0531-2019

DOUBLE DOUBLE
Writings/ Photographs/ Poetry/ Archives
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine. Published on Fridays.
李家昇黃楚喬網上雜誌,逢星期五出版

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CURRENT WORK (1)

Sushi Grass in Paradise (A story)

written by Holly Lee
with photographs by Lee Ka-sing


(18)  A better handyman

Ginger was still wiping her sweat as she climbed out of bed. Still disturbed by the terrible dream and the fate of her parents, and within the next minute, she heard a scream. It was from her mother.

"The kitchen sink is leaking!" cried Mrs. Bento frantically.

It is not overrated to say that Ginger is the 'better handyman' in the building. After all, the two other contestants, Mr. Bento and Mrs. Bento are deficient in several ways. Mr. Bento has very bad eyesight, and Mrs. Bento has an injured left arm. There are times they still have to call in a plumber, a technician or serviceman to help fixing the bathroom basin, the laundry machines or the dishwasher, but most of the time, after Mr. Bento and Ginger's careful diagnosis, they will try to fix minor problems themselves. Ginger's self-learning instinct is remarkable. She learns how to fix and install many things from the Internet, for example, the bathroom ventilator, the video doorbell, and quite soon - the leaking kitchen sink. She loathes to be the 'repairman', but after several instances when they recruited professional helps, and turned out paying for some lousy jobs done, they've lost confidence in most of the so called house maintenance 'professionals'.

The real domestic hand Mrs. Bento dwells on small things, things that aren't significant to Ginger at all. She would go to great length to find warm beds for Cigar in the Winter months. Once she bought a cave bed, but it was too small and had a smell Cigar didn't like. Then she discovered a huge donut shape bed, rimmed by faux dark-brown fur, and thought it was the perfect bed for the cold sitting/dinning room where the cat usually sleeps. But Cigar hates it, and still thinks of it as another rival animal. She has thought of getting a plush pet cave bed for Cigar, who likes to burrow deep into the blanket when sleeping, but Ginger stopped her at once and reminded her of the rejected cave bed she bought sometime ago. Last Winter was brutal, Mrs. Bento mail-ordered a thermal blanket from Amazon to keep her feet warm. The idea of getting a self warming thermal bed or, as advertised 'thermo snuggly sleeper' for Cigar has never left her mind.

Ginger is an angel of thrift. She knows how to live wonderfully by spending light and right. She considers buying cat toys a waste of money and prefers to make small playthings for her cat. Cigar, like all cats, loves newspaper and boxes. Ginger would crush some wrapping paper together to make a crumpled paper ball, throw it to the already excited, athletic Cigar to catch. Ginger would make imaginary castles, safe houses and Cigar would jump from box to box, from purple Cadbury to bright orange Twizzlers, from Kerr's Halloween house to M&M's Mars abode. Ginger would then follow him with the iPhone, taking videos or pictures, playing now you see me now you don't like with a little brother she never has.

At the end of the day, Ginger gives herself a good massage from the neck-back-shoulder massager borrowed from Mrs. Bento. Cigar gets a good neck back massage from Mr. Bento. All are happy.

 

"Sushi Grass in Paradise" is an on-going story. To read the full length version with previous chapters, please visit- https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/sushi-grass-in-paradise


 

CURRENT WORK (2)

Holly Lee
Quiet Night Thoughts 床前明月光 (work year 2014)
from PictureWords series

 

I began the photo project PictureWords in 2014 with the idea of building a carousel of vocabulary in images for the written words (here I mean Kanji, the Chinese character). Inspired by Chinese classical poetry, I started my first photograph in PictureWords with the first sentence of a poem by Li Bai (李白 701-762 AD), one of the most celebrated poets in China. His work has been admired world-wide and translated into many languages.

The poem is Quiet Night Thoughts 靜夜思. I used (and pictured) the first verse “床前明月光 Abed, I see a silver light”. In doing the project, I attempt to work on the words that pick up rudimentary elements, with pictograms and/or phonetic sounds. I am always curious to learn how pictures, language and its coherent meaning work and interact as a form of communication. The individual experience of the viewers is also another interesting point of entry into the work.

There are many versions of English translation of this poem, below are two - one is my favourite version translated by Xu Hanchong. The other version is by Ezra Pound.


靜夜思
李白

床前明月光
疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月
低頭思故鄉。


A Tranquil Night (Jing Ye Si)
Abed, I see a silver light
I wonder if it's frost aground
Looking up, I find the moon bright
Bowing, in homsickness I'm drowned
(Tr. by Xu Hanchong, Chinese)

Calm Night Thought
The moon light is on the floor luminous
I thought it was frost, it was so white
Holding up head I look at mountian moon
lowering head think of old home
(Tr. by Ezra Pound)

PictureWords prints are archival pigment prints, 17x22 inch and in the edition of five.


 

CURRENT WORK (3)

Lee Ka-sing
Selection from DUET series
(work year 2019)
Photographs from DUET series are available in BIBLIOTHEKA Prints - 6.25x13 inches, with BIBLIOTHEKA blind-stamp, signed on verso.

 


Time machine


Brave new world


Song comes from a circular device

 

 

OP EDITIONS


Leung Chi Wo
Untitled (Hong Kong Cultural Centre & Penisular, 1995 (#95P0126)
8"x10", gelatin silver photograph
(printed in 1995)
OP Edition, with "OP editions" blind-stamp
Edition 9/20, signed, numbered on verso
Featured in the OP EDITIONS catalogue, issue 9503 in 1995

OP editions are limited edition photographs from the OP Print Program we organized since 1995. After we moved to Toronto, the Program was still in operation for the first five years. Over hundreds of artists have been included, with photographs released as small format limited editions, in 8”x10” fibre-based black and white or chromogenic colour photographs. We plan to publish here, a selection from the collection on a weekly basis. Some of the photographs from OP EDITIONS are available at OCEAN POUNDS online shop.

 

 

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DOUBLE DOUBLE
Issue 0531-2019

A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine. Published on Fridays.
Published by Ocean and Pounds and archived at oceanpounds.com
All rights Reserved.


Selective items in this publication are available at the OCEAN POUNDS online shop. For items featured in CURRENT WORK, VINTAGE, ARTIFACT, PUBLICATION, OBJECT, BOOKSCAPE and COLLECTION, please send a request to: mail@oceanpounds.com.

If you are a researcher or writer and want to use the material, please write us in advance. Some of the materials might have different level of copyrights involved.

Not to miss a single issue, please subscribe to DOUBLE DOUBLE Release Notification. Visit - http://doubledouble.org

DOUBLE DOUBLE previous issues were archived at -
https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/doubledouble

leekasing.com is a portal website for current and earlier works. Apart from exhibitions, Holly and Ka-sing use extensively web platforms to display photography and writing projects. Contact us for a detail list of links.

Holly and Ka-sing currently live in Toronto with their daughter Iris, and their cat Sukimoto.

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