Pieces on the Highway Dream

There're shoes strewn all over the living room floor. Ugly shoes, tacky shoes, one pair with pink and purple crocodile skin which I had seen at the Goodwill. I am packing.

I am packing to go to America. I'm going there because I'm supposed to meet my boyfriend and his parents; they are currently in Taipei, too, though. My boyfriend does not help me get a ride to the airport and I am running late. He says, just go out and get a taxi. I need some items from a pharmacy, but I'll have to live without them.

My dad is going to see me to the airport since my boyfriend won't help. We leave the house and are close to some sort of large street, highway. With great difficulty we find a taxi which is a motorbike. The highway is strewn with motorcycle parts, people parts, dead people's arms hanging over the bike seat; I look away and mentally urge my driver to drive, drive fast, please, and don't trip the wheels over a bike carcass or human part. There're some gangsters further down the street; they must be the murderers. I hope that we can pass them safely, but my taxi driver seems to get in a tiff with one of the murderers and as we zoom down the highway that gangster comes after us on his motorbike with a large cleaver.

Catching up, he sinks his cleaver swiftly through the taxi driver's chest. I'm very upset and angry? He whacks again, at my left shoulder and arm. We both look at my arm and it's fine, still there--he missed. He aims for my father's right arm and injures him; I see the large blade sink down his shoulder. I'm furious now, horrified; I grab the cleaver from the murderer it's very heavy and solid and large and I sink it into the gangster again and again. The only hesitation I have about killing him is that I hope his friends won't come after me for revenge.
I remember the cut on my dad’s shoulder and hug him, crying. Somebody take my dad to the hospital, somebody take my father to the hospital, please...

Corum Panda Shield

My beloved new panda shield!

Ham Goes Fishing

Nommable Books

Robot Hamster

My brother sent me a robot hamster from Japan. His name shall be Ham.

Getting Shot Dream

At a party held in a library I walk onto the upstairs balcony and stand beside a friend of mine. Somebody takes a shot at him/us, and hits me on the shoulder/neck/face. I can feel the wetness of blood and my face melting, and think to myself, god, I'm dying. Just like that. Then I try to shield my friend from more bullets since I'm a goner anyways.

Parasitic Lit

This was a fun project that Steve Finbow invited me to be part of: Parasitic Lit. The entire Joycean text is comprised of first sentences from abandoned stories. My line, "the air and the winds are the sea-goddess's dreams" was from a project that never got beyond that first line and some notes. I had ambitiously intended to write a whole mythology of Taiwan. (One can guess why that didn't work out. How does one set out to write an entire mythology? Transcribe one, or finish reading one, maybe...)

Crow Eats Bunny Dream

I saw a crow eating a bunny that looked like it had been hit by a car mid-leap and fallen on its side into the grass. The crow was picking at an extended thigh. The bunny was light brown and fuzzy. The scene made me sadface.

83

Don’t look at me. In the glass box at the Museum

of Natural Arts, a placard: Emo Stick Insect.

It sleeps, looks defeated.

63

The third eye glittering on forehead, the breasts consider a third nipple.

It is between the legs, buried. It is more enlightened.

80

The backwards lower case y of a virgin.

W of a hamster and w of a seasoned whore.

The alphabet between legs.

Yu Hsi

Am working on some translation projects about Taiwanese poet Yu Hsi. I love these lines, translated below:
Zen is a flower between fingertips
Poetry, moonlight on fingers
Pinching a flower is knowing how to smile
Seeing the moon, understanding.

Really love translating literary stuff, though every time I type Yu Hsi [space] Microsoft Word changes Hsi to His and drives me a little nuts because I have to go back and correct it again...

Bendable Yarn Animal

End of the World Dream

Due to planetary alignment/asteroids/earthquakes, the world seems about to end. I am in Taiwan and so is my family. We get on a space shuttle; outside the window planets are moving up--we are moving down.

"Is that normal?" I ask.
"Yes," a space shuttle personnel guy says.

Then we get on a bus. My dad and I are in charge of carrying a number of family members in tube/bottle like things, basically sucking their souls as well as physical bodies into the thin bottles until we are ready to release them. I am carrying my youngest brother, my four grandparents (one pair per container), my cousin, and her father. We make a bus stop in Pingtung and are at my grandparents' house. My maternal grandparents are no longer in the bottle when I open it; they are gone. My fraternal grandparents, after I let them out of the bottle, say they want to stay here, even if it means death, because they are tired. I let everybody else out, talk to them, and then put them back in the bottles. I pack some chocolates, crackers, candy and a bottle of fiber supplement.

We don't know if we're going to die but we have to get on the bus and keep traveling. Looking out from the bus window, I see people everywhere in the streets. There are booths and stands that sell water. People look desperate and frightened.

Hamster Reads Eeeee Eee Eeee

French Sacrificial Killing Rampage Dream

I am on a tour in France with five other girls and my dad (!) on a travel piece/assignment; we have to report back to the editor in chief in Taipei. The guards in charge of us who are around at all times are some German soldiers and one or two Germen women. We speak English to them but Chinese amongst ourselves so they won't understand.

I overhear the guards saying something about one of the girls, Shu, being "a target." Just as I duck into a fancy clothing store, I see them seize her from the reflection in the glass door. Once inside, I call some of the other girls to let them know something fishy is going on. Later the same day another girl disappears.

By nighttime only four of us are left, including my dad. I decide that we should be armed in case they try to grab one of us--we can still overtake them if we try. We hide impromptu weapons in our pockets and bags: razor, older razor, barber's blade, a compass for my dad. I also try to email the editor's secretary in Taiwan to tell her we are in danger. The guards tell us we are going to a restaurant for dinner, and we comply, bringing our weapons.

The restaurant is more like a dance hall, very fancy, filled with people dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. The atmosphere is so weird I gather up the girls and say, "Let's go to the bathroom, it's safer there."

"La salle de bain?" I ask, and somebody points upstairs. "Merci."

As we are moving up the spiral staircase, I realize that the atmosphere turns even more eerie. The air is solid as ice. Two of the guards escort me back downstairs to a stage of sorts. I struggle a little and try to razor one of their faces. I hope the crowd will help me, but then I realize that every single person in the crowd wants to come and take a shot at hurting me in some way. They have bricks, pots, rulers, even knives and scissors. They line up to hurt me, one by one, as if this were a sacrificial ritual. I fight back and avoid their blows the best I can, hurling bricks and pots in their faces and still trying to use the razor on any exposed body areas to draw blood. Finally I get ahold of a pair of kitchen scissors and go on a killing rampage. I cut people's throats open, slice their entire heads or torsos off.

At this point, some police come to help us. They let me out of the restaurant, but I notice that there are zombies outside. The police let some of my victims out, and I realize my victims have become zombies, too. I go back inside. The girls and I go up the spiral staircase to investigate and find painted portraits of all six of us who started the tour together. This is a secret French society that systematically sacrifices foreigners. *Scary music.* (During the whole dream, appropriate horror movie sound effects and music accompanied each scene.)

Asian American Writers School Dream

I'm in some kind of high school setting, can't tell in what country. Apparently Tao Lin is in my class. I am walking on campus and a middle aged blonde lady with short hair stops me and asks me if I know Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston. I say no. Apparently this is some kind of Asian American writers school, though technically I'm not American.

She then asks me if I know Tao Lin. I say, kind of, yes. She asks me how I feel about the fact that Madonna has been talking crap about him. I say, "Good for him, that will make him famous." She wants to talk to Tao Lin so I take her to the classroom, call for someone named "Tao," he comes, and I leave them alone to do whatever she wanted to do with him.

The Perverted Kindergartener

I'd tried on different accounts to explain the character of 蠟筆小新 (Crayon Little Shin) to Americans, but it's hard to describe a cartoon about a perverted kindergartener whose fluffy white dog's only trick is "小白, 抓小雞雞," Whitey, scratch your dick (this prompts the dog to reach repeatedly for its privates with alternating front paws, which are really too short to reach). So I was surprised and delighted to find that the "Shin Chan" was on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

Here's a sample episode of Shin Chan on Veoh.com.

Octopus Stuffed Animal

I made this today. Octopus stuffed animal (see underwater hamster). It has little beige pastel blushing spots because I marked the fabric with pastels. Should have used white pastels, I guess, but then wouldn't be able to see. My paternal grandma, a seamstress, has this chalk stuff she uses to mark her fabric that you can pat right off afterwards. Apparently pastels don't work the same way.

Dalmatian Hamster Dream

This is a game challenge. Each room one enters has a challenge in it and one has to complete it to move on to the next room.

One challenge is to pick one dog from a room of dogs and tame it on the spot, make it calm down and submit. I picked a dog (Alsatian?) and managed to press its head against the ground long enough to make it submit, though it bit me in the process. My brother came in next so I helped him pick a baby dalmatian that looked like a hamster. It was so obedient and sleepy my brother passed his challenge immediately.

I open the adjoining door to the next challenge and it's a room full of cats. I have to pick a cat and tame it, claws and all. "Fuck that," I say and open the door all the way to let all the dogs in after the smug looking cats.

I Killed a Man by Putting Him in a Plastic Bag and Dashing Him Against the Ground Repeatedly Dream

In my dream, I'd procured some really hard-to-get circus tickets for my family but this gangster guy and his lackeys were trying to take them from me, so we fought, and I ended up swinging his body against the floor so many times he was obviously dead or half dead. I put him in a plastic bag and dashed him against the floor some more. There was a hand poking out a little bit from the bag and I stuffed it back in.

One of my brothers and I decided to escape and disguise ourselves. We were walking through alleys and I had to make sure our plastic bag with the dead gangster in it didn't look too suspicious (double bagging, woot). We ducked into a brothel/love hotel that was also an illegal hair salon. The woman told us to go in room 405 and wait, and said if there was still a man in there "he'll leave soon." I considered getting bleached blonde or pink, with bigtime bangs covering my eyebrows and face. My brother couldn't decide.

Tao Lin Dream

In my dream, Tao Lin didn't look like Tao Lin. He was an orange-faced carbuncular young man with a crew cut. He was on a So You Think You Can Dance type of TV show, dancing with an Asian-looking girl with big eyes, pale skin and her long hair in a ponytail. They did a hip hop number and after judging moved up in the contest because the host/announcer told them to pick a stuffed animal (somehow this will help them in the competition). The girl, who is acting a little cocky at this point, picks a pig stuffed animal, and says something clever that makes fun of Tao Lin.