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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

BOOK REVIEW: Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise

This book is nothing if not charming. I picked it up in Kinokuniya, one of Singapore's last surviving large bookstores (somehow bookstores have not proliferated in the same way as malls. Somehow.) which still allows you to browse books. I opened it in the middle of a comic story about the author as a young boy, discovering that the "itch" inside his shoe that he had been worrying at all day was in fact a cockroach. It's a very short comic (in both senses) story, that perfectly captures a certain innocence and the intensity of the emotion of disgust when one is very young, along with its lingering effects.

Other stories in the book are more fantastical. A story about a man obsessed with obtaining a new "thingy" would be heavy-handed in its allegorical moralizing, but for the well-paced advancement of the story, and extremely appealing artwork. The author, who goes by "drewscape" for this book, sometimes veers into the banal (the first story's conclusion, in particular, I found particularly weak), but the drawings and quirky little ideas or semi-self-conscious observations (one of my favorites were a young narrator's asides on the merits of a pink water bottle for boys) more than make up for any lapses.

This book is not (yet!) available on Amazon, but is probably at various local Singapore bookstores, along with, of course, Kinokuniya. Here's the publisher's page.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

on Vocation

What is my life's work?

This word: Vocation

According to wikipedia:
"A vocation (Latin vocātiō - a call, summons) is an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which he or she is suited, trained, or qualified. Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity."



I am expressing this curiousity...
What is my life's work? What "occupation" am I drawn to for which I am (uniquely?) suited, trained or qualified?

To what extent am I already doing my life's work? To what extent am I already being financially compensated for what I am doing? To what extent is financial compensation important as part of the definition of "legitimate" vocation?

If my material needs are being met, then what else is there left? To what extent are concerns about an abstract future in which I am completely and utterly reliant on resources acquired and amassed from my own labour playing a part in how I think of work and vocation?



Here are some...:
Vocation is about friendship, justice, creativity, healing woundedness, catalysing knowledges which begin from wholeness (i.e. "I was / We were never really wounded")

Vocation is about...
completing unfinished business, with grace, mindful attention, flexibility, patience...
The unfinished business of the ills unleashed by colonialism, capitalism

Vocation is meditation & washing dishes
Vocation is every moment as "free time", time freely used to do whatever it is that I am doing, not doing whatever it is that I am not doing, being whoever it is I am being, and not being whoever it is that I am not being.


Vocation is in education, exploration, learning
Vocation is on unlearning, keeping still



Vocation is also all the icky stuff:
Impatience, annoyance, anger, betrayals, disappointments
Vocation is the work in integrating all these 
(and seeing, perhaps, how they are already perfect articulations of that which is already integrated).



Vocation, my life's work... Is vocation a luxury?
I am a religious man, sometimes... Religious, intentionally, triggering revolt from my Rational-Atheist self that decries New Age nonsense (and is sometimes femme-phobic, averse to colour, desperately fearful of mistake, conflating all error with utter failure)


I want to start a Business...
My Business is already started! I am in the middle of my daily business, it is none of your business, it is All of your business.

My business is partially allowing deepening, broadening awareness of all the business of the world, and about knowing my capacities and limitations, knowing what is possible and not-yet possible, seeing the arbitrariness of these impositions, and then choosing to act anyway. Or not act. Or assisting others in acting.


So here:

Vocation is:
Availability as an assistant.
A catalyst.

Balancing the fine tipping-point line between innovation and tradition.
Assisting others in their already-excellent work.

Vocation is:
Pouring tea,
putting labels on envelopes,
calling a friend, saying
"I don't know, what do you think?"