The Changhua Thirty

This Saturday afternoon, Sepetember the 27h, I found myself in Lukang, a town five dollars and 2 hrs north from Chiayi City, and its attraction is its resemblance to "old Taiwan." It has several important, or at least beautiful, temples and the town is pretty much maped out for the hundreds of visitors that come weekly, if not daily, to tour the streets. I saw a lot of young parents with their young children, retirees, and even high school kids just hanging out, eating the street fair, and wondering about the roads as if they were in one big mall. I can't say too much about my experience there though because soon after I arrived I found myself going home. A lady who I was having tea with (all my adventures seem to end this way) told me that a big typhoon was coming and that they wouldn't be open the next day or on Monday. This made me reconsider my plans to spend the night in Lukang for one night. What if, Sunday morning, I could not get back? What if the storm was such that school would begin Monday, but I wouldn't be able to get back? I had stupidly left my cell phone because at the time of leaving my progression of thought was this: "my bag is too heavy--I'll leave my cell phone." It didn't seem a problem at the time. I don't use the cell phone and if there was an emergency I could always use another phone. It didn't occur to me that any number that I would need to call was--you probably guessed it--programmed into my phone and not something I know off the top of my head. All this pushed me to turn home prematurely. I guess--and this is the really stupid part looking back--the typhoon wasn't such a big surprise even though it seemed like it at the time. I had originally intended to head up to Ali Shan but had been unable to get a train ticket because the train had closed due to the typhoon. Perhaps I exaggerated the reality of this: I considered that those who were in charge were overly sensitive to the rail's teeny tracks and the happenstance of mudslides. This, the clouds that morning setting out, and the considerable gusts of winds all should have reconciled me to staying in Chiayi, but I was irreconcilable. I needed to get out of Chiayi and spend some time elsewhere.

This brings me to the point of waiting at the trainstation at five o'clock with nothing to do. My train was to come in forty-five minutes and then I remembered something I've been meaning to do. As a casual observer of Taiwanese fashion, which I'm really quite interested in, I've been tempted to take photos of interesting clothing I see on the street, something like I saw in the NY Times where a photographer showed a series of photographs he took of self-designed and made clothing outfits that he saw "on the runways of the streets of New York." But I also have been wanting to attempt a series of shots of some portion of the city taken from the same position at exact intervals of one minute for the duration of thirty minutes to one hour. When completed it has a shocking character, throwing question upon the construction of time, narrative, and place. As you watch characters--nameless of course--who wander in and then out of the frame you begin to realize just how long a minute is. But what is more shocking is to see a character again and again, someone who disappears and returns. The constriction of time (only able to see captured shutters onto what is actually a constantly evolving setting) and space (the borders of the photo are predetermined--if a murder occurred to the side of the camera one would never know but would have to impute what is occurring from the reaction to the events) draw into question our knowledge of narrative. In a completely voyeuristic fashion, the seat of observation holds no privileged position but must feed on what is accidentally captured. On one hand, the observations one can make are nearly limitless and the speculations are a hundred times more tantalizing without having to devolve into romanticized sensations. Who is that person partially out of the frame? Who is standing just outside the frame that could give you that one additional clue? Who has just walked by the camera the second before the magic one minute has passed? I think the accumulation of the effect is the appreciation of how rich any one place at any one moment can be--how rich our own lives are without necessarily realizing that we are an actor to some unseen eye, a view which we can appreciate but not completely satisfy in this world of mirrors. When I look at the series, I am reminded of Hogarth or any traditional mural painting, but here is something that is even more fascinating to me because what you see here is real and unfabricated.

I can't take credit in anyway for this series, however. The idea really comes from my friend who has studied art at NYU and she once showed me a one hour series she had done, which was much more incredible than what I produce here. She called her series, if I remember right, A New York Hour; so in that tradition I call this one, the Changhua Thirty. Do enjoy. One warning, however: The pleasure of these images is to study them in detail so it would be best to view the images large, perhaps in a slide show and manually click through them. It is also part of the play to flip backwards and forwards to try and make connections, so I do say now that if your connection is slow and constantly have to wait for an image to appear, it might not be the most interesting thing. The link is to the side.

From "CHANGHUA THIRTY"

Moon

"I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude--save for a few black faces--have made it a rule to dress for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism." Eskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands

Tonight is not moon festival but people are nevertheless celebrating, perhaps compelled by the mildness of the typhoon so far. On the TV, it appears that a giant white dollop of whip-cream is consuming the entire island of Taiwan, but here an apprehensive wind has been rattling windows, searching up and down the streets, calling forth its warning, but with no follow through, and so the people all day have been going about their business with one eye to the sky and the other into their concerns of Saturday. Even I was willing to take my chances to ride out to the single English bookstore in town and brave the possibility of imminent rainfall.

When darkness fell I ventured across the road with a bundle of clothes wrapped in my bath towel and slipped through the unlocked green gate of my school. It is eerie to be there at night with such a dubious purpose as washing my clothes, but, forced by the habits of single life, I am sometimes only ready at unusual hours for this chore. But tonight it was also partially beautiful. The entire day of wind and bursts of light rainfall had left the evening cool and calm; crickets sang and the street light shone half-heartedly through the playground trees, setting a stage that would be perfect for the chance and mysterious encounter to a heinous crime or horrible secret, such as when the boy in Treasure Island innocently enough falls asleep in the apple barrel to then overhear deathly dealings.

But I quickly left these settings for the city streets. While am not particular fond of the rain or the fact that it is usually only at night that I have time to wander, I do believe that the city is so much more clearly a city at these times, as if the wet and night were elementary to the city's constitution, commanded from the beginning when those that had the power chose the build of everything from the tiger to the lamb.

But tonight the air was thicker than usual, for in every house there stood a group of people with something like enjoyment set on their faces, and they spent their time looking out onto the streets with skewers of meat in their hands and congregating about a crude, footstool-sized metal grill. The smells and mood were those that I had been apart of the night before and so I did not stop or loiter, fearing too the generosity that these families would perhaps bestow upon me as they quite naturally seem to do, but I wished to press on, stopping only at a small park, which was entirely empty but for a group of boys that quietly but persistently attended to their sport of setting off fireworks some of which violently shot horizontally across the earth. This seemed to bother nobody who wandered by and so I let myself to it and listen to the sound of the great city that across its face fireworks were being set off so that in orchestration it sounded something like a expansive pot of popcorn that slowly attended to its task.

Though it seemed like everyone was finding shelter near their grill or setting fireworks off in a park, it was something pleasurable and confusing to see the cars still speeding about the roads, each according to its own mission that no holiday can ever quail. It reminded me of that odd vision of people out on Christmas day and the surfacing realization of people's continuous needs and restlessness, never quailed by the sacred rites we ask it to attend.

I found myself then at my favorite sushi restaurant where I slipped inside, noticing it was crowded and feared immediately being an annoyance to taking up an entire table while dining alone (something that really isn't done here). But I was greeted by the mistress of the place, one of two women who with graceful attention control the operations of the restaurant, by a simple and quiet, "Hello Joe." There were several unoccupied tables in the back where I was led, asked my preference, and then, once seated, was helped through the now familiar menu. I gave my order and waited.

I could have chosen this as my favorite restaurant simply by the quality and price of its food. But I also come here because it is simply inviting; and I'm very often surprised. The staff frequently brings me a small dish I haven't yet tried and in this way I've been introduced to some of my favorite dishes. The first, that I had again tonight, is a simple onion salad. In fact, the only vegetable in this salad is the onion, sliced thinly and a thousand times, the pieces arabesque in a lovely, translucent sculpture. On top are green onion pieces and sesame seeds. However, the bite of the salad is not from the onions, and, if it weren't for the small green onions, the onion flavor would hardly be present at all, the onion serving primarily as a fresh tasting, crisp and cool base for the sesame dressing, seasoned with fresh black pepper, a vinegar, and a combination of sweetness (honey?) and lemon. Sometimes, this dish in other restaurants is seasoned by flaky brown pieces of garnish, something resembling in fact dried bits of onion skin. I'm told that this is actually certain fish scales that are used as seasoning, but despite this their taste is earthy, and in any case, I prefer the salad without. Other dishes I had tonight also were favorites, including something they call zhu pai. Zhu, I know, is pork, but I do not know what "pai" is. What is issued forth though is a thin piece of meat that has a crust and has been fried. It is universally served with a dollop of ketchup and a dollop of sweet mayonaise which inveritably become mixed together. Sometimes the meat is cooked with garlic flavoring and sometimes not, but it is always served with a very simple and fresh garnish (tonight sprouts) that play a complete opposite to its rich and oily nature.

When I left, it was now rainning well enough and I only had my hat. Also because of the way my shower is set up (really a hose extension from the tub) and because the cieling is somewhat dropped in my bathroom, I must kneel to wash myself thus making my soaps more excessible as well as avoiding the difficulty of bumping my head against the cieling. As a consequence, my knees are sometimes fitful with anything but a slow and ease stride. Because of this I walked slowly, finding the moments when the rain lifted, and pausing each time it renewed its force. At each awning under which I waited, it was impossible to say whether or not I was giving the storm the chance of becoming stronger or was allowing it to blow itself through. And when at moments I was inspired with a mad dash, I could not decide if it was better to do so at a moment of clarity or at sudden heavy rain.

Eventually, I made it home, much more wet, with 12 litres of bottled water that I had purchased at a happy-mart during one escape from the rain. But as soon as I put these down, I dashed out one more time, found myself pulling folds of clothing from that still womb in which they lay, protecting them as I crouched by the warm machine's side against the unclean rain of the sky, and acting in all manners like a furtive figure darting through the shadows of life.

Eureka!: Laws of Displacement

I got my sister's e-mail today at school about a front page someone did about her out west adventure (link here: http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2008/09/01/news/news01.txt). It struck me chiefly by the vivid and glorious photograph of April and Honeychild in relief by the direct American sun. I teared up and looked to find some child or teacher to grab to show it to but none were convenient. But also, as I read through the contents of the article, I began reflecting upon something I remember April writing, whether it was in her blog or in a letter I forget, about the moment when Dana decided to leave the expedition. April likened this feeling to the blind and scary feeling she felt when in an airplane descending into Delhi several years earlier, feeling entirely alone and overwhelmed. Since reading that, I felt, reordered, and wrapped that particular sensation up, and maybe several times I have thought about it since then when I wasn't looking. But today I wanted to think about it some more. I was also provoked by reading various articles on the hurricane that was threatening New Orleans, and reflecting on the feeling those people felt then and now, getting on a bus, without knowing where one was going or if one would ever get back. Surely this sensation is not the point of travel or these types of things, but in fact a painful reoccurring theme of life which is to be avoided. No--the reasons must be many to remove oneself from others or so cryptic one is compelled without any sense at all (or otherwise dictated as in war or in hurricanes).

All of this threw good fodder on a fire that always has coals to me now, the abiding awareness of my separation. Since I've left, many startling things of lesser and greater sorts have happened to make me reconsider my stupidity or brashness for coming out leaving behind my commitments to people at home, which are made automatically through the order of living. With my eyes continually riveted back home by such incidents, it paints a potentially whimsically reality of my decision to live in Taiwan, and I borrow it from one of my favorite authors in his absolutely best book, Invisible Cities. He describes a particularly strange city, one where all the buildings have been built upon tall poles so that nothing ever touches the earth (people sleep in hammocks below their houses). The chief occupation of the residents, besides getting by in this precarious set-up, is a continuous and absorbing examination through telescopes of the earth below; muses the author: "fascinated by their own absence?" If fascinated is not particularly the right word, the oddity for me is equal to look back at a world, through the small hints I receive (nevertheless highly scrutinized) of photos and letters, web-address of front page stories, and all the pleasant and disturbing confetti that makes its way across the sea, and find that they all pertain the same irregular fact that I am not there. Now I may as well quote A. E. Housman,
“Is my team plowing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
But I do not own to have these affectations so great to be much concerned with my absence. Obviously, my absence considers into my image of home now. But the angles and shades of this disposition are many; it also says that the image of myself in Taiwan is one without the healthy presence of my friends and family, and it is their absence which is so conspicuous and not mine. Have the poets written about this? Oh, they have endlessly moaned about their hearts lost in the highlands or wherever their native resort. They have also clamored to proclaim the essential sameness of all diverse nations and seasons. After clamoring about the world, William Saroyan once wrote how shocked he was to find music unchanged, stepping into a music store in some city in eastern Europe and catching a wisp of Mozart and, by God, there it was again. The realities seem many from this side. We do not know why the residents who lived up those long poles were doing what they were doing, looking at the ground, but maybe one day they find out.