EVICTION

For the first time since1986, I have lived in the same house for over three years! Ironically, Taipei is a place I anticipated only staying in for about 6 months… so I rented a furnished house as a temporary base. It came complete with all the former family’s trappings. As you enter the apartment, your eye is struck by a HUGE family shrine. It sits under a massive triptych of important Buddhist (?) figures… One that must be Guanyin, one that appears to be Damou (Daruma in Japanese) and another… all rendered in big black brushstrokes with finer detailing in read and gold. The effect is quite imposing… if I can get my digital camera fixed, I will attach a photo at some point. You MUST see this! It is no ordinary household shrine. The closets are also stuffed with various boxes, trophies, photos and other old things. The bookshelves contain old piano sheet music, an assortment of Chinese literature and, funnily enough, a small English collection: medical books, and a few erotic novels accompanied by some sensual massage/sex manuals. Actually, the initial attraction to the apartment was the piano sheet music and the piano (see October archives – soggy soundboards…), but about 6 months ago, the landlady’s youngest sister took the piano away.

 The rest of the apartment is very spacious and open: high ceilings, white walls, ceilings and ceramic floor tiles… big windows. The furnishings consist of a hodge podge of old style bamboo and wood varieties. I rent a room and the other rooms are rented out to other women (currently one woman from Southern Taiwan and one Japanese woman). The landlady feels it is still her home and enters unannounced when she feels like it…. Recently not so often, but more regularly when her parents visit (they live in LA) as her mother comes to pray at the shrine. Funnily enough, I don’t mind this, the mother is old enough that she has survived Japanese rule and we can communicate easily using Japanese. She is friendly and reasonable. Her daughters, on the other hand, are stingy and difficult. Maybe that is why the parents choose to live in LA.

 Anyway, the youngest daughter- the one who “stole” the piano- wants to save money by moving her family to her parents’ home. So that means we all have to vacate. I hate to move again with so little time left in Taiwan… as usual, I have the dilemma of whether to think of this as temporary or… Truth be told, I find I live more happily when I think of my residence as home rather than temporary dwelling place. But if work doesn’t slow down, I may have to use an agency to do my house hunting for me… or move to a business hotel. Not good!