sand

去年你问我，什么时候再回来？

我说，看看吧，谁知道啊？

你的目光找到了远方的月亮，什么也没有说。那时候，夜里的风吹的是空空的，我的心却是满满的。

你说，嗯，反正我也等了你八年了。是吧？

那几个字，落到那空空的风中和我的心里，飘走了，记住了。

我哭了。去年我回去，只哭过一次，为了一个人，为了一句话。

今年，我真的回来了，但是去年那真实的你，却没有回来。

上个夏天，你骑着自行车，拖着我去公园， 让我给你照相。

这个夏天，你的朋友骑着摩托车，带着你的眼光走了。车后喷出一条一条的黑烟，蒙住了你眼前的所有，让你看不到我。

蒙蒙的日子，像树上的黄叶，一个一个的掉下来，飞到我后面，等着风给他们吹走，可是今年的风，和今年的你，还没有来。

你说你等了我八年。

You asked me last year when I would be back.

I said: Who knows? We’ll see, I guess.

You didn’t say anything, your eyes following the moonlight in the deep, deep sky. That night, the breeze was empty, but my heart was full.

You sighed, and said: Don’t worry. I already waited 8 years for you anyway, right?

Those words, fell into the empty wind and into my heart, floated away and were remembered.

I cried. Last year when I went back, I cried once, for one person, for a few words.

This year, I really did come back, but last year’s real you, didn’t.

Last summer, I sat on your bike while you pedaled me to the park, making me take pictures.

This summer, your friends ride motorbikes. Your eyes no longer follow the moonlight, but a trail of black smoke out of a pipe, so dense it covered everything, so that you couldn’t see me.

These hazy days, like the yellowing leaves on our beloved tree, fall away one by one, till they land behind me, waiting for the wind to carry them afar, but this year’s breeze, like this year’s you, has yet to come.

You said you waited 8 years.

**

I wrote this exactly a year ago, suffering in the familiar sticky heat, one leg up on the chair, trying to keep it away from the prying eyes of my mother. It's too embarrassing, I think. For a family that does so much yelling and celebrating, we are oddly afraid of quiet contemplativeness.

I'm not sure, I used to think that loudness is what makes us feel alive, like we lived big, but now I'm starting to see that maybe the silent moments have something to say for themselves.

I realized, rereading that passage, that I don't really mention how I feel, yet I think it does come through. This is perhaps the answer I've struggled with for a long time on here now, what exactly cheapens the meaning I'm trying to convey here. The tricky thing about exposing your feelings is--the more explicitly you do it--the more its truth eludes you. If you just hold it loosely in your hand, maybe then, after the pesky little things slip away, the remains of the golden grains can stay atop your fingers, curving into perfect thin lines.

**

a slow forgetting

Ok, so I have nothing to do here. I might as well do something. Everyone else draws, or paints, I cannot do either. I used to dabble in it, but with years and years between the last time I practiced and now, my clumsy fingers stay still on the paper, uselessly. Just like Chinese, I seem to forget everything once I have no immediate use for it. What makes a person like that? Am I too hedonistic?

I’m afraid I’ll turn into one of those daughters in Amy Tan’s books, realize the value of a culture they’ve thrown away too late, and by the time they do, they’ve already become an outsider. When I go back to China, my uncle said: you have a foreigner’s air, I can tell. And it’s not just the fact that I stumble over my words like a silver trout on the net of my grandfather’s fishing expeditions, flopping everywhere yet going no where. It’s something else, an air, an aura. I think at the time I was secretly pleased, I don’t know. And if I was pleased, what does that say about me? About how I feel about myself? I used to proclaim how China is such a deep, necessary, inseparable part of me. But now it feels like hypocrisy.

When I go back, I show unfathomable excitement for old, out of fashion things. Like the White Rabbit candies we used to eat when we were little, or songs that are 14 years old. Everything I like about China is…no longer China. It no longer exists out there, but only in my preserved memories. As my cousin looks at me with perplexed exasperation, I realize how childish my excitement is to her, and I drop the decade old treasures back where they came from, some lost, tragic corner of a street vendor’s display, belonging to a seller who doesn’t even believe in their magic.

I’m beginning to wonder if what I really feel a connection to is China itself or simply my childhood. But I suppose it is an inextricable part of my childhood—would our family have been so close if we had been immersed in American culture?

But even now, the closeness is dissolving. Those I had shared so much with barely make an effort, and it leads me into a muddled state of confusion and disillusionment.

And if the people were my sole means of having a present connection with my past, then their fading will inevitably lead to a disconnection of myself from whatever I remember. Even now it seems like another life. Can I stop or even slow this forgetting?

**