The Eastern Coast of Taiwan
More and more of my headspace is being allocated to the external details of my environment. I am studying how my body interacts with space. This is a good sign— an indication that perhaps I am pushing outside the six-year tornado my brain has been nonstop producing.
1. Yilan, Taiwan
Passage
Today was another surfing day. We left earlier (9-10am) to maximize the time in the water and the 500 NTD spent on our rental boards. We also rented a car to avoid the hassle of public transit, driving through the highways and tunnels that are becoming familiar. Renting a car has a special charm about it. Cars are very personal objects. The driver is in control of the destination. The car forms a microhabitat that seals the riders from the elements outside its container. One is not reliant on the preset routes of buses or trains, nor does one have to shuffle in and out of crowds. Riding a car evolves from a means, to get to a destination, to an experience in its own right. Today, with two new friends and one best friend, we laugh and sing, making the passage to surfing comparable to the joys of the waves themselves.
Now Surfing.
This is my second-and-a-half time surfing. I am trying to gather together the movements, but the progress is slow and subtle. It’s one thing to learn the form on sand (of which I’m not particularly good at, anyways). It’s another thing to balance and stand on waves that are each slightly different from one another. Every detail in the body is necessary for a successful run.
The details: center on board (horizontally), shift towards the back end of the board (vertically; I imagine this shift won’t be as dramatic with a hard board), feet together, tense core, look forward (not down at the board), twist torso as coming up, shift weight to back leg, stand with legs rather than hinging with hips.
My friend says this list will become intuitive and embodied. For now, I repeat all of the steps in only a handful of seconds before the wave comes and all thoughts escape as I try to not get flung off the board.
I still get flung off.
In between the nose dives, I am making progress. I am beginning to lift both knees from the board, doing some form of standing. My feet sometimes deviate from the centerline, accidentally revealing how turning works. When I do manage to find some lift and time on the wave, I beam.
I smile, not as a learned response to a stimulus, but to express pure satisfaction at my small (but mighty) improvements. And then I turn the board back towards the wave and repeat, repeat, repeat. I mutter my list of details, fly off, choke on water, and sometimes find the lift again.
A brief dérive beyond the waves
With a bit of confidence and timing, one can get behind the surf. This is for surfers who are trying to catch waves, and not just white water. It’s a place to rest and prepare. The area is peaceful as it is beyond where the waves break to their face-slapping energy.
To get here can be a battle in its own right. Getting behind the surf requires a strong paddle towards the wave head-on. This often means taking ten strides forward, getting pushed back nine, and repeating until by some miracle you are safe.
Here, people sit up and straddle their boards, carrying out conversations as they find the perfect wave for them. Today, I had a chat with a new friend. We reminisced through the loves and frustrations of our pasts. Telling stories from worlds so distant from the expansive ocean we now floated upon. I mentioned my travels through the Himalayas—oh how different that scene is to now.
As we continue chattering and allowing the ocean to carry us, magic arrives: FLYING FISH! Flying fish are one of the most silly beings from a human POV. Fish are, by category, bounded to the water. Yet flying fish play with this assumption as they propel themselves out of the water, maybe half a meter high, before slapping back under. Like a dolphin with about 5% of the grace. I have only ever watched flying fish on video, so the unexpected splashes brought great joy.
Also I looked it up, apparently flying fish is a specific species. I do not believe that I saw the flying fish who have wing-like fins (although maybe I did?). These fish only jumped above the water and fell back down. I am trying to determine which type of fish these were, but my findings remain unclear.
Irritations
So far, I have described special, cherish-able moments of the surfing day. There were also MEGA irritations that had me exiting the water two times with a ranter’s rage. For surfing, there is an etiquette. Unlike land etiquette that is fruitless besides being a (yucky) mechanism to differentiate social classes, surf etiquette is a necessary exercise to keep people safe.
Whoever is closest to the peak gets priority.
Whoever is already on the wave gets it.
Without these practices, you have people on top of each other with giant hard slabs getting chucked by waves waiting to hit all of the concuss-able heads bobbing in the water. No only that, but these slabs have fins that, accompanied by a wave’s power, can slice.
A note to the remarkably irritating people in the whitewater:
please look behind you & in front of you
If someone is clearly about to take a wave, move the **** out of the way (or at least try)
If you are a teacher with a student on a board who is not looking back, and you (as the teacher) clearly see another person about to take the wave, move your student.
Please stop standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me. If I move to the left, this is not an invitation for you to follow
If the person right behind you is taking the wave, you are not supposed to try to get on it as well
Additional Notes
A FamilyMart (convenience store chain like 7-11) in a small town sold VEGAN SESAME PASTE BUNS. Sesame paste is the ultimate bun filling.
Shoutout to the baked sweet potatoes in the convenience stores, again. Mega yum.
TeaTop is quickly becoming my favorite boba chain. Great prices, sweet boba balls. I’m sorry, Milksha, but you lost your shine when you lost your soy milk option.
Electrical lines spread across buildings like ivy. The aesthetic is so common here I often overlook how different it is from the built environments in other places that I have lived.
Stephanie has improved. If something does not work out, try until all solutions are exhausted. After that point, discontinue stress as it serves no function anymore. Enjoy. Finally, enjoy.
2. Southeastern Taiwan
We are currently on the train, sliding down the eastern side of Taiwan, heading to a new “home” for the next couple of weeks. I am impressed by the scale of the mountains we pass. Three years ago, I went into the mountains in northern Taiwan, but their soft rolls and fog coverings do not convey the power, taqatwar, of the stereotypical mountain. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever imagined the “mountain people” in Taiwan as actually living in the mountains. Th mountains always read as large hills, for me. That may also be due to the different nature of these mounds. The idea of a “mountain” is sharp. The rocks are exposed as the altitude, winds, and temperatures make any plant growing above a particular height impossible. The big, impressive mountains, also would be covered with snow, theoretically. Subliminal, for sure.
These mountains have a woven net of foliage from the base to the peaks. Small pockets have rock exposure, probably from common earthquakes that destabilize the rock, but otherwise, the mountains are notably softer. The eastern mountains, though, are more grand than those I met in the north. Perhaps the valleys are carved deeper, communicating the scale more clearly.
I imagine that life on this side of the island is notably different from the highly developed west side of the island. On the west side, there are multiple large cities one can visit as they head down. On the east, the most notable place is Hualien, and after that, it is villages that one must zoom in quite closely into google maps to pick out. On the west side, one can take a train from Taipei to Khaosiung in 2.5 hours with the high speed rail. On the east, only slow and slower trains exist, taking at least 5 hours to get to a place not even as far south as Khaosiung.
Pacing. There is no rush.
The development of the west is SOOOOOO obvious with yellow lines cutting through the coast, while the east largely remains green.
Introspective Interjection
This flow of creativity is not the usual manic impulse that radiates beneath my skin where I can feel my individual atoms shaking and bumping into each other—where I must act towards this fixation, that blinds me to all other matters of life.
This time, I am very much guided by curiosity. Curiosity that is bouncy, light— perhaps a bit obsessive in moments, but never all-consuming beyond the few-hour sessions in which they occur. Outside of these session, I am maintaining a rich life with exercise (climbing and surfing girlie, whah whah!), forging new friendships (tell me what?!), and connecting to the physical space that I am inhabiting.
Documenting My Taiwan Oats Recipe
ALSO let me tell you my breakfast. I have significantly upgraded my oats routine. It doesn’t taste any better, but it is certainly more interesting. For context, my baseline oats recipe requires oats, cinnamon, and water. More often than not, I upgrade water for plant-based milk (almond, oat, or soy). Oat milk in oats is the yummiest, but is ridiculous to think about putting “milked” oats on top of oats. We need more nutrient diversity here. In the past 9 months, one of my dear friend has converted me to soy milk. I am not sure I like the taste of soy milk, but I like to convince myself that I like soy milk. I think life is more fun this way.
Okay, so the oatmeal recipe so far is oats, cinnamon, and soy milk.
Might I also mention that I rarely ever eat my oats warm. I rarely even marinate them long enough to become overnight cold oats. While one of my focus areas for improvement this year is patience, I will reserve my oatmeal from this grueling task. Patience is not needed for my oats. No, thank you.
Cold (uncooked) oats with cinnamon and soy milk.
To expand my nutrient portfolio, I also add chia seeds or ground flax seeds. Flax seeds is for my omegas, but high-key ground flaxseeds are not delicious, so I tend to sprinkle these in exchange for more chia. Including chia in uncooked impatient oats is even more of a choice. Enjoy the crunch.
ANYWAYS. I am really going too far into the depths of my oats logic. Let me just tell you what I put in now. Wait— before that I need to emphasize that the type of cinnamon matters. Standard store-shelf cinnamon is not good. There isa Tung Hing variety from China which has more spice and flavor strength. I need the strongest cinnamon otherwise I will overdose dumping in heaps of this stuff just begging to register the flavor. I have become too immune.
Finally, the new additions:
Black sesame powder. What! Never heard of that. It smells delicious, tastes like nothing, and brings me great joy every morning.
Black soy milk. What! Black soy milk is actually incredible. There is a difference in taste, one that I will need to do a side-by-side taste test to actually describe to you. But, it is this charcoal gray color, and according to google, it is naturally sweeter, carries more protein, and is rich in B vitamins. I am sold.
So the daily routine is carrying my reusable bag that I got from the fortune cookie factory in San Francisco’s Chinatown filled with various plastic bags of seeds, cinnamon, oats, and milk.
When my visa runs out, I will dearly miss the quiet luxury of these ingredients.
Arrival
I have officially arrived to my mysterious location in Southeastern Taiwan. I will not disclose the exact whereabouts just yet, but what I can say is that I am in a fairytale. I am sitting on the rooftop getting my ass bit by mosquitos but the sky is covered in clouds with a single hole where the moon perfectly peeps through.The horizon is black besides a whisker of light for a small stretch of a distant island. Yes, this means that when I turn my head to the right, it’s the ocean. When I turn my head to the left, it’s mountains.
I think this might be my first solo trip, if we exclude working with monkeys in the Bolivian Amazon. Here, I know no one, yet I already feel quite grounded. Probably because FamilyMart is here, and I got my baked sweet potato and sesame paste bao. Mega yum.
I will need to take a detox from boba and tea, though, as these shops default to large sizes which overdose me on caffeine.
I am excited to lean into my own interests and rhythm. Taipei is so busy that even though I find my way, my brain matches the swarm of motorbikes, and I struggle to settle down. I need a particular degree of quiet to lean into exploratory patience, specifically with what I am interested in exploring here: art and photography.
I will leave you with a photo of my view:
peep the ocean
