To Spring Equinox

After the exhibition in 2010, I was seriously ailing and suffered from a codiac surgery. After the recovery, rehabilitation was needed and is still required even today. I must walk 10,000 steps daily. I was demanded to walk ten thousands step each day for the recovery since half year before.

Around Spring Equinox, I set out for the walk at five in the morning. I walked along the river bank, and saw water tinted by the twilight. Ten thousand steps are right about to reach my studio at the river bank.

I read books, make ink from an ink-slab, and write about the scenery I observed that day-Melia azedarach trees have blossomed and suffused into pinkish purple; the hibiscus tiliaceus dropped on the ground; the late cicadas sing in summer.

Ink making and writing can be my matin. Calligraphy is performed without deliberation.

In the studio, it is always Bach or Satie’s music which companies me. Music is not so disturbing. They are presented as if not presented.

On every Spring Equinox, the mist floats and rolls in the valley. Sometimes, the Sumer Solstice I’ve seen in Siziwan in Shoa Shan would come into my mind – the Phoenix flowers and the sunset; so red which will make my heart ache.

At the beginning of autumn, I often stroll in the valley of Liwu Chi, the mountains are serene. The brook curls along the deep gully, winding forward. The gully and the rocks have tangled up for centuries,- there must be karma for their tangling.

There must be karma which binds me and the island.

Nevertheless, dew drops turn into frost; mountains and the brooks are sometimes a tiny implication in the emptiness, present as if not present. Use ink to render, to memorize; use coloured paint to outline, to cover. All might have been effort in vain, helplessly.

Flowers fall off, do what one may. Wished I could stop the time, even though I knew it will always flow away.

Three years. There are memories and there are the forgettable, but they are not all. If this is called exhibition, aside from the poems, the traces of ink, the glitzy colours, I really would not wish to talk about any more.

By: Chiang Hsun at Spring Equinox, 2013