the dream before yesterday

In the dream before yesterday, I lost a tennis shoe to the sea that swept cities away. I was standing aloft the porch to four apartments. Inside each door was a little man pining away on a tiny metal bed or little wooden chair, their plastic hearts and glass eyes creaked with the wind. I was standing there when the sea carried my tennis shoe away. It floated on across the flooded landscape until I could see it no more. I remember it being blue as cerulean paint.

It’s been a week without an iPod and liFE is a-ok. I think if we learn to tune our ears to humanity, we might learn more than we ever could have from chan marshall mathers.  It’s been like spring these winter days, and while taking a walk yesterday (without my ears plugged up), I started singing as if I had a range of vocal abilities. The point is, these days, there is too much going in and not enough coming out. There’s reading, listening, watching, holing… and writing in itself, perhaps, is a way of basking, wallowing. It’s the most indulgent “outage” for me. To excise, on the other hand, is to sing, to speak, to scream. To use ! instead of … To love and hate instead of meditate and hesitate.

I wish I could write less dramatically.

Dr. T said the other day she threw out a journal from the college days. I look forward to the day when I can chunk out the girl I am now.

talks of conundrum

the conundrum rolls on, blinds your soul and sucks your breath out. the conundrum of sun, of light, of happiness. the conundrum of thinking too much, of doubts on your goosebumps, and the only reassurance you have is skin on skin and breath against breath. and i _know_ i know you’re good for me the way princes are good for queens, but on the throne i’m still staring at vultures glowering the sky, and you see through me, eye to eye to your beautiful world.

new york on wednesday, new york again. the love affair of my life. the city of pain. the city of harangue. the love of my life. the insouciance and glowering towers, lifted by thousands of towering gazes… and here i am trying to be one in a million. think me not foolish, says the eye, heed me and praise me by the dock of provincials,  buy me fish and candy as we row down the lane, down the drain, down the vain.

praise me.

roll

Happiness is a state of mind. My roommate reminded me last night of just how happy I sounded when I called her in New York, “oh my god, you sound so happy and SO LOVING, Qing Qing.” A couple days before Christmas, I was making round calls to friends while walking down 6th Ave toward Union Square. I don’t think I was feeding off any specific event that made me glorious happy, rather, I think I was literally bouncing off the energy and pace of the city: the Christmas store fronts, the crowds of people. In other words, I was literally hyping up my own happiness because I believed that by being in the greatest city of the world, I ought to be happy.

Maybe it’s this ought that makes all the difference. Maybe it’s this ought that made me a hermit in Ohio, that made me semi-renounce humanity, a bigot wearing the guise of the victimized. And so, I wager to… start listening to more pop music. That’s it. I know nothing. I renounce myself.

n/n

I dreamed that n/n’s getting married. The wedding was to take place the next glorious summer, somewhere in the mountains of Louisiana. I didn’t even know there were mountains in Louisiana, but I imagined the glaze of the warm, violet sun against his copper skin and brown curls, and I imagined him as a shepherd leading a herd.

The girl he was to marry was a mutual friend. She was short, too short for him. I thought, a moment in eternity, that he and I would make a much fairer pair. So when he reached to hug me, long limbs and the smell of pine enveloped me, and I told him “you’ve grown taller.” He laughed and shook his head, “not at all. It’s you who’s grown.”

On his fingers, n/n wore these exaggerated jade rings that only exist in dreams. They were three long stripes of specked green/grey jade on his thumb, index, and ring finger. Then on his middle finger, a huge silver ring glinted like a symbol of manhood and prowess. But his fingers were thinner and more graceful than I remember.

We talk. We walk. We dine at the strangest places – in rooms with gaudy carpets, silver candle holders, animal screens, mahogany wood, dark wallpaper – places I can only appreciate in dreams. I told him, it’s a lot easier to talk to him now that he was getting hitched, none of that pent up glow, but instead of wishing him all happiness, I told him so, that I adored him so.

In dreams, he’s a blur of army green and coffee brown, with a smile that embraced my coquette verbs. I’m feeling Scarlet O’Hara, but he’s no Ashley. He’s out of this rundown village to find another village. He’s marrying a short girl whose name I forgot, and in all my lies is a debris of truth, and feign, heart, feign.

USK, the pig, my starving stomach, and ripped to shreds

It’s been really hard lately to write, whether in a journal, for school, or for work, I feel like I’ve finally gone and lost all my wordmarbles… all my warbles. This is especially bad, considering I have a piece due for Theme this Sunday, and I just read Rain ripping some writer to shreds. Damn it. I lost my warbles I lost my warbles and all I really want to do is drink on it. Instead my stomach is screaming hunger and lurching for all the nutrients in OXYGEN, but I will not eat I refuse to eat because it is my goal to look like a Dolce & Gabbana model – smoky eyed, sultry lips, thick thighs, tiny waist, a man under her heels – we may never get there, but we continue to pray to Photoshop.

I can’t believe I’m going back to New York next week.

Normally, I would be ecstatic, but… for some reason, I’m not really ecstatic, for some reason, all I really want to do is dive home to Mao&Rong. When I think about the different lives I lead here, in New York, and then in China. When I think about the way I change in these three different places, I really only just get damn confused. All I know right now is I’m due for Beijing. Winter Break in New York was dramatic enough, very admirable set of characters and plotlines that I may never exploit due to losing my warbles. Maybe… maybe I should write more in this electronic pad… write to just write without thinking. I know we’re getting a little rusty, so even if it’s stream of conscious shit, so what? Just do it?

The problem is, every other day, you just wanna give up, you just wanna throw up your hands and surrender to the fact that maybe, maybe you just don’t have the talent, and it’s high time to go the PR route, or take Microeconomics and go into accounting to make daddy happy. The problem is, every other day, you get so inflated on the idea that perhaps you do have a shred of salvageable talent, and a bloody unique story to tell… and you’re bleeding from your throat to tell it, and your brain is decaying because you’re too busy living to write and you’re too busy writing to live and why can’t they ever ever just collaborate?? Teach me to breathe words, so I know when to pause and when to punctuate and when to love and when to seize and…!

I can’t believe I’m going back to New York next week. I’m really excited to see Ham Lam. I adopted Ham Lam you know, the week I met him. He has a dog named Henry Lam. He is the only Asian hipster I know. Walking with him and his dog under the orange glow of Brooklyn Heights… made me feel like a scene out of domesticity. Ham Lam made me laugh so much with self-doubt and word tripping that I desecrated.

I lie. He is the only New York Asian hipster I know.

In Australia, Ari’s girl left him… and he left for booze, sex, rock n’ roll. He sounds awfully happy for being awfully sad. I’m at a loss for what to think? Is love so tenuous that it can be healed by banging your head against the wall 56 times, the same state of unconscious as drinking 5 rounds and jumping up and down? Remember that scene at the club, when you turn on all the fluorescent lights? Do we look foolish my love, if I just want to go at it on the floor.

Everyone is love.

Lately, I too just wanna get wasted. I just wanna climb inside the stereo stripped naked and barren inside. I just wanna scream in there and hear nothing except my muteness intertwining with the sound of bass, jam, love, melody. I just wanna curl up in there and be raped a thousands times by the music and cry until I’m starved to death. I’m sorry I’m so emo I can’t help it because it’s so quiet here god it’s so quiet when it’s just the music and the lights low and I’m so faraway from love and NOTHING NOTHING IS ABRASIVE ENOUGH I JUST WANT TO SCREAM UNTIL THE SHARDS trash my lungs.

I still think it’s cool that I dated a pimp though. I’m so wasted on love. I should probably call Geng. I know I’m cold, but it’s only because I fear for myself, I just don’t want to bring the awkwardness of my being onto you, it’s that easy swaysey.

Ugh… let’s start again. Let me tell you about my two favorite kids in the whole wide world. I met them this time last year give or take, and seven months later we were in a tent in Inner Mongolia at the foot of some beauty of a mountain. Rong calls Mao my “big white rabbit” because he’s pale like a baby with wonder-some eyes. He’s probably the smartest person I know. I know this, because he helped me with a translation project and I almost ended up crying with the words he used (English to Chinese… so I mean, he REALLY helped me). 500 years ago, he would be some renowned scholar at the aid of some wise emperor. 500 years later, I wonder if it’s China that wasted his talent.

Do you mind if I write onto eternity? Even if it’s drivel. Even if it’s dramatic. Even if it lacks tension, symbolism, conflict. Even if you can’t understand a thing. Do you mind? Rong is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known. She has the eyes that steal your soul and cheery lips that break into the widest toothy grin. She laughs like the wind, and her long hair makes wind worthwhile. The most unconventional beauty, blood and bone and flesh and maturity and innocence wrapped into one. I’m so sick of seeing our faces in the mirror – our made up beauty, our magazine styles, our cool shoes and coats starving for mass attention while we back ourselves into a corner, lighting up a cig to say I’m too cool for you but actually if you give me five glaring minutes I’m perfectly willing to fuck in that shithole of a bathroom at this godforsaken party. I’ll leave my gum on the door as a token.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried as hard. I didn’t think I was going to cry at all. I think, was it the whistle of the train going by, the cinematic scene like a music video running through my head, that when I hugged him, even my bones sacked down to my very stomach, and it’s these tears welled up from the depth where you’d get stomachaches… that’s where it starts, where it travels up and up until your throat clogs and your cheeks huffs and your eyes swim and I cried so much Mao Mao, I cried so much I was afraid I’d scared you and you think I’m a foolish stupid girl. That night, the last thing I did was brought him a 2 yuan drink. It was Kang Shifu green tea, lukewarm from August heat. The last thing I said to him was “Mao Mao… hug her for me please… hug her for me please…” The last thing I thought to him was “I would die for you guys. I would die for you guys.” You understand? You and Rong. I would die.

You understand. Happy Birthday love. Over and over.

bedlam of sound

and here i am yet again, sinking into the bedlam of sound, and here’s the weight of sound, grappling every limb and fiber, every finger and every joint, until i feel my very heart pounding out into the universe of vibrations. mr. speaker, we listen to the sound loud so we can feel it ravage in the depth of our bowels, gutted and fleshed out, consumption and reduction, until they grate our bones and gnaws at our very soul. mr. speaker, if i burn you to cinders by loudness, perhaps we shall meet our happy demise together, incineration, illumination, eradication.

incinerate!!

tomorrow, everything will change

The city is made of brave people, the cunts and the cunning. I can play the cunt for an hour or five, but cunning I still have to work on. Cunning is a bit evil because it’s intentional; cunt is carelessness and then thinking too much.

Here’s to the second entry that never came. One of my worst fears has always been being pretty ugly. The theory behind pretty ugly is as thus. You know the friends you have who start off as physically unattractive people, but with time and your getting to know and love the person, they go through a duck to swan transformation – flaws suddenly become endearing features, asymmetry becomes character. Well, pretty ugly is when you meet somebody gorgeous, pleasant, and lovely looking, and by and by their beauty erodes because their personality cannot live up to their physical beauty.

At vanity’s worst, I’m always acutely aware of my ‘being’ whenever I sit across the table with a friend. Playing the first-impressions game even though we’ve only known each other for 72 hours, and I wonder whether I’m a regressed duckling in their eyes.

Somehow, New York felt like a train ride of first impression and 72 hour friendships. There’s only so much you can get to know a person an hour at a time. To be honest, there’s actually so much you can get to know a person an hour at a time. It felt like I was speed-dating since day one, the endless where are you froms, what are you doing heres, and where are you goings. Oh you’re a film producer and can make people cry in a minute flat, but you hate it, you hate doing that. That’s all very swell…

I really love people. I love their beauty and love their flaws. I love their vulnerability and their big phoniness. I love how they are when they are drunk and how they are not when they are sober. I love my three in the mornings, dancing with drag queens (oh he was my favorite, oh was he not my favorite under the disco light bulb, oh was he not the only one I fell in love with?!), dragging my luggage across Queens, bumming around on New Years’ with no destination.

But New York New York, this is my last rendezvous with you. I’m done with affairs and over deja vu. I’m leaving the wide-eyed little girl standing on the curb, and I’m dragging a life’s worth of baggage and moving into Queens. Soon. When? Soon.

Soon.

Mama Roma
When the Italian boys say “Ciao Belllllllllllaaaaa,” I can count their every ‘l’ and every ‘a.’ I’m in love with their lethargic hellos and shamelessness. I’m in love with their love and in love with their style. I know in the streets of Paris and Roma, men drop down to their knees for beautiful women, and I know that I, Puritan and too idealistic at times, can only handle their love in the fiction world, but that in no way detracts from their art of flirtation, nor the power of their gaze, the way they possess you with hugs and kisses, even if they do wander to the next beauty in line five seconds later. I’ve always said Italy was the China of Europe. We’re both messy cultures in love with food, big families, being loud with exaggerated gesticulations, but in truth, Italians roll in their Ferraris and are all swimming in happy hormones or something. I say live bravely. Drop down to your knees for the love of your life on the train whom you held a steady gaze with. I say do worship women but don’t be a shady New York man being all predatory. I say I say Ciao Bellllllaaaaaaaaa. They were the best, these kids.

Ari
My favorite Jew tells me that, in fact, he knows a dozen stupid Jewish people, but I’m less inclined to believe him now that I’ve met him. This kid whom I mistaken to be Adam the Australian guy after a flurry of meet and greets at the hostel, funnily enough, is now in Australia. And Ari says,
-There are just slightly more Asian people here than there are in San Francisco. Y’all appear to be taking over Sydney. (Not that I mind at all… I love you guys the fucking most!!!!!!!!!!!)
-Speaking of which, there is an abundance of Japanese, Chinese and Korean supermarkets.
-All the shops are the same as those you’d find in NY or CA, for the most part. Thanks a lot, international mega-coprorations…!
-The price of a haircut is still only $10.
What A RIOT. I would say more but words are not enough to encompass all that is this kid. I wish with every fiber in my body that someday, I could live like him, that I could pick up my life for the love of my life and not be fazed one second by the airline losing all my luggage, that I could smile so genuinely over friends and pocky, at the same time. I love you kid. Thanks for being in my life for 20 days.

Ssinjin
The baby was born on Christmas. Alena said it felt like she helped give birth to the kid. In a way, I think all the Theme kids feel this way. Holding the baby in my (rigid, clumsy, not-very-mommy-at-all) arms had to be the most solidifying moment of my life… He was so small, so fragile, and so waiting to be loved, and there is so much love, so love waiting for you little one.

Ham Lam
My favorite snark Ham Lam and I are going to conquer the creative world one day with our super vision ingenuity and hardworking Asian ethics, that is, if he doesn’t kill me with laughter first.

童童
It’s three o’clock with the red light floatin’. She loved the red light in the hallway because it made the brown in his eyes glow maroon, and she took photographs because she wanted to be like Shu Qi in Three Times, shining black lights on his profile. He wouldn’t understand why she got excited all over a red light. It’s a dollar fifty for a red light bulb at the supermarket, he thought in his head, and if you want I’d buy a dozen and fifty for you. It was three o’clock when she jumped up and packed her stuff. She threw on loose jeans and a sweater over her pajamas. She threw on a mask and wouldn’t look at him. She shook like a baby girl and he couldn’t even touch her. When she went for the door, he could only whisper “what’s happening? Why is this happening?” She could hear the awe in his voice and the see the hallow in his eyes. Tong Tong said, “I never know what to say around you. Around anyone else I can’t shut up for the life of me, but I like you too much, don’t you understand?”

But baby words words words I lived for words.

It was three o’clock when she dragged up luggage into the night, and it took two blocks for her to start crying. It was the godforsaken soap opera rain falling from the sky, and it was the dim orange street lamps that followed her shadow everywhere, and it was the thought of leaving New York and the thought of leaving that made her cry, and it wasn’t the first time she cried for a guy she didn’t love and it won’t be the last time, but she thought about how he looked at her in the dark, smoothing her hair and kissing her as if she were a jewel.

Here we were made of loneliness, and love was never so easy for two seconds. You’ve made her both woman and girl, and she’s made you nothing but woe and longing. I can write a book about her affairs in New York, and all it is are a series of leaving. She’s always leaving. “You’re always leaving,” he said. Stay still and let me look at you. “Don’t look at me,” she says. Let’s finish the porno videos and leave when it’s over. She prefers the ones with a good plot and a lot of dirty talk.

Millenium Mambo Millenium Mambo… Mambo Millenium.

It was three o’clock when she said: Tong Tong, I’m sorry Tong Tong.
Free again.

Disco Drag Queen
The drag queen was made of beauty like no other. He took me to the dance floor under the disco bulb and we danced as if we were in love. His eyelashes were long and his eyeshadow shimmered brighter than the lights. When he spun me around and pulled me close, it was as if the stars collapsed at our very feet. I loved him as he loved me, two traveling stars streaking by one second in a lifetime. I loved him as he loved me, and we belonged to no one except the bright lights.

http://www.subwaylove.org/
Q train. You sat next to me on the bench while I went through every playlist on my iPod. We went into the same compartment sitting opposite each other, and kept staring at each other (except when I stared at you through the glass). You had purple shoelaces. You were holding a Virgin megastore bag.

Conclusion, I’m too dreamy and too in love with love, too flighty to be any good.
Hey woman I need you to focus and stop losing your numbers all over the place. I need you sane and not so full of yearning. I need you to not love every face on the subway, but New York, I can’t do it, I’m in love with your tired and the hungry, your poor and your rich, your models and your hipsters, your every face. What can I do except nourish myself with 75 cent buns at Mei Lan Hua? The granpapas there make me as happy as a five-year-old… and if I spend all my life washing dishes there I think I will be okay.

Leave a spot on the train for me city.