beijing, may 2010. individually wrapped cookies and the extra air inside packagings to prevent the chips from breaking. full of excitement, woody asks for our permission to polish the wooden surfaces in the room. he later forgets his basketball behind when his grandma rushes him to go eat dinner. fluffy white things getting in my eyes as i’m riding the bike. the daily tears. the precariousness of life in china. so much dust. everything happening out there, in the open, like the man who is trying to ‘hide’ his bag amidst the bush in the middle of a busy highway. all flesh, no skin. we ride the bus and he argues that women are weaker than men, generally speaking, everyone should know their place, he says. gobo, my new favourite. she says i take too much care, like being mama, ‘can you enjoy when you are like this?’ but then a few moments later she says i’m like child. postmaturity? my friends’ babies and wedding plans. so much life happening. the unpronounceable volcano, the mispronounced “debt restructuring”. sigh. where do we go from here. the haunting pronouns. acknowledging the other. ethics, infinitely demanding. hitting a ball against the wall, our mediated exercise. winter turning into summer, no spring. the guilt of being far away. the relief of being far away. the time, the time, the time. i try to make a dorodango. it turns out not that shiny and ends up cracking on the way home.
kind of, sometimes
to the old lady working at the internet cafe, whom i could slam a hundred times in aftermath but only saw my childish smile in backwards retreat, we could make an example of you in our courteous, civilised new metropolis, as per a certain someone said i was often wont to do, some sort of ethnographic approach to what lack of humanity there may be in world of screens and headphones, of blank faces and pounding hearts, why in the world should i wish to make an example of you, sickly woman with cracked face who sits in the dark by day, your rule this world perhaps and i am mere observer, a hasty brushing off sends me away, without being able to engage in the very services that you offer. or the mistake that we make in this situation is that working for the money (the system that creates low wage working conditions, the worker that desires to fill this position for lack of better opportunity, because it is easy, because it is simply what is there) eliminates the very ‘you’ of this equation, for You, Other, are simply no longer there. This is not an issue of being looked down upon or prejudiced, it is the disappearance of another all together. Combined with the last 61 years of our lack of self, we come back in full force with an overbearing subjectivity that oppresses all not-self as well. it leads us to a form of exchange without humanity whatsoever, but what sort of presumption was that, anyway.
i cringed when he mentioned that words had been missing of late, but the lack of literature could have been a parallel to a similar decline of the sense of being. i am present, perhaps, in some way, a childish half-smile, but it’s only half-shock, a blinding before anger sets in, what was that about to solidify, hard-set equations, exchange is never all that, i kind of hate you sometimes, kind of, sometimes.
Posted by 丫 | reply »home
yesterday i felt like i’ve never been here, today like i’ve never been there.
we start talking to no one in particular, a no one without properties
“what a lovely name for a street.” feeling. still. yes. no. nostalgia. for something that will never be. alas. so we walk. we walk. with the need for dreams to commit suicide. sometimes. “c’est la chose la plus horrible à faire“. or is it. again and again. and an afternoon in the sun. tracing and retracing and walking anew. circles perhaps. fly. yes. fly again. it’s good to be in a place without lists and rows. construct to reconstruct or an economics as a doing. in the city. it would be nice to see what we cannot see. “precisely to fill the emptiness with emptiness, and thus to share it.” you do with it what you will. never a prescription for life. and yes we are left ‘inconcluded’. always. upon arriving home a message overheard from the new york subway through to london: “everyone knows. that love. belongs in the microwave. for two minutes.” 哈! thank you maria.
Posted by a | reply »inventory, for aikun volume 2
from a contribution to aikun zine number 2, by 王汉丽 Regina Ho. Recording by her daughter 丫, April 2010.
Posted by 丫 | reply »i sincerely wish this for you
“you said you didn’t care when people were not talking to you but in your films, your characters are actually always trying to connect with somebody — following someone, or trying to make contact — but they just don’t seem to be able to connect.” “i prefer some distance. i don’t decide what the best distance is — how two people can get close and not feel uncomfortable. my films treat human relationships like an experiment. there’s no real conclusion. they are always experimenting, experimenting with that distance.” from an interview here
spring…I’ve never missed you so much
samples, what to say
またやります、かっぽう着展！
京都の三条商店街のTOTTEさんで「かっぽう着展」を開催します。
昨年のGW中にここで開催した、初めての「かっぽう着展」が、日々譚の活動のきっかけを作ってくれたといっても過言ではありません。
TOTTEさんは、焼き菓子を中心とした美味しいおやつと、店主セレクトの食品や雑貨を扱うお店です。小さなカフェスペースもあるので、ほっこりしていた だけます。最近、色々新しいお店も増えて、盛り上がりを見せている三条商店街、ぶらぶらお散歩がてら、おこしください。
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Posted by anyway | reply »puddle thinking
This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
(Douglas Adams)
Posted by joe | more »low side the basin, high side the range
mountains are not somehow created whole and subsequently worn away. they wear down as they come up, and these mountains have been rising and eroding in fairly even ratio for millions of years – rising and shedding sediment steadily through time, always the same, never the same, like row upon row of fountains.
(john mcphee, annals of the former world)
Posted by toby | more »he had definitely found it….
…see more here
Posted by joe | reply »