there are ghosts on the road

out in the Pingtung country
there are ghosts on the road
happens when you stop softly
the one sound's a single toad
making a single croak
in fifty-mile wide silence

this half-hour bike ride's on rails
stillness has become concrete
chill now after daylong heat
dogwood sports heads, roots for tails

and within this farmyard land
only odd streetlights at hand
stop near a tiny temple
hear music drifting gentle

cycling in silence alone
these are the things you are shown
plain as the river has flowed
there are ghosts on the road


I lived briefly in Pingtung. I used to ride my bike around a lot, including after dark. There was definitely something magical, and occasionally eerie, about the countryside there.

Falling Asleep to Puppet Theatre

I wrote a poem about 5 years ago when I was staying at a guesthouse in Taidong in Taiwan - it was about falling asleep in front of the telly, on which there was a programme of Taiwanese puppet theatre playing. I've just been reading about, and watching videos of, the brilliant Murray Lachlan Young. The following poem is my 5-minute attempt to rewrite that old poem, while emulating Young's rhymes:

and when you slump down in your chair

vision starts to go: eyes dropping, drooping

whether it's bedtime or not, you do not care

your thoughts wander to ancient gods swooping

as your dreams gather your mind's eye sets

to lightning scooping

and though really it's just the telly noise

from where you're sat it's become really real

so that on-screen battles of toys fighting toys

become burning exchanges: every blast you feel

as one mystic being kills another again you think 

you yourself have been run through with steel

then you wake up and realise where you are

it's just a front room with a fan going and a TV on 

someone outside's just pulled up in a car

all that fear and apprehension might well be gone

but still on the goggle box

a wild witch floats past, graceful as a swan

what's puppet theatre anyway, when storms gather outside

watching children's programmes in a foreign land

I really do need a guide

Probably April 2013

Just found this is the drafts folder. It's probably from April 2013.

On my way to the station I was addressed by a man who I initially assumed was homeless. Perhaps he'd not slept. He had the scruffy look of a happy madman. In fact, once I'd got a closer look at him I saw that his clothes weren't at all dirty or torn and he was wearing clean as new red Converse shoes.

I didn't hear him shout out to me. Crossing the road I passed a convenience store. When I reached the opposite corner I felt like there was someone trying to tell me something, so I turned around and there he was, dark skin, white hair, dishevelled in new clothes. He could have been a taxi driver seeing me with my large bag, which I had brought for the weekend. He could have wanted to know if I wanted to pay for a lift to the station.

He was waving and smiling. It was as if we'd met and he was about to say, "This is silly, you'll hardly remember me, but you held the door open for me once last year, we ended up having a little chat about how hot it was that day." His smile was so familiar that he seemed to be able to say all of this, without speaking, while looking about him and making to cross the road.

For some reason I was on my guard.

I Want to Move Everywhere

I want to move everywhere and when I see a job post advertising a position in Nanjing, that is suddenly my next destination. When I get an inkling that there could be a life for me in Central Africa, I have an uncontrollable urge to go there. This is a ridiculous urge. I want to tear across the sky at great speed, I want to move over the Earth like a plague of locusts. I will rip up the ground with my beating feet and seep into the cracked earth.
I will flood out whole riverbeds
I will be a rolling drop of water on a leaf washed down a waterfall
I will be a moment that cannot be captured
I will be dead for a thousand million years
Let me live first

Addicted to Jonathan Lee (李宗盛)

After listening to his music while working, I got addicted to the sound of Jonathan Lee's voice. His lyrics melted my heart and his spirit went up my nose and into my brain. He's marked me like chocolate ice-cream on white trousers. Good luck getting that out!

The tinkling ivories tinkle away against a twilight background. The slow clap of a hushed million-strong audience rushes and shushes like crashing waves on a distant coast. Nestled in his voice, I fall asleep.

In my dreams he is a dragon. We fight weaponised ghouls and go on cross-continental open-air flights. Over rocky outcrops, we hover and watch as the sirens sat there call their sailors in. Beauty has killed. Beauty is the death of hope. I heard about it in a Jonathan Lee song.

As if he's been waiting for this chance to show me the world, Jonathan Lee picks me up and takes me over the ocean. We land on a vast plain, where great trees reach up into the boundless sunlight and fruit farms are spaced out. Banana trees and mango trees and betel nut bushes are ranged in rows. We walk along chatting. Jonathan Lee is a good conversationalist. I prefer to listen, so he starts to explain some complex theories to me. He is very well-read but breaks these ideas down like any serious matter was just as simple as the arrangement made by grains of sand as they shift randomly on the shore. I've explained it poorly, he would do a much better job.

As we walk and the sun beats down on us, I dare not ask for any water, since Jonathan doesn't seem to need any. He is talking about Post-Structuralism. I only dimly get what he's on about. My throat is so dry that it's beyond help. It's all I can think about.

"...the mutation that affects it is so profound and so decisive, the content of the political economy so thoroughly changed, indeed annihilated, that the term is nothing more than an allusion."

In actual fact, the words he's saying may be nothing like this. They would ceetainly be easier to understand, but my attention's gone. The sunlight's got so bright that it takes all my concentration to deal with blinking it out. Each time I open my eyes, my head drifts a little distance further from the centre.

Thankfully we get out of the sun and into some shade when we reach the edge of a forest. Lee is still talking. I can only blame myself as I've not summoned the energy to tell him to stop. Ahead of us we can see a large clearing, where several houses are set out. There's a low hum, ever louder, like the noise of a light aircraft preparing for take-off. It somehow gets into my ears, deeper than I'd like it to go. My brain feels cooked already. Now my nerves are vibrating, like paper puppets on the end of strings held in the hands of this droning sound. I pass out and have to be carried the last few hundred yards. Fortunately, Jonathan Lee is as strong as an ox.  

Waking up, I realise that I've dreamt much of what I thought were memories. Jonathan Lee is no dragon. We didn't fly on the back of some giant beast, we probably took a private plane.

The village is tiny, surrounded by thick forest. Beyond the forest is the open plain we walked across, where I got sunstroke. Stepping outside, I see that the sun is up and as hot as hell. The surrounding trees do somewhat mitigate the sun's fury, but I'm still constantly squinting.

The noise I heard, which made me pass out, turns out to be a generator. It hums away in the background constantly. Sleeping through that sound over night seems to have got me accustomed to it. It is a constant that you never think of.

The generator is mainly used to power the hospital tent. A lot of people convalesce there. Conditions are pretty basic. While I've been sleeping, Jonathan Lee has been anxiously pacing about, trying to help in any way he can. There isn't much for him to do, so he's taken to wandering up and down between the beds, singing the lyrics to one of his songs: "走吧! 走吧!" (zou ba! zou ba!, which means something like 'go on! go on!'). When he realises that his voice can't cure anyone, he weeps like a helpless child. I have to take him away, because he's upsetting the critically ill youngsters.

We escape that afternoon. With the sun still so high and hot, we board the town's one bus and head to the nearest town. I sleep on the bus. I'm not sure if Lee sleeps at all. He seems wired. Like a man possessed. What's going on in his head, I do not know.

Up and down and round and round the bus goes, like a circus joke, like a fairground ride. We don't get there before dark and as we near the town, where the traffic gets thicker and the roads busier, we are still passing the hills at the end of the plain. There are endless corners and there is nothing you see, just the sweep of a bus that speeds along with you barely holding on. It seems this way when you're in and out of sleep. When we arrive, I'm extremely thankful the journey's over.

The first thing Jonathan Lee does is buy a bottle of beer. We find somewhere to stay, check the room and go straight out. We have dinner in the market, where these bright, bare light bulbs hang down over stainless steel tables. You add chilli flakes and chilli sauce to your noodles. We have seaweed as a side dish. Jonathan Lee has a massive appetite. He washes everything down with his third and fourth beers. 

Playing pool, we meet two women. Lee knows what to do. He's stepped up a gear, become another man. Focused now, he gets them to come back to our room. Oddly, once we're there, he wants to talk about Post-Structaralism again. I was already feeling sleepy. The window's open and the curtains flutter about. In great waves, the room sweeps from wind-side, across the one woman's hair, passing onto her friend's blouse. Lee talks. I fall asleep.

They are gone when I wake up. I can hear Jonathan Lee singing in the shower. When we leave the hotel, I bump into a passing teenager. He is with his friends, who are slumping aroujnd beside him like hyeenas. The head dog steps foward and barks at me. My head is splitting and the sun is bright and I am enjoying the silence of not speaking. Lee and I have not yet spoken today. I observe the dog from behind the sunglasses I bought in the market the day before. Feeling like the world could be peaceful, I imagine that I can simply go on not speaking. Instead, the barking goes on. I start to walk off, as does Jonathan Lee, but the hyeenas hold us back and there are quite a few of them. I'm not sure if they hit Lee, but soon I'm on the ground and I feel them stamping on me. Their laughter and cries get louder.

I wake up in a field, where the grass is quite long. I feel like my head has split from the inside. Jonathan Lee is singing, so I lie there listen to him.

He stops singing and, out of the blue, recites the following poem:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - Too?

Then there's a pair of us?

Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog - 

To tell one's name - the livelong June - 

To an admiring Bog!

which seemed odd.

Drowning in Mango - Part Six

Apparently I was feverish. I found out afterwards, though I remember well enough how it felt to have your bones ache from within. On occasion I contorted my back so thoroughly that I thought my shoulder blades were about to pop out of my skin. I found afterwards, I say, that I spoke a great deal. A man from a nearby town, who was brought in to decipher my most probably nonsensical dream-speak, made many proclamations about my character. This man became a kind of friend not so long after this and I have a feeling, despite the crooked nature of his smile, that he said mostly benign things. Still, I always felt the people there regarded me as a half-possessed, half-demented fool. The fever did my judgement in for quite some time. When you're anxious and paranoid, as I was, it's hard to be sure of anything.


Previously: Drowning in Mango - Part Five

Drowning in Mango - Part Five

I poured myself out. A viscous mess. The thoughts were broken. I flowed like wine at an alcoholics' convention. Sweat was my element, fever my tonic and bane bane bane. My bones creaked. There were moments of shame and manic, train-like fury/joy. I slept a lot though it seemed, at the time, like I did nothing but writhe about restlessly day and night.

Previously: Drowning in Mango - Part Four 

Drowning in Mango - Part Four

I passed out. The heat did it. My brain was like a fried egg, one that had stuck to the bottom of the pan.

When I came to I was quite violently sick and entirely at the mercy of my hosts. Having washed up on their land, I'd become their problem.

"How did he get here?" they said, or so I imagined, since their Cantonese-like jabber was totally incomprehensible to me. I understood some Mandarin and perhaps three phrases in Cantonese, but not one word of this language.

"How'd he get here? Where's he come from? Who is he? Why? god-knows-how". They chatted away at a million miles an hour and I presumed to have the first clue what they were saying.

It was still so hot. No air-con. Barely enough breeze to lift a sock on the washing line, not that there were any socks. Sandal weather.

Previously: Drowning in Mango - Part Three

Drowning in Mango - Part Three

The elephant was not life-size. Nor was it convincing. Clearly it was a relic from a long-defunct children's play area. The elephant stood in a disused paddling pool. The plants around it were overgrown, so that it seemed to be standing in knee-high grass. Its back and trunk were. meanwhile, coated with black-green slime that had dried in the sun. I wandered over to it, apparently attracting some attention in the process. I heard a voice behind me, but it was like a distant sound, a bird song that passed over me. The sun must have been getting to me. I imagined cool, clear water streaming out of the elephant's trunk and into the pool below. I knelt down beside the pool and sunk my hand into its thick waters, which were all the wrong colours. The voice behind me went on shouting. I didn't understand the language. The owner of the voice came closer now. She was pointing and telling me off, this much I could understand. I sat there, cupping some of this green fluid in my hand, and thought to myself that it sounded like Cantonese but wasn't. Then I drank the water.

Previously: Drowning in Mango - Part Two

Drowning in Mango - Part Two

It took me a long time to sit up. I suppose I was in no kind of rush. The only sound was the wind rushing through the trees. There was long fronds, like on banana trees, hanging down all over the place. This wasn't a plant I recognised though. The fruit it bore was huge and covered in reddish hair. It reminded me of orangutans, but curled up so you couldn't see the arms and legs.

There was nothing to see overhead, not a single cloud. The sun scorched down one side of me. The sweat poured out. Still I didn't move. Aside from the occasional cough to clear chunks of mango from my throat, I lay completely still. It felt like I was sinking into the grass, becoming part of the earth.

The thing that got me was thirst. I'd almost drowned in liquid mango. On top of that I'd lay there sweating for what felt like eternity. You could say my throat was a little dry. So I sat up.

I saw now that there was a vegetable patch not more than twenty yards away. I saw, too, a hut where people were living. You could see laundry hanging up. There was smoke coming from the other side of the building. If it had been blowing my way I might have smelled it earlier. Charcoal? Pork? The idea of such scents, if not the actual smell of them, got me thinking about standing up, but first I wanted to get used to sitting there. I could see now that the sun was getting low, but it wasn't that low. There was still no rush.

And then I saw the elephant.

Previously: Part One

Drowning in Mango - Part One

drowning in mango, I came up for one last gulp of sticky air

the world turned dark orange after that

the last thing I saw before my eyes stuck together finally: an enormous brown and yellow snake swimming towards me with great muscular movements

now blind, I felt myself being transported at great speed, but like a drunk on a train, half-asleep and conscious only of how sick all this movement was making me

I passed out, probably because my lungs were filling with mango juice

when I woke up, I was on the shore of a small stream

there wasn't a mango in sight

Read Part Two

120 - the world seeps in

the world seeps into my mind from without
and outward seeps that mind of mine too
there is a man
five foot five perhaps
stooped you see
he stands outside his family's printing shop
perhaps he set it up many many moons back
he wears a white t-shirt faded to see-through
hair droops out an inch wide of his brows
he shuffles
taking his time since there is no need to rush
and stares at me like i am an object from out
we are at opposite ends of the spectrum
and
that
is
fine

you asked why there are so many frogs around

you asked why there are so many frogs around and the question struck me as essential. once we know why the frogs have multiplied so remarkably then we will uncover all sorts of other meanings.

every morning it is so hot that the pressure suffocates you. then it rains for about five minutes after lunch and there is a kind of relief. it is normally cloudy for several hours afterwards. around three or four o'clock the sun comes out all brilliant, at an angle that means you've either got it shining on your back or right in your face. i go of course all over the countryside at this time. there might be a few drops of rain coming down but it only very rarely turns into a proper downpour.

you also complained that the hundreds of mosquitoes were keeping you awake. there probably weren't hundreds in your room, though there may have been a lot. did they buzz around your ears? did you have to get up repeatedly. i have hit myself in the head trying to kill bothersome mosquitoes. luckily the apartment i am living in now has good screens on the windows. i almost never notice mosquitoes in here but when you go downstairs to hang out laundry you find that hundreds of them (perhaps not hundreds but certainly many) are buzzing around. they land on your legs and make a nuisance of themselves.

 Japan's Sakoku Period

during the 17th century the rulers of Japan decided to isolate the country from the rest of the world. for the next 200 years, which has become known as the Sakoku Period, foreigners caught entering the country were put to death, while Japanese folk were forbidden from leaving. an Italian missionary who snuck into the country was buried alive. in fact at one point an edict from the Tokugawa Shogunate, which was Japan's military government, forbade Japanese people living outside the country, such as in small colonies in South East Asia, from returning to the homeland. Japan's silver mines were a source of wealth at the time and trade was conducted with foreigners, but any visitors to Japan came under heavy restrictions. Dutch and Portuguese traders were forced to remain on a tiny island in the harbour at Nagasaki. foreign knowledge was still brought into the country, albeit through a very small gateway. interested Japanese citizens learnt a lot from books and pieces of technology that were brought into the country through Nagasaki. doctors and other foreign experts indirectly advanced Japanese society and the rapid development that ensued once Japan finally opened its borders to foreigners and allowed free trade can in part be explained by efforts made during the period of isolation. these efforts sought to find better methodologies. Chinese medicine was, for instance, abandoned in favour of proto-modern western methods which were observed in use among the foreign doctors who accompanied traders coming into Nagasaki. the aim of the restrictions imposed by the shogunate during the Sakoku Period was to protect Japanese culture and maintain peace in the country and the epoch only came to an end when foreigners, armed with big guns, forced those in power to ease restrictions and allow free trade to resume. i feel like i have accidentally isolated myself in a sort of mini, very localised Sakoku Period of my own. i need some outsider to come in, perhaps without big guns, and force me to interact. this is a tortured analogy. for now, i treat others with suspicion. i have become so used to being alone that i find the company of strangers challenging. this is a tortured analogy but i feel it works. i learn selectively from others while keeping them at arm's length. i care most about preserving myself and the peace i imagine i feel. i protect what is mine and visit awful hatred on anyone whom i perceive to be a threat. this is a lonely existence and i feel that i need my own new era of openness. i need someone to pass the time with. there must be exchanges. there must also be development. on like this i cannot go.

i feel i could agree with you about the mosquitoes but i'm not sure where the conversation would go after that. could we simply sit there in agreement? could we somehow just share the mutual knowledge that mosquitoes are indeed annoying? perhaps, like a tap, i could switch you on and you could talk and talk and talk and i would lie back listening and enjoying the relief around lunchtime, or the low sunshine in the late afternoon (we should meet at this time, somewhere shaded where we can drink ice tea, perhaps with cushions on the floor where i can lie down and you can sit comfortably while you explain why mosquitoes are annoying).

the fact is that this will probably not happen. you will sit at your computer and i will sit at your computer. we may as well be adjacent but we are not. we live in the same city (for all of a city it is) but on different streets, not even adjacent streets. i see you only online and perhaps you see me there too.

i feel i could love you, in a way that i should perhaps explain, since it wouldn't be fair to let you misunderstand me. i don't want you to expect anything from me and i don't want to look for anything from you. i could love you in the sense that we both are people with feelings and thoughts and if we somehow come to experience our shared humanity then we will both enhance each other's experience.

 The Ranch Davidians

once when the sun had already gone down and it was getting cooler but still warm enough to ride around in just a t-shirt and shorts, i was riding around in the country, where there are douits and plantations - i suppose they are irrigation canals rather than douits - in among the lanes that separate the plots of coconut and banana trees, most of which in that area are unfenced but still patrolled by dogs that bark at just about anything, a noise that gets my heart racing and makes me ride a little faster no matter how many times I hear it, i never see those dogs, well, there was one day when i happened to be riding near there and someone who was in charge of some wedding festivities set off a bunch of extremely loud fire crackers, then i saw the dog, it ran in a panic away from the road and disappeared among the trees, anyway, when i was riding in the early evening among those lanes there was an unexpectedly brightly lit and noisy shack, where a makeshift bar and barbecue had been set up. behind this arrangement of beer and meat and people was a man with a guitar, who made a point of being friendly to me, without ever really addressing me directly. he certainly didn't fuss over me. in the course of the next hour or two, which i spent eating and listening to songs, i heard him claim to be variously Isaiah, David and Christ, not Jesus, but a new Messiah. he quoted freely from scripture, some of which seemed make believe. only one line of what he spouted has stuck in my mind until now, he said "the fool has said there is no God", or something very similar to that, i don't particularly want to look it up, but he was shaking his head and speaking as if inspired by some higher power, while slapping on his guitar and captivating a lot of dummies who crowded around him and his pretty face. thinking about it now, I can recall that he used the phrase "children of men". he was paraphrasing one of the psalms, saying that since they did not believe in a god, the people of the world had become dirty and incapable of true goodness. he offered no clear way out of this predicament. as i ceased to look so impressed by what i'd initially thought to be a fortuitous find: a group of laid back people in among fields out in the country; since I ceased to look so interested in this bunch of hippies and their open grill and warm beer, he looked me in the eye and seemed to be trying to communicate something, as he whistled and hummed and drummed his fingers on his guitar. i drank some more beer and started to feel less and less responsible. eventually i left without saying goodbye to anyone, or at least tried to. when i went to urinate away from everyone else and then went directly to get my bike, some of them called out, though i didn't understand them. though i knew that i had nothing productive to say to them and they probably had nothing to say that would interest me very much, i still felt ashamed at sneaking away, and just like when the dogs barked from somewhere in the darkness and i feared they'd run out from among the trees and onto the road, my heart raced and i rode a quickly as i could until that odd little shack and its makeshift bar and guitar playing wannabe prophet were far behind me. i now sometimes wonder if i didn't imagine the whole thing. i don't want to look up the psalms because i'm not sure how else i'd know any part of them to put them into my imagination.

last week it rained for several days. it rained so heavily that you couldn't hear yourself think. it rained until the roads were all flooded. "flooding like typhoon season", you wrote. these statements you make are what i see of you shared online. it is perhaps awful that i notice every word and think of our shared experience. i see that it is flooding and you see that it is flooding and we both comment on the flooding. this is perhaps brilliant. or awful. we have either already attained that togetherness of shared experience, or we have alienated ourselves so well that despite having so much in common, and a willingness, on my part at least, to connect in some way, the most we can do is make unconnected assertions: "it rains"; "how hot i am"; "this new music bothers me"; "turn me over"; "i am without God".

112

you stranger were staring at the flower
a water daisy or whatever they're called
a margarita
your sister or whoever was sat down behind you on the phone talking to someone about how the flower had been growing or how it was still growing and how it was going to grow
not this one maybe but a flower
the water
on this headache hot Kaohsiung street lit up was like a pool of fresh mountain run off
this green and mossy bowl of flower water
just then the single flower was what you were staring at and your sister was talking about it and I was watching and I walked on into a grove of a hundred thousand flowers as high as a house and as deep as the sea that you walk into white and fluffy and immediately forgetting



written without thinking

111 - After 劉辰旦 and 28 Days Later

If you visit Kaohsiung's Museum of History this week then you'll see an exhibition of ink wash painting and calligraphy from Liu Chen-dan (劉辰旦). Liu is a former inmate of the controversial and now defunct Jingmei Detention Center and it was while imprisoned there under the charge of treason that he taught himself the skills that are presently on display at the museum. During his 15 year imprisonment, Liu had great cause to feel despair, but the messages he conveyed at that time, and which are collected in the exhibition, are undeniably hopeful.

One painting he produced while in prison shows a man drawing a circle around himself, above which Liu has written 畫地自限, a Chinese idiom which literally means draw a line on the ground to stay within, the message being that we create the limits we live with. It seems that while living in a cell Liu managed to liberate himself through his artistic pursuits. Ideally, regardless of the constraints under which we live we can find true freedom.

Also displayed in the exhibition is a letter that Liu sent to his wife, in which he included, written large in cursive script, the apparently original phrase 大地無情, 你我有愛, which means in a world without feeling, we have our love.

Since we always view whatever we see through the prism of our past experience, it is perhaps helpful to point out that I attended the exhibition the day after watching the British horror movie 28 Days Later, in which two survivors of an epidemic that has obliterated all social order find solace in one another's company, sharing the sense that as long as they have each other then they can avoid being overwhelmed by the chaos and misery that surrounds them. For me the message of both Danny Boyle's film and Liu Chen-dan's piece of calligraphy is that love, or at least companionship, enables us to overcome any evil circumstances we might encounter. Our relationships with our friends and family are to be treasured, especially when we face hardships.

I find it inspirational that a jailed man was able to maintain such a positive outlook. His enlightened message has still more resonance because of the skill and feeling with which he expresses it. Yet I think that even in ordinary circumstances, and without remarkable means of expression, it's worthwhile to consider these two ideas: restrictions are merely self-imposed and togetherness helps us overcome suffering.

Here are a couple of examples of Liu's artwork:

109 - Tomorrow's Sensational Story

Last night I saw a video that was shared on facebook by a friend who deemed it "unbelieveable". Its title promised that it showed people "doing it" on the subway. It did indeed show a man sitting on the Kaohsiung subway, a woman bent over his lap with her head covered by a jacket. As she moved about, the man made some almost comically pained expressions, as if he were enjoying whatever the be-coated woman was doing.

I was unconvinced by what I saw, though I felt more sure that something had taken place once I read the caption underneath the video, in which the person who uploaded the video said that the young woman had emerged from under the coat with a look of disgust on her face before getting off at the next stop. The man, after zipping up his fly and doing up his belt, got off at the following stop, taking a teddy bear with him. The caption-writer expressed surprise that he kept the bear for himself and didn't have the decency to give it to the coat woman.

Today, when I went to have breakfast at a local cafe, I saw that the story was featured in the newspaper. This evening, I saw that the story was featured on the TV news, too. It seems half the country has now seen the video. The couple are going to be prosecuted.

This strikes me as extremely swift. Within twenty-four hours these deviants went from seeing if they could get away with something illicit to being publically shamed as their faces are printed and played over and over again for the amusement of the nation. We live in a viral society and you'd better never step out of line, otherwise the misdemeanour you commit today will become tomorrow's sensational story.

108 - The Gaoping Train

as we roll over the county divide
it goes dark as the middle of the ocean
in the middle of the night
there's no moon
only distant strings of orange light left and right
looking straight ahead
this empty grassland
is ongoing
creaky
silence



The train from Kaohsiung to Pingtung passes over the Gaoping Bridge, which rises high above a dry riverbed, where thick grasses grow. When it floods this area becomes a broad basin. At night this is an oasis of darkness between the two counties, which are lit up everywhere. When the train goes creaking across that bridge, you notice a change in the atmosphere.

107 - Breaking Spring

It started raining and this breeze came in. Not long after, as if part of the same moment, an earthquake began. It was mild at first but it built gradually. Still there were no great shunts. Rather the room swayed in slow motion while the rain hammered away, creating a curtain of rising water noise. The breath of the afternoon exhaled up off the street as the tarmac cooled. My head toppled. I went to sleep with a headache and woke up soon after covered in sweat. It was dusk by then and the rain had stopped. I could hardly see. Just blue luminescence hung with raindrops out the window. Adhesive heat stood on the shivering air.

103 - Dog Pig

Yesterday at Dog Pig Art Cafe, we saw a piece of performance art. Since 'a piece' can also be used to describe an amount of gold or chocolate, it is perhaps the wrong term to describe what we saw. It wasn't a play, since it had no plot. There was some singing, but it wasn't a musical.

In the performance, three women walked round in circles posting notices on a wooden structure, which they retreated into at times. From within their apparently hastily constructed wooden house they sang a song. Throughout their half hour show, they shouted slogans, most of which referred to everyday things.

As they performed, the three women were filmed by about a dozen people, some of whom noisily fetched ladders so that they could see into the wooden house.

While I had no idea what any of this was supposed to mean, and developed a suspicion that the performers were just as much in the dark as I was, I decided that this is the sort of thing that is worth fighting for. These women could say whatever they pleased in the silliest fashion imaginable. They may not have made any specific political statement, but they could have. They may have made me feel a bit bored, but they might have entertained me. This is the freedom that is worth fighting for. I will go back to Dog Pig.

102 - Leave Me This Choking Haze Behind

Send me out
Down the road
Toward the hills
Leave me this choking haze behind
Once out from between these houses
The air spreads
You notice it at once
A freshness fills you
Strap me to the pick-up's bed
Face up
Wide-eyed at the sight of trees sailing by
Foaming at the grin to live this life down the road
Heat-stricken
Ignoring exhaustion as the travelling breeze cools me

Something scribbled down in a notebook on September 15th last year, my second day in Pingtung.