perishables

Arriving

2011-10-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

I have recently made a new solo. It is called Finding the Way from Everything to Nothing and was my response to a commission from the Dance Centre and the Canadian Music Centre, in which they paired me up with electro-acoustic composer Barry Truax. Initially annoyed with the music, entitled Sequence of an Earlier Heaven and based on the trigrams of the I Ching, I have come to be grateful for its rigorous beauty. I made a ritual out of ritual objects, Daoist and otherwise - Yarrow sticks, Joss sticks, Spirit paper and tobacco in the form of cigarettes. It was a ritual of arrival. A negotiation between the diasporaic history - with all the ruptures contained within it - I carry in my body and the colonial history - with all the ruptures contained within it - embedded in this land.

On hundreds of pieces of Spirit paper, the money one would burn as as offering to the ancestors so that they may shop in the after life, I wrote:

To my ancestors
and to the ancestors of the
Skwxwù7mesh,
the Tsliel-waututh,
the Xwméthkwiyem,
on whose territory
I dance.

I threw these objects onto the floor, into the air, and danced in the landscape that they made.
I received many positive responses.
But it didn't really matter.
I felt an incredible clarity and lightness after the performances - a rare thing as one usually crashes after the adrenaline.
I felt light because I had been dancing for non-humans and I knew deep in my body that they had received it.

The spaces in between

2011-09-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, on my way home in the mornings after waking up in the bed of my beloved, as I ride down the hill, I stop at Terra Breads, and have my soy latte there. I sit eating a cookie - I like cookies for breakfast - and stare into space among strangers and baked goods, finding quiet in my body, allowing the singing in my body to subside, and prepare for the next dance of the day.

The more love accumulates, the less space there seems to be.

But there is space. And sometimes, it is revealed through the meditation on how the sweetness of anise and almonds can come together in a perfect biscotti straddling the perfect place between hard and crisp.

The body is always political

2011-06-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

I am listening to the CBC and Michael Enwright is interviewing a poet. The poet has just said that societies that are in turmoil tend to look back to their poets to help them through difficult times. And when things are going well, they abandon them for "easier" forms of literature.

Some months ago, over dinner with Karen Jamieson, she said that dance on the whole is a benign form. It does no harm, she said. I am not so sure. If dance is so benign, why then, when governments and ruling powers want to control a people, is dance the first thing they ban or surpress? I think of the persecution of Sundance practitioners by the Government of Canada in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And more recently, the incidents at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in the U.S.

Perhaps when times are good, the people abandon powerful dancing for benign dance.

But it is time to bring back the real dance.

awake

2011-04-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

Today, my wise man (yes, these days, I have a wise man) said, if you are the only one awake, you end up doing all the work. That is just the way it is.

I guess that is why most people would rather stay asleep.

grace

2011-04-11T13:36:00.001-07:00

Last night, as I said goodnight to my child, he said, "Thank you, mama, for loving me the way you do"

decolonizing III

2011-04-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

The face of death has no eyes and no ears.
This is what I learned yesterday from a fierce warrior woman named Dorothy Christian.
And I learned, as she did, that there is no use talking to people who do not see you, who do not hear you.
I realize also, that it is important to peel off your own mask of death. Wake up your eyes, wake up your ears and see, listen.
Then learn to dance with the new sensations.
Peel off the flat floor that conceals the earth, the bones in the earth, the voids in the earth.
Feel the bones in your body, the voids in your body.
Then learn the dance that comes from connecting bone to bone, void to void.

I will dance for you

2011-04-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

When I say, "I will dance for you", I want it to mean, "I will dance on your behalf."

conditions

2011-02-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

Recently, a wise man said, "There is such a thing as unconditional love". For some reason, this took me by surprise.
Then, in a class, while on the subject of structural integrity, I said, "So that even if nobody loves you, you have that (the integrity of your structure)." This also took me by surprise. The fact that I said it. In fact, my eyes teared and my throat got sticky.
A wise student added, "It's unconditional." (Ah!)

Yesterday, Noah, who teaches me voice, said, "The breath you take is your birthright."

It occurred to me that all this while, I have been working with the conditions placed on love, alignment and breath; and that it is possible instead to trust in that place where there are no conditions.

vertical rituals

2011-02-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

It is Chinese New Year, and while in the past I have marked it by occasionally throwing huge feasts of Malaysian Chinese food, this year I am marking it with quieter rituals.

Mee Sua is a dish my grandmother used to make in the middle of the afternoon. Thin, delicate floury noodles that cook quickly in a pork broth made with ingredients found in the pantry and well-stocked freezer - a sauté of shallots and garlic, minced pork and preserved turnip as a base for a simple but comforting broth. A swirl of egg for added texture. A garnish of crispy fried shallots in oil to annoint.

Today, I started to make jiaozi, Northern chinese dumplings filled with pork and leeks (so alien to my South-east Asian displaced Hokkien childhood but adopted now as part of my North American Chinese identity) but decided to throw them into a pork broth instead of pan-frying them or boiling them. The result was a cross between Northern Chinese dumplings and Meehoonke - a handmade unfilled dumpling made by tearing bits of dough from a ball of dough, flattening them quickly into discs before throwing them into boiling broth in the wok. The starch in the dumplings thickens the broth into an unctuous gravy in which the chewy dumplings float. Again, this is what my grandmother would make for a peckish beloved child in the middle of the afternoon.

As I cook, I feel like I am convening with my ancestors in the kitchen.
As I serve it to Junhong, I feel as if I am throwing a feast that connects, vertically, my grandmother to my son.

Recovery rituals

2011-01-17T14:33:00.000-08:00

A big cock cures a headache.
A long swim clears the head.
And opera,
the loud and Italian kind,
opera clears the heart.

ruthless desire

2011-01-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I was told that to love means sometimes to protect the other from your own ruthless desire.
So I hold my bundle of ruthless desire against my breast.
And it sucks.
It bites.
It hurts.
(Love hurts)

Nothing left to do then, but to dance it out.
The audience does not need to be protected from your ruthless desire.
They have, in fact, paid for it.

decolonizing 2

2011-01-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

I woke up the other morning thinking that to make a dance is to construct a ritual that decolonizes our bodies. A ritual that frees us from straight lines and linear thought and re-awakens our bodies to their inherent capacity to attend to and negotiate the complexities of the world.

sugi cake

2010-12-29T20:08:00.000-08:00

This Christmas season, I have been thinking about Sugi Cakes - my way of holding on to a sense of myself amid a whirl of other people's Christmas needs and neuroses.

I have, in my collection of recipes, a recipe for Sugi Cake - semolina cake - that came from a handwritten book of recipes given to me by the aunt of an ex-boyfriend. She gave it to me as a sign of affection and welcome into the family. The boyfriend and I broke up later that year and the book has since disintegrated and been lost. But I copied this one recipe into another book for safe-keeping.

I made this cake once, a long time ago, within the first few years of my arrival in Canada. Perhaps I needed to hold on to a sense of myself amid the whirl of arriving in a new place. At that time, freshly departed from Malaysia, taste memories still sharp, my confidence in my ability to translate/adapt half-remembered words and measurements was high.

But I now look at the recipe with the antiquated measuring system and the imprecise names - kaundor? - and cannot so easily find this confidence.

Here is the recipe. Only ingredients. No instructions.

Sugi Cake
1 kati sugi
1 kati sugar
1 1/4 kati butter
1/2 kati kaundor
2 pieces preserved nutmeg
1 piece preserved lime
1 teaspoon rose essence
1/2 kati ground almonds
4 tahils flour
1/4 kati raisins
30 eggs
1/2 teaspoon each of ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves
1 wine glass brandy

I invite you to experiment, adapt, improve and share your results.

Happy New Year.

le bout du monde

2010-12-25T13:24:00.000-08:00

Tofino for Christmas.
I am on the edge of the world, surrounded by water, salty and fresh.
Somewhere
in the interrogations of time past
time future
time present,
I seem to have gotten lost.
While crossing the water on the ferry (perhaps the early morning darkness was a contributing factor), I fell into a funk of irrational heartbreak.

But yesterday, at the end of a journey through a storm of biblical proportions, there was a gift from the gods: a magnificent sunset to remind me that the present is full of joy and love, despite minor irritations.

fairytales

2010-11-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I have read to Junhong. For the last couple of years, it has been David who has had, or has insisted on, the privilege. Instead, Junhong and I, as our reading ritual, read our respective books in bed or on the couch together, exchanging interesting tidbits as they come along. Last week, however, he was felled by a bug and was in bed for 2 days. When I offered to read to him, he, in the spirit of nostalgia for babyhood, requested fairytales. So I read him "The Young King" by Oscar Wilde and cried while doing so. Then I read to him from the Book of Genesis. We both agreed that God was a punitive asshole.

clown

2010-11-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, in order to become a better clown, I went to see a therapist.
I told this to May Lyn, who thinks it is amusing. (See, already my strategy is working).
Then she told me (in the in-between language that we speak together),
"Between you and me, you clown ce n'est pas possible. Tu n'es pas assez tragique".

Day of the dead

2010-10-31T15:48:00.000-07:00

My love said to me, I want to love you a long time.

Then he branded me.
Or maybe it was the other way around.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present
(TS Eliot)

On my heart, death and creation.

birth day

2010-10-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Today, as I turn 46 and am thinking about how clown, dance, failure and heroism intersect in my childhood, I was offered this:

The baby is a bundle of ruthless desire.

shame

2010-09-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

In St. John's, Newfoundland recently, while at the Festival of New Dance, I saw Martin Bélanger's piece Spoken Word/Body. In it, he offers us a piece of text which he wrote a long time ago. He tells us, however, that we should know that he is ashamed of it. He is only putting that text in the piece because his collaborators insisted upon it. Then, he says, seeing as he is being paid to perform and the audience has paid to watch him, it is only fitting that he should be the one who is humiliated.

Shame and humiliation in an arena of commodification.

In that little scene, we are all implicated in this ritual of performance - the performer, the audience, the exchange of money. And by calling it for what it is, we are then able to see past the ritual and perceive the real pain and truth contained in the shameful text without feeling as if we have been manipulated by shameless sentimentality.

The following night, while in the middle of my own performance, I realized that in fact, The Whole Beast is full of things that I am ashamed of. The shame is about speaking the truth about yourself. And the line that divides the shameful from the shameless is very, very thin indeed.

To dance the truth is to dance on the treacherous edge of a very sharp blade.

obstacles and desire

2010-08-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

Dancing with Jung-Ah is an exercise in extreme faith and humility.
I am a crippled mortal next to a mythical creature.
If dance is an adjustment around our obstacles and our desires, then my body is the obstacle, Jung-Ah's dancing is what I desire. And I must have faith that the adjustment is enough. Because the attainment of desire is impossible.

decolonizing

2010-08-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

Someone said that the flat floor was a form of colonialism. The colonialism of straight lines and linear thought on a world of curves and complex textures.

While at Shangri-la, Jason's secret camping spot, a spot that requires bushwhacking through the forest, that requires climbing down a cliff while hanging onto dubious trees and even more dubious ferns, and finally a precarious hike upriver over sometimes-slippery rocks and boulders; it occurred to me that being there was a process of decolonizing my body.

A process of re-awakening my body to its inherent capacity to attend to and negotiate the complexities of the world.

contraptions

2010-07-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am collaborating with Steven Hill and Jesse Garlick on a performance contraption that will be an intersection of clown, dance and architecture.

Jesse offered us Martin Heidegger's thoughts on dwellings: that a dwelling should address the sky, the earth, yourself and the divinities.
Hence, we are trying to construct a dwelling that does all that, plus ask: can you build a dwelling out of materials, obstacles and desires?

It feels like we are trying to build a utopia.
Like all utopias, it will be full of failures.
And failure is where the clown and the dancer meet.

Perhaps I shall finally learn how to be funny.

peaches

2010-07-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I ate my first peach of the season. Blessedly, because it is rare to find a good peach even when in season, it was perfect. Thus, I announced, perhaps with a fair bit of hyperbole, that it was better than sex.

Junhong, who eats liver, sweetbreads, kidneys and chicken feet with gusto, but is fussy about fruit, tasted a sliver with trepidation and said, "THIS is better than SEX??? It's nasty!!!"

At 12, approaching puberty, he has a poor opinion of what lies ahead.

arriving

2010-07-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Years ago, whenever I flew from the home that I knew - Malaysia - to the home I adopted - Vancouver - I would weep copious amounts of tears, my heart breaking painfully (for a loss of wholeness that never was) for most of the journey across the Pacific. Then I would arrive and the toilets at the airport would be clean, the salty air would seduce me, and it was as if Vancouver were an amnesia-inducing anesthetic.

"How can I tell if love of life is not a delusion? How can I tell whether a man who fears death is not like a man who has left home and dreads returning? Lady Li was the daughter of a border guard of Ai. When the Duke of Chin first took her captive, she wept until her dresss was soaked with tears. But once she was living in the Duke's palace, sharing his bed, and eating delicious food, she wondered why she ever cried. How can I tell whether the dead are not amazed that they ever clung to life? (Chuangzi)

Lately I feel as if the last 20 years of being in this place, I was really still leaving that place: unable to properly see this place from the clutter and tangle of the things I carried.

But now, finally, I am arriving in this land, into this land. I arrive into a beauty hewn by violent geological upheavals. I arrive into a present made by violent upheavals and displacement of peoples from their land.

I arrive into a clutter and tangle of violence and ruptures that are so painful that we long for the anesthesia. We long for amnesia.

awesome, great and scary

2010-04-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, when I asked Natalie Lefebvre-Gnam about why she danced, she confessed that when she was younger, she just wanted to be "awesome", thereby reminding me that sometimes it was just that simple.

Last night, while eating dinner with Lisa Milloy at a French restaurant in Berlin (Bandol on Torstraße, for those of you who care about these things), I was reminded that awesome wasn't always so simple.

When the owner/manager came to clear the plates, and asked if everything had been fine, I said, It was AWESOME. And, Wie sagt man AWESOME auf Deutsch?

He said something in German and I think he was saying that there are many meanings and perhaps there wasn't the exact same word in German (So precise, Germans). He came back later and said, as if to share his discovery and maybe to ask for clarification, "Awesome means great and also means scary".

How delightful!
How wondrous!

Because recently, Marion and Janet, after watching The Whole Beast on video, had said it was "scary". Which means it is awesome.
And because in Natalie's confession, one can find in the youthful desire to kick ass, the desire also to be scary.

And because I am reminded that great food and great dance, like great sex, reminds us that life is great and scary.

interim

2010-04-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

I am busy processing thoughts about the architecture of obligation in performance spaces. I cannot articulate it yet. In the meantime, I discovered a delicious snack.

Cut up an avocado.
Drizzle with honey.
Sprinkle with salt.
Toss to coat, if you must.
Eat.

When I was pregnant, I ate, everyday, an avocado drizzled with heavy cream.
I got very fat.
The above recipe will make you less fat.

Objects and Matter

2010-02-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from a trip to Malaysia, which included a 10-day workshop with Malaysian artists, Jacqueline Ann Surin, Anne James, Hari Azizan and Tiffany Chew. We paid attention to our bodies and made objects out of energy. People came, sat among the objects and watched us move among the objects. They, in turn, left behind them imprints of their presence.

Photos by Jason of Tasik and Sungai, Burung dan Ikan.

while at home

2010-02-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a conversation with The Nut Graph, via Jo-Ann Ding.

clowns and terrorism

2009-11-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

I was talking to Steven Hill the other day.
He said, the clown breaks rules and is always political.
I said, what is the difference between a clown and a terrorist?
He said, the clown wants your love.

minimalism and maximalism

2009-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

To extrapolate then, from the last entry on emptiness and fullness, I suppose that the function of minimalism (say, in dance) is to call up my imagination and my attention. And the function of maximalism - I borrow this term from Cornelius - is to blast me into nothingness.

Somewhere here is a lesson in how to construct a mandala.

So is everything in between a mere opiate?

As an artist, how do I know when I am imparting immortality - through heightened attention - into mortal life and when I am just a drug dealer, constructing beauty only to lull people into unconsciousness.

emptiness and fullness

2009-09-15T11:36:00.001-07:00

On the road trip from Regina to Vancouver, driving through miles and miles of prairie, I could not get enough of the sky, the uninterrupted horizon. My mind raced, caught constantly by shifts in the light, the slightest movement of a cloud, the variations of wildflower clusters by the road, the wind in the grasses.

As Junhong said, "I keep imagining I see mountains."

My imagination, my attention is called up by the emptiness around me.

A complete opposite to the day a month earlier, when I had sat on a rock at the bottom of a canyon - my mind emptied by the fullness of the landscape.

comforts

2009-08-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I took to drinking brandy and smoking pot and cigarettes to calm myself down from the anxious excitement of being in the outdoors.

I also cooked.

I discovered that cooking in the outdoors is an exercise in focus, balance and intense ergonomic planning. The simple act of retrieving an ingredient that is not within your reach requires a complex dance that calls for the unfolding of your hip flexors, balancing on rocks as you pick your way to the said ingredient, more folding and unfolding of hip flexors as you bend down to pick it up, more balancing on rocks to return, all the while being careful not to knock over the other ingredients and equipment also precariously balancing on other rocks.

The first night, I cooked pasta with bison sausages, bell peppers and fresh basil.
The second night, I made pasta with zucchini and the rest of the basil. This accompanied the trout that Jason had caught, which I stuffed with sage, rosemary and thyme packed from my garden, and which I then panfried.
The third night, giving in to a curiosity about dehydrated camping food, I reconstituted an unremarkable beef stroganoff-in-a-bag from MEC. To accompany this, however, I made a perfect pot of basmati rice - no mean feat over a camp stove that does not simmer, let me tell you.

emptied and filled

2009-08-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

On a rock, in the middle of a river, at the bottom of a near-inaccessible canyon, I sat empty of all intellectual pretenses, and was filled instead by wonder and terror at the logic of nature.

Later, on my belly, with the rock beneath me, the sky above me, I was led to a hallucinatory union with the elements, fucked by sun, sky, trees, rock, man.

My body changes, branded inside and out.

the great outdoors

2009-08-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago, I said to Jason, "I am not very outdoorsy I'm afraid, but I will have a drink with you on a patio anytime."

Now, see what has happened:

transmission #2

2009-06-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Mika is Junhong's tap teacher. She is a small Japanese woman with a big voice. She inspires and terrorises the boys to dance like there's no tomorrow. She gives them choreography that wins them medals and makes them feel like the coolest boys in the lower mainland.

Yesterday was the rehearsal for the school's year-end show: an epic organisational wonder that involves more than a hundred kids and some adults, all run by Mika aided by a few assistants and as a whistle.

While the boys were being made to run their piece to perfection on stage, amidst the noise and clamour of waiting parents and kids, Mika paused to turn around to the parents and noisy children and said:

THE THEATRE IS LIKE CHURCH FOR DANCERS. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO DANCE WHEN NOBODY IS WATCHING? IT IS LIKE A HEARTBREAK. PLEASE RESPECT THE DANCERS AND PAY ATTENTION

I felt my own heart break and fell in love with her even more.

alignment

2009-06-12T02:15:00.001-07:00

The last two mornings, I discovered the joy of feeling my heart break and heal simultaneously. I walk around now with the bits of blood and cardiac muscle tissue of another's embedded in my heart, bits of mine in his.

joy

2009-06-08T20:58:00.001-07:00

photo by Jason

desire

2009-06-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

Lately, in my classes, I have dared to use the word desire more often, proposing that we find movement by adjusting to our needs as well as our desires. This inevitably leads one to ask: what is my desire? For myself, I have been substituting the word dance for desire quite a lot this year, driving myself to an existentialist distraction in the process.

In Victoria recently, while discussing desire in class, Ken Gordon observed that sometimes, in order to move towards our desires, we need to feel that we deserve them. Substitute the word dance for desire once again, and you get a whammy of an epiphany.

Again, I am reminded that it is as difficult to receive as it is to give. Both actions require alignment.

in-between #4

2009-06-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

Anis wrote to me after my symposium: "You embody the classic mirages of feminist, pluralist-locutionist, affirmative Asian-Canadian artist but with the added advantage of being a multicultural self from before you set yourself up in Vancouver - mirages in the sense it is there but not there, being betwixt, hence constantly crossing the liminal and non-liminal. You are a global artist."

liminal |ˈlimənl|
adjective technical
1 of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2 occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

I have spent my life living the liminal, finding my liquid self as I yield, flow around and occasionally smash up against other people's certitudes and fears.

Lately, I have been wanting my own country.
Ironically, I seem to find it in hotel rooms.

photo by Jason

theology according to Junhong and Max

2009-06-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

Max was over for a sleepover with Junhong.
Coming as he does from a family less heathen than ours, Max took a moment before dinner to say grace, making the sign of the cross as he did so.
Junhong asked what it meant, the sign of the cross.
Max explained that each point corresponded to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
What about the Devil? asked Junhong.
Oh, said Max, that's the Holy Spirit.

patience

2009-06-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

Watching "I don't Want To Sleep Alone" by Tsai Ming Liang and "Flower In The Pocket" by Liew Seng Tat, I was struck by the patience inherent in each film.
I am trying to find that as a performer.
I discover, however, that there is a fine line between patience and insistence.
Or between patience and unconsciousness.

beauty, love and other pleasures

2009-06-06T16:08:00.001-07:00

instructions

2009-04-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

An offering from Oscarine, a response to the workshop I am currently teaching in Brest:
A poem from Ghérasim Luca, a dislocated Romanian Jew living in Paris, who spoke 4 languages, who wrote in French and who killed himself by jumping into the Seine after being thrown out of his apartment at the age of 80 "for hygiene reasons". A man after my own heart.

Quart d'heure de Culture Métaphysique

Allongée sur le vide
bien à plat sur la mort
idées tendues
la mort étendue au-dessus de la tête
la vie tenue de deux mains

Élever ensemble les idées
sans atteindre la verticale
et amener en même temps la vie
devant le vide bien tendu
Marquer un certain temps d'arrêt
et ramener idées et mort à leur position de départ
Ne pas détacher le vide du sol
garder idées et morts tendues

Angoisses écartées
la vie au-dessus de la tête

Flêchir le vide en avant
en faisant une torsion à gauche
pour amener les frissons vers la mort
Revenir à la position de départ
Conserver les angoisses tendues
et rapprocher le plus possible
la vie de la mort

Idées écartées
frissons légèrement en dehors
la vie derrière les idées

Élever les angoisses tendues
au-dessus de la tête
Marquer un léger temps d'arrêt
et ramener la vie à son point de départ
Ne pas baisser les frissons
et conserver le vide très en arrière

Mort écartée
vide en dedans
vie derrière les angoisses

Fléchir la mort vers la gauche
la redresser
et sans arrêt la fléchir vers la droite
Éviter de tourner les frissons
conserver les idées tendues
et la mort dehors

Couchée à plat sur la mort
la vie entre les idées

Détacher l'angoisse du sol en baissant la mort
en tirant les idées en arriére
pour soulever les frissons
Marquer un arrêt court
et revenir à la position de départ
Ne pas détacher la vie de l'angoisse
Garder le vide tendu

Debout
les angoisses jointes
vide tombant en souplesse
de chaque côté de la mort

Sautiller en légèreté sur les frissons
à la façon d'une balle qui rebondit
Laisser les angoisses souples
Ne pas se raidir
toutes les idées décontractées

Vide et mort penchés en avant
angoisses ramenées légèrement fléchies
devant les idées

Respirer profondément dans le vide
en rejetant vide et mort en arrière
En même temps
ouvrir la mort de chaque côté des idées
vie et angoisse en avant
Marquer un temps d'arrêt
aspirer par le vide

Expirer en inspirant
inspirer en expirant

conversations

2009-03-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Benoît and I strive to have real conversations during the 12 minutes we are on stage while the public arrives.

Here are some excerpts:

Why do you make dances?
It's political

Is Body-Scan a manifesto?
Yes.

Have you ever had an orgasm that made your heart break from loving, during which you feel so alive from the knowledge that you are dying every second of your life.

naked

2009-03-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

In Body-Scan, I walk naked towards the audience and stand there being seen, seeing and try to find a dance that comes out of these sensations.

In Brest, when we premiered the piece a year ago, I used to stick my fingers into my pussy, reprising a moment from earlier where I am riding the curves of my inside space as much as the curves of the outside space. In Montreal, when we remounted it, I took out that detail, feeling like it was a mask and a crutch behind which I was hiding.

This change threw me into an existentialist crisis about dance. It felt like I had made myself confront the ultimate question: what does it mean to dance, really, when stripped of our identity as defined by clothes and actions.

A wonderful crisis, really, to be in. A terrifying crisis.

But I bailed.
Just before I left for Paris, Jason gave me a gift - a brand over my right breast - to give me courage.
As I stood there naked, with my death mark made with love, I realised that that was a marker of identity too.
Then, yesterday we made adjustments in that section and now I have something to do in my nudity.

Maybe the fact is, dance is meaningless in and of itself. It is merely a transition.

beaubourg

2009-03-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

There is an elf who comes in when we have all gone home. She takes our costumes, washes them, presses them and leaves them in neat little piles, or hanging handsomely from hangers, to greet us when we arrive the next day.

Rock n roll!

preparation

2009-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

While Paris pulses outside I am perversely content to stay in my room, preparing to Body-Scan at the Centre Pompidou. I wake up late. I practise yoga in the narrow space between my bed and the desk. I cook myself lunch in the little kitchenette. Today's lunch is Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli served with Asparagus and sheep brie, all tossed in a light coating of pesto. I ate this with a small glass of Sancerre.

In a short while I shall go to the theatre. Hopefully today I shall not get lost in the labyrinthe that is the backstage of Centre Pompidou.

I have been forewarned (with a certain amount of glee) that a Paris opening is something to experience. I am to expect the huffing and puffing of bourgeois Theatre de la Ville season's ticket holders leaving the room. Possibly yelling expressions of outrage.

But I have been marquée au feu by love and death.
Bring it on.

beets

2009-03-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

I have been feeling remiss that I have not written anything for more 4 weeks. But joy, it seems, is wordless.

Nevertheless, I HAVE been thinking about food.

Recently, while in Montreal, teaching and rehearsing all day, I lived on meals of beets and quinoa.

You will need a bunch of beets with greens attached, garlic, olive oil, some quinoa, pine nuts and roquefort cheese (you could use other blue cheese but I am sensitive to cow cheeses and Roquefort is a sheep cheese).
Boil or steam the beets whole.
While they are boiling, clean and chop up the greens into a manageable size. You may throw these into the boiling water to blanch them when the beetroots are done.
Cut up the beets into chunks.
Toss in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
Sauté the blanched beetgreens in olive oil and garlic.
Serve both root and greens with quinoa.
Top with pinenuts, toasted and the Roquefort, crumbled.

This meal screams out: dancer food!

But I like it.

loving and moving

2009-02-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

In Martha's Twisted Project, she mentions her psychic osteopath, who says that maybe her spine has curled around her heart to protect it.

Today in rehearsal, we reminded ourselves that the spine and the heart are interconnected. In order for the heart to love fully and completely, the spine has to be free. Later, while sharing this with Ziyian, she added, and in order to move, we need to open our hearts.

But I knew this already, from making love with my beloved - our undulating spines unleashing the power of the heart. Our hearts pressed together to trigger the fluidity of the spine.

living on earth

2009-01-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

How do we live with what we know?
How do we live with what we don't know?

..and each time, I awoke delighted with life on earth despite its desperately compromised nature.

- Returning To Earth, Jim Harrison

home

2009-01-04T20:06:00.000-08:00

It takes time to arrive.

This summer, in Malaysia, it wasn't until my fourth and last week there, when I was walking in KL (why can I no longer remember the name of streets), that I felt I had arrived, come home, my body adjusted to the heat, to the noise, to the different rhythms.

In Vancouver, it has taken me 20 years.

When I first arrived and for many years later, I used to wonder what people meant when they said Vancouver was a beautiful city. The great outdoors, the beauty of the wilderness surrounding this unlikely city, was wasted on me. I could not see them.

Now, 20 years later, I see the new world.

Outside of me,
inside of me,
holding me in his arms.

looking into the abyss

2008-12-31T09:09:00.000-08:00

Once, when walking Junhong back from school, we encountered a particularly brazen, desperate couple on the sidewalk, shooting up in broad daylight. Junhong said, I wish we didn't live here. (Here, being close to the downtown eastside, where people come to get washed up)
I said, somewhat righteously, just because we don't see it doesn't mean it won't happen. Living here forces us to see and be conscious.

Presently, I force myself to look up from my bliss. To read the news and be conscious of people killing other people in the Gaza strip.

I see, but I am not sure what to do about it.

frolicking

2008-12-29T19:33:00.000-08:00

savage beauty

2008-12-29T18:59:00.001-08:00

The Coquihalla highway connects the rainforests of coastal British Columbia to the drier desert-like climate of the interior. It is a road where there should be no road. You look to the left and right of you and you see the magnificent Coast mountains threatening to squish you. Even in the summer, lit by the bright sun, it is terrifying to me because every few minutes you are reminded of the viciousness of nature, the hubris of humanity, by signs that say, "Do not stop, avalanche area", "Winter tires and chains beyond this point" or, even in the rest areas, "Danger, falling ice". They might as well say, "Turn back now, if you value your life".

Today, as the red truck we were in hit a patch of ice and as Jason said, "Oh fuck, I have lost control" (or something like that), the car behind us REALLY lost control and careened helplessly around the highway (I waited, somewhat calmly, oddly, for it to crash into us) before spinning off the road and into the ditch. As it turned out, they were OK, we were OK.

At Hope (oddly or aptly named, depending on the circumstances) the blizzard and icy roads turned into torrential rains and savage winds that threatened to blow the red truck off the roads.

Finally, as we approached Vancouver, the last few rays of the sun peaking out from behind the clouds, I marvelled at the unlikeliness of this city. That it exists at all is a wonder.

a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows

2008-12-26T19:05:00.000-08:00

David is reading Herodotus. He told me about a story in it of Darius and the Scythians. I asked him to show me the chapter so that I could tell it on this blog. But he has stolen my idea and put it on his blog. Go read it.

the body of longing

2008-12-26T10:47:00.001-08:00

Recently, in a conversation with Tim Wheeler, of Mind The Gap, a UK-based company that works with the "aesthetic of disability", I mentioned that I did not find the body of longing very interesting to watch, whether it was with or without disabilities.
I do not find interesting, either the disabled body longing to be whole or the abled body longing to be loved.

To perform from this body of longing is to ask for the void in it to be filled by the sympathy of the audience. This is an unsatisfying proposition for me, as performer and as an audience member. It locks me into a binary codependent relationship that trades on victimhood and false charity.

But the aesthetic of disability supposes that the void - and there is a void, a stillness, an emptiness that one strives for rather than fears - can be filled with offerings for the audience.

The first suggests the artist as mendicant. The other proposes the artist as gift-giver.

excursion into unknown regions

2008-12-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went for a walk in the forest with Jason. I watched, riveted, the dance of two salmon, horny and dying. I walked down a trail made by bears. I was quietly terrified of slippery rocks and logs.

On the drive back, (was it before or after Jason pointed out the red-tailed hawk flying over the suburban highway?), I felt overcome by joy, wordless and unadulterated.

desire and time

2008-12-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

ML met the old man again, the old man whose eyelids were so ancient they were translucent and veined and dusty, but in whom she had seen the young man flitting in and out. A few months ago, she had wanted to go home with him to his apartment overlooking the Butte Chaumont.
This time, when she met him and said how are you? , he said, “Very good when I look at you, such beauty”
They flirt, my friend and this old man who is almost half a century older than her.
She asks if his wife is beautiful. He says yes, but she left me 12 years ago.
Do you miss her?
No, it is better this way. But he misses having a woman lying next to him, misses caressing a woman.
They talk about French policier books.
She says she reads like an ass in French.
He suggests that perhaps they can read together in cafés and he could help her.
And he wistfully mumbles that perhaps one day she would allow him to caress her?
She gets embarrassed, hesitates.
He then adds sadly, it’s because I am much, much older than you, isn’t it?
No, no, she explains, if I were not with another person right now, I would go with you.
But it is too late. The young man disappears from the old man. His breath withdraws into the wisp of his 87 years lived.

terrorism

2008-12-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

I LOVE saying the words white people and brown people and watching the people in the room cringe and become nervous.

But later, I sit on the bus, shaking slightly, exhausted.

in art and sex

2008-12-02T07:22:00.000-08:00

You have to be dirty to get to the sacred.

adventures of a talisman

2008-12-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

I commissioned a talisman for Jason from ML. To protect him from bears and weird people while out in the wilderness. Recently he came back with these pictures. Belleville meets la belle natur via a couple of dislocated Malaysians.

first love

2008-11-24T19:51:00.000-08:00

The other day, while telling stories from my childhood, over breakfast with my love, I was reminded that my first love was a Maori hula dancer from Guam. She was a beautiful woman with long straight hair down to her bum and she danced in a lounge act that packaged all of the Pacific into an improbable evening to be enjoyed with colourful cocktails in a restaurant called The Paddock, on the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur circa 1974.

I went to The Paddock often with my father during this period, his date while he was in between girlfriends. I would wear my "going-out" clothes, which at this time was a red t-shirt and a yellow long skirt. I cannot remember the name of my hula dancer now, but the love was mutual. She too fell in love with me. I went to see the show a number of times (either my father was quite supportive of my love life or he was lusting after the nubile young dancers himself). It all culminated in a lunch date with said hula dancer. She sat next to me in my dad's car, an orchid in her hair. I was in awe of her skin, her scent and her beauty. She joked about packing me into her suitcase and taking me with her. Long after she had left, I wished it had been possible.

paris

2008-11-20T07:19:00.001-08:00

Paris, well, I just have way too much fun in Paris these days.

liquid state

2008-11-17T06:01:00.000-08:00

Recently I realised that I could write from my heart but could only speak from my intellect. I attribute this to the fact that the two languages in which my intellectual life is expressed - English and French - are adopted, colonial languages.

In Body-Scan, Benoît and I speak, attempting to find a language that comes out of the liquid state, the energetic state of the body. Once Benoît gave me a note that my words were too "hard", too intellectual. I don't know if I have been able to surmount this.

I marvel at the ability in other people for sound and words to form out of the beating of the heart, the rushing of blood.

In close proximity with the beloved, I find myself often mute, the pressure of my heart pumping relieved simply by the efficient passing of information through skin, through the meeting of fluids, the opening of chakras.

No need for words.

I speak merely to remind myself that I can.

zurich

2008-11-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

On the plane descending into Zurich I encountered, in Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, in the chapter on Phosphorous, a dismissal of Swiss precision as "a collection of witless impediments bordering on persecution mania"

Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian writer who found the Swiss even more loathsome than his fellow Austrians, said of both them, that they suffered from "sub-alpine cretinism".

As the plane landed, I remembered that when I was a young woman, I had had sex with one member of the Swiss modern pentathlon team while desiring yet another member (pun completely unintended).

Based on all this, I thought Zurich would be an unsatisfying experience filled with uptight, anal, navel-gazing inbred cretins.

Instead, in the midst of a performance from Compagnie l’Alakran, that, in its play on geeky sub-alpine cretinism that made me laugh from the bottom of my belly, I had an encounter with silence, stillness and beauty. I even wrote a poem on command.

Here is the poem:

Le poisson est
shok1ng
La cigarette,
mon désir
L'homme,
l'escargot
écrit
le temps
walks slowly

I also had memorable warm potato salad in a restaurant by the river.

expansion

2008-10-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last night, I said to Junhong, "Now that I have a boyfriend, I know that it takes time away from you and that is a bummer.", to which he nodded vigorously in agreement. "But you should know that it does not take any of my heart away from you". He hugged me and whispered in my ear, "I know". Then he said, "Your heart just gets bigger and bigger. The more people you love the bigger it gets!"

transitions

2008-10-27T16:32:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I turned 44. I made a chocolate cake with coconut buttercream. I also made little finger sandwiches. A paean to my tropical post-colonial upbringing. I served this to my loved ones - old and new - and felt giddy with excitement.

But I am realising that while my heart can expand, the days and weeks cannot.

Last night as I lay curled up in the beloved's lap, relieved to be in the dark, quiet, happy to be enveloped in love, I also felt a tinge of sadness that there is not enough time and space to be with everyone. Goodbyes must be said and endured. Absences must be tolerated.

autumn

2008-10-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

The wind has dropped out of my sails somewhat. Inevitably, there is the fall after the flight.

I notice the garden needs cleaning up.

I can't even keep my imagery straight at the moment.

lung fish!

2008-10-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

At the risk of this blog turning into a fishblog, here is another offering from Jason (not the man in the picture).

My defense is that fish is, um, perishable.

lung fiction

2008-10-13T23:35:00.000-07:00

Of course, fish don't have lungs!!! (I should have known this)
It is not a slice of lung that Jason gave me but a slice of pyloric caeca. (I wouldn't have known this)

Jason has just confessed that he had forgotten the word for this organ when he gave it to me and had simply said, lung. Apparently, the pyloric caeca assists primarily in absorbing nutrients, but it also absorbs oxygen into the blood stream.

I am glad to know of this scientific fact.
However, I like the poetry of fish lung.

Thanksgiving

2008-10-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday of the year. Because it is about food and love. About taking a moment to reflect on all you that you have.

gifts

2008-10-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

From Jason, my fish-bird man, on closing night of The Whole Beast:

The heart, a slice of lung and the liver of a chinook salmon.

preparing #2

2008-10-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the closing night of The Whole Beast, I just cooked myself a lunch of rib eye steak, rare, topped with a sauté of wild mushrooms, accompanied by steamed brocollini. I am eating it now, washing it down with a glass of Chilean malbec.

After this, I am going to make cornbread stuffing for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner.
David is cooking Cornish hens on the rotisserie.
We will eat all this with our loved ones and give thanks for the existence of love and food.

meat

2008-10-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

I had a good show. Possibly the best show I've had. The trick is to eat meat all day. Yeah that works..

preparing

2008-10-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I overdid it. I did 2 hours of bagua in the morning. Then a monastic lunch of chicken broth with vegetables. Then an ashtanga practice BEFORE opening night of a 60-minute solo. WAS I OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND????

Today, I woke up in the arms of my beloved.
I came home and went to bed for a few hours.
Then I ate left over fatty charcuterie.
David has just returned from The British Butcher Shoppe with a couple of meatpies and a scotch egg and I am going to eat those too.

While waiting for them to heat up, over a glass of spanish tempranillo-cabernet sauvignon blend, I am watching the nailbiting final episode of Master Chef: The Professionals wherein 3 young men from the British Isles duke it out with their culinary skills to win the title of the next big culinary star of the UK. (The young men - ernest, sporting incomprehensible accents and very prone to blushing when happy and when disappointed - make compelling watching. Plus I have a HUGE boner for Michel Roux Jr., one of the judges and apparently a culinary legend)

Tonight, Yang Shifu is coming to the show.

AM I OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND????

me in my wilderness

2008-10-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

Last night was opening night for The Whole Beast in Vancouver.
This picture is from Brest (you can tell from the very beautiful cyclorama that took many obsessive-compulsive french technicians and many days to achieve), sent by James from across the continent yesterday morning to wish me well on this journey.

I did not eat enough proteins during the day yesterday and felt shaky during the show. I am making up for it today by eating left over Rabbit Rillette and Pâté de Campagne made by Paul Findlay for last night's reception.

death

2008-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

More offerings from Jason, who gazes at death with me.

words, time, river

2008-10-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

When Junhong has something important to say, he usually writes it down in a note to give to me. He says of the intensity of his emotions, "Sometimes I can't speak".

I know what he means.

Easier to write.
Time slows down between the heart beat and the word.

Pipo once described the first time he went white-water kayaking. The first time he went down the river it was over before he knew what was happening. But as he repeated the ride, over and over, he began to see the eddies and the rocks and the falls along the way, and what had felt like half a second before, now felt like a lifetime.

wordless

2008-10-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures of me in rehearsal, taken by Amy Pelletier for a photo essay to be found in this month's Dance Current.

what women like

2008-10-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

One day, I gave girl advice to Junhong.
I said, "Junhong, a woman loves a man who dances."
And I said, "And a woman loves a man who plays fiddle. Remember that."
Then I added,
"Oh, and a woman loves a man who can catch fish with his bare hands"

To which he replied, "I think that's what YOU like, mama"

art

2008-09-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Zab Maboungou says, if you don't dance, how can you properly think?
I say, if you don't love, how can you properly make art?

fish-bird man

2008-09-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

An offering from Jason. A story from Chuangzi.

In the Northern Ocean there is a fish called Kun which is many thousand li in size. It changes into a bird named Peng whose back is many thousand li in breadth. When it rises and flies, its wings are like clouds filling the sky.

It is said “When Peng is heading toward the Southern Ocean it splashes along the water for three thousand li. It rises with the wind and wings its way up to ninety thousand li; it flies for six months, and then it rests.”

Heat shimmers in the air like galloping horses,
dust floats like the morning mist,
and living creatures are blown about in the sky.

love

2008-09-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you use a word, and even as you say it, you know it is inadequate, imprecise. But you say it anyway because the word is a valve to release the pressure of an alchemical reaction in your body that is like a great big river, running from your perineum to the crown of your head, that dissolves your eyeballs and threatens to blow out your heart.

gift

2008-09-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

Among many gifts from Jason, here is one of the great Canadian wilderness. Traces of bear and deer, going in opposite directions, to be appreciated from the warm comfort of your computer screen.

age

2008-09-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

Recently it occurred to me that in the past, when I have fallen in love with young men, I have actually fallen in love with their potential. Hence, I have fallen in love with what I project onto them. This can never be lived up to of course, and inevitably, I am disappointed.

ML has just offered a story of falling in love with a very very old man - a man whose eyelids are "so ancient they are translucent and veined and dusty. His gait is lopped and slow like a sloth. His voice almost a wisp". But she sees the young man within him flitting in and out, and wants to go home with him to his apartment in the butte chaumont, where it is very agréable.

When you are young, your age is a thought, sometimes held in fear, sometimes awaited for with taut anticipation and excitement.
When you are older, your youth lives within you - held by the fine lines in the skin, shining out of your, maybe rheumy, eyes.
Nothing is lost, unless you want to lose it.

a manly menu

2008-09-23T10:00:00.001-07:00

Ron and Jason (they are not a couple) are coming over for dinner tonight. I asked Junhong what I should cook and he said, "Something manly".

So tonight the menu will be

Baked mushrooms
Braised beef shortribs on mashed potatoes
Steamed broccolini
Rhubarb and strawberry crumble.

gazing upon the homeland #2 - food and drink

2008-09-22T18:22:00.001-07:00

char kway teow

chicken rice

ais kacang

wonton mee, siew yook

air limau in a plastic bag

air kelapa in a kelapa

how to give without asking for anything in return #5

2008-09-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here is a recipe for giving without asking for anything in return:

1. Give to someone who can receive without suspicion
2. Give from a place of structural integrity: your throat soft, the crown of your head open to the sky, your heart chakra open, your perineum connected to your heart, your feet connecting you to the earth, your orifices open.
3. The receiver receives from a place of structural integrity. Ditto ditto, ditto, ditto.
4. Let go once you have given so that tension does not mask sensation, so that your body can find the earth, so that energy fills you up again and there is more to give. You are rich! No need to hang on!
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

gazing upon the homeland - juxtapositions

2008-09-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

my young man and me

2008-09-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I came home in the morning with a new acquisition on my skin. A brand. Scarification to seal in a moment that counts.

I showed it to Junhong.
He was not impressed. He went into the bathroom and talked to himself for an hour before coming out with his water uzi and pointed it at me. He said it was ugly and stupid. Would it come off with soap? With bleach? With scrubbing? There were tears. Despite his announcement that he would not leave the house until the brand was healed, and only after he had made me change my clothes, we went out and bonded over junk food, ice-cream and the ogling of ipods. Afterwards, he conceded that it would have been better if the arrow had been neater and I should take more time next time.

Today I walked Junhong to school. I forgot to leave him at the corner two blocks away and walked with him all the way to school, closer to the possible gaze of his peers. Instead of a kiss, we high-fived each other.

And so, we each take a step towards our own autonomous bodies.

la vie est belle #2

2008-09-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

It is the last few days of summer. I walk fast, with a bounce in my step, a silly grin on my face. I am so happy that I listen to Mr Tambourine Man on repeat and think it is a happy song. David and Adrienne assure me that it is not.

A few days ago, I dropped by Mandula's to leave a stack of postcards for my show and to say hi to Ziyian. She got me drunk with wine from Jules next door and proceeded to sell me a very expensive turtle neck.

Today the turtle neck is imbued with the scent of the beloved.
I shall wear it to rehearsal this afternoon and dance like a motherfucker.

la rentrée

2008-09-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the week, Junhong, all excited about being in Grade 5 and having the teacher he wished for, said, as we were walking down the street, "I am a man!". Last night, overwhelmed by his own expectations of himself, he lay in a fetal position in my lap, crying repeatedly, "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it!"

Today, faced with an impending deadline and stupid questions about "diversity", overwhelmed by my own expectations, I too feel like curling up in a fetal position in someone's lap and crying, "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it!"

joy

2008-09-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

I went back into the studio for the first time in six months and danced for three hours like I had been
fucked
kissed
caressed
licked
sniffed
loved.

Yeah!!

the language of my heart

2008-09-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

People often ask me if I speak to Junhong in Chinese or Malay. I say, no, because I've lost these languages. I do not speak them from my heart.
What do you speak from your heart then, someone asked me recently.
Well, I'm not sure if my heart is capable of speaking coherently in any language - it is a mute, confused, irrational organ, capable of emotional acrobatics of incredible virtuosity and high risk, capable of superhuman long-distance travel, capable of breaking and healing repeatedly (all that scar tissue...).
But completely stupid in the face of language and logic.

dreamblog #1

2008-09-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed I followed death
I was performing A Character, the solo that I performed for almost 15 years before retiring it in Yellowknife. This was a surefire solo - impossible not to love. In this dream, however, I had not rehearsed, and my hubris was being rewarded by the fact that I was completely bombing. I had no idea what I was saying. I was forgetting all my lines. I lost my shoes, tried on many different wrong pairs while the audience waited. I forgot all the right places for the wrong gestures and paint. The audience left in droves. There was a party afterwards but I hid in the dressing room, which was full of beds. I went into one to hide under the blanket.
Then I was on the bus, talking in French to the Tibetan techie to convince him that the piece is actually not as crappy as he thinks. It will be better tomorrow, je te promis. He wants to go away and take on a gig with a Filipino dance company.
(Him: what will you be doing in September, still planning on having a baby?
Me: what do you mean what do you mean? I am never going to have another baby!)
Then the Tibetan techie turned into a Tibetan woman who was taking me to eat a special Tibetan meal. The best one was further along, where they didn’t have too many onions.

I woke up as if from a nightmare. Then I realised that I was alive and life is good. I went to my computer to write down the dream and found a message that made me smile.

gazing

2008-09-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

I see you
seeing me
see me
seeing you
see me
naked

need & desire

2008-08-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

We were working on finding the touch you never want to leave.
I asked, while thinking about structural integrity, is it in fact the touch that you never need to leave?
No, said the teacher, it must be a touch that can also support all your desires.

my non-lecture

2008-08-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

While in Malaysia, I gave a non-lecture - a performance/non-performance under the gaze of the homeland.

Read about it here:
Link

true north #3

2008-08-20T00:29:00.001-07:00

This time, true north is coming home to a dark, empty apartment because Junhong and David are camping somewhere in the wilds of British columbia. It is raining. I shall get into bed and lie in the dark and listen to the rain.

real thievery and violence

2008-07-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

This old man walked on the bus with really extreme bow legs. So bowed he could barely walk and needed a cane. He sat down on a seat by the door. Later, at a stop, a group of young men from the back of the bus got up to get off the bus. Suddenly, there was a commotion around the old man, around the exit. All eyes were focused downward, towards his legs, towards the floor. My first thought was that he had fallen or fainted and the young men were trying to help him. Then I saw a guy reach into the old man's back pocket and take his wallet. I said, hey! and grabbed the guy by his shirt. Nobody else said or did anything. I felt a moment of doubt. I let go of his shirt. I was trapped in my window seat by an old lady in the aisle seat next to me - I could not get out to be a very effective crimestopper; although I don't know if I was thinking of getting out. He slipped out of my grasp. I stared at him as he walked off the bus nonchalantly. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I had been thinking the old man was in trouble and the men in front were helping him but the story changed midway and I hadn't caught up. My reflexes were slow. Suddenly, all the guys were off the bus and the old man was sitting with his bow legs, humiliated and bereft of his wallet. What happened, what happened, the old ladies around us said. Now, the bus was united as we tried to reconstruct what was happening. But everyone was also looking for reasons why they could not be held responsible. "Oh you shouldn't carry so much money on you" "Were those guys Filipino?" "I didn't see anything, I didn't see anything" I wanted to scream and weep with frustration. I saw everything and couldn't do anything. Didn't do enough.

Once, David, responding to a woman screaming that her handbag had been snatched, dropped everything without stopping to think and chased after the robber down the dark alleys of the Vancouver Downtown East Side. I wanted to to be like David. Heroic. Fearless. Instead I was only me.

As I got off the bus, I gave the old man $100 ringgit to get himself home safely. But it felt like I was merely buying off my own guilt.