My logic, your logic & the cat that scurries away (Taiwan)
18 September 2025
Hello friends, family, followers. Triple f’s.
Taipei has it’s own logic. Like any place, people adhere to this logic unconsciously and intuitively. On the subway— reasonably, rationally, intelligently— people line up on either side of the marked entrances with the center aisle reserved for the people exiting the metro.
It seems obvious, yet in York City or San Francisco we are dancing our ways in and out of public transport. Shuffle to the left, a little to the right.
And the MRT (Taipei metro) is RELIABLE! Reliability is the core to rhythm. I find myself quickly embodying Taipei’s intuitive logic as I sense the pace of the train and its stops, knowing when my station is coming without giving many glances to the signs.
Rarely do I feel at peace on public transport. I am such an anxious girlie when it comes to making sure I get off at the right stop, yet for once in my life, I am able to rest in this limbo, pull out my kindle and read. The rhythm carries beyond the metro doors, as I wait on the right side of escalators, follow the pack of people orderly moving towards the exit. Again, I rarely have to glance up. My kindle reading continues.
For a long time, I have been out of rhythm. My stress levels extreme and my emotional states erratic and unpredictable. Finding myself moving to the small beats of the MRT stations marks my progress to stabilizing. Slowly and surely, I am settling in: to myself and my environments.
On a side tangent, there are also points of friction (ill)logic. I’m grateful for Taipei’s attempt at bike lanes, but they are either inconsistent in placement, walked all over my pedestrians, or muddled with bikes going both directions and not choosing a side of the path. I wonder if this is an intentional design to force bikers to maintain a speed limit, but it is seriously inefficient. People, STOP WALKING ON THE BIKE PATH! I remember 3 years ago frustrated by the same darn thing. Oh how little changes with time.
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A few days later… (aka 21 September 2025)
Within my Taiwan journey is a return to many familiar places. From the smallest corners to renowned tourist destinations, each one carries particular glimpses into the past. In some instances, I am searching for the faces that were my foreground to these spaces. I become congested with memory that I struggle to accept it as no longer real. I imagine their absence as only temporary and I am just waiting for that phone call to tell them all about these adventures.
For the majority of places, I am guided by the past as if it were a scent. But just as smell wafts away into obscurity with limited physical basis, the memories hardly fog or misconstrue the present (phew!). Rather, they are the comfort of freshly baked cookies that make the air so sweet, one doesn’t even need a taste.
I write this sitting on a bench nested within Jiufen’s winding cobbled paths with lanterns that every person makes them a character in the film Spirited Away. Last time I was here, I had no push to come— only a sheep following the flow of my friends’ curiosities. I remember being the photographer staging magic for my friends’ portraits, framing a world of wonder that overlooks the whelm of tourists and shops that over commercialize what could be a sacred space.
I came back, today, forgetting how commercial this space really is. It’s certainly not my cup of tea, and I must admit, I was initially disappointed to realized my limited photo collection misguided my memories to romance.
BUT, this is where OLD Stephanie is painted ANEW. Instead of trudging through the sweaty streets, I found the Jiufen that can be mine. The nested bench I mentioned earlier, in a cobbled side street. Secluded, but not detached.
As I write, a thin black cat tucks his shoulders and skirts across the path, up the stairs, and around a bend into a mysterious alley that could lead to anywhere. I see where a fantastic fiction could begin: the imagined answers to what we cannot or do not follow.
Perhaps Jiufen is a commercial tourist trap with overpriced tea that offers the guise of tradition and mystique, despite being observed and trudged upon by thousands. Perhaps it is also the place to embrace the aesthetic of the lanterns, find our alcove to new worlds beyond the physical reality, and wonder where the cats scurry off to.
Other notable highlights:
trying surfing for the first time (getting slapped in the face by waves over and over is certainly an experience)
Night markets! Sesame noodles are solid A tier.
Boba and late nights: talking for hours into the night with a new face, as we hope that everything will work out as it should
