(Source: an-94, via unusualyoung)
(Source: christdookie, via insomniomnia)
Kara VanderBijl: A Wise Man
Relationships, especially the deep soul-satisfying ones, are houses we build and live in with others. We construct them to weather the environment, the challenges we meet when we first connect. They are strong and beautiful and we fill them with laughter and experiences and intimacy. If we have a…
I am back home in Taiwan for the holidays. Taken in A-gong (mom’s dad) and Po-po (mom’s mom) room.
We can never get free in Beijing.
(Source: youmightfindyourself)
In our Been There Done That Mashup Age, nothing is obsolete, and nothing is really new; it’s all good. I feel as if the whole culture is stoned, listening to an LP that’s been skipping for decades, playing the same groove over and over. Nobody has the wit or gumption to stand up and lift the stylus.
Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out. So as the Web and artificially intelligent smartphones and the rise of China and 9/11 and the winners-take-all American economy and the Great Recession disrupt and transform our lives and hopes and dreams, we are clinging as never before to the familiar in matters of style and culture.
… …People flock by the millions to Apple Stores (1 in 2001, 245 today) not just to buy high-quality devices but to bask and breathe and linger, pilgrims to a grand, hermetic, impeccable temple to style—an uncluttered, glassy, super-sleek style that feels “contemporary” in the sense that Apple stores are like back-on-earth sets for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the early 21st century as it was envisioned in the mid-20th. And many of those young and young-at-heart Apple cultists-cum-customers, having popped in for their regular glimpse and whiff of the high-production-value future, return to their make-believe-old-fashioned lives—brick and brownstone town houses, beer gardens, greenmarkets, local agriculture, flea markets, steampunk, lace-up boots, suspenders, beards, mustaches, artisanal everything, all the neo-19th-century signifiers of state-of-the-art Brooklyn-esque and Portlandish American hipsterism.
—“You Say You Want a Devolution?” by Kurt Andersen, Vanity Fair, January 2012
Cowboy and Indien (September, 2010 - January, 2012)
Written by Yang, translated by Rose
Being a girl myself, I like girls too. This is not anything about sexual orientation; it’s just like an old Chinese saying – “Women are made of water and pay the life with tears.” For girls, who bring the world sweet warmth, are born with frangible thoughts - their innermost being is often even more splendid than their exterior appearance, and their soul more mysterious. I have always had the faith that every single girl is beautiful. Though there being some girls with plain appearance, just when you get to know them a bit more and in-depth, you find their wisdom, their tolerance, and their toughness all surpass the fleeting appearance.
My father has never been a bit despair about me being a girl; instead, he sees me as treasure of his life, sometimes even more loving than his own life. I remembered asking his reasons, and he said, he adores girls’ soft sensibility, soft skin, soft smiles, and soft bearings, and they are all perfect in his eyes. Unlike him, I like bad girls. I like those girls who smoke and drink; girls who look like boys I like, too. I don’t mind the girls who are slow and for from these girls who receive less appreciation from most people I can see clearer their young and weak hearts.
It may be easier to get Luo Yang’s pictures if you are a girl yourself, for there may be you in the pictures, for you may have experienced that helplessness and hesitation, for you know that dreams are something that may not come true. You may be the one with half the watermelon, whose youth is like the melon’s over-brimming juice. You may be the one looking out of the window, wondering if you walked outside that window, it would probably be a different world.
(Source: ourfieldtrips)
