Highest building in Taichung.

What is a page

What is a poem

What is a like

The sky was like a bell jar

What is that

What is a mason jar

What is a flea

What is desk or a glass coffee table

What is a word

And yes

What is a name

Of course you have that one

What is a name

What is a battle

What is a wellspring

What is a hoard and what is a safe

What is it you’re trying to do

What is a sacred artifact

What makes an artifact

What is happening

What is a piano

What is an ox

What a time

What a gift

What a sea

What a blue

What a vast blue bell jar sea

I won 17 Hong Kong Bucks. I am not in Hong Kong. I bought a big beer. Now I am a professional gambler.

oh yeah, and...

"I vow to wake the beings of the world. I vow to set endless heartache to rest. I vow to walk through every wisdom gate. I vow to live the great Buddha way. "

This 30-m Buddha holds ashes of bodies, for some reason. If you visit it, you will be cursed with bad luck. So no one likes to visit it except unknowing foreigners, like ourselves. I think it might be Dr. Evil's headquarters. There's a window in his belly button!

I keep thinking each acting role i have will be the culmination of my career...but then something like this always happens. To summarize: the butt of the long thing, the gout, the girl laughing uncontrollably on stage as Angela and i are enveloped by smoke during Quixote's To Dream the Impossible Dream, and now.... George the Sloth, knocked down by an annoying parrot in the Rainbow Time play for the Cornel Halloween party.

One more thing before I forget this blog exists for a little while:

Linger (Frank Stanford):

The moon wanders through my barn
Like a widow heading for the county seat

It's not dark here yet
I'm just waiting for the bow hunters
So I can run them off

They put out licks on my land
Every summer

When it gets cool the animals are tame

I've fallen asleep
In the trees before

I dreamed someone's horse
Had wandered out on the football field
To graze
And I was showing children through a museum

The bow hunters make their boys
Pull the deer's tongue out bare-handed

At dusk when I hear an arrow
Coming through my field like a bird
I wonder what men have learned
From feathers

The animals wade the creek
And eat blackberries
The wind blows through the trees
Like a woman on a raft

I think actually maybe it's Stanford not Standford.

In travelly things, something I meant to say for a long time is that listening to the Black Dice album Creature Comforts is exactly like being on the Taipei subway on a weekday around 5-6 PM, in case anyone is interested. Plus the Black Dice just rock you in general and listening to their album Beaches and Canyons is just like listening to their album Beaches and Canyons, which is to say I think maybe nothing has ever sounded like it. Or probably a lot of things have and the Black Dice do a mediocre job of taking stuff a lot of other people do really well and mixing it all together and making that one album of theirs, Broken Ear Record.

And then go on to make two more things that are kind of uninspired and repetitive. That's the scariest thing as an artist maybe. But one thing is: that's a risk everyone takes all the time, in life generally just as much as in art, and maybe that's why art exists anyway and why people go on living anyway, since if the risks weren't taken then there would be nothing.

I just remembered two images from the poet Frank Standford. I discovered Standford's poetry in 2007. He is dead, and his images kill me. Just the images. He doesn't even need a whole poem. Like these two I just remembered, which I am typing here from memory so they might not be 100% accurate. If they don't kill you then they're not 100% accurate.

1. The night is a horse with its eyes shut.

2. The strange country of childhood

like a dragonfly on a long dog chain.

I don't know how to describe Chungking Mansions. It's a tall residential tower in Hong Kong. It is inhabited mostly by Indians and Pakistanis and Africans. A lot of the apartments are converted into restaurants. I think you can buy fake Rolexes and maybe cheap electronics. When you enter the building, you get swarmed if you don't know what's going on, which I didn't, because my friend wanted me to be surprised, which I was. I couldn't even show you an image even if I had the image wires because I didn't take a picture because I was too busy getting swarmed or handed business cards and menus or urgently grabbed on the wrist or slightly pulled to one direction or slightly pushed or following a dude up an elevator or through halls or arriving in a little apartment and then eating really well. Wikipedia it or something.

The image I would now upload into this computer and then on to this website if I had image uploading technology would be of a funny japanese comic book in which a big baby and a big frog do battle.

I am currently in Hong Kong because I'm not allowed in Taiwan all the time like Kyla is because they don't like me as much because I am a jobless bum. I don't have the wires that let me show you images but if I had them I would show you a video of several fish gutted alive, beating bleeding hearts exposed, on ice at a day market.

Stinky tofu is aptly named. It's fermented. Peter says it tastes like how the Big Pig booth at the Indiana State Fair smells. I say garlic-infused, which is much better and actually makes it quite tasty. This is the fried kind. Apparently the steamed kind really does taste like dog shit.

Things/FUNFACTS(!) I've heard in the past month:

The sea goddess Mazu drowned her brothers. The sea goddess Mazu drowned her father. The man on the moon doesn't want to be there. There are three perfect ones. There is a Jade Emperor. There are ways to live forever.

Our baby is bigger than babies in Mexico or California. He cost 68 NT, which is like 2 bucks, which is about right. I have dubbed him. His dubbing is Arnold.

Confucius Day

Happy Birthday dude!

Once I used words to make a paragraph. I thought it was a story. Maybe it is. Maybe you can decide.

It never did typhoon. I'm told it typhooned in Taiwan but it never typhooned in Taichung.

Kind of anticlimactic. I blame the world.

Soon it will be typhooning. This is what the trees look like before it is typhooning.

We have found a way to make burritos possible in Taiwan! Yes we can!!!!

Maybe Peter can ask the I-ching...are we here in Taichung to open the spiciest, tastiest, beaniest burrito joint these people have ever seen/tasted? The yin and the yang may point to yes...

The old Taoist master rises every morning at dawn to practice Qigong in the park. Essentially he jumps up and down and practices various methods of breath control. He is an old man but he is healthy. His age is unclear, that's how healthy he is. His secret is obvious. Not only does he rise every morning at dawn to practice Qi Gong in the park, but he practices in the correct way. He is orthodox in his practice.

Interestingly, the old Taoist master has a small friend living in his ear. Sometime after the sun rises, the small friend says: look at the other people practicing in the park. They do not know what they are doing. They are growing old and weak. Only you have learned the proper way.

At this the old taoist master smiles. I will live a long time, he thinks. I will live longer than any fool in the park.

Lao-tzu's book is nonfiction. Critics are raving. They have called it "a wonder of the world." It has been nominated for the classic manual on the art of living award. I read the book. Then I asked Lao-tzu, "But what is the Tao?" Lao-tzu said: "Have a dragon fruit."

Nantian Temple is a Temple in Taichung

The subduer of demons is like 100ft tall. I don't know why he is so serious. I am trying to write a novel. I ask the subduer of demons: why is my novel so bad? He just sits there, big and red. I should have expected that. He doesn't look like the kind of guy who likes to talk.

weekend in LongDong...doesn't replace Camp Dick, but vaguely reminiscent...

Our living room has grapes hanging from the fan and really high ceilings!!

We are now in Taiwan. Welcome to our blog.

Hello All! We are leaving in the morning and are very excited!!