Notes of a Desolate Man and Fin-de-Siècle Splendour by Tien-Wen Chu

Caption of the Chu's novel Notes of a Desolate Man

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This is an age of decadence. This is an age of prophecy. I am securely bonded with it, sinking to the bottom, the very bottom.

I use my naked body to mark the nadir of all the most morally corrupting behaviors the human race can tolerate. Above me, moving from darkness to light, is rampant human desire and sexuality. Below me, there is nothing but an abyss. But since I have never believed in heaven, there can be no hell. Yes, below me, there is no demonic world. There is only, there is only the eternal, the everlasting abyss.

It stops here, it stops with me. The Bible says, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. This is where it stops.

I have reached my fortieth year, the prime of a man's life. So why have I already experienced the entire cycle of birth, aging, illness, and death, all that humans are fated to pass through, and become like a dead tree?

Who is it who said one should cultivate one's heart until it is like a dead tree and cold ashes, then have it sprout new leaves? But I am not like that. Nor am I like the monk, Master Hongyi, who could turn the splendor and charm of the first half of his life into dew to nourish the branches of tranquil asceticism of the second half.

I think, though I was once afraid of the raging desires that besieged me like moths drawn to a fire, and after the desire subsided, felt a deathly loneliness, and was terrified of facing that kind of loneliness, that now, at least, I can live with the loneliness. Living and dying serenely with that loneliness, looking death straight in the eye, I am no longer afraid.

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Source1 : Traffic Specific - Taipei

After the traffic "dark age" due to the massive constructions of MRT (Mass Rapid Transportation )system in Taipei, the velocity density of current traffic system is gaining controlled. Indeed, in order to maximize efficiency and performance of any particular tissue, vessel or intersection, numerous indicative lanes/signs/perfomative geometries are located throughout the city: they're either resulted from possible pasts (congestion or danger because of planing failures,) or reserved for possible futures (constructing MRT stations and bus exchange.)On one hand, the separation of bus and scooter lanes is specifically helpful for easing the traffic. Special rules dominate specific regimes or territory of flows. On the other hand, it seems to be over-controlled.

Chien-Cheng Circle, an once important commercial/memory node in Taipei, with intimate interfaces between venders and customers, was torn and rebuilt in 2002. Ironically, it went out of business and closed in 2005 since its most essential character - the intimacy between crowds, business interfaces, and aging of materials, had lost in the "modernized" version of it. After all, the characteristics and conditions of these urban spaces like Chien-Cheng Circle may not be looking for clarity/specificity; it might function as multiplicity of arbitrary occupations, interpretations, and exchange.