Highest building in Taichung.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
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
Friday, November 19, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
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.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
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
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.
Monday, October 25, 2010
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.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
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.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
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
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