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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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

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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

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A Tip for the Thesis

One page a day, keeps the professor away.

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The Fake Mustache of Peter Sellers: (4) The Wrong Man Escaped

Then it is Lolita by Kubrick. Wikipedia says that Peter Sellers plays a small part but “proved a scene stealer”. The opening is the main character Humbert Humbert walks into a big house but it is quite a wreck. He shouts a name, and a chair covered by cloth squirms, a man comes out from the cloth and it is Peter Sellers, playing Clare Quilty.

Quilty was completely drunk. He was so friendly as to ask Humbert to play ping pong as if he didn’t know that Humbert walked in for revenge. Humbert ran out of patience and pulled out a gun, but Quilty didn’t take it seriously until he was shot on the leg. Quilty crawled on the stairs trying to find a place to hide, and found a painting as a shield. Not a good one, obviously. The camera stops at the painting, and we see that the painting is a portrayal of a young woman and the bullet hole was right on her forehead between the eyebrows.

Peter Sellers plays the writer who figured out what happened between Humbert and his stepdaughter. He created opportunities for Lolita to get away from Humbert by choosing her as the leading actress for his play. Humbert got jealous and forbade it. Quilty wore a disguise and pretended to be a German psychoanalyst from the school, threatening Humbert to conduct a survey about Lolita’s family life. Humbert was afraid that the relationship would come to people’s knowledge so he settled with permission for Lolita’s extracurricular activity. Because of this piece, when it came to Dr. Strangelove, the studio funded Kubrick under the condition that Peter Sellers plays multiple roles.

Kubrick is the director who knows how to use Peter Sellers and make him glow. In Lolita Sellers is funny even if it is just a simple dance, but he is able to remain funny without sacrificing a realistic touch. He doesn’t need to be kitsch to by funny.

At last I found After the Fox to recollect the start of the encounter with Peter Sellers. I again got a really good laugh. It’s so bizarre and entertaining! After the Fox didn’t do well on the Box Office, and is never listed as classic or must-see. But it amuses me tremendously a good 40 years later. Peter Sellers’ sister was chasing movie stars and someone in the crowd exclaimed, “Look at the nose, it’s just like Marlon Brando!” Someone asked Sellers who is in the car anyway, and he replied, “Marlon Brando’s nose.”

The next year after Being There, Peter Sellers died at the age of 54. He identifies with the void gardener and his life ended at this role, isn’t it something? No, he made another mediocre movie The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu and that becomes his last movie. Moreover, Blake Edwards used the outtakes and footage of the previous Pink Panther movies to make another one Trail of the Pink Panther. Peter Sellers who hates mediocrity ceases in utmost mediocrity.

His life is exactly the way he tried to avoid. The heritage goes the wrong way, the career ends at outtakes; he was most known for a character unworthy of the fame, and the prize he deserves does not come his way. His life requires a good sense of humor to look at, even his tomb. The inscription reads: “My Darling Husband: I will always love you.”

I like the ending of After the Fox. When it starts, Peter Sellers is a thief in jail. He decided to escape because he learned that his sister didn’t attend school as she should. There was a psychotherapist visiting the prisoners routinely. After the visit, Peter Sellers wore a disguise and tied himself to the bed pretending to be the therapist, and called for help. The guards were fooled and that’s how he was set loose.

At the end he was caught again. He designated a specific date and claimed that he would escape again. This time he tied the therapist in the bed and walked out, and the poor therapist was mocked when he cried for help. The gate closed behind Peter Sellers and he looked into the camera with a conceited smile. He tried to rip off the fake mustache but oops, it didn’t work. He tried again and it didn’t work. Peter Sellers panicked: “Oh my God! The wrong man escaped!”

One is real and the other is fake, one is tied up and the other escaped. “The wrong man escaped” is against logic, hence hilarious. But for Peter Sellers who couldn’t figure out who he is, it might be just the perfect metaphor. Perhaps there was no Peter Sellers ever; there was an evil doctor, stupid inspector, void gardener and Fox the thief, and it is impossible to integrate these fictional characters into a real person. There is only the fake mustache that refuses to go, and the grin under it.

“Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.” —Peter Sellers.


Peter Sellers died on 24 July, 1980. The wrong man escaped.

-1962 Lolita
-1964 Dr. Strangelove
-1966 After the Fox
-1968 I Love You, Alice B. Toklas
-1976 Murder by Death
-1979 Being There

Technorati Tags:peter sellers, stanley kubrick, lolita, clare qulity, after the fox

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