traipse along

waking dream

2012-01-25T17:53:00.001-08:00

Dear Blogger-friends, friends, acquaintances and followers,

I am retiring and privatizing, possibly permanently deleting my long-time blogs, sweetemploy and traipsingpele, in order to start a new project and conserve motivation/creative juice for said project. I'm not yet sure whether it will be a new site or if I will continue to work on either of the old ones, but I need free reign to approach any subject, and I need to do more personal writing. Also, the purpose of these blogs was as much, if not more in some ways, to get feedback/have conversations/get closer to other people and connect, as for documenting my inspirations and life. It's hard to put a ratio on the breakdown of that but I am 90% sure that I wouldn't have so orphaned these blogs if I felt the presence of people "out there" reading and engaging with me... I'm aware that this maybe my own oversight or forgetfulness, and if that is so, it doesn't change the feeling of something missing. That said, I am very glad if you have read and gained something from what I did, and thanks for the comments. If you wish to still have access to the archive of these entries and I haven't trashed the blogs, do let me know and give me an email address so I can add you. If you would like to subscribe to my upcoming project, I will say that there will be some ground rules. Right now I'm thinking along the lines of: subscribers write a response at least every other post, whether by commenting directly or emailing me, or talking to me in person within a week of that post. I plan to take more risks with the content, so it will be serving varied personal needs, of which, a very important one is to test and strengthen my connection with other people. I am pretty open to exploring that with anyone. So...lemme know.

Party with Egyptians

2011-02-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

In celebration of Muburak's resignation today, I'm posting this recording from Bulgaria (oddly enough!) in 2005, when about 25 of us American girls of various ethnicity who made up Superdevoiche at the time were backstage with the Varimezovi and an Egyptian ensemble. Their percussion was unstoppable, and after Ivan started jamming with them on his gaida for a while, a bunch of girls went over to dance around them. I caught it on my low-fi minidisc recorder. Basically, wherever they went there was a party around them, even while walking in the parades in Bourgas.

Go Egypt! Peace and prosperity through all your transitions.

This is a photo I snapped with my phone of the women in their group. They danced with the (lit!) candelabras balanced on their heads.

Give catering another shot, after last year's attempt?

2010-01-24T22:38:00.000-08:00

It was bizarre and exhausting in the extreme, LA way. My first and only gig to date, I ended up at the Governor's Ball in Hollywood, one of, if not the main dinner party after the Oscar's. At my table, I served the actress from Ella Enchanted and her boyfriend. Caddy corner: Anthony Hopkin's table. I was too stressed out by pressure from 2 or 3 levels of management prowling around with walkie-talkies to be star struck, not that I have any opinion of Hollywood actors. I can't name more than a handful off the top of my head.

I may as well have been placing plates of filet mignon on the streets of Brazil. I was totally invisible, the picture of servitude, dizzy in a sea of sequins and colors, gowns with trains, blinding teeth and matching clutches, gloves, towering women with immaculate coiffures and milky skin. The live music was horrific. It was obvious, and assumed, that these stars treated the dinner as an obligation, and eating was an after-thought, or some kind of "free" night from a strict organic diet conceived by a yoga-fitness guru. Outside the ballroom, on my way to get desserts, I passed Sean Penn. He was keeping his distance from the ballroom while making an appearance. What an ordeal to receive an Oscar?

I kept smelling this amazing perfume, and thinking that fabulously wealthy people must have access to aesthetic sciences I've never dreamed of. As the guests trickled away hours later, I finally noticed a table on the level above me with bunches of hyacinths worked into the "Pan-Asian" arrangement. Ziumbiul, Tzvetanka's favorite flower, appears in many a Balkan tune. On my way onto the shuttle to the caterers' parking lot, I spied a bundle of 20 or so stems bound tightly together, fallen next to a bucket full of these flower bundles, in the back of a box truck. I dashed to liberate it and slipped back into line.

Just after we pulled away, we stopped at a light and an older woman in white shirt, black pants, black apron, walked forlornly in front of us. I could see she'd been crying. The other workers and passengers tried to get her attention, or to get the driver to open the door to let her in. It was past midnight, and she would have at least a 40 minute walk on the closed streets of Hollywood to get to the parking garage or a bus stop. She didn't hear us, and he didn't stop.

You wouldn't believe how purifying a bunch of 20 hyacinths can smell on a shuttle bus full of exhausted, demoralized human apes. They are the embodiment of Spring. A phallic thrust out of moist, thawed earth, even their flowers seem to be crystallized liquid, turning to a sugary purple sludge if bruised. Their form is incredibly feeble. It must be all about the permeating essence.

A Midwestern Memoir

2009-08-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

We lived in a dingy duplex on the outskirts of Columbia Missouri for half a decade or so. My dad had been teaching at the University, where he was denied tenure for the second time. He told us it was discrimination, and started holing up in the utility closet with the water heater, where he read Chinese newspapers, laying on a cot. We called it the rat hole. Later, after a short stint of grant-writing at a community college, he was recruited by an Irish company in Beloit, Wisconsin, and he decided we would settle in Rockford, Illinois, because it had good schools. Movers came and packed up our dingy furniture and we left behind the matted carpet, the brick and aluminum-sided box we lived in, and our next-door neighbors in the box, the Jones family.

The Jones half of that duplex was the mirror image of our half, and in an odd way so was their family. They were the only other Asian mixed-race family in the neighborhood, though this never occurred to me as a unifying factor. Their mother was Korean, their father was white trash, and both wore vacant stares. They didn’t work and my sister told me they were on welfare. I didn’t know what that meant but it sounded shameful. I remember the mother squatting in their front doorstep, smoking cigarettes in her flip flops. They didn’t speak Korean at home, unlike our Mandarin-only household, and their kids were a wild bunch. The boys were especially mischievous and unkempt – the youngest entertained himself by putting snow in our mailbox. The only girl, Angie, was in my grade. I judged her as childish and dull, although I knew she was honest and wanted my solidarity. She later adopted my ex-best friend, then estranged after having moved to North Dakota for a year, and I kept my distance from the both of them from fourth grade on.

Before all of that, the three of us used to practice hand-stands and cartwheels in our front yard after school, which was an unseparated rectangle of grass in front of the box, each side of the yard with the same young (maple?) tree planted squarely in the middle. During thunderstorm season one year, while we were at school, a tornado tore through our neighborhood, ripping the roof off a garage down the block and tossing their jeep out into the meadow beyond. When we came home, our tree greeted us in triumph, while the Jones tree had been snapped in half, length-wise. Maintenance people came to remove it the next school day. My dad laughed and said that’s what they got for the mailbox snow – tornado discrimination.

We left behind the endless humid summers for northern Illinois, a two-story white house with a red door, hardwood floors, a lush and shady backyard, and quiet streets of “well-established” neighborhoods. When we first saw the house, it had a single large oak tree shading the front yard. I looked forward to tackling that tree and making it up as high into the branches as my nimble spirit dared, which was pretty far considering thunderstorms, loneliness, betrayal, and biking the hills of Missouri had weathered me. But, between seeing the house, making the down payment, and moving in, a storm came through, doing enough damage to the tree that the city had it removed before we arrived. “Discrimination!” Dad said. And to rub it in, Mother Nature blew the rich neighbor’s leaves into our yard, so that we had to rake the front yard despite our lack of shade. “Discrimination!” he joked.

Not long after moving into our dream-house, Dad had a bad dream one night after falling asleep in the master bedroom with his Chinese newspapers and shortwave radio. He dreamt that the Jones family had followed us to Rockford, and moved into the house next door. We laughed about it in the morning, but now I understand another dimension to the comedy. A few years ago my sister revealed that, while Dad was unemployed in his rat hole in Missouri, we had been on welfare too. I wonder what it must have been like for him to go to Aldi alone, and pull out the food stamps in line. At the time he had told me how the unemployment officer said he could at least get a job at McDonald's. He’d answered that he didn’t come all the way from Taiwan for a PhD just to get a job at McDonald’s. He reasoned to me that perhaps she was right. Did I want him to work at McDonald's? Should we move into a trailer? They’re cozy - remember like Heather Jo’s in Indiana? White trash and Asian trash and discrimination. He was haunted by the Joneses, and Heather Jo haunted me.

I think of those last years in Missouri as Columbia, Misery. But it was during that time of bitter defeat that he started taking me on the nature trails, where I would ride miles ahead of him as he jogged, through downpours, along the Mississippi, where the trains used to pass – down a tunnel of trees. One Spring, on Arbor Day, he forced me to go with him to a park and plant a maple tree with other community volunteers. It has been 14 years since we lived together as a tiny family. We don’t have a house anymore, no rights to land, arbors or foliage. Recently he talks about going back to that park to find our tree in the park, and wondering how tall it is now. I imagine it shading passers-by, untouched by discrimination.

Cycling in Minneapolis

2009-06-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

Speed Market

2008-12-02T18:31:00.000-08:00

This is not Taiwan, but if you watch through the end you'll get a sense of the malleability of the yieh si. We live in such a regulated society!

New Playsuit (Un-ironed, Unfitted, Unkempt)

2008-11-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

Still needs some serious finagling, but my machine is acting up. You can see where I'm headed?

+

=
?

'Stamboul 2008

2008-11-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

Tophane Camii

Süleymaniye Cemetary

İstiklal Alleyway

Korea Air

2008-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Waiting at the gate for my flight from SFO to TPE, I caught a glimpse of some Korea Air and (its subsidiary?) Asiana Air hostesses. I suffered a bit of uniform envy mainly due to their headgear. In the search for these photos, I found this poor soul's website. Good for him anyway.

Airline uniform design is perhaps one of the last undefined pockets of fashion to be explored. Can it be pushed farther? In the modernized Western world (please prove me wrong), we have already lost most, if not all, of our formal trade-worker attire. Can this monotonous current ever be reversed? Shouldn't there be anything spicy about people who work in a certain hospital, or the DMV, etc?

slippers make the scene complete

2008-11-05T23:15:00.001-08:00

slippers make the scene complete, originally uploaded by formica.

My friend in Tainan takes really nice photos.

Hagia Sophia in 3D! Part One of Three or Four

2008-11-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the size issue. I'm too impatient to solve it at the moment.

The Simpson Tribe of Minneapolis

2008-10-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Ancestral Toys

2008-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Wee Winnie Wierdo

2008-10-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Reading about an acquaintance's close encounters with racism in Bulgaria this morning stirred some of my early memories. One, of kids coming up to me or my sister to say "CHING-CHONG CHING-CHONG!" and run away laughing. Sometimes they would stick around to ask me what they had said, with the conviction that it HAD to mean something. Our cousins in Minnesota would do that to us too. After a couple of these episodes, even earnest attempts to learn something from me about my cultural experience seemed vaguely threatening.
Another memory involves a cabbage patch doll I had. It was a love-hate relationship, because they were totally hideous dolls, but my sister was collecting them so competition and convenience of Christmas shopping made them a necessary population in my own toys. One day, I decided to take an ink pen and draw a big red dot on the forehead of my black cabbage patch, Mimi. It looked so pretty! I ran to the bathroom and made one for myself, not as neatly, but...wow, Mimi and I had entered new identities! Later, my dad took us to a park, me with my bold new mark. I met a girl at the top of the monkey bars and said, "Do you know why I have this red dot? It's because I'm Indian!" She turned around and walked quickly away. Why wasn't she impressed? I made no further attempts to recruit others to my Indian club, and Mimi went to the Goodwill when we left Indiana. I hope she was adopted. Her dot was really special.

More Tainan, and Some Minneapolis

2008-10-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

CKS Across the Ages

2008-09-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Remindings from The Serpent and the Rainbow

2008-09-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of a delightful book, on loan to me. The first pages are accounts of an Amazonian trek, which called to mind my favorite Herzog documentary so far.

The heroine of the film is kin (by marriage and profession) of a unique man, author and naturalist Berndt Heinrich. He mentions his connection to Ms. Köpcke at end of The Snoring Bird. Professor Heinrich is also a mentor of my dear friend Mr. Eiseman, who tells us that Heinrich, an ultra-marathoner, once experimented with long-distance racing while imbibing only beer. This man deserves his own Herzog spotlight.

N-E-way...Serpent and the Rainbow deals with the history and ethnobotany of Haiti. So we must pay homage to other great works inspired by these subjects.

Excerpt:

The book seems to prove Attenborough's thesis of "everything is everywhere" - at least in it's discussion of Datura and it's relatives. I'm hoping Mr. Eiseman will soon provide us with an exciting quote on the potency of said plant.

Meanwhile, take a look at this bloke. Henry Wellcome was also into plants, among other things. What a model of man!

Nice catch, EBA!

cell phone peeks in Tainan

2008-09-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

SCOOTopolis

2008-09-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

From the Bad Hair Annals

2008-09-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

I can only assume why my young mommy wrote on the back of this school photo....

Buddha Boxes Fever

2008-09-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

I first became aware of these wonderful machines of religion at my aunt's house. This was the plug-in type they'd use to keep the chants a-rockin' while they were out. Much more common seem to be the type I got from Hsi Lai Sı, where I nabbed a few for flee-ninety-nine a couple years ago. This led to a mistaken impression that I'd find them aplenty and cheap in Taiwan. Aho! They were to be found in pricey Buddhist gift shops and flea markets for not much less. I'm hoping Hsi Lai Sı is still in stock.

slim pickins of holga shots in Tainan, lovely Tainan

2008-09-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

SO FAR, IN A NUTSHELL

2008-08-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Which, by tradition and current proof, turns out to be much bigger than we think...this is Taiwan.

Sasha is here.

I am here.

There is Fire.

There is Water.

from the desk of Cinnabar Red

2008-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to turn down a free pass into the unknown mountains of central western Taiwan. Here's a little song about me:
"Sen2 Jin1 Bing4
Yo2 Mao2 Bing4
Ai4 Tze1 Ta1 De2 Wei2 Ta1 Min4"
It means "Crazy, Has a Problem, Loves to eat Vitamins!"

Instead of enjoying the majesty of Nature, my Dad and I went to Sun Yat Sen Memorial. And we made fun of these guys.

We went up to the balcony to watch, mimicking and talking about flies, sneezes, and itches. I can't watch the video right now so I don't know if it shows how there's a guy who comes up to them after their little dance up to the pedestals, and he straightens their clothes for them.

CJ7 Roach Scene:
I'm now staying with a friend. Her name is Cinnabar Red. She's letting me stay while she goes to one of the islands. I'm a little scared that now it's just me and them now. They keep running into me. I don't like them. They make me feel crazy and want to murder. They run like they're guilty, and I think they are. They are big. The one that ran out from under the laptop, which earlier ran into my hand and then I tried to shake out of hiding, was like 3 inches. It made a thud when it ran into my finger. I washed my finger. Everyone please pray that I don't see any flying ones. Or any more at all, ever, please God?

Departing Excorsises

2008-08-05T22:05:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me miss, you're going to have to open up that bundle."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am almost ready for another take-off. I whipped up this suspicious looking package today in a spare half-hour, in order to protect, serve and Be Prepared.

For, I must boast - I'm making off with a few rolls of SINGLE-8 FILM, and a very compact, chic li'l movie camera:

In other updates, I wasn't sure what we were going to do in Kaohsiung. People often mention like you haven't been to Taiwan AT ALL if you haven't been to Kaohsiung, yet I can't recall what's so happening there. Sure, Love River. Delicate, unique cuisine, as in every part of the island. Flea market treasures of Asia! But what makes the city worthy of entry into that anxiety-producing volume, 1000 Places You Must See Before You Croke?
A: I found out in a one-minute Wikipedia search on Kaohsiung. It's the 2009 World Games! All the miscellaneous sports that haven't made it into the Olympics YET, as if you didn't know. Although I reckon that once they expand Lifesaving to include other events, there will be no stopping the sport.
If you have any strong feelings about this, or other unknown sports, or what I must be doing for a weekend in Kaohsiung, please contact me via the comment link.

Bulgaria in 3D!!!

2008-07-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

Directions for viewing.

a top is a top is a magic topaç

2008-07-18T01:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was wandering and came upon this little street (everywhere is a little street with a mix of glorious old buildings in various states of decay but) which had almost no car traffic, with kids playing and laundry out. There were woodshops up and down the street, and I stopped to marvel at a man wading through wood shavings in a tiny shop with a loft. He was mostly a lather and welcomed me inside when he saw me staring. Picking out a wooden top out of a lidded lathed bowl of tops, he gave it a spin on the band saw. He said I could play with it and he didn't seem to expect it back.

His shop.

Benim topaç.

Hacı Aslanlar

2008-07-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

First the şalvar.

How to travel with wooden spoons.

The bus stop is a nice place to hang out.

They are shaded and in the trees by the road, some simple decks.

We will find some more at a lovely spot near the village.

Who is at Grandma's?

Let me see....

Ah! You're a little fuzzy.

Kim var??

Maşallah, Maşallah!

Rumeli Hisarı and cemetary surprise

2008-07-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

In my hood...Bozkurt Mahallesi

2008-07-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am staying with my friend here in Istanbul, and she tells me her neighborhood is a mish-mosh of long-established Armenian families & Christians, trendy students and Transgendered folks. This makes for a very lively environment here on Eşref Efendi Sokak, sometimes at all hours of the day and night. At first I was a little sad that I can only hear one muezzin at prayer times, but I am not missing out on the Aygaz song (maybe you can find an example on youtube- it's banned here! x-( ).
On my daily walk up the street to the main intersection, I have come to know the shops, grocers, kuaförü, decayed buildings, and the various sleeping dogs and cats and the order in which I'll encounter them. The animals are more predictable than the construction wreckage or the games and hijinks of the children. Anyway, Burcu explained to me how the Armenian families living up on the upper floors often call down to the shop owners from their windows to get such and such, lowering baskets. With their accents, as a whole it is free entertainment.

İstanbul

2008-07-07T02:31:00.000-07:00

The Rest of Bulgaria part 1

2008-07-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

Next Days in Sofia

2008-06-27T02:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I have been spending more time with Angela, and staying at her apartment in the center of the city with Martha, who is rejoining the choir from Athens. We have been walking to the National Palace of Culture (NDK) for the TV show and rehearsing for our concert tomorrow. This morning we visited the Philip Koutev choir. Then I came to Angela's apartment to sleep since I have gotten a bad cold, while the rest of the group went to Bistritsa to meet with some "Grannies" who have a vocal ensemble. When they came back, I had slipped into a mind-altering, exhausted slumber on the floor for 5 hours. We took a cab to a local restaurant with excellent live musicians and folk dancing. A few of us got up to sing one of our Pirin songs with the band, and plug our concert.
The Philip Koutev ensemble was an emotionally saturated meeting and I am still replaying the scenes in my mind. Tzvetanka introduced us to the conductor of the past 13 years, who had been her first teacher when she was just 14 tender years. He came out of an office as we entered the corridor leading to their sunny, stifling rehearsal studio. She told us "The most important person in my life was this man." He seemed quiet and approachable, of small stature and large-hearted. They had prepared a mini-concert for us, during the first half-second of which we were spellbound and devastated by their collective voice and the beauty of the music being executed with such power. We did our best to put more feeling into two tighter songs from our repertoire. They seemed to genuinely appreciate us, and made remarks about our perfect pronounciation and how much Tzvetanka's daughters have grown. To me, the power in this ensemble is really the story of all these women who have invested their lives to it, throughout so much turmoil - personal, social and economic. None of these superb musicians and performers can make ends meet without a separate career. And yet what they do together is incomparable.
When they opened their mouths, a sonic force entered the space from the center, creating a single, dimensionless portal in the fabric of reality. Words fail me now.
Maybe I'll post some images of other things later.

First Days in Sofia

2008-06-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

I made my sketchy connection in London. The "carry-on luggage only" was a successful plan. I ran from the arrival gate in Heathrow, through customs and on to the Central Bus Station and caught a bus leaving ten minutes before the one I scheduled. There was no traffic to Gatwick.
I arrived in Sofia about 20 hours after taking off from LA. The airport was even smaller than I remembered from 2005. After looking around for my ride and being harassed by taxi drivers, I thought there must be a mistake. The ATM was out of service and no currency bureau was open, so I asked the woman in the information booth if she spoke English. She helped me to ward off a pushy taxi driver while she called our teachers' home every few minutes. Apparently a new airport terminal was built recently and everyone else in the group had arrived there, a mile or so away. They had assumed I was coming in there. This was only one of a long string of travel complications. With 20 girls and a band, all with separate arrangments, you can imagine.

Anyway, I made it to their home dirty, tired and hungry. I hurt my neck/shoulders pretty bad lifting my luggage around and being cramped up on planes. Going on a 5 hour walking tour of Sofia didn't help me. Especially in the heat. But I didn't get to see any of the city last time I was here so I wanted to push myself. Long-time expat (Minnesota native) and former choir-founder, Angela, led us around to churches, mosques, parks, etc. Here is a natural spring in the middle of the city where people come to fill up bottles. The water is hot, and Myra said she saw a man washing his dishes there yesterday.

After our tour, we went to a rehearsal of the National Radio Folk Orchestra, in a bright room on the top floor of an old building. The rehearsal space is accessed by a stairway off the street in between some random shops, so it felt clandestine. Being in the middle of these musicians was a world of difference from the recordings I know. They are on the bill, along with other all-star Bulgarian folk groups, for our concert on Thursday.

Then we came home to cook, have dinner, and rehearse a little bit.

As I write this post, the group has gone to the TV station to do a PSA to announce the big event. It's nice to have a little time to myself, although I worry that this injury is going to keep me from doing other things and I ought to be resting right now. Later this afternoon we will be on a popular show, Slavi Trifonov. I think I'll go even if I'm stiff all over. It will only add to our groups' freakishness.

PREVIOUS TRIPS

2008-06-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Past.
While in Minneapolis
I rescued
these photos
and other
memorabilia
from the time when
my mom worked
as a translator
for Suzuki.
(She started studying Japanese in high school.)

Postcard.
They sent her on trips to Japan and San Francisco. From Japan she visited a friend in Taiwan. This was before she met my dad, who moved from Taipei to Minneapolis around that time.

Painpost.
Upon her return she suffered her first psychotic break, but not knowing what it was, she somehow was able to hold herself together enough to go to college, where she met my dad, etc...

Post-marker.
30 years later, around the same age as she was then, I went to Japan. Pictures I took /Mom & twin wearing yukata.

Parasols.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then how many memories is it worth?

I went to Japan,
but I couldn't follow you into every temple.

лято 夏天 yaz saati 2008 Itinerary

2008-06-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

June 3-13, Minneapolis MN

23 юни - 23 Temmuz, Bulgaria/Turkey via London

7th 八月 - 2nd 九月 Taiwan