Sorry-ology

Art Scope 2009 - 2011: Invisible Memories (II)

2012-01-31T15:00:00.000Z

Exhibition in Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (原美術館), Tokyo

10/Sep -11/Dec/2011

This is the second half of my reflection on the exhibition on Invisible Memory.

Koizumi's second video in the exhibition is 'Portrait of a Young Samurai' (2009). The artist's metafictional approach continues to characterize this work: in the video the director coaches a young actor to enact a kamikaze fighter at the moment before he departs for a suicidal mission. After several takes, the young actor's mild-manneredness still falls short of the expectation of the director who insists on seeing a more powerful outburst of emotion and a more compelling expression of physical response. The video documents how the young actor matures in his role as a kamikaze samurai and manages to cry out his valediction speech with tears and mucus all over his face.

To foreigners, kamikaze samurai is probably one of the most distinguished forms of nationalism in Japanese history. They were thought to have braved the destiny of suicidal task, and the courage and the spirit that they demonstrated were more or less the extreme display of loyalty. 'Portrait of a Young Samurai', however, is concerned with the fear and emotion hidden beneath such a daring act.

Is this patriotic form of courage innate to every human beings? Or, is it a behaviour that one is taught to do? I think through the metaphor of 'coaching and acting', 'Portrait' deconstructs this image of bravery in order to explore this issue of patriotic love.

On one level, the young actor is 'coached' to perform that particular moment, but the emotion that the director envisions is not quite the love for a nation but an immense fear of a foreseen destiny -- death. In the valediction speech, the kamikaze samurai's fear overshadows and undermines every statement that seeks to justify his unbidden farewell. Here the patriotic love is discoloured in contrast with the samurai's overwhelming anxiety over abandoning his beloved family for a planned death.

One might be nurtured to love a country, but fear is human, natural and instinctual.

The director's metafictional approach by getting himself involved in the narrative and getting himself in the shot suggests a vantage point from which viewers are able to see how such passion and courage can be as simple, and as complicated, as acting. It is simple because such emotional reaction can be achieved through performance; it is complex because the ideals of such passion run against one's real wishes.

Patriotism can be performed when it is needed, when it is wanted, and when it is useful. Being patriotic is probably not so much an instinct as a shared cultural memory. The memory may root deep, but it has to be recalled repeatedly in order to keep it alive in all those who share the same culture.

*******************

Last December, I came across a German news program about technicians working in Fukushima nuclear power plant after its meltdown in 311 earthquake in 2011. The report uncovers the anger, fear, desolation, and discontent of those Fukushima fighters -- modern samurais in this context -- an aspect of their life that sharply contradicts their silence and determination that Japanese media used to portray.

German TV-channel ZDF talks with workers at Fukushima Dai-ichi

(german, english subs)

(For English subtitles, watch the video on

Youtube and press cc button on the control bar.)

I was remembering 'Portrait' and comparing the artwork and the reality. I was thinking about how this forced love for one's country was mixed with fear and anxiety, how this notion of patriotism has driven us to tolerate injustice and blinded us to all wrongs, and how we will repeat same mistakes in the future in the name of patriotic love.

Art Scope 2009 - 2011: Invisible Memories (I)

2011-10-05T10:51:00.001Z

Exhibition in Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (原美術館), Tokyo
10/Sep -11/Dec/2011

Last Friday, a kind invitation brought us to the opening ceremony of an exhibition in Hara Museum: Art Scope 2009 - 2011. The Exhibition features 4 young artists - 2 Japanese and 2 German - who are sponsored by an artistic exchange program of Dailmer Foundation Japan.

As the reception pressed its attendants to the nightly museum yard, we ran short of time for most of the works. Fortunately, however, we checked out on the works by Koizumi Meiro (小泉明朗), a video artist. It was the second time for K and I to see Koizumi's work. The last time was in Mori Museum (森美術館) in Roppongi （六本木）about two years ago.

This time Koizumi presents 2 videos on the theme of Invisible Memories: 'Defect in Vision' (ビジョンの崩壞） and 'Portrait of a Young Samurai'(若き侍の肖像）. Upon knowing the theme of the exhibition, I was amused with the thought that the presence of his artwork on such occasion is itself already an interesting paradox: how could a 'video' artist talk about 'invisibility' in his 'visual' art?

Nevertheless, the artist solves this paradox and explores thought-provokingly the concept of vision: visibility and invisibility, seeing and unseeing, and remembering and un-remembering.

'Defect in Vision' (ビジョンの崩壞）is a 2011 production, a work of double projections on the 2 sides of one screen (or, 2 screens with their backs facing each other). The showing space allows audience to walk around the screens and alternate between the two simultaneously on-going projections. The story evolves around a couple at the dinner table in a tatami room at (the end of) the Second World War. The characters chat about the possibility that soon the attacks of kamikaze ('divine wind' in a literal translation, or suicide pilots; 神風特攻隊 in Chinese) will help to draw the war to a closure. They are also planning to visit an onsen (hot spring) once the war cannot ground them any longer.

The two films, which are shown at the same time, basically repeat the same narrative and the same conversation but with differences in every turn of the repetition. Sometimes the couple are both at the table to talk to each other, but sometimes only one of them is monologuing their share of lines on the screen. Sometimes the audiences are drawn very close to details in close-up shots, but sometimes they are objectively detached from the story, especially when the director himself occasionally intrudes upon the scene.

Each repetition functions, I think, as an attempt to recall the conversation on that particular day. Every attempt, by either or both of the couple, intends to reconstruct the conversation, but every attempt only seems to fracture the entire piece of memory further. We never know whether they have made it to the onsen in the end, or what would happen to them afterwards, but that conversation which anticipated a joyful holiday seems to have returned to the couple over and over again as the videos repeat.

The memory about the day is fragmented but remapped with some bits coming from the woman, and some, the man. It is probably how the faculty of memory works. When one tries hard to remember, there are some patches of the memory getting clearer than others. Most of the time, it is difficult for the remembering subject to recall everything all at once; instead that memory is usually loosely recalled by a specific sound, a singularized object, a sharpened image, or a particular sensation. When the videos repeat, those repeated lines leave memorable traces in the audience. Watching them conversing, the viewers are as well reminded that the time, the place, the type of occasion, and the historical background, in the video, are also an integral part to a past that they all share. That period of the Second World War is remote to the viewers in terms of time, but they are intimate in terms of emotion. Especially so with the Japanese public.

When the director steps into the scene to make new arrangements for filming, he would interrupt the mode of recollection and the flow of remembrance. His intrusion has a comical effect on the continuity of the narrative. Yet, the purposeful intrusion probably explains the artist's take on the notion of memory. To record is meant for the convenience of future recollection; to film is both to record and to construct a moment in life. Memory is never true to the remembering subject, as artificial manipulation is always involved. A thinking subject may choose what to remember and what to forget, as they are the directors of their own memory. But there remains a question of whether one can be entirely in charge of the 'fabrication' of one's memory. It is obvious that human beings are frequently seized by panic when a forgotten past confronts them unexpectedly.

The video is full of metaphors of visibility and invisibility. It took me some time to realize that both actors are literally blind. The visually impaired husband reads newspapers at the dinner table: an act of looking but not seeing it. The wife serves dinner without trouble: she is unable to see but is able to see everything to its proper order. This thoughtful characterization has a clever double-play on the notion of vision: one might see, but nothing is visible; one might not be able to see, but all are visible.

In the exhibition catalogue, Koizumi provides several passages which have inspired him for the works. One of them is as following.

'I have a wife and a child. It was clear that if I discussed what I was going to do with my family they would oppose it, so I lied to my wife to put her mind at ease, saying "This time I am going to the thermal power plant at Hirono-Machi in Fukushima Prefecture." (Friday, April 22 ed., p. 21, Kodansha, 2011)'

It was a passage by a technician who was sent to the nuclear power plant in Fukushima after its melt-down after the earthquake in March 2011. In post-quake Japan, there have been protests against nuclear power plants; and the catastrophic consequences of Fukushima Daiichi have brought back to the Japanese public the 'un-rememberd' memory of the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagazaki at the end of WW II. The entire nation is asking how it could have forgotten that unbearable past, and who has again misled the country to believe that nuclear power is a savior of the country's energy problem. When the husband in the video anticipates that the kamikaze will soon end the war, he probably never knows that it was actually 2 nuclear bombs which have concluded the war in tragedy. For the couple in the story, the bombing is in the future; but for us now, it is in our memory but, unfortunately, a forgotten piece. Or, that memory is deliberately hidden from being visible.

Several days after we went to the exhibition, one of the cabinet members of the Noda government in Japan was forced to resign, only 9 days after he stepped in the position. He was criticized for his comment after his visit to the evacuation zone near Fukushima. A dead town (ghost town), he said and was immediately blamed for being unsympathetic to the victims of the disaster. In the end the criticism grew out of control that he had to leave his job.

I do not quite understand the logic behind the criticism against him and the consequences thereof. But it is strange that he had to resign because he made a comment which is inconveniently true to the reality. If the cabinet member was to blame, does it mean that we are supposed to pretend nothing has happened in March and nothing has gone wrong since then? The on-going political infightings have sought to impose on us a distorted version of memory about that disaster, a disaster which might have been avoided if we had a better memory.

Forked path

2011-09-17T07:50:00.000Z

(A draft that I did in 2008 when I was still in York laboring on my PhD thesis.)

It has been quite a merry year since its first day. Two friends got engaged and are planning their weddings. Their wedding- and marriage-related adventures have been hot topics for our gatherings ever since. I came to know how every relationship goes through ups and downs, and fortunately the two parties return to each other again in the end.

This trail is one of my new discoveries this summer. The path on the right leads to the library, and the one on the left the same. The knowledge about the fact that the diverted trails ending up in the same place came much later to me. One day when I was treading on the path, I remember those stories about relationships. I was standing at the beginning of the division of the trails, thinking that this could make a heart if their diverted ends meet again on the other end of the meadow. Standing at this end, we never know what will happen unless we move on and get through.

2011-09-15T12:00:00.002Z

Last Sunday we invited some friends to the house. As my cooking is not something worth showing off, the choice of ethnic food, especially that of my own country Taiwan, is one of the safe choices.

Mullet roe (karasumi / 烏魚子) was one of the dishes that I prepared. It was served with cubes of leek, apple, and pear in a childish display. The bitter taste of roe was entirely enveloped in the sweet juice and smoothed away.

2011-09-15T10:08:00.000Z

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' at York Minster, 10/Feb/2007

(The first draft of this entry was done a while ago but was abandoned for some reasons. Now it seems that I have a better idea about how to talk about this concert.)

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' is a perennial concert in which vocal and instrumental religious music is presented in a fascinating audioriam: the York Minster.

This extraordinary space for concert and Gamelan, a traditional musical instrument from the central Java, have been two main attractions of the concert. And these they indeed worked together very well when the Minster allowed the oriental sounds to flow through the enormous space and to create enchanting echoes. Sounds of Gamelan provide a base melody with which the audiences' imagaination and mediation created resonance.

Perhaps the combination of these 2 elements was the main reason why the concert last year got it's name: 'Echoes from the Far East'.

This year's music feast was a success as usual, but it was even more intriguing for its 'experiments of music within sacred spaces' rather than merely 'sounds for sacred spaces'. As the programme said, it is an acoustic adventure.

The spirit of the concert--being spiritual and inspirational--was maintained, but more alternatives were added to the program. Last year's concert featured a stream of immaculate vocals and sounds of which the styles were rather traditional and monotonous and the themes were consistently religious. This year, however, both secular and sacred music were heard. There were spiritual songs of folk religions and some extracts from opera pieces. The flow of the music throughout of the concert was enriched by a good alternation between musical instruments, a short medieval opera and several pieces of choruses.

The internalized profiles of musicians this year definitely helped add a new dimension to the concert and to common perception of reglious music. YoMaMa, among other choirs in the performance, is a good example.

The Garden: Afternoon Glory

2011-09-14T11:42:00.005Z

In addition to bitter melons, we also grew afternoon glory as part of the green curtain for the house this summer. Both plants have been competing for survival, and at some point I thought the afternoon glory had lost the battle.

Finally in the early autumn when the harvest of bitter melons came to an end, the afternoon glory started to take over the stage. They are such elegant creatures, the buds and the flowers alike! Its flower bud closes in the shape of a spiral; the white color is innocently silky; the the neck of the flower looks firm and its petals tender. How unfortunate that they only bloom at night and only for a night! Only those who sit up late enough could appreciate these beaming gems in the dark.

2011-09-02T02:54:00.002Z

The Garden: Cooking with the Garden

It is pretty difficult to find fresh culinary spices and herbs in Japan. Most of the time we can only do with herbs from jars. Yet, the choices are quite limited to the types of cuisine popular with Japanese. Occasionally even if one is lucky enough to spot them on fridge shelves in supermarkets, they are as expensive as gold.

After the quake, the concern about the safety of food seeded in me the desire to create a small piece of kitchen garden.

Since the summer, we have been enjoying the lush produce of basil and parsley.

I have been greatly fond of thyme, a herb that is used to season pork and fish dishes. Their elegant look of straight-upward rising stems with small and neat leaves has charmed me greatly. The fragrance, which could be fishy to some, has turned me a slave to them.

Thyme (百里香)

The other day, I replaced perilla frutescens (しそ) with thyme on the recipe. I was not sure about how it would work, but the several spoons of thyme magically turned a traditional Japanese dish of aubergine and pork mince into a western delicacy (<- please be warned that 'delicacy' might be a pure exaggeration).

Before I had an idea about how I could use lemon balm, it had outgrown the flower pot. I followed a recipe on the Internet to mix it with garlic and olive oil and used it as an alternative to pesto. Different from the thick and sometimes greasy taste of pesto, the lemon balm provided a refreshing tint on the tongue.

Lemon Balm （檸檬香蜂草）

I was not a big fan of chives before I started to cook in Japan. The strong smell, like that of garlics, which does not dissipate for several days always irritated me.

K's father planted the first chives in the garden, and I was then compelled to use them as they matured. I have used them to make Japanese egg rolls (卵焼き). To my surprise, They are delicious without any aggressive and residual odor. It is probably because I did not fertilize them very well as there was a secret hope in me for their ill-being. I am now grateful that they have survived my cruelty deriving from a relatively shallow knowledge about the world of cuisine.

Garlic chives (にら, 韭菜)

2011-09-02T02:46:00.003Z

Pimm's, an English summery taste that I have long craved.

To celebrate the publication of K's translation today, we made this very English summer cocktail with Pimm's, lemonade, cucumber, and pear.

How I have missed the English summer!

2011-08-29T03:02:00.006Z

Furnishing up the house

Last week, we welcomed a new fridge to the house and sold the small one to a secondhand shop.

It had been our long-term wish to get a fridge of bigger capacity and higher efficiency. However, the moment of selling away the old one was full of struggles. This small kitchen helper was made in 2007 and had been with K since he started living alone. It had assisted me in carrying out housewiferies for more than 2 years. Although it was small, it fulfilled its duties.

We called a secondhand shop for an estimate and reached a deal. When the shop assistant was checking on the fridge and finally produced a number that showed its value, I was emotionally disturbed. It had nothing to do with the job of the lad, but more to do with the act of evaluation itself. My life in Japan had been connected to this little companion in many aspects, and it had been, in a very anti-feminist way, a marker of a new identity that I assumed in this country. And the evaluation itself felt like a judgment on my attachment to the fridge and an final examination of my performance as a wife.

When we were informed that it would be worth 2000 JPY, I felt slightly hurt and perhaps insulted. What did the number 2000 mean? If I had had been a better wife, would it be more valuable than this? Or, it did not matter at all. I am sure I was not greedy in terms of money. It was the pride as a 'housewife' that was hurt, I guess.

I remember the gas stove that we had to remove before we moved into this new place. At that time, the stove was too dated to be of any monetary value, and it was simply taken away by another recycle shop. The shop assistant said that he couldn't offer a price because it would be illegal to trade on an old machine like that, but he offered to take it away because it was still in a good condition. There was a moment of suspicion in me, but it was soon dismissed by a false sense of pride aggrandized by his flattery on my wifery work. It might not be the truth behind his offer and the deal at all, but his compliment (which was only clear to a housewife, I have to admit) had made it less unpleasant to let it go.

2011-08-19T02:07:00.004Z

(image from todoebook.com)

A Pale View of Hills

by Kazuo Ishiguro

It is a story about several women of different ages in Nagazaki after the second world war and long after.

The narrative is unmistakably Ishiguro leaving a lot hidden and unsaid. However, these uncovered secrets do not spoil the story at all but only make it more intriguing.

I really want to know what have happened to Etsuko, Sachiko and Mariko after all of them left Nagazaki!

2011-08-15T18:00:00.007Z

The Garden

It has been almost a year till now, a long process, since I started cultivating a garden.

A house should come with a garden, I believe, as it is a living sigh of how the house owners are connected to that piece of land. It also embodies the owners' views on their lives in relation to the environment.

I cannot recall since when I started to brew the desire for owning a garden, or, a simple green space. I am sure that I have hated cement since the early stages of my life: it is a sign of lifelessness and despair. Insects and worms have never been my thing either! During those years in York, a profound interest in greens and flowers has taken root in my mind, I guess. The city and the university campus are surrounded by great nature. A close friend of mine showed me how to enjoy herbs in every

aspect of life: she used lemon balm in sweets, basil in pasta, sage for tea, and lavender and rose to scent rooms.

Perhaps since then I have been dreaming of a garden of my own. Perhaps it is also a way in which I could stay tuned to those days in England.

Following the blueprint that I drew for the garden after we moved in, I started the garden project by creating a first brick patch on the ground, the second last winter, the thir

d and the fourth in the spring, 2011.

Since I was very ignorant about gardening at first, the selections of plants were pretty random, mainly based on choices available on the market in that season. This learning-by-doing process is full of anxiety, uncertainty, and surprise, and is overall smoothed by a sense of achievement. I am also keeping a

gardening diary in which the guidelines on nurturing each plant are noted, a calendar of watering and fertilizing is recorded, and pictures of first blooms and sprouts are kept.

When snow blanketed the ground last winter, I was worried about those young lives on the ground, but it was at the same time amazing to see the beauty of the greens against the snowy backdrop. Every single stem survived the winter, fortunately but unsurprisingly.

the garden in the winter

The earthquake in the spring 2011 hampered the flow of life in Japan, and the crisis of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant and the fear of radioactive substances thereof shut everybody up indoors. I was anxious for several days, but the debate abo

ut renewable and safe energies and the concerns for the

environment pressed me to the garden. First, I was seeking for some distractions; second, when would be a better timing than this to create more green space in the world?

I completed the brick circles according to my am

ateurish plan in the midst of gloomy atmosphere among the public. But the colorfulness of printemps and the vigor that the garden showed provided irreplaceable consolation.

the garden in the spring (before completion)

At the early summer, K and I spent 2 or 3 weeks clearing the empty ground, preparing the soil, and planted turfs. The turfs brought K, who had never showed a singular interest in gardening, to the garden everyday to discern their progress and admire his own work.

the garden in May

When the summer settled in, the shade o

f green dominated the landscape. Sometimes too green, if we did not work hard enough to trim and mow.

the garden in the summer

Then in mid-summer, trees moved in in the front yard. I paved steps and small wooden fences to give it a girly appearance.

the front yard

peony in May

dahlia in July

I always think that the garden means a lot to me: both the creation and the maintenance of it. Creating the garden is to create a bound between the gardener and the land, between me and the house, between me and the person who lives with me on the land. Keeping a garden is similar to keeping a pet, or even having a child. While one may easily move away with the child or the pet to a new place, it is not possible to pack up an entire garden. Garden is the stamp that one makes on the land.

Maintaining the land is to tend a relationship to the land, to declare one's settlement in that place and one's attachment to those which have brought her to the land.

2011-06-21T07:46:00.002Z

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

I came to know the title of the book a long time ago when I was doing master degree. Around the same time, as I vaguely remember, Amelie, a french film that features a imaginative girl who alters the world for everyone including herself, was a big hit. The title of the book also engenders the same colorful imagination in me. Mango street. What is a street like if it is called mango? Is it always as sunny as its orange and red color suggests? Is it as fragrant as the delicious flavor of the fruit? Is it as colorful as the tropical scenery in which mango fruits are grown?

I didn't get to read the book until last weekend, despite that it had already greatly excited my brain in the early years.

The narrative style is typically feminine, and I doubt if male readers would have appreciated it as much as me. When I shared some passages with K, his viewpoint sometimes appears to be very destructive to the image that the writing has created in my mind. I do love it and like its introduction in which she rationalizes her style and stories. The book is composed of a series of vignettes providing pictures of the residents and friends around the heroine on Mango street. Cisneros writes in a style that is full of humor and color but at the same time laden with inescapable frustration and helplessness.

One of the passages that I heart is that she describes the arrival of a neighbor's wife from his faraway hometown in Mexico.

Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm. Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. PUsh, pull. Poof!

All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her tiny shoes.

(pp. 76-77)

What a blossom! A full bloom of imagination!

2011-06-07T12:32:00.004Z

Sharaku in Tokyo National Museum

We went to an exhibition on Toshusai Sharaku in Tokyo National Museum today. The wood prints of kabuki actors in the Edo period Japan are among the most definitive icons of Japanese culture for foreigners.

Sharaku is most known for his half-length portrait of actor Otani Oniji 3rd (the image on the top). The almost satirical caricature of the actor in action is fascinating. The color and the contours that give form to the dramatic moment are engaging.

I was drawn, however, to one of a relatively small collection of the portraits that he drew for his contemporary sumo wrestlers. Daitouzan (the image below) was a popular child wrestler in his time. When he became a professional wrestler, he was only 6 or 7 weighing about 70 kilograms. Though appearing childish in many ways, he was depicted powerful when confronted with his human or ghostly opponents. In spite of his over sized body for his young age, his face is still characterized by innocence and naivety. What would be on his mind when he wrestled? Would he be thinking about the rice crackers after a hard-fought battle?

2011-04-16T14:00:00.001Z

One of the things that I look forward to most when a day starts early.

2011-04-07T03:44:00.004Z

Prayer in the Morning

Since last month, the world has gone out of control. The quake and its unfolding aftermath in northern Japan, the outbreak of warfare in the Middle East and the prolonged recession in global economy all have made the rest of 2011 difficult to look forward to. It has been almost a month that every morning the relay of news on BBC has inevitably resulted in anxiety, emotional upheavals and wrath.

The uncertainty in the air has made concentration on work almost impossible. Despite all the turmoil, there is one’s individual track of like to carry on.

Here I pray that I would calm down,
For only when the self is sober
Can a better understanding of the world be achieved.

I pray for positive thoughts,
For negative imagination will only shadow the future.

I pray that I feel contented
Because I have more than enough of everything
From my family and friends to live on.

I pray that I am more loving
To return the care and affection that I have received.

I pray that I am more understanding and wise
For parents only express thoughts of concern and care
And never harm.

I pray for sanity.
Even though K is Japanese,
He is not the one to blame for the current nuclear crisis.
He is an excellent listener and companion at all times.

I pray that I will be more capable
To be helpful to the needy.

I pray for a piece of peaceful mind,
For it is time to return to everyday life
And make myself a better being.

2011-04-03T16:00:00.003Z

Writing

I do like the end-of-year custom in Japan according to which people exchange postcards with friends, colleagues, and family members to inform each other of the year past and celebrate the year to come. Many of the young generation in Japan, however, find it tiresome, environmentally unfriendly, and unnecessary. Messages through mobiles, or social networks, are believed to be more up-t0-date and convenient.

I have been a big fan of handwriting, a practitioner of letter-writing, and a faithful supporter of postal system. Therefore, there is no single sign of cultural shock for me when I was initiated to this.

Due to the late closure of the term in December, my scribal activity finally started with hand-making postcards in January 2011. At first, I came up with a design that was supposed to facilitate easy reproduction making use of Japanese colored papers and a rubber stamp of a backward-looking bunny (for the year of rabbit). There were several variations of the same pattern in my mind, and I was convinced that it would only take less than an afternoon to finish. In the end, it took me three days to measure, cut and paste papers, write messages, sort out postage, and have them sent.

It feels just like a ritual for me to stop everyday routine, sit down, open my handwritten address book, and spend time writing to friends. Sometimes messages would (accidentally) get lost somewhere in the communication and fail to return to me, and which can be quite heart-breaking. I do admit that it is anxiety-making when waiting to be heard and replied. And sometimes, the thought of being forgotten looms lalrge and eventually becomes the reality. Nevertheless, this old-fashioned means of communication is still much preferred for me to online messaging tools.

Last year, I was advised by an acquaintance on the disadvantages of not joining any instant messaging networks online. The drawbacks, according to him, are mainly that the informality of messaging tools makes communication more transparent and efficient, problem more easily solved, and interaction more actively conducted; conversely, the bureaucratic formality of email, or mail in general, often delays the clarification of problems and postpones to an unseen end any solutions.

To be honest, I do not agree with any single point that he made.

Of course, it is undeniable that email is less popular than any current messaging tools these days, and unfortunately I have lost contact with some people since I withdrew from the scene of MSN messenger. However, in a world dominated by fast-food communication like the current one, all can be said, but most are forgotten. The fragmentary nature of the communication that the current messaging software provides really confuses me. I do wonder if the communication by such means is really more efficient or sincere. Or, it actually uncovers the fact that communicants nowadays care nothing but the result, nothing but the informal fun, and nothing from their communicating partner but the bits and pieces of their own thoughts.

2011-03-27T09:08:00.002Z

Pansy violetsPansies have served as an integral part to the landscape of Japan in winter and spring. I started growing pansies last November. After their full blossom in a comparatively warm autumn last year, their rigor has amazed me since then. As the natural world is gradually waking up from dormancy and responding slowly to the call of spring, these tiny monkey-faced flowers are already, again, in full bloom.

The impression that the name of viola, a species that pansy derived from, gives to me is romantic and therefore connotes fragility. However, they are very winter-hardy.

A couple of days ago, I came across the following sentence in Katherine Mansfield's shorty story, 'An Indiscreet Journey': '[p]olicemen are as thick as violets everywhere'.

I would not have paid serious attention to this descriptive detail if I hadn't had pansies in the garden. It is perhaps too cruel to associate these herbal flowers with policemen and the masculinity that their profession represents, but the density of the blossoms and the watchful faces of the flowers were made surprisingly sensible.

2011-03-25T08:12:00.008Z

Reading

In order to reread The Canterbury Tales, I started to use Kindle, one of the electronic readers available in the market. It has been a very pleasant reading experience especially when I was traveling between places. For people like me who had considered herself as a devoted follower of the cult of real books, it was certainly a surprise. Reading on iPad, iPhone, or mobile phones has been a trend around me for some time, and my first attempt was a recommendable one. For a moment, I wondered if my faith in real books had fallen apart.

Yet, there are still places where electronic devices are banned, for instance, foreign embassies. (Well, I have to admit that it is not the kind of place where one would frequent.) For security reasons, the embassy that I visited last month disallowed any electronic gadgets; therefore, my paperback Chaucer regained its presence. When the book was opened, immediately I felt nostalgic for the smell and the texture of real papers and the crispy sound when pages were turned. This book that I carried was a fourth of a fat volume of Chaucer's works dismembered for the convenience of reading. Lacking a proper back cover, it felt rather soft and fragile between my palms when the sweat and grease of my fingers damped the pages.

It needed a cover, I decided.

Then, as a amateurish tailor, I spent 3 days cutting and sewing a cover for my Chaucer. The tailoring process also involved necessary mending work when my ill-trained hands misguided the scissors to a wrong direction. This manual labor had resulted in stiff shoulders, sore eyes, and some delays in other work. The task was overall enjoyable, albeit I also felt sorry for the time that might have been more effectively used (who knows?!). The threads that are snaking all around the end product are embarrassing. The embarrassment, however, does not prevent me from adoring the floral pattern of berries(?) or flowers (?) in the frame of cold and conservative black color. It would be a romanticized metaphor for reading itself, I think: inside the dull, conventional, squarish format of a book there are many exciting ideas and amazing stories blooming as the reader goes along.

2011-03-20T09:25:00.004Z

Despite the cold weather these days and the saddening emotional climate in Japan at the moment, spring has stolen in in the air. I have been waiting for spring since August when we moved. As I have written on the new year's postcards to friends in the freezing December of 2010, spring has been very much anticipated because there are so many to look forward to in the garden. It is unfortunate that right before spring will start, the nation is faced with multiple unprecedented natural and artificial disasters. Yet nothing will linger forever and there is always a tomorrow to live for.

Gardening is a philosophy that attends to the arts of anticipation. A seed planted is carefully nurtured to grow into, to enrich, and to flesh out, its gardener's imagination. Before budding, before stemming, beofore flowering, there are many to worry about, many uncertainties, but much more to hope for.

The seeds that I sprinkled in the soil last autumn have projected for me an exciting image of the garden in the spring.

Today, I planted the first tubers for this year, dahlia, and will look forward to their blossom in between early summer and autumn this year, a time when, I hope, the people and the country that are suffering from the current catastrophe will recover and move forward again. It would take some time, and a gardener's patience and vision will be helpeful when one cultivates the land, cares for the wounds, and looks forward to the future.

The tulip bulbs, which were planted last winter, have pierced through the ground and are vigorously extending their leafy arms to the sun. It was not until the fourth month after the seeding that I was assured of their vitality when buds were felt at the fingertips beneath the surface of the soil. Last winter was fiercely relentless, very cold and dry, but they have made it through.

2011-03-18T15:12:00.011Z

Writing in the beginning:
Dear friends and family, thank you for heart-warming messages and kind offers. I have talked to my parents and have had them understand the situation here. We will take good care of ourselves and will move when it is necessary. Thank you all for kind supports.

As the name of this blog, Sorry-ology, denotes, the blog owner is expected to be quite pessimistic and melancholic in her writing as she is trained to be sensitive exclusively to the bitterness of life. (So dull! I know!) So be warned of any negative thoughts and feelings that this blog might provoke.

In one of the previous entries, I mentioned using flashlight when there is blackout and managing household work with dimmed indoor lighting.

Soon after last weekend's quake, the supply of batteries and all sorts of illuminating equipments in town all went out. Instead of going for batteries and flashlights (the truth was that none could be found) we acquired some solar light. These solar lighting rods are originally designed for gardens and have been one of my most-wanted items on my wish list for gardening.

On the top of each lamp is a solar panel that transforms sunlight to electricity and recharges a battery inside it. When the small sensor next to the panel can no longer sense sunlight, the lamp would be turned on by the recharged battery. The light that each lamp can offer is only minimal, but it is enough to help us get around in the house in the dark. I have been very fond of this idea of clean energy that this small gadget has embodied. It does not seem to involve very complicated mechanics and appears neat and affordable. What a legacy of the sun that is channeled by modern technology!

Next week, we will have solar panels implemented on the roof following the plan that was scheduled before the quake. I am very excited about the idea of having the house powered up mostly by solar energy in the daytime! I have to admit that there was a point at which my moral courage and commitment to the environment were daunted by the high cost that this change will cause (even after the subsidies from the government and the city council). I am very ashamed of that moment of weakness. Fortunately, K has been there supporting the plan and made it work. With the solar panels, in the future we will be able to recreate power, use it, and sell it to the electricity company to reuse in other needed areas. It is probably unlikely that we will be able to make any monetary gains out of it, but there is nothing to lose. At least, we are making efforts to make it a better environment.

The daily presence of the sun is assuring and comforting. It is probably how the arrangement of the universe has meant to be: always there is the sun to rely on, to be used and reused without many consequential damages to the earth. And perhaps it is only now that the technology has brought us to the realisation of such a grand design.

2011-03-17T15:17:00.005Z

I prepared two emergency backpacks today.

The idea had been hatched in my mind for some time, but this quake and a flyer about preparation for emergent occasions yesterday finally made me carry out the plan.

There were probably more than 30 items on the list , but I only packed those that seem to be most needed and those that were available to me in the house. My bags contain the following items: canned food and nutrition tablets for energy, raincoats for bad weathers, plastic sheet to sleep and sit on, lighter to make fire, gloves and ropes for rough environment, medical kit for cases of injury and illness, towels, tissue paper and alcohol handwash for hygiene, and flash light for nights. Bottled water and clothing were also packed in.

The flyer advises that a bag of 15 kg is ideal for a male adult to carry, and 10 kg for a female.

I have tried my backpacks, and they are not light. A rearrangement is inevitable.

Packing is never an easy task for me, I have to admit, either for moving or short trip. I am too attached to the things that I own. My dependence on my belongings has made me their possession instead.

I have always been anxious before check-in counters in airports every time when I travel. It has been a question for a long time: how weighty is a life? or, how light should it be? We might only need 10 to 15 kg to live on, but how much is required to have a life?

2011-03-16T15:20:00.007Z

It was probably the first time for me to be honest about my anxiety after the quake. At the moment of panic attacks, I fired complaints at K accusing him of all the preparations that I myself should have done but didn't.

K took me to an emergency shopping to acquire the things that I thought we should have had in preparation for the ever-unfolding disaster. There were empty shelves in supermarkets, but most of the food supply seemed to be running smooth. After I stuffed my shopping bags, sanity returned.

After the quake last week, the planned power-cut in Tokyo has divided my daytime into preparing food and eating meals. It is probably a desirable means to distract myself from the negative thoughts that are triggered by repetitive news updates. To avoid cooking in dark and to make food preservable, I would be cooking and pickling between meals in the afternoon. Usually soon after all preparations, dinner has to be served and finished before electricity is cut off.

Today in the dark we watched a film on laptop together. With a small torch in hand, I looked through the window into the moon-lit darkness. Perhaps it will be full of radioactive substances out there at some point, a thought into which my wild and pessimistic imagination dragged me. But on this side of the window, every moment is peaceful and beautiful together with K no matter what might become out there.

Thank you, K.

2011-03-15T11:45:00.009Z

50 percent of luminance

Everyday life has become stressful since the moment when everything was shaken and displaced 5 days ago on the 11th of March.

The pace of the cosmopolitan life was hampered but is trying to resume slowly, but the busy landscape of Tokyo has been inevitably silenced since then. On the morning of the 12th, after a night's horror, I woke up to a bright but quiet Saturday. The day was seemingly as peaceful as any other Saturday, but the soundlessness was unusually uneasy and agitating. The rhythm of routine in the house was greatly altered and interrupted by the 24-hour update of TV news about the devastating earthquake and its aftermath disasters. The flow of life was halted and stopped in front of an unending stream of news updates and a string of more and more heart-breaking images.

Due to the crisis in the nuclear plants in Fukushima and the shortage of electricity supply in the eastern part of Japan, Tokyo metropolitan has started a planned power-cut since yesterday. To be of any help, we have been trying to economize every degree of power. Therefore, whenever lighting is needed in the house, we would tune the light down to a degree that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly. 50 percent of luminance.

Thus in such partial brightness we watch news, cook, eat and feel an ever-aggravating sense of worry about the disasters.

Over these days, I have been thinking how we have persuaded ourselves in the first place to create such a gigantic bomb, nuclear plant, to worry ourselves at this point. Many questions have been asked whether such a monstrous electricity-generating machine is really necessary to keep the body of economy working. And it seems that most of the time, the answer is negative. Is it merely a cheaper and therefore convenient option into which short-sighted politicians and business vultures ensnare the public?

If 50 percent of luminance is manageable to live a life, if 50 percent of energy can be saved when more attention is paid to details, if 50 percent of efforts can be made to develop a cleaner and safer energy, we would probably be better free from this current state of great anxiety about the threat that the power plants have posed to lives.

2011-03-08T09:57:00.005Z

curve of sunlight

A patch of growing alfalfa sprouts bent towards the sun.
It is quite amazing to see how plants manage to survive wherever they are, indoors or outdoors, in harsh winter or steaming summer. Every fine stem practices well this ritual of solar worshipping in spite of how I have moved it around in different directions.

Plants are unbelievable tough and resilient. In a conversation with some ecologists a couple of months ago, they informed me of some amazing findings about the ecological cycle. At some point, we touched upon a question about what might be the strongest life on the planet. Plants, or trees in particular, apparently. If a city is abandoned, trees will take over everything very soon. They break cement, uproot skyscrapers, hold on to the earth and live on while all man-made structures gradually disappear with time. Nature is extremely fragile but irresistibly powerful at the same time.

I recall an undelivered speech by John, Annie's husband, in the movie, Calendar Girls (2003).
Before passing away from leukaemia, John wrote a speech for the Women's Institute (where Annie and her fellow ladies in Yorkshire are involved) comparing women to sunflowers. Sunflowers never fail to follow and trace the sun, the source of life and energy, and so are women who always remain hopeful and strives to live on.

Last year, an acquaintance asked how everything had settled down for me as a new immigrant in Japan. He commented that '女性は強ういです': women are tough. I do not know if this is a shared opinion among men, but it seems to explain a lot about the lives of many women around me: my grandmother, my mother, and female friends, who have taken care of their families and built up their life all over the world. Some are happily triumphant; some take on whatever comes to them.

I am rather happy to hear that comment honestly. However, I have also heard of some women's stories that are too sad to bear, and that has made me doubt if women are really that 'strong' or 'tough'. Or, my question is rather why women have to be strong. Is that an end result of a society with a structural flaw?

2011-02-02T06:56:00.012Z

Kandinsky and the Blue Rider: from the Lenbachhaus, Munich

at Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
23/11/2010 - 06/02/2011

Wassily Kandinsky, The Bride (1903)

It was the first time for us to see exhibition together after moving to the new place.

Wassily Kandinsky is not a small name, but my passion for his abstract art when I was a novice learner of the history of western art has long gone. As years have gone by, abstract arts only appear 'interesting' to me now. My adolescent admiration for the complexity and incomprehensibility that abstraction always represents was probably born of a feeling of discontent itself, a dissatisfaction with the world that, as I thought, had misunderstood and taken light of its young people.

The exhibition, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider, however, featured the works of him and his fellow painters, the blue riders, showing their development of styles and change in artistic taste. Kandinsky's works from his early period amazed me with its vibrant and luxurious colors, the comparatively realistic organisation is shaped by impressionistic stroke and brush. These earlier works updated my knowledge about the artist. It might be true that he did not become a real phenomenon in the world of arts until his abstract masterpieces, but these early efforts do tell something about the young artist, who experimented styles, struggled to find his own vision, and labored on canvas as often as he wanted.

The maturation of techniques and styles is always the thing that an established artist is known for, and the long years before this climax are commonly regarded as merely a prelude. The works from his early period might not be particularly unique, but they are characterised by a sense of clarity : clear shape and color, which still engages its viewers with an inexplicable mystery.

Rather than to Kandinsky, I was drawn to a painting by Alexei Jawlensky, Maturity, in the exhibition room.

Alexei Jawlensky, Maturity (1912)
Photo: The Personal Website of Joan Laurie Anderson

The application of the bright colors: scarlet red, yellow, green and blue, are impressively telling about its title, Maturity. As K suggested, it might be about sexuality or puberty, an awkward stage of life that any teenager has to undergo. Sexuality is probably one of the imbedded issues as noted by the black spot, a persistent acne (?), on the young man's left cheek. To me, however, these strong and distinctive colors seem to boldly visualize a broader scope of the overall awkwardness and confusion that a young man might experience in human relationship, sexuality, self-knowledge, and life. The sharp edges of colored patches resist any light-hearted mix-up. There are no blurry boundaries. Nothing can be, or should be, taken for granted easily, and reconciliation between the world and the self is never a convenient choice.

Standing in front of the painting, I was experiencing a sudden return of my teenagehood memory. About a month ago, some high school friends turned up on facebook all of a sudden. A high school group was then formed, and since then an excitement about finding long-lost friends has lasted for a couple of weeks among the members of the group. That part of teenage life has long been buried somewhere in my memory, far far underneath beyond my reach.

It is interesting to see and feel the memory resurging, but it is not necessarily a happy experience per se. Although that stage of life has been more than a decade away by now, the pain and melancholy that maturation inflicted on an immature self prove to be very difficult to revisit. They are those edgy and irreconcilable colors which still firmly occupy the places where they have been.

2010-08-17T13:48:00.004Z

The House

In two days, we will be moving to our new house.
The feeling of excitement didn't emerge until this month after we started attending details such as choices of curtains, furniture and lighting. It has been a long and tedious search, yet as the list of to-do's is getting short, the more colorful the image of the home becomes.

A couple of months ago when the house was still under construction, I did 3 sketches for the parking space outside the garden. The original plan that came with the project was rather plain and uninteresting: the entire space would be simply covered up underneath a thick layer of cement. I understand the convenience that a cement space would promise: much time would be saved from the labors of, perhaps, weeding, cleaning, watering, etc. However, I quite reisit the idea of living next to a lifeless space of cement for the future 30 years. My obstinacy then invited a challenge to visualize what I wanted.

Giving colors and shapes to ideas on paper was certainly much more affordable than making them real in reality. In the end, a fourth choice was made after budget and practicality were considered. When we visited the house last week, it was pleasant to see a bit of nature between plates of cement that we could afford to preserve.

None of the sketches was in use in the end, but it was from that moment my imagination about the home was set free.

2010-08-14T02:05:00.008Z

Photo: National Geographic

Ball Lightning

News about natural disasters has been flooding in since the beginning of the summer (or much earlier). I have just seen some pictures of a wildfire in Russian, which ravaged the landscape before anyone could possibly react.

I suddenly recalled a natural phenomenon that I learnt from my Russian colleague: ball lightning. We were talking about weathers in the countries which we had visited. Her preference to minus 30 degree Celsius in Siberia than 30 degree Celsius in Japan was quite unbelievable to me. She then went on talking about a natural phenomenon, ball lightning, that is exclusively Russian. The cause and the formation of a ball lightning remain enigmatic to most scientists even today. It looks like a fire ball, basically. Its appearance, itinerary and explosion are never predictable, but dire consequences can easily be imagined. She once witnessed a ball lightning flashing into and exploding in a chimney, and the iron chimney immediately melted into a small solid chunk.

I then remembered a film that I saw with my brother about 10 to 12 years ago, Burnt by the Sun, a Russian film. Throughout the film there is a mysterious fire ball floating around in the air; no explanation is provided and no function is specifically depicted. I remember my brother simply ignored my attempt at understanding the fire ball from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. We were fairly puzzled, or perhaps just me.

When I brought up this experience, the colleague confirmed my speculation: the fire ball in the film is a ball lightning. She then suggested that the unpredictability of the ball's presence and its trajectory seems to serve as a metaphor for the surveillance of the Soviet Union under Stalin's dictatorship. No one knows what is going to happen, and everyone is watched closely.

It really made my day to have a long-term mystery solved. I can't wait to go back to the film to see how this new piece of information would shape a new understanding of the story for me.

2010-08-08T06:54:00.000Z

The Cement Garden

by Ian McEwan
Vintage, 1997.

2010-06-13T09:36:00.005Z

Raphael's 'Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn'

Shortly before the beginning of the new academic year of 2010, we went to a exhibition featuring the collection from Galleria Borghese in Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. One of the major artworks of this exhibition is Raphael's 'Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn'. Before seeing it in person, I was not entirely sure if I would like it, or if it would just be another painting by a Renaissance master to me.

It is an oil painting of 67 * 56 cm, hung on a corner in a subdued light. It was an immediate amazement when I turned around the corner to see it.
The azure color of the sky in the background (which cannot be seen in the picture here) was alluring, and the immaculate and rather expression-less face of the young woman was equally mysterious.

The artwork also had an interesting history itself. Before 1935, it was accredited to another painter, and the unicorn, which was invisible then, was covered up by another image of, as I could recall, books. After the 1935 restoration, the unicorn was revealed, and such a discovery has led scholars to believe that it was done by Raphael.

There was a steel ball outside the museum.
I miss the big bean in Chicago!

2010-06-10T08:54:00.013Z

House Hunting

Our house hunting adventure began at the end of March and concluded in early May. Considering the nature of the purchase, it was a quick decision, so quick that it took much longer afterwards for the feeling of excitement to emerge.

At first, we were looking for a flat, a 'mansion' in Japanese or 'apartment' in America, for a combination of reasons, such as price, security and convenience. It was my first-ever experience to visit property sites, and every small arrangement that was employed to present the properties was simply fascinating. The visits usually began with a video-viewing session in small cinemas located in the reception halls. The videos presented an imaginary narrative about an ideal life that was to be shared by every household. Usually, it told a story of a young family: the father returned to the house in time from Shinjuku through a conveniently connected railway, he then enjoyed a fun time with his families in a nearby enormous space of nature, parents and child shared a fun time together in beautiful sunny days. Enchanting and appealing such a life was portrayed, but idealized view as such could be difficult to appreciate when an detached viewpoint was taken. Sometimes, I couldn't help smiling at the over-polished images of life and kept wondering if that was 'the' happy ending, or why it was the 'only' ending for every one.

However, I have to admit that this 'happy ending' thing has also enchanted me since I was little. In my childhood, I was always very fascinated by posters and fliers from estate agents; the neat and clean space that was drawn in advertisements always managed to seize my attention. I remember searching through piles of newspapers, collecting fliers, cutting the images of beautiful houses and apartments, and pasting them onto my sketch books to create my own ideal home. I love dolls' houses, too! Making doll's houses and creating familial relationship between the small figures that I possessed was always a pastime that I tirelessly turn to in quiet afternoons. Before I could afford to purchase model houses for the toys, I made cardboard houses and paper cars for them; I cut and tailored old clothes into dresses for their parties. That was my obsession before I was old enough to understand the concept of happy ending, and before some of my imaginations took form in reality.

Among the flats we saw, one was in a residential complex that contained more than 700 units; another, 500. Despite the fact that they were all fashionably designed, modernly furnished, and popular among first-time buyers in Tokyo, the thought of living together with another 699 or 499 families itself was somehow unthinkable to me. Living within such a big community perhaps guarantees a constant companionship; however, to make such a gigantic community machine function probably involves far more complicated orchestration that I would want to face.

Consequently, we said goodbye to the flats and redirected our search to detached houses. We were accompanied by suit-wearing agents to a variety of properties, houses still under construction, houses completed but yet sold, and houses refurbished for a second owner. I found it a peculiar experience to be regarded as 'valuable' customers. Most of the time, we were driven around, and the cars that we got on varied depending on the range of house prices that we had requested to see (I guess). One time, we had asked to see some items in a favorable residential area, which was a little bit beyond our means. We were picked up right in front of our flat by a posh-looking car, and the agent drove us around in a beautiful neighborhood. It was a quiet and sunny day, perhaps the first summery day this year. While I was sitting in the car listening to the conversation of a unfamiliar language between K and the agent, all of a sudden I recalled a Czech film, Autumn Spring.

For all these eight years after I watched this film, I have been remembering the way that the hero kept himself entertained in his retirement life. Putting on suits and ties, the hero and a friend, two retired gentlemen, pretended to be interested and wealthy buyers of expensive castles or villas. They succeeded in fooling estate agents around with props of expensive limousines, costumes and meals that they hired.

Although we meant to search for a property, I couldn't help feeling amused at the mischief of the gentleman, drawing a rather far-fetched parallel between the pleasure that he obtained and the amazement that we were thrown into, linking his desire to seek for fun in a monotonous life and our wish to compose a new rhythm for the life in the future. The time that he stole from the estate agents was devoted to his secret enjoyment; our agents' time was spent to no avail if we abandoned the choices that they had offered. I am probably too sympathetic with the estate agents at this point, given that they are usually known to be voracious. Whenever I tried to suppress my own amazement and astonishment at the high prices or luxurious interior furnishing in order to maintain an integrated look of a 'potential' buyer, I felt little difference from the mischievous gentleman.

2010-03-28T07:18:00.008Z

On Chesil Beach

by Ian McEwan
London: Vintage, 2008.

On Chesil Beach is the second Ian McEwan book that I have read; the first one is Atonement.

On Chesil Beach is a short story (160 pages) about a long night, telling about the mental and physical struggles endured by a newlywed couple on their wedding night.
Their respective anxiety over, resistance to, fear of, and longing for, physical intimacy, are narrated in a voice that feels quiet and calm but powerful and enchanting. The pace of the narrative is very steady and peaceful so that the climax simply catches one off guard. After a space of several lines of the climactic moment, the narrative flow resumes its normal pace, but the narrative impact is overwhelming.
McEwan's prose is a amazingly crafted tapestry of memory. Every moment is intricately intertwined with a long lost moment in the past; every thread of thought and doubt now is interlaced either with a unnamed cause in the past or a unknown consequence in the future. The hero and heroines are trapped in a uncomfortable moment in the history of sexual revolution and torn between their own selves and the world that has made them.

What is wanting more and desiring for just enough?
How can we say what we want to say? How can we avoid being driven by what has been said?

In a scene of reasoning/arguing, the heroine tries to sum up how she has felt but fails, perhaps, to grasp the entire picture of what has been going on in her mind.

She was not sure, but she knew it was the route she was taking. 'You're always pushing me, pushing me, wanting something out of me. We can never just be. We can never just be happy. There's this constant pressure. There's always something more that you want out of me. This endless wheedling.' (p. 145)

Is it still possible to feel certain about ourselves, when every moment of being is heavily ridden with memory, laden with feelings and emotions?

The last few pages of the novel quickly numerates what then has happened to the couple over a course of 50 years after the wedding night. The life of the total 50 years flies across the pages, so rapidly and so forward-moving, as if nothing is worth mentioning after that key moment of the wedding night. How true it is, sometimes, that many of the lives are pinned down at a certain moment/second of loss and regret despite that the course of time relentlessly continues.

2010-03-22T12:27:00.009Z

What I saw, had, and enjoyed these days

Eryngii has been a recent favorite on our dinner table. This type of mushrooms is full of texture and flavor either fried with asparagus or just simply baked with butter.
I also love the way that it is presented in the supermarket. They always come in a pair: one is always bigger than the other. They are always presented with a taste for elegance in a black container wrapped up nicely with film. The two eryngii are always placed side by side, as if they are just inseparable.

The ground coffee is a nice surprise from C in the beginning of the year. The green can is such a beautiful object for gaze itself, reminiscent of the beautiful Easter and St. Patrick's day in spring and the aroma of coffee late at night on Siward street.

This is a public art, entitled 'Three Piglets', that I found in Ueno station in Tokyo. I was attracted to the colors and the piglets (one of my favorite object for research and curiosity), but a close-up view might provoke unpleasant imagination.

2010-03-17T01:17:00.009Z

Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate

I was reminded of a small city, Harrogate, the other day. The lady and I talked about Durham, York and a city nearby which is know for its hot spring and the Betty's tea house. We couldn't recall the name even after the afternoon tea came to an end. I asked K what the place is called at the breakfast table, and, to my surprise, he came up with the word, Harrogate, without any effort. The lady friend also texted me to say that the place name popped up in her mind around midnight.

Recently, I became very cautious of the situation that some terms and names that were used and encountered daily during my stay in the UK are no longer familiar. Last week, coincidentally, it took me almost two days to remember the name of the debit card that overseas students use in that country: Solo card.

My memory about Harrogate started to take shape after the place name was recalled.

In 2007, C and I made a day trip to the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate to see the exhibition of William Powell Frith, a Victorian artist painting his contemporary world. It was my first and last visit to the town, but a good time was spent there with a beautiful and nice friend.

2010-03-16T14:01:00.003Z

Another play by Shakespeare

BBC

'Double Falsehood', a play that was discovered around 300 years ago, was recently credited to William Shakespeare. It is believed to be a work of collaboration between Shakespeare and another playwright, John Fletcher.
'Double Falsehood' is now included in, and published, by the Arden Shakespeare.

I am still waiting to see more debate about this 'discovery', but the news itself is exciting enough for people who enjoy the bard's talent and wit.

2010-03-13T05:54:00.016Z

Treasures of the Imperial Collections: Splendor of Japanese Art
皇室の名宝ー日本美の華

01/10/2009~03/11/2009
Tokyo National Museum

At the end of last year, K and I went to an exhibition of the collections by the imperial family of Japan, an event that commemorated the emperor's 20th anniversary of coronation. The showpieces all belong to the Museum of the Imperial Collections (三の丸尚藏館) in the imperial palace.
The event was very well-advertised and much anticipated by the public.
The day of our visit was, as expected, another busy one in the museum. It was not easy to appreciate beautiful details of paintings when viewers jostled against each other. However, I did manage to see things that I had never seen, imagination that I had never encountered, colors that I had never thought of, and the nostalgic taste of the past that I have always enjoyed.

One of the biggest stars in the exhibition was the Chinese Lions by Kano Eitoku (狩野永徳)

source of picture

The weighty presence of the painted screen itself was amazing enough. I have always thought that traditional Japanese paintings seem to have already started to cultivate a manga culture which is in its full bloom now. Circular shape and curvy lines render the 2 lions playful big cats rather than fearful kings of the forest.

Another highlight of the show was the collection of the 30 paintings of living creatures by Ito Jakuchuu's (伊藤若沖). The 30 items are presented in an array of vibrant colors, which give flesh and bones to the painter's amazing observation on the world of animals. Ito's work has found great popularity both inside and outside Japan. Although he has been more or less considered to be an artist appealing to a popular taste, the confidence and eaze behind the strokes is very compelling. His works are also tainted with a comical sense, a style which I tend to associate with the art trend in a much later date.

One of my favorite among the 30 items is The Fishes.

Source:「魚群図」

In the centre, the mother octopus is swimming to the right against a school of fish aiming toward the left. On the far end of one of her legs, a baby octopus clings tight to her. I was very amazed at the detail indeed, over-joyed with such an unexpected thought! The addition of the baby cleverly balances the organization of the painting in which the weight of attention concentrates on the space on the right side. Although the baby is on the far left, its small presence redirects the attention to itself. The mom's long leg connects both sides, serving to lead the gaze of its viewers. A clever and comical touch that Jakuchuu added to the work!

I was also very fond of Sakai Houichi's (酒井抱一) paintings of the twelve months,

Source

If Jakuchuu's style is imposing, the quietude and harmony in the 12 months calm the excitement in the viewers who came out of Jakuchuu's showroom.

Another highlight, I reckon, was the "Watermelon" by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎）.

At first sight, there were a strange feeling of ill-proportion and a awkardness of suspension (the knife). The color and style seem to be too modern to be traditional. However, the immediate thought of a splashy watermelon and the cooling air that the smell of the fruit could produce are all beautifully felt in the piece of white damp cloth, which is damp with the juice of the watermelon.

2010-03-12T12:38:00.001Z

How to Japan: A Tokyo Correspondent's Take
by Colin Joyce

2010-02-28T07:37:00.000Z

Alice Walker
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
London: The Women's Press Limited, 1984.

2010-02-28T02:52:00.001Z

Nine Stories

J.B. Salinger
Back Bay Books (2001)

2010-02-27T11:59:00.003Z

We bought a new rice bowl in a sale.

A rabbit waits to reward the person who enjoys a nice meal.

2010-01-12T06:10:00.009Z

Cinema at Home

ちえ(Chie)

M, my course mate in a Japanese course, is a big Miyazaki fan. He recommended Chie to me, a Gibly studio-associated production.

The style of drawing is not typically Miyazaki, and the reality setting, in spite of the appearances of 3 superpower cats, is far from the colorful and unconfined imaginary worlds that Miyazaki's works usually feature.

I watched it in French (M's DVD only provided 2 choices: French or Japanese) and managed to understand most of the story, but, inevitably, I must have missed some details that are only disclosed in dialogues . Some episodes and transitions remained unexplained to me, I am afraid.
I like the story which develops along with Chie's simple and everyday life, especially when she struggles to run a barbecue business in order to support herself and her lazy father, and when she acts her optimism when being faced with her parents' divorce. Yet, I don't quite understand another story line which introduces a family feud between 3 cats. Their presence is funny for sure, but I am not yet convinced that they are in any way essential to the narrative.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I watched this film for one of my classes before Christmas.
K's brother loved the film as a tragedy. He told me that the story is about the fate that one can never be someone else.
What he said is interesting, I think. Does it mean that someone else is always closer to one's ideal self? Isn't it more difficult to just be oneself?
Or is one's own self always an inconvenient fact that s/he wants to avoid?

Ponyo

Ponyo is very much a Miyazaki film, presented in vibrant colors and structured by an incredible imagination.

I am not particularly fond of the story itself. What I have enjoyed most in Miyazaki films is the feeling of texture that he can accurately create: the textures of bubbles, jelly fish, ocean waves, and nature. I remember when Ponyo's goldfish siblings try to release their elder sister from a bubble that confines her, they gnawed at the bubble with their toothless mouths. The sound effect and the image work perfectly together that it creates a wonderful sensation of itchiness on the skin as if one's also experiencing thousands of gentle kisses.

Ponyo is such an energetic 4-year-old girl! She does not seem to stop running until she gets where she wants, a very typical Miyazaki character driven by her innocent and powerful determination.

2010-01-09T05:24:00.009Z

Cinema at Home

K and I watched some films together to celebrate the end of the year.

I haven't been to the cinema much after I left York, and much less after busy everyday life and language barrier have inconvenienced my leisure life.

Well, language barrier is just an easy excuse. The main reason is probably that I have tried to avoid the feeling of disappointment that might inflict on me after unsatisfactory viewings.

It is rather a stupid reason somehow, as so many good stories are simply missed. Perhaps, there is no such a thing as 'bad' story, as I have often argued with K in the aspect of literature. The deciding factors to one's enjoyment are his/her preference and interpretive approach. Whatever story gives pleasure, whatever pleasure it is. More precisely displeasure is also a kind of experience, I would think.

The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon is a BBC documentary about Mitchell and Kenyon's business of filming their town people around a century ago when film was just a totally new idea to the world.
I heard about the discovery of the lost trove of M & K's film reels around 2 (?) years ago when I was still in the UK. The news came with a photo of the first-ever filmed official football match. The news was interesting, but seeing the documentary itself was even more fascinating. M & K's business was to propose to film people (mostly the working class) and invite them to pay to see themselves in the theatre.
This business idea fascinated me in that it played with the curiosity of the public about their own images and about this new invention in the world.

M&K seldom made stories (except some attempts), but the everyday-life images that it collected around the Edwardian period are themselves fascinating reflections of a foregone past.

I was amused and surprised.

Changeling

Director: Clint Eastwood

Changeling is an adaption of a real case in 1928 in Los Angeles. The story is saddening, but it was compelling with the dialogues nicely written and acting impressively carried out.

It was probably my first time to see and to remember Angelina Jolie in a film. It is a story about a mom's unending search for her son throughout her life and her fight against the corrupted and dysfunctional police system in the first half of the twentieth century in California. I think AJ's acting is great in general, especially when she is performing the role of Mrs Collins as a determined and clear-minded woman. There are moments, however, when I felt that the actress fails to convince me that she is as attached to her son as she should have been. She does not really show strong attachment to her son, for instance, no hug, kiss, or affectionate conversation is portrayed when Mrs Collins and Walter, her son, spend time together.
Or is it simply my misconception of familial attachment? Maybe it is precisely the reality that the emotional tie between family members is not usually visible and does not need to take the form of physical contact at all.

2010-01-07T23:57:00.002Z

Frozen Britain

Source: BBC Photo

2010-01-04T06:32:00.005Z

Recent reads

Jhumpa Lahiri
Interpreter of Maladies
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999.

I have spent the entire new year holiday struggling with a bad cold. Nothing much I could do except sneezing, coughing, blowing my nose and sleeping away the joyous time of celebration. In some moments that I was able to stay awake, I managed to finish reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, which I had started reading about a month ago.

I always prefer short stories to fictions or novels as the moderate size of the former is more friendly to my attention which easily loses its power of concentration.

I do enjoy most of the stories in this collection. They do not feature dramatic moments that attempt to astound or impress readers. Instead, Lahiri narrates in a peaceful, quiet, and matter-of-fact style the pain, joy, struggle, failure and survival of Indian immigrants in England, United States, or back in the native country.

The sense of pain and loss that some characters suffer from remains powerful through the narrator's quiet and observatory tone of narration. It engages my thought as if the steady pace of the narrative is stroking my nerve gently and regularly till the end. The author does not try to hammer into readers anything that she writes, but it simply grips attention. I love some of the stories which end with unresolved loss and longing, a kind of incompleteness that stories of immigrants usually share. Some are presented through the viewpoints of children adding humor to or emphasizing the endured suffering. Some are about aspiration, self-delusion, and disillusion.

Of course, there is also a small number of some tuning the song of survival in the end. However, to be honest, I find them somehow unfitting to the collection, a collection of stories about how individuals struggle to fit into their new world. Positive and happy ending is what we need in reality, but sometimes I think a short story is at its best when it does not conclude the plight, and it is more effective when it continues to provoke thoughts rather than to soothe the sufferers.

2009-12-25T12:45:00.011Z

Dear YC,
Thank you for the beautiful Christmas card which arrived at my flat in Tokyo in time for the holiday. I was absolutely amazed at the image of the books when the card was unfolded. It certainly felt so privileged to be remembered. Thank you. I felt as if I could smell these old books and touched their leather covers just like I did while I was browsing through stacks of antique books in the Minster Library in York. (Well, my imagination cannot reach to Cambridge, but I believe it is probably even more fascinating.)

Now the card is sitting in front of my desk to make up for a missing bookcase, which I would love to have but couldn't.

I have been busy with teaching, but everything has been going well in general . How about yourself? I hope you have felt less stressed by now being surrounded by the warmth and love of your family.

After the last class this year, I have been remembering the time when we were colleagues back in 2003. It was the first year of teaching for both of us, I guess, and we shared both fun and upsetting experiences about teaching during that year. I remember I was always easily annoyed by students who did not care enough about the class. While they were chatting, sleeping, or doing something else in the class, anger was burning in my eyes. Ha! For several years afterwards, I actually thought that I was stupid enough to be annoyed in that way at that time. As I realized later that perhaps in my case it was rather a sense of insecurity that was induced by my own lack of experience in teaching.

It might be the detached viewpoint, which I have gained by leaving the position, that has brought me to this conclusion. Surprising to myself, however, it seems that I am still struggling with the same problems of teaching even now. The facts that some students simply do not have motivation to learn and that some would ignore classroom rules, still bother me. The lessons that I have picked up from that year of teaching prove futile especially when I need them to console my other self as a confused instructor. I simply do not remember how I overcame the difficulties, it seems.

Or may I say that there is never such a thing as an 'experienced' teacher? Every teaching is a new experience, considering that every learner is a unique individual with his/her special needs.

Sorry for whining! It is just that I am usually very nostalgic and reflective at this moment of year.

You mentioned that you are thrilled at next year's theatre productions in Cambridge. I am very envious! I am still very far away from the time when I am able to understand and appreciate in depth the theatre here.

I wish all things well with you in the rest of the academic year. I was very pleased to know that you said you love the place in your first email. Enjoy it!

Hugs and warmth.

2009-11-01T13:15:00.005Z

Teaching: Lesson One

A couple of months ago in the office, Mr. T asked me what I was about to teach on that day. 'Globalisation', I replied. He must have seen through my anxiety about teaching that subject, so that he had an expression of 'ah ha, that topic!' to tease me. I then talked to him about my indecisiveness about what information to 'teach' or to 'share with' students on that day. I was very much troubled, since my own position became very strong when talking about issues like this. There were so many to say about the subject, and I didn't feel justified if only one type of views was emphasized. So it turned out that I had too many materials to go through within the sapce of 90 minutes.

Mr. T asked about the level of the class. A few minutes later, he came back with a set of cards with vocabulary items on each of them, and, of course, every word was related to globalisation. He then talked about what he did when he had a class on globalisation years ago. Each of the students received two cards, and their responsibility was to make a sentence that connects the two vocabulary items they had. Whatever sentence would do. At the end of the game, they would figure out something, whatever that was, on their own.

I didn't use that handy activity in the class in the end, but that certainly was a epiphany-like moment for me as a language teacher instead.

Considering the type of the class, I was not there to inform them about extant debates about the issue. As a language instructor, my job was to help learners express what they thought and what they wanted to say. Then, if needed be, in-depth discussion would follow. My personal position should come after their thoughts and needs.

I have to admit that a unknown (well, I know what it is) ambition and pride had prevented me from committing myself to that function of a language teacher until then. But I was lucky that this primary note to me as a language teacher was picked up in a small game.

2009-10-15T10:16:00.005Z

Just Another Interesting Anecdote,
Isn't It?

A couple of weeks ago, O. visited Tokyo, or technically the East, for the first time.

I was very relieved when he told me that the journey was immensely enjoyable. O. is a very optimistic, adventurous, and out-going person by nature, so perhaps the horror of being surrounded by a graphic language like Japanese could be overcome easily.

On the night before he flew back to Europe, we had dinner together. He told us an interesting anecdote that happened to him during his stay.
On his first day in Japan, he was stopped by two policemen in Ueno station, who asked him for his passport. According to the immigration law in Japan, visitors to this country are obliged to take their passports or any other identification certificate that is legally equivalent. He said he had left it in the hostel. Then the policemen made some questions concerning about his visit and where he was going at the time. Then they realized O. was a traveler and his nationality, and they let him go. It happened twice to him on the same day in the same station.

According to K., perhaps the police was actually on a mission to find a certain person on that particular date in that specific location.

While O. was narrating his story, my brain was boiling hot, and what immediately came to my mind was the issues of xenophobia and discrimination against tourists. I was frowning at the story and ready to make a complaint. However, before I started my argument, O. laughed away this experience and was somehow pleased by the fact that he was thought to be a 'traveler' instead of holiday maker or tourist.
His reaction then silenced me.

Afterwards I kept thinking if I had been him, I would take that an insult and would complain hard about it.

I don't know whether O. kept to himself any other interpretation of his experience, but his relaxed reaction certainly gave an alternative lesson on being a foreigner and looking at one's own foreignness in a different country.

Sometimes, it might be simply true that I am grounded by some over-politicized arguments about discrimination.

Take it easy and take it light! Perhaps.

2009-10-06T15:02:00.004Z

Green Curtain

Since the early summer, the city council started growing trailing plant outside its main building.

First, they set up a net hanging down from the top of the building to the ground floor; a week or so after, vines started climbing upwards along the net; then it didn't take too long before the foliage covered up the entire wall.

It was quite amazing to see such a massive green curtain in the city especially when its purpose was still unknown to me.

The buckets in the bottom, one day when I got a chance to have a peek, explained that it's an effort to fight against global warming. The natural shade that the vines provided to the concrete building would efficiently shut out burning sunlight and thereby reduce room temperature significantly. In this way, the use of air-conditioners would be economized.

Afterwards, I noticed that the ideas had been put into practice in many households throughout the neighborhood.

In addition to the environmentally friendly economy that this idea anticipated, the city also benefited from the increase of green spaces in its landscape.

Last week, I was surprised again by another bonus that this eco-economy brought to the community. Since the harvest season began, the vines started yielding sponge gourds, very healthy-looking and huge gourds indeed.
The total yield was given for free to whoever would take it.

The city council is plausible for their ideas and efforts, but what was even more beautiful is the generosity of nature and the greens.

2009-09-29T14:03:00.003Z

鯛焼き（taiyaki）

This afternoon I posted replies to friends who had kindly sent us warm greetings for the wedding. K took the chance to take a walk around the neighborhood. It has become a pleasure for us to promenade and explore unseen places near the house.

We stopped by a taiyaki shop and bought two fish for our afternoon tea, custard and red bean paste. In the snack shop, while we were checking menu, figuring out prices, and talking in English as if we were all alone, the young owner of the shop kindly interrupted us explaining to us in English! That was quite unexpected to me.
Immediately I was embarrassed. I hope he wasn't laughing at me in private when I was telling K how I was amazed at a gigantic shredding machine that was sitting in the shop. It is the kind of machine that people used to make shredded ice when I was little. Shredded ice with a scoop of syrup rocked! 'How nostalgic it is!' I said.

On our way home, K wondered why the shop owner opened his taiyaki shop on a main street with all possible expenses considered. In a rather cliched story that we made for him, the young shop owner was assigned the role of a young man with vision and ambition. He was a traveler wandering across the globe when he was younger, but his commitment to the spirit of taiyaki, a traditional Japanese sweets, brought him home. This shop is just the first step to his dream kingdom of taiyaki. (How Japanese drama it sounds!)
Anyway, we didn't really make it to end the story, but it gave me a good laugh. I laughed away the troubles that had haunted my brain space much earlier in the afternoon. How therapeutic this simple pleasure was then.

The taiyaki was not amazing, to be frank, but what came with it was.

2009-07-06T13:16:00.008Z

My Domestic Goddess Project:
Light Eats and the Rainy Season

We had a short break from the non-stop rain of the season yesterday. It was breezy and sunny. Shadows of laundry trotted across the curtain like running horses.

It provided a wonderful atmosphere for light and simple eats in this suffocating season of humidity. We had tomato flower cum plum pickles and cold plain noodle for lunch. Both were refreshing and very appetizing! I love beautiful presentation of food than the food itself, to be frank. The tomato was cut in a vertical direction so that it was able to bloom. Plain noodle dipped in dashi (だし) sauce (1 dashi: 2 water) was simply tasty. It tasted clam, cold, and pleasant. It felt as if pores, eyes and ears were temporarily immue from the heat and humidity in the air. The Japanese vocabulary that I just picked up, 素直な, might describe the taste well, or perhaps 'rustic'. I admit that the description sounds rather pretentious or exaggerating, but I really liked the weightless look and taste of the food.
The noodles floated in the amber dipping sauce gleaming like necklaces of coral. My tongue almost abandoned its duty at the sight of the translucency in the presentation.

Over the last few days, I have been experimenting with several light dishes. Spinach in crashed sesame seeds, sesame oil, sugar and some soy sauce; Asian cucumber blended in miso paste, sesame oil, a pinch of sugar. They were small delights on the dinning table for sure.

Bravo Veggies! They provide soothing company in summer!

2009-07-05T14:56:00.001Z

Hydrangea (あじさい, Azisai) 紫陽花

Hydrangea has been dominating the landscape of our neighborhood since a month ago. They are definitely showy and daring in posing for their beauty.
A couple of weeks ago when I visited the house of my aunt-in-law, she had a hydrangea standing on her dinning table. I was astonished at the close look at the flowers and was amazed at the vivid traces of veins on its petals and leaves. To me the net of veins manifested the vigor and power of their life.

It was pouring on that day, but, I remembered, all the hydrangeas stood stubbornly and bloomed extravagantly despite the torrential rain. It was as if they had no fear at all of braving the weight of the rain but enjoyed the down-pouring water as, perhaps, their name denoted.
My aunt-in-law must have told me that it is called 'azisai' (あじさい), but my command of Japanese language is too shallow to make it memorable.

Then in my textbook I came to know that Azisai, or hydrangea, is the flower of the rainy season in Japan, usually during May and June.

Ah! no wonder!

I then tried to take snaps of these flowers; however, perhaps the rainy season is now approaching an end, so that most of the blossom that I once saw is gone. What a pity! My knowledge about the pleasant plant came so late!

Fortunately, I did manage to catch up with some blossom, which waited until the last moment.

Sometimes there are azisai of different colors, for instance, pink, purple, baby blue, or white, on the same shrub. It is curious indeed. Roses can have different colors, but they are only found on different roots, as I remember. (Correct me if I am wrong, please.) The research on the internet told me that it is absolutely common for azisai. The degree of acidity of the soil determines the color of azisai flowers. As it is said, flowers turn blue if the soil is acid; they become white if the soil is neutral. Of course, then, it is possible to try to decide the color of the flowers in one's garden by adding fertilizers to the soil.

When I was hanging cloths last weekend, our landlady greeted me in the garden. She was trimming the plants outside our window. Then she pointed to some shrubs skirting along the house telling me that they are Azisai. I was so surprised and so much excited that I asked twice, '本当に？本当に?' (Really?Really!) I have never seen them blooming, and neither has K. The landlady said that they only bloomed once after the year when it was planted, but they have been very quiet ever since the last trimming about 3 years ago.

Upon the news, I sighed and felt the same sorry as the landlady did.

Azisai is so close! But I don't have a chance to see it...

What a romantic picture it would be to have lived in the house surrounded by these colorful ball-like flowers.

2009-07-04T15:00:00.000Z

My Domestic Goddess Project:
Pork steak and Komatsuna (こまつな（小松菜）)

Ever since I started cooking Japanese food, the Chinese characters of Komatsuna, 小松菜, has intrigued me. The characters, according to Wanchen's dictionary of free translation, were literally interpreted as "the vegetable of Little Pine". Of course, it was partly because I didn't know how to pronounce it in Japanese. Yet, the pastoral image that my literal translation projected, 'the vegetable of Little Pine', had been quite satisfactory to me. I imagined that it was a kind of vegetable that was initially grown by a little boy called Little Pine. Every morning, he would jump out of the bed and hurry to his small allotment in order to see how the little veggies had been. Dews on the leafy komatsuna were shining like pearls and mirroring Little Pine's happy face.

Then I found an easy recipe to try komatsuna. (Imagine how I was excited in the supermarket when I picked up a bag of this romantic veggie!) After the steak and komatsuna were shallow fried, they were ready to serve.

I found that the way I cut the tendon of the steak
made it look like a butterfly (or moth) flying over a meadow of komatsuna 小松菜.

This recipe was found on p. 50, Pork: Garlic Steak (ポークとガーリツクステーキ), in ひとり暮らしの簡単ごはん: Let's Enjoy Cooking.

2009-07-03T08:30:00.007Z

My Domestic Goddess Project:
Putting the sun in the pocket!

French Crepe, I think, for today's breakfast. It is quite substantial for a breakfast but absolutely yummy.
Well, I enjoyed making it as I felt I was doing an artwork when I tried to locate ingredients to their right positions on the canvas of the crepe.
A slice of yellow cheese as the background, a slice of pink ham as a cloud at dawn, and finally golden egg sitting at the center of the picture as the sun.

A morning full of energy! お元気で！
The recipe is here.

2009-07-02T01:41:00.004Z

My Domestic Goddess Project

I have been exploring the beautiful cookbooks that I found on K's bookshelf.

Tofu in Pizza Style is a very easy-to-make appetizer!
Basically, you just pile up bacon, sliced pepper, cheese and ketchup on the top of tofu and bake it! We don't have oven in the house, but it proved that toaster also worked!
The tofu chunks taste chewy and denty!

It is called はんぺんのピザ風, on p. 78 in ひとり暮らしの簡単ごはん：Let's Enjoy Cooking. (オレンジペ−ジ)
I love the tips and recipes of small vegetable dishes that this book offers.

2009-07-02T01:17:00.007Z

My Domestic Goddess Project

After I left York, my baking project has discontinued due to the lack of ovens available to me.
Life goes on, however. The project continues in the line of Asian cuisine.

The Lawson cookbook is now perching on the shelf for a rest. Instead, I am now experimenting with Japanese appetite.

I cooked ginger pork (しょうが焼き) a couple of days ago, a recipe found on p. 18 in いちばんわかりやすい基本の料理.

Ginger is definitely one of the most welcomed spices on our dinner table.

2009-07-01T03:25:00.003Z

A Desk of One's Own

2009-06-28T15:21:00.017Z

About the Engagement (II): Some Technical Facts

I started feeling that it will be a long journey before I can actually finish writing everything that I want to write about the engagement. At the same time, I am feeling the pressure of writing as the preparation for the wedding reception in September is now taking place.

I didn't organize every bit of the engagement reception on my own, and the entire event was a final presentation of many people's professional assistance.

It is not a commercial entry, but I do owe a big thank you to the professionals who were involved in the organization and preparation. At the very early stage of the preparation, I resisted some nuptial conventions that have been commercialized and over-emphasized in the last few decades.

However, in the end, I followed some of the 'chessy' fashions. (The term 'chessy' reflects nothing but my snobbery, I confess.)

Although I still feel quite ambivalent about the significance of these nuptial fashions, it is undeniable that we have been enjoying the beautiful and good memory that they have created for us since then.

First, wedding portraits.
The idea of taking portraits to commemorate marriage sounds simply exhausting to a couple like us who normally lack energy in everything. Although I dread the thought of posing for hundreds of shots as newly-weds normally do in Taiwan, I still fancy portraits like those of my parents and grandparents.

One good photo will do, black and white, serious looking but sweet, coy bride and nervous groom, I think.

I made the decision about which salon to go, as K's physical absence conveniently excused him of the duty. We choose to do only 6 photos, which, however, cost us as much as a normal 30-photo package. The wedding gown that my mom picked up for me was magnificent, at least we thought so. The shooting went smooth but was really exhausting. I ended up indulging myself in a 12-hour deep sleep. It was thought to be rather fortunate that there were not another 24 shots to go in the end of the day.

The photos were done in Wernar Wedding in Taichung. I don't have much to comment since I didn't really compare its price and service with other salons. We like the photos (taken by Mr. Chou, lighting by Margo, makeup by Nicole, costume assistance Enes, sales manager Ms Ya-chi Chen) and so do our families and friends. However, sometimes I wonder if it's because I appeared to be rather detached so that the assistants were also very detached from me. Or, perhaps I just need to say honestly that I hope the environment had been more friendly and relaxing.

Second, reception day photos.
I think it was a correct decision to hire a cameraman for the reception. The photos were mirrors of every moment that we shared with all of the guests. I believe the albums (see either my flickr or Mosaic 馬賽克) will be reviewed over and over again, and the pleasure of it will never be exhausted. Mark Wang （馬克）, who is running the salon of Mosaic, is our photographer for the day. In addition to the photographer's perspectives that I have appreciated in his work, he is very friendly and attentive to details. Most impressive of all he is very quick in responding queries and doubts that a busy and anxious bride like me would have. (All the photos in this entry are Mark's snaps.)

Third, venue decoration.
The idea to have the reception venue decorated did not come to me until a close friend of my parents offered this help. Ms Shen and her team at Star Wedding Studio （星辰(Star)會場佈置）created a romantic corner in the venue. Ms Shen was patient enough to visit the venue several times beforehand and to talk with me about their blueprint. At first, I resisted the glamour and extravagance of their design, which might contradict the small and quiet reception that I was expecting. However, their ideas were carried out beautifully, and the corner turned into a quiet gallery where guests would visit and taste the joy of the engagement.

Fourth, venue.
We had our reception in Freshfields Resort and Conference in Taichung. It was a beautiful place that promises a panoramic view of Taichung county. The orchestration of the event was quite eventful, but it was a good day in the end.

2009-06-17T08:15:00.015Z

Death of a Cockroach

K was shocked when seeing a cockroach in the living room. The amount of poison that he sprayed on that evil insect probably explained the unmeasurable astonishment that he was thrown in.

After clearing away the remains of the cockroach, K determined to chase out all of the possible members of the cockroach family remaining in the house. He showed to me his lethal weapon: cockroach houses. This time, I was the one who was in astonishment. Products of cockroach house across the world, I believe, shared the same design and adopted the same method no matter how culturally distinctive their appearances might be. I thought that the design was usually made as unnoticeable as possible, for instance, small size and simple color prevailed. After all they were kind of embarrassing witnesses to the hygienic standard of a house, weren't they? (of course, this statement can be challenged in many ways especially in the context of Asian countries where this creature never seems to disappear.)
However, the cockroach house that K presented to me was certainly another unmissable product of the kawaii (可愛い) culture of Japan.

The packet contained several parts that would make a good and effective trap.

First you removed the paper that covers the sticky pad and glued a sachet of 'cockroaches' snacks' in the middle in order to attract those unpleasant cohabitants.Then, on two of the entrances to the house, you stuck cotton slips. My Japanese proficiency, if there were any, didn't really help me at this point. According to K, sometimes cockroaches had wet feet after crawling through pipes or wet stuff, and they were expected to wipe their feet on these 'doormats'!

Oh my! :-O No wonder the slips had images of cockroaches with their dry and happy feet!

There was more etiquette awaiting its visitors, it seemed.
On the other two sides of the house were two doors through which cockroaches might also pass. A cockroach san was represented as a gentleman knocking on the door before being invited into the house!

I knew it's going a bit insane now, but the imagination behind the design didn't seem to stop here.

The house had a weathercock on the roof!!
At first, I thought it was another useless decoration that was imposed on the world of non-humans. But guess what, to my surprise, it was also functional!! K told me that it served as a handle when you pick it up and throw it away. It kept your hands uncontaminated.

Up to this point, the initial shock at the appearance of the cockroach was gone. The entire process of assembling the cockroach houses and understanding its design were absolutely amusing.

Let's wait and see how many cockroach sans would come to have a cup of tea.

2009-06-07T07:35:00.005Z

About the Engagement (1): About Writing the Engagement

SSS_8118.jpg
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

It has been more than 2 months by now since the engagement between I and K in the end of March in 2009. I have been thinking about writing about it but have been either kept busy with other tasks or indecisive about how the event can be represented.

It felt like a dilemma of writing, which I never could avoid ever since the moment when I learned to write. The writing school that I attended in my childhood taught us to be always committed to a good opening, an opening that would surprise readers and that would tantalize their anticipation. This principle, however, has made every writing difficult. Of course, it is also true that I am yet far from good at 'writing' after all. Hurdles are always there not to be overcome.

So an entry about the engagement has been postponed.

Yet I found the 'non-writing' of the engagement quite a serious problem for me since my settlement in Tokyo about 2 weeks ago. When life moved on and the space and time changed, the flow of time that my blog followed lagged behind. I felt rather unorderly if any post about my life in Japan would appear before 'that' piece of writing about that moment.

Then, miraculously, I happened to be able to overcome (or ignore?) this dilemma a couple of days ago when I was reading a novel （月色撩人）by Wang Anyi (王安憶).

She writes about a male character's feelings about love, marriage, and romance:

"另潘索感到沮喪的是，每一次的開頭都很特別，但是結局都是一樣，總是落入窠臼。" (p. 47)
(what disappointed Pan is that every romance begins in a unique way, but nothing ever escapes the set pattern in the end.)

Of course, it is not how I feel about marriage at all. Instead, I am intrigued by the literary contrast between the anticipation for being unique and the disappointment at the inevitable falls into cliches. Any attempt to be different is after all another failed attempt to make difference, that is. What an amusing observation about the destiny of struggles of human beings in life!

I understood that this passage presented a rather hopeless or even pessimistic situation, but I couldn't help laughing at myself when I read this. It set me free from my serious (but useless) attempts to impress readers (or myself, more accurately) by writing a unique article to mark a good moment of my life. If it was only another attempt, I felt less anxious about making this other endeavor now.

The dilemma was then solved.

2009-06-03T04:03:00.007Z

DSCF1275.JPG
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

After the buzzing noises of the efforts to fulfil the household duties in the morning, the room calmed down in the end.
K was away at work, and I was enjoying typing and working by the window. Yes, literally, by the window.

The grey luminescence in the room in the afternoon was very soothing.

The sun slid in leaving traces on the cool surface of a clean floor.

2009-05-15T10:34:00.003Z

DSCF1238
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

A bonsai is placed above an artificial pool in the garden with its branch flowing downwards towards the water. It resembles a mini green waterfall pouring into the pool a stream of freshness. The leaves have an extraordinary texture, thick and rich, substantial but weightless.

2009-05-07T15:13:00.007Z

DSCF1205.jpg
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

Since last week, the small tree of bell fruit has been laden with red bells in our front garden. Dad is extremely proud of his efforts and have been counting the rubies everyday.

Although 'wax apple' or 'java apple' seems to be more true to its texture, its alias-- bell fruit-- is certainly more accurate in visual terms. As a popular nickname 'bell fruit' is always preferable to me. Such a poetic alternative projects a romantic imagination about summer! They would be ringing delicious melody between leaves in an orchard, if its heavenly taste and smell could be translated into audial patterns.

These bells on our small tree are just miniatures in comparison with those sold in the market. Unsellable though they are surely jewels, the apples of Dad's eye.

I love looking at them, especially their fat bottoms. It's always amazing to see how the shape is formed and the pattern created. Hanging upsdie down, they resemble flowers in blossom, flowers with the sweetest petals in the world.

K and his families were amazed at this tropical produce when they tasted it for the first time last month. I am not scientifically knowledgeable enough to know whether or not it is genetically related to apple at all, but they all agreed on the similarity between apple and wax apple. (Strangely though I had never thought so before they mentioned it.)

Our tree is too small to bear edible or sweet bell fruit in the end, but the visual delight they offer is nothing inferior to the excitement that they bring to the palate.

2009-04-30T16:11:00.002Z

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Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

Between the end of spring and the commencement of summer, we found a mother Chinese bulbul and its three babies nesting in the Azalea bushes at the garden. These small lives have brought excitement to my parents, who have attentively watched them and faithfully reported their progress since the day the nest took shape.

Two pumpkin-shaped calamondins were found among their plump comrades. The orange skin shone like the beaming sun. I was amazed at the visual effect that was produced when they were rested on an old rattan chair. The stripy pattern that was shared between them made a wonderful tapestry of simplicity.

The time that I have spent at home since January has been an ongoing observation of different moments of lives: living and dying.

While I was celebrating the tender lives of the 3 chicks and the vibrant color that signaled summer's approach, a life faded out in that same afternoon.

After several months' illness, little P, our pet dog, died. Little P was not little at all, he was the type of breed that usually has stout body-build. However, he had never been like dogs of his breed but rather quiet and timid in many ways.
When I touched the corpse of little P and helped to remove it to be buried,
I was speechless being confronted with death, the silent, watchful and powerful presence of which was right there feeling my hands.

Death itself is fearful, I think. What is overwhelming lies in the moment when life and death make contact. It is still hard to believe how life was just breathed away and how it was simply gone despite the efforts that were made to rescue it.

I was smelling the smell of little P for the entire night and day afterwards wherever I went, a smell of both life and death, living and dying.

The chicks and their mother are chirping in the garden; the backyard is left empty and quiet.

2009-03-27T01:19:00.002Z

Engagement in March, 2009

Kunio and Wanchen are getting engaged.

2008-12-29T09:20:00.005Z

MOMAT (Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

We visited MOMAT, Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, the other day. It was right facing the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. I was there visiting the imperial palace when I was fifteen years old, my first visit to this country. At that time, this museum was unknown to my limited view of the world.

It happened to be rather quiet and little visited on that day, perhaps because it was after Christmas and almost the end of the year. We browsed through some of its permanent collections in exhibition, witnessing the interactions between Japanese and western art movements. It was quite interesting to see how the art of a certain culture adopted the style of that of the other, and how it resisted the influences.

To be honest, as I have discussed with K during the exhibition, I found dislikable and rather uninteresting those painters who have simply adopted the techniques and concepts of the modern art movements in the western world, such a cubism, futurism, and impressionism. Their works are still pretty but, unfortunately, lacking perspectives, perspectives that would have reflected artists' own unique visions of the world and that would have determined the successes of artworks.

However, there were still gems in the collections. I really liked two artists in particular. Kawabata Ryushi (川端龍子)'s Scroll of Bullfight is the climax of the visit, as I told K after the museum. The scroll spread across the exhibition room with an exciting narrative animated by vibrant colors and fluent flow of strokes. He has a very childlike viewpoint through which he told his story. Disappointing is that they don't have it available in duplicate prints or postcards.

Another pleasant surprise is Ogura Yuki (小倉遊亀)'s Bathing Women.

I wasn't surprised to come to know that she is a female artist. The almost transparent colours of white tiles and green water seemed to render the canvas only a feather's weight. The snowy bodies of two bathing ladies were almost blended into the white and immaculate background, floating in a watery and steamy space of a public bath.

2008-12-27T14:16:00.003Z

K gave me two adorable Christmas cakes! : )
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

I received two palm-sized Christmas cakes from K on Christmas Eve when he came back from work.

These two were simply adorable! The smiling faces of the two small figures, a Santa and a snowman, simply made me smile too. I was surprised to know how easily I can be pleased.

It was a very good Christmas holiday, quiet and sweet.

2008-12-23T03:00:00.003Z

Christmas Penguins in the Open Market in York
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

It was my last December in York. It's rather sentimental as I knew that I was leaving England for good. I am surely coming back to visit at some point, but the fact of moving away from York, a place that I've stayed for 4 years, is somehow very hard to cope with. On some farewell occasions, my friends and I were almost tearful that we had to force ourselves to say goodbye and turn away as if it's just another temporary departure as it used to be, as if we would still be able to text each other for an afternoon tea on the next day.
Meeting up again is definitely the plan, and there are several wedding occasions next year to expect. I told myself not to be negative about the departure and stay optimistic that friendship will keep us close and near no matter how far away from each other we are.

Saying goodbye is just as difficult as braving a new life.

2008-11-13T10:20:00.003Z

Baking mania: My Domestic Goddess Project and Blueberry Muffins

Since the end of September, I have been seized by an obsession with baking. Most of the time, there isn't any reason or occasion to bake for, but smelling the mixture of egg and flour is itself an unbeatable joy.

In the beginning, I simply reproduced the old recipes that I used to follow. Only occasionally did I consult my cook book, Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.

I didn't much justice to this recipe book before this September. It stayed on my shelf most of the time after H gave it to me as a birthday present last year. But, I am glad that I started enjoying its friendly recipes before it was too late.

One day when I was holding Domestic Goddess in my arms, my housemate joked that it seems to be my bible and suggested that I should try to complete all of its recipes. This random thought sounded like an interesting challenge. Yes, it would be fun to start a Domestic Goddess project, isn't it? So here I begin my baking diary following Nigella's magic hands measuring, chopping, blending, and playing with aromatic ingredients. It is especially fun when following those recipes that do not come with photos of their end products. An advantage is that these verbal descriptions do not impose any standard by which my neophyte efforts can be judged. Yet, there is a disadvantage that my beginner's knowledge cannot equip me with knowledgeable imagination about what I can expect. A friend said that it can be very trying when waiting for the baking to be done. After the batter/dough or whatever enters the oven, what remains with the bakers on the other side of the oven are anxiety and anticipation. It is somehow true, but why is baking still one of the most common ways to relax among people that I know?

Anyway, it is the first entry of my Domestic Goddess project: Blueberry Muffins. It is on p. 72 of that book. I substituted blueberries with raisins. The raisins were soaked in rum overnight, and I self-indulgently convinced myself that they were more like fresh blueberries in that way. They came out very well, I think. The faint sweet smell of rum was very addicting.

Let's see how far I can go with this project.

2008-11-11T10:59:00.004Z

Rubber band
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

I played with a rubber band between my fingertips while I was on the phone this afternoon. The importance of the serious issue in discussion over the phone rendered me rather inarticulate. I needed to divert my attention a bit and relax my nerve, and the rubber band happened to be handy.

I didn't really know whether playing with this small object helped ease the conversation in the end, for, as far as I can remember, I was fully engaged in the dialogue. Honesty, rather, between me and the other conversant on the other side of the world has led us to a happy and promising point which will keep both of us inspired and optimistic about our respective concerns.

After hanging up the phone, I noticed the distorted rubber band that my unattended creativity had made between the spiral of my diary. It was not like any cheap rubber bands that I used to see, I think. I recalled that it did not bite my skin but felt rather smooth, silky: nothing plastic. Its color was somehow potently dense; it is powerfully elastic, submissive to the tortures that my fingers imposed on it and resilient enough to return to its defining shape. It didn't provoke any irritation that the plastic nature of rubber usually suggested. Instead, the three arches between the inked and blank spaces in my diary appeared rather arty and thoughtful. It guided my thoughts to follow its curvy paths.

I saw a lesson about flexibility, a note on how to strike a balance between being submissive and being resistant, between the contrary forces of the world and the self.

2008-10-20T13:52:00.004Z

DSCF0196.jpg
Originally uploaded by Wanchen Tai

North Wales, 14-17/Oct/2008

I just came back from a trip to North Wales. The purpose of the trip was to relax and to see the other side of this country, but it proved that to full both aims is physically impossible. But I have managed to sleep well throughout the journey, pampered myself with good showers, and fed my eyes with enchanting views of the countryside.

This sleeping bear explained well the nature of this part of the UK: blissful rest in the arms of nature.

2008-10-10T09:54:00.011Z

Carrel 12

'Can I get key to Carrel 12?'

Over the past two years, it was the phrase that I used to begin a day's work in the JBM library. Sometimes, it was the only phrase that I would utter during the entire day, while the rest of the time simply fell in silence.

Beneath the humble request for assistance that this question implied was actually a privilege, a privilege that allowed me to enjoy a secluded and private space on campus. It granted me a secret pleasure of being alone among books and in the library crowd.

My carrel overlooked a meadow adjacent to the library. The lawn featured budding plants in spring, starry daisies and sun-bathing people in summer, golden leaves in autumn, and freezing emptiness in winter. The apple tree had been amazingly productive laden with fruits every autumn. Most apples remained on the tree throughout the harvest season, rotten or randomly pecked by birds, and fell on the ground when winter came. These trees best exemplified the seasonal poetics of time, cyclic and repetitive.

The nocturnal beauty of the view was mysterious. The dim light that emanated from the concrete building of the library drew thin and glistening contours of objects that were apparently visible in daylight. At night, standing in the study room, one didn't see the outside as much as s/he saw her-/himself. Sometimes before I locked up the carrel to go home, perhaps enchanted by the darkness, I would gaze through the window pan and look to the depth of the sky. I gazed as if I would see anything at all; yet in the end, I realized that I saw nothing but my own reflection on the windowpane. No matter how far my eyes had managed to trace the traffic flow that was delineated by moving dots of light, eventually I was guided to see my own image that was just an inch away on the glass.

It felt like an exercise of contemplation by which thoughts about the world eventually bounced back to the subject. This trajectory of logic--the dialectical relationship between subject and object--would continue without exit.

After the end of my university registration, I am no longer entitled to this pleasure of feeling securely alone. The key to this private space was returned for good. Yesterday when I saw the name of a new owner of the carrel, I think I forced a smile to disguise my feeling of loss.

2008-10-08T09:59:00.004Z

Rainbow

K and I went to London for a research holiday in August. It was a lovely time together hunting for good food, music, and art. This rainbow was a wonderful surprise that footnoted the journey.

We saw this colorful arch right outside the tube station of Earl's Court. The gray cityscape was immediately animated and brightened up by the rainbow at sunset when the city was already heavy with a day's toils. The presence of the rainbow miraculously allowed the busy flow of traffic to assume a new rhythm. Some paused to admire the arch, some turned their heads to glimpse it even after they continued their journeys, and some posed for photos against the backdrop of the celestial vision.

Later during that holiday, we saw another rainbow in York after a torrential rain. The experiences were particularly blissful, I think, because I didn't just witness them alone, both times.

2008-09-13T20:04:00.005Z

Suicidal Thoughts

There were several times over the past month when I tried to cross the motorway to enter the campus, I cared nothing about the cars rushing towards me. Seeing vehicles approaching, my brain virtually went blank, and it was usually only at the last minute that I suddenly realized the potential danger and stepped back in time.

It felt like an attempt to kill oneself, but it wasn't true, I think. It is quite mysterious. That feeling alienated the physical self from the thinking self and provided immediately a third-self viewpoint. The sense of self-alienation came from the very heart of the architecture of sentiment and presses hard against nerves after it happened.

These days, absolute concentration on work has been keeping me peaceful and leaving me in quietude, but still, sigh, the world is not only about the enjoyment of work.

2008-04-15T21:58:00.005Z

Grey Sky and Bare Twigs

I adore those days that feature grey sky.
This colour is damp and heavy, perhaps somehow gloomy, but it allows every other color to shine.

2008-04-05T10:23:00.003Z

L and M had their wedding in the end of March in Italy. Guests witnessed their happiness and promises in a medieval castle in Italy. A day of fairy tale in real life.

Go to my Flickr to capture some graceful moments of the beautiful day.

2008-03-23T10:41:00.006Z

Easter Snow

February Frost

2008-03-21T08:59:00.006Z

Xenophobia is a Symptom of a Falling Country

It is the current presidential election in Taiwan that made me start this entry. But the same sentiment of xenophobia is, in general, increasingly strong following this trend of globalization, in the UK, in EU, and in all over the world. Concerning about this issue, the situation in Taiwan is slightly different from the rest of the world (or perhaps not absolutely) in that Taiwan has a specific target to resist.

One of the arguments between the two presidential candidates in Taiwan is whether to establish a closer economic tie with mainland China. Protesting voices claimed that such a move will eventually allow China to engulf Taiwan in both aspects of economy and politics.

It is such a narrow-minded view, I have to say.

Of course, I don't disagree that any policies like this need careful considerations so that they do not compromise any benefits that they promise.

Thoughtful consideration, however, is not equivalent to mere resistance. Resistance is surrender, here I quote Zizek. Any attempt to voice a nation's own identity and to participate in global affairs is doomed to fail if from the outset it is already contaminated with a prior prejudice against certain political bodies, and if such discrimination is derived from a defective conscience against advancement.
There are unfortunate witnesses of such both in the world history and today.

Xenophobia is only a symptom, and it can be tackled before history repeats itself in resorting to national closure.

Photo: in the Central Park, New York

2008-03-18T22:01:00.005Z

A Small Friend's Visit

M is in York for her holiday, her first return to York after she and her family moved back to their country almost a year ago. We had tea together this afternoon. We knew each other when she was only 3 years old, and now she is 5! She showed her small fingers proudly to say how she is a big girl now! She is a sweet heart, smart, and smiling as she used to. Now she is even adapting herself into good manners: she uses napkins when she has meals and cleans up the table after she is done. That really surprises me. She does not rely on baby cart any longer! : )

We waved at each other when parting. Bye bye M! See you next time!

The photo: M is taking photo of all of us using her own camera.

2008-03-14T22:14:00.004Z

There is a slope near the house. I always have difficulties in cycling up on the way to the university. But cycling down has been a very much different feeling. It is a mixture of fear and excitement: the fear of falling off my bike as I did once, and the excitement that is brought forth by high speed.

It is usually quite dark at night. Tonight, on my bike I sailed down, and I saw lights approaching at the bottom of the slope. A car it was. I wondered whether to clutch the brakes.

2008-03-04T16:30:00.009Z

Underneath

Roses are amazingly enduring.

It's been 3 weeks since the day of purchase.
These flowers remained rosy in color even if the silky petals were wrinkled with time, and the crowns of the blossoms were touched by the impatiently burning hands of death.

But the stems underneath were still vigorous, unexpectedly.

Bubbles were glittering with oxygen, clustering around the lengthy and graceful stems, and stretching the last moment of life.

2008-01-25T10:15:00.001Z

In Rainbows

In Rainbows, Radiohead's latest release (photo taken from amazon.co.uk)

It has been quite windy these two days. Wind speed reached between 22 to 28 miles per hour in general. These numbers didn't make sense until I heard the wind wiping across the streets in a howling roar and until I felt windows cracking and buildings shaking. Yorkshire is notorious for its winter of gales. When I still lived in the university accommodation, the first winter was made up of several sleepless nights of unceasing wind. Hearing it scratching over concrete surface can be quite depressing, as if it is also aiming at the human body seeking to pierce through and to mock the hidden fear.

These winter days fleshed out my imagination about Wuthering Heights, and sent me back to the passionate days when I was just a literature neophyte (a never-changing and constant state, though) and to the burning excitement that I found in that novel. (Some of my current colleagues, however, do find my taste for literature, especially in this case, disagreeable.)

Yesterday I was walking in the wind listening to In Rainbows, Radiohead's new album. Music is never my specialty and I tend to be very forgetful about anything related to music, including the musicians that I have liked or the melodies that I have enjoyed. Music does not usually stay in my mind but only in the ears. I have been listening to this new collection for a week, yet not much emotional response was evoked.

Yesterday during my foot-journey, there was a moment when the bricky wind smashed into my body, the male vocal in the ears took off, flying, against a rising and gradually evaporated melody in the background.

This strange moment of weary conflict was very close and familiar, as if it suddenly transformed into a smell or a touch whose physical presence can hardly be ignored.

A couple of years ago, I used to listen to Radiohead when I drove home on highways after a week's labor of work. Now I remember. The same route, the same vehicle, the same fatigue, and the same dull mind. This week duplicated the last, and the same formula of copying was followed repeated. The saddening melody of the pop rock bellowed within the confined but secure space that finally all belonged to me. The right volume for their music was extremely high. I drove on, the body hung onto the floating but gravitating notes, and the heart gradually learned to beat in a healthy pace again.

The wind and the music, the roaring and the moaning caste me into a zone of twilight. Perhaps, that's where the rainbow is, (well, over-interpretation in this case is the curse of my profession), beyond the toil of the world but before the bliss of another state of mind.

2007-11-09T08:47:00.000Z

A Nocturnal Pedestrian

Several nights ago, when I was cycling home, I almost ran over a hedgehog had my bicycle light not captured its crawling figure in the absolute darkness.

I braked in the nick of time and was luckily enough to avoid two misfortunes simultaneously: having the hedgehog injured and having the tire flat. Apparently, both of us were shocked. The little creature immediately rolled into a thorny ball and refused to move at all. I tried in both languages, English and Mandarin, to persuade it to go either forward or backward. But it stubbornly denied my kind suggestion: it remained stupefied and motionless.

Worried that it might get hit by another vehicle in such a dark night, I decided to help it move. I pushed it slowly with my feet toward the pavement. It was still resisting but started 'rolling' at last. It took several gentle kicks and about 5 minutes to return it safely to the corner.

Hopefully it is happy and safe now.

Next time when you try to cross road at night, it might be a good idea to speed up a little bit.

Photo from Think Spiky.

2007-11-08T09:12:00.000Z

Further to my previous discoveries of cat-on-the-wall (cats 1 and cats 2) in York, here is my new finding: a cat on the wall of Barnitts. I was initially attracted to the public clock in order to confirm my time, but the small black object underneath entered into my eye.

The encounter has delighted me on the way to a supervision. : )

I hope this adventure in York continues.

2007-11-04T17:56:00.002Z

What can I do with unfinished paints?

Today was spent in a luxurious manner for painting. I had been drafting a blueprint for a week since my return from the northern city, Edinburgh. An art plan for my impressions of Edinburgh. Colors had to be applied to the ghost draft before all of the colors became discolored amongst endless routines and works.

I visited Edinburgh in time before winter properly settled in. Autumn was still there in the gardens, on the hills, in the air and the sunset.
The autumn sun was even somehow tanning. It graced the rocky landscape with a golden color and gave it a look of content.

2007-10-21T09:44:00.001Z

Autumn

The weather has been much better in autumn than in summer this year: steady temperature, regular sunshine with no shower intervals.
Heart-warming is the autumnal color. It wraps up the world in a fabulous fruitfulness, upon which the afternoon sunshine gives highlight.

I have started feeling nostalgic before any departure that has to be taken.

2007-10-14T20:58:00.000Z

Gateau de Legumes (Vegetable Cake/Bread)

A curious name it is for this salty bread of bacon. The word 'legumes' provoked my imagination of lettuce, mushroom,carrot, pea, etc., but none of them is in the recipe. Perhaps, it proved that my imagination is still highly charged with Asian dietary. Instead, olives, bacon, dried tomato, and cheese are added.

A good side-dish for dinner or for a quick lunch!

For me, baking is more like a punctuation mark that signals intervals between works. It always helps me recuperate energy for next stage. There are occasions on which I do baking amongst endless works, and curiously those products have never been satisfactory. Something un-nameable is always missing in the flavor. The recipe is the same one, and I am quite a careful cook when it comes to baking. I follow word by word, literally, on the recipe even if I have done it for hundreds of times. No kidding.

Perhaps it's the absent-mindedness that makes the difference, a whole-hearted willingness is missing.

2007-10-04T07:42:00.000Z

Today's read
Funny and ironic enough is that when I was checking out this news, the advertisement of a brand new release by Saab was hovering over the headline on the web page, was partially blocking the vision, and stubbornly denied any attempt to close it.

'Melting ice cap brings diamond hunters and hopes of independence to Greenland'---the Guardian Online

'But rather than putting her faith in mineral wealth, Mrs Hammond believes that her country's best prospect of buying its independence lies in hydro-electricity. The vast lakes and melting ice cap provide enormous potential for electricity free from fossil fuel and the Greenland government is negotiating with Alcoa, an aluminium company, to built the world's second largest smelter. No contract has been signed but the minister hopes this project will provide 3,500 much-needed jobs.

It was ironic, she says, that climate change had melted the ice sufficiently for prospectors to move in, and that might in turn give the nation its independence. A referendum in Denmark had shown a majority in favour of granting Greenland home rule. "We hope it will happen soon."

But Professor Minik Rosing, of the University of Copenhagen, who was born in Greenland, believes it would be a disaster if his country had a big oil find and used the revenue to buy independence. "As everybody gets more desperate for that commodity you do not want to be a very, very small, very independent country, very far from anywhere else. Much better to stay with the friend you know."

A major mineral find could be catastrophic, he said. "With such a small population we could be overwhelmed by people coming to work here. We should be cautious of suddenly finding ourselves in the minority."

2007-09-28T22:00:00.001Z

I have kept a bag of organic apples during this week, and they have been soothing my fatigue that accumulates during the day! Those organic jewels are small enough that I can hold them tight in my palm, a good size for a couple of satisfactory bites after breakfast or before dinner. Excellent taste!

On another day in the library, a lady was sitting next to me in the computer room eating. Of course, eating is absolutely disallowed in the library! But she was even eating an apple! And doubtlessly her enjoyment was creating an enormous crunching sound 'echoing' in the room. I side-glanced at her and her food. Curious was that her apple had a lot of bruises, or to put it more accurately, a lot of holes spreading over its surface. That was also a palm-size apple, and the size of which made the cluster of wounds even more noticeable. Perhaps she had put the apple together with a pointy pen in her handbag, I guessed.

When I was looking out from the window today in my study room in the library. I found the apple tree right outside of it leaden with fruit now. And suddenly I saw that most of these green apples shared the same feature with the apple in the computer room. They were bruised and damaged in a quite identical way: now I know, birds* must have pecked them before the reach of anybody else!

The mystery about that apple in the computer room is now solved!

* I have a new discovery today, they are ravens! : )

2007-09-21T20:31:00.001Z

My Worry Doll

A friend and I went to York Theatre Royal to see a play this afternoon: Silly Billy. It's adapted from a book by Anthony Browne.

Children's theatre has been very remote from me as most of the time I am quite scared of kids, especially when they are excited, shouting and screaming out of a reason that is not always clear to me. Anyway, it's a very colorful and dynamic presentation, and the story is composed with subtlety. The kids proved to be excellent company. (Of course, it's a children's theatre!)

The worry dolls from Maya legend are important to the story. These roughly fabricated but colorfully clothed small dolls are said to be able to carry away worries that haunt their keepers.
I found the idea interesting to keep a doll which can worry instead of you.

'You have to tell your worries to the dolls' is the first step. It is the act of 'speaking about the worries to another person' that allows the subject to let go of his/her worries. But the keeping of the worried dolls underneath one's pillows is quite curious to me, for the act of keeping the dolls is an alternative way to keep one's worries in another form of existence. The worried subject, still, has his hand on the worries in an even more concrete form of a doll than that of shapeless imagination.

Before today, I used to think that in the Maya legend, these dolls should be thrown into fire after they fulfill their function. If it is the case, when the dolls are burned down to ashes, the worries are supposedly gone with the smoke. It is admittedly cruel and heartless, I agree.

Comparatively, it's rather humanistic to save these dolls. But what is this bothering fact that the worries are carried on within the dolls? I don't know, perhaps, it's in fact a very subtle and metaphorical way of suggesting that not a single worry will disappear, but every worry can live in a less disturbing existence.

Photo: A worry doll, a souvenir from the play.

2007-09-17T20:34:00.003Z

A happy angel I met in the library

I saw a friend in the library today. It's been a while since last time we saw each other.

She was as friendly as usual, but she was somehow a bit different, I felt. Her smile radiated brilliant happiness, very hyper in spirit and excited. The apparent excitement was quite unusual according to her rather steady temper.
Then she said she had a good news to tell me: she is engaged! We gripped tight each other's hands and screamed exultingly a voiceless scream in the corridor in the library.
Another 18 months to expect the wedding! I am so pleased for her!

The good news kept me smiling for the rest of the day.
Congratulations!

2007-09-12T23:09:00.001Z

On the way to the city this evening, I saw a girl crying.
Her emotion was struggling through her throat to break through the body making hoary sounds. The dusky night shaded my vision to track any trace of tears.
Her cry sounded dry, devoid of liquid.

I wonder for what reason she was crying.

The sound of her emotion was no more than another random note to the music of the night.
Passing.
So will be the cause.

2007-09-11T20:09:00.002Z

Atonement

I have liked the title, atonement, and have been very interested in the idea of penitence. But in fact the green dress on Keira Knightley, the leading actress, is more the reason that I was firstly drawn to the film. The robe is in a mysteriously and sensually green especially against the backdrop of the deep and enormous garden on that dark and unsettling night.

It is a very good story narrated along a stream of poetic images in the film. Beaming sunlight blurs the contour of reality; buzzing flies tickle itchy ears; the penetrating sound of strings stings the youthful and passionate skin. Hollow echoes draw that summer afternoon to a temporary horizon of silence when water swallows up impatient souls.

The crime committed on that summer day remains and continues through an ever-renewed remembering and an impossible forgetting.

2007-09-02T11:21:00.001Z

Walking? or Dancing? in the Rain.
Neither.

I was asked this question, 'is the song "walking" or "dancing" in the rain?'. I lost the grasp of my memory about the title and somehow failed to come up with an answer. 'Dancing', I said, with much hesitation and a little pretentious arrogance recalling the musical in which the leading actor happily dances in a pouring rain.

But neither dancing nor walking is right after my chance discovery in the cyberspace today. The song is in fact 'Singing in the Rain'. What a trivial thing that I am fussing about now!! However, I do feel embarrassed or, more appropriately, upset about my being incorrect. I even wrote an entry about the musical early this year but still couldn't remember its title. Symptoms of senility. There is nothing seriously wrong about being incorrect in this case perhaps, if only distressing.

It is not the fact of forgetting the correct title that is bothering. I was making decisions between two GIVEN choices, dancing or walking, but forgot that a possible answer is located outside the choices. This forgetfulness is worrying.

Disappointing is the frequency that 'alternatives' do not always seem to be apparent to me.

2007-08-20T11:02:00.000Z

L got married.

It's been a while after L's wedding in June. I just saw the photos of the ceremony these days and was again touched by the beauty and the significance that this event was meant to be. She was extremely pleased and was surrounded by friends and beloved families. It was a shame that I was unable to attend her wedding.

L and I have been friends for almost 12 years since the first day of our university life. We and four other girls shared a room in NCCU female dormitory for an entire year. Six of us in total. That was an extraordinary year for all of us, I think, or at least for me: trying to know and to get used to each other, especially it is perhpas the first time for all of us to live far away from home. We also enjoyed an extraordinary excitement in exploring Taipei city by scooters. Riding through empty streets on countless midnights. After the first year, we continued living close to each other almost for the rest of the 3 years before completing the degree.

L is such a different woman, realistic but temperately and pleasantly imaginative. Although she always thinks that she has a rather rash temper, in fact a very tender and caring friend she is.

Our friendship went through ups and downs at some turns during these years, and thankfully L is such an open-minded and passionate person that she tolerated my quirkiness. We hadn't seen each other for years before a meet-up last December when she told me this news about her marriage.

After that, she kept me updated about their preparation for the new house, the wedding and the photo-shooting, and she told me the date as soon as they'd reached a decision. She kindly shared with me every bit of happiness in the process. Their smiles are charming, so tenderly reflecting each other's good nature.

Happy marriage and blissful future together to L and her husband!

2007-08-12T14:29:00.001Z

In March 2007, some of my coursemates and I went to Gregynog Hall in Wales to attend a Palaeography workshop. It was my first time to journey to Wales, and have liked it tremendously! Fields and endless fields spread out in front of us, sheep and horses and piglets scattered across the vast tapestry of green. Sweet smell of grass and tender breeze. Nature is such a gift of grace.

I recalled a cake that I made a while ago, a cake themed Yorkshire Dale with plenty of sheep merrily wandering around. (Although I had heard about some really naughty sheep which trampled down gardens and farmlands in the countryside and although I also had been told about the evil nature of these 'pretentious' creatures...)

I did my laundry today, and the smell of lavender of the washing powder is now lightening the heavy and thick air on such a humid day. I am reminded of the sweet and refreshing smell that I encountered in Wales.

Go to see photos of my trip to Wales, including Gregynog Hall and an involuntary but pleasant detour to Shrewsbury.
(I am trying this new place to house my photos and have been excited about the 'map photos' function that Piscsa provides.)

2007-08-05T07:22:00.001Z

National Palace Museum, Taiwan

The National Palace Museum in Taiwan (here after the NPM) is one of the best museums in the world and definitely the best place to explore Chinese culture and history. It is incomparable in its comprehensive collection of quality Chinese art.

In recent years, the NPM in Taiwan won several important international awards that recognized its creative maneuver in managing the museum, in particular, in its efforts in transforming the culture of antiques into a fashion.

It might still be a fashion of culture tourism, but more significantly, it also creates a fashion for museum culture. The NPM has introduced a new lens of technology through which ideas of past, history, and culture could be seen from a up-to-date viewpoint.

I am frequently appalled by some popularized forms of culture, to be honest. However, efforts in makingthe so-called high-brow culture in museums 'popular' and 'known', like what the NPM is making, have to be appreciated. New technology adds a modern flavor to the hidden beauty of objects from the past, and this modern touch also meets the expectation to draw closer to each other the modern audience and the artifacts.

One of the NPM movies that I have been intrigued by is the 'Adventures in the NPM'. The story takes place on a quiet night in the NPM where national treasures all come alive and run in search for a missing katydid.

Follow the click below for a view of the film:

Adventures in the NPM

(Originally downloaded from the NPM website)

This 3-D animation stars a small child, whose image is derived from an artwork of NPM's collection--"Child Pillow"--a ceramic pillow that is molded into a sleeping upper-class child. Another star in the film is a katydid, probably the most valuable insect in the world. The katydid is drawn from another famous work of art: a jadeite cabbage upon which a katydid perches. The film is also narrated against a stream of images, which is made up of some of the most representative features of Chinese art: calligraphy, dragon, plump ladies from Tong dynasty, etc..

Every click on the NPM website ushers me into my memory of such a rich culture that I grew up with. Every turn of the web-page provokes unceasing amazement that I once had in the classroom of Chinese art years and years ago.

Let's talk more about this place in the future.

More reading:
* The news of the premium of 'Adventures in the NPM';

More adventures:
* National Palace Museum in Taiwan

2007-08-02T22:09:00.000Z

A man and his muddy dog

On a morning early this summer, on a fence in the neighborhood stood two toys: a man and a dog. 'Are they lost?' I wondered. On that same afternoon, I was surprised again to find them there, still, except that the man changed his pose.

The mud on that toy dog was curious: traces of so much memory and time that had gone passed. He must have just been dug out of soil where it was buried some time ago. Why was it buried in the first place? Perhaps the keeper was suspecting any possible loss of this toy, or plotting to make the dog carry out a certain mission.

The toy man in a technician's costume has a peculiar vividness in his body and feature. He was made with so many joints. Must be very agile! Did he come with a girlfriend? just like Barbie and Danny* were made a couple.

I was thinking, is there any toy like them hidden in my garden back home?

* 'Danny', a mistaken figure for 'Ken'. Thanks to a live-in commentator's reminding. [emendation made on 3/08/07]

2007-07-23T23:32:00.001Z

A Wedding

and Some thoughts

R and H got married last Saturday in a small church in Surrey. The ceremony and the banquet were well-tuned by several readings from the Bible, a reading of sonnet 18 of Shakespeare, and several moving speeches.

H the groom talked about his appreciation of his new wife and about the un-conpromised happiness that their match has created. He said R has brought him plentiful of joy and has offered him unlimited care. He put the beauty of R's virtue thus in words, '... R. forgives and forgets ...'.

The entire speech was footnoted with the speaker's good sense of humor and punctuated by intervals of burst of laughter. It helped us to envision their firm mutual commitment and projected an image of a future life of felicity that they are going to work on with their original families.

The two words, 'forgiving' and 'forgetting', lingered in the air, and I started musing on the relation between these two acts.

The alliteration between 'forgiving' and 'forgetting' might have made the two words sound easy and therefore light, but somehow they are two really difficult things to achieve, especially if we are talking about wrongs and faults in terms of managing a relationship.

It is not difficult to forget and then forgive, since, supposedly, the point of argument is buried in/or erased from the pool of memory and therefore the reason for the fight ceases to be. No worries for further consequent discord.

To forgive and then to forget is more a challenge, I suppose. It requires a generous heart, mature mind, and sympathetic reasoning. One has to reason with his/her own anger and the irritation that is provoked in him/her, then to extend his/her sympathy and affection to the partner, and is able to release both parties from the confrontation in the end.

It is in this process of reasoning with one's own emotion and in the process of clarifying the problem that 'forgiving' is enabled. In forgiving, forgetting is initiated, not in the sense that one represses the unpleasant past, but in the sense that one becomes considerate and understanding. Then the mutual affection is embodied and the emotional bond is strengthened.

Perhaps there isn't anything like complete forgetting, i.e. failing to track any trace of memory. Forgiving and forgetting are on the one hand, I suppose, removing the negative emotion, but on the other, remembering the affectionate bond that ties the the couple together in the beginning.

2007-07-08T00:11:00.000Z

Time in York

A number of clocks stand on several corners in the city of York, providing, presumably, references to time. Most of the time, however, these clocks seem to forget their duty especially when they forget time themselves or when they tell the wrong time. The rather slow life pace of this medieval town, however, does not seem to reflect the need of these time controllers. Compelling people to walk faster? or to slow down? or just to present themselves as nice companions? I haven't found any massive digital clock here, fortunately. Watching and hearing clocks ticking away time are such a 'luxurious' and 'expensive' habit, I have to admit, but I really enjoy it.

Colors of these clocks are important. They are obviously the primary feature that drew my attention to these circular signs of modern life.

The bareness of time.

Green time for food and grocery.

Telling time before the house of God is very daring!

Brick red time invites me to a cup of tea.

This blue clock on the white building of the tourist information centre is always my favorite. The glossy blue frame is very eye-catching just like a piece of blue sky on a cloudy day: inspiring excitement and hope.

This is a very beautiful clock outside of a small church in the city centre. It looks grey-green on cloudy days, crystal blue on sunny days. A trumpeter is standing right above the clock, trumpeting soundlessly the time of the day. I found this idea of the trumpeter of time telling and clever: time passes without making any sound, but it has an imminent presence that voices itself so loud that can hardly be ignored.

2007-06-13T22:03:00.001Z

An additional finding to my collection of cats in my search for animals in the city of York.
These two cats were spotted near King's Arm before Ouse Bridge.

2007-06-12T22:42:00.000Z

Chicago, Kalamazoo (MI), and New York City: 09-17/May/2007

Intersection of sacred and secular spaces

Perhaps I really need more time so as to appreciate the beauty and the character of New York, one of the most legendary cities in the world. Before my trip, almost everybody I talked to told me that 'it's an amazing city', 'everything is happening in that city', or 'you will definitely love it'.

Yes, it is amazing, and indeed everything seems to be possible there, but, it is impressive in a very imposing way, at least, to me. Perhaps I have been too relaxed in the Old York, so that New York is too fast, too loud , and too busy.

The rapid rhythm and loud melody of New York City is driving every passenger forward, and further forward, mercilessly. However, this ever-faster movement from one block to another, from one street to another, from one metro station to another, is curiously slowed down every now and then by parish churches or cathedrals which are resting on some block corners.

I didn't expect to find so many sacred spaces in this 'very' secular place. By saying that it is a 'very secular' city, I mean, this is a city that seems to allow every kind of human material desire to be pushed to an extreme: most people are here or come here with a hope that their desire will be answered.

Trinity Church stands right at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street: its soaring pinnacles counter-balance the skyscraper in their close confrontation. St. Paul's chapel is facing Ground Zero, echoing a solemn memory of loss.

St. Bartholomew's church sits right on Fifth Avenue with comfort and ease among an endless flow of traffic and man.

It was around noon when we arrived. The staircase that leads to the entrance of St. Bart's was taken up by people who snatched themselves away from half day's work. Some of them were chatting, some talking on the phone, some eating lunch, some reading, resting, watching Fifth Avenue, or just idling. The stairs between the busiest and the most lavish street in the world and the church yield a liminal space between the secular and the sacred, between excitement and tranquility, between real work and real rest, between sound and silence. Perhaps, for some people, it is also a boundless small area in which the soul and the body are granted a chance to encounter.

My entering into St. Bart's after a long walk in the stinging sunlight transformed my curiosity and surprise at the discovery of these quiet religious presences into an appreciation. Grateful to their steady and silent company.

On my travel map, they look just like scattered stars anchoring the city in an irresistible material flood.

Fifth Avenue is behind the gate and the window.