TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 2004
Some things you think; others you just know.
In February, I talked about commitment to a money project in a way I’m usually only committed to a literary project. For six of the last seven weeks of my earthly existence, this has been exactly what I have made myself guilty of.
However, it has become increasingly clear that the project I am working on is quite possibly not just weeks away from positive cash flow. I can, therefore, not continue to work on it like a psychotic robot at the expense of anything else.
It should come as no surprise that I did not merely think I ought to pay attention again to some of my other projects; I knew it.
For the record, it must be mentioned that the idea of maintaining a domestic situation in Taiwan is currently experiencing a period of renewed tolerance among the “people”. (We know, however, how quickly the atmosphere of tolerance can change in this area – one moment the Chief Advocate for Staying in Taiwan is happily stumbling to his bicycle with bags full of breakfast cereal, and the next moment he is pedalling for all he’s worth to get away from a small but hostile crowd armed with stones and broken bottles.) To put repatriation plans on long-term ice, however, will once again fuel impatience, frustration and despair … in such a way that one starts to wonder if totally different future plans share a single internal root!
Are there alternatives between these two extreme options? Is there an alternative idea-logic to offer the citizens of my internal republic other than Return to the Country of My Birth despite the Consequences, on the one hand, and Too Much Uncertainty and Effort so Let’s Just Stay in Taiwan on the other? Is it time for the Writer, the Student and that other guy (the one who has to make money) to storm the towns, the cities, the plains and the coffee shops with the manifesto of a New Idea? Is it time for a Third Force?
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