Journey to the East: Taipei (1)

As the bus came down from the airport, through the highway towards the city, I saw the mists of rain shimmering in the orange light under the highway bridge among the hill of greens.

The different yet seemingly familiar scene took me back to the work travels a few years back, where a group of us were here in this tech city trying to untangle and progress live projects. The life and the travel were somehow insulated because I mostly stayed at Regent, the art circle was limited to the weekends, and the views were limited to the consensus of a few.

This time it is somehow different. As I closed my eyes in the bus, I had many scenes and names like montage passing in front of me. When I opened my eye again, I saw the almost ephemeral clouds hanging low in the sky, against the city landscape. I saw more beauty of this city, such as the wet road intersections where all cars with flickering lights would merge and then diverge all went their own separate ways; such as the trees with beard-like roots hanging low in the rain by lines of bikes covered for protecting the damage and rust from the rain.

I even felt the beauty as I came out of my hotel without a compass, a map, as I was meandering around the lanes of roads with neon lights, among the confusion and a slight trepidation I stood on the road and started laughing. It was such a small cosmic dot of a place but my mind was rich and encountered so much visual stimulations that it had the silly dizzy spin.

Taipei, its richness comes in all forms. Outside my hotel I saw a poster and it says: as human beings we are able to cry since birth, it was later that we learn to laugh; so it was from the basic form of sadness, that we step into the high form and ability of being able to laugh and embrace joy. ‘ it makes you wonder why, why would such a poster be there if not thanks to some mind, filled with curiosity, thirst of knowledge, and the urge to express, communicate, and attract?

Every stall on the streets of Taipei is a story and that was what I was thinking as the plane landed at Taoyuan airport in Taipei. Lots of little dots of yellow moved around the airport trying to keep the wheel going and these dots, upon close looking are beautiful beings each representing a rich and long stretched life story.

I think as we experience more, that experience feeds to the well where empathy originates from. I image each of these dots, how did they arrive and work at this space, how would they go about their daily lives, and what dreams have they carried in their sleeves and their heart? By thinking of them it makes me feel happy, because all of us are never lone animals. We all need the eye to see,  the heart to feel; as we move around we move the world and stories of human life with us.