Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Diary II: Something about "A Question of the Power" and International Women's Week


A flyer of the program that I am in.
Time: 2 pm, 11th of March, 2006
Venue: Studio 2, St. John's College

The whole programme of International Women's Week


IWW, Page 1


IWW, Page 2


IWW, Page 3


IWW, Page 4

I will get some hard copies to you soon.

Monday, February 27, 2006



Diary I of Rehearsal of "A Question of Power" for International Women's Week, York,

It'd been more than 4 years before I came back to the stage last Sunday.
I didn't know that I would feel shy and awkward back to stage. I made all mistakes that a good actor should have avoided, forgetting where to put my hands and how to project my voice. But the artistic director managed to help me get back to the right track. After some rounds, I think my actor-self will be back, at least I hope so.

I am going to recite/perform two of my poems on this occasion. One is "I wonder" and the other is "A Red Pepper".

Sunday, February 26, 2006


Photo from YS's camera

Something memorable in Fiesta, 25/Feb/2006, Univ. of York, UK

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Brokeback Mountain, Short Story and Film




I read Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" after watching Ang Lee's award-winning film. Both experiences were very enjoyable. In an interview, Proulx described that the film is huge and powerful and that it vividly brings to life the two ranch boys, Ennis and Jack, whom she thought have gone from her for years. I thought her complimentary comment was only abstractly and officially polite until I read the original.

Proulx's narrative is clean but heavily loaded with emotional intensity, which is quite typical of good short stories. The film and the written story enhance and explore each other's visual and verbal density.

For instance, she wrote, "Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousand ewes and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber and out above the tree line into the great flowery meadows and the coursing, endless wind".

This scene is expressively represented in Ang Lee's film. From a paronamic viewpoint, the camera captures the flow of hundreds and thousands of moving, grey, and ball-shaped lambs moving up the slope. The oppressive atmosphere, which the slow, crowded and quiet upward movement creates, is relieved at the moment when they reach the tree line: an Edenic world is awaiting.

In the edenic wild, the two teenage boys develop friendship and then romance naturally. The sharing of labors and the manless scenery do remind me of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in John Milton's Paradise Lost. In the Garden of Eden, they could be thought as sexless before the fall, and that human relationship is only naturally care and love. If marriage (in its conventional sense) is a ritual through which human beings are assigned distinct sexual roles by society, before the two teenagers' entrances into marriage later, their innocent happiness in that summer is everything sublime and everything that is destined to lose. Every goddamn thing is built on that Brokeback mountain, complains Jack. He wants to move forward and, also backward, to that edenic state. However, everything can only be built on that Brokeback mountain memory, and no more. No one can ever make it, I suppose.

When Ennis tells Jack that he's no queer, and so does Jack, it might sound defensive at the beginning, but they are truly not queer at the time and space. They are away from the people in time and space who judge, or define, their sexuality.

Another interesting difference between the film and the story is the representations of female characters. In the original, there are neither Ennis's daughters (I mean adult daughters) nor the woman he encounters in a pub after divorce. Women are very important in this story in a unique way. The female characters in the film give a very homely touch to the story. Lureen, Jack's wife, does not seem very favorable at first, but her tears in the last scene somehow show her love for Jack and her knowledge of the two men's relationship. Other women, including Alma, Ennis's daughters, the woman that Jack dates for a while, and Jack's mother, are tenderly portrayed. They show to the men their maternal love, jealous love, and filial love: love of all kinds whether it's bearable or not. Although the marriages might have been suggested to have interrupted the two protagonists' happiness, these women's tenderness contrasts other men's hostility. Despite how Jack's father has been sarcastic and rude, or in Proulx's word "a stud duck", Jack's mother warmly invites Ennis to visit them again. In that conversation at Jack's old house, it seems that his parents already learned the unusual relationship. Jack's mother is a mother after all, she gives Ennis her maternal warmth which she would have given to her own son.

I enjoy Lee's humanistic approach to issues like human relationships and family problems. Intensity of relationships is always quietly and effectively conveyed in his well-chosen metaphors for his films, ex. food (in "Eat Drink Man Woman" and in "The Wedding Banquet"), and natural sceneries (in "Crouching Tiger and Hidden dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain"). However, his films do not seem depressing even though the stories themselves are gloomy enough. His very sensible humor always brings timely relief to audience, and the relief lasts long enough for us to have more thoughts.

Monday, February 20, 2006



Badminton Tournament

Some friends and I went to a badminton tournament yesterday. I paired with Yen-lien to play mixed-double. It's my first time to play in a "serious" game. (K said, "so, you are going to play badminton seriously?! Don't twist your arms or legs." Is that an encouragement???)

Although I had decided and claimed that I was there only for fun and wouldn't be nervous at all since everybody knew that I was just a beginner, my ears never stopped ringing during the games and my arms kept trembling. The other team might have wondered why this woman kept breathing hard and touching her ears, or she's passing signals to her partner. They did not know that our only strategy was to "hit the shuttle and make sure that it flies over the net".

We didn't win any games at all (sorry for my partner though, he's a good player), but it was great fun. I saw a lot of good players and studied how they moved their bodies and supported their partners. The post-tournament session with Toyo and Yushan allowed me to apply what I just learned in the game.

It's good fun and good lesson on my mental and physical attitudes to badminton!

Friday, February 17, 2006




Afternoon Break on Valentine's Day

Some friends came over to have a tea-break with me on Valentine's day. I made some Taiwanese sweets to share: glutinous rice balls which we usually have on Lantern festival. Sweet is of course the best choice of food for a sweet occasion like Valentine's day.

Glutinous rice powder was the main ingredient. In addition to the traditional white, green tea powder and red yeast were used to add colors. I was kind of doing an experiment as it was my first try although my childhood memory about helping my grandmother out is still vivid to me. I talked to my mother on the phone before starting the experiment. She opposed my idea about using green tea powder and thought it was too unconventional to work out. However, it proved that cooking, just like life, needs adventures. It turned out that 3 colors were made: white (original), bubblegum pink (red yeast), and green (tea powder). They were very simple in taste and chewy. But I am afraid that some of them were too "sticky" that they almost choked my guest, Oscar. Really sorry for that.

The rice balls that my grandmother made were simple in taste too when those with fillings were not yet popular, or at least in my family. At that time, the natural and pure taste taught me how to enjoy and appreciate the sweet soup made of sugar. A very simple satisfaction of life that has to be remembered but constantly forgotten.

ps. I also made some balls with peanut-butter filling, but I am afraid they were a failure...

Friday, February 10, 2006



Dimitri Kabalevski

The concert by the University Chamber Orchestra last Wednesday was very nice. I enjoyed almost every moment except for one contemporary composer's work though. I think my taste for music is too conservative to understand fragmentary and asymmetrical composition of contemporary work.

However, the Orchestra nicely played Beethoven's Symphony no 2 in D op. 36. The harmony that every violin and cello tuned to was beautiful but it also presented duly tension that string music should convey. The drummer was excellent! As if heard from far away behind the harmony of all string instruments, the sounds of drums pushed, chased and excited the violins to move forward. Every drum-beat caught but re-adjusted every breath of the audience.

What amazed me most was Dimitri Kabalevski's Cello Concerto No. 1!! It was such a melancholic charm! My preference for cello did not bias my judgment, I hope. The young cellist, an undergraduate in the univ., is only 21 years old. His baby face still wore an innocent and shy expression. However, in his performance, he showed his mature skill and sophisticated sensibility to present this rather emotionally dense work. Most of the time, he played with his eyes closed as if in a trance. Occasionally with his eyes open, the dark eyeballs, in contrast with his rather pale face, expressed a deep emotion that echoed his body moment and flowed along with the melody. Barlow, this young and talented cellist, is a rising star.

I am expecting my CD of Kabalevski's Cello Concerto to arrive, cannot wait to listen to it in winter evenings.

Monday, February 06, 2006



Events for this Birthday 2006

Plenty of things happened during this week: birthday celebrations, birthday flu, birthday farewell, birthday trauma, birthday determination, birthday epiphany, etc. They were all significant moments in my life.

My birthday speech was somehow very cliche, I know. Sorry for that, I am very slow somehow and sometimes cannot express myself properly.

When I said "I am very grateful" in the party, I mean it! I mean that,
Thank you for coming to me to be my friends, as I have been clumsy with friendship.
I am truly grateful that you offered me your hand first to take mine.
Thanks for bringing yourself close to me and drawing me close to you.

Friday, February 03, 2006




Orange Therapy

I am now suffering from a bad cold, coughing, sneezing, speaking in a hoarse voice, and having a running nose all the time. I do not catch cold very often, but once it gets me, it never loses its grip easily. Maybe the only good thing is that I can speak like a gentleman now.

Yushan made a Korean Orange Therapy for me and it helped! Thank you! People can hear me better today and it seems that my burning throat has been eased a lot.

When I was in Taiwan, my mum also used similar therapy. She usually boiled peeled oranges, juiced them, and added salt in the juice. It was always effective.

It usually takes me 1 to 2 months to recover, and too much chemical medicine disgusts me. However, if in need, I am very willing to try these alimentary therapies.

Fruit is such a precious gift from nature.


Picture by Ernest von Rosen, www.amgmedia.com