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 The market across the street where a lady with the Sichuan accent made hot and sour cellophane noodles has been replaced by a string of cell phone/clothing/and sock stores.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.

NYC

For the length of time I've lived in this city I've written remarkably little about it. I have paid attention to it though, a glance and a pause here and there. I suppose I hadn't cared to say much about it because I knew that this was just the beginning. Too early to jump to any conclusions, particularly if I knew I would stay long enough to realize how foolish they are.

But knowing I could completely change my mind about these things, I'm going to stumble forth anyway and make my statement about this city, if only to document for the future just how hasty and foolish I've been at this very moment. After all, who's to say I will only become wiser over time.

People in this city are the most unaware as I have encountered. They are the most skilled at pretending they are alone. Whether there is just one other person on the subway car or 500, they carry the same blank expression or perform the same rhythmic nod to the beats of whatever music streaming into their heads directly from their headphones. They have become experts at being alone: when to look down, when to stare, how to scratch their sideburns or do their makeup - even when they're not.

People in this city are the most aware as I have encountered. They know who to keep a distance from, who has the more expensive jeans, who's carrying a 100$ bill, who doesn't belong here - all this while doing their makeup on the subway. Most of all, they know who they are: white, black, Dominican, grunge, hipster, Jewish, rich, poor. And they know where they're going, it's either up, down, crosstown, or out. Don't know where you're going? Then get out of the way.

This is a city that knows it has made mistakes and knows it will make them again. Hell, it knows it's in the process of making a huge mistake this very second and yet carries forth unalarmed. You won't find many tears of remorse or cries of guilt around here - of course it feels such things, but there's so many things to feel and so little time.

This is a city that pretends many things but never pretends to be perfect. Flaws! it screams. That's what makes me me, that's what makes me New York City, the apple of the world's eye!

This is a city full of big dreams - dreams that dream about being bigger than all other dreams around. It is the epitome or perhaps abomination of what our forefathers envisioned when they first dared utter the words 'the pursuit of happiness.' Could they have imagined 18,696 restaurants, 13,237 taxis, or over 250 feature films produced every year in one city? So much happiness pursued annually, it might be too much to attain.

This is a city that forgives the most unforgivable sins and forgets the most unforgettable victories. No matter how atrocious your history, they've heard worse. No matter how moving your accomplishment, they've heard better. 'Don't you worry, honey,' they say, 'you're just like any other one of us now!'

This is a city in which the tracks of the train have been worn flat by protest and rebellion and life has finally become the field in which one can travel infinite directions from any given point. Nothing here will keep you confined to paths laid out for you. You can go anywhere from anywhere. But the question is, where are you going to go?

Where am I going? Who am I to be? When am I alone? Which mistakes will I forgive? Which won't I forget? What will I pretend? What will I dream? What can I attain? What the hell am I doing here?

This is a city that asks me the questions. For this, I'll be sticking around.

Mastermind

It was around 3am again. Funny, it was about the same time of night last time when the transport system was down, and I found myself taking the familiar walk over the glass-covered bridge to the lab with bags of blood samples in hand. On the bridge I get the best view I could ask for in the hospital: a straight shot down Fort Washington Avenue, for at least 10 blocks south, and I can imagine the rest of Manhattan asleep further down. Below me runs the street itself with a few gypsy cabs still parked, no longer as eagerly searching for customers.

I stared at my reflection in the glass as I walked across the bridge and noticed again my tired, stooped posture and immediately pulled back my shoulders as I always do. Then suddenly, without thinking anything in particular, I felt a familiar swelling of tension in my chest, then my throat, then finally my eyes pushing out the tears that had been resting comfortably for some time now in the bed of my sinuses. Now what is it this time? Self-pity that I had no rest tonight? Anger that I can't be understood? Sympathy for my poor patients? Disappointment that I remained selfish in such dire times? Inspiration from my mentors to become better? I had no idea...I probably could have fixated on any of the above and picked any one out from the slide-show of faces and images that ran through my head like in that corny yet annoyingly tear-jerking life insurance commercial. So for one of the first times I could decisively remember, I completely dismissed my emotions and said 'get over yourself!' I wiped my tears, dropped off my blood samples, and went back to ordering Tylenol and Ambien.

When I was younger, I believed my emotions told the future...ie. that massive crush I had on Bobby in third grade in my enchanted mind could only have meant that we were destined to be married and live happily ever after. Needless to say I learned quickly that maybe only the REALLY strong feelings ought to be used to make decisions, a rule which worked well, until recently when I saw that even that strategy could turn out badly, or even worse, the feelings themselves could simply change - too late for decisions to be undone, too soon for them to be forgiven.

So here I am at a buffet of emotions and intuitions, dazzled and perplexed by which ones I will ingest and make part of my history, fearing both that I will be poisoned by the next one I choose, and that I will bypass the elixir that leads to true happiness - a happiness that of course is itself somewhere on the buffet table amongst the forest of distractions. I have become 'that girl' who 'doesn't know what she wants' - so cliche and nauseating. Bleh.

In retrospect I've attempted to advise plenty of girls (and boys) as the one described, and I've always said, 'just try something damn it!' like it was so easy to fuck with one's life like that. But I suppose I could be much further in life at this point if I weren't so scared of fucking up, or beat myself up so much for it - as though I, unlike other poor unsuspecting folks, was somehow wise enough to know the difference between truth and a really good-looking lie.

So maybe it's time that I just try something, time to let myself be played again by the great illusions in this world, not as though I ever had a chance of escaping that in the first place. I guess what I mean is to feel like that's OK, to be satisfied in living a human life in which I will stumble and fall and make a total fool of myself every so often - not just in small ways, but in big ways, and even in way huge ways as well. (Perhaps at this point those of you reading are thinking, 'shit. she's going to shave her head.' Rest assured, I have no plans for that one.) It's just life, and my only life - why waste it on perfection?

Star-crossed Lovers

The two sides of the coin never really get to see each other or any one thing at the same time - and yet, they are bound to the same fate and to each other so intimately.

Thus is the love affair between patient and doctor. The doctor gets in at 6am, spends the day rounding, checking lab results, reading notes, making phone calls, scrutinizing over his diagnosis, discussing or even arguing with colleagues, going home late, thinking on the subway ride home, and laying awake worrying about his patient, wondering whether he made the right decision. The patient wakes up to the touch of cold stethescopes on his chest, spends the day staring restlessly out the window at his cancer, going over the five words the doctor spoke yesterday in his head, waiting in the repetitive noise of the beeping IV box for him to come again, calling his wife to tell her those five words he heard, wondering whether what the doctor really meant by them, staring at the clear fluid feeding into his veins that the doctor ordered, and laying awake hoping that he knew what he was talking about. And in the morning they meet for the usual five minutes of the day in a desperate exchange of information, each hoping they guessed correctly about the thoughts of the other: the doctor hoping the patient feels better, the patient hoping that the doctor is reassured. The meeting is brief. It is cold. There is relief, familiarity, disappointment, apathy, and maybe even resentment. "How are you feeling today?" "About the same." "We'll do our best to figure it out today." "OK...I hope you do."

As the meeting is cut short by the pressure of time or the lack of things to say, whichever comes first, they are both left feeling alone. The doctor wonders whether the patient realizes the extent of obsessive details that have taken place and are about to take place again that day. The patient wonders whether the doctor realizes the extent of perseverative thoughts and behaviors he will go through again surrounding the five words they just exchanged. Both obsess about whether the other gives a damn about how hard they work for the other, how much they really do care. No, they conclude. It's impossible for him to see the truth. They each obsess over the other while the other is not looking. They are the center of each other's lives. They love each other while the other is not looking, then wonder if they'll ever be loved in return. They learn to accept this.

Then there comes one brief moment when I imagine a glimpse of the birds' eye view of this perpetual battle: I feel from a distance in space the brush of air against my skin of the cosmic explosion that is the power of all the care, energy, pain, longing, and love that the two throw out for each other - the explosion that is otherwise silent to them both. For just that moment I see a beautiful dance - not a smooth or harmonious dance - but one that is full of passion, tension, and intimacy - the kind that is danced so closely it makes one tremble.

I realize I will never truly see the face of my patient, but I will continue to love him as he will go on loving me. The dance we share moves me beyond belief.

"Sorry"

My mother used to tell me, 'don't say you're sorry - change!'

I suppose she let me off from one of the most dreaded acts known to man.

It may also be one of the most potentially expressive words in the English language.
Say it too often, you're insecure. Say it too little, you're too proud. Say it too softly, you're ashamed. Say it too loud, you're resentful. You can pretty much say anything and mean anything you could ever want in just that one word.

The hard part is saying it to mean what they want you to mean...in that, it's almost impossible. I don't know if I've ever succeeded in providing the correct sounding 'sorry' to my listener. And I know there is always one that they're waiting for.

Perhaps my mother was wise enough to realize I could never produce what she was hoping for in my 'sorry' and so skipped that step entirely.

So maybe I have a bit of a developmental delay in my utterance of 'sorry's. I'm catching up these days, but how much have I longed for some special education on this stuff...

Dreams On Fire

Dreams On Fire


"You are my waking dream
You're all that's real to me
You are the magic in the world I see

You are the prayer I sing
You brought me to my knees
You are the faith that made me believe

Dreams on fire
Higher n higher
Passions burning
Right on the pyre

Once far, forever yours
Give me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher n higher

You are my ocean waves
You are my thought each day
You are the laughter from childhood games

You are the spark of dawn
You are where I belong
You are the ache I feel in every song

Dreams on fire
Higher n higher
Passions burning
Right on the pyre

Once far, forever yours
Give me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher n higher"

To some I'm sure this may be the cheesiest, most unrelatable song ever.

But I've never heard a song that feels closer to love. It leaves me a little speechless.

I've come to sense that all of our lives go differently, and thus all of our loves as well. I may be wrong, but if I'm right, it's a bit of a trap to go chasing after the kind of love that others seem to have and to sing about. It's everywhere: the loves of other people - and it's tempting: readily made and pre-packaged. For the longest time I've asked around and listened in this marketplace. But it's really time to grow up now, time to find my own kind of love and write my own song.

In the meantime, I'll borrow this one as food for thought.

Something to Remember

Borderline Personality Disorder:

DSMIV Criteria
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization
and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging.
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars
or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger.
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms.

I've been trying to write about her, but it's just too difficult. She's too vulnerable, too accusatory, and though I realize she may never read this, I still fear her turning against me. So I'll write about her boyfriend instead...although even this I do tentatively.

He's a 26 yo African-American man, appearing slightly older than his stated age with hair cut tight around the curves of his skull, wearing a black, ribbed, long-sleeved T-shirt over baggy jeans, and one small silver hoop earring on his right earlobe. I found him standing outside in the hallway of the emergency room after he had knocked on the door to the psychiatry office, saying that he was looking for a Dr. Du. He stood, shifting his weight from side to side with his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans and reached out his right hand to shake mine. He made appropriate eye contact but shifted his gaze away from mine frequently as he spoke of the facts of his situation, as though my eyes were those very emotions that ought not be confronted at this moment of logistical urgency. His speech was polite but had a sense of urgency and his hands punctuated his sentences with masculine fairness . He spoke what I can only describe as the language of the "inner city," frequently ending his sentences with 'you know what I'm sayin?' As he went on, he spoke more and more rapidly, as though he was making his final plea to the jury. His thought process was linear, but he returned always to 'I just want her to get better,' and 'I just can't be with someone like that.' His thought content was predominated by her threats, her moodiness, her violence, her drinking, her lying, her insatiable need for attention, etc. His affect ranged from worried about her, to angry at her, to sad that it has been so hard. His eyes moistened as he heard my trite words, 'it must have been difficult.' I didn't ask him his mood, but I suspect he would have repeated, 'I just want her to get better, you know?' I could tell he had insight into the issues in his life and hers, but he hadn't heard the term "Borderline Personality," nor had he thought of her as fighting a difficult life-long "illness." To him, she was the firebrand, fragile-hearted, emotionally draining, but yet fascinatingly endearing love of his current life - and I can't deny the accuracy of his perception. He had good judgment to focus on his immediate purpose of finally curing her of her manipulative behavior that kept him holding her but hating her, by telling me anything and everything he could of the truth, knowing that she twists the truth and lies. But he was wrong to believe that by doing so and by being in a hospital, she would 'be cured' of her personality. And perhaps he was wrong to have stayed with her because she threatened to kill herself each time he tried to leave. But then again, perhaps he was really the one who saved her then and now.

In summary, this is a 26 year old man standing before me, his eyes moist with the tears of a trapped animal without a trap to blame. There was nothing that I could do but to feel his anguish and remember.

Windows

There is that phrase that eyes are the windows to one's soul. I open them to allow my thoughts to escape. I close them to contain myself and keep it all together. I take in the words on a page to allow my thoughts to blend with that of the author, so to not feel so alone. I expel words to permanently tack my thoughts down to stop their pestering. And when I cannot find the words, the pressure forces out teardrops to leave on the page. I look into the eyes of another to see what I want to see - that he understands.

It explains why I have difficulty keeping them closed to fall asleep at night. They keep snapping open to release the crowded thoughts within. I am relieved I have them to open and close as I please. I wonder sometimes whether they become weary from the traffic they must contain or reveal. They inevitably become worn and laced with fine wrinkles and creases as the years go by. The creases remind me of the thoughts that have trespassed through this little mind and the words that were transcribed.

Magic

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.

Cows and wives

I read in an article in the NY Times today that in the Sindh Province of Pakistan, there is a saying that goes: "If your cow dies, that is a tragedy; if your wife dies, you can always get another." I have to admit that this made me feel a little more sorry for myself. Despite the cultural distance between upper Manhattan and the Middle East, somehow the meaning of the word "wife" to me became a bit heavier and flimsier. Will "wife" mean walking alongside my best friend for the rest of my life or being a vessel of procreating robust offspring? Does being chosen as "wife" mean that we are destined to fuse in spirit or that I am just the most attractive available specimen of the lot for now? As "wife," will I be just as unique and strong as I am when I am just myself, or will I become the generic, disposable, easily replaceable character in another man's play?

Of course, like all answers, this answer is somewhere in the middle. But somehow, this one is a bit more difficult for me to reconcile. To reconcile seems to entail being persistently disappointed that I have neither found the magical scintillating vision of love I have always pined for, nor attained the high state of wisdom to recognize that such a vision could never be realized in this tragic world of ours. I would be forever stuck in limbo between hoping and giving up. It is like the pain of not knowing whether there is a God or not and watching myself shift from one side to the other depending on which side is more convenient at the time.

So then perhaps the definition of "wife," like the belief in God, is simply again just a conscious choice: a choice that annoyingly cannot be made based on the outcome of where that choice might take me as I will never know that outcome until I have already chosen. Everyone has their opinion of course, and everyone will speculate about which is ultimately the right answer, but they are just as reliable as their debates on the existence of God. Whatever I choose, I risk being alone and disappointed. But I suppose the good news with a choice like this one is that I'll never risk being wrong - or right for that matter.

I've noticed I always like to end these posts with having come to a conclusion of sorts. I unfortunately have to break that tradition this time if I want to stay honest. I confess I'm still too afraid to make a decision on this point, fearing what it might mean for my fragile future happiness. So there it is, my first incomplete blog post - suggestions on the ending are welcome.

Heroes

I remember when I didn't have to tell myself it was unreasonable to be so excited that we were going to have my favorite flavor of ice cream, to be so disappointed that we couldn't play my favorite game after all, to be so sad that everyone would be leaving the party so soon, or to forget so quickly that the world was perfect/going to end just a moment ago. It was a time when things were so much more colorful, a time when really, anything - the best and the worst - was possible. In them I see all this: the child I once was, and the child I'm still trying to become.