The Google Streetview cars have been venturing further and further afield recently, making forays even into small-town Oklahoma, so I did a little searching and was able to find the places I visited on holidays as a child after long rides in the back seats of huge Buicks, to houses with old people, cigarette smoke, pecans and dripping-oil china sets.

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First up is the house of my great grandparents, whom I only remember vaguely as being very well-dressed and dapper (as far as I could tell from ankle-height). We visited my great-grandfather Will at the rest home once, but I don’t recall much about him. After they died, we went through their house and retrieved, among other things I’m sure, a very comfortable rocking chair. In the garage out back was a classic vintage 1950’s two-tone Buick.

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Next is my maternal grandparents’ place, the one constant location of my childhood as we moved here and there across the country in the steps of my father’s aerospace career. It was here that my grandfather beheaded a mole with a hoe in front of me, shocking my mother. My parents and my grandparents would argue a lot, which didn’t understand as it involved inheritances and wills (I still don’t understand it, actually). At one point my grandparents had a waterbed that a lot of fun to bounce on, but if you were sleeping in the room that used to be the garage, as I always did, there were no bathrooms to use until the grown-ups got up in the morning, resulting in me waking everyone up by setting off the burglar alarm when I tried to go outside to find a bush to pee in. The garage/guestroom did, however, have a Steinway piano and an organ with all kinds of funky sounds available by pressing down colored tabs labeled “bosanova” and “waltz”. As there were no kids my age to play with, I would borrow a bicycle that was too big for me and ride east, up Main Street, which looks pretty much as sad and empty as it did in the early 1970’s.

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Finally, my paternal grandparent’s house. I never knew my grandfather, as he died when I was very little, so this house was to me, my grandmother’s house. My grandfather had been a carpenter and had built and designed not only the house but much of the furniture. The house itself was an odd, ramshackle thing, mostly garage downstairs with a narrow living room and kitchen, and no actual doors, just curtains hanging in the frames. My grandmother drove a dull gold 60’s Nash Rambler that still bore her husband’s initials on the doors. I remember wondering at the blue flames shooting out of the gas stove and the tepid skim milk served with breakfast. One thing I don’t recall there is arguments, as my grandmother seemed pretty upbeat and happy. The backyard was long and thin as well due to the unusually sized lot. I’m not sure if I ever actually made it to the end, but I do recall vegetable gardens and hanging plants here and there. It seems a sad, rundown place now, though.

2009年已經快要過一半了， 好久沒有在這寫東西。 繁瑣的電影剪輯暫告一段落， 最近又開始編輯台灣饅

There have been activities around the park for the last couple of weeks. Last week is was Buddha’s birthday party or something, which involved lots of chanting. I practiced with Yang Qingfeng, who hasn’t been to class in a while and says he’s out of shape. He’s still far better than I am, however, out of shape or no. The guy in the yellow shirt from the picture told me his secret was practicing by tossing water high in the air.

This week a DPP protest was organized nearby, so again, a lot of people walking by. My leg’s been sore lately for some reason, so I was taking it easy when I practiced with Little Qin, who was echoing Obi-wan Kenobi’s line of “Your eyes can deceive you; don’t trust them.” He also told me that there was always room for a little more retreat, and I had a vision of myself as a storage room that could always be rearranged with a little more space at the back if needed. It was surprisingly effective. He also practiced “sticking swords” with me; it’s been a while since I did that, and it was refreshing. The wooden swords are lighter than I’m used to, but it was educational.

Small, occasional drops of rain fell on us as we practiced. Little Mountain Pig taught me a fulcrum-like arm turn that is useful, if tiring. I’m realizing that alot of the time, angles of attack are really important.

Summer has pretty much arrived; it’s time to stuff all the winter things into big, transparent plastic bags and vacuum them into thin, portable slabs to be stored under the bed. The windows are open all the time, and the world outside has graduated from the slimy spring moss into a drier, hotter state. Though I sometimes feel burdened by niggling details and obligations to other people these days, I’m trying to use my mornings for more productive activities than just sitting around reading Internet articles by and about various idiots. I’ve dug out my old book and am making some progress in re-writing it, something it needs desperately as my writing style of yore left much to be desired. It’s also good to get out from underneath the growing pile of unpublished photographs that has been piling higher and higher in recent months. I’m still not finished with posting the photos from Spain, and selecting various photos for competitions has made the unholy mess even harder to untangle. I was thinking of using weekends for photo processing, but then the weather is so nice I find myself out shooting even more photos to add to the pile. The obvious answer is to be more picky about which photos I bother keeping, and only post the ones I like the most and throw out the rest, but I have a packrat’s view on the subject and always feel like I might be throwing out a great shot that nobody, including myself, happens to be able to recognize as such.

I try to keep things simple because I am not good at organization, but simplicity is deceptively hard to attain. Taking this website for example; I’ve got it set up so that all I need to do is write and publish in WordPress to update, but many things are going on in the background that need updating. The WordPress version is out of date. The film site is way out of date and needs a complete overhaul. I’ve read that many people don’t consider someone a “real photographer” unless they have a dedicated domain called “JohnDoeImages” or “SallySomethingPhotography” with a suitably confusing flash interface and cryptic titles, but I can’t bring myself to actually do something like that when so many examples I’ve seen suck so badly. I’ll stay with Flickr for now, I think. I’ve got a few dozen photos in the Getty Collection through it, and I’ve sold a few others via Flickr, including one in The New Yorker, so it’s not completely ineffective.

Speaking of professional trappings, I walked into a camera equipment shop the other night (the one where you step down a few steps to enter; you know the one I mean), and the clerk walked up to me and then right past me to help the next person who had entered. When I finally got his attention, I asked about negative scanners, which they said they didn’t stock. He glanced at the camera hanging around my neck, the little Panasonic LX3, and actually snorted in a derisive fashion. I’d thought that this kind of thing only happened in old Fawlty Towers episodes, but apparently it happens in real life as well.

In other news, as nothing seems to be happening with the Ramblers, I’ve decided to consider a summer gig with some other local musicians, travelling around the island on weekends to play in a series of bars. We got together last night to see what was what, and it was pretty dismal. The only bright spots were when we took off on our own in between practicing the songs we were supposed to be playing. Still, I suppose there’s hope. Though it’s only been a few months since my last trip, I really wouldn’t mind a few days somewhere else. This is, of course, Paul Theroux‘s fault.

Not much has happened since the last post six months ago. I know, not the most exciting thing to read. I haven’t done anything but a couple of travel videos in the time since. Darrell is still working on the sound, and he expects to be working on it until the end of the year. After he gets all the dialog synced up he will hand it back to me for some final editing before he puts the music in.

In the meantime, I have a couple of ideas in my head for another project, a bit smaller than the last one and something I hope I can really sink my teeth into. A local project that takes advantage of the resources at hand here in Taiwan instead of trying to depict other places, a Taiwanese story with local actors. Something more intimate. Something I can get my head around, in other words. I’m not sure what camera I would use to shoot such a project, as my DVX100 can’t produce HD video. I have a Canon 5DII that can, but only at 30fps, and the production capabilities are limited without major investment in supporting equipment. I might make some music videos with the 5D just to see how it works.

But it’s not necessary to decide things like that at this point. Right now I just want to sketch out the story, fill in the details and make sure it’s not just a tale I want to tell, but a tale I can tell. I’m thinking a cast of maybe a dozen at most, limited to a handful of locations, all in Taipei. A small story with a big impact. Something I can tweak and manage. But I’m still working it out.

The usual crowd at the park this morning. Little Qin was chatting with Teacher X, while Mr. V and Little Mountain Pig practiced with some guys from other groups. I warmed up with the empty-handed form before practicing with Little Qin. I told him about the photos I took a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about just what was going on there. He told me that there are many things going on that are no immediately apparent to the outside eye. “When he exerted force, I internalized it and jumped back,” he said, adding that Master Song and Master Yu, our “fore-teachers” as it were, did similar things when practicing with students. He related a story about when a well-known martial artist was going around challenging people. Eventually he challenged Little Qin, and they had an exchange where the guy pushed Little Qin away in an apparent “victory”. But such were the subtleties of the exchange that both the martial artist knew what had really happened, and the guy told Little Qin “You’ve got class.” After that he stopped going around challenging people.

We worked on the concept of “attraction”, i.e. pulling your opponent off balance with a combination of subtle moves and will/intent. “Most practitioners can use their palms like suction cups,” Little Qin said. “If you’re really good, you can do it with any part of your body, creating a well into which your opponent’s energy falls.”

“Or like air into a vacuum,” I said.

“Yeah. Use the contours of your opponent’s body,” he said. “Now grab my shoulder blade and pull me around.” But, try as I might, I couldn’t find Little Qin’s shoulder blade. I did manage to pull him around a few times, despite the roundness of his back.

Teacher X suggested that I practice with someone outside our group, and introduced me to an older fellow wearing dark blue. Practicing tuishou with him was like pushing wet noodles. Very animated wet noodles. He was pretty good, and polite enough to keep it mellow.

Later, after I went through the sword form a few times, Little Qin told me that I had the moves down but not the spirit. I told him I was looking for some video of the forms done in our style, and he said he’d look into making some later, when he could “get back into it.” He said that, like me, he has trouble keeping various forms in mind at the same time, no doubt a bigger problem for him as he has studied stick, baton, sword, scimitar, fan and empty-handed forms. “But it’s like pointing at the moon,” he said, alluding to the title of a book on Taoist philosophy. The phrase basically means, that, once you’ve pointed out the moon to someone, the fingers you’ve used to point are no longer important.

As I was preparing to leave, I was drawn into a conversation with a small man sitting and talking with Little Mountain Pig. He said his name was Lin Hong-yu, and that he was a former national champion. He said he wanted to teach me “real” martial arts, which he said was Southern Style Kung-fu. “All of this,” he said, waving his hand at the people practicing in the area, “this is all useless. A kid in an alley could whoop your ass.”

Little Mountain Pig was smiling. Lin went on about how he could make me a master and I could teach in Taiwan and abroad, etc. I waited until he was talking to Pig before making a quiet exit.