I wonder what a spine is. What it means to have one. Is it to fight back? To walk away? To float alone? To struggle in midst of seediness? In human life, how much to forgive, and how much to avoid?
These questions always circle back around. This time easier than the last. Still, the fear never subsides. The fear of being alone, the fear of being unloved. Which poison more tolerable?
It's a stewing process. The skin slowly forms new, thinly stretched membrane as the immune system learns the toxin. No sharp victories here, but at least a continuous overcoming. Letting the self tap into its own resilience and watch as a parent watches the child fall from those first bike rides. Never knowing what the next fall will be like, but trusting it will be like the one before, and the infinite ones before that in the human experience.
**
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, May 25, 2012
between sinking and swimming
I have never spent so much time in the land of mediocrity. Did you know you still have to apply for a work visa here? The elite laugh over their sparkling wines, explaining that trying is what differentiates them from us, delivered with a smile and a tsk-tsk, one of which is sincere.
But staying in the land of mediocrity is itself work. Simply floating, without attempting to swim ashore, takes exhausting, wild, desperate treading of the feet. An immense output of energy. No less than those already parallel with the waves, their fluid bodies billowing in time with the tides. I wonder what it takes to go from vertical treading to horizontal swimming. I wonder what truly differentiates us and them. I wonder if knowing the answer would help us, or sink us further.
**
But staying in the land of mediocrity is itself work. Simply floating, without attempting to swim ashore, takes exhausting, wild, desperate treading of the feet. An immense output of energy. No less than those already parallel with the waves, their fluid bodies billowing in time with the tides. I wonder what it takes to go from vertical treading to horizontal swimming. I wonder what truly differentiates us and them. I wonder if knowing the answer would help us, or sink us further.
**
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
mice and men
"What things are steadfast? ...
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
...
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring...
...
We love a little, as the mice
huddle..."
--Linda Gregg
I found this poem a couple of nights ago, what a moment of serendipitous premonition. Had I known how perfectly it would fit this moment, 48 hours from when I first fell in love with it, I would have said: you say you are in love with these words (and other fanciful ideas), but you have no idea. You who barely tasted the air above the well of infatuation, beneath which a current runs to the oceans and other oceans. I would say, you are as brief, as contained, as mouse-like as this poem accuses you. You who wear the target this poem aims at, but have yet to feel the arrow's sharp piercing. Even 48 hours from now, the silver will only have scraped by with barely a scratch.
But who listens to the poets? What I have now is infinitesimal compared to the seas; what I had then was smaller still. Somewhere on dimensions not mine, the gods are savoring all things huge and mad and ignited, rolling them around their tongues as occasional flames escape out of their lips. While I--
while I barely make it into the world of mice and men.
**
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
...
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring...
...
We love a little, as the mice
huddle..."
--Linda Gregg
I found this poem a couple of nights ago, what a moment of serendipitous premonition. Had I known how perfectly it would fit this moment, 48 hours from when I first fell in love with it, I would have said: you say you are in love with these words (and other fanciful ideas), but you have no idea. You who barely tasted the air above the well of infatuation, beneath which a current runs to the oceans and other oceans. I would say, you are as brief, as contained, as mouse-like as this poem accuses you. You who wear the target this poem aims at, but have yet to feel the arrow's sharp piercing. Even 48 hours from now, the silver will only have scraped by with barely a scratch.
But who listens to the poets? What I have now is infinitesimal compared to the seas; what I had then was smaller still. Somewhere on dimensions not mine, the gods are savoring all things huge and mad and ignited, rolling them around their tongues as occasional flames escape out of their lips. While I--
while I barely make it into the world of mice and men.
**
Saturday, April 7, 2012
breaking point
I've never felt more like a stranger, lying next to your skin. Outside of myself and not knowing if anyone is in or even if I am. The breath next to me barely registers. It runs into the back of my neck, gets lost inside my hair and stays there. The air is stained copperish yellow with reality and I wished you would go, and take the copper tones with you. You did. But I stay saturated in the unpleasant colors. I think it finally happened. I think what was enough finally isn't enough. I think we're done and I think you knew it too when you left with a closed mouth goodbye, your lips pressed firmly against each other. And not against mine.
**
**
Monday, March 19, 2012
scarcity
I called my grandparents last week. My grandfather told me about his morning. He had gone to the market and gotten five pieces of sweet cakes. He had gotten them, because he got some earlier in the week, but before my grandmother had any, my cousin came and had two with lunch and then took the rest home. So he went out and got some more for my grandmother. When I was listening to his familiar voice I could picture him carefully putting on his battered, honest, navy-blue linen shoes, rolling his cigarette deliberately, slowly, putting on one of his several newsboy caps, giving the front end a firm tug downwards to make sure it's snug.
I was rendered silent by something, and could not find words that should come next from my mouth. We don't say "aw" in Chinese. We don't say "that's nice" to your elders, like you need to tell them what's nice. But I doubt that was the whole problem. I don't think it was just an insufficiency of Chinese as a language. I think it was a feeling that is universal yet cannot be put into any language, a feeling that haunts someone at times like these.
It was not a fantastic picture, the one my grandfather told. It was a picture of routine. But routine is underrated. Newness explodes in youth, in New York, in a world where time is not a concern. But at some point we do face another side of life, when newness is not welcomed indiscriminately, when we will have to re-catalogue some old things; when we will see, sometimes despite ourselves, the shaping of our routine.
And my grandfather's routine. It was so ordinary, so unadorned. Yet at that moment, it seemed so scarce to me, that thing he has day in and day out, for the better part of half a century. It's a strange thing, having a surplus of new, unique things; and not enough the opposite.
**
I was rendered silent by something, and could not find words that should come next from my mouth. We don't say "aw" in Chinese. We don't say "that's nice" to your elders, like you need to tell them what's nice. But I doubt that was the whole problem. I don't think it was just an insufficiency of Chinese as a language. I think it was a feeling that is universal yet cannot be put into any language, a feeling that haunts someone at times like these.
It was not a fantastic picture, the one my grandfather told. It was a picture of routine. But routine is underrated. Newness explodes in youth, in New York, in a world where time is not a concern. But at some point we do face another side of life, when newness is not welcomed indiscriminately, when we will have to re-catalogue some old things; when we will see, sometimes despite ourselves, the shaping of our routine.
And my grandfather's routine. It was so ordinary, so unadorned. Yet at that moment, it seemed so scarce to me, that thing he has day in and day out, for the better part of half a century. It's a strange thing, having a surplus of new, unique things; and not enough the opposite.
**
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
frozen particles
The people you love become ghosts inside you, and like this you keep them alive.
--Unknown
I went back to Chicago this weekend and met up with people I were with only a few months ago, and for the most part they remained unchanged. But one person, I think, did recede into a ghost inside me, because he no longer feels the same way he did. Of course, selfishly, I wish he would go back to these feelings of the past, so I could always come back and figure out what we could be. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that we had an expiration date, of course we would, of course we would be subject to the same laws that bind everyone else. Under the always beautiful, always familiar Chicago sky, our expanding distance seemed more pronounced than ever. Our breaths came in between us and froze into frosted particles, even though they had come out so warm just a moment before. I wanted to fill the silences with something, but there was no way to push these awkward thoughts out. So I just let the silence freeze. Along with our breath. Along with our possibilities.
I wanted to fly faster than our plane back to Chicago, faster than the speed of light, back to the Chicago of 2011, when times were green and golden, and I would say, let's try us now because things are not always going to be this way, because I have seen the expiration date and I want to use up our pent up potential before then.
That would have been a failed experiment, I think. It too, would have become a ghost very quickly. Still, in my insatiable desire to have everything, I wanted every mistake as well.
**
--Unknown
I went back to Chicago this weekend and met up with people I were with only a few months ago, and for the most part they remained unchanged. But one person, I think, did recede into a ghost inside me, because he no longer feels the same way he did. Of course, selfishly, I wish he would go back to these feelings of the past, so I could always come back and figure out what we could be. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that we had an expiration date, of course we would, of course we would be subject to the same laws that bind everyone else. Under the always beautiful, always familiar Chicago sky, our expanding distance seemed more pronounced than ever. Our breaths came in between us and froze into frosted particles, even though they had come out so warm just a moment before. I wanted to fill the silences with something, but there was no way to push these awkward thoughts out. So I just let the silence freeze. Along with our breath. Along with our possibilities.
I wanted to fly faster than our plane back to Chicago, faster than the speed of light, back to the Chicago of 2011, when times were green and golden, and I would say, let's try us now because things are not always going to be this way, because I have seen the expiration date and I want to use up our pent up potential before then.
That would have been a failed experiment, I think. It too, would have become a ghost very quickly. Still, in my insatiable desire to have everything, I wanted every mistake as well.
**
Friday, January 6, 2012
december 31st
First, or should I say final?, blow of marks have come out. In opposite-land somewhere, a cherry is being placed carefully atop a great heap of ice cream. This past half a year has been a miserable experience. With little redeeming gems here and there. I had banked on the possibility of a final saving grace. But of course, that material belongs mainly to myths and Hollywood. In real life, real life with pantyhose and 9 to 5 workdays and gas price escalations, limits are quickly coming down like a metal netting over the exuberance of youth. Every five year old dreams of being the President or an astronaut, somewhere along the spectrum of the golden years, subtle and invisible things chip away at those dreams: maybe just Senator, local congressman, school principal, salesman. Slowly, we grow up. Or perhaps we grow down.
People say there's nowhere to go but up, but they never tell you how to go up. As a corollary, they fail to mention that there is a way to go down. A very plausible way. And that way is to stay the same. Not stay in the darkest pit for now, but for tomorrow, and the day after that. What is worse than bad? Bad without hope. How to climb out? How to stop the stagnant trajectories sputtering out in every aspect and direction? New Years are meant for new beginnings. But wait, that is another child of myths and Hollywood. It is an artificial and unfruitful cut, like taking a sword to a stream of water. There are no clean slates anymore. And the more the golden years slip by, the more the slate hardens and becomes harder to mold, yet easier to break.
Excuse this post for its rambling and uncohesiveness. I don't know how to make sense of something I have never known. These are failures both new in kind and more in number than I have encountered. And now I'm no longer fearful of the failures themselves, but of their persistence. Somehow, New Years does not seem enough a cap to stop the flood of the last few months. December 31st is still very much alive, stretching past its human-imposed bounds.
**
People say there's nowhere to go but up, but they never tell you how to go up. As a corollary, they fail to mention that there is a way to go down. A very plausible way. And that way is to stay the same. Not stay in the darkest pit for now, but for tomorrow, and the day after that. What is worse than bad? Bad without hope. How to climb out? How to stop the stagnant trajectories sputtering out in every aspect and direction? New Years are meant for new beginnings. But wait, that is another child of myths and Hollywood. It is an artificial and unfruitful cut, like taking a sword to a stream of water. There are no clean slates anymore. And the more the golden years slip by, the more the slate hardens and becomes harder to mold, yet easier to break.
Excuse this post for its rambling and uncohesiveness. I don't know how to make sense of something I have never known. These are failures both new in kind and more in number than I have encountered. And now I'm no longer fearful of the failures themselves, but of their persistence. Somehow, New Years does not seem enough a cap to stop the flood of the last few months. December 31st is still very much alive, stretching past its human-imposed bounds.
**
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)