Haruki Murakama once said that ritual was important. Chen Chih-Yuan thoroughly implemented this concept and lived his life with care.
As an Aquarius, Chen Chih-Yuan had a fast intuition and an alien personality that people could never understand. He also had a typical quality of the air signs—he valued the sense of ritual in many activities in life.
For Chen Chih-Yuan, visual and formal ritual were especially critical to the achievement of his hobby and interests. To go camping, he bought a camper. To have a real Christmas tree for Christmas, he bought a generator so that the lightbulbs hung on the trees in the park would light up. He also once bought a whole model train set so that he could recreate conveyor-belt sushi at home.
Upon emigrating to Canada, on the first day he moved into his new, empty house, which lacked even beds, pillows, and comforters, the first thing he bought was an outdoor grill so that he could thoroughly enjoy the fun of barbecuing in one’s backyard, like he’d seen in Hollywood movies. This was the Chen Chih-Yuan who valued a sense of ritual. He did everything to a tee. Perhaps it was his pure mind, which was paranoid and refused compromise, that could generate those eccentric notes that will be passed down forever.
