Sorry-ology

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...

( 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 ...

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.

'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...

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.

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 th...

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!

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 ...

(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 !

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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

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. ...

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 pa...

Pansy violets Pansies 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 pro...

Reading In order to reread T he 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...

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 th...

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 ligh...

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 movi...

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...

50 percent of luminance Everyday life has become stressful since the moment when everything was shaken and displaced 5 days ago on the 11 th 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 12 th , 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 ...

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 t...

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 m...