Notes of Great Jones Street

Simply clips from Great Jones Street that I admire a lot. Couldn't think of any remark other than "wow".

I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest.

There was soup to eat when the old stove worked. Things functioned sporadically; other things functioned all the time but never to full effect.

The little radio made its noises, fierce as a baby, never listening to itself.

An infinite number of monkeys is put to work at an infinite number of typewriters and eventually one of them reproduces a great work of literature. In what language
I don’t know. But what about an infinite number of writers in an infinite number of cages? Would they make one monkey sound? One genuine chimp noise? Would they eventually swing by their toes from an infinite number of monkey bars? Would they shit monkey shit?

I’m the one who works. I want my money to sit quietly. That’s my idea of the value of money. While I work and sweat, I want to think of my money resting in a cool steel-paneled room. It’s stacked in green stacks, very placid and cool, resting up.

People who travel a great deal lose their souls at some point. All these lost souls are up there in the ozone. They get emitted from jet aircraft along with the well-known noxious chemicals. There’s a soul belt up there.

This professorship deals with events that almost took place, events that definitely took place but remained unseen and unremarked on, like the action of bacteria or the rising and falling of mountain ranges, and events that probably took place but were definitely not chronicled.

I thought of all the inner organs in the room, considered apart from the people they belonged to. For the moment of thought we seemed a convocation of martyrs, visible behind our skin. The room was a cell in a mystical painting, full of divine kidneys, lungs aloft in smoke, entrails gleaming, bladders simmering in painless fire. This was a madman’s truth, to paint us as sacs and flaming lariats, nearly godly in out light, perishable but never ending.

Live strawberries instead of strawberries on tape.

Suicide was nearer to me than my own big toe.

I’m luggage. By choice, inclination and occupation. What am I if I’m not luggage? I open myself up, insert some very costly items and then close up again and get transported to a timeless land.

Let the stress of trying to live determine how you die.

I’d be happy to consume the dregs from an old cup that’s just lying around unwashed.

I began to feel that the bed was having a dream and that the dream was me.

Stand there and move your lips. Don’t think of it as a performance. Think of it as an appearance.

You betray a friend and then you brag about it. That’s star quality. That gives you stature.

The perfect suicide is when people know you’re dead on one level but refuse to accept it on a deeper level.

Technorati Tags:don delillo, great jones street

Read More......

Taiwan Police Violates Civil Rights When Maintaining Order During the Meeting of Taiwan’s and China’s Top Negotiators

The statement is written by Taiwan Sovereignty Watch and was taken from their website. It's a rough week here. :-(

Chen Yunlin, the chief of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, landed at Taiwan on November 3rd. He signed agreements on passenger-cargo flight, maritime shipping, mail service and food safety related issues with Chiang Pin-kung, the chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation. These agreements made Taiwan and China enter an age of three direct links. He would also meet President Ma Ying-Jeou of Taiwan.

For a long time, China has repressed any opportunities of Taiwan to participate international events. China neither recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign nation nor gives up its plan of making martial intrusion into Taiwan. Many Taiwanese people, including Taiwan’s biggest opposition party, Democratic Progressive Party, were worried that Kuomintang government would not be able to defend for Taiwan’s sovereignty during the negotiation. They also questioned that this meeting was not put under public examination. They are holding protests throughout Chen Yunlin’s visit to Taiwan, expressing their claims, such as “One Taiwan, One China”. Those people against China’s forceful repression of Tibet’s independence activities also joined the protests, holding “Free Tibet” slogan.

For Chen Yunlin’s Taiwan visit, the Kuomingtang administration has specifically deployed some seven thousand policemen and special agents to cordon off the venues where Chen would appear in an attempt to prevent the public from raising protests. Measures employed by the police to guard Chen these days have, however, gone beyond the bounds of the law and the Constitution and seriously infringed on citizens’ personal liberties and civil rights. Following are some instances:

1. The policy confiscated and damaged personal belongings of flags and balloons held by people at protest venues.

2. In the evening of November 2, four Taichung City Councilors, Chen Shu-hua (陳淑華), Chiu Su-chen (邱素貞), Chi Li-yu (紀麗玉) and Lai Chia-wei (賴佳微), checked in the Grand Hotel where Chen Yulin would stay during his visit. The next morning, they displayed protest banners from the balcony of their room. Within one minute, special agents broke in the balcony and entered their room, without their consent, to remove banners and restrain their actions.

3. Three bloggers with national flags of Taiwan and Tibet in hand were forcefully taken away by the police when walking southbound along Chung Shan North Rd and passing by the Taiwan Cement Building, where Chen Yunlin visited Cecilia Koo Yen, widow of the former chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation. The arrest caused the dislocation of fingers of one of the bloggers, but police refused to send her for medical treatment until she provided personal information.

4. Chen Yu-ching (陳育青), a photographer who visited friends near the Grand Hotel, was arrested and sent to the police station for interrogation for shooting the video of the banned area with hand-held camera.

5. Hung Chien-yi (洪建益), a Taipei councilman, entered the Ambassador Hotel, where Chen Yunlin’s dinner reception was held, in the afternoon. When leaving by himself in the evening, he was dragged away on the ground for tens of yards by several police officers at the front gate of the hotel. He did not shout derogatory slogans or carry any dangerous items but only wore a T-shirt with the mark of “No Conspiracy with China” on it.

6. On November 4th, while Chen Yunlin was at the dinner reception hosted by KMT leaders at the Ambassador Hotel, a nearby record store was playing some Taiwanese song out loud. The police thought the song would stir up the feelings of the protesters on the scene, so they, in uniform or plainclothes, led by Beitou Police District Chief Lee Han Ching, broke into that record store, asked the store owner to stop the music, and shut the door.

7. On November 3rd, the Association of Taiwan Journalist issued that Cheng Chieh-wen (鄭傑文), a photojournalist from the Central News Agency, was dragged by the security police for 10 meters while he was doing his job at the Grand Hotel, and that an inappropriate press coverage area plan had caused quarrels between the press and the officials. ATJ declared that press freedom was under severe attack in Taiwan. Meanwhile, the government imposed such strict control over press coverage for this event that several reporters from Hong Kong said they failed to get press passes and had limited rights for coverage.

Protests are continuing, so are actions that invade human rights, actions that do harm to freedom of speech and personal liberty. These actions not only violated both Taiwan’s criminal and civil laws but also contradicted the Constitution that should have protected the rights of people. We will be watching these events, and we want to raise our severe objections to the police in Taiwan.

Read More......

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.”

Technorati Tags:russell hoban, turtle diary

Read More......

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.

Technorati Tags:battle in seattle, battle in seattle movie

Read More......

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.

Read More......

A Walk in the Snow

I walked in the snow and my foot got bogged down in each step. I pulled it out and it got mired in the next step. The air coming in my nasal cavity was chilly. After a while there was a lodge.

It was empty other than a wooden bench. There is no door; the so-called door is a hole for you to duck in and out. It was not a closed space but it was still warm in the lodge. As long as it was not as chilly as outside, it was warm.

I remember that I brought cheese, bread, boiled eggs, and an apple. After I ate them there was no more to do in the lodge so I resumed my hike.

That was last summer in Switzerland. It doesn’t make sense to snow in Faulhorn in August but it just did. The need shrinks to the minimum to the very basic in the snow. An empty lodge on the way is highly appreciated.

I met many lodges and owe them the grace. Beauty is shown to me and I reckon it as a privilege.

Technorati Tags:switzerland, faulhorn, grindelwald, hike

Read More......

Count Down

For maybe two weeks I was sad and down, as if I don’t know whether I should sit or stand. All of a sudden Hamburg is so intriguing, Germany is so intriguing, Europe is so intriguing and I am leaving. So much moving and leaving in two years doesn’t make it easier for me to pack. I perceived the limit of time so strongly and was stunned by the passing of time. My apartment can be so quiet that I heard my clock on the wall ticking. Tick tock. Tick tock. I felt the time slipping away from my fingers and I couldn’t grasp it.

I went to Heidelberg for no good reason. Because the overnight bus costs 18 euros only in return; because the idea of leaving made me greedy for Germany; none of the reasons is for Heidelberg itself and as predicted the trip was not much other than exhausting. I took a nap under the trees beside the castle and in Philosophenweg, and returned to Hamburg feeling spent but no less greedy. I still heard it, tick tock, tick tock.

Where else to visit? Plenty of choices and all of them seem the same. Revisit the places in Hamburg that I enjoyed, or go check the passage behind my apartment where hares are insatiably nibbling? Maybe I’ll have the luck to see a hedgehog walking so slow, so harmless? The sun sets and the darkness descends, and I go nowhere for I can’t decide which is the better option. Tick tock, tick tock.

I need to complete my thesis but there is so much trivia to take care of. The necessities of life become redundant one by one that all I am thinking is to get rid of them. The criteria for purchase become rigid. Buy a small pack of rice if necessary, buy a small bottle of sauce if necessary, or refrain from buying anything if a small pack is not available. I ate without tasting and wrote without thinking; just stuffed the stomach like I stuffed the pages. Get the last word of a sentence in the beginning of a line and yippee, start another paragraph!

Listen to Anjani a lot. Blue Alert, the lyrics from Leonard Cohen and thank G-d there is no need to put up with his “golden voice”. Anjani has such a beautiful voice. She sings sober and precise. The accompaniment is pushed far away in the background and all you hear is her, minimalist vocal plus a few notes from the piano here and there. She sings as if she sees things right through but decides to be tender and serene about it. There is a quality in her voice that even when she sings “I’ve never loved before” or “there is no one after you”, it is still credible. To say it with sophistication is different from saying it with naïveté. It is definitely better when she sings, “As many nights endure/ without a moon or star/ so will we endure/ when one is gone and far”. I listened to Anjani to comfort my thoughts but when it was done, again, “tick tock, tick tock”.

The requirement for the thesis is 80 to 100 pages, so 80 pages it is. I finished it at exactly 80 pages. Months ago Katja mentioned her worry about getting behind the deadline, and I said, “It’s not that difficult. As the deadline approaches, I lower my standard so eventually I make it.” They thought I was joking but I was not.

The books go back to the library and all readings become redundant now, yippee! I reject the idea that I will read them in the future so I am NOT taking them with me. To finish the thesis before leaving is exactly the same deed as in my teenage years: staying in school, completing the assignments so no textbooks in the bag and I could go home light. People don’t change do they.

The best part of the thesis is the acknowledgements, naturally. “The joy of completing the thesis is seriously interrupted by the knowledge that it is time to leave. Two years is not long enough to have someone embedded in a different culture, but when the departure is so near, it makes people feel disembedded.” Tick tock, tick tock.

I am eager to meet my classmates for one more time before I go but the mailing list is getting shorter. Only four are left but it’s actually three; I know that Jeff was off to Bonn for his internship. It’s just a tentative pull, knowing that it’s probably in vain.

This afternoon I came across the fresh made bread and was so tempted. I gave up the idea of making pasta, had the bread with butter instead and found it so delicious. I know I survive the worst, because hours later I am hungry again and can’t stop thinking what else to eat to meet my appetite.

Europe is elegant in the eye of departure, and it is going to end soon. But what is going to end? I don’t know. Ending means that something exists now but will cease to exist in the future. Unless I know about the future, I can’t possibly know what is going to end.

The lease of the apartment needs to be terminated, the modem needs to be returned, the sofa bed needs to be sold, and more small items to be disposed, consumed or tossed. Moving is such a waste: you get embedded, no matter how shallow, and get disembedded; the soil is lifted and it’s in vain. Tick tock, tick tock. But this is the way it is. Take a rest and gain the courage to endure the fruitlessness of life. Tenderness grows again from the heart to live a night without a moon or star. Tick tock, tick tock.

Technorati Tags:anjani, blue alert, leonard cohen

Read More......