Cold Pizza
2024—2025
Compiled in 2025
Photography (B/W), Text
The day he realised he’d lived longer than his mother, something shifted inside.
A quiet calculation. A number passed.
He thought about telling someone.
But what would he say?
Instead, he considered marking the occasion with cheap wine and spaghetti.
Because—how the two go so well together.
To fill the house with the smell of garlic, basil, and tomato sauce felt right—
a quiet tribute to his late mum, with Neapolitan roots,
partial to jarred Paul Newman’s,
and the British sitcom Birds of a Feather.
But in the end, he just walked.
What we protect from the light that reveals it. (003)
He walked.
Because sometimes, movement is the only thing that helps.
Movement doesn’t ask for meaning.
It only asks that he keep going.
He started to think of Hong Kong’s trails as pressure valves—
pounded down by the anxious and the overworked.
That the paths meant for clarity were shaped by what they were meant to clear felt, somehow, appropriate.
What doesn’t belong, learning to stay. (005)
.
He ran, too.
He passed Chow Yun-fat by the Quarry Bay waterfront.
Chow pretended not to notice him pretending not to see him—
an improv masterclass from one of the best to ever do it.
No lines, no camera.
Just two men running toward nothing in particular.
Ready to mix, waiting to matter. (008)
Tomorrow's foundation, today’s pile. (010)
The photographs he made over this period were shaped by movement.
But what they hold is stillness—
a quiet he couldn’t reach at the time.
He wanted to slow down.
To return to the same place and see it again.
Taipei was good for that.
Its corners invited noticing.
The melodic chimes of its garbage trucks.
People talking quietly into steam.
You could walk for hours and still feel held by the city.
Slowing down let other thoughts surface, too.
His friend had sent a photo of retro Jordans, still boxed.
Alongside it: a message about his mum’s cancer,
and treating himself to the shoes.
Men did that.
Side-door confessions.
Or gestures—often in the form of jokes—
then the truth, slipped in sideways.
Had it always been like this?
Or was something eroding,
hardening, over time?
There had been words once as kids—
about sadness, loneliness, the things they’d read.
Discussions alongside the trading of Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning basketball cards.
But the conversations had thinned with age.
Maybe this was what time did—
take things away,
and replace them with roles.
Yet every so often, something would slip.
A gesture. A memory.
Lightness not as joy,
but as absence—
the brief forgetting of how you’re meant to be.
A glimpse of who you were,
before a shape was imposed.
Knowing doesn’t lighten the load.
But it keeps you from mistaking it for something else.
Les non-dupes errent.
Domestic constellations against the dying light. (016)
Each window, a different evening. (018)
Maybe lightness is just this—
a moment that floats, that doesn’t drag.
A Friday night.
Not sneaking gelati from the freezer—
but lingering in another’s smile.
Teenagers in black Levi’s and red aprons.
Pizza grease.
Mini Disc clicks.
Looped tracks.
Looped smiles.
A walk to the tram stop with music in his ears
and a feeling of joy in his chest.
Cold pizza.
Music videos flickering into the small hours.
Too many pimples and a bad haircut.
The world from the upside of the seesaw.