In The Distant Waves

Obviously, I was began feeling a little bit sentimental when I found this picture on my camera. The doll was not my best, but I don’t especially work well with rubber bands, foam pads, and cloth. She (dubbed Lady Charlotte) was a creation of mine sometime in the far past, which I left in one of my relatives’ homes last summer, to keep the portrait of my passed grandmother company.

I really don’t know what I was thinking, perching a delicate, practically weight-less doll like her royal highness on such a precarious post. Chances were, a gust of wind would blow by, and she would fall head first into the deep, swirling waters below. Luckily (I don’t know whom it was better for, me or her) that didn’t happen.

Now. I met/made Lady Charlotte in an art center in Taiwan. I can’t recall the name of it, exactly, but I do know that I spent close to an hour cutting, shaping, and transforming three squares of foam and two bunches of cloth into the lovely lady you see below.

I remember riding back to my hotel on the subway, sitting next to a baby girl in the most adorable bunny outfit. She kept smiling and giggling at the sight of the doll, and I was so tempted to give it to her, I almost offered it to her mother, since it pleased her daughter so much. But then I remember that the entire body was connected with toothpicks, and it would sooner kill the poor child rather than keep her company until she grew up (or chewed Lady Charlotte to death, which ever came first).

The City Behind The Clouds

The sky is lit up behind the clouds

And the water only reflects what it cannot see.

A bridge that extends into forever

Leaving the city behind.

A boat floats past;

So much larger than the one that played in my tub as a child.

There’s so much about the world that I don’t know

And so much more that a boat can tell.

In the distance, mountains rise up

Covered by thin mist.

The world, too, is covered in a veil

That even pictures cannot uncover.