: in medias res :

02 July 2009

I want to remember this mysterious day. 烏日－埔里－河堤－南投佈教院－中台山－地藏院人乘寺

D woke up at 7/02/2009 11:58:00 PM [comment]

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27 June 2009

The bicycle still stands parked and locked at the gate of the school. The long walks we took, holding hands in the cover of the night and the extended conversations, as if our first date, made the key obsolete. We only rode on it once, or twice, I cannot remember. But we were dating again. I was sure.

You were crying on the bus to the airport over a span of two songs - one that played repeatedly when I first fell in love with you but thought it could never happen, another by your favourite band that looped endlessly on radio when I was 17. It was in the middle of the first song when I turned away from the speeding highway to notice your teary eyes. My sleeves were made damp, quietly. I remember the stationery shop, you said before the song began its first note. A block of hideous green passed by on our right.

The much anticipated and discussed typhoon headed away from the island on the same day Micheal Jackson passed away - you walked in from a designated smoking alleyway on the outside of the airport to tell us both, answering your own rhetorical question regarding the headlines today. It was a cardiac arrest, you also said. We accepted the news with a brief note on how sudden it was, his death and departure.

We took turns to cry in the last three days. Him first, then me, and then you. Tears, unexplained, your thoughts, unclear, my heart, in disarray. When night fell, after a long day of packing and moving and saying goodbye, I felt like I was back at the first night in Taipei, lost, though not totally, exhausted, but cluelessly.

D woke up at 6/27/2009 12:39:00 PM [comment]

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23 June 2009

We brought Vincent out for a walk.

D woke up at 6/23/2009 01:59:00 AM [comment]

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20 June 2009

On the bus a day earlier, Nick was thrilled just listening to Mariah Carey's 'Obsessed'.

After a day of water-slides and sun, we headed for pizza and ice-cream, where Nick exclaimed, "It's a perfect day!" In the morning already, we were singing to Stephanie Sun's 完美的一天.

Jeff always concludes his text messages with this: ^_^

D woke up at 6/20/2009 12:02:00 PM [comment]

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18 June 2009

Awesome weather!

D woke up at 6/18/2009 09:53:00 AM [comment]

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17 June 2009

D woke up at 6/17/2009 11:59:00 PM [comment]

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08 June 2009

《小情歌》的鋼琴前奏開始響起
群眾的歡呼聲淹沒了我的一陣鼻酸
我難過
因為春天要離開了
這是青鋒選擇演唱的第一首歌
“受不了
看見你背影來到
寫下我
度秒如年難捱的離騷”
中場的《生命有一種絕對》讓我釋然
或許無論甚麼
帶著他們繼續前往
那就好了
我記住了我們幾千人一起合唱的
《這天》
“總有一天我們都死去丟掉名字的回憶再沒有意義
總有一天我們都忘記曾為了一個越演越爛的故事傷心
總有一天我們都歎息笑著緬懷有過的愚蠢的美麗
就讓現在過去”

我再次與蘇打綠談了戀愛。

D woke up at 6/08/2009 01:28:00 AM [comment]

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31 May 2009

They operate by nicknames here, though I have resisted adopting an official one, so I have plenty arbitrary ones, but none that I respond to all the time.
Here's 澎澎 Pong Pong sometimes also known as Ho Ho for his snigger （澎季群）who stays near 阿里山 (Alishan), and 瑋瑋 who is accident prone. They're my group mates in a class I take on Wednesdays: Spiritual Care in the End Stage of Life, where a lot of our class is really, about happiness.

D woke up at 5/31/2009 04:00:00 PM [comment]

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30 May 2009

小珮 & 小佑（李俊佑）：An extremely endearing couple on the same tour group as us in Penghu. 小珮 is an elevator lady in Sogo Taichung and 小佑 works in some engineering firm (if my memory doesn't fail me).

While we said goodbye as they headed for Da Cang, an island we covered on the first day as we arrived earlier, we thought, if the island of Da Cang was disastrously boring and pathetic, their love for each other (7 years!) would make it nonetheless marvelous.

D woke up at 5/30/2009 12:01:00 AM [comment]

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29 May 2009

It was a vivid dream. But when I woke up, there already, was nothing.

D woke up at 5/29/2009 07:06:00 PM [comment]

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D woke up at 5/29/2009 03:52:00 PM [comment]

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27 May 2009

Solicitude

A cat and a dog, and an exceptional spring.

D woke up at 5/27/2009 10:26:00 AM [comment]

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26 May 2009

The Jet Star Guy Has No Nipples.

D woke up at 5/26/2009 03:00:00 PM [comment]

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25 May 2009

Near my school's back gate, in the evening, my cycling route to a stretch of diners or to a train station that would bring me to town.

I am fully aware of how I am setting myself up again and again for a catastrophic flood of yearning for this place when I am home again, this place with its quick and deeply moving light, and passionate, good-spirited friends. I am consuming them all in amounts that are larger than what is healthy for a rational, easy retreat when it is due, and painfully inevitable. "A month's time," I slowed down a little in my reply, when I realized that while the answer was reflexive, the sequela came much later, or earlier, depending on one's perspective.

I was alone that evening and a little homesick, so I thought it was time to abandon my bicycle to take a walk around the vicinity. Before I got my bicycle, I reasoned, I saw more. That was when I fell in love with the city again, the freedom I saw in its disordered wires that were functioning and never rioting, how if I took turns in the corners I would find strange cafes and bookstores and wonder if they'd be elsewhere next summer. No one spoke about the graying walls or rusting metal almost as if they'd replace themselves quietly. The Taiwanese understood that perhaps only until they retire themselves, they should be respected. We need not always make room for the new.

A typical meal I would have when I eat alone.

I know CM is afraid of being alone, as much as he would never admit it. But I know, because he would seek company in almost everything he does, especially meal times. My turning vegetarian is the most isolating thing I'd ever done to him. I can already imagine how he would crave for fried chicken wings in the middle of the night and the coldness of him having to eat them alone.

I've been waking up early to read, sleeping earlier too, save for nights that are spent at the bar. "Regular hours," as my Mom would have said. The entire journey was relayed in my head last night as I saw countless questions that swirled around me when I was back home, being resolved one by one back here. They were not completely answered, but at least I knew for once, what I had to do.

Oh, and of course, there is the one that I've met, that would linger in my thoughts for a lifetime.

D woke up at 5/25/2009 01:11:00 PM [comment]

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24 May 2009

Salt crystals in my hair!

D woke up at 5/24/2009 09:00:00 PM [comment]

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23 May 2009

義大利羅馬KITONB<日光飛行>

There were angels last Sunday at the Deaflympics performance, and people swarmed to her for a feel of divinity, or the semblance of it.

D woke up at 5/23/2009 02:12:00 PM [comment]

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21 May 2009

D woke up at 5/21/2009 12:00:00 AM [comment]

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20 May 2009

I like how slow they are in responding. And how they take time to observe.

D woke up at 5/20/2009 01:35:00 AM [comment]

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19 May 2009

"This angel, she's my favourite angel. I like them best when they're statutory. They commemorate death but suggest a world without dying. They're made of the heaviest things on earth: stone and iron. They weigh tons. But their winged. They're engines and instruments of flight."

Prior Walsh, Angels in America
Written by Tony Kushner

D woke up at 5/19/2009 07:33:00 PM [comment]

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I want to be out in the open, sheltered by you.

D woke up at 5/19/2009 10:49:00 AM [comment]

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18 May 2009

There is a photograph of you that stares back at me on the screen. Your mouth agape, and I am unable to detect if it is wonder or mischief, or even vertigo, as you are clinging on to the railings; you are falling, that is. But while I am undecided, you are staring back at me, conscious of the shutter. I've grown to learn in the past year that the look on your face is one that you use both impishly and when you are bewildered. You must have been only nine, but your menu of expressions have already been etched and imprinted. Where did you learn this from, I wonder? My eyes meet yours and above them I see hair that is pulled back by what I thought to be initially as a blue hairband. It was a water-bottle strap you slung on your head, the bottle hanging slightly obscured behind your hips, leading me to your exposed zipper. You are trying hard to keep your footing - a stark contrast to my own stationary poses in my childhood photographs - and you do it with ease and pleasure, though in your eyes, euphoria are often instant flashes. I recognize the background: it's the airport, a place for arrivals and departures, where in our country families spend their weekends dining and observing hoards of travelers take off in Boeings and Airbuses. Did your father take this picture, I wonder? He must have, for how else would he know that this is indelibly you, and will continue to be - trying everyday to be back in balance, checking off items on to-do-lists and rationalizing utility in everything, even words. But I am guessing he also knew that memory was fallible and he was always ahead of you in time. It is persistent and relentless till cessation. But what I wanted to tell you was that, it is never an end, like that instant of your life that had been exposed and reflected, caught, as a photograph; it is perhaps more accurately but a pause, a break before the next instant, the next ephemeral moment, which we often mistake for as a lifetime.

D woke up at 5/18/2009 01:31:00 AM [comment]

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17 May 2009

i'm a rider!