Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

The monsoon kingdoms: a languid afternoon read

Posted on March 8, 2015March 8, 2015 by cheryl

Across the globe from the monsoon kingdoms, the Swedish west coast.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

2015. History was not a subject of particular interest to her. But the thick book, bound in green, fell into her hands, with its pages opening to the chapter entitled The Coming of the Europeans. This was his book. She sat and proceeded to read. She smiled when she encountered a paragraph that described the city in which she was raised, Singapore, in the 1500s, compared to the great emporium of Malacca, Java and the Spice Islands, as known for ‘nothing much’. Malacca in the Far East was the flourishing main trading port where every year, between eighteen to twenty ships were laden with numerally Sumatran pepper bound for China. Continue reading “The monsoon kingdoms: a languid afternoon read” →

Misty mountains

Posted on February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 by cheryl

Sunset, Swedish west coast.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

In conversation, a Master Yogi (MY) and his Student (S)

§START
S: Master, I have come to you today in query of an Enlightenment Pathology.
MY: You are troubled, Student? Perhaps it is that you cannot cessate your Mind?
S: I have to admit, I have no control whatsoever over my Mind. Do I attribute that you my Teacher?
MY: The Students who come to me as Sheep. Do I ever enquire after the Great Zen why it is that my Students are all Sheep and what unfortunate luck I have? What is your pathology query? Continue reading “Misty mountains” →

In celebration of 40 on Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2015February 14, 2015 by cheryl

In celebration of 40 on Valentine’s Day.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

I was seated in a tutorial session of a module in Philosophy 101. I had not a clue what the tutor was trying to explain about the Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, where it came to that one should practice not thinking anything as part of the ten grounds towards Enlightenment. I remember asking, how it is that one could think nothing? At age 9, I asked my parents what Time was. At age 10, they branded me “little Margaret Thatcher”. Would the very act of thinking not nullify nothingness? And according to what was discussed in tutorial, it is through thinking nothing that one comes into the essence of knowing. Every evening for the entire module on Buddhism, I went home and tried to practice not thinking anything. Every evening, I failed. Continue reading “In celebration of 40 on Valentine’s Day” →

Empiricism

Posted on February 14, 2015February 14, 2015 by cheryl

In Pronovias.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

Most forms of meaning-making grounded in empirical endeavors have yet to place postmodernism in their perspective. Truths based on empiricism in whatever of its hundred guises remain not only context-dependent, but intersubjective, constructive and aperspectival [1]. With this comes the grounding realisation that what is seen remains, what was seen. Continue reading “Empiricism” →

Warm buttered toast

Posted on February 4, 2015February 6, 2015 by cheryl

Semla or hetvägg as it was called in ancient times served in a bath of warm milk is an old Swedish treat that goes back at least to the 1700s. Maybe much further back than that since it is made from the ancient basic ingredients of almonds, sweetener, milk and wheat.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

Singapore

With chin resting on his open palm, and elbow resting on the dining table, he sat and contemplated his options. Suddenly, he bounced right off his chair, and headed straight for the household refrigerator. He tip-toed to reach the freezer handle, grabbed it, gave it a decided pull and brought out a tray of ice-cubes. Freeing one ice-cube, he then placed it carefully on top of the buttered toast served warm to him for breakfast just a few minutes before. Continue reading “Warm buttered toast” →

To the child

Posted on February 1, 2015February 2, 2015 by cheryl

Illustration by John Bauer. Still, Tuvstarr sits and gazes down into the water, 1913, watercolor
Text © CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

To the child that was born to least suspect
For everything promised it and all itself expects
The unfunnification of life begins with a tint of misgiving
A twinge of a tint of a misplaced shilling
To be shown all candy to be told they are there
Confirmed for its having without any care
The unfunnification of life begins with the realization
That these are just things in phantomisation
And when the child steps into this phantom world seeing
That everything it once thought it knew believing
Was not to be seen nor touched nor found askew
It will know. The unfunnification of life is just so.
A phantom of expectations that come and go.
To the child that was born that now suspects
The unfunnification of life was its founding aspect

Daifuku | a small Japanese dessert

Posted on January 31, 2015February 1, 2015 by cheryl

View from Sentosa.
Text © CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

Clarissa sat at the table with five other persons, to a Japanese lunch. She noted the interest of a friend to the family, a suitor, in the family daughter. The suitor had for some years ago, gone on a parent approved date (in Asian tradition of chaperoning) with the daughter. It had been some years in-between, but the suitor felt as if nothing had changed between he and the daughter of the family. So time was of no barrier. He felt they could carry on the conversation from where they had left off some more than a decade ago. He was about to leave the bright city lights of his home country for a new one. The new country being nothing short of a paradise island located in the crystal blue oceans of the Caribbean. He was to be there for at least a year, and most everything of his essentials were contracted to be looked after by the company that was sending him on this expatriate assignment. Continue reading “Daifuku | a small Japanese dessert” →

Carnation | dianthus caryophyllus

Posted on January 30, 2015 by cheryl

It was a wedding. A cousin’s. It happened that Ava had clean forgotten to turn off the gas stove. Ava and her husband were both already in the car on their way to church, but realising this, she turned to her husband to ask him to turn the car around. It would take just a few minutes to get the task done. But Ava’s husband was not in the mood. She could register his rising irritation by the second, “How could you be so careless?” he bellowed, “It’s just like you isn’t it, Ava! Careless and forgetful!” Continue reading “Carnation | dianthus caryophyllus” →

Goya geosemiotics in Singapore

Posted on January 29, 2015January 29, 2015 by cheryl

The geosemiotics of Singapore. Towering plastic sculptures in the city’s heartland. Freud, Goya – or both? I would beg to differ on the perspective that Singaporeans have no sense of humour.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

They walked as a pair in complete synchrony in rhythm and sway. Finding a seat in the train, they sat comfortably, next to each other. After contemplating the signs hovering above the bright coloured plastic seats of the train for all of three seconds, the older of the two decided to take the seat marked for the disabled. She was after all in the elderly range in the context where she now found herself. The pair gestured animatedly as they talked while they sat for their journey. The younger of the two had at all times in hand a mobile phone where utmost attention was paid. If there was any sort of hierarchy between the pair, it was not much noticeable except that the older seemed to speak much more than the younger. And when the younger was too engrossed with the phone, the older of the two would peer over the younger’s shoulder, inquiring in expression of what it was that made the small screen so interesting to the younger. The younger did not seem to mind this intrusion of space, a normalized behaviour that had by now become an expectation. Continue reading “Goya geosemiotics in Singapore” →

Sweet sticky cupcakes

Posted on January 18, 2015January 30, 2015 by cheryl

Red bean, black glutinous rice pudding (bubur pulut hitam) with coconut cream (santan). This pudding was made with one part black glutinous rice and one part red beans. The beans were boiled, sweetened and mashed into a paste before they were added into the rice pudding.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

The granddaughter, now in her early twenties, watched her grandmother prepare the batter of a mixture of white glutinous rice flour, tapioca flour, a pinch of salt and a pinch of yeast etcetera, for a sweet and sticky Asian cupcake. It was humid outdoors and this was something to look forward to with light tea, in the cool of the patio on the rattan settee outdoors, overlooking the small but tidy garden. Continue reading “Sweet sticky cupcakes” →