Calligraphy and the Act of Dying

I found a $2 calligraphy brush

The delights of digging into secret stash… So many new things I can do with this brush. What should I write? 

Post drinking session, Bun named himself 目垂西星and posted his “first” poem on the chatgroup. 50 years old already, yes, time to wake up… 

散
椰糖色晚霞，浮云掠过我脸颊，

随豆花滑进我喉咙，自在
憨然半生，染过色的五十岁月，

说好的说坏的，都不许重来了

Hereby started a trend of the group composes, I write… with my “new” brush. To my surprise, my handwriting is pretty pretty nice!!!! Better than my mum’s!

Heart Sutra

It occurs to me that every time I feel unsettled, I trust my hands to keep me occupied… by doing repeated work. During my A levels, Mimi told me I started knitting a scarf so long that she could tie it to the kitchen window and escape 2 floors down in case of a fire. 

DANG! I just solved the mystery of my fingers craving a cigarette in SZ. Ok I digress.. 

Writing long pieces of calligraphy text gave me the same sense of calm and automation. How to write in a straight line. How to write characters of a similar size. To include or remove the commas and full stops? More importantly is the discovery of 繁体… looks so much better than simplified Chinese… A thing of beauty we gave up for convenience…  

I settled on repeatedly copying of the Heart Sutra – 260 words, simple enough for me to understand half of the words and 20% of the meaning. And I included a spin of the only five 繁体 characters I knew.. Sweet…

Of Close Friendship and Support

After 2 weeks, I invested in proper brushes, ink and paper. My Heart Sutra looks so much better on long scrolls of paper… So proud. So neat. Quickly sent the photo of my first completed greatness using proper tools to my friends. 

60 seconds later….

Ouch…

Luckily, I have other group of friends… 

5 mins later….

“… I can C rubber band, top petals shld be more enclosed… outermost layers to be more open-up to create hierarchy…..”

… … ...

Many many books

Ever since jotting wide awake at 3am one Jan morning to goggle “how to die” and received pages of crap “HELP is HERE Hotline”, I gave up looking for a POV and an attitude on death online…  

Library algorithm pushed all kinds of books to me… Philosophy, Medical, Biography, Wisdom of Tea, Bayes’ Theorem on life’s predictability… Except for curve diagrams, I hate curve diagrams, I do not discriminate what I read. Took notes and dumped every change in my thought process to those insufferable friends. 

 

A Calligraphy Scroll - Takachiho

Ichi-go Ichi-e,一期一会, a depiction of a scroll hanging in the Tea room in “The Wisdom of Tea”… A new scroll is hung to match every change of season – seasons of nature, seasons of the heart, seasons of events… 

I never cared or gave notice to calligraphy scrolls in tea rooms before. My eyes only on what is placed on the table. Ah… there was a scroll in the Tatami breakfast room of Takachiho. What was it? Looking through photographs, for the first time, I realized it was 江南春 by 杜牧. Someone hung up a calligraphy text describing the scenery we were about to experience in the next few days. We just did not know it then. Whoever hung it there, your intentions well received, now. 

 

On making sense of Dying 

I followed her gaze and looked out of the window. It was a view of an annex hospital building. It was Sunday and there was no wind. Is there anything worth looking at? 

In life, there are things that we understand immediately and there are things that takes time to comprehend. For thousands of years, human have been dying, but at this point, where is the accumulation of this knowledge when we need it? A clinical statement of “3 weeks” is not enough information for my brain to internalize into a something… 

I cuddled back into books… I don’t like having too many thoughts in my head… I need just enough for me to settle on an action I believe. What is my position and point of view. What will she like or want. What do I need to do to support Ken. How do I prepare M&M. 

Everyone griefs differently. I supposed I started grieving months ago. Hence, the days before the last hour, I was settled and actions came naturally. I can trust my hands to execute my intents without hesitance or awkardness. 

The fresh tangy smell of peeled oranges right under your nose… isn’t this the smell of youth and happiness? Flowers… how to place them for the best view from her angle. Colorful paintings… will the new splashes of color on the wall capture her curiosity during the short time she opened her eyes? Will she go… “that looks somewhat familiar, I have seen it somewhere”….. 起风了, open the windows, is the vitality of the wind against her face another familiar sensation? Showing her some old vacation photos, I thought she gave a chuckle… 

And then I write… with a simple notion that the Heart Sutra will reduce her fear of loss and death. Form is emptiness, there is no real, permanent self to die… See, it is the same, the more I write, the less mistakes I make… accumulatively, the path gets smoother and courage stronger. 

 

The Reception Counter

The CEO’s executive secretary’s table aka the Reception Counter is an oasis of exploration, a happy creative corner… CEO will be happy to see the young ones next to her attempting to write. Yes, I bought rolls of different paper and plenty of brushes for anyone who wants to chit chat over beautiful things they create.  

Despite questioning of purpose and all, the young ones do get it (after a while) that It does not matter that they do not understand what they are writing. The act of writing is a quiet return to inner self, writing for one’s own sake and the enjoyment of slowing down one’s thoughts. “Should we write one more piece?”… sure… “I have finished half, can I burn to show Ah Ma first?”…. sure… 

Even elderly residents passing by stopped to watch the gals write silently and gave a thumbs up before leaving… Now uncle has nice stories to tell other old neighbors “I met a young gal who can write very well…”  Life is made up of many such fleeting encounters that we chose to create for ourselves and others.

They say handwriting is a powerful expression of one’s personality and spirit… same goes for any spontaneous scribbles… It takes courage to pen anything down, esp. with a brush. A person with no anxiety taking the first step that risk ridicule, has no anxiety embracing life. Respect. 

 

Death is about Living 

After months of my intensive research on death… my conclusion is Death is all about Living. We cannot always live up to who we think we are. We learn about shame and how to deal with it. There is an over-production of truths by everyone that we cannot consume so I will only embrace what matters and walk away from others. 

In essence, life is a theatre and 烟火气is important to feeling alive. In school, everyone wants to get into the Drama Club, it is most fun acting out different characters. I very much realized in the past months, my role is creating the ambience.

Will the dancing orchids flutter in the breeze, subtly making the audience realize it is alive and not just a prop? Is this incense’s smell too flowery for the remembrance of the mood?  Is this cup better being Celadon, simply because I searched 20 years to replace my one broken cup? How is the aesthetic of the sound? And yes, I guess I will also hang a new calligraphy scroll in the background every change of season. 

It will be delightful to one day, see M&M look up from the table, at the wall and say “mum’s handwriting has really improved in the last 10 years… did she write about the rain this time? She does love the rain…” 

Bye Bye Snake... Hello Horse.

Happy New Year. 

No CNY painting this year… So sad… was too busy (actually horse too hard to draw)… The fire horse was rumoured to be a year of 大大大凶 for dearest me… But we will get to that in the coming days… This is a blog to wrap up the year of the golden snake.

Meggi had the greatest fun participating in the Festival Winds 2025. Her brother was super excited in his “fancy seat” supporting Meggi at the Esplanade, cheering “Jie Jie! You are awesome!!! This is the best performance ever!!!”

Skiing in Shen Zhen was nice. Biggest indoor ski compound in the world and M&M were speeding along like they own the slopes. I was not bad myself, spending most time chasing after the M&M. Could not locate Kenneth in the white landscape – either he had given up somewhere or progressing so badly that coach had to spend more 1-1 time with him at the training slope. 

Singapore Office Party. Galaxy theme was hard!!! But the folks seemed to do well…

Black Hole vs Big Bang!!! Both trying very hard not to win Best Dressed. 

Jellyfish species ??? Alien invasion??? Self Appointed King of the Galaxy? 

Same party location as years ago when two plastic sea brass trophies was shoved to me and Joris for winning the most prestigious  “Worst Project of the Year” or maybe “Most Unhappy Client Award”. Those days were really fun. Suddenly I missed AM. He would make this party much more silly and hilarious. 

Shanghai Office Party. After nagging at them for some time, they finally abandoned round tables and went thematic role play. Dotter encouraged me to go for full ancient costume make up, selected this look for me. If not now, then when - she said... I liked her logic. 

Amy scoffed at the selection“ …this dress is for drinking tea, not wine…. How to play? Skin? Where is the skin? Show more skin….” 

“More slutty?…. Its 2 degrees in Shanghai ok, you want me to freeze to death?”

I did eventually asked Shanghai team to find me something closer to 蜘蛛精, any 妖精 style but they came back saying all the clothes very 淑女.

淑女 I was certainly not because I ended up having a video call with the money people before party. Heated arguments and multiple roll eye balls moments. Charisse could not stop laughing, rolled over and dropped me a side text “NEVER dress like this to discuss serious finance topics ever again”… She could not resist eternalising this moment with a screenshot which became photo of the year. 

Party was well organized. I was determined to get the gals to work the night and create new revenue stream for the business. Though some guys from dunno what era looked at me and say “你战国的？是不是有点老啊？"。。。"只大你千多岁好吗，我穿越不可以吗？" So annoying!!!

Costumers these days are hard to please: 

扑过去。。。“先生，要吗？”

。。。“多少钱？”

“200元。”

。。。“有开发票吗？”

Even Mimi was having fun with my aunties. Another crazy bunch partying elsewhere. 

After multiple unlucky attempts… Ken finally got the good news he wanted while drinking in Amsterdam… Looks like our holiday locations are set for 2026…

Bye Bye Year of the Snake. Am so done with the year. 

How to Die

3.05am. I woke up in the middle of the night to write this. How unprecedented.

How to die. I have been pondering this question a lot lately. Tried to google search about dying and all helplines and hotlines popped up.. Tsk... How unhelpful. Searched the national library for books instead and reserved "When breath becomes air" and "The denial of death"... need some reading materials for my upcoming work trips transiting airports again...

As we grow older, we cannot help but accumulate more experiences of other people dying. And dying is so ... personal. what do I want that I can wake up in the middle of the night to pen this down?

I want dignity on how I want to go - not to be dictated by others who think this or that is good or bad for me. Hence to be lucid and maintain ability of thought and communication is important. When I am dying, I am not an exhibit to visit. I am likely to look terrible so outsider visits will likely be burdensome. If we have not met for the last 6 months, maybe there is little value of you occupying space beside my last months and days. 

Please do not give me words of encouragement like "when you are better, we can travel etc etc”, trying to tug at my heartstrings to maintain strength for your sake when I should be preparing and building courage to leave. You make me feel like I have failed you and it is on me to be brave and stay strong. Just provide comfort and support me going through a difficult process. 

There is a 100% certainty of us dying. Maybe suddenly, maybe a long dragged out illness, maybe peacefully in sleep. Even if I were to die abruptly, I will like to believe people I truly love would have received all of my love while I was alive. I would have shown love enough for you to feel no regrets so even when I die, you would already feel fulfilled and unburdened by my suddenly lack of affection. You are complete when my time runs out. If I have not shown you that, maybe you are not that important to me… let it go after I am gone. 

After I die, now I come to terms that the wake and all that are for the benefit of the living… I am no longer around so I no longer matter… however the living wants to ease their guilt or extend their peace. lily says the soul only leaves the body after 49 days...