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.

“But when we begin to question our projects, to doubt or reformulate them, the present, the contemporary, becomes important, even central for us. This is because the contemporary is actually constituted by doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, indecision—by the need for prolonged reflection, for a delay. We want to postpone our decisions and actions in order to have more time for analysis, reflection, and consideration. And that is precisely what the contemporary is—a prolonged, even potentially infinite period of delay. Søren Kierkegaard famously asked what it would mean to be a contemporary of Christ, to which his answer was: It would mean to hesitate in accepting Christ as Savior. The acceptance of Christianity necessarily leaves Christ in the past. In fact, Descartes already defined the present as a time of doubt—of doubt that is expected to eventually open a future full of clear and distinct, evident thoughts.”

–boris groys, comrades of time

先週の木曜日、星ヶ丘洋裁学校で秋のフェスタの特別授業として開催させていただいたワークショップは５人の方に参加していただきました。今回はミシンの設 備のないギャラリーでの開催ということもあり、当初みなさんにはエプロンの部分だけを手縫いで作っていただく予定だったのですが、参加されていた方の希望 もあり、かっぽう着作りの一通りを一緒に進めて行く内容に変更しました。そのため、作業量のかなり多い内容になりましたが、時間も大幅に延長させていただ き、なんとか５人５様のかっぽう着の出来あがりがイメージできるところまで作り、仕上げは自宅でというかたちで持ち帰っていただきました。

一 度に詰め込んでたくさんのことをしたので、参加者の方はちょっと消化不良…！？だったのでは、と心配していますが、一通り手を動かして仕上げれば、個々の 作業への理解も後から付いてくると思います。また実際着てみることでも、身体の動きと衣服の構造の関係というのも経験できます。ぜひ、また２着目、３着目 に挑戦していただき、自分に合った着やすいかっぽう着を発見していただければと思います。

後日、あちらこちらから「ワークショップ、参加したかった！」と声を掛けていただきました。今回は初めての試みでしたが、また今回の反省点を活かして、内容を整理した形で続けていけたらと思っています。ブログ上でまたご案内させていただきますね。

そ れにしても、星ヶ丘洋裁学校、ほとんど丸一日の時間を過ごさせていただきましたが、ほんとうに静かな時間のながれる、すてきな場所でした。ワークショップ が、うまく進められるかどうかとても心配でしたが、敷地内に入ると、前から知っていた場所のように心が落ち着き、その気持ちをまん中に据えて、行うことが できました。ありがとうございました。

www.hibitann.exblog.jp |  www.iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter.net/us/anyway/kappogi.html

Michael writes to H.F:  “We enjoy the space between being ‘in the know’ and simply being attentive to one’s social environment where the unexpected may occur, setting up an interaction that will provide a meaningful communication, ‘loading the decks’.”

It ends with a face in rain, or two, that washed away one after the other like passing faces in a party.

The next day, he sends me a message: “One day I will explain to you why things are so complicated.”

And then it becomes difficult to respond, silence an only recourse, uncovering to plot thickening. The loneliness amidst joyful crowds, like the stripping away of an impersonator who says, “I don’t know. I was born that way.”

People ask questions all the time to which we must answer, “I don’t know.” I can’t remember anymore which way it was when i was born, but somehow I always return to a letter read as a child, from an old woman. I read her as if I were her already, so confounded by the inexplicability of my thoughts, to the possibility of their being expressed. It seems now, in future, utterly impossible to answer any question asked of me. I find less and less the words to place the complexities of my feeling.

Perhaps now back outside of each of those moments, I could answer each of you in turn, eloquently and honestly. Like an old woman’s remembrance of the sound of a black-capped chickadee, a doing nothing kind of being or simply, so simply, the fullness of…

The kind of guttural yelp that cannot find the words, at twilight, a half twisted smile of utter beauty and ghostly pain. I wish I could describe it to you better. Don’t read the about page; read what brought you here in the first place; read what makes you stay or go away; read and write and read and write and read and right. “Finding a balance between reflection and action”, these words don’t make much sense here, but it somehow lies that these words are precursors to something else, perhaps a coming together or a realisation that we are not at all. He says that ‘.networks’ are preferable to ‘.organisations’, and I suppose it goes along with one’s thinking about maneuverability, the possibilities for participation, connectivity. And ideals? I tear up.

So one acts alone, feverishly, perhaps to meet much dismay from the others. They come and they go. A guttural yelp. Let us restore that expression, something precursory to sensibility, an affect but all alone and thinking of you — fuck, it’s selfish. A conversation or just fantastic screaming. The ridiculous. He asks, “能说 ‘rational’ 来代表人吗?” Yes, perhaps.

So what could we do, too much expressionistically, moreso rationally? If I am not allowed to use the word “we” anymore, dare i say another?

Let me restore meaning to participation. Or I would like to. I would like to consider the empty spaces of respect, the distances necessary in love, in friendship and even intimacy. I would like to love you again. I would like to restore meaning to collectivity, to citizenship, to being all alone in the world. I would like to rethink my ways of relating to another, to rethink work and life and work in life. To make time to rethink, period.

The fool says too much again. Anarchically, anachronistically. Words that topple on top of words of words of words. iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter is now a network. Ha. Whatever that means…

and hope you are having a good time, well into your 30’s—-knowledge and wisdom much further beyond… 生日快乐 happy birthday, rl… muchlovefromafar

filmed in new york city, autumn 2006. summer 2008 finally got around to… thank you sim-chan and aka-chan and D-chan!

somehow ended up in our mailbox a few months ago, addressee unknown, but when we tried to have it returned to sender, it made its way back into the mailbox. so took it to the desk where it has been sitting since, waiting for shawn, until she picked it up again from the pile of papers yesterday. if you are reading this, dear shawn, come by to pick it up.

北京景山公园早上8点 | Beijing Jingshan Park, 8 am

without hesitation or ambiguity, he said, ‘it is like going to war.’ and almost as surely, i understood. through three generations, fifty-eight years, one thousand four hundred and twenty-one miles, thick as molasses blood, steady hospital landline, yuan fen. sometimes, all it takes is a little reminder and good time spent together.

To write is to permit others to conclude one’s own discourse, and writing is only a proposition whose answer one never knows. One writes in order to be loved, one is read without being able to be loved, it is doubtless this distance which constitutes the writer. (Roland Barthes)

::writing about writing, between shanghai and beijing, 2 December

today i become a writer. written self reading a purple journal like being in this airplane, oh i fucked up fucked up so many times, “it’s just that this year has been so full of small, stupid, non-descript disasters, not the big ones that could at least be identified as crisis.” sometimes in reading their words i describe my own surroundings, the small spaces around the page being written as we read others: (please fall in love with me). He is nonchalant about loose trivia on japanese aesthetics like mentioning the names of people he knows.

“The proximity of two differing individuals can become too intense.” (Arnold Barkus)

They are all your friends. And the more old friends that keep popping up in magazines, oh, we must be doing okay. And all the ones that don’t, that come up instead in cafés, in the airplane a couple rows ahead, on someone’s facebook friend list or just in my memory, well… we’re all sorry it turned out this way, we haven’t turned out at all, or against all, or we’re just turning…

so many things happened this year, i lose sight of the things that matter most.

but i’ll love you through the pages of a matte-papered magazine, and maybe that’s enough for today.

“30″, Binna Choi, from The Sole Proprietor and Other Stories, ed. Melissa Lim and Heman Chong:

Perhaps this sudden consciousness of my turning thirty has become entangled with my untamed anxiety, which stems from my own difficulty in being myself when with others. In other words, what mattered, bothered and concerned me can be summed up as my “relationality” with her, him, another me, different me, disappearing me or whatever, or the air, time, space or something. With her leaving and being. With him next to me or with him annoying me. With the density or stuffiness of air. With speed. With intensity…

I am writing about turning thirty, but in doing so, I could be seeking to deny or erase it. This piece is written in the present, about a somewhat unknown future that we are in the process of progressing towards. I hope that the significance of turning thirty will surface later on. You know, I will never be thirty – I will only be two thousand, two hundred and and seven years old next year, I bet.

Hence “writing about turning thirty” is a means of pulling myself out of the preconceived position one has as part of one’s culture or society. It is also a way for me to create an interstice for myself without deliberate avoidance of particular cultural or temporal frameworks. I am trying to prevent these aspects from governing me or my being with “others” within and outside of these frames. I want to take responsibility for my life or lives of others in mine, and ultimately grin — rather than laugh with sound — in the face of my struggles, strengths, delights – like that mad girl on a bus who glared at me as I stared back at her years ago.

Before I can reach this state that allows me to “grin”, let me pose a fundamental question: why do I write? I’d asked this same question quite a few times before, and I know that I have a problem with delving into it. Actually I even doubt that I had ever “written” in the most idealistic sense of that word. I reckon my fantasy is that writing for me is an opportunity to communicate in silence, to compose and liberate what is a part of me, be it my fascination, wonder, despair, concern, joy, beliefs, thoughts and so on — without being dogmatic. I want to believe that I make friends and love through writing.

writing having been written, between beijing and tokyo and los angeles and dallas/fort worth, 22 december

today, before leaving Beijing, it was written: “yes!”

There is no fear in that. No fear, no fear. Its beauty is impressed upon my skin as much as it distances. it was like looking again into the past. Every new realisation is also recognition of all that past in which you did not know it before! Linda didn’t get it at the time. Now she’s married and has dogs, surely she knows something we do not?

It was brought up again over dinner that that desire to cut off was as much the fear of being disconnected from. He cannot understand the difference between the cup there, or here, or there… And I thought we bought this salad. Well, you certainly didn’t buy me. But it’s the cup and the salad and the me and the you, and if we acknowledge no distinctions between any or all, how far can we go in attempt of love? Should we be left formless? Where would we go, and how would we know who we are anymore?

He reminds her that they are all connected. Of course, all these things are written into the body. Past is future is present, so just watch. I watch what i do not see: the big-eyed girl crying in secret, the small-eyed girl crying all day. I wish you could see more so that i wouldn’t have to explain anymore.

“Giorgio Agamben claims that the most important political goal is to find new ways to make the human body inoperative, in the sense that poetry makes language inoperative, to find new uses for the human body.” Would you want that I gave myself completely to you? Would you want that i agreed with everything you said, that everything that you wanted was what i wanted, too? I keep trying to think with those words, read from a monk when I was in Japan: “utmost reverence”. I try to say “yes!” too. But it’s not what I want. So please stop telling me everything you know about me. Because you don’t. And you won’t so long as your eyes stay wanting.

You are watching. I am watching, too. We just don’t always see the same thing.