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.
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.
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[春天,宋庄 | Spring in Songzhuang, China; Matthieu & Sylvie & mode d'emploi]
Posted by 丫 | more »cutting down the tree while you’re hanging from it
today. you and we. happy birthday miss asuka
a year passes – 誕生日お目出度う happy birthday, aka-chan 生日快乐 – the day whiles away… late afternoon, almost evening… more space these days for time, for thought for re-collecting, gathering, re-organizing, arranging, and you, ever-preparing for an unfinished moment, future, now in a box, the a-4 papers placed on top as they don’t fit, remembering in april to prepare for may, but when? after ten? after twenty? alas the archive! a year passes – 誕生日お目出度う happy birthday, aka-chan 生日快乐 – the day whiles away… a day with the memory of you and your birthday, perhaps not so different from the year before just that we didn’t record or we didn’t say. so today we learn new things, we capture video, eat a good crispy jian bing, we wear things long forgotten, we receive a phone call from japan, do grocery shopping, cycle to the village, we watch dance, we buy more food in the village, apples, bananas, pears, peanuts mixed with raisins, two filled pancakes and an egg pancake, and we search for a picture of a birthday cake we don’t find, only the not so good one where the candle wasn’t lit and more food is visible on the table, while searching we collect other images, we stop for a moment, we miss you – a year passes – 誕生日お目出度う happy birthday, aka-chan 生日快乐 – the day nears its end… miss asuka-chan, how was your day?
on the verge
the street without glove
today as i was cycling i passed over a small crumpled brown satin glove on the street, and, as i always do, thought of aka, about taking a photo of a glove on the street for her, as she always did, as she perhaps still does. but it’s a busy process, this taking of photos of lost gloves on streets, and at some point i stopped to do it anymore, because there are just so many lost gloves on streets around the world, and maybe they are quite even the most lost things in the world, beyond money and pets and love. f says that she always thinks of aka when she sees gloves, too. so we are consistently finding the lost things, and whether or not we take the picture, we keep losing and finding and losing again —- the thought. the money, the pets, the love.
and these thoughts happened within the space of about 50 meters, at which point i happened to ride right past the matching small brown satin glove, and though i didn’t stop, i slowed down a bit, thinking how this may be the first time in my life to see a whole pair lost, not quite together, but close. and maybe they weren’t lost, maybe the woman riding her bicycle could feel the spring as i do when i ride my bicycle these days, and she decided to fling her gloves away in joy. oh, the thought!
and so i couldn’t resist anymore, the chance to find and take a photo of a pair of lost brown satin gloves, so i slowed down more, turned around and started to go back to the place where i passed them. But just as i turned around, a man on a scooter slows down and swiftly picks up the small brown satin glove from the street and rides right past me.
so… the gloves and the money and the pets and the love.
sigh…
and a photograph for you.
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