2(x+7)
(7+x)2

Pushed back to square (so transpose).
Sunday, 08.05.2001 : 11.16 a.m.

In 1965, during the first American space walk, astronaut Edward White lost his glove.

This glove gloried in the fact of it becoming one of the first pieces of space litter, orbiting the earth at a speed of 28,000 kmph (I'd like a glove as well-traveled as that!).

Today, there are around 110,000 objects floating around earth. Things like satellites, paint flakes, nuts and bolts, and probably even large blocks of frozen urine (compliments of the cosmonauts on the Mir Space Station).

Moreover, I've just read that a piece of space debris the size of a coin moves so fast that it has the destructive force of a bus traveling at full speed. Imagine that. With the satellites we are producing, costing something around US$250 million (not including the launching, mind you), a collision can be expensive.

What is funny is how we have decided to cope with this problem. One British company has invented Snap I, some sort of space garbage collector if you will, a miniature satellite that collects space debris to push it back towards the earth. I don't see the use of this : theoretically, space debris should burn up in the earth's atmosphere. But surprisingly, some do make it back to earth. One piece a day, even, on average.

Something for you to think about. Bic produces 9 million razors and 4 million lighters a day. This company started with just one product in 1949: the disposable ball-point pen. To this day 14 million pens are sold in around 150 countries in ONE DAY. 14 million disposable ballpoint pens. ("I shudder at the immense proportions"). I ask you: what can be done with the plastic casings once a pen runs out of ink?

In Bangkok, Thailand, these casings are used to make improvised heroin syringes. In other countries, they are transformed into crack cocaine pipes. Unhealthy recycling. Ooomph.

What about chopsticks? In Japan, it takes 15,000 trees a year to make waribashi (disposable chopsticks). Almost a quarter to make these delightful chopsticks are taken from tropical rain forests.

That's not a good thing. But at least they're biodegradable.

How saddening it is to think of garbage: all around, even in space. Sometimes, I think we're forever trying to clean up after the mess we make : an eternal mess we create throughout our lives. Things we throw away are always thrown back to our faces. How do we expect to clean up space debris when we can't even keep track of things down here? An impossible feat, you say? I don't know. I don't even know why we think that we're so important... Mother Nature will go on evolving and breathing even without humans. Compared to the Universe, we're cosmic glitches.

But important cosmic glitches.

I've seen a poster about recycling yesterday with the caption: "We should all give a fuck."

So true.

da Vinci and Tachibana. Subpoena.
Friday, 08.03.2001 : 08:04 p.m.

It is a pleasure
When, in a book which by chance
I am perusing.
I come upon a character
Who is exactly like me.

-Tachibana Akemi

The story is that Boom found the pigeon.
Wednesday. 08.01.2001. : 05.02 p.m.

Let me start with a picture I've just made, because that's how everything starts...


Version 1.0 | Hands.
My grandmother passed away when I was eleven. I don't remember much about her, except that during her dying days, she spent it at home so my father could take care of her. I remember her hair, very long and white, strands that almost looked as if they would crack under the comb she'd use to brush it. And I could stare for hours at her hands. Not kidding. They were a mystery to me. Wrinkled, soft skin, the flesh under her forearms loose. That is why I find hands so fascinating: because my Grandmother would tell me that her hands were soft sculptures. But who sculpted you? I asked her a few days before she died. I was sitting on her bed, legs crossed, pretending to be an Indian. She smiled at me. The sculptor, was her reply.

Version 1.1 | The sculptor and me.
I've always been disappointed because I've never been able to draw hands as beautifully as they are in real life. I myself have non-dramatic hands, unlike my sister's long fingers. Boy's hands, people would comment upon my complaints. Maybe it's because I'm not a sculptor. Or maybe the sculptor just wasn't too fond of me, I suppose. Oh well.

Version 1.2 | Basquiat's Hands.
I wonder if Basquiat had nice hands? But then I wouldn't care. Any hand that can create art as wonderfully as he did is bound to be beautiful anyway. But at the same time, it can cause his downfall too. Strange things always happens when emotions are involved.

Loops.
Saturday, 07.28.2001. : 03.27 p.m.

If people can live without you, you can live without them.

Her Iris. Off-Kilter.
Friday. 07.27.2001. : 06.17 p.m.

Obviously, she is his world. Her iris is his Universe. Her hand is the cure to all the world's diseases. I like that about him.

"Him" is the photographer of the website I'm looking at. A collection of his photographs. The theme: the girl. It's just "some girl" to his audience, but for him, it's "the girl". He almost dedicates his life to her. He dedicates his life to her because his life is a roll of film. I like that about him. This good Japanese twenty-something photographer.

The girl is everywhere, in every location. He photographs her in the most common locations. Against a wall. By the grass. Under the sun. Most of the photographs are taken in their home. The girl sitting on a kitchen stool, her feet propped up on the kitchen table, smoking. The girl, staring at him with a cup of coffee in her hand. THe girl by the docks. The girl asleep. The girl staring at her own reflection in the mirror... you can tell he is pleased to have caught his girl twice in the same frame.

Her hair is always over her face. She has short brown hair that is almost yellow in the sun. He likes her in the sun. But then again, he likes her in the shadows, too. Her bangs cover her eyes, making me realise that she doesn't appreciate having her photograph taken all the time. And it's obvious that he doesn't care if she does. He'll take her picture anyway, anywhere.

I can almost hear them talk.

• "Yamamoto, stop it, take that camera away," she'd say (of course, his name isn't Yamamoto, I just made that up, and her name isn't...)
  
• "Mizuki, come on, don't be difficult, now."
  
• She would then stomp her feet on the ground, and try to dodge Yamamoto and his camera. She'd run around him and he would never remove his lens from his eyes.
• "Mizuki, really," he'd admonish in his sternest tone. "Cut it out. You're making me dizzy."
  
• "You," she would then say, stopping right behind him, "are driving me crazy. Put that away for just one minute. Please?"
  
• He smiles from behind his camera (from the pictures, he uses a Pentax, as it is photographed several times).
• "You," he would say loudly, "can never be captured enough on film. I was born to photograph you." (I'm almost sure he'd say this to Mizuki!)
  
• And she would bend her head, her bangs falling over her little Japanese face, and that is his photograph.