Delightful piece, my favorite detail is the stacked stools as a kind of urban semaphore — not just seating but a promise, a placeholder, a message to the street that this spot is alive even when it's empty. Taiwan does this with so many small objects and gestures. The street communicates in a language you learn without anyone teaching it to you.
The idea of stools as urban semaphore stopped me. A promise to the street that this spot is alive even when it's empty. I grew up in Taiwan and spent decades in the US not realizing how much of that sidewalk language I had absorbed and carried without knowing. Your writing is making me see it again. Thank you :)
Delightful piece, my favorite detail is the stacked stools as a kind of urban semaphore — not just seating but a promise, a placeholder, a message to the street that this spot is alive even when it's empty. Taiwan does this with so many small objects and gestures. The street communicates in a language you learn without anyone teaching it to you.
Thank you so much for this lovely comment! I totally agree. Once you start looking, it’s hard not to see more and more.
Exactly — and Taiwan does it with so many objects beyond just the stools. Once you start reading the street that way it becomes its own language 🙏
The idea of stools as urban semaphore stopped me. A promise to the street that this spot is alive even when it's empty. I grew up in Taiwan and spent decades in the US not realizing how much of that sidewalk language I had absorbed and carried without knowing. Your writing is making me see it again. Thank you :)