Beijing, 2014

6.1.14

I feel the need to say something about this place, to be affirmed that my feelings about it truly happened. Being here is like walking through a fragmented dream I've had over and over again. The occasional unevenly laid grey tile of the sidewalk still trips me. The tiles are sometimes dusty, sometimes wet from water purposely poured on them in front of a doorway, maybe for cleaning purposes? Or cooling purposes? We weren't sure. But when they're freshly wet they smell like summer rains. The buses look different now and have side view mirrors that loom just over its front corners like antennae, making them appear alive like giant grasshoppers they've tamed to carry us on their backs. The lane dividers are still white metal with little arches and blur into a transparent screen between us and the bikers and motorbikers as we pick up speed. There are vehicles big and small, electric and gas, man and machine powered, covered and uncovered, old and new. It's as though they haven't yet decided which ones work best. 

My grandmother's home still looks about the same. The little convenience store that sold popsicles at the front gate is now gone and the lady who sold steamed rolls and buns of various fillings in the courtyard has decreased her inventory. The market across the street where a lady with the Sichuan accent made hot and sour cellophane noodles has been replaced by a string of cell phone/clothing/and sock stores. But the clothes lines that criss cross my grandmother's front stoop are the same ones as before and the black peaks of dust caking the tops of the cabinets along the grand hallway have only grown in size. 

We decide to sit by the empty fountain with the large rock sculpture for a little while. There are several other elderly neighbors of hers sitting out as well on shopping bag mats they place under their bottoms to protect them from the dirt on the benches. Their respective home aids, all somewhat still young women, stand in a cluster and chat amongst themselves. My grandmother comments on how the trees they planted around us years ago have grown tall now and how the landlord has removed all the sporting equipment from the yard except for the stone ping pong table that people still frequent. She comments that today is cooler than yesterday, only 34 degrees Celsius, and yesterday was 41. Her neighbor Mrs. Li who's in her 70's now remarks for the fifth time how much my sister has grown from the toddler who struggled to climb up the front stoop. I wonder if my grandmother would write about our conversation in her diary she keeps along with her close documentation of the temperature and weather for the day. She likes to keep track of things and still uses her abacus to calculate her budget every month. 

Her daily routine involves massaging her assorted acupressure points from her head to her feet a calculated number of times according to a recently popular television show with accompanying manual written by a former barefoot doctor, now respectfully trained - perhaps a Chinese Dr. Oz. She shows me step by step her routine, ending with 300 downward strokes of her abdomen which she says has been shown to make fat people thin in addition to relieving all sorts of digestive problems. She shows me her few medications, one with "clopidogrel" in small letters and another all in Chinese. I rotate the box in my hand, making no attempt to guess at what the characters say. "You can't read it, right?," she chuckles. "This one's made of things that are still alive, like scorpions!"

My grandmother turns 90 on July 1st. My mom chimes out, "the traditional Chinese doctor says one can aim to live to 120 these days!" But my grandmother scoffs in disgust, "my heavens! Who would ever want to live that long? That would be awful!" 

I don't remember being a child here anymore, but what does happen is that once in a while something feels so familiar I can't help but turn my head and stare for a while. We walked by Hou Hai lake the other day. It's still lined by a fence carved from white stone, the kind one sees frequently around here. Willow trees dangled over the fence and along the walkway, some tickling the water's surface. The houses surrounding the walkway were ones they kept from before, renovated, or rebuilt in the same fashion, with sloping roofs of grey tiles, brightly painted awnings, and bright red doors. Groups of older people including some old men in wife beaters clustered around playing cards. Some older men in speedos very comfortably jumped in and swam laps as my mother used to do here. It's become a popular tourist destination dotted with occasional white folks with fanny packs and large tour groups of Chinese people speaking in accents different from ours. There were even new old fashioned boats with lanterns that carry tourists and lovers across and probably cost a fortune to ride. Nonetheless I couldn't stop staring at the way the willow branches hung in the breeze. 

I don't know when or whether I will see my grandmother again. The thought brings tears to my eyes. I'm not sure what I'm crying for, whether it's her, my childhood, or just the passing of time. I feel angry I ever left here. Yet I feel suffocated by the idea of staying. I feel regret for not knowing her more than in fragments separated by years. I feel guilty for avoiding visiting her more often. I feel happy to share with her a few meaningful moments. I feel proud to be able to sit with her without asking too much from either of us. I feel sad to be leaving her so soon. 

Self Psychology

I think of the little girl I was and still am inside, how lonely and wanting she is of warmth and comfort. I think of holding her close, running my hands through her hair, and telling her that she is beautiful. I think of how hard she is trying just to stand tall. I think of how hard she tries at everything. I think of how terrified she is alone in the dark and how enraged she is at those who left her behind. I think of how badly she just wants to be noticed and how ashamed she is to ask. It's up to me to notice her and to hold her and love her. I can no longer wait for someone who's not coming home, because even when they get there, they could never hold her long enough or hard enough to ease the pain.

She's my child now. She's always been mine. I'm the one she's been waiting for. The greatest men in this world can't substitute for my love. They will always fall short. They will always fail her. I am the mother she needs.

It's a huge responsibility, to love such a real thing. Such a thing with imperfections that can't be hidden because I have a front row seat. I'm the person I've been hesitant to get close to. I want to punish her for her inadequacies. I'm afraid she won't survive. I'm afraid her hunger will engulf me. I want to show her off and use her for her talents until they're wrung dry. But she needs me to do better than that. She needs my protection.

Pieces of her are bled onto the pages here. Pieces of her glisten throughout the day in the corner of my eye. Pieces of her people love and give everything for. Pieces of her cut through the people she loves and bring up their hatred. Pieces of her tear apart the world they've built for her. She is sadness, pain, sweetness, greed, envy, longing, and anger. But I am her container. I hold all of these pieces into a whole. And she stands there waiting to be seen as her alone, naked, and real. It's painful to see her and I so often look away. Her gaze is weighty and needy. When our eyes finally meet, I see the bottomlessness of her loneliness and stillness of her courage.

The Big Apple

There's never been a place that has so much want. A want to exist rooted so deep and tenaciously. Yes, I want to exist right here right now! I dare you to topple these dreams! It's in the brown eyes embedded in wrinkles, and the blue eyes behind dark locks dripping with sweat. It's in the turquoise reflection of the sunset on strapping young office buildings, and the rain stains on the mortar grooves between the bricks of brownstones that look on longingly. The ladders are clearer than ever here, between me and you, between Houston and 110th. It calls out to me, ‘climb!’ in the way a maze calls out to the mouse. I come back to the city always. My hatred and lust cling to the gaps between buildings, cars, and grates the way the grime clings to gaps in the tile. It is a place that will have known more pain than I, always. It will always understand. Being down here reminds us of where I'll stay if I don't want badly enough. It reminds me of my place in this world where I bow down to my dreams.

Leaving Buenos Aires

The dense blend of smoke and cologne infused into my head, begging to be let out. So I roll down the window. The crisp air swirled with exhaust came to the rescue for all of us stuck inside. We are stopped again in the crowd of vehicles and I realize that rush hour exists here as well. I'm at a loss about what to say about this place. Maybe I didn't take enough to time to see it, hear it, feel it. Maybe my senses have been dulled too much for it to happen like it used to. Maybe it hasn't been enough time. Maybe i was distracted by the conversation. At the risk of writing too much on the surface, what's really on my mind are just his words, why he said them, what they do and don't mean. Those few words awakened so much complexity in me, he would never know. And what they may have stirred in him I could only guess. This is what they mean by baggage. They say the roads in Rome were built upon layers and layers of ruins, layers that were probably too impossible to remove and thus served as cushioning for the next present. They're invisible until a loose brick is displaced. It is like the complexity of red wine, that concoction of the past. I still remember what it was once like when it was pure excitement, passion, and longing, which already overwhelmed. Now there is also the hints of empathy, sadness, disappointment, calm, and resignation. It is an acquired taste, the kind that makes my lips tighten and cringe but with the promise that it would get better. My chest is heavy and my heart droops like a water balloon filled to capacity hanging from the lip of the faucet. It wants so badly to stay. Not necessarily for him I think, but for itself to savor the fullness. It let's me know and makes me nauseous. I'm proud that I found the courage to look into his eyes more than once, to allow the kindness in us to say hello in the midst of the threats that surround us. I tried to let my eyes say as much as I could and let my words take a rest. Words said and unsaid have always left too much to regret. It was a beautiful moment I think, one that I felt good enough to walk briskly away from. Perfect just as it is. ;l I'd like to believe that our situations are as well. Perfect as they are. Because it would be so exhausting otherwise. This is the most exhausting love of my life. It takes all of me to imagine myself without him and with him. It's taken all my spirit to maintain it, then all of my year to reclaim my spirit. It is so much mine because I've bled into it so much. I'm tired of considering other things, the calculation, the guilt, the secrets, the wishing.

The Community Service

Re: Winter, 2010

There isn’t much more to say these days. It has all been said or heard one way or another. There’s nothing that doesn’t wash over me over the course of the week. It makes the little feeling that I conjure up on this page trite and offensive. What must it be like to have no one but God to speak of? The loneliness in this place is like the dry air of the desert in which any drop of water is eaten up immediately. By the end of the day, my lips are parched and I too go home alone.

There is a long thin room with windows at either end, one facing the nursing station, one facing the outside world. There are a few couches squeezed in along the walls and a telephone. In it is where the ladies chat, nap, huddle around, gossiping, giggling. It is the few square feet of the building that feels like it could be real. Real relationships, real laughter. I’m afraid to walk in and penetrate it. I don’t belong in that real world and they remind me so with their teasing eyes.

Most of the time she speaks of nonsense. “My saint will protect me. He is the only one who is there for me. He makes me pregnant.” I can never remember what she said more than a day ago because nothing fits into the pre-existing tracks of logic in my brain. But in the moment, her words are clear enough to pierce through the many layers of human and professional propriety I’ve accumulated, to the point when I leave trembling and ice cold. Her smile is like that of a newborn child. Her anger is that of the perpetually tortured souls in the depth of the inferno. My heart goes out to her to be shredded to pieces.

What I’ve always needed desperately is to be loved and cared for, and yet I’ve chosen a profession in which I expose my deepest wounds to those who can’t help but hurt others. Perhaps I feel that their love is more meaningful somehow because it is buried so deep in pain, anger, darkness, just a little like mine. This may be the only way I know how to love deeply.

Magic

Re: SF 2009

I wonder if trips will ever stop feeling like this: so unbearably, unrealistically intense. It somehow feels even theatrical, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end that have always meant to be. The encapsulation of what transpired into the boundaries of space and time somehow relieves it from the chaos to which I’m accustomed, as the covers of a book relieves the words on the pages. And of course, I am left again with the sadness that nothing will ever happen again in just the way it did within this story. I have a hard time believing and not believing that it was all as magical to everyone as it was to me. I suppose if I have learned anything in life it’s that it is filled with unilateral magic.

There’s nothing like traveling just to see friends. I was passed this time from one to another, like a series of trust falls without ever touching the ground in between. I’m inevitably impressed by their capacity to take care of me and absorb me into their life for just a little while. The exercise has completed its task: I trust them more than ever now. It gives me the false illusion that San Francisco is filled with nothing but warmth, friendship and good times.

A certain phrase danced at the tip of my tongue over the past few days, and it was a movingly awkward line delivered by none other than Hugh Grant in the movie Notting Hill. After Julia Roberts had spent the night, woke up terrorized by the paparazzi, and stormed out screaming at him for ruining her career, he said quietly, in that Hugh Grant sort of way: ‘I on the other hand will always be glad that you came to stay for a while.’

Classic unilateral magic…or so it seemed at the time.

Street Cred

There are many cracks in the city to fall into, for the water to run like the creases between pieces of brick on a sidewalk. I shoot glances down the avenues and streets as I pass by compulsively because they always lead somewhere I can dream – the Hudson, Ellis Island, Central Park, and the Bronx. No matter where I am, my vision can shoot that far, and I am reminded of just where I am in the world, and of the places I can still go whenever I choose. I should never be lost here. There are too many things that know too well where they are for things to be lost: the people, the storefronts, the smells. And as different as places become, everyone knows that we still share the same Park Avenue as those who might not have anything else in common with us. There is something empowering about that. But also something that puts me in my place at all times. The ladders are clearer than ever here, the distances between me and you in money, reputations, realestate, our history. It calls out to me, ‘climb!’ in the way a maze calls out to a mouse. I take pride in the lows and highs I’ve been on this climb, as we all do here.

Sara Part 2

The doorbell rang. She pretended it didn’t. It rang again. And again. She stopped the music and removed her headphones. She clicked ‘save’ and closed her laptop, setting it down on the hardwood floor beside the pile of test prep books. It was 3 and the nurse was here. That means it’s been two weeks. It was windy outside and the leaves were rustling in the waves and whistled through the slits as she opened the door. It was cold. It smelled of rust as autumn does sometimes. She shuts it out but the coldness and rustling sneak in somehow. It always does in this house. She looks down and notices a drop of red on her right little toe. She smudges it with her finger leaving an orangish brown behind. It oozes red again within a few seconds but she isn’t paying attention anymore.

The nurse nods and goes up the stairs. She peaks little English. The girl followed.

She watched the nurse do the dance with the syringe and alcohol and blue tourniquet around her mother’s limp wrinkly wrist. The tourniquet wrinkles it even more. Blood always comes out somehow though it seems she should be drained dry by now. It’s darker each time. This time almost black.

The nurse packed up and nodded again, then showed herself out leaving just the girl behind. The front door slams shut in the wind leaving it with only the slits to tease.

She tucked her mother’s limp wrist back under the white sheets. The nurse always left her wrists vulnerable as though to make it more ready for the next time.

The crusted lips gasped and the girl jumped back, startled. She immediately reached for the gauze on the nightstand and dabbed fervently at the yellow glaze drizzling out. It clung to the gauze and her fingertips. She gagged, nauseated. You’d think she’d be used to this sort of thing by now.

She tossed the gauze into the basket of other gauzes like it – rusty. She breathed deeply and composed herself again beside the bed. No breaths from either of them. She was waiting for her mother. She finally breathed on her own out of desperation, but her eyes remained stuck on the horizon of the white mound’s chest. It was a game they played, seeing who would give in first.

She waited more. Breathed again. That’s twice now that her mother had won. She bent closer, held even more still. No touching, just watching. Those were the rules. Nothing. It got hot and her nose began to glisten with sweat. Her cheeks slightly flushed, her right eye tearing slightly but not giving in, her hands clenched at her sides, avoiding the white.

Nothing.

She swallowed and broke the rules, angry that her mother had cheated. She tugged the rim of the sheets to see if she would respond, which she sometimes did, sometimes not.

Nothing.

Her fingers crawled up the sheet and found the limp wrist and squeezed. It was between lukewarm and drafty like the whole damn house. She froze again bending even closer to watch the horizon. If she blinked, she could miss her chance to finally catch her.

Nothing.

An indefinite amount of time had passed. She tried to appear as though she had forgotten about the breathing, convinced that she could do such a silly thing and just disappear already. But then her eyes got foggy and sour, her nose moist and clammy. Finally she threw herself away from the mound and let out something between a scream and a grunt. Her face seethed from anger. Her mother wins again.

She backed away slowly, careful not to step on any objects or make any noise. Her eyes darted all around the mound, as though trying to pounce on any flicker. She panicked, perhaps because she was alone with a dead body or because she realized now she couldn’t win the games anymore. She reached for the gauze and picked up one, then another, until she held the one with the freshest bronzeness. She glared at it fiercely wanting justice. Her eyes traced the outline of the body before her, as though looking for when was the last breath that came and went so cavalierly, just like its owner.

Her toes curled into the hardwood floor, oozing bright red on the right. She had lost. She always loses to her mother. She is always the one left to drag her bare skin over rocks chasing after this creature that pranced unabashedly in the wind. She is the one with scars. So many scars. So many but none this time or ever now. She gasped.

She looked down at her pale wrists, unmarked and virgin. She never hated them more. They were so whole, so pure, so put together, just like her white binder with color-coded subject and sub-subject dividers. She was disgusted by the irony of her being. Suddenly in that moment she realized why the scars were necessary and appropriate. They were the only places the ugliness could get out – and there was so much of it swarming inside.

She snaked her finger and thumb around her wrist and squeezed until her hand became cold and tingly. It was up to her now to make the scars. She trembled. She breathed to gather up courage, knowing she needed to commemorate the occasion with a special scar. She took a few steps toward the desk and opened the drawer. Her movements were slow and precise. She picked up the razor blade she had routinely thought about but never used. She knew its exact place in the drawer and pictured it against her skin so many times, but it still felt so foreign. It was cold. Her fingers were colder. She touched the blade with her fingertip to test the sharpness and was satisfied.

She approached the bed and bent down to place her wrist on the mound. She wanted her to see and be proud. She chose a particularly perfect looking part of her wrist that had to go and placed the blade tip on it. She pressed, and her skin dimpled. It was thicker and tougher than she thought. She pressed harder, and harder, her heart racing faster and faster.

Then finally, it burst. It was warm and generous. It flowed freely and naturally, tracing the curve of her forearm, moistening the sheet, and sinking into the fabric. She had never seen anything so beautiful. Her face melted into a slight smile. She was relieved to be released once again, this time all on her own.

Reconstructing Sara

This is what it’s like to be afraid of the dark. I’m huddled, scooting along the floor towards one corner, then along the side of the bed, but then I realize the corners are no better. They are just as hot. Then I just stay somewhere in the middle of the room, as close to the ground as possible without surrendering my mobility, keeping my feet below me, because at least down here the sound of his voice was not as loud. I feel my weight pressing harder against the floor squeezing out the blood from the edges of my feet, making them pale. I am desperate to fuse into the ground – my only way out. But the boundaries of my skin are too strong and I stay in the room, with Him.

He stands up and takes a few steps towards the door. Although I wasn’t looking, I knew what his coordinates were. He was hot like that. I felt relief with every step he took away and intensifying desperation with every step towards me. My heart pounds with the hope that this might be the end, that he might finally walk out of the room so I could be left to tend to my wounds. But then he turns around, I dig my nails into my knees in preparation – my painted nails that made me a whore - and as though out of nowhere the familiar whip cuts through my fortress of air and cracks against my raw trembling back.

The cracking sound is the worst part. It always surprises me to hear it so soon – and then the bite sinks in, followed by the deepening with the sting. I wouldn’t look at it. It would break me. I imagined that it was pristine, pale and perfect still, although I couldn’t deny the few strokes that stayed. I was reminded of them, however, only when they were crossed again. Pain is funny like that. I imagined that they were the delicate branches of bamboo in the painting. No, I couldn’t look. I had to believe my skin fortress was still intact. It was my last stand.

Silence follows. After an indefinitely long period of time, I breathe a shallow breath and finally pluck my nails from my knees to see the marks they left behind – my relaxed state. I breathe again deeper. My back stings back. So now I know my limits and I obey.

I thought about what was happening: his anger, his love taunting me, my pitiful body, my desire for his approval, his want for my everything that I didn’t know how to give. Then it really started to hurt. My chest collapsed with my heart in it and I squeezed, pushing out a few drops of tears from one eye but not the other – the only little pieces of myself that I could get out because I had nothing else. I took a deep breath and squeezed again. Nothing this time. Nothing left.

I dig my nails into my knees again, back into the small ditches where they belong, and I press harder and harder, feeling the pain pierce into me. I feel my body tremble with life – what little there is of it, it is still there. As though by natural instinct, because it kicks in in times like these, I begin rocking slightly, in the rhythm of infancy that makes the world feel like a dream – the first step to falling asleep.

My brother and mother standing in their own corners, stared at the ground, occasionally glancing over at me – their naked creature-sister-daughter-thing. They stopped pleading a while ago when they realized the more they spoke, the harder he hit. They stood aside though and between us was a moat they couldn’t pass, because this time he chose me.

In the spaces between the slashes my mind wandered into the darkness, into the things I could do besides digging my nails into my knees. The options were of another world, I knew, and I stood at the open door. I imagined what it would be like to strangle, to cut, to burn, to amputate. I imagined seeing shadows I couldn’t touch or feeling bugs crawl that I couldn’t see. I imagined hearing voices alone in the dark that I couldn’t prove were there. The world was tempting and he was pushing me in. I clung to the edge because part of me knew it was bad somehow, but part of me believed it was where I belonged from the start. This is insanity. This is Hell. I could fall indefinitely into it. It would swallow me whole and not notice any change in its hunger. No! I don’t want it! It wouldn’t give back. At least He reacts. Hell doesn’t.

I suddenly shut It out and return to my floor, my nails, my strokes of bamboo, and I am relieved. But I know It awaits. It will always be there calling. My chest collapses again but this time it is from anger. All this time I believed it was my weakness, my degenerate little mind, my pathetic yearning heart that led me to the abyss in love and challenges, but no, I was wrong. He was the one pushing me down this path – so many times that I’ve started to walk it myself. It was too familiar, too beaten from my own footsteps, through a forest that most do not entertain entering. He will continue to push me again and again because he doesn’t realize how close I am to jumping in. Or maybe he does and believes I deserve it. Maybe I do deserve it. Maybe I’ll jump.

I collapse again at that thought. It was a self-hit. And I savored the agony it brought me. I believe I am dry now because nothing is coming out anymore. I am paralyzed. There is nothing else to do when I am dry but to stay very still. There is no purpose in any movement now. There is no more reaction to my actions from anyone, including myself.

This is it: My naked body, sitting in a small smeared pool of sweat-tears-blood-fluid. My floor. The window. My bed. My brother and mother so still like furniture. And Him. I wasn’t sure if he had been yelling earlier. I had let sounds pass me by for a while now, because there was no point in listening when I was dry. He could hit me again but I no longer felt the urge to dig my nails into my knees. I was spent.

This completes the cycle. I’ll build up again, and we’ll talk and laugh, then he’ll snap, and I’ll fight just briefly, then I’ll huddle and squeeze and tear, I’ll peer into the abyss, contemplate jumping, then get scared and turn back, then I’ll be dry again and everything will stop. And the cycle starts again. He could hit me again but he didn’t. I don’t know when he left the room. It didn’t matter.

I breathe. I hold my head a little higher. I breathe a little deeper. It stings.

And then the other kind of tears was released – these were cool, refreshing, and flowed freely without squeeze, like the mountain stream. These were the tears of the artists, the musicians, the eccentric thinkers, the persistently misunderstood, I am certain. They blurred my view of the bed frame and the sheets that draped over the edge. They were me returning, and they were beautiful.

Love Story

Life has gotten complicated for this little girl. The city is bigger and badder than she had imagined. It has always been complicated way before this moment, but now it is official. Her story has gotten difficult to tell in a passing conversation and the bullet points are no longer self-explanatory. So when the music plays now, she sits in a bed of scattered post-it notes and moves them all around and around her – until the ink is smeared by the teardrops that won’t stop coming. What is to become of the powerpoint presentation on the meaning of her life now? Poor little girl.

She remembers back when the story made sense and the way she sang it to everyone who came around. She sang it proudly like it was the only thing she knew – so what does she know now? Too many years had fallen too quickly and not enough time to decide where they ought to go.

She is used to seeing things fall apart. When they do, they almost never come back together. She glues things together for a living, and just before she sets them free she turns her back and walks away, because otherwise she knows she won’t let go. She holds her breath and waits for the sound of her heart breaking.

Her silly story has fallen apart. It was silly but true. It will be tough to find anything true now, silly or not. So she found him.

Nothing was ever too difficult for this boy. He won nearly every heart he tried on. That's why he couldn’t have her. So he spends his years unplaying the plays he spent so long contriving, to make her believe in the him that has been there all along. He was once just a sappy love song too, he really was, just like she believes she is, although neither of them are really that anymore. Love isn’t really like that anymore, nor was it ever.

He doesn’t regret what he’s been, although he knows he’s made mistakes. He’s never been one to wade in the guilt of things, because what’s the success in that? He knows where he’s going now, that’s all that matters. He’s going right into her heart.

He is one who won’t ever fall apart. He doesn’t quite know what that means so he’s not afraid. And at the end of the day when she is again in pieces, he picks them up one by one and tucks them in to sleep.