feverish

I used to think drinks simply induced a sort of reckless abandon. Fun and full of surprises at best, awkward yet harmless at worst. But now I worry it’s also tinged with a kind of evil. Maybe that’s too strong a word, but it eggs on a kind of selfishness, capable of unraveling things that took so much time and care to be weaved. It also betrays the most worthless of desires…but this is, of course, old news.

Pure evil. Destruction. We often take so much pleasure in it, despite all of our sober consciousness’ efforts of denial. Though it has an easier time in the freedom from such efforts. The author of A Clockwork Orange meant for the title to symbolize a kind of mechanistic morality imposed on something full of juice and life. I will here, in a wild guess of optimism, claim that it is ultimately effective, but never quite the perfect fit. Spurts of incomprehensible bad sprout up from time to time, its refusal to be understood so very terrifying. The fear of not only what we are capable of but also what we can take pleasure in…it is…in a realm where words (among other tools at my disposal) fail me.

The breeze is streaming in through my window now, as is the sunlight. As the day creeps still further along, some of the fear leaves with the first blush of dawn. The cold sweat dries slightly. This time, though, something lingers from the night before, something tells me this lesson is not a repeat. I think what’s fundamentally different is that this time, the crime almost committed would not have simply led to self-destruction, but will have spread to others…would have spread to others…as it hasn’t happened yet (nor will it).

The writer of mechanisms and juice goes on to tout the importance of change. Characters must be capable of change, without it, no matter how sensational, the story simply remains a fable, never a novel. As I scramble to root my belief in his preachings, I barely register the irony that this nightmare I am trying to flee from turns out to be a fairy tale. The copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales someone gave me so long ago sits mostly unread, because there runs a deep kind of morbidity absent from Disney films…but maybe the lesson is that they are, in essence, all that fairy tales boil down to. In any case, it’s time for me to stretch into novels.

**

abandon in the winds

Whenever I watch a glossy reality show I feel an odd inspiration to mimic their lives. The way they live is, according to us, silly, without substance, and melodramatic. But I need to look no further than the sterile academics I'm swimming with to know what attracts me to the golden tresses on the other side of the TV screen. It's the ability to own up to everything they feel. They drink their mocha lattes and complain to their girlfriends and confess to their crushes and express their dislikes without any discernible barrier between the throat and the mind, whereas we are rendered mute.

If any of those actions dared spill over this side of the screen, it'd be quarantined into whatever that shuts up the desperate and passé and irrational. The one get-out-of-jail-free card is, conveniently, the inducement of alcohol, an always reliable scapegoat. Why so proper? Why not rein in abandon? Why not let what you do say something other than that you know where social boundaries lie?

I'm so sick of people telling me: "don't do X because they'll know you feel Y". Maybe that's exactly why I want to do X. Maybe I want an other to know I feel Y. Maybe actions should signify desires. Maybe the external world should reflect internal affairs.

Maybe I want my X to mean something.

**

foster pet

The green eyed creature is back with me today, but its stay won't be long this time. I've well prepared for it. It and I have a relationship kinder than most. Others indulge and despise it. And I've certainly done a great share of both. But there's not so much fear and hatred on my part, at times there's even open welcome, sometimes, if it's lucky, scratches behind its ears.

I've always maintained that it can keep our self dignities afloat, more effectively than most other, bitterer pills. Inherent in keeping the emerald deity around is the condition that you must feel entitled to something, and hence, that you are worthy enough to deserve something of this world. This is perhaps the life raft that preserves us from plunging into self-pity. Maybe the overcompensation speaks more of an insecurity in this belief than anything else, but on the face of it, there is enough to tide us over before the real rescue can begin.

**

impeccable timing

A storm came today, and I got caught in it. It was not at all how I imagined it would be, or rather, not how I imagined it would not be. It was, contrary to my predictions, reminiscent of some sort of romance, or a sense of free abandon. The drops came in formidable sizes, each announcing its right to be reckoned with by a righteous splatter on my arm. Soon, uncovered skin becomes coated by glistening sheets of running water, the feet slip in and out of flimsy flip-flops, and pit-pattering footsteps push past with no apologies in their quest for shelter. And the rain just keeps on making its point.

**

pleasantries

This summer is going by so pleasantly. That's my word for it. It's nice. Lots of hangouts and down time. Work's not so time consuming that it gets in the way of being productive. But still, it's not violently passionate...

Speaking of which, thunderstorms have yet to come. I want to see a really big thunderstorm (though probably not be caught in one--it's one of those things that only sound romantic but the essence of which reality would never permit, like glass slippers). I want the same intensity around me but also in me. The heat is sweltering here but it's a languid heat. And the breeze blows but to no avail in our quest for some escape from the air. At the same time, none of it is so oppressive yet. It's just...pleasant--at a standstill, hovering somewhere above limbo but below nirvana.

These are not complaints, and certainly not rage (which, let's face it, is a welcoming tide after those past that crashed into the cliff, their resounding roars lapping closer to the tip of drop-off point. Not unlike those fireworks I saw last night, each exploding closer and closer, until I think the next huge bubble of red and green sparkles will envelope us all) So maybe it's a blessing, I suppose. The pangs, exquisite and insufferable as they are, stand in the future with certainty

...so why be in a hurry to get there?

**

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.

**