翁淑君 • Sook Jin Ong

#MyNameIs Ong Sook Jin. My given name is Sook Jin (淑君), because my parents believe in raising a thoughtful scholar. My family name is Ong (翁). I have my name rearranged to Sook Jin Ong in the USA so you know where to find my "first" name, but "first" is contextual. (1/2)

This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it. There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3. At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day. Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems. Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love. The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method. At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be. Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain: 仁智懷德聖虞唐， 貞志篤終誓穹蒼， 欽所感想妄淫荒， 心憂增慕懷慘傷。 In pinyin, it is: Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng, zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng, qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng, xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng. Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief." Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain: 傷慘懷慕增憂心， 荒淫妄想感所欽， 蒼穹誓終篤志貞， 唐虞聖德懷智仁。 The pinyin: Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn, huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn, cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn, táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén. It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence." That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu! At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message: 詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping." Or reversed: 蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace." Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle. For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages. Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…). Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems: - The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens. - Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy. - It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions - Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections. So the Star Gauge is simultaneously: - A love letter (expressing personal longing) - A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival) - A cosmological model (structured like the heavens) - A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy) - A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me". Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age. The heart at the center was filled after all.

JANUARY 2ND (MY BIRTHDAY🥰) OUR MAGICAL GIRLS ON SKATES ARE FULLY DEBUTING❣️ DO YOU LOVE MAGICAL GIRLS? DO YOU LOVE INDIE ANIMATION?? DO YOU LOVE ROLLER SKATING?!?! WELL MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!! AHHHH I'm so excited for our full proof of concept short to be shared with the world!

RIP, Alice Wong. Thank you.

Happy Halloween! In case you can't go trick-or-treating later, here is some candy from Elmo! 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭 🍬🍫🍭

NOW LIVE!!!!!! WATCH NOW: youtu.be/sT23E5MyZKQ?si…

@nooksneedlesco that maroon one is giving library vibes. 📚

SWEATSHIRT GIVEAWAY ✨ giving away another one of these cute mushroom cat sweatshirts!!! 🐈‍⬛🍄 to enter: 🍂follow me 🍂like & repost 🍂reply which colour is your favourite 🍂tag someone for an extra entry open internationally 🌎 closes 16th October! ✨

A must read essay on the 2nd year of the genocide newlinesmag.com/first-person/t…

In her autobiography, Assata Shakur critiqued those who were so busy engaging in ideological debates about who had the correct line that they failed to put their ideas into practical application. This is a lesson that many of us can learn from today. Ideologies must not only exist for the purpose of intellectual debates, but to also serve the people in a tangible way.

The Etel Adnan Poetry Prize is now open again for submissions after a year hiatus due to pro-Zionist anti-Arab laws in Arkansas; now the prize moved to @Noemi_Press; please submit and participate, ecnourage, and share noemipress.submittable.com/submit

Found out that aside from publishing the Malayan proclamation of independence in English and Malay (in Jawi script), the Federation government in 1957 also published official ones in Mandarin and Tamil. Saw it at Raja Ahmad Aminullah’s exhibition in GMBB.

this is why i adore my peoplesssssss

Goodnight 💤

Guys I just found out that you can support indonesian grab riders who are still out on the streets because grab allows you to make deliveries in other SE Asian countries?? OKAYYYY

Drew this in 2022 for a brand collab, and I think it’s still relevant as before. Happy Merdeka dear Malaysia! ❤️🇲🇾 1/2

والشعر، هو كذلك، يقتل في المجازر Some of what passes as poetry in the moment of genocide serves those in empire who seek validation and credit for their emotions and guilt. This so-called poetry will return to haunt us all, and will be remembered as another form of violence.

@yiiidiii whaaaaaatttt?!!!!

Today’s poem is selected by Chen Chen (@chenchenwrites) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry. “It will all work out okay” appeared in High Lonesome by Allison Titus, published by Saturnalia Books, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

Since it’s durian season, here’s a reminder that flying foxes & fruit bats are important pollinators for our king of fruits! They eat the nectar from the durian flower & transfer the pollen to other trees. Without wildlife, we would not have healthy durians, petai & bananas!