Happy Half-Decade to the Red Room, January 2015

Happy Half-Decade to the Red Room
This five-minute time limit is good,
it makes me press my words into verse.
A masterpiece of literature this is not
and I’m not sure if it’s poetry or prose,
but in the spirit of this event,
here goes.

This piece I rapidly composed
in gratitude to the Room
they call Red,
where much is sung
and much is said.
And with the thanks I have
to the Mehtas:
Roma, Ayesha, Manav;
and a dude called Ping
who gets up here quite often
and says pretty much the same darned thing.
But it never gets old,
because there’s simply not enough listening in this world
to the stories needing,
the stories needing,
to be told.

Creativity community acceptance,
a safe place,
warm forgiving hands
to land on
when you fall
flat on your face.
Nonjudgmental shushing,
Get on stage don’t be selfish share your words.
This is a space,
in all honesty,
that at times
has bestowed upon me,
healing
by allowing
my heart
to be heard.

So with this I wish you,
Red Room and your bathroom*,
A Happy, Belated 5th Birthday to you.

(*I want to hear Holly Harrington sing the Red Room bathroom song again!)

This was written after an unexpected long day of work right after a trip abroad to see family. It was a cool, damp, winter evening under Civic Boulevard; I was wandering around looking for a late meal, and wrote this inside one of the later-closing eateries. It’s a little snapshot of life in Taipei, a place that I may or may not leave.

Under Civic Boulevard
So on top of my jetlag, tonight
I’m overworked and underpaid,
but this night,
I accept the injustice like a filial son
stoically paying his dues to this – country society culture island –
whatever it is here that lives off the overworked, the over-desirous, the insecure and the underesteemed,
and yet still manages to care enough for enough of them.

Lao ban niang, nimen ji dian da yang? What time do you close up, I ask the matron behind the sizzling oil and rising steam, as my glazed eyes instinctively fall upon some winter miniskirts leisurely flickering across the window.

A souped up little muscle car blasts by to remind the busy strip that it’s a weekend night.

In a very simple gratitude, tonight as I wait for my food, I appreciate the gawdy colors of the LED strings draped over a KTV palace not far in the distance.

I eat. Pedestrians thin out.

Soon my sauce-filled but otherwise empty plates brusquely levitate with a plastic clanking and I wonder how long before I’ll be hinted at, strongly, non-verbally and rudely in a polite kind of way, to vacate the premises.

Two days ago I was ten time zones away, and tonight my body isn’t quite supporting my brain.
I have slightly new eyes for these scenes after the well-worn screen of routine has been temporarily lifted from my mind.
But it’s alright, I like this state, I’m riding this cheap, weak drug while it lasts.

The aftertaste of MSG lingers and I realize, damn, I’ve eaten too full. But tonight it’s all OK, after a long unexpected evening of work this simple joint has somehow hit the spot, just right.

The feet of chairs upturned on tables reach my seated eye-level as the night proceeds, so what I want to say tonight is this:
If ever I have to leave your multi-armed embrace Taipei, I’ll miss you but that’s OK, should one day I find that missing you is what is meant to be,
and I promise you here
that I’ll…savour
and enjoy
every pang of that longing,
as I know all too well by now
that that
is precisely
what you would want me
to do.

Jason Hoy