Reading the Story of a Place

Ming Chi and I visited the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. This beautiful museum is located on the banks of the Singapore River.  The majority of the collection is dedicated to all the peoples of Asia, not just Singaporeans and exhibits focus on the region's complicated past.

Photo from the Museum

     We viewed many relics of silver, gold, pottery, mosaic, and art-- all displayed in cases and on walls-- but one exhibit was vastly different.

     In an large open space at the very back of the museum is located a modern sculpture, a  large installation called "Grains of Thought," by Eng Tow.  This exhibit gave me major pause. 

     The two "grains" are actually fashioned to look like grains of rice.  Each piece is free floating, hung from cables in the ceiling.  The two "grains" fill the gallery space and are made to seem even larger reflected by one wall of full-length mirrors.  
    This contemporary work was commissioned by the museum.  Supposedly,  Eng Tow wanted to make a statement about rice.  Rice after all sustains half the world and is grown almost exclusively in Asia.
     As I moved about the gallery, looking closely at what seemed in my mind to be large stones, I experienced weighty thoughts.  For one thing, each figure would shift and sway a bit from the movement of my body in the air around it.  How much, I marveled, are we shaped or effected by mere proximity to other people, places, and ideas? And don't tiny grains of thought in the mind grow in significance and impact the more we experience?
     Like everything about my visit to Singapore, like infinitesimal details detected each moment spent in this city, "Grains of Thought" grew on me the more I interacted with it.  

     I marveled to think how big ideas are all around.  Each day is a lesson in Asia, a lesson in history, and a lesson in appreciation. I feel as if I am in a schoolhouse of little impressions: food, art, buildings, comments. The whole of the montage is still evading me but I am thinking and feeling deeply as little by little, I am learning a story and loving a city state.

Visiting Singapore reminds me of this poem by Mary Oliver:  

            Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea. 
How everything shines in the morning light! 
The cusp of the whelk, 
the broken cupboard of the clam, 
the opened, blue mussels, 
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— 

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, 
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. 
It's like a schoolhouse 
of little words, 
thousands of words. 
First you figure out what each one means by itself, 
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop 
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
                                                          --Mary Oliver