New Year's in Taipei

The big action last night was at Taipei 101 which planned a small fireworks show sponsored by Sony (the building was lit up in text to recognize this sponsorship). The fanfare lasted about 2 minutes and supposedly cost a few million to expense - the fireworks itself not being the major cost, but the hiring of staff and pyrotechnic experts to time the whole affair.

TAV held its open house from about 7:30 - 11: 30 p.m. which had a low turnout due to damp/overcast weather and I imagine that most revelers were out on the street, though we did get an appearance by the commish of cultural affairs who is himself apparently a poet. At the end of the night, I went and checked out some of the other artist's studios - Carl does rubbings of manhole covers throughout Japan and now Taiwan. Andreas does interactive performances where he cooks and serves the public. The last performance he did last month involved serving about 200 people goulash. Mayumi is still doing photography, but also does installation and more sculptural work, while Taro does work with video and installation. The two occasionally collaborate together.

Pre-open house, rode the MRT subway system for the first time which is very easily navigable. Automated machines vend tickets based on the distance of planned travel. Basically, you look at a picture of the stops on the colorcoded line, choose the stop you want and pay the corresponding amount. The trains were packed at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, but it being New Year's Eve, this may have contributed to the over-crowding. It is not advisable to exit the train to let other people deboard as passengers waiting to get on the train will very quickly fill the spot which you occupied and leave you out in the cold. I learned this when I stepped out of the way for an old lady who was exiting. One of Mayumi and Taro's friends took us to a dimsum style restaurant where we ordered a variety of noodle and dumpling style dishes. Proper dumpling eating technique - place grated ginger on top, dip in soy sauce, pick up with chopsticks and place in soup spoon, raise to mouth and eat. These particular dumplings were filled with delicious layers of shrimp and pork (the Chinese put pork in EVERYTHING unless you are specifically eating veg fare) and soup at the bottom, so that when you bit into the dumpling, there is a lovely hot explosion of flavors in your mouth.

I slept away most of the day and worked on fine tuning the children's story some more, fleshing out details about the hen house and shelters for chickens. Right now, I think my plan will be to revise and finish the various files of started poems that have been waiting for an end. Cleaning up the desktop before starting on anything new.

Here is an old-new poem on a decorative object in the collections of the DMA:

Bedroom suite

a cabriole on a Chippendale
lowboy curves outwards to
an ornamental foot-

note to the anatomy
of antiques, chest and legs
drops and drawers, skirting

history, objects tell
the stories of our times,
a tale told by a curator

before retiring his piece
de resistance, a Gothic
bed fit for a would-be

head, commissioned for
“the great compromiser”,
Henry Clay, negotiator of trade

barriers, a bed never slept
in soaring pinnacles, cluster
columns and apostle posts the

desire of a Southern
cotton baron, (if royalty
should ever stop over)

at Rosedown, West Feliciana,
an estate in disrepair, sun
bleached and damaged,

desperation shining through
windows long after the
docents were “let go”

the fantasy of sleep
with kings, populating
the bedroom with Spanish

moss and wet dreams