The boundaries of reality are the area of play…

You ask me if I still miss you,
I say yes I miss you all the time.
But how but how?
Every thought brings me to you.

You ask me if I still desire you,
I say why speak of desire?
Why not why not?
Because desire is distance distilled.

You ask me if I still love you,
I say what comes after rapture?
What what? - you demand.
The burst, I reply. And from then on everything hurts.

© 2007 Post-Modern China Doll.

After Munch’s “The Scream”…

Maxime is asleep, and after Nat clankered away into the taxi with her high boots and a thin layer of makeup that she wiped off and re-applied throughout the evening (I caught the moment when she shifted from ok to stunning and everything became light), there’s just the great stillness of the winter night. No music, no sound, only left-over scents of alcohol and canabis and nervous laughters in the air, dissolving into a waterfall of one thousand poorly-focused lightbulbs in the city skyline.

Sleep has become obsolete for those who are accustomed to hearing hung-over voices of the day - voices of hope and regrets, of love and sorrow, of loss and retrouvaille; utterances of the past, slowly eaten away by the present, finally obliterated by the future.

If I go to asleep, this too will become a blurry dream, blended into my bitter potion so as to fall into another, greater stillness.

© 2007 Post-Modern China Doll.

I can’t see how I was ever “underground,” since I ‘ve always wanted people to notice me.

-Andy Warhol, Popism. The Warhol Sixties

ç§!& called to say that she must begin to make money by the end of Feburary - with art, I suppose. This is one of her great themes (another one being getting exhibited in NYC). I never know what to say when she’s like that, as if I must give a verbal confirmation of my faith in her imminent success. I fear that she’s missing the whole point.

I mean I don’t pretend to hit right on the spot of things, but I’m in business for a higher reason. It’s not that I believe I’m divinely bestowed, or preordained by the secret blueprints of my DNA, but I’m not yet ready to admit that I live for money and success and these 2 things add up to happiness. So I keep my silence while trying my best to lend her an attentive ear.

She then said that soon society will no longer operate on money (all the more reason that she must begin making some now!). I’ve vaguely heard about this paradigm shift thing, supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar and confirmed by eminent contemporary mathematicians, and I jokingly said that she should not spread false words about imminent apocalypse, only to be corrected with utter seriousness.

In fact, as she tells me, contrary to what most think, the Apocalypse does not signify the end of the world, but rather a new consciousness. Certain beings will not be able to adapt (spiritually?), and will thus die off en masse. Poor souls - at least they are forewarned.

She keeps wanting to redefine our “partnership”, despite my assurance that she’ll get 50% of the earnings, not that there’s any sales at the current moment - putting the series on the back burner. She does not seem reassured by my promise, and will “rethink” our partnership by the next time we meet.

Which reminds me that I have to call C back for miscellaneous things to advance my current project.

It is such a pain to work with French people sometimes.

This morning as I woke up, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. No not the past, but the near and the not so near future. It happened so quickly that I missed it though.

Today, for the first time in a while, I feel joyous and free. I’m wanting to go back to Henry Miller, to Nexus. I’m yearning for something new, perhaps a new season, some sort of a new life.

Butterfly in the candle flame,
nervously flapping its wings.
If life is but one flash of brilliance,
why not consume it in one blazing flame?

© Post-Modern China Doll

Thoughts, in broken fragments
Words, drifing in a whirlpool
Slices of truth lost in delirium
Incoherency is lasting poetry.

The lover needs the beloved
The beloved the lover.
If you are a lover on love’s path,
Renounce all others.

© Post-Modern China Doll

This was almost “dictated” to me as of now. But could it really have been “authored” by me? Sounds like something that would have be written by eXtreme Celibacy or St. Augustine (after the conversion). Could I have unconsciously plagiarized? I thought I would only have this kind of insight when I turn 50… If anyone has had similar experiences, or has read this elsewhere (would be a relief to know), please shed light on this strange, strange matter.

MySpace’s blanket image censorship policy:

Photos may not contain nudity, violent or offensive material, or copyrighted images. If you violate these terms your account will be deleted.

And no, you don’t get your account back. It gets sucked in the black hole of mydarkplace, lost forever to mankind…

Myspace deleted my account, and I got myself back on in no time.

I tried to contact the president of Myspace “Tom”, because I suspected that it was the “nudity” of some of my images that disturbed Myspace’s admistration. He’s got obscene or rather, “offensive” lyric on his homepage, but somehow I couldn’t put my artsy fartsy nudes on Myspace.

I thought the account cancellation was pretty rude and completely unconstructive in a supposedly democratic space of personal expression and constructive dialogue. Exchanged a few comments on Skype with my friend Daniel about this, but he nonchalantly said to just sign myself up for another account minus the tits - “This is America, you’ve been away for too long.”

This is not how I understood America from my history books. But 147,349,573 MySpace users seem to be OK with following the ridiculous image policy with no questions asked! Is the world becoming even more docile than I was lead to believe?

***Following the increasing number of private comments this post has generated, I have decided to confine all discussion to comments on this post. So if your comments elsewhere are not answered, this is why. Post them here.

Following Sister Sophie’s Truth and Dare with eXtreme celibacy, I have sent my application to join her convent. Anyhow, I’ve been looking for a convent for a while, and what could be more fun than spending some time with Sister Sophie? You can find her versions (please note her purity and devotion) on her blog.

Dear Sister Sophie,

I’m thoroughly impressed by your 26 alphabetical letter poems. The convent is indeed no place for conventionalities. Here is mine, in hommage to Maquis de S. Consider it my application to join your convent.

Yours truly,
Post-Modern China Doll

Adulterous Brain Conditions Desire,
Enforced For Gyrating Holes.
In Jail,
Keeps Lamenting…

Mid-Night Omnivorous Porn -
Queer Ruminations,
Sodomitical Temptations,
Uninhibitedly Voluptuous Wide-eyed Xenocrates Yield Zoolatry.

© 2007 Post-Modern China Doll.

All I ever wanted to do was to be a bum, and I’m working my ass off for a meager income. OK that was largely an exaggeration, my favorite Monday gripes for poetic licence.

If I don’t finish that damned article that I’ve been avoiding all weekend by say 12:30 pm, you can come and shoot me, and collect my dead body.

Or I can make my way to Sister Sophie’s convent and help her out with her Jewish experimental deli, and finally meet that cute Jewish boy that’s written all over my destiny…

Update (3:00 pm): Editor thought my analysis was “perspicace”, pheww…no rewrites. I wish I could get my hands on this Brit Lewis Blackwell’s books. I think his writing is so sexy. And he was so good with his words that I didn’t even realize he stuttered until I was re-editing the sound files. Had to spend extra time to edit out the stutters for the slideshow, even though I think some of the greatest conversationists stuttered (can’t think of any one example besides Blackwell now, eh, Sir Isaac Newton?). I need to either get a culture or get a life.

© Post-Modern China Doll

I used to go to Forum de l’image after a long long school day to watch this movie over and over again. The lady at the desk got to know me.

Larry Clark rules! I like all of his movies, so it’s a hard pick. The beauty of this movie lies in the utter senselessness and the inherent amorality in life.

Bonnie and Clyde, a cult movie par excellence, and Fay Dunaway at her most memorable.

Catherine Breillat is my hero, and I had the chance to tell her about my admirations in person a few years ago. This was Breillat’s first feature and is based on one of her first novels. It was made in 1976 and wasn’t shown on screen until 2000. I first saw this film late night on Arte France and was completely mesmerized. I’ve since seen it many times on screen. Very Georges Bataille, very dark, and very powerful. I’ve seen all of her movies also. Try A ma soeur (Fat Girl), 36 fillettes, Romance X, and Love is a comedy.

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. Meet me and I’ll sing you, “Est-il loin est-il proche est-il à Rochefort…Son amour c’est ma vie mais à quoi bon penser?” Michel Legrand is simply brilliant.

The imagery is breathtaking - luminous shades of grey, and the ZONE is kind of a metaphor for life. For a while, my photographs were heavily Stalker-tainted. Every single movie of Tarkovsky is a masterpiece.

L’Empire des sens is unquestionably the most beautiful movie on love and obsession ever made. I also enjoyed Taboo and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

This movie is so multi-layered that even though the narration is fairly traditional, and even though I have a fairly firm grasp on Chinese contemporary history and culture, I always come out with new insights. Farewell resumes contemporary Chinese history (feudal China, Japanese occupation, New China, Cultural Revolution), and re-confirmed my belief that love and betrayal are indeed flip sides of the same coin.

Godard is a giant and this movie is a monument.

Time stands still and the rest of the world drops off. Like a well-brewed tea that makes you want to linger, and linger some more…

Old Boy. I had to watch it a second time to get over the violence. A modern Greek tragedy. Breathless.

Charlie Chaplin in the final scene of The Circus (1929). Chaplin was the greatest of all poets. Did I mention that all my pre-pubescent fantansies consisted of running away with an itinerant circus? That was back in the old days when there were still street magicians and artist/vagabonds in Beijing, and on my way back from painfully long piano lessons, I would stand transfixed for hours until darkness arrived and crowds slowly dispersed, dreaming of a vagabond life free from daily grind and responsibilities (and screaming mother because I had come back home late, again)…

Spirited Away. An epic fairy tale conceived by a mastermind of phantasmagoric animation. I’ve watched this so many times and am still captivated by the poetry and the boundless imagination of this super brain.

Anita read this to me over the phone from Jordan in December. I was going through some difficult times, and she always finds the perfect words to sooth my soul:

Meditation At Lagunitas - by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

When those pearls drop,
Why do they splatter like rain drops?
When those pearls drop,
Why do they blind me with their glisten?
When those pearls drop,
Why do they make one thousand clinks?
When those pearls drop,
Why do I feel a leak in the heart?

© 2007 Post-Modern China Doll.

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, “What does love mean?” The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.
See what you think:

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.”
Rebecca- age 8

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
Billy - age 4

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”
Karl - age 5

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”
Chrissy -age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.”
Terri - age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”
Danny - age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.”
Emily - age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.”
Nikka - age 6

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.”
Noelle - age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”
Tommy - age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared
anymore.”
Cindy - age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody . You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.”
Clare - age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”
Elaine-age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.”
Chris - age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”
Mary Ann - age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.”
Lauren - age 4

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.”
Karen - age 7

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.”
Mark - age 6

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”
Jessica - age 8

And the final one — Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”

Happy 2007!
Bonne année!

新年快乐！

Peace and love from China Doll
Shanghai, New Year’s Day

沁沁，二零零七年元旦于上海