Turtle Diary

In the beginning, Turtle Diary is like a disoriented murmur from under the sea. Russell Hoban writes about turtles, water-beetles, oyster-catchers, whales, and throws irrelevant knowledge about them at his readers. Surviving the first 50 pages, the reader will find a structure that emerges as two loners hold the same thought of rescuing sea turtles from the zoo. Since they are one man and one woman, a romantic encounter is expected given the prevalence of heterosexual presumption.

I enjoyed the narration when I waited for the two loners to meet. Their minds cross each other’s in the indifferent, anti-social thoughts, featuring self doubt and confusion. That is not the best formula for a romance.

I slowly got to understand the meaning of freeing the turtles when I waited for the romantic action to be taken or whatever plot it might be to bring the two loners closer. Putting turtles back to the sea is an attempt of the loners to free themselves from their dull life. They feel like a loser in their middle age and they need a drastic change desperately which preferably does not really change anything. A gesture would be just fine.

But they are difficult people. It is too simple and too easy. Before actually doing it they hesitated and soon they revealed their awareness of the hypocritical nature of such a self-righteous move.

It turned out that it is not about the turtles. It is not a romance of two like-minded loners either. It is dialectics of going back and forth between possessing something to reassure one’s existence and releasing one’s grip of something to achieve one’s own freedom. It is unlikely to be answered by either this or that. Like most questions of life, it is possibly a matter of a combination of this and that. And a perfect life is to go back and forth to find a balance.


Quotes I like:

“Polperro seems to me like a street-walker asking for money to maintain her virginity.”

“The ends of things are always present in their beginnings.”

“When a ewe licks a new-born lamb all over I believe that’s called owning it but the ewe never really owns the lamb.”

“I looked at the telephone after I’d put it down. Sly thing, getting words out of me I’d no intention of saying.”

“I’ll never cease to be amazed by the fact that people uncomfortable in themselves can give comfort to other people.”

“She looked heavily understanding, which irritated me. I felt there wasn’t anything to be understood.”

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Battle in Seattle, Battle in Yourself

Battle in Seattle brings about mixed feelings which boil down to the guilt for not doing enough, and the compassion for the hectic lives of activists.

The image of the crowd, demonstration, garrison police and blood-shedding conflict reminds me of the years before the Martial Law was lifted in 1987 in Taiwan. It is an inseparable part of my youth. I remember watching the TV news with great suspicion, which presented the mob rioting and the police defending, until alternative video and printed media broke the silence and revealed that the police provoked the conflict.

Shortly before and after the lift of the Martial Law, protests mushroomed everywhere and people pay a price for the rough years. Cheng Nan-Jung, a publisher of a political magazine, was indicted for insurrection and he ended up burned himself alive to claim freedom of speech. The photo of the remain of his body can be found on the internet. Unlike dead bodies found in most fire scenes curling to avoid the pain, his body maintains in a straight position as if he has no fear for the fire. I think I owe him. I think we owe him.

In my 20s I was actively involved in feminist movements, lesbian movements, and other human right issues. We had our glory but glory is for bystanders. For insiders the sense of achievement is always peripheral. More often there was the crash of egos, the group dynamics of implicit manipulation, the projection of emotional problems onto social issues, and the anger that dominates the movement.

I remember an activist talking in a condescending manner as if this is the only way to assure his proletarian stance. I remember an activist being unreasonable at whoever works under her and constantly threatened to dissolve the organization she founded. The super-sized ego guy and the self-hatred woman both make great contribution to social movements, but I very much want to say, go home and rest, and stop poisoning the movement with your resentment because it is goddamn pathetic.

I remember those episodes in which we were rough and nasty, even to one another, as if it is not part of our goal to make the world more accommodating to tenderness and delicacy. If we could we might quote Harlan Ellison, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution a few die who shouldn't, but they have to, because that's the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile."

Over the years I lost several friends and comrades to every kinds of emotional problems. They are alive. They are just not themselves.

A movie like Battle in Seattle or more so, the movement of anti-globalization, stirs my mind nonetheless. The courage and creativity in it is thrilling and I think I owe them, I think we owe them. I have my militant years but now I would like to give more space to allow my doubts afloat. I still engage in some sort of activism such as judicial reform and the abolishment of death penalty, but the anger is appeased to a large extent. I have had other goals and now I tend to think that my ultimate concern IS to make the world more accommodating to tenderness and delicacy.

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An Old Friend

There are people whom I knew when I was young and later walk in the same direction in life; we meet here and there and the meetings are taken for granted. They are not old friends. But the world is big. Every road leads to Rome and every road leaves Rome. I am not aware of it until I meet someone I knew when I was young and she took the road that I didn’t. That is an old friend.

Old friends carry a commonality of the old days. We did something together and that’s how we met; we walked shoulder to shoulder and shared a history. There are pieces of my past stored in her memory and hers in mine.

But old friends are foreign for she walks through the road that I didn’t take and she sees the sights that I didn’t see. She becomes someone that I don’t know. I studied her face to identify each pace after we said good-bye last time. She entered a labyrinth, she encountered a deadend alley. She got in and out of the battlefield several times, bearing inscriptions in the body and the soul, and having a head of a moose hanging on her wall as trophy. The flame shines on her, and it could be the light on a busy street, the glitter of a diamond, or a splendid night view from a lookout. At the back of the light, shadows await, it could be protective, or devouring.

Does she recognize me then? The road I take is documented on my face as well, the bumpy, the winding, and the beauty. I told, detailed but scattered, like Marco Polo explained to Kublai Khan about a knot on a chess board, or an arch of a stone bridge. The conversation jumped back and forth between the familiarity and the foreignness; we talked about what happens after we left Rome and the people we knew when we were in Rome. I saw the wrinkles are developing between her eyebrows and know that I am aging in the same pace and same place.

The familiarity and the foreignness were stitched together at the end of the conversation: we are Marco Polo to each other. I presented the sweet and the hostile in a place where she has never been, but she knows enough of sweetness and hostility, not to mention that she too saw the wrinkles developing on my face in the same pace and same place. Once again we go back on the roads leaving Rome, racing or rambling, until Rome is far away and left behind. The magic is, an old friend is never far away nor left behind.

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