narrative junkie

Walltown. (at Durham, North Carolina)

"All memories are sodden." 「所有的記憶都是潮濕的。」 Rewatching “1918,” the 黃勁輝 -directed documentary on the great HK modernist writer Liu Yichang 劉以鬯, who passed away today. Peripatetic, diasporic, cosmopolitan - Liu's life and work embodied a less remarked-upon but just as vivid trajectory of modern Chinese intellectuals. Wong Kar Wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and 2046 were inspired by 2 of his best known stories, 酒徒 (Drunkard) and 對倒 (Tête-bêche). Wong Kar Wai brought Tony Leung with him to visit Liu Yichang - he wanted him not only to understand Liu's stories, but also to capture something of Liu's style in his creation of the character of Chow Mo-wan, lovelorn newspaper editor and pulp fiction writer. According to Wong Kar Wai, his film was an homage to Liu Yichang and his generation of diasporic Chinese writers who lived through war and dislocation. Liu was born in Shanghai and attended St John’s College, but lived and worked as a newspaperman and novelist in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong for most of his life. His passing, at age 99, seems like the closing to a particular story arc of modern Chinese letters. Safe travels. #hongkong #shanghai #chineseliterature #liuyichang #inthemoodforlove #2046 #wongkarwai #劉以鬯 #香港 #王家衛 #花樣年華

Nina Simone, Here Comes The Sun Olek, 2017 (Crocheted Acrylic Yarn) (at Raleigh Convention Center)

now it is time to be summer it is time for that departure -WS Merwin, “First of June” #everynightapoem

“A quiet desolation is more resonant [than the bluntly tragic]. Like pairing scallion green with peach pink, it is the skewed contrast that lingers.” -Eileen Chang, “On My Own Writing” (1944) 「..像蔥綠配桃紅，是一种參差的對照。 」-張愛玲，自己的文章 #everynightapoem #ofsorts #eileenchang #張愛玲 #參差 #onwriting

Another quick exercise we did in #GraphicAsia class to practice attentiveness and close observation, without getting hung up on disparity in drawing skill - I had them draw a portrait of a classmate using their non-dominant hand. (at Story Lab at Duke)

I read aloud the first few pages of Swann’s Way to my students while they drew spirals (an attention-honing drawing exercise learned from Lynda Barry), and the cadence of Moncrieff and Kilmartin’s Proust translation felt like my own madeleine, transporting me back to age 17 and Lamont Library. « Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.» Later, I spent all of one summer and fall reading this in entirety in French, but the discovery of Proust’s vertiginous prose I forever associate with Moncrieff and Kilmartin’s translation. (at Story Lab at Duke)

Teaching one of my absolute favorite pieces of fiction today — 棋王 “The King of Chess” by Ah Cheng. 「何以解憂？唯有象棋。」 “How to assuage one’s sorrows? Only through chess.” #chinamodern #bookstagram #amreading #chineseliterature #ahcheng #chess (at Story Lab at Duke)

Throwback pic of Q reading our fave #ChineseNewYear picture book: 團圓 “Reunion”- about a little girl who looks forward to her migrant worker father returning home once a year. We are in grim times, but also not without glimmers of hope - for one, the forceful and righteous young survivors speaking out after the #parkland shooting. As Lu Xun exhorted exactly 100 years ago: save the children, save the children. #lunarnewyear2018 #TheNRAcanbebeat #救救孩子

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” -Audre Lorde, 1977 Collected in Sister Outsider, (Crossing Press, 1984) #thisiswhy #everynightapoem #BlackHistoryMonth #audrelorde

「今天晚上、很好的月光。」 -taught Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman yesterday. Not meaning to coincide with the #supermoon or even with the story’s centenary - but there it was. First published in 1918 in “New Youth” and heralded as the clarion cry of the May Fourth generation, and also of the modern Chinese literary revolution - it is the first work to be written in (self-consciously) modern vernacular Chinese. Re-reading Lu Xun is always a revelation. “Save the children!” - such are the madman’s final words, for then and for now. (Pictured here - a precious 1979 reprint absconded from a relative’s bookshelf a while back. List price: 0.36 yuan) #luxun #diaryofamadman #oldbooks #modernchina #chineseliterature #五四運動 #魯迅 #狂人日記 #bookstagram (at Story Lab at Duke)

Fist of Fury (1/7) Movie CLIP - Sick Men of Asia (1972) HD