The Sun and the Moon move in endless circles, performing an eternal algorithm of light and darkness, yin and yang. Against the star-studded backdrop of the Milky Way, the drama of black and white unfolds, precariously balancing the eons-old mathematics of the cosmic duel.  

Who says it is not an inevitable solution of aesthetics, a poetic necessity, that Hou Yi shot out the multiple suns from our mythological sky? The ancient epics for our ancestors, and the ancestors of our neighbors across the oceans, don’t they sing the sagas of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, of Heaven and Earth, of suffering and joy, and of light and darkness? 

The fierce Sun, Unbridled, can turn life into a shriveled yellow leaf, devoice of itself; yet without the Sun, in the monsoon season, life multiplies like poisonous fungus, bringing us nothing but dark, twistdecuses… 

Yin and yang circulate back and forth in their eternal dance of push hand. In their shuffling, down falls Pompeii, a few twisted silent towers remain in the stones of Angkor, and the majestic sadness of the Stone Henge shocks and disorients us with its ponderous mystery. Nature, following her own rules, performs a never-ending exercise in aesthetics. 

Time comes and time goes. 

Space closes and space opens. 

People, like ants, busy themselves generations after generations. Socrates, Kant, Rochester, Don Quixote, the Brother Karamazov, Hitler, Einstein, Qin Shi Huan, Han Wu Di, Dou Er Doun, Li Bai, Xi Men Ching, Genghis Khan, Lu Ah Shou and Shao Er He… Like a tube of toothpaste, life gets squeezed out, a little at a time, to the end. Busying, busying, fighting, fighting; the struggles never end. Charlatans, politicians, soldiers and scholars, each waving their own banners, walk on the stage, play their parts, hawk their wares, and then are gone. The history book is a hastily written work in progress, covered with sloppy revision… 

The Sun and the Moon still move in endless circles, light and darkness are always fighting a war, their clashing weaponry plays a cruel cosmic symphony. In the chapters of seasons, blood and sweat stain the pages of planting and harvest. 

The Earth moves around the Sun with such haste and dispatch. In the relentless turning of the cosmic wheel, with a swoosh, Yin and Yang have just torn off the last page o the Twentieth Century. Listen, the cold and calculated clicking of the computer keyboard is mincing the few remaining organic visages of the human race. Civilization is a derelict streetcar named Desire, grimacing in the dappled rays of the setting sun. 

After all, what I can try and do is to pick up my artist’s sickle and hoe, to take care of my fields of soy and sorghum in the vast land of art. 

1999. 9. 28.1:30am