March 24-27

MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2:24 p.m. - KMRT Formosa Blvd Station exterior.

2:48 p.m. - mostly just documenting that the KMRT is open after so many pics of construction.

3:38 p.m.

10:00 p.m. - Heart of Kaohsiung.

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 12:30 p.m. - Tableaux on my cute aunt's dashboard. Asia has these soft plastic non-slip sheets that create enough friction on surface areas so things are held in place and don't slip off when the car turns (centrifugal force?).

1:50 p.m. - Shin Zuoying (Kaohsiung) High-Speed Rail terminus. Heading back to Taipei.

MARCH 27, 4:11 p.m. - Placid Keelung River from Rainbow Bridge.

Raohe Night Market is now my night market.

from Chenggong Bridge.

high school students on a forced run cross-country team

Double-decker freeway to points east of Taipei.

Drat. I went for my medical exam last week to apply for a Taiwanese ID card, and got my results back a few days ago. No tumor. Everything checks out. Pass.

I know I didn't have AIDS/HIV, nor any poop in my parasites (switch that, it just sounds better this way), nothing showed in the blood test, and chest X-ray was clear of tuberculosis. And tumorculosis. I'm making up words now.

My gut still feels all wrong, sit-ups are still hard, and I had hiccups the day I went for the exam, and I had them yesterday again for about 24 hours, so they're definitely occurring with frighteningly greater frequency. Frightening, more because they tend to piss me off and wear me down, rather than because of any medical or health reasons.

So as to the question of what would I have done if it turned out to be a tumor will remain unanswered, as will the question of who I would have told. In a thought exercise, the short list turns out to be pretty darn short.

Who would have been worth telling? There are people who deserve to know, but would they be worth telling? I lean towards the no.

Obviously none of the superficial contacts I have in Taipei, including Hyun Ae. I have one language exchange partner, but I think that's just an excuse to hang out, since she's not really serious about improving or maintaining her English. She might be a friend, and she I would tell eventually, but not right away. I wouldn't just disappear, like with the other people. I have another language exchange partner who is serious and is actually my previous Mandarin teacher, the best one I've had, but I wouldn't tell her. I would just phase out our meetings.

The band I would tell and probably quit, but I would offer to remain until they got a replacement up to speed so that they didn't miss any paying gigs, but they would probably reject that option.

If I stick with a job I'm starting next week on a trial basis – part-time position with an English language newspaper, which has wonky hours because of deadline and probably a low retention rate – I wouldn't tell. I'd just quit when I finally couldn't do it anymore. Or I would probably just quit. The point being I wouldn't feel like I owed them anything, like I do with the band. Not that I like being in this band, I just have a higher respect for musicians, what they do, and the pressures they deal with.

I don't know about my uncle and aunt in Kaohsiung. They deserve to know, but there are too many other factors that make me lean towards not telling them until late. If I told them, then everyone would know, and they'd all fuss and hassle and treat me in a normative way, and I'm in no way normative. They wouldn't understand that I would think it was the best thing ever happened.

Cousins Audrey and 姿慧? I project that Audrey doesn’t deserve to know, but knowing our relationship, if it were reality, it's in the realm of possibility that she might be the only one I end up telling, depending on circumstances. She does know me well enough that I can bully her into not telling anyone. 姿慧 I don’t know well enough, she’s just not that close.

Parents, brothers? Good god no. Why wouldn't I just kill myself first rather than go through that uncomfortable mess of how they might react. I just want to be left alone, and that I know they don't understand.

And blog? Blog would be the first to know.

TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 3:44 p.m. - Cow Elvis tableaux at a restaurant on Roosevelt Road. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 16 - Construction in Xinyi District. Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super.

MONDAY, MARCH 17 - Hike up Elephant Mountain..

3:36-4:57 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 4:54 p.m. - Maokong Gondola.

5:03-5:07 p.m. - from Maokong.

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 11:34 a.m. - I'm not so much into nature photography, but some people like it.

MARCH 22 - Kaohsiung. Election day voting at a Jhongsiao Municipal Elementary School not far from my uncle's building.

Room at the residence where my father grew up.

11:51 a.m.-12:07 p.m. - Portraits of my father's side of the family. The only person I recognize is my father's older brother at the right in the top photo. I met him in 1980 shortly before he died. He was in a wheelchair and mentally debilitated, as I remember. His portrait was obviously rendered at a different time from the other paintings, one of which might represent a great-grandparent. Someone knows, I don't. I can't even identify my father in the bottom photo, such is his mystery.

8:29 p.m. - My parents footed the bill for a family banquet. My grandfather had five children and members of all five families are represented here. 

8:32 p.m. - The kids getting their picture taken and Sunny looks at me.

So to sum up the last week, I moved to a new apartment. My old apartment was just outside the southern Taipei border in Xindian, and I moved to Songshan District in Taipei, off Nanjing East Road, Section 5 – way eastward, but not as far east as Taipei goes.

I live less than half a mile from the Key Lime River, where it bends east and heads out of town. Well, where it flows into town, actually. Across the river is Neihu District, which everyone considers "far" (even people who live in Neihu (this is before the MRT brown line extension into and through Neihu -fut. ed.)).

I like it here in my new place, verging on loving it. I wonder how long this honeymoon will last. So far, after a week, no nasty realizations, surprises or regrets, no dead rats like in the second place I lived. Quite the opposite.

Even the lack of internet and TV isn’t bothering me. Quite the opposite. I was thinking that internet is necessary, and I would probably crack and get internet service installed, but if a nearby café has free wireless, I’m gonna see how much longer I can hold out. I really like an apartment without internet. I was wasting so much time.

I thought I loved my old apartment, but maybe after a year of living in a place, I was stagnating. I needed this move and I didn’t even know it. Now I feel like I’m discovering Taipei anew. It helps that the sun came out for my move, and was out for a week before it started raining again today.

I even started running and riding after moving. I just couldn’t get the motivation to start my season before. I started with a measured 3 mile that I pushed, and established an average 7:25 mile. The idea being that now 7:25 miles are my goal as I extend my distances.

My second run was a measured 4 mile easy, and running easy I did it averaging 8:22 miles. The idea is that as I extend my distances, the average goal will be still be 7:25 miles, not easy for me once I’m doing 6 or more miles.

And then this ache in my gut. I want to blame it on the sit-ups I did as a part of my warm-up, but I think the ache started before I started running. My gut feels like a rock. I even played with the idea that it was alcohol related, and it’s getting serious now.

No joke, no game. If I don’t want to die soon, I need to stop drinking now. Immediately, and even that’s no guarantee I can turn things around. But don’t I want to die soon? That’s what I’m playing with.

Diem said her alcoholic uncle died when he was 34. Ritu died when she was 34, and even though it was a suicide, she was definitely alcoholic. There’s no way I can have been drinking the way that I have for the past 10 years, and not have a major problem looming. Girlfriends did curb my drinking, and it’s been that long since my drinking has been curbed. Like any practice, my drinking has improved.

Josephine was my last girlfriend. She actually found one of my fotologs a few months ago and started leaving me comments. Then she just as abruptly stopped. I think she’s gone for good now.

She hinted at meeting up, but I neutralized that. And it was after I mentioned that I never want to have kids and was principally opposed to it that she stopped leaving comments. She had an 18 month old son.

I actually didn’t get her current situation clear. She said she had married after we broke up and she returned to Taiwan (our relationship was in San Francisco), but her husband was killed in an accident. That happened long before the 18 months ago when she had this baby, so I don’t know if she re-married or what.

Anyway, we were able to express some things leading towards the closure we never had. She said she’s at peace, and that said a lot to me. If she said she was happy, that would say she was great and things were going well, and I wouldn’t want anything to do with her anyway. Why rain on her parade?

But she said she was at peace, and you only get to peace after going through an ordeal, a trial, and it sounds like she did that. I really loved her, and cared for her. It makes me think of the other people I loved and cared for, and who went on with their lives without me.

I assume they went on with their lives happily without me. I never considered whether they went through an ordeal like Josephine did. I assumed Amina and Shiho were perfectly happily married with careers and popping out babies. That always pissed me off. But what if they weren’t? What if they went through ordeals, what if their husbands died?

I would much rather be pissed off and they be happy, than them having to go through what darling Josephine went through. The pitfalls of losing contact with people you love, even exes.

I was reminded of Amina when I moved. Once when I moved in Oberlin, when we were still “just friends”, she came over and helped me clean my new place. From that, I got it in my head that a new place isn’t home until it’s given a proper cleaning, until I’ve put my hands over all the surfaces. So I came a day in advance to clean before I moved.

It seems my apartment was designed for a left-handed midget. Everything seems to be on the wrong side of where I want it. And low surface areas. Or maybe the surfaces in my old place were unusually high. I stoop to make coffee.

random memory:
Amina: Do you want some coffee?
Me: Um, sure.
Amina: Great, can you make me a cup, too?

I'm glad that just about the only thing I remember Amina saying still cracks me up.

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 5:20-5:21 p.m. - Farewell old apartment.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 10:09 a.m. - Hello new.

1:30 p.m. - Taida main library stitch.

2:24 p.m. - Maishuai Bridge #1 and Taipei 101.

FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 9:43 p.m. - Just what Taiwan needs. Hyper-caffeinated white men as role models for our kids.

SUNDAY, MARCH 9 - Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. New neighborhood riverside park photostroll:

MARCH 10, 6:09 p.m.

People I don't know putting me into a bad mood. People I know putting me into a bad mood. Situations putting me into a bad mood. Me putting me into a bad mood.

And I walk with hostility and I catch myself, but negative thoughts bloom in my mind like mold spores in a petri dish. And I catch myself.

Why the negative thought directed towards that person who is just living his or her life, just going from one place to another on the MRT? This thought is not objective, it's not real. It's the result of my bad mood, but then why does he or she need to be the target of it?

The target should be me.

I weigh down the negative thought by turning it to stone and it falls to the ground, and I walk and leave it behind. I turn the energy of what was the negative thought into a positive thought towards this person or everyone around me.

I stand in the MRT car, still affected by the negative thought. It occurred naturally, it's still there, visualizing it as something else doesn't get rid of the fact that it occurred or the situation or my being that created it.

The MRT doors close and the train starts to move. I feel the inertia and I let go the thoughts in my head and they flow out of my head as they get left behind as I move with the MRT car.

This movement through space and time. The energy of space and time rush through me as the MRT blue line moves westward from Zhongxiao Fuxing to Taipei Main Station. I'm not even here. This is literal, not figurative. We already know of energies in the universe, cosmic rays, that bombard our planet and us, but are so energetic that they pass right through matter.

How much more so is it possible that dark energy is of this nature, what I'm postulating is the equivalent nature of our own consciousnesses? All flowing through with every movement, all seamless and connected. I move and the energy of the universe flows through me.

"My destiny is not to shoot you, the universe can't be that lame"
-Claire Bennet, "Heroes"


My new Canon IXUS 860 IS has this cool stitch feature that takes a bunch of pictures and uses a computer program to assemble them into panoramas:

3:34 p.m. - Xindian, from my rooftop deck. The road below is Rte. 106 and goes straight east to west. Just about every shot I took from my apartment window was somewhere in this one shot.

5:48 p.m. - The new apartment I'm moving into in Taipei.

6:18 p.m. - My first picture in my new neighborhood as a (soon-to-be) resident.