January 28-29

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1:28 p.m. - Jingmei River default shot.

8:20 p.m. - band rehearsal room, Ximending, Taipei.

JANUARY 29, 12:01 p.m. - Shots from my apartment window, Xindian.

I met up with Hyun Ae last night for the first time since October. We went to see the new Wang Kar-Wai film My Blueberry Nights. I wanted to see it because Norah Jones is butter-meltingly gorgeous, and the trailer used Cat Power's The Greatest. I had no idea it was the new Wang Kar-Wai film, and I couldn't even guess when Hyun Ae was telling me what her co-workers were telling her about how the director has a really strange style and was from Hong Kong.

When Wang Kar-Wai's name came up on the screen I almost fell out of my chair and I tried to communicate to Hyun Ae in a fraction of a second, without distracting from the fact that the film was rolling, that Wang Kar-Wai is one of the greatest directors of our time, and when I predicted several years ago that in the future film schools would have entire curriculums on Wang Kar-Wai, was told some already do.

I think I said, "Gaw!", jabbing frantically towards the screen.

Yes, my blueberry nights with Hyun Ae she has no idea about. That I have no idea about. Wang Kar-Wai films are more about impression than narrative, and the song "The Greatest", also more about impression than what Chan Marshall is singing. Chan Marshall is in the film, by the way, and it only hit me when the character says the word "sentiment" that it was Chan Marshall.

And Hyun Ae is only impression to me. She's not about desire, she's not about wanting, not even sentiment. She's just an impression of those things. I neither desire nor want her. I just love blueberry, it's one of my favorite flavors, and was drinking lychee-blueberry juice during the film that Hyun Ae had paid for.

I wanted to tell Hyun Ae, "Once I wanted to be the greatest, no wind or waterfall could stall me. And then came the rush of the flood, the stars at night turned deep to dust, melt me down into big black armor. Leave no trace of grace, just in your honor", and then I would kiss the bits of blueberry pie from her lips as she lay sleeping, exhausted.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1:11 p.m. - Jingmei River default shot.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 5:46 p.m. - Miramar Mall in Dazhi with Hyun Ae.

Unknown, Taipei - Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super.

Anchorage, Alaska

On the way back to Taipei from New Jersey. After four weeks, that was one of the more difficult departures. Parents getting old, brothers raising kids. You play with those mites for just a little bit, and man do they get under your skin. You don't want to miss one day of their growing up.

But I have to go back. Have something to go back for, which is rehearsing with the band for a gig next Monday! Oy, time to pretend I'm professional. Or not.

And 2008. Yeesh. Same ol' resolutions, although I thought of something while in New Jersey that I haven't decided holds some grain of truth, or is the cop-out of a lifetime.

I realized or thought maybe that whenever I die, however I die I'm going to consider it a suicide. Living the way I do, thinking the way I do, writing what I have, holding the beliefs I do and I really can only die by suicide.

It doesn't matter how, but my dying will be the killing of myself. By myself. It's just the end point of the process of how I've lived my life, which was with suicide as, if not a goal, well something . . . the cornerstone, the keystone, the basic philosophy, the foundation.

It's kind of irrelevant how I die. That moment of death is just a mere instant, a cold fact, and if it doesn't manifest as some overt act that people traditionally and conventionally consider suicide, that shouldn't overshadow what I've carried around with me my whole life. That doesn't make sense to me.

Does that mean I don't actually have to do an act that traditionally and conventionally looks like a suicide? Hm, for the first time I'm going to say maybe. But augh that looks like a cop-out. And it still feels like the day that I definitively decide not to "commit suicide", whatever that means, will really be the day I die. That's just weird, man. But at least it still makes sense to me.

January 3-13

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 9:41 p.m. - Tessa Rose @ 1 and a half years @ her aunt Peggy's in Manhattan.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 6:22-6:36 p.m. - Jazz combo at AIX Bistro in Manhattan, Upper West Side. Tom Kennedy on bass.

Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN. Just some recap: This roll was started in July 2007 and left half shot in the N70 in New Jersey. I finished the roll when I came back during this trip, but only 24 frames out of 36 on the roll are in the folder, only five of which were shot this trip and all on one day. So it's a bit of a mystery what happened to the rest of the frames. I find it hard to believe I only shot on one day during four weeks in New Jersey and didn't finish the roll. So these are all of the shots left on the roll, irregardless of subject or how I feel about them, but just because it's a bit of a mystery:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 8 - unknown, but the rest of the shots are down by the Hudson River in Edgewater, N.J.

JANUARY 13, 4:24-4:29 p.m. - From my room at my parents' house.