Welcome back to the way it was.

I watched a part of a pretty bad movie last nite; and Shirley McClaine was in it and at one point in the movie she said, "If you haven't been through a divorce, you haven't lived." It stopped Jennifer Aniston's character dead in her tracks. At another point in the movie J. Aniston is swept off her feet by her own father and they have sex and he asks her to break up with her fiance to spend an extended fling with him in the California Wine Country. I fell asleep so I don't know what she decides, but you know they weren't married, let alone divorcing, yet that sounds like living some kind of life to me. I think I've "lived" lived a decent amount so far. I remember every passion and the accompanying confused, maybe-irresponsible choices that tumble out when they are played upon. I remember every break-up I've ever been through. But that was before I took pictures. I will remember today. But maybe I will remember today more like the story my pictures tell than the way it actually went down. It was a weird day, but all at once, it was rather the same, but then while simultaneously being the same in dimension and appearance it was confusingly weird and wholly unclassifiable in terms of any other day I've ever "lived."

Hospital Heart

CHalloween (china + halloween)

Happy Halloween everypeople! I will really miss not being in Tucson this year for All Soul's Procession and all the fun of making masks outside of BICAS. FYI: Scott S. is holding my maskheadcreations from the previous 2 years if anyone needs to borrow. Meanwhile, we are Livin' it up between the Moon and Beijing City.

Apocolyptic Fetish Yen Party

Sea Bag

Tonight, I attended another school banquet. My school sent some students to Ireland this summer and tonight was a show and tell: a night of preteens acting in skits and giving speeches and kind of singing songs, sort of. Best part, of all the best parts, was that it was in one of the many HYPER-GLORIUS sea food restaurants around Shijingshan. These places are bonanzas of golden tin foil and vaulted ceilings and mazes of aquariums of crustaceans and many a shark fin with red bows in frames, they even have two live SEA LIONS swimming fancy free in a little pool. And everyone loves them and never eats them! They call them Hai Bao, which literally means "Sea Bag" and I couldn't, oh so, agree any more! Here's just a little of the visual and epicurious glory.

Sea Bag

Soggy.

Soggy Night

I didn't go on a run tonight because I had a headache all day. Plus, I wanted to do something else. So I assembled a particleboard gun from a kit, watched some bits from an old Iranian movie called The Traveller about a misfit kid who hangs out in the Tehran alleys and takes pictures, then watched some photographers from my massive photography documentary on DVD. Its good. Everythings good. I went on a late night walk. I forgot to to take the toy gun. Came across a few characters and I was briefly interrogated by 2 police on bikes when they found me taking pictures of a little construction zone. No problems, I told them. I smiled a lot. Smiling helps. One of them patted me on the shoulder; though he didn't smile while he did it, it was still reassuring.

Gently Oxidizing.

Wuyi Public Primary School has been pretty rough on me the last 2 days. Everyday (except for Friday), I teach two classes of 40 six year olds. They can barely write and hardly read and have no english, which is fine, but there are 40 of them. The building is old and the corridors are echo-y. I have to speak in a booming head voice to keep their attention, but also I compete with the the unison chanting, screaming choruses and thunders from the other English teacher's classes up and down the corridor. Sometimes I feel I might faint from light-headedness. And lately, I have been getting yawn attacks in the middle of class, due to lack of oxygen, I suspect. I need to learn how to breath and boom-talk simulataneously. Today, I felt particularly defeated, which is unusual. My students are lovely and they are mostly eager, but their numbers are getting to me. I left the first period in a frustrated blur of "GoodByes"(evading the other teachers at our hangout spot). I had a brief moment padding toward the communal bathroom where I was thinking "This sucks. I hate this." But actually, I have never thought this before, never, ever in all of my teaching thus far. In fact, its been rather okay, with big ups and big downs, up until today. I quite like teaching. Certainly, this is just an off week. I needed to dissipate so I took 10 minutes at break and meandered in the old living quarters behind the classroom building with my new camera. This is where the school chefs, janitors, groundskeepers live, and maybe even the teachers, I bet probably even the teachers. I felt a whole lot better afterward. I call the pictures a "A place for it."

A place for it.

My Neighborhood Market

Bonus: After school I went to the market.

Bits from a Long Day, Tuesday.

(First, I show you these "do-selfs" to show the camera. This is the camera. The camera I bought yesterday. )


Can you find the lady below, above?

 

 
 
 
  

 
 
 
  

 
 
 
  

I bought a NEW CAMERA!

Oh Heck its happiness, techinically its FUJIFILM S9600 FINEEPICS. But I LOVE! Here are some, just some.

My New Camera

Lovebies!

I'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVEI'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVE.I'M IN LOVE.
YAMUACHI KAZUAKI

SLIDESHOWS FOR YOU.

Textures and Reflectures

Oct 8, 2006 - 9 Photos

Postures

Oct 7, 2006 - 9 Photos

Trees, Lines, Lamps, Buildings

Oct 8, 2006 - 13 Photos

National Holiday and the NO+CH Festival

This last week was China's week of National and Mid-Autumn Holidays. I had no work. I didn't travel and I also had no camera. (And still don't, its beyond broken now.) But this week was truly great great fun. For the past 4 days I have attended a music event. The first was a fairly big Rock and Beer fest just up the street. That was okay, most all of the teachers went, and I got ot see Hang On the Box (pretty famous all girl Chinese punk band) and witness how the police march around the fairgrounds, despite the concert being the tamest I have ever been to. The last 3 nights were the real treat. I attended the Nordic and Chinese Music Festival (NO+CH) way faraway in Lido Park. It was in Nhu Loungewhich is pretty much the fanciest bar/restuarant I have ever been to and the crowd were the standard fashionable European and hipster Chinese artsy types. Everyone was dressed fabulously. (Even me!) The MUSIC was, no doubt, some of the best I have EVER seen performed live. The sets ranged from modal string jazz, to Guqin (chinese zither), to just mega-good DJ after DJ. The Nordic jazz and DJ artists were so different than anything I had heard before. My two favorite by far were the Ola Kvernberg Trio (upright bass, drums, and a virtuoso violinist) and Kim Hiothoy, a visual artists who I was familiar with, but had never heard his fancy-free funk beats. He had the glorius visualizations of scampering deer across landscapes of Urban dystopia but also scampering in space grids and there was a cartoonish vampire playing a synthesizer keyboard. in a some kind of space-time continuum of my dreams! I stayed each night dancing for hours and hours, in a HannahDanceTrance. And I made some party friends! Superbness!

I REALLY love Edward Vint FOREVER.

('05 Laguna Beach photos by David Bower (who I also love fvr!))