email theft

I've never felt so violated.... I've never before been stolen. 

All of a sudden my veins are severed, my friends disconnected, my business disrupted, me email has been taken from me!

In sympathetic insomnia

when slippers - plastic and made for hygienic purposes - are heard slip, slap, slapping along the linoleum corridors in the I am a.m.'s of the day, before the sun rises, before those other I am a.m.'s of wakefulness, they bear textbooks heavy and anxious limbs to corners with humming air, running motors and ticking clocks that in their quiet symphony dance like dervishes - exam time

fearful love

waiting for you

I message

someone else

Ross Clark

Fragments

Fragments can be fragments, of glass, then shards, of wood, then splinters, of hearts, then grief, of self, then dissolution.

But fragments can be made be blunt, placed in a box lined with velvet and nourished back to context.  

Sometimes fragments, in all their discontinuity, are all we can have and hope for, and that is the way it has to be.

using other peoples words to be angry at you

I have your words, that you put down on paper,

but nothing at hand to return, so I write down

papaya. I cut one open: so many

dark points, so many undefined things.

Leung Ping-kwan (Ye si)

an attempt at content

Last night a posse of exchange students headed down to Soho, Central, to see a stand up comedy night. 

Twas funny enough. The usual jokes about fat people, thin people, pedophiles, white people, black people and yellow people.. and mooncake - ofcourse.

Soho is a funky little area. Streets of extremely hip galleries, interspersed with overpriced antique stores, gridded by steep lanes on which stalls selling everything from sandals to bananas to live crabs lean on a 45degree angle. 

Upon detatching myself from the umbilical chord so seemingly stretched between us, I ventured off alone.... in search of a good pinot gris. What I found was a german subtitled screening of a Fellini film with Frauen in the title, and an Italian pinot grigio that despite its promise was stale. 

Nevertheless, when the heavens decided to flush their drains on Hong Kong only minutes after the glass was poured, the wine took on several more hues of salvation than that which was expected of it.

And what follows comedy, white wine and Asian autumn? Semi cooked street chicken in the era of 'bird-flu' (which I might add was delicious, even if twice cooked (upon request)).

Fed and cocky with residual alcohol I decided to turn home, via the more romantic route - across the harbour on a ferry. Walking along the overpass down to the pier the signs are direct, "no hawking", "no spitting", "no walking on the left", " no entry", "no exit". Halfway along however was a caveat, an embodied exception to the rule... I asked him are you from Hong Kong?

"Yes" he nods. Then shows me his wares - handmade folded paper figurines. One is a clown, the other a clown fish, the last a series of coloured round balls... obscenely overpriced but I am a sucker. His smile combined with the very likely chance that the ferries had finished for the night made the extra walk alright. It made the non-utilitarian quality of my purchase redundant - for he made me smile.

There were no more ferries. I like to think that when I passed him that second time, with caricatured bad posture and crippled feet, I made him smile too.

today

The worst thing about it is, the way it drains the colour from the world and makes it shabby grey.

There is nothing good.

there she blows

The line in the supermarket was long... for some reason.

The afternoon class was cancelled... for some reason.

Inside our rooms, the windows were closed... for some reason.

Open, we did, a bottle of red wine... for some reason

Then she hit, lashing. 

Typhoon Hagupit. 

And in the morning she is gone... for some reason.

recap

correspondence is not my forte....

so let me be a latecomer to my own blog and recap a few things.

If you know who I am you know who I am.

I used to be somewhere else and now I am in Hong Kong, til the new year at least.

I used to avoid doing things by going to university. Now I am certain that I am avoiding things by going to university in another country.

Soon that will all be over, because this is my final semester and I'll have to start doing something... else.

To those to whom I never said "I love you", I love you. To those to whom I said I did, I love you still. Even if sometimes, I lied. To you all whom love shares it's peanuty garb (see pictures ), I hope with all my heart that you are not allergic.

I miss you and hope that you are happy.

>>>>>>

For those to whom I lied. I am sorry. I sleep with these words to remind me of you...

...Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth....
Desiderata

It's been a pleasure growing with you.

the cake in hong kong

...a friend once asked me to my face, "how the cake in Hong Kong?"

Does bad English carry on the wind to this place? Occasionally refashioned by a typhoon swept in from Taiwan or the Philippines, mistranslations, like fallen branches are everywhere to be tripped over.

So, Daniel, the cake in Hong Kong good.

No, actually not good. Not just good. They are the caricature of a cake in all its evil attributes: Hong Kong cake is superlative cake.

Last weekend was the mid-Autumn Moon Festival, celebrated by Chinese across the world. The mooncake is a pastry desert that is given and received as a gift to be shared. The secret ingredients of the mooncake were recently blown in the South China Morning Post; beef lard pastry crust, white lotus seed paste and salted duck eggs, three if you are lucky.

At the Paralympics closing dinner, which catered for 4000 guests, 20 000 mooncakes were ordered (and specially made to be 'healthy' for the athletes, although no confirmation could be made about what the new and improved 'light' versions contained). My dorm neighbour hinted at the farce of such an attempt when understating, "They are not very healthy". One mooncake (or one serve) is equivalent to 800 calories... that's alot. Right?

Anyway, health issues aside. I've had my few portions and have enjoyed the ritual of giving and receiving that they are part of. It must be the most expected gift this time of year, yet the expressions of delight on peoples faces show nothing of the boredom that must slip in.

I guess it is like Christmas... we always eat the fruitcake...

My favourite poem...

departure

judge a man, then, by that
against which he must strive
against what
if not this soft night
and the wind and sea
against the myth
he must become
and his own will
the ocean waits
to measure or to slay me
the ocean waits
and I will sail

Webb Chiles 1978

http://www.inthepresentsea.com/poems.html

a heav(enl)y morning

The sun suggests itself and before the dawn there is a chill - spurned from life, death and stupidity.

Stupidity,

A word I dare not mention, for sympathy is too strong a companion of the weak - be they giver or recipient. But when a toilet bowl and limbs become confused in the daze of Thursday night ladies drinks, the porcelain flesh carries a peculiar stench,

of,

stupidity.

Death,

You may think comes unexpectedly. But no, the dawn begs to differ, for death can be as calculated as prostitution, pursued and paid for with rations and reason. Just ten floors high, perhaps a little less, but still the building that is home to a swarm of young lives can provide the platform from which and old woman may jump. And go unnoticed.

Life,

Is for all of us to live and to live in a life is for us and you and all of that beyond psychoanalytic distinction. And life is here to be lived, so wake up now, wake up now in the dark and leave your daughter sleeping, lover, wife and mistress dreaming and run. Run because you have the right to and because the right to defend your life, or life in general is why you live. For you? For us all?Warm clay pavings connect to branded leather shoes connect to brittle bones which extend to your once broken nose, and a glow.

That glow is dimmer than the rising sun, diminished by black plastic sheeting, and embarrassed by a dry retching so induced that blood can change its hue.

Yet that glow is golden; precious and heavy. Worth saving and a burden to die for.

a friend of mine once said...

..."you should listen to yourself sometimes". And now that there is noone else but I to pay tolerant attention to what I say, it seems brash and brazen.

Not once, but twice then three times did I let things slide,

"You are a different demographic"

"American?"

"What do you mean Australians are racist, sexist and homophobic!?"

Without a love to count on, these words now stand unshrouded; ugly, sharp, upsetting, confronting. And now, like you said I should, I can listen to myself and be ashamed.

a piece of heart

Between the paperwork and wonder, I miss you.

drip...

Scattered?

No.

More like splattered.
I have dripped from forehead to toes to station platform. From cotton dress, synthetic bra, ill-chosen underwear and winter shoes (and socks).

What was I thinking doing yoga in a sun filled room with 10 other ladies when it was 32 degrees?

Despite the interminable flow, Hong Kong is pretty great.