first, a few disclaimers:
this keyboard is a crazy taiwanese keyboard. the keys are in slightly off places, especially the shift keys. please excuse my lack of caps and frequent typos.
this chair and table is not made for me. it is uncomfortable and i will only be able to sit at it for short periods, so my entries should stay pretty short.
today i was going to buy a digital camera, but i decided to wait and check prices online. this turned out to be a bad decision. i explored the region around the night market for a while and it was interesting but my feet hurt and i was heading home. things turned very interesting when i heard loud drumming and shrill horns coming my way. a bizarre parade! many of the little blue half trucks that you see all over asia were coming my way, covered with red, green, and yellow decoration -- maybe some kind of plastic, it looks like the outside of a pinata. the last one in the line carried a young guy playing what looked like a small taiko drum and a guy with some cymbals. behind them there was a gong on wheels that was repeatedly struck. next came 20-30 men in identical polo shirts and straw hats (almost like a dixie land band) playing shrill horns -- the type of horn you might imagine someone using to charm snakes. i was on the covered sidewalk, and the acoustics were such that the sounds echoed around me, distorted and very loud, creating a very psychedelic effect. next in the line were old people carrying sticks of incense as long as my arm and as thick as a big cigar. then there was some space while the next group waited for some traffic (i should add that the first part of the parade thought nothing of shutting down traffic by walking in the middle of a very busy street - a remarkably brave undertaking given the nature of driving in Keelung (pronounced Chee-lung, in case anyone wondered)). The next section was, amazingly enough, a mediocre marching band playing "and the saints go marching in."
1 comment:
most of the great films about alienation in an asian country are japanese, but still seem somehow appropriate to your situation. alienation is truly a global phenomenon. i know you've seen it, but allow me to evoke - and bring it to the attention of those who have not yet had the pleasure - the face of another. it's an expressionistic, existential/bergmanesque kurosawa film from probably the 50s, about a man in love with his own foot. starring fabio of 'i can't believe it's not butter' fame, believe it or not. a seminal and underappreciated work. highly recommended.
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