perfection

The other day I saw a picture of these lovely chinese roses, dozens of their white petals fading to a light magenta at the roots. It reminded me of something I drew in chinese watercolor from drawing class when I was little, the teacher hands out grades to all of the drawings at the end, the most elusive of them all was a "99"...a year of classes later, I had yet to get one

this was the painting that did it for me, it was many petaled and the ridges were just like this one, and just as thickly layered, and the pink is the exact same shade, which I'm still not so fond of, objectively, though of course now the color is tinted over with some sentimental value.

a "99" was perhaps more important to my mother than to me, that first 99 she didn't get to see right away, because she was in a hospital in beijing with my father, for brain surgery.

a few days later my aunt took me and my cousins to visit her, lying on the hospital bed, she looked on quietly as my cousins bestowed upon her all these pencil drawings of bunnies and suns and clouds, and I went last, and I gave her that painting, and I gave her that "99"

I know it's probably not nice or even healthy to think your present is superior than others, especially when they are for an occasion like this, when no present is quite the right fit, and I probably shouldn't feel like I have to earn my mother's admiration and hard-to-come-by praise (though I always do),

but I did feel disproportionately good that day, it was the most poetic timing that fate could've had the tenderness to arrange, and it was perfect.

years later I revisited the school and some paintings were on display, one was of grapes, it was nowhere nearly as good as mine (and I'm not just saying that from some personal bias), mine, a couple years earlier, garnered a 98, this one had a big 100 written on it in red. They probably got another teacher for the class, I think. In any case, the painting took me back to my first 99. Not my first 100, because my teacher then didn't believe in perfection, but then again, she didn't know the story of my pink roses.

**

cylinders, bubbles, lines

I came home the night before last and saw plastic barrels in the bathtub. To soak our feet in, my mother said. I stared at her, at a loss for words. It was neither something I could come up with an answer for nor an idea I wanted to ponder too much. It seems that every time I come home some new poor man's treasure claims its hold in my home, seemingly plunging us still further into something that denotes a poor living.

We are middle class; definitely above the poverty line, at least. Yet I have no idea why my parents hold on to these things, and come up with more ways to make our one-bedroom look as much like a garage sale as possible. Today I was digging for my suitcase amid the pile of furniture near my parents' bed, when I found that their sheet was laced with inch-wide holes, lined along the same two lines that make up a soft pink and blue checkerboard pattern, like some artistically arranged bubbles. It's a sheet that I remember well, which translates to at least 13 some years of wear and tear. They need new sheets, I think, as my subconscious pours guiltily over my recent purchases of frivolity.

None of these things should bother me. And they don't bother me in the worst way possible, that is, they're not an embarrassment to me. But they make me guilty, and they don't have to exist at all. At least I don't think their existence is necessitated.

When I was little and complained about becoming collateral damage to my mom's frugality (I was the only kid who didn't have an allowance, which meant no snacks to share with friends...and eventually, no friends who would share them with me. Tit for tat), my uncle told me that if my mom weren't the way she was, we wouldn't have what we have now. That might be true. That is definitely true. Even now, invisible wires tighten around us to support every new project: my tuition, plans to move out, maybe a trip back to China. Her trace runs silent and everywhere. Something is piled still higher amid all the clutter, and it's all her little tricks that turn our possibilities into something lived. Still, I feel like the wires can be relaxed a little bit. Maybe my parents too.

At the very least, they should get new sheets.

**

vaccination

You are so frustrating, it’s terrible. I hate to come back to the same word over and over again but it's enraging.

You can't ever fall for someone harder than they for you. These were the pearls that flowed from my fingertips last night. Except he disagreed with me, and I secretly agreed with him. No matter how good some pieces of advice sound, they remain drifting from one ear to the next, because simply, we are not willing to internalize any of it.

Take right now. Always a classic case. It will probably turn out to be the same road I went down last fall, except it’s barely summer. The asymmetry is aesthetically unpleasing to me. But the rest I can handle. A cold needle prickle is always easier the second time around. Maybe this time I'll rub on the alcohol a little earlier. Feel the odd cooling sensation a little sooner before something foreign penetrates. Sterile. It's that image again. I wonder if my unwillingness to internalize will transfer here. Maybe the vaccine won't work. Maybe you won't work. Maybe I caught you just in time. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

**

夏天的一晚上

I found this browsing through my computer. It was the very first composition I wrote for Chinese in the fall. The English translation's not the best, someone once told me. And he is right. The Chinese is better. It's like there are two planes, and a graph on one cannot exactly project onto another. The blurriness is always what people who write fight against, and also what we want to preserve. The mathematics of language is an oxymoron, but only because the laborers make it so.

**

夏天初期的一晚上，我碰见了你。

那时候，夜里吹着一股凉爽的微风，悄悄的来，偷看我们之间表演的戏。你好像也感觉到了这个未被邀请的客人 ， 因为你什么也没有说，虽然你的眼光告诉了我很多。

那天晚上，我以为那风是空手的走的，但是后来我才明白，时间和它，什么都有权利带走， 包括记忆中的一晚上，包括记忆中的你。

夏天，也就是这样糊里糊涂的过去。

转眼就到了九月的第一场雨。那些蒙蒙的雨滴， 和树上的黄叶，一个一个的掉下来，落到一股熟悉的风中。那一刻，风带回来了你原先的眼光，但是没有带回来原先的你。

Some time in the spring, when the air was filled with possibility, I met you.

That night, there was a crisp breeze, quietly creeping up, watching the play that unfolded between us. You seemed to also realize that we have an interloper among us, because you didn’t say anything, though your glance betrayed more than the wind can tell.

On that night, I thought the air left empty-handed, but this summer I understood; time and the wind, they can take away everything, including the memory of a night, including the memory of you.

Summer was more or less spent this way, hazily yet in a flash…all the way until the first rain of September. The lazy raindrops and yellowing leaves fell from the sky one by one, until they land in a familiar breeze. And in that instant, the wind brought back last summer's glance, but didn’t bring back last summer's you.

**

hospital hallway

There are no words. Just perfunctory hugs, friendly smiles, some empty, general niceness going about, like a lazy kind of flu or something. Except this is not a sickness I can cure. Besides, if I were to complain about anything, it's that we are too sterile. Too bleached. What I want most of all is probably exactly like a sickness.

I don't know. I can't say much, not just because of others' constraints on me but because my mind is literally muffled. Nothing but incoherent noise reach the linguistic cortices of my brain. So there are no words. No words. Just noise, and niceness. Two very neutral things. Like beige, or a nice, forgettable blue plaid.

**