Reunited

Your white sports car is maybe the only thing different about you. That, and your hair which used to be long, blond, rebonded and reached halfway down the tattoo on your back. Groovy, but not the right do for corporate whores.

Time wanted to make a 3-year getaway. It knocked us out first. You still quote lyrics and lines from movies. You still keep that pinkie nail long. And you still dig Kurt and Red Hot Chilli Peppers — those prima donnas whose concert we waited 1.5 hours for in a humiliating queue. Also, when you flicked your zippo, it was deja vu.

You told me you cried watching Star Wars Return of the Sith. And when I told you about my favourite scene in Lord of The Rings where Merry the hobbit sang about the good old days while his friends died in battle, you remembered it just as vividly.

We both also remember the rude thing you said on my 20th birthday.

By the way, I forgive you. Because you're cool. And since we have so much in common, it means I'm cool too.

Lights of Taipei 3 

Lights of Taipei 2 

Lights of Taipei 1 

Like the arms of a Shanghai girl 

Ode to the bohemian

I am deeply envious of the singing bohemian in Agnes Varda's "One Sings, the Other Doesn't". She travels into forgotten towns bringing her sweet voice and music. Man is bourgeois, and woman proletariat, she sings, telling of housewives who bring their men their breakfast and morning paper. With a swollen belly, she sings that the pregnant tummy is a balloon, a cocoon, or a cookie filled with fortune. Her face shining like a flourescent lamp, hair a tangled web of strawberry curls. I so longed to be her, barefoot, in loose blouses that billowed in the wind.

Her Iranian husband had a bordering-on-gay wardrobe, tan skin, unkempt hair and bell bottoms that went on forever. He fell headlong into her life, but she left him for a career on the road.

Now, unfortunately, there aren't anymore Romantics from the sixties. We are left with only peasant blouses, billowing in air conditioning.