Pocky Pocky Pocky
350 × 270mm｜80 pages｜hardcover
I’ve always wanted to make a photo book for my dog Pocky, yet I cannot say why I kept postponing it. Perhaps I have too many photos of her, making it hard to sort through our memories. I kept hesitating, until the first long separation between me, her and my homeland initiated this book.
Seven years ago, Pocky came to our family. She was only three months old, nestling in a blue plastic basket. Her name, Pocky, comes from a kind of cookie. At that time, I was in excruciating mental and bodily pain from mental illness. I had just reached adulthood, had left home, before unexpectedly returning. Pocky and I ate, slept, ran and swam together, even swimming all the way across the river.
Collected here are twenty questions that kids and adults wished to ask her and to which I’ve taken the liberty to respond to with photos of her. Are those photographs themselves the answers? Or, maybe, do they lead to even further wonderings?
“Do you like eating vegetables?”
“Do you have to go to school?”
“What’s in your dreams?”
These questions are typewritten and appear in parallel flowing in opposite directions—English alongside my fragmented mother tongue (Chinese phonetic alphabet, while losing its diacritics).
“Would you also feel anxious when you come to the outside world?”
“Will we see each other again, will you come back to play with me one day?”
……
我一直想为我的狗狗Pocky做一本摄影书，却不知自己在迟迟等待什么。也许是我有太多关于她的照片，难以对我们的记忆作出择选。我就这样踟蹰着，直至迎来我与她还有故土的第一次长久的别离。
七年前，三个月大的她被装在一个蓝色的塑胶筐里来到我们家。她的名字——Pocky，来源于一款同名饼干。彼时我的身心正饱受精神疾病带来的创痛，才刚成人离家不久却又意外折返。我们一起吃饭、睡觉，跑来跑去，游来游去，甚至一同游过河对岸。
这里收集了来自孩子和大人们想问她的二十个问题，我自作主张地以她的照片作回应。那会是答案本身吗？亦或是引向新的奇想？
“你爱吃青菜吗？”
“你也要去学校吗？”
“你的梦里有什么？”
这些问题的文本使用打字机敲写，由英语与我破碎的母语（失去声调的汉语拼音）两侧逆向并行组成。
“当你来到外面的世界你是否也会不安？”
“我们还会再见吗？你还会再来找我玩吗？”
……