The most difficult part of living in that castle was utilizing all the space. I was alone at the time and passing through those immense empty rooms just shed light on how solitary this life could be if I allowed it. Not to mention my phobia of immense empty spaces. So of course I invited all my friends to live with me. That still left a few rooms empty. So each empty room was designated as studios, mapping rooms, a greenhouse, a giant laser building workshop, etc.
The location was great as well. We had a great view looking west over the East River, an empty lot to the south and a junk yard to the north. The east side of the building faced the street where we could easily load and unload from the building. I wasn’t about to call it a utopia but it seemed like a nice little niche that we had carved out.
I thought that the “trick door” on the south side of the building would be great to keep just in case I decided to turn evil. It would be something that would really get me going by telling someone that the next room over was absolutely amazing . . . go ahead, just walk through that door. In the end, I knew it would only be used to take in the views of the south.
The castle was in a bit of disrepair but I’d figure that we could start on that the next day as it was getting dark and we had no food inside. This meant I would have to leave the grounds and venture back into town . . .
Posted by joe | reply »in passing, black-capped chickadee
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’.”
[photos by 戴璞 Dai Pu]
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…
Posted by 丫 | reply »new/old neighborhood/amenities
architecture for fools
everything from my mother
謝謝媽媽
Posted by 丫 | reply »spring’s fuzz Posted by 丫 | more »
a little of switzerland or something in Vietnam
I met my grandfather on my father’s side, who turns 96 this year, for the third time. In 1996, I went ‘back’ to Vietnam for the first time to attend my grandmother’s funeral. My mother’s parents passed away when she was still little. Simone and me visited ‘Gong’ (grandfather in Teo Chew, our Chinese Dialect from Shantou, 汕头 in Guangdong) in Ho-Chi Minh City for 5 days. I consider myself as an ‘Overseas Chinese’, because Chinese Culture/Tradition was passed on to us. However ‘Home’ for my parents has always been Vietnam, because they were born and grew up as ‘Overseas Chinese’ in Bac Lieu, South-Vietnam. We stayed with my uncle’s family who look after ‘Gong’ and everybody in ‘our’ neighborhood knew that the two of us were the relatives abroad from Switzerland. We went every day down to his room and were talking to him in Teo Chew. I was happy to see ‘Gong’, but in some ways he was a stranger to me, but I did notice similarities to my father. ‘Gong’ knew all the facts (school, profession, salary…) about his grandchildren and kept on asking us if it’s true that Binh, my second oldest sister, has become a lawyer. He also kept on asking if we really got the grant from Pro Helvetia and if we are really working on our project in Beijing. He said proudly that he is amazed how many languages his grandchildren speak. Somehow he thought Linh, my oldest sister, speaks Italian, what is NOT true…Pictures of us grandchildren and my parents were hanging on the wall. I recognize our old apartment in Solothurn, my Swiss hometown. I see family picture of us when we were little. All those pictures are part of my memories from Switzerland and are hanging on the wall in my grandfather’s room on the second floor at Binh Toi No133/5/3 in the 11th district of Ho-Chi Minh City – Saigon, how my parents still call the city! In the morning on our last day before we left for the airport we went down to ‘Gong’ to say goodbye. Both us took a picture with him to capture this moment. He wished us a save journey to Beijing and asked me: Is Beijing nice? I think he has never been to Beijing and has never returned to China since he moved to Vietnam.
Posted by mon | reply »
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