end. Just got back taking my daughter to the Saint Vincent De Pauls second hand outlet where she loves to rummage for name brand blouses and pants, used off course. Took along one of my nephews and got him a nice pair of sports snickers that fit him perfectly and I got myself an apron for my printmaking. So the afternoon went after sending my son and his buddies to sleep over at one of their homes and tha was before I took my daughter to the thrifty store. Where to from here?

I would like to reflect a little over my past to Green Bay, Wisconsin where I first settled down after making the big move from Malaysia along with my former wife and my first born son. My son Nazri was about four months old then and he was born at the Asunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur on April the eighth of 1973. I was not present when he was born as I was hten working in Georgetown Penang for Hagemeyer trading Company as their Sales Executive for the NIvico and Matsushita departments depending on where or who needed my services more at the time. That morning when my wife had driven herself in our VW from Shah Alam where she was a resident lecturer to the Hospital and admitted herself to deliver the baby. My former wife was one gutsy lady from Stevens Point, Wisconsin who came to Malaysia as an exchange student and met me and decided to saettle down in Malaysia when our son decided to drop in on us unannounced.
We decided to get married right away when we learned of the gift we had given ourselves when having a great time one the beaches of Terengganu and Penang and the wedding took place at my Auntie's house on the junction of River Road and Sungai Pinang.My firends called it a shot gun wedding and we had a great time although it was not a grand show by a long shot. After the wedding for the next few months i was walking on air feeling on top of the world like nothing could bring me down and then he came and it was the cream of my existance, the peak of my young adult life. I had a good job with a bright future, and my wife had an even greater prospect teaching at the college. But all good things must end and the end in this case came in the form of the Malaysian Bureaucracy, the Immigration Department in this case. Not wanting to go into it too much surfice to say we had to make a choise of staying or leaving and we opted to leave.
Thus after selling off whatever we could and saying good byes to good prospect vocations and some close friends and families we got two one way tickets on board the Air Cezchkoslovakia and flew all the way from Kuala Lumpur to New York and from New York to Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was one of the most uncomfortable trips i ever had as our son was not too happy with the flight and threw a fit almost all the way there so much so that I can almost say that I had walked across the Atlantic simply because that was what I was doing exactly carrying my son in my arms so that he stopped screaming. It became a joke with us later that Sam walked across the Atlantic to get to Green Bay. I did not minded at all as I was driven by the adrenalin of looking forward to being in the United States and whatever that laid there for me.
The most impressive thing about landing at the airport in New York and in dealing with customs and immigration was the fact that it wnet so smoothly that the only thing that was not in harmony was my son's screaming. I was waived over by an immigration officer and told that if i gave him the envelop I had in my hand he would give me tha card he held in his and that was the extent of my dealing with the immigration and when I got my card I was automatically a permanent resident of the United States barring the fact that I cannot vote or become involved in any anti-government activities, I am short of a full fleshed citizen with all the rights of a US citizen. I was moved to love and respect the country by this simple gesture from hence forth.
After a night spent in New York we flew to Autin Strobel Airport in Grenn bay, Wisconsin and it was the cold autumn sunless grey skies that greeted us upon our arrival. I was shocked by the leafless trees and the lack of colors all around me as we drove in my former mother in law's car from the airport to Duck Creek. When we got to Duck Creek I was struck with a sense of lose and forboding, I was scared of being in an unknown territory with no one to turn to except my wife and her family. For the first time I felt like I made a big mistake and there was no turning back, I might never see my home again and what am I going to do there? My mind was running helter skelter sketching the worse case scenarios it could of our bleak future in this cold and colorless place. To make matters worse we were informed by the Hospital authorities that our sone had contracted a kind of worm from the flight to Green Bay most probably from the milk he was provided and that we were all asked to be quarantined till the Health Authorities could be sure that we were safe to move about. The quarantine included my mother in law and my sister in law both had to take off from their respective works. So I spent my first few weeks of my arrival in green Bay indoors watching Gilligan's Island and Private Gommer Pyle reruns.
Off course my bummbed out feelings became contagious to the others and it made their lives i am sure as equally miserable especially my sister in law who was working for twelve hours a day at a paper company and often came home too tired to stand and my mother in law who had so much pains in her athritic feet which were often swollen. I would offer to massage their feets and hands whenever I had the chance to and this helped to build a bond between us as they thought it a little weird but great the fact that a man would offer to work on their feet and hands which is seldom heard of in their neck of the woods which by and large was considered a typical red neck country with me being the first few colored guys that had set feet in their midst, but being Beatrice's son in law made a difference I came to find out.

Ahh! Mono-Prints!!

For the past two days I Have been spending my time in the Printmaking studio at the University Sains Arts Faculty. On the first day I spent a few houyrs cleaning up the studio to make it presentable as a printmaking studio and later that evening after getting used to the tools and press available I pulled off ten prints oe mono-type. It was a great feeling to be able to lay my hands on the printing press and having the whole studio to myself. So far i have twelve pieces worth considering for my upcoming show and I hope to be able to produce at least fifty by the time I am through so that I can have a whole set of prints to complement my sketches for the exhibition.
The stretching of my larger canvasses is still put on hold by the guy who dos the job for the museum, his excuses being that he was loaded with work but does not seem too much in a hurry whenever I met him. I guesse if i can afford to slide him a few bucks it might help to speed up the process but as it is i am again walking on thin ice where money is concern. I am trying hard not to think too much on how to come up with my next rent or car payment on top of seeing through tis major art show in two months time but i cannot help feeling apprehensive about the whole predicament I am in. It would be a sin to throw in the towel and call it quits and even if i give in what would i do? All these years I have always did something else to pay my way through life rather than depend on my art maybe it is time to take the challenge and accept the fact that I have to give it all I've got and stop worrying about making it or not financially. I remeber my good friend George Berberis of San Jose, California, used to ell me that i would not make it on anything else in life but my talent if only i had the confidence enough. I also remember my friend and Tanto (Practice teacher) at the Zen Center in San Francisco who told me to stop my worries about money and being able to pay for my lodging and so on, he said that if i worry than everyone else worry too and they start asking questions. These are things that rubbles in my mind day in day out or my life and there seems to be no end to it, yet i have made it so far by hook or by crook I have I have survived to be 58 and though with not much to account for, I have still my good health and my Art.
My days are getting shorter and my options are running low, I have much yet to resolve where my children is concern especially where they will end up at the end of the day, here in Malaysia as Malaysians or back to the US as American citizens. I keep telling them to be ready to take the challenge for the inevitability of what could or would happen to them when shit hits the fence and I believe they are getting the hang of it with their future hanging in a balance of uncertainity. My wife, I have about forgotten about her and her sad fate. I try to replay our most beautiful moments in life and tried to find out where i wnet wrong, like perhaps we should not have come to this country and just stayed in Japan or even returned to the US when we could. But all that is tossed and gone, ifs and ands were pots and pans, should have, could have would have what good does it all bring me except more headaches and no solace.
At the end of the day let me do my printmaking while I still can and it nothing else it helps me to stay focus on my journey and meet my goals as an artist in Quest of The Universality.
I AM WHOLE,PERFECT, STRONG AND POWERFUL,
LOVING, COMPASSIONATE, HARMONIOUS AND HAPPY!!
I CAN DO WHAT I WILL TO DO,
InshaALLAH!!

Happy Birthday Bahari!

Headed for the USM Muzium this morning hoping to get something accomplshed, get some canvasse mounted or even some printmaking done but not much luck, its Sunday perhaps. To not let it be such a wasted tie driving all the way there i decided to reada little on the Art scenes at the small library corner od trhe museum and found an interview article with Redza Piyadasa, his views about the Art scene within and without the country. The interviewer did not have much proding to do and Piya let himself loose over the whole decadence of the local art and cultural scene due to the onslought of the West. A man who claims to have understood and admired the Japanese scene and a man who in his end of days larments over the lack of spirituality in the arts and cultural scene of this country, Piyadasa was true to himself in answering the questions, he was the epitomy of an oppotunistic manipulator only commonly found among western carpet beggars. When you have tot make a choice between good and bad right and wrong, when you draw a line segregating this from that you are not fit to claim as a spiritual adept of any culture much less the Japanese.
The Buddha is said to have said that 'right and wrong is a sicknees of one's own mind', Piyadasa was still trapped within his own dichotomized mind that was born and raised a non Muslim with a western education deeply rooted within his psyche. His love for the Western Art scene was to the point of obssesion and had earned him the gift of being an Art critic often gauging Malaysian Art by Western Standards untill more younger malaysians made it overseas to study and got to know what he was selling them first hand. Then Pia became the agnostic of wesstern art and the champion of the Asian Art especially when he was invited to become an advisor to the Japanese Museum or Fine Arts in Fukuoka, Japan. Everything swings Eastwards for Pia just like Dr. M, Pia abandoned all western for what the east has to offer and how like the former Prime Minister he easily forgot. Having spent most of my secondary school years being his student ansd latter keeping in touch with him everytime i return to this country I got to know Piyadasa quite closely often over a few beers. I have great respect for the man but not for what he claimed to be when it comes to being appointed as the spokesman for the Malaysian Art Scene. He was simply a great Malaysian Artist and an Art Educator.I told him so when he was alive and the result was that he chased me out of his home in Subang Jaya.
I went to an Art oppening for the artist Shahrul Anuar Shaari with Hasnul and his wife and daughter. The show was held at the Alpha Utara Gallery in downtown area of Church Street. There many local artists present at the show and I got to meet my good friend Rashid the Portrait painter. I also met Mr. Chew teng beng who is one of the most well known artist in Penang and who was at one time a friend of my oldest brother when he was teaching at the Sultan Sulaiman Secondary School, in Kuala Terengganu. Mr. Chew was surprised to meet me and finding out that I am 'Spike's brother. We talked about the printmaking studio at the USM and what a shameful state it is in and what should be done to bring it back to life. Present later was also Encik Rahman the assistant dean of the Art Faculty at USM who is also a keen printmaker and was at one time a student of Mr.Chew. The Print studio is ready for my use according to the professor in charge Encik Khizal who was also present at the show. All in all it was great that I made it to the oppening.
So it is my birthday today! How old am I! 58?59? Should i call my twin brother and wish him a Happy Birthday too? Naah! It would be too phoney and as far as I am concern the dye is cast and there was never a relationship between us that was positive. I hate living under his shadow but there is not much that I can do about it. It is part of the Divine Comedy in my life, the souce and spice that makes life a little more eggravating if not exciting. They say that blood is thicker than wine, what the hell do they know! It is sad that I have not much positive thoughts to share on this my Birthday, I wish there is some wise words some significant line that I could let out and make my day, I feel like I have lost a piece of me with the passing year of my life instead of gaining one more year.

Hiroshima Revisited

Arrived at the University Muzeum Gallery to find out that there was a ceremony which was just completed of presenting the Museum with a piece of the rock. In this case the slab of concrete came from a structure that barely survived the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb at the end of World War 2. The digniteries were leaving the building when I walked in and was in time to join in on the food and drinks, not bad timing for one who was humgry and trying to conserve on spending.
Did not accomplish much other than sat and talked with Encik Hasnul about getting my canvasses mounted by his assistants and told him to expect my transcripts from the University in Wisconsin via the Student Clearinghouse Agency. I hope all goes well and the papers get to him as I have need for them in order to start applying for any possible teaching jobs in this country. Discussed with Hasnul about the possibility of working in the printing studio at USM with the prospect of making it a teaching profession eventually, like becoming artist in residence. He agreed with the idea but was ambivalent about me getting it easily unless I talk to the Dean personally. The dean Encik Najib is not an easy guy to work with but I could try my luck.
My luck, just about everything I try to accomplish comes up against a wall of one form or another or so it seems and what is ironic is that the Dean Najib used to play golf with my twin brother and putting two and two together there goes my prospect. Oh well looking on the brighter side I have no problem of introducing myself into the Art circle's of who is who here as just about anyone I approach or introduced to I would be told who they thought I was and I would say Yeah its great to be living under your brother's shadow for sure! If nothing else it makes for a great non fiction story.

Prospects and possibilities

Went to the USM printing studio with the instructor who runs the satudio and dicussed the chances of my using the studio while at the same time be able to student teach in return. Not a bad idea to get something going on in the printing medium to add to my upcoming show as printmaking has always been my thing since the University of Wisconsin days, I fell in love with the medium. What better time coulkd this happen now that I am a lttle free with alot of time on my hand and not knowing what to do and what with the show coming up eventhough it still is two month from now.
I stopped by the Penang State Gallery to say hello to the Curator friend and was aked to apply for a time slot for my show next year so that o dont miss out and I did. I decided to do a show in April next year if it is possible but the time has no significance for me except that it gives me plenty ewnough time to get ready after the USM show.
Why the sudden need for shows? I know I can ill afford to create any new pieces much less hold a solo exhibition on a grand scale such as at the State Gallery or even the USM Muzeum Gallery! Well why not? What else is there to do other than not get depressed and keep looking for something just to stay afloat for the kids and I. Hell most of my life I have been avoiding making my artistic talents pay for me, I lack the self confidence in the fact that I can live solely as an artist and not have to depend on any other income to support my family. I have swallowed my pride, pandered my self esteem and dihumanized myself ever so often simply because I have never had any confidence as an artist and so it is time to put my foot down and take the bull be the horns, do or die I will get my act together and give the artworld the best that money can buy, I will become the best there is and there ever was. Geeze its great to be able to dream still at my age. Let them frown and let them laugh, who gives a shoot anymore I have done more than most in this alotted time in my life most of it cannot be valued in dollars and cents and hey the game is not over yet and as a matter of fact it is just beginning!

The Show Begins

This morning got all my sketchbooks together and delivered them to the Muzium Gallery at the University Sains Malaysia. Encik Hasnul the Muzium Director was not in , he is in KL. I left the books and some loose sketches with his helper encik Noordin who has been a great help and sopporter in the past when I had my HUMIND show at the ABN_AMRO Gallery. I told those present, the security personel and the sweeper looking at the transfer of hands of my works that I beleive in not wasting time in making things happen when they should instead of putting things off to the last minute and chewing my fingers for lack of time. All of these gentlemen were taken by value of my books especially their span of time and the places they cover in my life, it gave me a warm feeling.
I have a good feeling about this show already the fact that it will be a major show and might even be the last I can afford to have if nothing comes out of it in terms of financial benifits. I hate to think in these lines about my works but reality is hitting me left and right at the present moment and a little financial gain is a great help. My self esteem,(not that I have much these days) took a beating from my cousin brother Salleh who runs a succesful restaurant and catering business out of his mother's home and where my children have their free meals in the afternoon when they got home from school. Salleh asked me when I told him that I am no more working, what is my next move, and I told him I have the show in October to get ready for. He immediately got on his high chair and gave me the spill about what can I earn from doing Art and so on and I had no answer but to duck his attacks. I could have told him to screw himself had I been in a better financial position and remind him of the fact that his and my grandfather was an artist and but for this old man who painted for his life the two of us would not be sitting there nowwould he be using the very house tgat the damn useless artist had provided for and handed it to his mother who the old man's adopted child., which places my mother the true owner of the house if push comes to shove in who owns what in this dump! As the former Prime Ministe once said, Melayu mudah lupa! The Malays tends to forget easily. My cousin most probably is worried that me and my two children will become his unwonted dependants and not that I can blame him.
This is one of the very reason why this show in October will be the final cut so to speak for it either will pick me up and complete my journey or it will shatter every hopes and dreams that me and family's is riding on. Oh life will go on but hell to die a mediocre or worse yet a looser? All these years of my life I had believed in something I have lived my life as what I chose to do which has often been against the grain, always up river against the current, taking the roads and paths less travled, getting into circumstances where angels would not dare and only fools would thread, but I believed in myself. I believed in being special and my Creator had special intentions for me when Hu decided to squeezed me into my mother's womb alongside my twin brother. Hus had special reason for having me given away to be adopted and raised as a Buddhist for almost twelve years of my childhood life groing up in Sungai Pinang among my Muslim brothers and sisters and my cousins and relatives. My Lord must have a good reason for having me delivered back to my parents and brothers and sisters to be raised another twelve years of my life in the East coast state of Terengganu alongside my twin brother where our sibbling rivalry has cost such friction till this day that I cannot turn my face to him for any help in my times of need. My Maker must have a great sense of humour to make sure that I marry an American who was my twin brother's girlfriend and my not knowing it untill too late when my son was conceived and my relationship with my twin brother has gone from bad to worse. The AlMighty, indeed sow it fit that I leave this good Muslim country and my family and friends to live among the nonbelievers, America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave where I became the devil's own. Yeesir!,,such Is, Such Is!
Today I found while rummaging through my sketchbooks and old book left to me by my friend and mentor the late Cikgu Yusof called, "The Removal of Cares" by the Great Sufi Master and Awlia Shaikh ABD AL-Qadir Al-Jilani (Jala Al-Khawatir) and for the umteenthtime I redread a few of the discourses in it to remiond myself of the warnings the great master had for guys like me in the afterlife!

"How can you expect to receive the Grace of Allah (AlMighty and Glorious is He), when you keep spending His blessings in acts of sinful disobedienc against Him? You will soon be reduced to begging, but no one will give you a handout, and you will end up living in the refuse dumps and sewers. It may be that death will come to you while you are in this sorry state, in which case you will accept it as a wholesome release from wretched misery"
Shaikh Kadir Al-Jilani
Jala Al-Khawatir

I am a true believer and this I am convinced beyond all doubts if ther is any sense of worth in my life or anything that I have discovered from this long journey that I have tried to record of my existance thus far it is this fact that I a true beleiver in the Lord AlMighty, Allah Subhana HuaTalla, The LOrd of Power and the Owner of the Day of Judgement. Yes I am afraid of what I might be facing with this profess of my belief after all these years of challenging every command and dictates of Hu's all because of my self deluded anger and egotistical ignorances but I believe in HU's Infinite Compassion for my deliverances and that of my two wives and children for they have all became Muslims at onetime or another in their lives as I am the witenss to this fact here and in the here after and let no man or woman deny this but fear the wrath of false accusation in the after life.
Hence when anyone decides to point a finger at this misbegotten sinner let him or her investigate thoroughly the finger that is pointing lest it be imperfect in itself. As the Great Master Sufi said,

""This world cannot last forever, but the hereafter will endure eternally. The pleasure of this world do not linger very long, but everlasting are the delights of the hereafter. The true believer(Mu'min) trades this world for the hereafter, and the creation (khalk) for the Creator (Khaliq)."
Shaikh Kadir Al-Jilani
The Removal of Cares

Singapore Amrican School

A gentleman friend I just met a week or two ago at the Penang jetty had promised me to look nto the possibility for me to teach at the Singapore American School and what a dream come true it would be if this could ever materialize. And what an added bonus to life if my two children being American citizens with a whole lot of citizenship problem ahead into their futre here could join this school, it is almost God sent, short of a miracle. How I would love to be able to evenrually share my years of learning experiences in life as an artist both in the East and the West just as I had once sketched the Cheeseburger Buddha in the effort trying to tie up two loose ends of a rope with tags at each ends saying East and West. The American School from what i have read in their website seems like the place of my dream where students from over fifty countries are gathered under one institution of education with one motive and that is to become the 'Global Citizen' and what better place can it be than at Singapore, the crossroad between East and West.
Well lets see what happens when I start getting the ball rolling, maybe there is a silver lining after all in what is going on with my life currently. However in the meantime I will have to hussle my butt and get going getting my artworks ready for the next big event which is the Solo Exhibition at the Univeristy Sains Muzium Gallery here in Penang which will happen in October. This will be another make it or break it show for me and I will not spare the guns in making sure that this show will scream out loud enough that even the die-hard aesthetically deaf and blind will turn their heads to ponder. I have half the mind to call it 'Zen and the Art of Living' and dedicate the show to my wife but will see how the Curator feels about such ideas.
The Muzium has alot of spaces to cover and so I will alot of work to do to fill up these huge walls and I am hoping to fill them up with black and white sketches on canvasses which will cost a fortune which again brings back to the old vicious circle of ya gotta have money to generate money no matter what you do. I dont see anyone for the present that I can turn to for some sort of sponsoreship but hey, who knows what can happen from now till then! As Pink Floyd would have said it, "And The Show Must Go onn!!"

Miseries comes in three...so they say

My car refuses to start for the first time since I bought it and so this morning eventhough I had a day off I could not send my son to school, Karim got lucky again an so he sleeps in instead. I have only ten ringgit in my wallet and that rules out getting my car fixed for now unless i go around begging for help from my cousins here. I had intended to go to a function at the USM where there is a sort of seminar for artists -resented free for artists at the Muzuem there but again my fortune eludes me. So here i am doing next to what I can think of as being a creative act instead of crying ove what is the inevitable. Payday and my final working day is not til next week Tuesday how I survive til then is in the handfs of my Maker the Giver of Pain and Pleasure to Whom I have submitted my destiny eversince I decided that my life has been a long chain of wasted events and episodes with no depth of truth worthy of an intelligent human, I was merely existing for the sake of filling space and time and have practically no control over my own fate, like tall grasses swaying to the breeze.
The horrors of not being gainly employed has already began to sink its claws into my heart as I sat this morning on the steps to my house and contemplate what next. I watched the same old ladies as they go about doing what they do to fill their time and space, my neighbours, I am beginning to see myself in them doing the same when all is said and done, waiting for death. As I have said before my mind has the tendency to see the worse of scenarios before they happen, its one of my negative traits among the many. It is one of those habits that I have for years been struggling to eliminate from my mind's database but has little success with. One of my practicess eversince I discovered it some twenty years ago is the art of auto-suggestion or a sort mental hypnosis whereby i will recite these lines to myself every night before bedtime and morning upon wakening.
"I am WHOLE, PERFECT,STRONG,POWERFUL,LOVING,COMPASSIONATE,HARMONIUOS and HAPPY AND I CANDO WHAT I WILL, INSH'ALLAH,(god WILLING). I added the last words just incase my ego gets the better of me. This practice came from a book I used to carry around with me called the "Master Key" by Frank Haarnel. It was loaned to me by my friend Rahim whem I was 19 years of age and I later took it with me to the US. The practice I held on to must have worked for me for better or for worse as my life has proven so over the years, I can safely say that I have lived beyond my wildest dreams often times for I have been to places and done those things that many would just dream about or watch others do on TV. I have met great teachers and made exciting friends who life had shed lights upon my own, I have experienced events that shook the entire cities like the San Frqncisco earthquake of 1989 and the the Sarin Gas attack of the underground subways of Tokyo by the AUM Shirinkyo Group in 1995, I watched the Makushin Volcano spewed dust into the skies of the Aleutian from a four sitter plane, I have experienced what it was like to fish for hHalibuts in the Berring Sea.
I have walked beneath the clear skies of the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Equador and I have celebrated the Gawai Hantu along with the Ibans of the Five tribes of Head humters of Borneo, drunk for three days and night from rice wine.
But today I am not feeling all that mighty anymore as I face my long time buddies the prophets of doom and gloom like monkeys riding on my back, like dead carcasses of the Albatros hanging like a curse around my neck. If I give in to these feelings sooner or later I will drown and I will drag all those around me to the bottom. My car not starting has set off my second bad luck since learning of the refusal to renew my contract at work what will be the third negative vibe that will seal my fate? I am WHOLE, PERFECT,STRONG....SO HELP ME, YA ALLAH!

All Good Shit Must Come to an End

Well I would have to say that loosing my job with JRS is not a total disaster as Ihave just about had enough of sitting around and playing with myself trying to figure out how to keep my body and mind busy despite the serene and tranquil environment I am located at. As anyone of my age would testify lossing the job and the prospect of finding another decent one would be short of a miracle and having two kids still in school and having to make sure that the rent and car patment are made monthly will all add up to what turns a man of good faith and intellect into a terrorist. Just about, as this is an ongoing investigation into the factors that spawn terrorists or rebels in answer to the former Prime Minister's question into this matter, like What makes a Terrorist? What pissed off every decent hard working caring and creative individual into a demon of high calibre? Well I have pondered upon my own life and reflected upon every episode of thus so far arse kicking events that have led myself into and I have come a little closer to the answer and it is not and has nothing to do with politics,religious fanaticism or socio-economic causes, it has to do with every one of these factors and then some.
At this age of mine it dont really matter one way or another how I end or where I end but I am sure not going to take all the crap thrown at me throughout my adult life with my hands tied behind my back. What makes a terrorist is one very angry man performing his last angry scream towards every injustice and uncaring and inconsiderate acts thrown against him by the Almighty Himself, not man but the bloody God, in whose image he was created. I cannot blame my felow man for all the wrong nor will I keep on whipping myself for the mistakes I have made throughout my life, but enough is enough, I have not walked the path climbed the mopuntains threaded the forest in vain to get where I am and like bloody hell if I am going to exit this existence with my tail between my legs. Yes this is what it takes to become a terrorist and then some now all one need is to find a cause.
Alright this is what a normal reaction of my mind whenever I am confronted with another major change in my life, it goes on a panic spin creating for iutself a worse case scenario and if I had been on drugs or have been having a drinking problem, the scenarion mightly like manifest itself into some pretty nasty, negative and even destructive act one scene one on the richter scale of human psyche. But being older though less wiser has its check and balance when it comes to making radical and unjustified moves that would affect your loved ones or those who look up to you for support. Even if one can impail one's soul onto the crucifix of mayhem one cannot deny those one has a hand in bringing into this life thier chance at gatting a better crack at this life. As one good friend once said, lets not sweat over the little things in life or turn every setback into cancer case and all things in life are little things.
So what the hell am I trying to tell myself ? Why am I rambbling away on this Friday morning while my children are in school and i have just had a good mee goreng for breakfast taken a good crap and now on my way to the University to see what I can gather in terms of getting my works on show? Yep! The show must go on... the only form of self justification left for verrifying my existence lest it be called wasted. They say its the road to the top that matters when one is climbing a mountain the top is just the end of a very long and tedious journey filled with surprises and disappointment, the journey and not the peak is the goal but the peak is conquered, the prize the end. For every journey there is a beginning and there is a middle and an ending, how excitng, how wonderful, how glorious the journey is, is entirely up to the traveller and the traveller who could turn every boring trip every negative episode every failiure into a success, into story worth reading is he whose life is well lived. Life is a blank canvasse ready to be filled with all the colors of the rainbow it is in how we apply the paint that is our style, that is how we live our life. No man can force us to use the colors we do not want to nor make us draw what is against our nature, no man can make us dream any different from what we have already envisioned in our minds, but it is for us to fill this canvasse with our own hands and creative juices, with our blood sweat and tears as we trudge towards the peak of our individaul existences.
I will scream my last scream when the time comes and it will rattle the mountains and raise the tsunamis, it will be heard far into the heavens and down into the sixth level of hell or call me not a man, created in the AlMighty's image.Damn if I am merely going to fade away from this life without leaving behind me my final cut!

False Pride

My experience meeting with the National Laureatte Artist, Dato' Syed Ahmad Jamal formerly the Director General of the National Gallery in Kuala Lumpur whose works I have seen here and there and whose life is pretty much obscure to me is very enlightening. The artist who inaugurated the opening of the Penang International Printmaking exhibition at the Dewan Seri Pinang or the the Penang National Art Gallery was it seemed to me a little exhausted physically and had a hard tome delivering his speach.
The show itself was a vewry good effort at trying to bring International Printmakers to the Malaysian Art scene as there was a good enough representation from all over the Globe with pieces that vareid from Woodcuts to modern graphical printing techniques that utilizes the computer dexterity with manipulating the printing medium to produce excellent prints that captures the imagination. But I still enjoy the subtle beauties founfd in the Litho prints and the etchings and aquatints. I di not see much of these and not a one drypoint or mezzotint. Most of the works I saw was not anything that I would consider as par excellent whether it was in the subject matter or the techniques used, I have seen master printers in my life at some of the most obscure places such as the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay , such works as done by Timothy Josephs nnd my mentor the late Mr. Clarry Nelson Cole. The intaglio prints of Clarry's works was among the International Collection of Prints from all over the world that was part of the Smithsonian collection being shown at major cities around the world. His works had such a surrealistic aura about them that they were almost spiritually alive. Clarry Nelson Cole was an Art proffessor from Sierra Leone who was teaching at the UWGB when I was attending the college. Clarry was made an honorary citizen of Texas for his exemplary dedication to print making.
Clarry opened my passion for printmaking and we would spend from morning till the closing time bent over our plates polishing, scrubbing, rocking and watching nervously as the plates were taking an acid bath or how they prints would turn out as we pulled it off the press. We were lost in our own worlds most of the the time leaving eachother alone as we stare into the grains or burrs on the surface of the copper plates after a good amount of the process of rocking the plate. I was most into mezzotint as I love the sense that I am working upon a field of gold as the burrs caused by the rocker blade was set ablazed against a candle light. I could see myself running in this field of blazen gold with my hands flung out and grazing the fine gold strands like I once did while running through a rice field when I was a child. To form an image on the plat one has to flatten those wreas that will reject the ink when ready for printing. In essence like most prinmaking processes one has to be good at drawing the images in reverse. The subletlest form of art is found is the process of printmaking where the printmaker and his process of creating the print becomes one and the print produced is testimonial to his acheivement of this one spiritedness between mind and matter.
I enjoy mono=type printmaking technique as it allows me to create freely without too much technical involvement that often makes it almost impossible to pour out my creative energy. Mono printing is a technique that is about the most basic form of printmaking which can be exploit for those who are impatient but totally and passionately involved with what he does...I am a very impatient creator. I was informed of this by one of the instructors at the Miyagi Art Museum in Sendai where I had spent almost three years engrossed into mostly printmaking and Japanese Black ink paintings on Hand made papers. These three years was about the peak of my creative endeavors throughout my life. I was most creatively alive when I was living in Japan and Printmaking was ozzing out of me that even my Japanese instructors were awed by it to allow me to use their facility freely with alot of help given if and whenever I needed. Most of my best pieces were given away to my nephews and nieces simplr because I could not afford to give them anything most expensive at least in fiscal terms. They may not value it as such but to me I gave them the best for safe keeping.
I saved yet some for myself to be brought here for any possiblitility of having a show someday at anyone of the Galleries here but Allah would not permit me my glory as they ended up being missing along with a few of my best acrylic and oil paintings. I felt the sadness and the anger at the loss when I discovered it but now I only am angry simply because they had not been able to be shred with others who aspire to become great prinmakers here in Malaysia, and Ye I am among the best in this country after having viewed what representation of an Internatinal prinmaking show is like to day I know deep down my loss of those pieces is not my loss alone. Those pices carried the information i had collected for the purpose of teaching others if and when I am given the opportunity to, but as I said earlier Allah has not given Hu's Grace on this.
Among my favorite printmakers down the Art Historical figures East and West are Goya and his Lithos, Durer' and his etchings, Dore' and Hokusai and Utamaro, Hamaguchi and Clarry Nelson Cole. Printmaking was what brought closest to my spiritual self, in prinmaking I touched the unknown n myself often at times when I least expect while in the process of preparing a plate or inking one, or while rubbing off the excess ink from the burrs of a mezzotint plate to reveal the outlines of the images to be exposed finally. In the silence of the studio or listening to the background music from a cheap radio or an insignificant converstaion going on across the room suddenly I am transported into another dimention when my blood becomes the ink and flows on to the plates spread otu evenly to cover its surface the I remove it slowly like I am wiping my tears of long time hidden sorrows lock within my soul a sense of release would settle over me after it was all completed and I would feel awaken like from a sleep and WALLA!! if it all goes well a print is brought into light.
Throughout my years in the US and in Japan I had printed hudreds if not thousands of prints as I sometimes ended sleeping in the print studios when the nights grew late and the time to close was up but due to some good friends like in the security guards, I was allowed to stay dack and left alone with my works. Most of my creations were given away to close friends and and benifectors who supported my lifestyle when I was too busy to take care of myself. As I said before I could not afford to give anything less than a piece of my soul created through the processes whatever I was working on at the time.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Mantainence

The book by David Persig about his motorcycle trip across the North-Central States of Minnesotta to Oregon and California is what has been my reading material for the past week and it has been not a very smooth reading as I have expected. The book is too deep into heavy analytical research over something as simple as the whole idea about 'Quality' sometimes is too boring for my shallow mind to follow. Although there is alot of well thought out ideas about the sense of what is Art and Science's relationship to eachother and how to approach the act of working on one self as one would approach on working on a motorcycle is a bit Zennish, I am a little bit disappointed perhaps because i got lost in all the author's ramblings and i was expecting to read something of the nature of his travels in relationship to his son. I had spent many times visiting the author's son's grave site at Green Gulch Farm located on a hill slope over looking the the highway at Star Route 1 in Sausalito Carlifornia. The site is also where Alan Watts has his grave marker next to Chris's. Chris was mugged and killed in San Francisco I was told if I was not mistaken he was sixteen or seventeen years of age then.
The scene at work does not look too good for I might be getting laid off next month if rumors has it were true. Offcourse my mind has already started spinning itself into a turmoil conjuring the worse of case scenarios if and when i am out of work. The reason I am told by one or two persons who was present at the meeting of department heads is that i am too old for the job and there are an abudant supply of young Indoneasian students who has just arrived from Bali who need something to occupy their time with. Life sucks they say but you cant go blaming the Indons for every job lost for the locals or the very minimal salary that an average Malysian gets as he has no bargaining power against the cheaper labor force provided by the foreign workers. Foreign workers keep their job as they do not question their bosses' integrity nor do they dare tell their bosses to take the job and shove it, foreign workers are like indented slaves who short of suck their bosses .... to keep their jobs. The system whereby the Resort hires students under the guise of them getting their practical training done here is a very lucrative venture that all resort operator should look into as it pays more than one way for the Operators. Its cheap and its makes perfect sense when you can get very young adults fresh out of college to do the jobs which normally would have been done by expensive and not so easily managed local workers. And the institution that sends their students to be 'trained ' would even be paying for the cost of training. But who gives a damn, so long as the ssystem works and everyone is happy why not? It will come to an end sometime when local Malaysian youths finds onedya that their jobopportunities is being syphoned from underneath their feet byt the smart operators or the fact that they lack all the basic training which they should have been afforded by the very people who manage these facilities. Where would an average Malay youth find a good training ground these days other than those run by the government? I am talking about a Malay youth and not a Malaysian youth.
It is pretty scary watching the scenario being laid out for the future of this country in terms of human conflict in the making and the former Prime minister is right we are presently still sitting on a time bomb and worse. Malaysia prides herself in the fact of being a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society only the number of different ethnic groups has double of trippled in the last decade to include the foreign workers from countries like Indonessia, Bangladesh, Burma, India and China, Vietnam and God knows where else or who else. We have a multi-ethnic time bomb slowly broiling under the veneer of our exitence and we are in a state of denial about such an ogre. I watched the TV one evening where a lady politician was lamenting about this issue and the fact that crimes and a host of other societal woes are being caused by the infusion of foreign workers into our own community over a very long period of time some of these froeign workers are settlers here and have grown roots deeper than anticipated. But we are a plural society and a tolerant one and hell, foreign labors is cheap and they dont ask too many stupid questions or not turn up for work whenver they wish, they dont talk back and they are able and available for anything and everything.
So one cannot blame foreign workers for loosing one's job opportunity they got to eat too and they are not the ones who decides if you should go or stay or if your children are trained to handle manual labors or not. When the time comes they will leave the country when or how, hell thats up to if and when the money runs out or the government crack down on them for whatever illegal activities they get themsdelves into till then why worry? Just move on look for another job after all this is your country there is plenty for you to do if not why would they need to hire more foreign workers? Blame it on your bosses! Enough said for now as it is let us see if we get censored or there is a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

APOCALYPTO

Funny how I thought all the while that the DVD I had borrowed from Isabel was the movie Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando in it, the classic Vietnam war biproduct in the theaters. Well it turned out to be a pleasant surprise as my daughter was trying to convince me that it was not an old movie but a recent production and the directed by Mel Gibson no less. Off course I did not know this either untill the credits came after the movie. I was shocked to say the least and felt myself transported perhaps like Joseph Conrad, in the Heart of Darkness where horror and innocence coexist as a means of routine survival. From the movie I had a good glimpse of understanding the nature of 'fear' and how it can work for or against one.
The movie was very well done in every aspect of artistic as well technological production and the actors were real as realistic as can be, the movie was almost like an anthropological documentary of a native tribe of bygone era depicting the life of the Mayas or perhaps the Incas and their sacrificial rituals. What made such a strong impact upon me about the movie was that I was not prepared for it or I had no idea whatsoever to expect from the beginning, no preconceived idea what it was going to be about having assumed that it was a movie about the Vietnam War. Mel Gibson surpassed himself again like he did in 'Braveheart'. It is good to discover that nomatter how far into the teconological realm we have ventured to create an added dimension to our so called reality there is still the ability for someone to create out of the ordinary and make it a virtual living historical feature. The movie'300' was perhaps a little zealous in a politcal sense of the West domination over the East syndrome perhaps with the intention of collecting psychological mileage over the masses but the movie itself was quite well done in the millitary perspective where the few faced the multitude and brought the mighty monarch to his knees all because of pride and arrogance.

Fasting from smoking

This will be my third day of no cigarette and it is doing wonders to my head and not to mention the rest of my body. Perhaps it has nothing to do with smoking that my neck has a kink in it and I am having the dambdest pain in the neck. Oh well lets see how long I can go without smoking and what good does it do inside out,and thanks to the sales office PC I have been able to spend sometime writing and killing time which otherwise would have been devoted to simply sketching with pen and ink on recycle papers of two years ago Buffet Ramadan brochures. I started sketching on the back these brochures almost two years ago when I found out that the management was getting rid of a pile of untouched brochures which were no more valid as their function was over. The size and the quality of these papers were just good enough for me to scribble away to my hearts content and soon I found that I had a few hundred sketchings done of everything and anything that came across my visual taste to be sketched. At my first solo Exhibition at the ABN AMRO- USM Gallery in May of 2005 I displayed some 65 pieces of these sketches. A chinese docteor asked how much I would sell each and I told him 25Ringgit (RM) each and then he asked how much for the whole set and I told him I had to calculate which I found out about RM1200 worth. Th Doctor offered to 1000RM for the lot and did not hesitate to sell,now there is a Chinese doctor somewhere in town thw is a proud owner of some 60 odd pieces of Bahari's original sketches done on back of a recycled paper.
Oh well now the USM muzeum wants me to do a show at their premises too and possibly with the same theme and who knows they might be interested to own my works too. And so I am busy producing more sketches on the very same papers whatever is left of the same brochures for my next show at the USM. How I wish I could reproduce all the sketches on to this blog pages to make it more interesting for my readers if there is any out there. Too bad I am not savey in getting this done on my own as I am slow still when it comes to utilizing the computer I am still an ignoramus. I did try to get my works installed into the blog when I started off with the Ramblings while living in Kuala Terengganu and hanging out among a few computer whizzs at a syber cafe in Gong Badak area. After investing time and money in the project now I am still not any closer to getting a decent Web Page nor a decent blog, such Is! What happened? Oh well got to talk to the man himself if you want to know at the score is as he is the master when it comes to computers and programming them my friend Fazli Mubin had my vote of confidence and for three years I hung out with him hoping that I could get something out of his expertise to continue on my works into its next stage but alas! But hell I st8ill have faith in him and he is not going to up and disappeare from the face of the earth and even if he does he would still be visiting the Net every now and then and perhaps even pop into my blog and read this.!
When I started off with this blog it was with the idea that my art works would balnce off with my boring ramblings. My sketches and drawings, my paintings and photograph were to be a crucial part of the blog, after all this blog is all about an artist's life not merely of someone who wishes to offload his crap on a daily basis so the rest of the computer literate world can read it. My primary intention was to somehow share an experience of a life of an artist as he faces life's trials and tribulations and how it affects his sense of creativity at the same time or as the late Trungpa Rnpoche would have put it. how he churned all the crap he finds in his life and turned them into manure or food for his creations.
I have used every so often the analogy of the night soil carrier in the past depicting a philosphy of turning shit into money or food the ultimate in the recycling process, The night soil carrier in his daily vocation turning shit into wealth and health.

The Penang Bridge Run

Was reading John Le Carre's The constant Gardener while waiting for the roads to be opened again after the Marathon beridge Run. After wondering what the hell to do having left the house at seven this morning and not being able to get to the Ferry terminal I decided to hang out at my auntie's in Brown Gardens eat my roti canai and drank my Nescafe which I bought at Restoran Farouk on the corner of Patani Road ad the river never really had a name given to it for as long as I had known. It is about the most obnoxious smelling and blackest looking thing that I have ever come across and the smell has stayed with it since my childhood days. The whole stretch of this river that leads to the Sungai Pinang River is so polluted that only the thye hardiest of God's creatures survives in it. Over the years it seems to get worse and worse and only when it rains heavily and the river get a good amount of wash does it gets a respite from the filth and the smell.
Le Carre's book is getting the activist in me all fired up again alas I might be a wee bit too late to be affective as my age and resources has more than diminished and my resposibility towards my children is paramount so long as their immigration situation and schooling is not complete. I would love to be on the road again perhaps for the last entry of my journal to a foreign country but I see it as an unfulfilled dream these days. I am not good at being a father or homr maker I must admit I just dont have what it takes to be like all those good husbands who are able to build their nests and raise their young to become good citizens. I have been a rolling astone too long in my life and have gathered almost nothin that my shildren can benifit from other than my worthless art pieces that are slowly physicvally falling to pieces. I know i could have been more well off now had I focussed on making money or saving for that rainy days as I am experiencing right now when I was living abroad but as the Prophet is sadi to have said dont dwell on what should or should not have been... so I am content to just sit it out and wait till the roads are open again and head on to the Jerejak Jetty and hopefully i will not be reprimended for being late for work.

Riki-Kundalini

This morning i met an old friend who upon greeting asked if I believed in the inner powers of healing and so on. We proceeded to sit at the coffee shop close to my auntie's house and discussed the subject. I told him of my interest and how I just had a discussion with Hasnul at the USM Muzium Gallery a week earlier on a simmilar matter. My friend told me of his experience and of a teacher who has transfered to him the knowledge of how to harness such inner energy that would make it possible to do healing via inner powers. It would cost off course as it had cost him to acquire this knowledge. As we continued on with all the possibilites that can be achieved through the development of these energies through the process of what he called Riki/Kundalini methods I was less and less skeptical as it has always been one of the subjects of my intrest.
He proceeded to demonstrate his ability by purchasing a light bulb from a nearby shop[ and after a few minutes of focusing and concentration dropped it to the concrete floor several times with it not breaking. Although I was not totally convinced of his ability by this one simple demonstration I was was not totally skeptical of it either as I personally believe in such abilities from my earlier research and readings. As a Muslim my one concern is that it does involve any external beings or entities that could be the casue of such ability other than one's own innner strength and leaving it ultimately to Allah's Will to succeed or fail. The employment of other forms or entities as an aid or spiritual guide is taboo in Islam unless fully comprehended and in line with the teachings of the Prophets and Awlias or Saints of Allah. In this cases I consider one to be merely a conduit or medium for the process to take place.
All of us whether we realize it or not are inherently endowed with the abilities that sometimes boggles our own minds and the sciences. We are capable of doing extraordinary feats at times that defies the norm and logic. But most of us are either ignorant or have made no effort whatsoever to understand such God given gifts thinking ourselves as incapable or these acts of supernatural powers are beyond our will. There are those who persues these knowledges throughout their lives but are also unable to achieve the hoped for results due to one blockage or another. These self created 'fire walls' stops us from reaching our goals and sometimes never to realize them but only through knowledge and understading and not the practical reality or manifestations. These type of individuals would usually require a string teacher to open their locked doors and unveil their perceptons to be able to see through and beyond words and ideas. Most religions and cultures insist upon the need for a teacher or a spiritual guide in order for one to venture into the unknown.
However jaded one might be towards the subject in these days and age it is not a total waste for some to keep persuing and developing these capabilities as it might just be what is need for man to save himself from his own self destruction or carry him through these dark period of his history. Wars and deseases, climate changes and natural disasters, rape and murders are becoming an everyday occurences and we stand the chance of becoming comfortably numb from too much bombardments of these negative energies globally. Man needs to stay in touch with his inner being discover who or what he really is and locate his sense of ownership of this planet as written in the Holy scriptures... for man has been created as the Caliph of his environment, warden or keeper of his planet and all the is within and without seen and unseen. To loose touch with this gift is to loose control over his own sanity and the means to save the very thing that he has been alloted to care forand as a mateer of fact man ends up becoming the slave. Faith is not just worshipping One God or many it is the ability to transcend all that is and become what is that is the Lord over all creation. As it is despite our so called progress in becoming civilized and technological geniuses of the century we are closer to becoming worse than the worse of the Lord's creatures for we kill for the fun of killing destroy simply for the sake of being able to do so.. The power to create positively and with compassion for the benifit of the whole is slowly deminishing leaving us merely vicitms of our greed hate and dellusions. We are becoming self serving creatures at the expense of those we are dependant on us, we are abusing our God given rights and the intelligence that goes with it.
Wake UP!!

The Complete Enlightment

My daughter needs to do her homework at the CC and so here we are with me not even having a chance for a shower since i arrived home from work. It was a long tedious day at work with hardly any day trippers going into the resort what with the rain and it being a school day.
I have been doing alot of sketching for the past few days mostly reproductions of blak and white pictures that attracts my fancy and my caricatures. At the same time i am also rereading the " Complete Enlightenment" a Zen book by the Chan' Master Sheng Yen. It is a comentary on the Buddha's sutra which was said to have been based on his answers to questions raised by some of the foremost boddhisatvas regarding the understanding of and practices for the achievement of Complete Enlightenment. This writing and commentaries by the Chan Master is one of the most profound and easily understood of writings on the subject of Buddhism and in particular with regard to the the explainantion of a Zen teaching.
What i have learned and came to understand of Zen while living and practicing at the San Francisco Zen Center at Green Gulch and Tassajara Zen Mountain Retreat has been brought to clearer light. I found Zen to be the closest way I could accept about my life and the way I chose to live life. It is clear cut with no holds barred and it allows for one to make mistakes and feel free from too much guilt. It allows a man to be more human and yet tells him that at the end of the day there nothing to be excited about because it is all an illusion, life is an Illusion. The Buddha preached and thought this truth in every sermen he had given admonishing those who are ignorant enough to believe in the so called "self" that we all assume to be who we are. He demanded that we investigate and discover the Truth that liberates us from the bonds that this belive has held us through out our lives. He pointed out how we have become slaves on account of this misconception.
In Islam the whole idea of arriving at being empty or void is called 'Fana'" and this to me is not unlike what the Buddha has been trying to preach or make me see. I think the Prophet was said to have said that one has to die before one dies the physical death in oder to be reborn in this life. The Buddha simply wants us to wake up from our dreamstate of our ignorant life. Life is suffering only because we have been living in ignorance to the fact that we are asleep not knowing that our life is but a dream, we create this dreams albeit individually or collectively and dremas more than often has the tendency to turn into nightmares sooner or later and nightmares are what we are looking at in this day and age of ours. All over the world we kill and send millions into exile, destroy our environment wantonly like there is no tomorrow, we are full of greed, hate and dellusions. Sometimes this is achieved all in the name of an ideology or a belief system, an ism or a religion all in the name of the greater good that we beleive is good for ourselves but not for others.
Many of us believe in the Universal Creative Mind that governs all that we see and do but there is very few that actualize this creative acts in changing the course of our human fate and the Buddha and the Prophet of Islam were among the few who saw through this Mayavic life that we lead and the course it is leading us towards our own self destruction. Ironically the destruction of the self is what is prpofessed by the two great Souls but not in the manner of blind ignorance which causes more suffering than deliverance of beings from suffering. Oh well let me not get carried away with my thoughts and understanding on this subject as I am falling asleep right now and i hate to wake up with a nightmare.

What is happening with my Art

Payed a visit to the USM Muzium and had a talk with theMUzium Director Encik Hasnul with regard to what he has planned for my next show. Hasnul has over the years become a very close friend and I find him to be a very insightful and intelligent man whose artistic talent compliments his intellectual understanding. We discussed about the attempts of western mind in trying tro proof or disproof of the eastern mysticism through the use of advanced technological instruments and research methods. Telepathy and extrasensory perceptions, faith healings and the supernatural. This it seems is his present project and so I gave him my two cents worth on the topic giving him a little addition to his research in to the matter.
I told of the Carlos Castaneda's experimental and research into the healing methods of the Yaqui Indians of the Sonora desert in Mexico. The use of the Mescal a type of cactus extract to induce an altered state of conciousness whereby one is able to perceive the other dimensions existing parallel to our according to the Yaqui Indians and also the exploits of Antonin Artaud the French playwright and anthropologist who studied the Tarahumara Indios of the Tarahumara mountains of Mexico. I tried to impress upon him the effects of our own genetical makeups in so far as to allow us excess tinto our psychic abilities to penetrate the unseen in healing or being able to utilize the forces of nature in order to heal through the mind alone. This is a very deep and precariously dangerous field of study like becoming a Shaman. Not many has the ability or well equipped to embark upon such a venture into the unknown where the need for an 'Ally' to assist in the process of healing is necessary.
We both came to agree that the finality of the fact that one has to arrive at a stage of 'Fana' as in Arabic for void or seizing to exist of the ego has to be achieved before one can really harness the forces of nature in order to become a Shamanistic healer. Thus the need to get to know who you are and transcending this knowledge upon arrivcing at the answer is a prime focus of most healers for the ego is an impediment towrds achieving a direct connection between ourselves and that which we seek to join forces with. Meditation is one form of exercise whereby the state of 'emptiness' of being can be achived over a priod of time. In this state the mind is more receptive towards the subtle prescence of othe energy forms that exist alongside our own and through this sense of acute awareness we are able better to communicate or allign our energy to that which affects our healing process. We then can become a medium or conduit for these existing enrgies to utilize our physical form and execute the healing activities that is required to be carried out physiccaly.
Ultimately there is only One Healer and The AlMighty Healer is the Lord and Creator of all healers without Hu's blessing a healing process is impossible. But Allah (God) demands that man initiate and act upon the process to the best of his ability with thorough understanding of the elements involved before Hu intervenes, (Ikhtiar).
Thus the process of understanding of who we are becomes paramount in the effort to become a true healer in the traditional way like that of the Shaman or the dukun or bomoh or better known in the west as the witch doctor. Modern day technological advancement has practically obliterated this process by introducing the machines and equipments,the drugs and therapies which takes the place of the human psychic abilities. The trust in our latent abilities as humans has been thrown into the closet to be hidden from our future generations, they have become the skeletons in the closset. That knowledge which our forefathers had survived with throughout our human history has become invalid, a superstitious enterprise born of ignorance. The west has replced it with modern technology where the use of drugs has replaced the use of the human mind itself where the will power that we are endowed with has been replaced with a surrender to the hands of surgeons and scapels. Today there is more neorotics and psychos running around the planet than there ever was because we have become dependant upon themental health institutions and the shrinks who often times has no time nor the financial capability to cope with the ever growing number of schizoids and displaced entities in the world. Every symptoms has to be rationalized in the scientific manner and meet the scientific equations or rationally and logically explained. Anything that is beyond the scope of modern day medicine is considered incurable or subject to more research.

So what is the plan for my art show I finally asked him and Hasnul offered me a show in August and three blank wall in the Muzium to be filled with my sketchings and drawing in the meantime.

Pirates Of the Caribean

Having gone to see Pirates of the Caribbean one and two with my two children at the theaters the third will have to follow sooth. We also have gone to the Spider onw tqo and three together and the X-Men series it is becoming the Bahari family tradition here in Penang. It is not the best of quality times one spends with the kids but it will have to do for now.
I enjoy goinbg to the movies for as long as I can remember starting with the Hindi movies that i used to go to with my father and mother while growing up in Penang. I loved to old black and white classical Hindi filems especially those that depicted ancient KIngs and Kingdoms, the epic stories like the Ramayana and the Mahabarata which sometimes lasted for more than three hours long. My imagination was enriched at a very early age by these classics and later when I was living in Terengganu my taste for movies switched from Hindi to Chinese and Japanese movies. My oldest brother would take my twin brother and I to the early Chinese Kungfu type movies where there was alot of swords ang guts spilling all over the place by the end of each movies. Later on along came the Japanese movies like Zatoichi, Yhe Blind Swordsman and Kurosawa's black and white classics like Yojimbo, THe Seven Samurais and The Forty Ronins. Along with these Asian movies was the early Clint Eastwood cowboy series like A fistfull of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and the The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and so on. These were the movies that I never missed when I was growqing up in Kuala Terengganu, what else was there to do otherwise for a teenager growing up where the only source of entertainment was the Theaters.
Today the movies has moved into a whole new dimension with the latest in computer animation technology movies has become almost a virtual reality where anything and everything is possible with the manipulation of the cinimatograhics. I tremendously enjoy the latest of the Marvel Productions series like Spiderman, Batman, Superman and the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and so on. My oldest used to buy Marvel Comics eversince these series were first introduced, if we had kept his collections of the DC Comics till this date it would be worth a fortune. Thanks to him we, my twin and I were exposed at a very early age to some of the first ever issues of these movie character like the Incredible HUlk when he firts joined the Marvel Comics.All these happened in the early sixties when my oldest brother was teaching at Sultan Sulaiman Secondary School in Kuala Terengganu. He had made a great impact in my growing up as a teenager not only in his taste for comics but also the Play Boy magazine and Jazz albums, the Erotica collections he had hidden in two suitcases under his bed and most of all the way he had carried himself as a teacher feared and respected by students and peers alike.
It was also through my brother that I developed the love to read and till this day I am hooked to reading and at present i am reading a novel by Irving Wallace, The Three Sirens. Just finished The Fourth Estate by Jeffery Archer. My twin and I are forever indebted to our eldest for his wisdom and farsightedness in the manner he had raised us for if not for him I would not be sitting here writing these words.
Reading good novels for me is a form of transportation that tkes me to places that i only could dream of and I have gone many of these places in my real life afte i have read about them and fermented their imges in my heart with the desire that one day I would be there where the authors have been describing. The Characters in the novels are people that I see in my life and wondered what they were like, what their dreams and aspirations were and where and what they had done that is different from me, there is so much to do to touch to taste to experience in life and only through the vivid imagination os great writers and one's personal commitment to read and enjoy reading that one can reach the sight of the impossible, the vastness of humanity.
Movies helps one to mayerialize the written words and it take the imaginative and creative minds of the artist to render words into images.