|
|
|
August 31st, 2006
10:03 pm - From Now On, Boy, This Iron Boat's Your Home
I spent countless nights on my back porches. Cockroaches crawled up and down the back of my shirt. Rats scurried and chirped over the powerlines and through the gutters just beyond the tigercage. Mosquitoes chewed away at my ankles. None of this was enough to drive me inside, most nights. In the event of a typhoon, or a torrential downpour, I’d be driven inside, to my desk, or the kitchen table.
I stayed outside so I could smoke, usually. Smoke and drink coffee and listen to the records ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) woquinoncoin and I played. The dog would usually join me. The tobacco smoke would drive him into the corner opposite me. On particularly muggy and stagnant nights, he’d sneeze.
By the time July, and then August, and then September rolled around, I’d find myself outside thinking that the temperature was more comfortable than it was inside.
My old Toshiba notebook, the one my Grandmother gave me before a nasty cerebrovascular accident began nudging her into the Great Beyond, acquired more than its fair share of tar and resin. The tar and resin brought God-knows-what out of the environment and glued it down on the keyboard, the screen, the vents. . . over the entire surface area of the machine, basically.
I found this endearing, initially, but other people found it disgusting.
The back porch on NanJing didn’t have room for a chair. I sat down on a stack of foam, floor mats, with my back against a wood shelf. I’d bring my knees in close to my chest, resting the laptop on my thighs, ensuring sterility and cramped wrists.
The back porch on MinQuan did have room for a chair. I’d sit—slouch, really—with the machine on my thighs. I was forced to look at the screen from a farther distance, and I think my eyesight, if not the way I used my eyes, improved as a result of this.
From now on, though, I think I’m doing all of my writing from a table.
Current Location: Berkeley, California, The Golden Bear Inn
|
August 4th, 2006
12:00 am - taiwan on3
This collection spans from August 31st, 2005 to July 31st, 2006. It's the last of the Taiwan On series. It documents such shenanigans as The 2006 Taipei Game Show,
The Rapid Transportation Corporation's theme song, a few scans from the The Apple Daily, an essay onTaiwanese Karaoke, something that happened On the Way to the 09:25 Rally, and a lot of images and impressions from around Taipei.
I ought to thank Michael Turton, and his fine blog The View From Taiwan and /. for their efforts in promoting my work.
taiwan on1
taiwan on2
|
July 31st, 2006
11:42 am - "He are so proud of we!"
Tigerclaw Red sits in the second row from the whiteboard. To the left. He sits alone, properly speaking; lately, he's been sitting next to a rusty, tin pail. The pail holds a bout a gallon. It's been there for a few days, now. There's a leak in the ceiling. It's been going steady at a drop every three seconds.
Tigerclaw Red has a really big head. Lot's of Taiwanese kids have heads that are too big for their bodies. He's not so unique, in that respect. However, the kid grows his hair out, good and long, and his mother combs it straight up. . . all to accentuate this enormous head of his. He looks like one those superdeformed Japanese cartoon characters.
He blinks in sync with the "ploinks" the droplets of water make.
He smiles a lot. He's really smart. He doesn't know his own strength. . . You'll see his mother (and her Falun Gong kidney) carrying his bookbag out of the school, at the end of the day. Some of the other kids get him crying. It's not that hard.
He's precocious, too. And that fact alone has probably earned him more scorn from his peers, than anything else. I try my damnedest not to encourage precociousness among my students. That's really hard to do, sometimes. You get so sick of being with kids, all day. You get so sick of listening to bullshit. The ones that come up to you and try to impress you. . . sometimes, you just can't turn them away.
( You don't have the heart. )
|
July 30th, 2006
11:47 pm - Lou
I brought my camera to every lesson. I went through the memory card and removed everything. I charged the battery. I zipped it up in my counterfeit Nike bag.
I gave the camera to Lou. I taught him how to take a picture. How to hold it steady. How to zoom in. How to move the angle of the lens so he capture different hues. How to view and image. How to delete an image.
I stressed, again and again, that we could take as many pictures as we wanted. Anything and everything that caught his eye. If it looked cool, take a picture. If it looked weird, ESPECIALLY if it looked weird, take a picture. If you didn't know the name for something, take a picture. It wouldn't matter, I explained, if it didn't come out perfect, if the image was blurry. Sometimes, we take the best pictures by accident, and the best pictures don't always resemble what the eye registers.
Now, I took a great deal of pride in teaching the kid how to do something useful. To my mind, learning to take a good picture is as essential to life in our time as learning how to use a telephone.
But it was a trick, really.
I had him taking pictures because I believed—and still do—that as many associations as he could make with the time we spent together, the more likely he was to remember the time we spent together, which is to say he would get more out of our time together in the long run.
He'd take a picture of the old fruit stand across the street from the Burger King, and he'd think of that picture, occasionally, whenever he caught a glimpse of the real thing. And that would bring to mind pressing the button. And that would bring to mind the questions I always asked.
"What are we standing on now, Lou?"
"The sidewalk."
"What are going to go do, Lou?"
"We are going to cross the street."
"Where are we now, Lou?"
"At an intersection."
"Good boy. What are we going to step off of, Lou?"
"The curb?"
And in that way, I tried to get him talking about Dahu. His town. His world. Noun by noun. It's not that I was drilling him, constantly. But I'd keep at the same questions. And, eventually, those nouns would work their way into his everyday speech.
|
11:45 pm - Lou
|
11:41 pm - Lou
Whenever we had the chance to the go to the park, we did. Almost every day. Tutoring the same kid, for so long. . . It can get really boring, for teacher and student alike. When one or the other gets bored, the boredom usually spreads. The teacher doesn't teach, the student doesn't learn. One can just as easily influence the other.
When we got to the park, we'd walk on this one path. I don't know the name of this thing, which is a shame. You see paths of this sort all over Taiwan. In parks, near benches. . . people even build them on their property—if they have have property—or in their homes. Basically, they're paths anywhere from six feet to thirty feet long, designed to stimulate all of the different nerve endings on the soles of your feet. The paths are carved into the earth, filled with cement, and then covered with smooth, sometimes polished, stones. These pathmakers try to keep the crests of the stones level with one another, but it doesn't seem like it's absolutely necessary. You're supposed to walk down these paths on your bare feet.
Doing so hurts. Hurts like hell. This path Lou and I used had benches, to the side, about midway through. Both of us would take our shoes off and begin our walk. How gingerly we made the walk depended on who was around. If no one happened to be watching, we'd take out sweet time. If old ladies were watching, we'd go at a respectable pace. No pauses. In the presence of young women and children, however, we stomp across the thing, doing our best to show off how badass we really were.
Neither of us ever said anything about it.
A woman asked me, once, if Lou was my son. I told her that he was my student. This was as we were putting our shoes back on.
"Your son is Bowdu," Lou said, when we were out of earshot.
Then we'd go to the dock, find an empty bench, and sit and read. If any of the guy's fishing ever caught anything, we'd set the books and down and get in close for a good look. No one ever caught anything while we had the camera around.
The boy would up the volume to his reading when he knew others were around. Even though his phonics wasn't the best, he was smart enough to know that most people listening wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless I corrected him.
Which I did. Again and again and again.
|
11:36 pm - Lou
|
11:34 pm - Lou 1/3
The summer months in Taiwan, Taipei especially, are as close to unbearable as I've ever known. If nastier weather exists on the face of this planet, I'd die a happier man remaining ignorant of it. The heat makes everything difficult. Walking, thinking, sitting. Everything. Sometimes I have these dreams, alright? In these dreams, I'm trying to walk, but I can't. . . nothing impedes me, as far as I can tell, and yet I feel like I'm trying to slog through some kind of molasses and cement mixture.. Taipei's summers are a bit like that.
Around the first of July, I was hoping to pick up a few extra hours. I was thinking maybe another class would open up, or maybe I'd get a few students to tutor privately. What I wound up getting was a kid from my one o'clock class. Lou. Two hours a day, with Lou. From ten a.m., to noon, it was all Lou. That's sixteen hours a week, with one kid. One kid named Lou.
Lou's name is supposed to be Louis. Some foreign teacher gave him the name "Louis" because "Lou" sounds too much like his given name, which is Lu Chun. But he doesn't look like a Louis. He looks like a Lou. What's the difference? Lousises are tall and skinny with wavy hair. They wear glasses and baby-blue button down shirts. Lous are short and stocky. They wear their hair in the blunted fashion. Lous wear silver watches and warm-up suits, weather permitting.
I'd had a pretty high opinion of the boy. He was no dummy. He had two faults, near as I could tell. The first being that he was really hungry for attention. The second was that he was too easily influenced by his peers. The second wouldn't be such a big deal if all of his peers weren't total dipshits.
So, I was offered this gig and I took it.
|
June 21st, 2006
11:00 pm - Bribing The Kids With Television
aum posted this video clip of The Residents. I like it. It's basically a clip of them doing some kind of promotional video (I guess) for their cover of “Jailhouse Rock.” Basically, they take the song and temper it with moods more readily imagined behind bars. . . those of menace and fear. That's a big part of what The Residents do.
But, after the “Jailhouse Rock” clip, you get a more recent (and complete) video. It's them at. . . well, I don't know where they're at. But it's them doing “Wonderful,” off of their “Demons Dance Alone” record. The video, I think, is great because it shows you just how much they put into their shows, theatrically. And it's a damn good song. They even changed the lyrics from the album. . . totally changed the lyrics from the album, too.
Totally.
The other Friday night, I was sitting down in my classroom with my two older students. Mr. Lau and Thirteen. Mr. Lau watches MTV, occasionally, and doesn't care for American videos. I assure him that he shouldn't. Thirteen is a young woman who likes historical novels. She recently read the Da Vinci Code. . . translated into Chinese. (Ain't that a shame? All of Dan Brown's nuanced language. . . lost on an entire audience! ( Talk about an injustice )
|
June 17th, 2006
May 27th, 2006
12:37 am - Love For All Things
The Janitor at Dahu, Auntie, used to be one hell of knockout. She isn't anymore, but she still probably carries herself the same. Carries. She's carrying a lot more of everything. She's had children. Still, she carries it like she did back when she was twenty-two. No doubt. She's got a smile on her, and it's not the “nicest” smile. Yeah, in terms of appearance there's nothing wrong with it. It's just not. . . fucking Alice from the Brady Bunch nice. I get the feeling, from time to time, she'd like to slap one of the kids upside the head, too.
When we go out for karaoke, or there's some special event. . . she's dolled up. She looks elegant, I mean to say. She doesn't look so elegant killing the punch bowl. I remember her and I divvying up the last of the rum and orange juice, one Christmas. She insisted on handling the dipper. There was no doubt in my mind she was splitting it right down the middle. That, there, is serious business.
( And she can roll a joint one-handed. )
|
May 26th, 2006
12:27 am - The Good Cry (2/2)
(Ji4Xu4!)
This is what he told me: “Sometimes, I come here, and my brain tell me to do crazy things. Just. . . things.”
That's the last bit of dialog you hear before the music leaps up and hits you in the face, followed by the jump cut to the title screen with the release date and production credits. End of preview.
“What do you mean?”
“When I come here, to school. I don't know why. , , My brain just tells me to do things.”
“Things like what?”
“I don't know. . .”
“Things like what?”
He looked up to the ceiling. He put his left hand on his hip, cocked his hip, put his right hand beneath his chin, cocked his head. I was supposed to infer from this that he was rearranging the furniture to see how the room looked. And working really hard at it.
( I'd been taken in. )
|
May 25th, 2006
02:06 am - The Good Cry (1/2)
The Wiry, Little Bastard brought one of those big-ass McDonald's Cokes and a box of fried chicken. A big box. He had a large order of fries, too. I can see him, clearly, standing in line with his grandfather, it's their turn at the register. The kid is hungry, but not too hungry to think. In a moment of inspiration, he asks the old man for the big box of chicken. He'll use the deep fried chickenheads to win the allegiance of his classmates. He'll bribe them in an attempt to win amnesty for a day.
After getting into class, he stashed the food under his table. The Wiry Little Bastard knows the rules of the class. Every last one. He knows the ins and the outs of them, too. To make my job easier, for instance, I tell the kids that so long as I don't SEE anything I don't particularly CARE. This means that Little Ms. Wang can fondle her little blue Blukachu beneath the table and relieve her little body's desire to squirm around and crack jokes and push the soles of her feet up against the wall when she gets all Linda Blairey..
( They're called loopholes and they exist because, at bottom, I'm a reasonable man. )
|
May 23rd, 2006
12:49 am - Sandwiches
There's a minimall a couple of blocks away from my house. It's got a supermarket with a Japanese name. Matsusei. It's got a coffeeshop, a dry cleaner, a sushi joint, a tepanyaki place, A few jewelers. A couple of clothing stores.
I know what you're thinking. But, what this mall lacks in pornography, it more than makes up for with sandwiches. I've wanted to live next to an honest to God sandwich shop since I showed up on this muggy, bug-infested, cannibal ridden island. Walking about a block to buy a sandwich. . . That's almost as cool as walking into your kitchen and making one!
But, hell, if there's no love for the sandwich, here in Taiwan, ( why SHOULD supermarkets stock bread? )
|
May 11th, 2006
12:39 am - Think Spy Vs. Spy
I'll tell you the story of Red Ninja Versus Blue Farmer. It's the story of killing for revenge versus killing for money.
Blue Farmer was a happy family man. He had a wife and a daughter. He was really excited, earlier in the day The Emperor confiscated his land because he'd just received word that his daughter would be accepted into the local school. She might actually learn to read and write. Think about that. . . He sat down to his lunch musing on how great it would be that, finally, someone from his family would attain literacy. Before he could finish his meal, an arrow flew through his window and pierced his wife's heart. Fastened to the shaft of the arrow was an Imperial decree which neither he nor his daughter could read.
( And it gets even heavier handed from there. )
|
May 4th, 2006
May 2nd, 2006
07:51 pm - Does Life Seem Nasty, Brutish and Short?
I can't complain about Tuesdays. I put in an hour and half of work beginning at four forty and I'm on the street again at ten after six. It's an hour and a half more than I'd like to work, but I'm grateful to have it. This afternoon, I showed up and taught my first grade class the finer points of a Harcourt story called "Splash!"
"Splash!" is about two shiftless bears that can't get their sorry asses out of bed to feed themselves. One is named Sam, the other one is named Nelly. By the time Sam and Nelly make it to the lake to catch their fish, the other bears are already snatching salmon and bass and whatever other freshwater fish are unlucky enough to be swimming around. The other bears are disappointed to see Sam and Nelly. The pair have a reputation for fucking things up. Sure enough, Nelly slips on a rock and goes into the drink, her companion following her under the pretense of a rescue. Needless to say, this scares the fish away and throws the other bears' game off. Sam and Nelly apologize profusely and manage to persuade the other bears to let them stick around. At this point, the entire group gorges itself on fish. For some reason, the fish--as they're drawn--are all smiling. . . as if to say "Hooray! I'm going to die!" At some point, the "brave" fish swim away. . . The author tells us that every bear was full and that not too many fish were eaten.
I told the class that to flee certain death isn't brave. . . nor can we call it bravery's opposite, cowardice. What we witness, watching those fish plunge into the deep, is the animal desire for survival. . . the desire to stay alive at all costs. Such a will not only runs through the animal kingdom, but motivates humanity, as well. The urge for self-preservation is present in all forms of sentient life and, in the case of mankind, has lead "lesser" men to betray their parents and children.
Moreover, I went on, it takes a lot of fish to feed a bear. Carnivorous bears grow to weight about fifteen hundred pounds . . . which is about ten Mr. Hudsons. If a bear is getting to hibernate, it needs to eat several hundred pounds worth of food to sustain itself through its dormancy. Assuming the bears were only taking in a regular feeding, though, it's probably safe to say they'd feel full after consuming between thirty or forty pounds worth of fish. Considering that your average salmon will be about six to seven pounds, each bear would need to eat about six fish to get its fill. According to the one picture of the bears going after the fish, in which no less than twelve bears were seen, we'd be forced to conclude that at least seventy two fish died in that lake.
So why isn't the water being splashed about in the fray red? Why isn't blood washing up on the shore. Why aren't the bears soaked through with it?
"Because it are the children-people story, Teacher Mr. Hubbason!"
"That's right," I said. "And what do we know about children's stories?"
"They are packs of lies written so that we may sleep soundly in a cruel world in order to remain fit enough to perpetuate the relentless and indifferent horror!" sounded the class as one voice.
(It took six lessons to get them to understand that, and twelve to say it properly.)
"Very good, class. Who wants to play heads down, thumbs up?"
|
March 20th, 2006
08:05 pm - Girl, It's So Groovey
I teach a first grade class. Every day.
There's this kid. This boy. Name's not important. There are four boys. He's not the dumbest, which isn't saying all that much, but he is the loudest. Damned kid.
The kid's suffered plenty of psychological numbing, over the years. He very rarely responds to pain. He's the kid who gets his head slammed shut in a door and laughs about it. His inability to feel pain does not only go skin deep, either. But the stories surrounding his slapstick injuries are much more amusing and less painful to ruminate upon.
For instance, he was once balancing himself on his chair. His knees were at the edge of the seat, and his feet were bent against the back of his chair.
I snapped at the boy "Goddammit, boy, why am I snapping at you now?"
Someone else says: ( Teacher, I know! )
|
March 16th, 2006
12:07 am - Well, Abe said "Where you want this killing done?"
I work in Dahu. Nice neighborhood. Mountainous. Beyond the apartment complexes, you see mountains. Lot's of them. From a distance they appear purple. On overcast days, their peaks are masked by clouds.
I'm told there was a language school boom in Dahu, several years before I showed up. Money started pouring into the place. It's easy to tell, just by looking, what stores were and weren't there, before the boom. It's surprising to me that the old shops weren't swallowed up by the new money. They weren't renovated, either.
( The store you buy your bronze plated Buddha from has to look old, after all. )
|
|
|
The use of 
Yip yip yippity ying yang yow. . .