the text and images below are posted from beijing, berlin, buenos aires, hong kong, los angeles, new york, sado island, shanghai, tokyo and zürich. there are a few of us, and this is the space in between.
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但願您也在這裡 （finding greetings series no. 4）
紐約 New York – 蘇黎世 Zürich
Washington Square Park
Photo: Battman
Piece of the Rainbow
©1993 New York

 

北伊羅戈省丁格拉斯 Dingras, Ilocos Norte – 斜坡村 Incline Village
Ilocana a Nasudi
A dance of the Manongs and the Manangs, elder couple known for their religiousness.
Courtesy of: Barangay Folk Dance Troupe
Philippine Normal College

 

奧克蘭 Oakland – 首爾 Seoul
Alberto Chou

 

索倫托 sorrento – 新加坡 singapore
Pensione Ristorante La Tonnarella
Casella Postale 22 – Via Capo, 31
Tel. 081/8781153 Fax 081/8782169
80067 Sorrento

 

this set was posted March 2020, three-quarters known to be successfully received, though one never realised as it was intended. i guess it’s still in singapore and you’ve moved on to taipei now, busy with digital things. then there’s one from you on the way, though i’ve also moved on, around the corner of the sea since then, and it will be a while before that post box can be checked. it’s the same post box that you sent your painting to, the one that was too small for the painting so the delivery person had used long rubber bands to strap it to the face of the box. you wished you had seen what that looked like when i told you about it, but unfortunately i had forgotten to take a photo. your painting is now framed and hanging at an odd angle from a pipe above my kitchen.

recently during a bonding session about mutual compulsive collecting habits, i told p about how i pilfer the werbung from other post boxes in my building, the unsolicited pieces that have nice plastic packaging that i can reuse to wrap other things. Once there was also a sticker advertising plumbing services, i have quite a few of them now. Very pretty.

it’s no surprise that all these things material and immaterial circle around one another like cyborgs and spirituality. he calls it the ‘eternal network‘. Looking again now from the current perspective of lonely immobility it feels sadly less anticipatory but only maudlin, a ‘radical inclusionism’ that makes most bored and need to leave the room. self-descriptive at best.

Posted by 丫 | reply »


elephants in the middle of nowhere

we keep missing that catch-up conversation, but “your absence fills the space”, and i’ll keep running. congratulations, dear s… until the next high-five.

left // internet, right // 理变奏曲 Variations on Lǐ (New York, 2006)

Posted by 丫 | reply »


但願您也在這裡 （finding greetings series no. 2）
布拉格 prague – 舊金山 san francisco
kostel sv. mikuláše na starém městě (the church of St. Nicholas on the Old Town)

 

i wanted to be everywhere, all the time. but somehow time stumbled, fell down, and we were led to change genres because nobody took us seriously. or was it simply taking the time to get back to roots, ironic after that white dude’s patronising joke thirteen years ago (so you came to China to find your roots, eh?), me and my roots, everywhere, all the time. keeping it real is just something really really difficult, you know.

you know, just letting you know, you’ll be an arrival point because there’s a one-way love letter at stake, like determined roots and you, the water between my fingers.

 

重慶 chongqing – 星加坡 singapore
a hearty welcome: a massive dish showcasing Chongqing’s sprawling high-rises greets visitors at the opening of the Hotpot Cuisine Culture Festival yesterday. The pot——a reflection of Chinese people’s culinary passion——is divided into two, with half containing light-flavoured broth and the other half, a spicy variation. Models of skyscrapers sit in the middle. The municipality is widely regarded as the origin of hotpot.

 

紐約 new york – 紐約 new york

 

i started to realise the meaning of repetition. maybe because i was once a teacher, and that’s what one does in school, spinning drills, tires as hips. an exercise machine for getting old and being afraid of being forgotten.

you weren’t so didactic, but romantic still loops. we won’t call it like that because you wanted agency, 醒了 and 行了 again and again, aware of pretentions, but what recourse is there? you make your bed.

i make it again and again. and realise that actually that arendt bit is about systems, too. about the ecology of ‘it’s hard to be a good person’, being holistically compromised. about the distance between a sender and a receiver, about the logistical operations of the greatest love poets——”close to cynicism the way comedians are close to sadness”.

you realise、 you rise、 醒了 (a doubt about wokeness)、 行了.
 

Posted by 丫 | reply »


biography

Posted by 丫 | reply »


a monument to stubbornness

or what else is -this- ? all of -this- ? a perverse kind of loyalty. a “then-ness” carried on into now… a gift. not gifted. gifted to you all here, in vein of mister aarsman (photography against actual gifting):

Posted by a | reply »


we start talking to no one in particular, a no one without properties

“what a lovely name for a street.” feeling. still. yes. no. nostalgia. for something that will never be. alas. so we walk. we walk. with the need for dreams to commit suicide. sometimes. “c’est la chose la plus horrible à faire“. or is it. again and again. and an afternoon in the sun. tracing and retracing and walking anew. circles perhaps. fly. yes. fly again. it’s good to be in a place without lists and rows. construct to reconstruct or an economics as a doing. in the city. it would be nice to see what we cannot see. “precisely to fill the emptiness with emptiness, and thus to share it.” you do with it what you will. never a prescription for life. and yes we are left ‘inconcluded’. always. upon arriving home a message overheard from the new york subway through to london: “everyone knows. that love. belongs in the microwave. for two minutes.” 哈! thank you maria.

Posted by a | reply »


$2 solidarity, right here (key ring included)

solidarity

new york misses you already.

Posted by joe | reply »


alone and drinking under the moon

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

– Li Po (701-762)

Yvette And Doreen are taking a seminar on Li Po at the Poughkeepsie Center for the Eastern Arts.

Yvette: How interesting.
Doreen: How delightful.
Yvette: The moon, a man talking to the moon… you gotta come up with that…
Doreen: Yes ha… quite unexpected.
Yvette: …Turn off your cell-phone, Doreen.
Doreen: It’s on vibrate.
Yvette: I know Doreen, but I can still hear it. It’s not nice for the other people.
Doreen: …
Yvette: (to student B to her left) We’re sorry, it’s just her… cell phone. (To Doreen) You see?
Doreen: If I didn’t know you, I’d think you can’t stand me.
Yvette: Shhh, it was your idea to come here so be quiet please, let me learn.

Doreen starts sobbing and takes out a huge vibrator from her purse. She stands up and starts waving it on the air. The whole class is staring at her.

Doreen: So now you can see… it wasn’t my cell phone, no, it was this. How depressing am I? How desperate?

Instructor: Excuse me miss, but I actually think that you are the only person here who really understood what Li Po was trying to say. It’s exactly that acknowledgement that we are alone even when we are surrounded by people. That false sense that our despair is shared by the people who seem to care the most. Bravo, miss…?

Yvette: Doreen, she’s Doreen and I’m her best friend Yvette.

Doreen stares at Yvette and sees in her eyes the truth of a lifelong friendship. Yvette puts her arms around Doreen. While Doreen is trying to put her vibrator back in her purse, it falls on the head of Student D, who’s sitting right in front of her. A moment of nervousness is followed by a relaxed and shared laugh in the whole class.

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