Hair, one of those things that isn't really important but is simply ANNOYING!-3

A chunk of hair that just won't sit down.

Get one free, one of those things that isn't really important, but is simply ANNOYING-2

Special discount at the supermarket where it says ‘buy three get one free’, but there are only two left on the shelf. What’s the promotion for, really?

Yellowish white sheets, one of those things that isn't really important, but is simply ANNOYING

I like my bed linens white. It feels more comfortable, softer, and more, shall we say, snuggling. But as it gets older, it starts to look a little bit... yellowish. It’s not like it’s dirty, or torn, or anything. But still even when I bleach them and wash them every other week, it just doesn’t look, all that white. 

You know linens, good ones can be expensive. So I was like “C’mon, Clorox, just try a little bit harder!”

Air Doll

My Australian Working Holidays visa has been approved. In fact, it’s been a few weeks now. It got approved the next day after I’d taken the chest X-ray check up. But it’s kinda hard to tell yourself that the departure is getting closer, while in fact, after almost five years living in this city, things still feel like they are falling apart.

Am I supposed to have much to say? I took out the notebook I bought for this journey down south, figured I should probably start on some sort of a prelude, but I’ve got nothing. Instead, I felt like an air-doll seen through against the light, hollow to my core.

About the film, I personally think it’s been unfairly underrated. But I reason one must have some sort of contact with Asian culture to appreciate its almost vulnerable narrative, will then be able to see the parallel of obsession and destruction, enlightenment and the struggle. I would like to see the air doll as the metaphor here, bobbling, shallow, and weightless.

Air Doll (空気人形), 2009
directed by Hirokazu Koreeda (是枝裕和)
adapted for the screen from the same title manga series by Yoshiie Gōda (業田 良家)

Lifeforms by Daughter

I found a contemporary but sort of jazzy dance choreography video on YouTube a couple weeks ago, and I was intrigued both by the dance and the music. 

The music is from a live performance by the British artist/band, Daughter (how original! I must say). I tried to learn the choreography, but my crappy studio room is just too freaking small. I purchased Daughter’s album, If You Leave, and I got addicted. It’s kinda dark, but sophisticated, indie, but with a effortless flow, and poetic touch (Christ! What am I getting at?). Anyhow, Elena Tonra, the vocal, is an angel, and if I understand correctly, at the beginning, Daughter was actually her own one man band.

It’s not really party music, but if you need quality alone time from time to time, otherwise you’d explore (like me), you definitely HAVE to check them out!

Daughter’s official website

This video/choreography doesn’t really have a story, just a compilation of some ideas I want to try.

Music: Lifeforms by Daughter 

HD version: http://youtu.be/aKmxjO803Gk

Images of human fertilization from...

Fertilization Cone uploaded by GenderedInnovations：http://youtu.be/gtPd4Yn_18c

When the egg meets sperm uploaded by mithotyanochka：http://youtu.be/fO4UWj01Gx8

Fertilization uploaded by Nucleus Medical Media：http://youtu.be/_5OvgQW6FG4

Could have, would have, should have

George Eliot said, it’s never too late to be who you might have been. I personally think it’s a dangerous quote. Dangerous, because it incites such optimism when you first read it. Then through time, you start to shift the focus to the latter part and start to question: but it doesn’t mean that you get to be. And then you start to have reservation. Finally, there appears this really complicated feeling, quietly zooming in, subtle, but yet it sticks with you, kind of like remorse, or regret, but only about something that’s never there. 

Your life’s the same. But often, especially after being over excited about, say, some trivial, or say, you happen to catch your own reflection in a mirror, or a glass door, and you look like nothing you’ve imagined, worse, unfortunately. you hear a passive aggressive voice inside your head, asking: Well, what do you think? Is it never too late? You almost want to call it void. But again, it’s of such little importance, you wonder if you should call it anything at all. It became so disappointing that it hurts.

But ultimately, why does it matter to argue what you could have been, would have done, should have done, while you will always be what you’ve turned out to be, not under a flattering light, saddened by remembering all those plans that you failed to carry through?

The idea of believing in a big break is so fragile that it’s like gambling while you’re not even in the game. Life, consists of so many variables, is simply too vulnerable when you forestall too bright a blueprint before chances start pooling in, that is, if they do pool in. I have another quote here, from Match point, the movie by Woody Allen:

“People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.” 

In the end, you just don’t understand why you’re asking all those questions. Or, are there questions?

CVs for the road

Well, a boy's gotta eat.

Okay, I have to admit, I think on some level, I enjoy making my CVs, even more than I enjoy the actual job. (is that the reason why for a specific period, I kept switching jobs?)

Anyhow, since going to Australia is not actually a "career" type of thingy, and I've decided that I want to work in cafes while I'm there. I don't think I need a title, and I don't think they need to know too much. So I decided to go for a "greetings-through-the-post-man-ain't-that-cute" theme, what d'you think? Wouldn't you hire me? 

I've heard that it's kinda hard to find casual job there nowadays, for there are, like, so many of us, so I printed, like, forty of these, cold laminated by hand.

Free and unbounded

Working late night shifts, it’s kinda easy to feel like all of my time, I sleep it away, as if I live in another layer of the universe that overlaps with everybody’s, but not quite the same. While the day people work through the day, building their lives, constructing, for better or worse, the foundation of their future, I, as a creature of the night, pass my days in a blink of the eyes, doing a job that’s invisible to the others, indulging myself in movies, fiction, foreign politics, music and what-not, anything but the contemporary world I live in.

I get off work at 7:00 in the morning, go to bed at noon, wake up at 8:00 in the evening, go to work at 9:30. Social life is reduced to the minimum, which doesn’t hurt, for I expected and welcome the isolation and distance in the first place. But it can be nerve-wrecking, though, to start each day startled by my own weak consciousness, feeling that I mess up big time for being ridiculously late for something, while in fact, my day has yet to start.

The thing is, the body has its own memory, and is homesick for the sun in the day and the moon at night.

The past few months have given me a junky look, dark circle under my baggy eyes, which also give you the impression that I’m far more near-sighted than I actually am. My skin looks pale and papery in an undernourished way. I often has a lost look on my face. It’s harder to get excited about things, and easier to get annoyed, by traffic, by daylight, by people.

Anyhow, time flies. I had asked for the transfer myself for I was planning a get-away again, this time, hopefully for years. The flight is scheduled on New Year’s. My first stop will be Melbourne in Australia. I sure can use a little bit of that extra money. Especially now that it’s pulling closer and closer.

After my military resignation, I spent three months in New York City. I remember the first night I spent when I got to New York. I had thought I made the biggest mistake by going there, giving up almost everything I had had. It always goes back to that.

It’s difficult to say whether or not New York was a good plan. I mean, how do you calculate the benefits against the odds? A huge chunk of my years’ savings was thrown over that expenditure. The result and returns aren’t in the form of figures. But when asked if it’s worth all that, the answer is always a without-a-doubt positive, which, often feels like the line of the last defense, for I could never elaborate further on that comment. But it’s a brain reaction, I just know, because I don’t regret even one penny.

Even though New York has been proven to be the best investment in my life, to my weird, non-transmittable psyche, it does not turn me into the type of person who faces each decision with a grin and enthusiasm. I still can’t trust my own instinct and conclusion. The unknown still freaks me out, which is exhausting, for I am constantly like, ‘oh, shit, how do I know which is right?!’

What makes this time different, and inflicting much more paranoids about is that I’m not twenty six anymore. I’ll be thirty soon. I won’t even have a place I’ll be able to call home. And when I look around, I see nothing that tells me this is okay, especially in this pussycat Chinese society. I already don’t have mommies and daddies like these fuckers. If I don’t even have the roof over my head, I feel like I might as well just die!

What I don’t get is why I am so upset. Am I not the one who decided that he won’t conform to the norm anymore, against things he believes in? Then why is there such ‘screw you! you don’t know what real life is’ hardcore punk attitude?

I guess knowing is one thing. But to do, and be at peace with the idea is a whole new other aspect. So my remedy right now, is trying to be as detached as I could ethically manage, and hoping when New Year’s comes, when I’m on my way, I’ll get to see a new light along the fresh start, and I’ll get rid of feeling trapped and rejected.

I remember waking up after my first night in New York. It felt like I had been given a brand new life. I looked out from the tiny window from the west ninety something street apartment building, I saw trash and litter in that dark alley. But the sky was ultra clear, just a surreal bright blue. And I felt anything is possible. No one can hold me back. I’ll be only what I decide to be. If I want to be a writer, I’ll be one in my own way. If I want to be an artist, I’ll be one to my own definition. And I felt so alive, my head was clearer, my senses were sharp, my vision was vivid and my whole being was electrified.

After these years, after coming back to Taiwan, it all faded back to an illusional memory, maybe somewhat exaggerated because the lack of its tract. I only hope I’ll be able to feel like that again:

Free and unbounded.