It was a fillip for the soul when the sun decided to stream some of her golden strength down on her subjects after an interminable time. Her previously generous reign had become so insipid that the peasants were almost revolting! A long cold spell was finally snapped on the weekend with glorious weather of sparse cloud cover and beaming sun; her abdication obviously just a scandalous rumour: long live Queen Soleil!
A lunch al fresco beckoned us down to Wendel's Backerie to take advantage of the sensational weather in their spacious outdoor area to consume great food in a relaxed setting. We snared a lovely spot on the main verandah and both ordered Caesar salads, mine with grilled chicken and Cassy's with warm bites of salmon. Some fried Brie with cranberry sauce for accompaniment and we had a soporific time before motoring over to Shinkong Mitsukoshi and the Wovie cinema.
"Manchester By The Sea" was a wrenching, beautifully photographed and imagined film. The actors were sublime in their respective roles, especially Affleck and Williams as the tragically split partners. The metaphors of cold, and water, and abandonment, unfolded subtly through the script and settings, and scenes were allowed to play out with significant silent periods, all of which just added atmospheric overtones to the recurring analogies.
Expecting the weather to default back to normal the next day, we were delighted to wake up to yet another dreamy day. A lazy breakfast watching the returned "Insiders", a quick shopping run through the park and across the river, before we were set for another adventure. Double Square Gallery in Dahzi (in the general Neihu precinct) was our destination. The scooter ride there is always an event in itself. Weaving through the weekend drivers, always expecting and often confirming that they will do the most ridiculous and bizarre driving behaviours in front of us and to all sides, we navigated our way beside the river villages through to the Dahzi tunnel. From here, it's a flat out roar, as we're jettisoned through the tunnel to emerge in a whole different world on the other side.
Dazhi/Neihu has become an oversized organism of concrete and steel and gaudy opulence. It's still a work in progress in some districts however, so much so that we parked on the street metres from a four story Mercedes Benz outlet fully stocked with vehicles on all floors, yet right in front of a surviving market garden, with old mate's canvas lean-to still providing him a home among his flourishing vegetables.
Cynthia Sah is a world renowned sculptor of marble, her accessible works dotting the globe after decades of critical acclaim. Interestingly, she spent her middle and high school years in Taiwan attending our school. She now lives and works in a converted marble factory/warehouse in Italy! Esoteric at first glance to me, I was armed with the gallery guide as we wandered around yet Cassy invariably guessed the form she was trying to recreate. Cass, "It's a leaf of some sort." Dave (consulting the guide), 'Yes, it's called 'Leaf Variation II' ". She got them nearly every time! The gallery space was multi-storied and cavernous, three vast rooms in a white wash a perfect canvas for these Carrara marble mini-masterpieces. We love this sort of art: it is spare and clean, a vision wrought from stone after painstaking modelling and sculpting. It seems a nod to the Italian greats who used this raw material all those centuries before. I can just imagine Cynthia's chisel twitching with anticipation as she gazes upon the Prisoners ,in the forecourt leading to Michelangelo's "David" in the Accademia in Florence, as they, forever trapped, struggle to emerge from their monolithic blocks of raw marble! She could help with that!
After an extremely enjoyable and calming interlude in a gallery we pretty much had all to ourselves, we traveled further into Neihu proper for a late lunch/early dinner. We could hear the last sputtering gasps of the small chain of "Aubergine" restaurants here in Taipei last time we visited. The last franchise tucked away on a quiet street, the staff uninterested and listless. Sure enough, when we turned the corner we were confronted with a brand new cafe in its space! A little sad, yet undeterred, we scootered round a few of the lanes and alleys till we spied "Campus Cafe". It turned out to be a great spot, rich in American faux memorabilia and decoration and serving a wide range of burgers and pastas. We negotiated the Chinese menu with a smattering of English, and I ended up with a possible coronary inducing double cheeseburger and Cass a salt laden pasta. We indulged in our guilty feast with the solace of knowing we don't eat like this every day!
Back home to stream some Aussie Twenty20 with Sri Lanka, some down time with attentive old cats, and getting slowly prepared for another hectic week at work. Mr. Lee came up to fix a leaky toilet pipe and I managed to hold a semi-comprehensible conversation with him in Chinese, of which I was pathetically proud! Photos: shot in the mirror at the cinema, Virg sunning, and shots of the gallery, Dahzi and the diner. Video of Cynthia Sah exhibition here.