I'm hoping I'm at a breakthrough point in sitting. Or not. I'm hoping that I've reached a point where I can endeavor to more successfully calm my mind on the way to letting it transform, wind it down from the torrent of thought it usually subjects me to.

It's not necessarily new, I don't think. I think I've touched on what I'm hoping to maintain now before. I'm hoping now won't be the same as before where I reach this sort of revelation, but then slink back into my habit of uncontrolled thoughts and wandering mind.

I think I've reached a point where I can maintain a struggle to clamp down on it and not get discouraged or frustrated, but keep the struggle going. It's nothing new, it's just reaching a point of development after years and years of sitting where I might actually get some consistency and discipline going.

The basics are the same. The focal point is breathing, concentrating on breathing as the foundation of practice. Second, moving out from the breath to body awareness; acutely aware of physical existence, being here, sitting here, focusing on it. Then sound is my third pillar, maybe because I'm very aural, but holding my concentration on breath, body and sound to maintain awareness of the moment. Pay attention to every sound. If my mind is wandering, sounds happen, but I'm not acutely aware and focused on them. If I'm acutely aware and focused on them, my mind isn't wandering. Finally, also maintain an awareness of time, or the concept of time, as each moment passes through.

For me, I have to be aggressive, I have to get 'angry', proactive. When thoughts form, they push concentration out of my mind, so I have to maintain concentration and force thoughts from forming, or shutting them down as soon as I'm aware that they're there. It's one or the other, either thoughts are formed or I can maintain concentration. Once thoughts start forming, concentration slips away. If concentration is maintained, thoughts don't form.

The practical side of this is that it's practice to shut down negative thoughts when I'm going about my business in life. Controlling thought formation obviously is a good skill for controlling negative thought formation.

In regard to "enlightenment", I'm thinking that it is not some great state of mind that people can reach with the proper effort. Enlightenment already surrounds us, it is the fabric of our very existence. We're steeped in it, swimming in it. Water is to fish what enlightenment is to us.

Maybe fish have no awareness of water, it's just fact, it's just there, it's the foundation of their existence and there's no questioning it until they're taken out of it. Maybe it's the same with humans and enlightenment, we're already fundamentally touching enlightenment, but we're taken out of it by our egos, attachments and aversions, and only then are we aware of it, but only as something separate from us.

Otherwise, enlightenment is already right here, it is every moment, but to get an idea of it, it's necessary to experience what a fundamental moment is, and a good technique towards that is sitting meditation.

Rainbow V toy camera, Solaris FGPlus 400 color film. March 21-26, Taipei and Kaohsiung:

Building the park along Park Road. The road came before the park, so maybe they should name it Road Park :p

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25 - Kaohsiung, Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

Cijin Island windmill park

4:13 p.m.

4:53 p.m. - 姿慧, on the left, my cousin on my father's side, and her friends.

5:29 p.m. - Port of Kaohsiung.

THURSDAY, MARCH 26 - Kaohsiung Cultural Center.

Central Park

4:53 p.m. - Central Park KMRT Station photostitch.

Back from a visit to Kaohsiung, having found out I can't leave the country until May 8 if I want Taiwanese citizenship, which I'm not sure I do, and with definite end dates for both the band and my current boss at work, I'm wonderfully adrift without a rudder.

It sounds like this weekend is my boss's definite last weekend (after his retirement ceremony which was held in early February), so I need to assess the new editor-in-chief to decide how much longer I'll stay.

One final gig with the band next Friday and the lead singer will be leaving for a while, which is my cue to bow out of that unpleasant situation.

What else?

Why do I even want to make a final trip back to the States to "wrap things up"? Why do I even want to wait until May 8 to get citizenship, which would be useless and superfluous – my current residency card allows me to stay and work in Taiwan beyond when I expect to move back to the U.S. anyway.

If I do want to stay, all I have to do is stay here one full year, but assuming I've found a reason to stay, staying here one full year won't be a problem. I should either go back and "wrap things up", or stay, but don't think that staying until May 8 is for the purpose of getting citizenship.

I find I don't want to move back to the U.S. – dead end. I find I don't want to move to Kaohsiung – dead end. This past trip there enlightened me to that fact.

Why am I replacing the drive train on my bike? Why do I want a faster hard drive computer? Why am I constantly accumulating more and more music on my iPod which I won't even listen to, much less get into, on shuffle play of almost 13,000 songs?

I need to get to my own personal truth, which has nothing to do with what anyone around me knows anything about. I need to wrest myself out of any paradigms people around me live in and see me existing in. There is no one whose life I wouldn't mind disappearing from, although I suppose that's always been the case. If I want to commit suicide, I should commit suicide. That is the meaning of the journey.

You've seen many beautiful scenery
You've seen many beautiful women
You've lost your way on maps for short periods of time
You've tasted the nights of Paris
You've stepped in snowy Beijing
You memorized your favorite truths you found in books

But you couldn't say the reason why you loved me
You couldn't say which of my expressions you admired
You couldn't say in which occasion I once moved you
You couldn't say the reason why you left

You accumulated many miles
You carefully collected souvenirs
You got to know on every map where the beautiful weather was
You embraced hospitable islands
You buried memories of Turkey
You lingered on beautiful scenes from movies that weren't real

But you couldn't say the reason why you loved me
You couldn't say which of my expressions you admired
You couldn't say in which occasion I once distracted you
You couldn't say the meaning of your travels

You reluctantly said why you love me
But you couldn't say which of my expressions you admired
You couldn't say in which occasion I once moved you
You couldn't say the reason why you left

You reluctantly said you sent me a letter
All of it reasons why you left me
You left me, all of it the meaning of travel

Taoist temple, east end of Raohe night market. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

Rainbow Bridge near Raohe night market.

Keelung River.

Abandoned driving test course.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 3:58 p.m. - Sanchong, Taipei County, bikeway along the Danshui River under construction.

3:58 p.m. - Plane landing at Songshan Airport.

4:49 p.m. - New bridge construction in Taipei County.

Kaabei (Mother) (2008, Japan)

I think this film has gotten many international accolades, but being a foreigner in Taiwan, I haven't been able to get the hype firsthand. Basically, I saw the DVD at Blockbusters, got a good feeling from the case, and put it into my mental queue of films to watch.

I can do that, you know – touch a DVD to my forehead and get a vibe about whether it's good or not. No I can't, I'm just kidding. Sheesh, I really must have no sense of humor left when people can't tell when I'm kidding.

I just got a sense that it was a quality film, but knowing nothing about it, it wasn't pressing. It was a film to keep in reserve in case I saw a string of crap films, which is always discouraging, and this would be the film to regain my faith in watching films.

I was a little disappointed in one single aspect of this film – the final scene before the credits rolled, which I'm not going to spoil by opining further. Until then, I was thinking this was a great film, automatic 10 out of 10 tomatoes; if not in my top 10 films of all time, then easily top 20.

The film is about the struggles of a family in Japan in the years leading up to World War II, when the Japanese military government was increasingly intolerant of dissidence, and the father/husband in the family was considered a dissident. The title character's maternal strength sees the family through these hard times.

My primary bravo to this film goes to the classic narrative style. This film could be taught in film school for the simplicity of its narrative. If you want to tell a story using film, here is a basic, fundamental lesson in how to do it. How to deviate from it is the students' challenge.

From the start, the story unfolds scene by scene, characters are systematically introduced, and the story evolves in a very organic way. Of course, I'm oversimplifying. There's more to it than a technical exercise of how to roll out a basic narrative. But it's clear that the director thought through what he wanted to convey about each character as they're introduced, and thought through how he wanted to convey their attributes. Every character represents something in the outside world in those trying times (I was a little unsure what the sister/aunt represented, but then it hit me – Hiroshima, duh! She was exactly what she was supposed to represent).

It is a feel-good drama, so in that sense the film lacks complexity. There's something redeeming in all negative aspects that are represented. This could be seen as a fault, but otherwise the package is wonderful. And it's amazing that a film so filled with love, that only once are the words "I love you" uttered, and it's very quick and buried, I didn't even notice it the first time through.

The family has two daughters, 12 and 9 of age, and their characters were excellently written and acted. Too often child characters are incidental, but in this film, they have very defined and developed personalities, and they definitely help carry this film.

The film is narrated from the remembrance of the 9 year old, and it's funny how some scenes where intimate, personal witness would have been required, she had to be taken along for those scenes. Otherwise, how would she know those scenes happened? Really well thought out. Other scenes depicted where she isn't present can be attributed to being "public" scenes, not needing her presence in order to include.

So that last scene. For me to make this one of my favorite films of all time, the last scene needed to really sum up emotionally, it needed bring the film to closure while opening something up at the same time. It had to be that last look by Kay as the doors close on Michael Corleone getting his hand kissed as the new Godfather. It had to be the camera lifting into the air off the baseball field to show the headlights of cars streaming in from infinity. It had to be a 6-year-old boy saying last words at a funeral with a depth that none of the other characters could match or even imagine ("Yi-Yi").

This film just missed it. But that's just me, having such high expectations from the first 2 hours of the film. I'm sure many other viewers were caught up in the emotion and didn't even notice that it was wrong and petty and totally out of the character we might expect.

But for me, I dock the movie 2 tomatoes and still give it 8 out of 10 tomatoes. That's me harshly panning the film with venom for that last scene. Still highly recommended, even a must-see, but for now, not even in my top 20 of all time (21 perhaps). Although I don't preclude seeing it in the future and holding it in higher esteem.

Finally, from a historical perspective, it's always interesting to see how Japanese filmmakers are treating World War II. I think it's impossible for Japanese filmmakers to make a film that touches on WWII that isn't saying something. In that aspect, this film isn't at all groundbreaking. It's safe and unchallenging.

The timeline moves on and it is now past mid-March. Nothing's changed, but I'm still waiting.

Right now I'm waiting for this week to be over and I'll go to Kaohsiung next week and see if I can find anything about getting my Taiwan citizenship and finally being able to leave the country for the first time since last January. Then wait to see if my parents offer me miles to go to the U.S. next month. Of course, I'm not going to ask, they have to offer.

After I get back here, I don't know what I'll be waiting for. Maybe waiting for someone to push me to move to Kaohsiung. I won't ask about it, someone has to offer. Maybe it'll be time to stop waiting.

The weather's getting nicer and I've been getting out on rides more. Work is getting intolerable, but why can't I just be satisfied? I got a new toy camera – a local knock-off of the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim with a supposed 22mm plastic lens. I'm still assessing the results.

You know, for years and years I've subscribed to the just sitting form of sitting, but after years and years, I think it's time to move on. Instead of just letting mental activity flow like a stream, I'm getting more into actively shutting the activity off and clearing my mind of all the noise.

I think it's time. If I tried this before, I think I would have been very discouraged, because it's very hard, if not impossible. It's a constant struggle to keep a rein on my consciousness and not let my mind wander and beating it down whenever it does.

Thoughts themselves are karma, and shutting down mental activity is practice in shutting down karma – attachment and aversion.

I still have bad days when I go out and get annoyed by people – negative thoughts and reactions, but I think I have more good days when I lay off the judgment of the outside world. Again, I don't think I'll get rid of that karma, whatever it is, in this lifetime, but I think the efforts are worthwhile in that direction.

So sitting is no more 45 minutes of mental floating, but actively clearing any thought formations that inevitably pop up constantly. Focus on sound in the present moment, focus on breathing in the present moment, but once a thought forms, wrestle it down and plunge it down the drain.

Miao Miao (渺渺) (2008, Taiwan)

After all those horrible romance films I've been seeing, I don't know what made me rent this DVD. Actually, I remember its theatrical release last year, but ignored reviews since I usually like to watch films untainted (which also is the reason for my style of reviewing – I give my personal impressions, but aside from basic information, I avoid giving away what viewers would inevitably see themselves). So I didn't know for sure it was a romance. From the poster, it could be a high school, teen flick.

But with the fear that it might turn out to be a romance, I had low expectations for this film, although I tried to keep an open mind during the not-so-promising opening scenes. But I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Actually, I thought it was a great film! Another local film to give hope for the local industry.

I think it qualifies as an indie-style film, with no point A to point B plotline. It unfolds and it explores human feelings and dynamics. It centers on two high school girls and a moody CD shop owner who has a mystery in his background that the girls pry into.

I saw this film as being about loves; true, pure loves that can only exist in songs, passion perhaps, but such loves that "miss". Loves like that which aren't requited or recognized or reciprocated, or they're imaginary or not consummated, but the love is there, in all myriad forms – parent-child, girl-girl, boy-boy, girl-boy, or even a passion for a future plan that's never going to happen.

I liked how by focusing on the misses of the loves, the film floats in the twilight of potential, of yearning and desire, and for most part I think it's done beautifully. OK, the two female leads are high school girls, so you have to accept watching teenage girl behavior. There's a bit of overacting here and there, but it's counterbalanced by some very subtle, charming and poignant scenes, too.

It's not a complex or deep film. Or a long film for that matter. At 84 minutes, I wondered whether the director couldn't flesh something more out, but adding more may have run the risk of losing its short sweetness. Ultimately, I think the feeling the director was trying to evoke runs deep.

On a personal note, several months ago, someone gave me a mix CD of Taiwanese music that she liked. On the CD was this song, which is also used in the film in what I consider the climax. I translated the title of the song as "The Meaning of Travel", but I didn't know any of the lyrics. The movie includes some of the lyrics in the English subtitles, and they are very nice lyrics (they translate the title as "the meaning of the journey", but the dual meanings work, hinting at both why do we do the things we do, or why do we go to the places we go?).

The experience of this song helped me appreciate the movie more. 8 out of 10 tomatoes with the help of that song. Recommended for fans of indie and Taiwanese film.

from the subtitles:
You carefully selected souvenirs
You collected scenery from there and here from far and near
You embraced the warmth of the tropics very tight
You memorized all of Turkey's sights
You wandered through fantastic scenes you saw on movie screens

But you couldn't say why you loved me so
You couldn't say which smile made me glow
You couldn't say why I filled your heart with glee
You couldn't say the meaning of the journey

I pushed you to say why you loved me so
But you never said which smile made me glow
You couldn't say when I made your heart sway
You couldn't say why you went away

It's been a while, I think, since I had an Amina dream. I keep a recorder on my night stand because of the idea that I should be recording my dreams, but alas, I haven't been using it, even during last month or the month before when I was getting ridiculous amounts of sleep, enough to remember dreams upon waking.

But I awoke from this dream and started reviewing it mentally and had the presence of mind to reach for the recorder.

I think recording dreams is better than writing them down, because recording dreams allows you to stay in a muted state of consciousness and spontaneously reflect on what you remember about the dream.

Writing dreams down requires heightened conscious brain functions that might influence the final recollection of the dream. Indeed, from when I did this before, there were times that I would revisit a recording, and there would be stuff that I didn't remember at all.

In this dream, Amina and I had just gotten together. She was exactly who she was so many years ago when we did get together, my feelings for her were exactly what they were so many years ago, but I was who I am today.

The surrounding cast of characters were some people I know now, some I'm not sure of, and the setting was unfamiliar. I don't know where it was.

In the dream, we had just spent some time apart, and we were in a room talking, and it wasn't really clear that we were together, but it was clear there were feelings between us. We were enjoying being back together and being with each other.

She mentioned something about Mars, whether I had seen Mars rising underneath the Moon. We were in this room late at night because I had been out late. I asked her what time and she said after midnight. I was surprised that she was asking this because I didn't think she had an interest in astronomy or what was going on in the night sky.

I asked her why she knew about where Mars was and she said that (during our time apart) she had met someone who had written a book on astronomy and they had talked about it, and that's how she knew. I thought that was great. I'm always happy meeting people with an interest in astronomy.

Then the dream switches slightly and it's still late at night, but we're about to go to sleep on a very large bed, and there are also a bunch of other people there. We're about to go to sleep on the left side of the bed, other people would occupy the other parts of the bed, and at this point the feeling was very clear that we were together and enjoying each others' company.

One of my current co-workers is there and he notices us and realizes that we're together and makes a questioning gesture to that effect, and Amina is like, 'yea', and I'm like, 'yea, who woulda thunk someone like her would go for someone like me'.

I remember thinking, 'There's sure going to be a lot of people on this bed'. Some other guy, maybe someone else I've met in Taiwan, but he has no further role in the dream, is stretched out along the foot of the bed. Some other people were on the right side of the bed, but then they disappeared.

The dream switches slightly again, and we're still about to go to sleep, but we're in the back of my old car, which is the same size of that large bed, meaning it's still basically the same space we were in. It's just Amina, me and that co-worker there.

Actually, there was something right before that transition. The other people in the room were getting the room ready for all of us to go to sleep, and Amina and I were lying on the bed chatting, not in anyone's way, with the understanding that we would put everything away in the morning.

In the back of the car, it starts pouring rain, so I quickly reach over to pull down the glass hatchback window. She says, 'quick, drop the radio!'. I have no idea what she's talking about, but she says, 'quick, drop the radio, that's what you're supposed to do if you're in a car that's not running in a rainstorm'.

I'm like, 'what? I've never heard of that', but she repeats, 'yea, quick, drop the radio!'. My co-worker jumps under the dash and does something to it - ostensibly 'dropping the radio'. She explains what it means to drop the radio, and I'm trying to make sense of it, asking if it has something to do with grounding the car in case of lightning, and she says, no, the car is already grounded, tapping the dash, and I'm just like, 'OK, I'd never heard of that before, but of course there are things I don't know'.

I think this part of the dream was subconsciously referencing and acknowledging my general arrogance. How does she know something I don't know about? Why doesn't everyone know everything I know about? But I'm working on it, getting rid of that arrogant attitude, and I think the dream was addressing that, too. It's just not natural yet, it's still a cognitive step. I'm aware of the arrogance and that there's something wrong about it.

Mind you, I have little to be arrogant about. Except at work, maybe, where I can't believe some of the mistakes they allow to go to final print. DOH!

The aspect of the dream changes then, and we are in the car because we were on some kind of honeymoon, some bohemian roadtrip before I went back to start working for my parents (which is a current reality which my parents are pushing me to do).

The last scene in the dream felt like it was in the same physical space, but instead of the car or the bedroom, it was in a kitchen, and the co-worker was still there (he might represent Amina's current husband, come to think of it).

She had just cooked dinner and was wondering if it was alright that she wasn't working and was just being housewifey, and I said it was cool and that working for my parents, everything was stable, and she should do whatever she needed to do to settle down. If she wanted to work, that was fine, if not, also fine.

This part of the dream might have been referencing my oldest brother's situation, where there are tensions regarding their roles. In the dream, I was still doing music and wanting to work on music after coming home from work, but also feeling I should be aware of and attending to Amina's wants and needs.

Remembering back to the first scene of the dream when we were alone together in the room and it wasn't clear we were going out, but it was the actual point where we were getting together and getting to know each other more deeply, I asked her what magazines she was into. I was inquiring about her interests, knowing that when I was growing up, I had regular subscriptions to Astronomy magazine, and that said something about me. She said she used to read "Sixteen", so that probably indicates that scene was supposed to be from way earlier, long ago in my past.

I came out of the dream with the feeling that everything was going great, and everything would continue to go great. Uh, yea.

Parking (停車) (2008, Taiwan)

I vaguely remember having heard buzz about this film when it came out last year, and that it was chosen for Cannes. Really good film, I was very impressed by it. It's a bit like the old Scorsese cult classic After Hours, where the most routine task is rendered impossible by a series of farcical, improbable, unforeseeable and frustrating circumstances. 

In this case, all the main character wanted to do was buy a cake to help mend over a row he had earlier with his better half. Finding no parking near the cake shop, he does what any Taiwanese person would do – he parks illegally to run a simple errand. Just as he leaves his car, a parking space comes available, and he does what any Taiwanese person wouldn't do – he moves his car into the legal parking space. Hilarity ensues. Or not.

Actually, that he moves his car into the legal space isn't implausible. People who are socially responsible like that are very rare here, but they are here. So that move says something specific about him in the film – he's basically good people. And we all know what happens to good people.

I might classify this film as an ironic suspense comedy of errors. There's a suspense element in that you're always wondering what's going to happen next, but it's not a suspense film. It's not a comedy, you never bust out laughing, but there are amusing, laughable moments. There's irony involved, but it's not a cheeky film. The irony is measured, as is the pace of the movie, which is neither fast nor slow.

The film displays good emotional depth and character empathy, and the director has a masterful way of doling information out to build up a situation or reference back to a character's motivation or will have further consequences, where one decision will have one immediate repercussion but then come back later with a different result.

There is a definite point to this film about consequences and situations as the director adds bits showing how other people's situations can be worse or how bad things can really get. The unusual catharsis of the ending wouldn't have happened if he didn't make the decisions he made, and gone through all the crap he went through. It all fits together nicely with the information the director doled out through the film. And it's important to note that the main character's attitude through the whole thing is key. He's basically good people, but he reacts, he gets pushed, he gets pushed too far, he responds reasonably realistically.

It's not perfect. Some exposition scenes run a little long, and maybe some scenes were unnecessary and not all of the pieces fit, but that's easy for an audience member to nit-pick at, but much harder for a director to assess while editing reels and reels of film. Forgivable. Not all the why questions are answered, there are some inconsistencies. The female lead was probably miscast (she's a current "it" girl in Taiwan), and it was probably a mistake to make her occupation a model. That didn't really fit. Still forgivable.

Highly recommended for fans of indie film and irony. 8 out 10 tomatoes.


Su mi ma sen, love (對不起, 我愛你) (2009, Taiwan)

After panning so many romances recently, what could have possessed me to rent yet another romance? Well, from the picture on the back of the DVD case and the little bit of Chinese I have the patience to read in a video store, I was guessing it was set in Kaohsiung, where my family is from. Just that, I knew, was going to make me rent/endure it sooner or later.

Also, the hint of Japanese influence in the English title and that the Japanese actress who appeared in last year's local smash hit "Cape No. 7" is in it (that's even printed on the cover) made me think, for some unknown reason, that this might not be just another dumb romance.

But all this panning of romances, which clearly is not a film genre I appreciate, gets boring. So let's see if I can't say something good about this direct-to-DVD rental.

It's about a Japanese woman who works as a model/actress in Taipei. After ruining a photo shoot, she assumes she has the next day off and goes to the southern city of Kaohsiung. She loses her wallet and runs into a local guy who helps her out and quickly pronounces their meeting is fate. Hilarity ensues. Or not.

They end up spending the day together, sharing anecdotes about love and their lives and backgrounds; he always having it in his mind that he wants to get in her pants win her affection, she not wanting to come across as desperate or easy, even though she finds it hard to hide her loneliness.

OK, that was boring, too. Now for the panning.

The director opens the movie with a shot – the same shot – cut about 8 different times in quick MTV-like succession in brazen announcement that he prefers style over substance.

Steadicam? We don't need no steenking steadicam. Bungie cord! Shaky camera (I was getting a little nauseous during some scenes – and this is on a 19" tv screen), subjects moving all around the screen and cheap camera tricks are apparently artistic. I missed the memo. You have to be a master like Wang Kar-wai to pull it off.

The narrative is immediately bungled as the above-mentioned scene actually comes later in the movie. After the opening credits, the movie jumps back one day earlier, but having been exposed to that opening tidbit and not being told it's one day earlier, the information given is totally misleading, and this isn't a spoiler, it's doing the film a favor – his opening narration isn't about her, despite the misleading visuals.

What's to like about these two annoying, self-absorbed characters who we're supposedly hoping will come together in some realization of or about love? In the first scenes developing their characters, we find that they're both incompetent and irresponsible at work and are rude and flippant to their employers. We're supposed to sympathize or feel bad for them? We're supposed to wish for something better for them because of their bad situations? I thought they should have been fired. I would have fired them. Even if I weren't their boss.

The dialogue made me wretch several times. There were some Kaohsiung geographical problems that only a local would know, like that she didn't need to take a taxi to go from a cafe on the Love River to that Catholic church – they're about 200 meters away from each other. But, of course, any film has these problems. Off the top of my head "When Harry Met Sally" (Chicago, at the beginning) and at least one Dirty Harry film (San Francisco) had geographical problems.

On the plus side, the filmmaker did do a good job creating a feel of loneliness and isolation, I'll give him that even though it's not the most challenging thing to do in a film. I'm not sure that was the motivation to shoot in Kaohsiung, which although is Taiwan's second largest city, is still a boondock compared to urban and modernized Taipei.

And he does catch a few bits of local history in the unfolding. At the beginning, the guy rides away from his house along what I recognized as Park Road – before a bunch of blocks got torn down to make way for a park – and the character later mentions that his home is going to be torn down to make way for a "lawn", and so he's afraid if his father ever does return from running away, he won't be able to find him.

The film, ostensibly set on specifically May 18-19, 2008, also had scenes in the freshly opened KMRT subway system, whose red line went into operation early last year, and the people taking photos in the station was a common sight.

I give this film a rotten 4 out 10 tomatoes, recommended for anyone interested in seeing Kaohsiung on film, Taiwanese indie film, and for total, hopeless, sappy romantics.

Gah, what a confusing, wonderful mess my life has become. It's going nowhere, but it came from nowhere, so that's perfect. I just want to smear my life along a wall like graffiti, or like a mental patient smearing shit on a wall.

I'm trying to get things to come to an end, I'm driving things towards coming to an end, and in doing so I feel like a sprinter getting ready in the starting blocks. Nothing makes sense anymore, and that's just perfect, wonderful. Enlightened?

Enlightenment is nothing. A sure sign of not attaining enlightenment is thinking enlightenment is an accomplishment, that it is something. But what is enlightenment? What was the enlightenment of the Buddha?

I think I already covered this. My opinion is that the Buddha's enlightenment was that he touched on the primordial essence and energy of the universe, the actual ground of being. Existence is but shit smeared on a wall, a medium that we call the universe.

The truth of the matter is that everything that manifests is illusion, it arises from the energy for no other reason than it is a random natural course of arbitrary being. Enlightenment is getting back to that fundamental being. But then what is the meaning of enlightenment?

Enlightenment has no meaning unless being is manifest. But enlightenment can't be reached until the lack of meaning of existence is attained. It's a pair of ducks. It's totally awesome!

However, enlightenment does have its manifestation in existence, embodied in a certain lifestyle and attitude. The attitude is more important than the lifestyle. Both are a matter of understanding and compassion. But that's just a manifestation. Understanding and compassion also have no meaning, otherwise they are further attachment to the illusion of reality. That's just awesome.

I'm going slightly mad, haha!