Memory Crafting in Hong Kong

Well if you think this blog is just jumping around all over the place with a new project every week, you wouldn't be wrong. That's why I started the blog, to try to keep track of myself. In fact, my life is about a whole lot of projects in different directions with different collaborations at the same time, and what I'm doing is trying out some distinctions from LK's books to see whether approaching from that direction makes a difference.  The Battle of the Books/ Readers' Circle project is on hold as everything is in a state of suspension in HK this month. The emergence of Corona Virus next door, at first WuFlu, now Covid-19, has led to borders closing, many government facilities closing, and schools closing. Some students are studying from home. Others aren't.  So Kalamata (pen name) and I have decided to start learning/teaching French because why not? And we are trying out Lynne Kelly's rapscallions approach and my mum's 1950s French teach...

I absolutely love scholar stones or scholar rocks and I want one for my garden. I think I want all of them. Things I know: People love them. They were not only found, they were shaped. They look like mountains. They inspire writers, calligraphers, ink painters. They are so various. They fit many criteria for a memory device: uneven, tactile, associated with knowledge and scholarship, ritual and serene mind. But not really portable and not communal. The writing I have found about them only mentions aesthetic appreciation and 'inspiration' or daydreaming. I have asked well-educated Chinese people about it and they deny everything. But then Sam said, 'Oh yes scholars would touch the bumps to remember different stories'. So someone must have told him or he read it somewhere, but he doesn't remember where. I have bought a book called 'The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci', a Jesuit cross-cultural teacher in Ming Dynasty China. Maybe there's s...

Telling Mum about adventures with Winter Count, the system where you create a symbol for each year and embroider, burn, paint them in a spiral outwards from birth. I said, 'You know I, for some reason, thought we were in France for the Bicentenary (of Euro-Australia), but when I put all the years down, it turns out I was there in 1986. And the Bicentenary was 1988. Isn't that odd? She said, 'We were there in 1987, weren't you 15?' Well I know I was in Year 9. And according to my timeline, I was in Year 9 in 1986. The other key year was when I was in Paris at 10 with Dad for 3 months. I was 10 in 1982. But no, Mum said I was in Paris in 1983. Spring (April) in Paris, and my birthday is in September, so both are correct. I was actually 10 for most of 1982.  I'm sure this is super boring for the reader, but it's interesting to me how badly I remember years and what happened in them and the things I've made a rough reckoning of which are not quite ...