To Trim Perceptions

1.      Can’t propel myself to write today. 2.      Stopped by Manuel’s office to fix the form. 3.      Still raining. 4.      Read more on Charles Brockden Brown tomorrow.

The hypnotic prose of Nightwood produces certain hallucinations via a profusion of personas and locations, encrypted codes perceived in a vain strive for the forward momentum of plot. It seems exhaustive and carnivalesque, like Ulysses . Like Ulysses , it is constantly bounding and unraveling onto itself in an ecstatic fusion; yet, unlike Ulysses , it’s stubborn loquacity doesn’t irritate me. I’ll keep mining through the text for charming hendiadys and possibly escaped meanings. P.S., should not even compare with Ulysses . I am as of this moment putting Joyce away and leaving only Barnes and the lean arabesque form of a woman on the table.

  獨自在台北街頭行走，試著聽音樂調節自己的心情，卻不斷被來自從前的思緒纏上。南門市場、永康街、大安公園。星巴克、茉莉書店、人行空橋。熟稔的巷口、吵過架的地方、夜半駐足的馬路。這個城市把我包得如此緊，我幾乎無法脫逃。記憶的浪潮強勁，與冷風一起充鼓我的腦海。 這些細碎真實的記憶，等我離開這裡之後，應該就會消散了吧。我愛的人和那些不愛我的人，很快也不會再迴盪。時間越來越稀薄，吸飽了幾乎要滿溢流出的現實。長長的風和慢慢的樹，煙火般的高樓與半頹的牆。我的台北快要結束了。我也只能繼續行走。

 I spent most of the day filling out a form, over and over again, in Manuel’s office. A form. A single form. What a wonder of precision and obstinacy! We would take turns tackling the keys, hawkeyed and embattled, chip chip chipping away at the august undertaking with a severity never afforded Sisyphus.   —Did it work in the end? —No, there were a couple of problems.   We’ll keep trying on Monday.

  今天一口氣看了整個下午的書，起身時頭暈目眩，意識語言突然變成中文。 也許是天氣轉涼了，最近比較深居簡出，畏光且厭食，成天在等待著甚麼事情發生。答應自己每天要早起、行走、寫字。似乎又回到了十年前的此時：初乍入世，不知道如何自處，只好依偎著文字。 而現代主義和陰性書寫推拒冰涼的現實，這樣保持著若即若離的關係──彷彿有意義又彷彿沒有──挨著秒針一步一步走到暮色泛起。又一天過去。一些微弱的勝利。

My writing has changed over the past few years. It used to be sensuous, wistful, and almost somnambulatory. Now it’s fragmentary, shot, and shorted. I suppose it’s my mind that’s changed. It’s decayed—collapsed into a splatter of spasmodic cells, sporadically firing at the light of the tangible world. Words awake, from time to time, peeking above the dark foamy sea of consciousness, and dissolve soon afterward. No relations make themselves known.  

  Living like a ghost in a castle. Floating around. Up and down the stairs. Reading dusty books. Half listening to music. Staying silent. All day long. A whisper. 

  What are you trying to write? Eating. Walking. Sleeping. Spending time. Waiting for things to change. How and when will things change? You read a little. Nor for long, just enough to make you feel less alone. Then you return to panicking. You wonder if you are trapped in a nightmare. The inability to do anything, the dumbfounding reality, the difficulty to connect with other living subjects—aren’t these all the constitutive elements of a dream? Except, they say, that you can’t write in a dream. Maybe writing is what you are using to resist the nightmare. Maybe through writing you can escape, like Sophie and Alberto. Then lucidity and control will return. But what if you never wake up? What if you slowly wither in your velvet fortress? The white flowers are dying, they see, and the red curtains are staring into you, calling you out: Get ahold of yourself, you amoebic slug! The incandescent sap of loneliness is oozing out of you like tears. Hold it back. Hold it in. Your faltering brea

 I had a dream last night about packing. Clothes, shoes, skincare, makeup, books, electronics…everything meticulously put in its place, into oddly shaped baskets and bags that fit together into a pale mass. I don’t remember where I was setting off from, neither where I was going, but I was not planning to return. Sometimes I feel like my waking self is even less cognizant of what is going on in my life than my sleeping self. The things I worry about—scholarships, jobs, thesis, and boys—float about in my head, pulling me in one way or another, keeping me in a constant state of mild panic.

  “Davey’s predilections as a writer echoes those she displays as an artist.”—Brian Sholis  Photography and writing comes together in Moyra Davey's works. It occured to me, after a painful night at this year's edition of Art Taipei, a frustrating morning with Gertrude Stein, and a quick run to the photo developement shop just now, that perhaps I, too, am a writer first and foremost, and a photographer second.  I have always struggled to express my obsession with abstract lines, shapes, and textures. I find these in contemporary art as well as poetry, and cherish the experience of looking at them--intensely--until they are fixed to my retinas. Is not this a kind of photography? The pleasure of this looking is extraodinarily similar to the pleasure of looking through a viewfinder. I lose the sense of time and space, and the pleasure of encountering this visual feast gushes forth from deep within my body.  The distinction, of course, is that photography has an end goal. It all sto