Here: a video sequence of the sun rising and a random shot of some clouds later on that day.
The transcript is NOT available. Photos, however, are available by clicking here.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Visiting Taiwan: Part II, Yu Shan Sacred Tree
My friend Jane Shuput visited over the Christmas/New Year holidays. Together with Fiona we spent our time exploring some of Taiwan’s most impressive, scenic retreats from Yu Shan National Park to Taroko Gorge. Besides mountains and geological wonder, we ate plenty of Taiwan’s varied cuisine, explored the streets, spoke bad Chinese, and welcomed in the New Year on a stranger’s roof in Taibei. The following adventure happened on Jane's eighth day in Taiwan, in Yu Shan National Park.
“After all,” he said, “life and death must look pretty much the same after you’ve been around for twenty-seven hundred years.” They walked down the timbered path. The tree stood tall, ancient with one tender white branch pointing directly toward the sky. As they walked about the elevated railing—that is he, his girl friend, and his friend visiting from Paris—the obvious, though not insignificant, correlations to history and time came to them. This tree tendered carbon from the air in a world where the Greeks hadn’t yet flaunted a pillar. More—when it rose from the earth, unaware of its endless journey, those men were still scrambling for an alphabet. Consequently, their two heroic songs that have meant so much to western culture and thought were still only echoed in the hills. The Great Wall was constructed when this tree was a stately peer, respectably some 500 years old. Even the woods about it must have flickered and passed away like flames that did not do more than tease its sides. Were seeds made the same back then? When it was young could it grasped a fate stretching out before it—tedious—and unremarkable—old before it was matured? What had led this tree to grow this big, this long? Was there some joke he did not get?
To one of these, his friend responded, “how had the mountain allowed it to grow this big, this long?” This was stirring for another reason. On the drive to the site, the road was here and there destroyed where God might have taken his finger and clawed it a length down the mountain, here where rockslides had upturned the earth and rock and everything in their path. This tree, for example, was evidence that no such rockslides had touched this hill for almost three thousand years.
Some Taiwanese tourists came down and took the pictures of themselves at the base, no doubt they were photos of faces each with a similar gray background. No one seemed in any hurry. I stayed in the shade of some other trees and looked at the giant from another angle. The giant made me think of other giants: whales, rhinoceroses, and Roman Galleys. My girlfriend approached and said, “Do you like this side of the tree?” This was an appropriate enough question. The top hill side of the tree was covered in thick mosses, ferns, even various other saplings of other species that had decided to take resident there on that ground, as reliable as the mountain itself, and on the bottom side it was bare and dead. Huge grooves ran up the length of truck, light gray, like no other substance imaginable, neither something fibrous or mineral. “Yes,” I said. “From here I can see every aspect of the tree.”
The more I thought about it, the more the tree seemed like a freak of nature, and I suddenly realized my analogy that had been hidden in my mind but all the time active and latent—I saw the thing as a freak creature, sole of its kind, mis-matched to the world: a Frankenstein. And what weird passion is that—what weird meaning to stand so alone against time, until time itself becomes irrelevant and identity disappears?
Slide show: click here.
“After all,” he said, “life and death must look pretty much the same after you’ve been around for twenty-seven hundred years.” They walked down the timbered path. The tree stood tall, ancient with one tender white branch pointing directly toward the sky. As they walked about the elevated railing—that is he, his girl friend, and his friend visiting from Paris—the obvious, though not insignificant, correlations to history and time came to them. This tree tendered carbon from the air in a world where the Greeks hadn’t yet flaunted a pillar. More—when it rose from the earth, unaware of its endless journey, those men were still scrambling for an alphabet. Consequently, their two heroic songs that have meant so much to western culture and thought were still only echoed in the hills. The Great Wall was constructed when this tree was a stately peer, respectably some 500 years old. Even the woods about it must have flickered and passed away like flames that did not do more than tease its sides. Were seeds made the same back then? When it was young could it grasped a fate stretching out before it—tedious—and unremarkable—old before it was matured? What had led this tree to grow this big, this long? Was there some joke he did not get?
To one of these, his friend responded, “how had the mountain allowed it to grow this big, this long?” This was stirring for another reason. On the drive to the site, the road was here and there destroyed where God might have taken his finger and clawed it a length down the mountain, here where rockslides had upturned the earth and rock and everything in their path. This tree, for example, was evidence that no such rockslides had touched this hill for almost three thousand years.
Some Taiwanese tourists came down and took the pictures of themselves at the base, no doubt they were photos of faces each with a similar gray background. No one seemed in any hurry. I stayed in the shade of some other trees and looked at the giant from another angle. The giant made me think of other giants: whales, rhinoceroses, and Roman Galleys. My girlfriend approached and said, “Do you like this side of the tree?” This was an appropriate enough question. The top hill side of the tree was covered in thick mosses, ferns, even various other saplings of other species that had decided to take resident there on that ground, as reliable as the mountain itself, and on the bottom side it was bare and dead. Huge grooves ran up the length of truck, light gray, like no other substance imaginable, neither something fibrous or mineral. “Yes,” I said. “From here I can see every aspect of the tree.”
The more I thought about it, the more the tree seemed like a freak of nature, and I suddenly realized my analogy that had been hidden in my mind but all the time active and latent—I saw the thing as a freak creature, sole of its kind, mis-matched to the world: a Frankenstein. And what weird passion is that—what weird meaning to stand so alone against time, until time itself becomes irrelevant and identity disappears?
Slide show: click here.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Visiting Taiwan: Part I, New Years in Taibei
My friend Jane Shuput visited over the Christmas/New Year holidays. Together with Fiona we spent our time exploring some of Taiwan’s most impressive, scenic retreats from Yu Shan National Park to Taroko Gorge. Besides mountains and geological wonder, we ate plenty of Taiwan’s varied cuisine, explored the streets, spoke bad Chinese, and welcomed in the New Year on a stranger’s roof in Taibei. Here is a medley of footage I took New Year’s Eve. Jane and I met up with Fiona in Taibei to celebrate the New Year. Climbing from rooftop to rooftop we finally found a suitable place to see Taibei 101 burst into flames.
One can also view some photos I took by clicking on "All Photos" to the right.
One can also view some photos I took by clicking on "All Photos" to the right.
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