Rainbow: You have a chameleon aura. You know how
to adapt to your environment. You are usually
happy and few things in your life can change
this, at least not for very long. You love
life and all the challenges it has to offer
you. You are quite the enigma to other people,
but think you are really quite simple. You
could care less about money or material things
and, in fact, think they get in the way of
happiness.
You sometimes suffer from insomnia.
Secret emotion: Confusion and Passion


What color is your aura?
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Another reading from Equivalence:

December 5, 7 p.m. at the Brookline Booksmith: Gary Duehr and Shin Yu Pai.

Can anyone recommend a good endodontist? I spent Wednesday morning in the dentist's chair for a root canal. After 10 anesthesia injections, we declared failure and rebooked. Allowed injection into the bone, but protested when he suggested "drilling through and injecting the nerve". You gotta be kidding. Maybe all the crying threw us both.

Someone from Slovenia is reading the Pillow Book!

10 year reunion report: I beat out the "I sell panties and bras" nominee for "most unusual job" award with "published poet". (I had a great cheering section) Poetry triumphs! But actually, being a writer didn't seem to be all so unusual, considering that 2 other folks up on the stage were a "writer" and a "writer/artist/grad student".

"Fork lift operator" could be code language for exotic dancer.

Also won for "traveled the farthest" cateogry.

Felt rather sheepish/with mixed feelings to win what felt like the new "popularity" contest. The craving to be "liked" never goes out of style much as I would like it to, but than neither does "authenticity" - the topic of an old-new friend, Minerva Gomez's PhD dissertation.

You don't eat pancakes for breakfast?! I thought you guys were Buddhists!

The 2 sushi restaurants in the neighborhood of my job were both randomly closed today at 12 noon. Sigh.

At the post office, Debbie the clerk, tried to get my attention as I cashed out at the station next to her. I looked up and she said, "That's him. Abe." I blanked for a good five seconds, until she said "Abelardo. Morrell". Like a schoolgirl with stars in her eyes I turned around to a tall, white haired bespectacled man smiling slightly and said rather lamely "I love your work. It's totally amazing!"

David Byrne loves Powerpoint.

Kort and I are on a movie rental kick. Last night's movie was "Down with Love" starring Ewan MacGregor and Renee Zellweiger in a Doris Day/Rock Hudson tribute movie exploring the battle between the sexes. David Hyde Pierce starred as Ewan/Rock's Tony Randall. And Tony Randall actually made a cameo appearance as the CEO of a big NYC publishing house. In general, the movie seemed well cast, though the chemistry between Ewan/Rock and Renee/Doris didn't seem as magical as that between the original Rock and Doris. Ewan doesn't have quite the same body type and seemed to slink around a little more. I think George Clooney might have been quite good in the role, given his performance as Miles Massey in Intolerable Cruelty. Renee had that whole Doris pout going on and the wardrobe/costuming for the movie was just great. During the closing credits, Ewan and Renee do a song and dance number that is quite excellent. What a fun movie!

Mark Lamoureux gave a brilliant reading on Friday night. Buy his new book City/Temple from UDP... beautifully letterpressed in a golden ratna yellow brilliant as flower pollen.

Went to see Gus Van Sant's Elephant over the weekend. The movie touches briefly on one theory of why Columbine occurred - violent video games and the availability of guns over the internet. Also, absent parents. I was totally psyched to go and see this movie and than when we were actually watching it, though it was very photographically beautiful and well shot, the pace of the movie was hard to sustain at times. The camera follows several characters from behind as we eavesdrop on teenage conversations. It reminded me of how very depressing and oppressive highschool can be. One girl, Michelle, particularly captured my attention. She was very physically shut down, quiet, and wouldn't wear shorts in gym class. The best guess I can make is that she was hiding signs of abuse, maybe bruises or other injuries. Benny had a very short role that began with his introduction during the shootings. He helped to get students out of the building and was about to take out one of the shooters when the kid turned around and plugged him. The "violence" against Alex, one of the kids who goes bad, seems pretty senseless- I'm not at all clear on why he is the victim of spitballs and peer hatred, except that's just the way it is sometimes. Why did he warn John to not go in the building? Maybe because John too was a loner. John did the best he could do in that situation, which was to tell others not to go in the building. Interesting to think of what one would do in that kind of situation.

Protector


The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla

Achin' To Be - Maybe the most depressing
Replacements song. You need some professional
help.

"She closes her mouth to speak and
Closes her eyes to see
Thought about an' only loved
She's achin' to be
Just like me"


What Replacements Song Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The cover for Carol's book is a painting by John Yau's wife, Eve Ascheim. It seems like a perfect fit for "The Lightning Field". Abstract marks against a white canvas.

My reading with Arthur Sze yesterday was quite possibly the highlight of my year. Sadly, Carol, Arthur's wife, had to cancel at the last minute. Their 4 year old daughter, Sarah, developed a fever and she was too sick too travel so Carol decided to stay behind. The reading took place at Simmons College in a huge conference room with ceilings so high I felt lost. There were hundred of students and faculty and I was very nervous and stammered and stumbled over words. Some things never change.

To hear Arthur read his work is to revel in the beauty that is poetry. He read pieces from his collected poems, translations from The Silk Dragon and closed with a wonderful elegiac piece called "Earth Shine" for one of his colleagues at IAIA who commit suicide very suddenly. Years ago, Arthur lost another dear poet friend, I think his name was Gu Chung. I watch the way Arthur engages with the world, the way he answers a question from the audience, how at ease he is with the world, and in his work, and I learn so much about how I would like to engage in this world. The language of science, symbols from classical Chinese art and literature, the heart breaks open with every word.

Carol's new collection, The Lightning Field, looks really amazing too. The piece is based on a trip that she and Arthur took to Walter de la Maria's environmental installation out in Quemado, New Mexico. To visit the site, you call a # (its a DIA sponsored project) and you drive as far as Quemado. The caretakers of the installation than pick you up where you leave your car. They drive you around back and forth over remote roads to disorient you and than take you to the site, a cabin that can sleep 8 people. You are left at the site for 48 hours. No phone, no interruptions, no contact with the world. The site has several lightning poles installed and is the most interesting when lightning strikes, although on Arthur and Carol's trip, lightning only struck in the distance.

I cry easily. Today at the dentist's office, I burst into tears when he hit the interior chamber of my 14th tooth, as he dug away an old filling. After evaluation and assessment, it will cost me a grand total of $4,000+ to save this little molar, factoring in a little periodontal surgery. The word surgery definitely makes me cry. Bawl hysterically actually. Feeling a little heartbroken at the moment.

Reading tomorrow:

Arthur Sze, Carol Moldaw, and Shin Yu at Simmons College. 300 The Fenway. 11:00 a.m. -12:30 p.m.

An old friend at Naropa once randomly said to me, before I ever had plans to move to Chicago and leave Boulder and before she really knew me, "I could see you living in Texas." I wonder now if she weren't at least somewhat clairvoyant about the future.

On the bus ride to and from, finished 2 books:

Samantha Lan Chang's Hunger
and
Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina

Chang's Hunger resonated for me more than Tan's work. Like Tan, Chang explores the relationship between 2nd generation Chinese Americans and their immigrant parents, but in her work there seems to be less redemption, reconciliation for her characters. Whereas reading Tan's work, I felt the narratives were interesting and I was learning something about the stories and experiences of her specific characters, with Chang's work, I feel like I learned something about the universal experience of loss and love, touching in to some of my own experiences as a 2nd generation American.

Bastard out of Carolina - I read the whole book cover to cover and was knocked out by the writing, the story, the characters. Totally amazing.

I liked the feel of Saratoga Springs itself as a town. This part of NY state is called "The North Country" according to the bus schedules. I like this regional name, as it makes me think of Bob Dylan's song, "Girl from the North Country". There are a great many more bars in the town, more than Peterborough had anyway. I walked the 1.5 miles from my hotel past the empty horse racing tracks to the art colony of Yaddo and was shocked at what I saw and felt. The Yaddo gardens are the only area open to the public but from the main lawn, there is a terrific view of the main house, the original house in which the Trask family who built Yaddo lived, a greying and decaying austere old mansion towering over the grounds. The main house where apparently the administration runs the colony during much of the year. As I walked up the long road from the entrance to the grounds up to the public garden, it did not feel so different than MacDowell at first. Forest and creeks, absolute quiet, not a soul around. But upon seeing the main house, the only way I can put it is that I got a really bad vibe. That sounds totally "L.A.", but the place felt lonely, cold, and privileged in the worst most disconnected and disengaged sense. When I talked to one of the townies, a massage therapist at the Crystal Spas, later about my impressions, she said, well that's it, it's not a colony, it's a place where people go to be alone and work really hard on their art. Hmmmm.... that in combination with some of the snob and snub stories I heard from Laura Hendrie about some of the New Yorkers she encountered while at the colony sort of fill out the picture, not so much a community of working artists so much as a retreat situation.

What stays with me about MacDowell and its magic is that it was built on love - the love of Marion for her composer husband Edward. The old barn which they renovated, the first log cabin that still stands on the grounds, a gift to her beloved. Their graves on the land itself, where they lie side by side. The land a product of a dream and hope fulfilled.

Someday I will make compile together all the silly things people have said to me that are related in some part or another to my race - the most recent quotes to make this work in progress are:

"You look like you're 10" (not meant in terms of my literary quality either!)

"How come you Chinese people don't date the brothers?"

Back from Saratoga Springs. Saratoga is a cute little town - bigger than Peterborough, NH but smaller than Boulder, Colorado. On the main road running thru town, Banana Republic and Gap moved in 3 years ago, a sure sign of development. I stayed at the Grand Union Motel, a block away from the Greyhound bus station which is attached to the town diner.

I was happy with the outcome of the reading and talk. The library in Saratoga coordinates a monthly series which invites published writers to come and give a reading of their work and to choose and dicuss a book (other than their own) as part of their Great Books Program. The regulars who attend this program reminded me very much of my old docents in Dallas. All women, nearing retirement, if not already retired, highly educated, cultured, and intelligent folk. Some of the ladies hated Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter (likening it to Hollywood tripe) and others were deeply moved. I found myself defending Tan's work, not surprisingly, though I have my own issues with her work, I do feel that she has been an important voice in Asian American literature and her stories about women are compelling. It is true however, perhaps, that she had a little less aesthetic distance from this book, as so many of the issues in the book were lifted from her real life. Amy Tan has had her fill of suffering - losing her brother and father within months of each other to brain tumors. Her grandmother committed suicide in front of her mother by swallowing raw opium. Her mother herself hid secrets from her for many years, a 1st husband in China, the family name... so many secrets.

Dreams are easily forgotten unless they are written down.

I had 2 very interesting dreams while in Taiwan. On the first day, I dreamt that I was calling one of my teachers and when the answering machine clicked on, it was the voice of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche from the grave. I don't think he had any special message for me, I think he said: leave a message. Dream number two involved my friend Whiting Tennis giving me a refresher in meditation. I was visiting his apartment in New York which he happened to be rehabbing and he said, slow down and remember how to breathe. He walked me thru the steps and I woke up feeling refreshed like I really knew how to breathe again.

My site meter tells me that someone from www.injuryatsea.com has been reading this blog. What an interesting company. Right now it makes me think of Russell Crowe and his epic new film which I will most certainly not be running out to sea. The papers have been flooded with reviews and write-ups of Mr. Crowe's latest. I've thought that he was creepy ever since his much publicized affair with Meg Ryan. Incidentally, Crowe used to sing in an '80s New Zealand pop band. Maybe I would like him better if he had pursued a musical career instead of one in the film industry.

Seems like Brookline has many a famous photographer frequenting the post office in the Village. I shipped off my slides today to Taiwan and the clerk who helps me all the time in the post office asked me about my art work. When I revealed that I do photography she commented, oh there are tons of photographers here in Brookline. Nick Nixon lives down the street and Abe what's his name. I'm like.. Abe? You mean Abelardo Morrell? That's him, she says. Abe she calls him. His work makes me starry-eyed...

On going veg: first I wasn't, and than I was and than I wasn't, and now I am again.

In highschool, I fell in love with a senior in my brother's class, Justin Rush, pasty dreadlocked lead singer of Hindu Garage Sale who just happened to be a vegetarian - yes, him and my other adolescent rock star crush, Michael Stipe. My childhood friends remember me this way, so when I went back home in September and friends saw me eating chicken, they were like, wait aren't you a vegetarian?

In the early days, still living with my parents, I was only able to eliminate red meat from the diet. Later, in college, I had full control over what went into my body. In grad school, my immune system crashed due to stress and poor nutrition so I started eating red meat again which I definitely don't eat a lot of but than the habit stuck... on this recent trip to Taiwan... it has taken 10 years for my parents to comprehend that being a vegetarian means that no, chicken or beef steak, is not a part of the plan. Now that this registers for them, I don't feel like playing with their perceptions, God knows it might take another 10 years to get it back into their heads. After 3 weeks of going veg, I feel a lot more lucid, healthier, and cleaner. One lifestyle change worth revisiting.

Yesterday, I heard 3 co-workers talking about "free range" turkeys vs. the "other" kind. Free range turkeys were referred to as succulent, and also less fatty, because they get more exercise. One woman quipped that than no one in her family would enjoy them then b/c of the low fat content. Laughter at the table. I found it all a bit depressing. In Taiwan, I saw chickens in cages, pigs on trucks, disembodied fish heads in the markets - it doesn't all savvy with the vows of compassion. Also, Jim Casey told me about how angry the chicken is as a bird - a story he read in Thich Nhat Hanh's book Anger - chickens that grow up in cages, in factories have nothing to peck and cannot stand, become so angry that they peck the birds next to each other, so they are pecking each other to death. So when you put this angry animal in your body, it can't be creating a good energy.

I feel really out of touch with friends and loved ones at the moment. So many people to call and talk to, so little energy.

Spent a few hours tonight putting together my teaching plan for a book discussion on Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter. It is the first Tan novel I have read from cover to cover. I saw Joy Luck Club on video and got part way through her earlier novel - title something like the 100 hundred senses, I am misquoting/misremembering at the moment...

I have mixed feelings about Amy Tan. On one hand, I read her books and feel emotionally manipulated in the way that I come out of Disney movies wiping tears out of my eyes and grumbling to myself about Hollywood. She certainly knows which buttons to push. On the other hand, I have a hard time with her depiction of Chinese immigrants, though I think she nails the complexities between the 1st and 2nd generations.

The Bonesetter's Daughter is about 3 generations of women. Gu LiuXin is the bonesetter's daughter - a bonesetter being a practitioner of traditional Chinese herbal medicine. The bonesetter is unable to save his wife and sons from an epidemic illness and LiuXin is his only surviving child, as a result he spoils her and teaches her how to read and write, how to heal the sick. One day 2 clients come into the bonesetter's clinic - a baby which has been physically abused by his father, a coffin maker, and a young man who has been stepped on by his horse. The bonesetter and his daughter help to heal both - as a result, the father of the baby and the man injured by the horse both propose marriage to the bonesetter's daughter. LiuXin accepts the young man's proposal, shirking the offer of the coffin maker who angered by her rejection, ambushes her wedding party, stealing her dowry of oracle bones and murdering her father. The husband to be is accidentally killed when kicked by his horse. LiuXin attempts to commit suicide and swallows flaming ink which only succeeds in burning off her tongue, disfiguring half of her face, and making her mute. She is pregnant by Baby Uncle and gives birth to a daughter LuLing.

It's a very long story. 300+ pages. Then there is the dramatic story of LuLing and LuLing's reconciliation with her 2nd generation American daughter, Ruth. Alzheimer's Disease and dementia also figure into the narrative.

What I want to write about, before I forget everything, is seeing the oracle bones in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan (Chiang Kai-Shek's private collection). Oracle bones are used for a number of purposes - namely divining the future and documenting history. Fragments of bones with Chinese radicals and pictographs scratched into hard surfaces polished by human touch. Many of the oracle bones in the collection were turtle "plastrons" - the underside of a turtle's shell providing a larger writing surface. This was all before the invention of paper. Fascinating. Oracle bones, in the Tan story and thruout history, were used for their medicinal purposes - shaving off a small section and grinding into powder to put into a decoction. Some crazy stuff goes into those medicinal brews.

Got 2nd hepatitis shot today. Feeling slightly feverish and woozy.

Stay tuned for 2 links I need to build:

1) photos of Taiwan
2) photos from the family archives

I inherited a used camera tripod that I would like to give away. It weighs about 10 pounds and has lots of good photo karma. Any interested parties, email me. If you can pick it up from Watertown, it's yours.

Yesterday's Daily Metro and CNN.com ran short pieces about the new edition of the Merriam Webster's dictionary which now includes a listing/definition for "McJob".

Request for Proposals from the New Langton Arts Center in SF, CA:

Performance and video proposals on the theme of "how to."
From self-help books to how-to manuals, from etiquette-for-dummies to iron chef reruns, from teaching your baby sign language to g-spot instructional videos, our culture is obsessed with getting better, acting smarter, and playing like a pro.

Performers, videomakers, astrophysicists, preachers, jocks, code breakers, and the like are called upon to teach the how-tos and how-not-tos in an evening event to be held at Langton in April of 2004 .

Performances should be 5-15 minutes, and videos should be 8 minutes max.

Several artists will be selected to present their work in a one-night group
exhibition and screening.

Interdisciplinary performances or collaborations (between artists, or
between artists and those in other fields) are welcomed. Proposals/submissions will be selected by Langton's performance and video curators.

How-To Enter:

Applications must be received (not postmarked ) by Monday, January 12, 2004.

All applicants will be notified by mail the week of March 1, 2004. Please
do not call.

Entry Fee: None

VIDEO proposals must include:

1. Video you propose to show (works in progress acceptable); OR samples of past video work with a description of the video you propose to make for the show. VHS or DVD format only.

2. Resume.

3. Self-addressed stamped envelope with adequate return postage for all
documentation.
(If no SASE is included, the materials cannot be returned.) 4.

Optional: artist's statement/bio, additional still images, and tapes/DVDs of
past video work.

PERFORMANCE proposals must include:

1. Video documentation of past work (VHS format only), with a list of what
piece(s) are on the tape.

2. Description of your proposed performance (1 page max).

3. Resume.

4. Self-addressed stamped envelope with adequate return postage for all documentation.

(If no SASE is included, the materials cannot be returned.)

5. Optional: artist's statement/bio, additional still images of past work.


Proposals should be sent/delivered to:

New Langton Arts
Attn: The How-To Series
1246 Folsom St.
San Francisco, CA 94103

Autobiographia Literaria

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

- Frank O'Hara

I visited the Taipei Artists Village on my 1st day in the country. Our arrival in the country was rather dramatic. Well the departure for that matter was entirely dramatic also. My mother's passport expires in January 2004 but there is this wacky policy that bars entry into the country 6 months before your passport expires. So essentially, if your passport expires in January 2004 officially, the latest you can travel to Taiwan on this document is June 2003. There was a big ruckus when we checked in and my folks persuaded the agent to let my mother on the airplane though we were warned that she would not be let in the country. So we arrive and no, they would not let her in the country. She had to apply for a "landing visa". So I waited just past immigration/customs where they measured my temperature by pointing a hand-held device to my forehead. SARS and all.

So... the Taipei Artists Village is a fairly newly built artist's colony in the heart of Taipei city. The facilities are quite modern and include a photo/video/film editing lab, a wet darkroom for B&W, office space for writers, a gallery/perf space and modern apartments with A/C and heating. I got a quick tour of the facility and chatted with some Australian artists who spoke well of their time at the colony and of their hosts. The staff is friendly, speak a limited amount of English. I was warned up front, by both my mother and the program administrator that poetry and literature are a "secondary" art in Taiwan - the real arts being painting, music, dance, the classical visual and performing arts. Poetry/prose are in this "other" category. I was told basically to submit a photographic portfolio with my book so that the judges could see a range of my interests. The Taiwanese are so very hard to please. Sigh.

I am sorting out my thoughts about the trip...

I visited very briefly with my cousin Cong-hui who came to America to study English a couple of years ago. At that time, she was desperately unhappy and proclaimed that she would like to be reborn in the next life as a man. Because in her mind, men have more opportunities, more power. From a Buddhist perspective, to want to be reborn at all is heartbreaking. Anyways, a few months ago, one of her friends arranged a love match for Cong-hui and she is getting formally engaged next month and married in March to a man who is neither tall nor who drives a fancy car (her previous criteria for a match). She says it was "about time" - meaning mostly that she'd been advised by 3rd Uncle to find somebody and get out of the house.

The engagement is a formal, traditional affair in which the parents of each person meets each other. The groom brings special cookies to the parents of his bride which they can then distribute to friends and family thus announcing the happy news. I saw one of these cookies on my first trip to Taiwan five years ago. I was driving around with my cousin Yi Heng and he had a cigar shaped wafer cookie on the dashboard of his car. A girl he had once loved sent it to him - her way of letting him know that nothing more was possible. How sad my cousin was! 5 years later, he is living in Taipei, with his new girlfriend, a distincly untraditional thing to do in the Taiwanese culture. 4th Uncle and his wife visited them in the city and asked about their intentions and arranged a visit to her parents house. So forward-thinking...

The air still smelled charred in So Cal. Thank God our house didn't burn, though my Dad's university lost 3 buildings and was shut down and evacuated. The roads to the mountains are still closed though there are backroads which doubles his commute time. Ugh. The swimming pool was filled with ash. Never seen anything like it.

Operating on very little sleep here.

Lunar eclipse overview.

Visited the town of Shui Li yesterday where there is an ancient temple that collapsed in the big earthquake of 1999. The foundation wasn't strong enough to support the weight of the top floors and the building crumpled. The local township has decided not to rebuild but rescued the sculptures of the deities that were worshipped within the temple and erected a shrine for them. There are several gods, and 3 of these black-faced sculptures wear beards that have been reported to grow rather mysteriously after the earthquake.

4 out of 4 aunts were married through arranged marriages.
2 out of 5 uncles were "love matches" vs. finding wives on their own. The 3 youngest, including my father met their future wives to be.


The government worker who processed the paperwork to register citizens/families disliked the family and played a nasty trick on the Pai Tsai family. All of the men except for 1st uncle are "Pai". All the women and 1st Uncle are Pai Tsai. When women marry in this culture, they add the husband's name to their existing name. The young women of the family, already having 2 last names would be forever laughed at upon speaking their names as people would presume that they had been married many many times already and thus be humiliated.

The local elementary school published on their 100th anniversary, a listing of every graduate's information for the past 100 years. My dad and uncles are in the listing, and my 4th aunt. Except she is mislisted as Pai instead of Pai Tsai. She was furious and we told her to tell the school so on the next printing/the next edition, the edit can me made to the error.

Leaving for Taipei via bus in about an hour from the Aloha bus station in Taichung.

At breakfast, 4th Uncle said to me to live life as if shooting a photograph. From either side you see two different perspectives, looking at your subject directly you see another path, and from behind, yet another vantage point. Think things through before you take the picture, don't rush. Live your life like this.

Down at the end of the road there was for many years a pineapple canning factory. Workers cut up the pineapples and the cores were dumped en masse in the fields near the family house. The smell of pineapple scented the air of Ching Shui. The local children, poor kids of farmers, would pick up the pineapple cores and gnaw whatever meat was left on them. Grandmother used to tell the kids that if they ate these throwaway parts they would go mute so that they would be afraid. Years later, the pineapple cores disappeared from the fields when the factories discovered that they could make use of these parts, by squeezing the cores to make and can juice. Likewise for many years, metal bits of scrap were dumped in the fields until recycling was put into practice.

More on turtles: grandfather gave 4th Uncle a turtle when he was a kid. He carved his own nickname "Kame" (turtle in Japanese) in to the turtle's shell. They drilled a hole thru the shell and laced a piece of twine around the animal's body, like a leash. One day there was a hurricane - chairs and tables blowing about the neighbor's chimney - the rains flooded the street in front of the house and swept the turtle away downstream.

We ran into my 4th Aunt on the street with her husband. They rode the bus in from Taichung which took them about an hour. She brought with her homemade green and red "turtles" - basically a giant mochi - the red stuffed with azuki bean and the green stuffed with veggies- the kind of foods that grandmother fed the kids growing up - lots of creative ways to make meals out of rice. Running into my 4th Aunt and uncle on the street like that had to be one of the most delightful moments in my life. As if we lived there and such a meeting should be so every day.

I read from Equivalence (with slide show) last week to a group of Taiwanese English students at Kaoshiung University. The comprehension factor was tough as the students had no previous exposure to literature in the English language. Afterwards one student asked me rather shyly why I have so many poems on Asian topics. I am viewed as an American by both the elder and younger generations here, so there is this presumption of what that should look like. One positive outcome from the reading was that my mother, a visual artist, finally really made a connection with my work. She saw the galley and I sent her a copy of the book when it came out, and I know that she's read the poems and pulled out the dictionary when she comes across unfamiliar words. But for her, seeing slide photos of Wolfgang Laib's work and Jackson Pollock, that tied everything together for her. It was really amazing to see the comprehension registeriing on her face and the deeper meaning coming through. Dad had a conflicting lecture at the time of my reading but arrived with 3 poems to go in my reading. I noticed that when he walked in the room, my inner child had a minor freak out - I started stammering, slipping on the language thing - saying um a lot and getting really self-conscious. In all the years that I have been giving performances, this was the very first time my dad had been in the room and I realized what a big moment that was emotionally.

4th uncle's first son's wife is at the hospital about to give birth to her first child. She's way overdue, huge as a house and walked the stairs up and down all night trying to induce labor. The name of the baby will come from 3rd uncle after his birth, as my name once came from him.

Last night dad took mom and I for a walking tour of Ching Shui after dinner. The streets where we walked were only built in the last 15-30 years. At the time when my father grew up, nothing but rice fields, dirt roads, and everyone walked. no one owned a car. We stopped in at the home of dad's boyhood friend from elementary school. Mr. Chen made us a pot of tea and the two rehashed growing up under the reign of the White Terror, post KMT occupation when you could hear soldiers out on the streets hassling people, and next thing you know, bing bing biang biang , someone's taken away and you never see them again.

On the drive to the bus station in Taichung to pick up dad last night, we passed a military air base that is just minutes from the house on Ta Chieh Lu. 4th uncle was lucky enough to be stationed locally when he served in the military (compulsory in this country). Dad was stationed on the island of Ma Tsu. 4th Uncle drove tanks. Once a tank (not his) was driving down the side of the mountain behind Ta Chieh Lu and the driver lost control. The tank rolled off the side of the road and landed on a neighboring house demolishing it. 4th Uncle was off duty at home when it happened and heard the crash. He ran outside to the tank and found both of the soldiers inside already dead, surrounded by ammunition and artillery. The firefighters came but had to wait for all of rounds of ammunition to explode before getting the whole thing under control.

It is both heartbreaking and joyful to see my dad truly happy for what may be the first time in my life. You can not return to the past or relive the past but peace must be made with it and it can never be forgotten. I had thought that the changes to Dad's home town might disturb or upset him - he doesn't know the new roads, and well, frankly, change has no place in nostaglia. But as it turns out, the new shops in the neighborhood, the addition of a new bakery in close proximity are all pleasing improvements.

I've been reading Joel Sloman's Stops which reads to me like music. My favorite poems in the collection are Constellations, Recitative, and To the Sky which reminds me a lot of Keats' odes. I took way long to read this book, it is brilliant! Hope the reading in Cambridge was well attended...

The turtle that was living in my uncle's downstairs bathroom sink 5 years ago is in the same place I last saw it. Now a days it is less afraid of people, although this is the period of its hibernation. To spend one's whole life in a bathroom sink -

Everything is birth death rebirth death and more rebirth.

Dad's home town has changed quite a bit from when he grew up here. My mom and I walked down a busy street crowded with scooters and cars down to my Dad's old elementary school. In his day, the roads weren't paved, there were very few houses, and the path to school thru the rice fields was a zig zag indirect one. One of my cousins sends her youngest daughter to the same local elementary school and pulled out a book on the school produced for its 100 year anniversary in recent years. The book has photos of Ching Shui 50 years ago - rice fields, mountains, children of a different era. As we walked around the old campus, we passed the principal's office where dad no doubt spent plenty of time for getting into scraps with other little boys.

On the roadsides in Taiwan are betel nut stands - little glass booths which house pretty, young girls in various states of dress and undress who are hired to sell betel nut - a carcinogenic chewing gum like product which produces a dark red juice not unlike the color of blood. Betel nut is enjoyed by many folks from the lower socio-economic classes, street vendors, taxi drivers. The see thru booths are located on remote roads and lit by bright flashing neon lights attracting men to stop along the road. Legally, only girls over 18 are allowed to have these jobs, which pay about 40,000 NT　per month. It is a dangerous profession - the girsl wear bikinis, tiny skirts, lots of make-up but are not selling sex in at least most cases.

betel nut girls now have dress codes.

cultural observations:

in situations when my mother and I have been driven in cars by Taiwanese, we always end up in the backseat, though the passenger's seat next to the driver usually remains empty. Even if this means that 3 people are crammed into the back seat of a tiny sedan. Apparently, the passenger seat next to the driver is reserved for that person's spouse. If my mother were to sit in the front seat next to a man other than her husband who is shuttling us around - someone might see them together and report it back to that person's wife. And than the assumption might be that that person sitting in that seat, is a mistress/adultress. So people of the opposite sex are not permitted to sit next to one another, with the exception of children and parents.

So far on this trip there has been an inordinate amount of driving and sitting in cars. And hotel rooms.

Typhoon winds and rains. Here now with my mother at my 4th Uncle's House in Ching Shui (Clean River) for a few days - my father's home town. Tomorrow a tour of the local sites hopefully - the elementary school where dad got into fights, the railway station, and if I'm lucky/sneak enough, entry into the tiny Japanese style house where all 9 siblings, and my grandmother and grandfather lived for many many years. The roof has since collapsed, the door is gone from the hinges, and on the last trip, I was forbidden entry. God knows what poisonous snakes live within...