Today, I'm one year older. I ate a fantastic orange today. I feel pretty darn happy.
On Tuesday, I visited the HKBU campus on a whim and tried to find the library there, only to find myself lost in the music hall, listening to the composition of bells and xylophones. It was then that I discovered that, even though the building says "library" on it, it was converted into offices and classrooms (the real library is on another campus).
Wednesday was an action packed day, filled with two of my very favorite things: free museums and poetry. I met up with Sam and Alley and we went to the Hong Kong Museum of History, which is sure to become one of my very favorite places here. The exhibits included giant-sized boats, reconstructed houses, city streets equipped with medicine stores, tea houses, a tram, etc., and a fantastic sense of what it might have been like to walk around Hong Kong, many years ago. I was most affected by the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong exhibit, which was quite intense. The hall quickly changed into cement walls, bare lightbulbs, and the stories of the many people who endured the 3 years and 8 months (beginning in 1941). I'm actually planning to do a bit of research about this period... maybe it will turn into something?
Photos from the museum:
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Later on that night, I read at PoetryOutLoud at the Fringe Club, along with other fantastic poets and writers. It was a great, relaxed, and encouraging place to talk about poetry and share work. This reading made my entire week. I'm overjoyed. And, it happens the first Wednesday of every month.
Yesterday, I attended a writing workshop also at the Fringe with Peter Bakowski entitled "The Nourished Writer". There were a few things I got out of it: practice, persistence, and patience. And to not be afraid of the blank page. The blank page definitely terrifies me, including the expectation to fill it with something worthwhile.
Now, with the things I disagreed with and/or frustrated me (mostly because there should have been an acknowledgement that there are other ways of writing): the goal of clarity, of "cutting to the chase", of necessity, of age-old ways to approach writing. His approach seemed too traditional to me, to the point of repetition (I've heard these "ways to write" and "how to revise" Writing 101 speeches way too many times). I think, as writers today, the challenge is really to test these "ways of writing", to trespass and create a more provocative text. I do not believe that a writer's goal is to reach clarity - Bakowski's goal being that the reader "does not fall asleep". I don't agree. I have more faith in my reader - that he or she does not read simply to be entertained. Language, prose, the drive to question, the sound of words, the story that challenges me (and sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable) ... these are some reasons I read. He was also against the space of lingering. In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", this sense of lingering - of longing and the space between touch - is what makes the entire book. How could this book be as powerful as it was without lingering? Complete clarity, to me, seems false at times. I think clarity, as a concept, must include fog. What we see beyond the fog, the outline of a person, the gesture of a hand. Even in disconnection, we can create a sense of what is there. Why are we so afraid of "the messy"? Why are we afraid of getting our hands dirty? Yes, let's appreciate Hemmingway and Carver and O'Connor, but let's move on, let's create something new, something more dangerous, something more like the holding of breath. That's what excites me about writing.
On Tuesday, I visited the HKBU campus on a whim and tried to find the library there, only to find myself lost in the music hall, listening to the composition of bells and xylophones. It was then that I discovered that, even though the building says "library" on it, it was converted into offices and classrooms (the real library is on another campus).
Wednesday was an action packed day, filled with two of my very favorite things: free museums and poetry. I met up with Sam and Alley and we went to the Hong Kong Museum of History, which is sure to become one of my very favorite places here. The exhibits included giant-sized boats, reconstructed houses, city streets equipped with medicine stores, tea houses, a tram, etc., and a fantastic sense of what it might have been like to walk around Hong Kong, many years ago. I was most affected by the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong exhibit, which was quite intense. The hall quickly changed into cement walls, bare lightbulbs, and the stories of the many people who endured the 3 years and 8 months (beginning in 1941). I'm actually planning to do a bit of research about this period... maybe it will turn into something?
Photos from the museum:
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Later on that night, I read at PoetryOutLoud at the Fringe Club, along with other fantastic poets and writers. It was a great, relaxed, and encouraging place to talk about poetry and share work. This reading made my entire week. I'm overjoyed. And, it happens the first Wednesday of every month.
Yesterday, I attended a writing workshop also at the Fringe with Peter Bakowski entitled "The Nourished Writer". There were a few things I got out of it: practice, persistence, and patience. And to not be afraid of the blank page. The blank page definitely terrifies me, including the expectation to fill it with something worthwhile.
Now, with the things I disagreed with and/or frustrated me (mostly because there should have been an acknowledgement that there are other ways of writing): the goal of clarity, of "cutting to the chase", of necessity, of age-old ways to approach writing. His approach seemed too traditional to me, to the point of repetition (I've heard these "ways to write" and "how to revise" Writing 101 speeches way too many times). I think, as writers today, the challenge is really to test these "ways of writing", to trespass and create a more provocative text. I do not believe that a writer's goal is to reach clarity - Bakowski's goal being that the reader "does not fall asleep". I don't agree. I have more faith in my reader - that he or she does not read simply to be entertained. Language, prose, the drive to question, the sound of words, the story that challenges me (and sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable) ... these are some reasons I read. He was also against the space of lingering. In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", this sense of lingering - of longing and the space between touch - is what makes the entire book. How could this book be as powerful as it was without lingering? Complete clarity, to me, seems false at times. I think clarity, as a concept, must include fog. What we see beyond the fog, the outline of a person, the gesture of a hand. Even in disconnection, we can create a sense of what is there. Why are we so afraid of "the messy"? Why are we afraid of getting our hands dirty? Yes, let's appreciate Hemmingway and Carver and O'Connor, but let's move on, let's create something new, something more dangerous, something more like the holding of breath. That's what excites me about writing.
1 comment:
Really like these photos!
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