Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

Look, this was my home in the Chung Hwa Market. We only had one bed. Mum, Dad, my brother and I all slept on the same bed. When I was a girl I often dreamed of leaving that home.

This is Thom, my husband, and this is our son, Toto. He was still an infant at the time.

Are there mountains on your island? The thing we’re on right now is called a mountain, and that tall pointy place in the photo is a mountain.

This is a “true touch” topographical map. Try touching it. Doesn’t it feel upraised, furry, wet? Some places feel hard. In the past you could just draw something pointy on a map and that was a mountain, but feel it now: that’s what a mountain is supposed to feel like. Taiwan is a small island, but the mountains here are just incredible. My husband and son really loved mountain climbing. One day they went climbing and never came back.

My good friend Dahu found Thom’s body a while ago, but my son has completely vanished, like a leaf blown into the forest, never to return. They only went for a visit, not expecting that the mountain would have them stay forever, I sometimes think.

Since then I’ve mostly been living alone in that house by the sea. At first we called it the Seaside House, but later the sea level rose and other people started calling it the Sea House. Now I call it Alice’s Island.

To tell you the truth, I felt so much sadder losing my son than I did when my mother passed away. Your mother must be devastated. If my son were still here, he might be as tall as you in a few years. You know, I’m a second child, just like you. If you don’t mind counting girls, that is.

Ah, not a cloud in the sky. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a clear sky. The Nalusa is so beautiful and bright this evening. People on Wayo Wayo see the same Nalusa . Do you realize, Atile’i, that the Nalusa you see now is the same Nalusa you saw on Gesi Gesi?

Sometimes I talk and talk and I think he can understand everything I’ve said. It’s not understanding in the linguistic sense, but in some other sense.

One morning he said, “ Ohiyo , good morning.” (I taught him how to say this). And I replied, “i-Wagudoma-siliyamala” (It’s very fair at sea today). We’ve gotten used to using each other’s language or mixing the two languages together.

In talking to Atile’i I’ve noticed that he often seems to repeat greeting queries. He keeps asking me, “i-Wagudoma-silisaluga?” —a question that may mean, “Is the weather fair at sea today?” to which the other person is supposed to reply “i-Wagudoma-siliyamala.” At first I was puzzled, because we weren’t going out to sea, so what did it matter if the weather at sea was fair or not. But you’re still supposed to reply, “Very fair.” Sometimes when the weather isn’t fair at all, when it’s raining and the waves are watching the island coldly from afar, Atile’i will still smile and say, “The weather at sea today is very fair.”

Atile’i looked really happy that day, maybe because I gave him pen and paper of his own. He kept asking me, “Is the weather fair at sea today?” And I kept replying. Three minutes later, he asked again, for the sixth time. The seventh query came less than five minutes later.

I didn’t mean to ignore him, but my mind was wandering. Not having received my reply, Atile’i looked humiliated, as if he’d been snubbed by his best friend. He had to confront me.

“You must reply: ‘Very fair.’ ”

“But I already did.”

“When someone asks, ‘Is the weather fair at sea today?’ And you hear. When you hear you must reply, ‘Very fair.’ ”

“Even if it’s raining as hard as it is now , you still have to reply in this way?”

“Yes.”

“Even if you don’t feel like replying?”

“Yes.”

We both gazed out at the sea, which seemed to be slowly bringing rain. Every so often a breaker would come rolling in. Following a silence of ten waves, Atile’i asked me another time, “Is the weather fair at sea today?”

“Very fair,” I replied and for the first time I realized I could ask him back. “Is the weather fair on your sea today?”

“Yes it is, extremely fair ,” Atile’i replied.

I don’t know why, but right at that moment we both began to cry.

When I started to “categorize” all this trash I was amazed at all the strange, smashed-up stuff that turned up: the body panel of a scooter, a stroller, condoms, needles, bras, nylons, etc. I often wonder who the owners were and in what circumstances they threw these things out. I remember one time in the army I made a bet with a comrade that if I had the guts to wear a bra to bayonet practice he had to treat the whole company to drinks. Well, I really did it and we all laughed our heads off. That evening when I sneaked out to buy a midnight snack with a buddy, I scrunched up that pink lace bra and tossed it into the ocean. Sometimes I get this crazy idea it’s floated back here with the Trash Vortex.

I find lots of people are misled by news reports into thinking that the only materials that won’t decompose are plastics. My observation these past few days is that artificial fibers in general are also amazingly durable. And there are lots of things in plastic bags or styrofoam containers that are still particularly intact. I’ve found things like rings, glasses, watches and cell phones — these get sorted as “intact valuables.” I hear someone even found gold! That’s why there are so many outsiders on the beach these days: they think they can find treasures in the trash. But I’m more concerned about the residents of the tribal villages. They once depended on coastal planting and fishing to make a living, and now they can only get by picking through the trash on the beach. It’s hard to escape an occupation, and once you’re used to a certain lifestyle it’s hard to change. That’s what Millet told me, anyway.

I brought Millet here, too, when we were still together. We went for a few strolls along this exact same stretch of beach. This one time, one of her earrings fell out. We searched all over the beach, but instead of finding it we lost the other earring. I kissed one of her ringless ears and she squinted at me like a sleepy cat. I wonder if that pair of earrings is still somewhere on the beach.

Sometimes we also find living creatures trapped in the trash. Some fish seem to have survived in plastic bags for quite a long time. We discovered a nearly complete whale skeleton as well. What we find most often is dead sea turtles, ordinary green sea turtles as well as loggerheads and leatherbacks. The meat has usually been eaten, leaving only an empty shell behind. We notify the marine biologists, who come right away and measure the shells on the beach. These shells won’t rot anytime soon: in the end all they’ll do for these poor creatures is prove they once existed.

Each piece of trash that floated here seems to have brought a story with it from across the sea, because anything that’s been thrown away has its own tale to tell.

For the past week, various experts have been gathering on the beach. There are specialists in ocean currents, littoral biology, plastics, etc. Today there was a team of trash experts from Germany who have reportedly come to “study” the trash we’ve sorted. They took samples, which had to be clearly labeled, indicating where each thing was found and how much it weighs. I hear one of the trash experts wrote a cultural history of Germany based on a landfill in the Ruhr. He recommended that the trash on the beach be sorted according to “function” not recycling value, because who knows? Maybe some day it might be an important source for the study of the cultural history of globalization.