Opened Once

 

Taipei, Taiwan | Christmas, 2010

I once was open, and one with a traveling heart.
I loved this sweet god.
Just like the fiction rushing in your riverbed,
Arise like applause in my head.
And in the half-light, where we both stand
This is the half-light, see me as I am.

~ Jeff Buckley

How it ends

My pieces of 2010.

Some video, some stop-motion, some slideshow, some highs, some lows, some revelations:

ICP and beyond – My year at the International Centre of Photography, New  York

Pre-Games – When friends come over for the party before the party

In the early AM – Heading downtown in a cab, late one night/early one morning with Ling

Sneak peek – A cracked window on how I like to “work”

Escape to Fort Myers – Brief respite from New York in Florida

Insomnia – No sleep in April

Loss – I lost someone

Getting personal – Understanding what it means to be separate

From England to Australia – Journeying away on wobbly post-ICP legs

x Ying + Ling

 

How it begins

Slate grey landscapes beneath a dissolving pink haze sky
(Translucent coin of a moon rolls slowly overhead)
Slim boats moored up for the night
Single neon lights
Fade in
Slow cruise home

(Hello you)

Somewhere along the Dan Sui River | Taiwan

Roots

My father. All he did was work. Work and spend time with us. I didn’t have him around for half of my childhood, lost to the office in another country, the office that was a home, where he worked, slept, ate. Those long weeks where I cried myself to sleep every time I got scared that he wasn’t coming back. He built for me here. Everything I have.

A shophouse near Clarke Quay | Singapore

Homelanding

Where should I begin? After all, you have never been there; or if you have, you may not have understood the significance of what you saw, or thought you saw. A window is a window, but there is looking out and looking in. The native you glimpsed, disappearing behind the curtain, or into the bushes, or down the manhole in the main street – my people are shy – may have been only your reflection in the glass. My country specialises in such illusions.

…

In summer we lie about in the blazing sun, almost naked, covering our skins with fat and attempting to turn red. But when the sun is low in the sky and faint, even at noon, the water we are so fond of changes to something hard and white and cold and covers up the ground. Then we cocoon ourselves, become lethargic, and spend much of our time hiding in crevices. Our mouths shrink and we say little.

…

By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, take me to your leaders. Even I – unused to your ways though I am – would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings amongst us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.

Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.

These are worth it. There are what I have come for.

~ Excerpts taken from Homelanding, in the book “Good Bones” by Margaret Atwood

Succour and relief

Founded in 1682 by King Charles II and intended for the ‘succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war’. I walked amongst the cultivated roses, grapevines carefully nudged to life by veterans from the first world war. Listening to stories from another life, brought out and dusted off in a perfect English garden. He cut me down a peony, presented it with a flourish.

“The Royal Hospital Chelsea will be here for todays young soldiers on the front line when they retire.”

The Royal Hospital Chelsea
London, England

Body from the reservoir

He told me that he had to pull a body from the reservoir the other day. Bloated, afloat, stagnant water and the tropical green, almost visceral. A concerted effort to remain stoic. It’s all part of the service apparently. Ruff, Shaf and Nat – halfway through their mandatory term in the army.

National Service, Singapore.

Too much gin, not enough tonic

December in Saigon. 2:something am. Colonial relics and disco lights. Streaking through the streets on the back of Kevin’s bike. I hang on tight. Miss Maitland and a sparkly little number. Too much gin, not enough tonic.

When it happens

New people, walking into my life, unfamiliar voices from familiar smiles that I recognise immediately as one of my kind. A saunter through the half light beaded sweat of Siem Reap, arm in arm, bursts of laughter – the kind that explodes.

When it happens, I wonder how I got so lucky.

Kapil, Kosuke and Veejay | Siem Reap, Cambodia