Samhain Tarot Reading

1. The Present

Five of Swords

This is showing your current activity to be quite selfish. The Five of Swords is not a card you will be proud to see in the present position of your reading. Perhaps you have let someone down. You are putting your reputation on the line with an ongoing series of self-centered activity.

2. The Challenge 

Three of Swords

The Three of Swords represents rejection, sadness, loneliness, heartbreak, betrayal, separation and grief. The Three of Swords therefore serves as a reminder that if you can start to see pain as a learning opportunity, life will suddenly become less painful.his card is therefore encouraging you that you have the ability to conquer any pain that comes your way. Understand how the pain can help you grow. If someone has betrayed you and you do not think you can ever love again, challenge that belief.

3. The Past

Seven of Cups

When the Seven of Cups is in the past position, your pursuits of pleasure have led to where you are today. When you emphasize a life of pleasure-seeking, at the core, you are pursuing a life of selfishness. Where this has lead you only you can see, but a past based on narcissistic pursuits does not often lead to a solid present or future without much support from other areas of your life.With the Three of Swords present, your pursuit of illusion is in response to a broken heart, no matter how firm your denials. 

4. The Future

The Heirophant

Here the card reveals a strong pull toward an individual who will explain the meaning of life to you, as well as your role in it. This might be a good affiliation for you to make, or it could be a detrimental affair depending on just whom this person is. 

5. Conscious Goal

Page of Wands

The appearance of the Page of Wands indicates that you are experiencing a creative restlessness within you that is just waiting for some sort of expression, or, you may be on the verge of some sort of discovery or new phase of life. The Page of Wands represents the sudden creative spark that comes to you, suddenly and unexpectedly, and that starts you down the road of a new creative vision. Thus, he encourages you to express yourself and your individuality with light-hearted abandon. Listen to your unconscious mind and follow your creative urges.

6. Unconscious influence

King of Wands

The King of Wands reminds you to lead your life with intent, vision and a long-term view. Know that even though you are experiencing challenges now this is just a part of your journey to something much more positive. Eventually, you will see this time as just a little blip on the radar and it will have simply served to make you stronger. Stay focused on your long-term goals. He shows determination and vision to accomplish his goals at any cost, and while he is often a respected leader, there can be instances where he is prepared to go above the heads of others in order to fulfil his own dreams and agendas, potentially putting others off-side. This King can also become easily distracted by bigger and better things and he can become so accustomed to attention that he can take other people for granted.

7. Advice

Ten of Wands

The Ten of Wands serves as a reminder of how much we take on in our lives and all the extra burdens and responsibilities we weigh ourselves down with. We take on so much, trying to do all the things that need to be done. Thus, this card asks you to stop and examine your current lifestyle or work. Assess which activities or tasks are really urgent or really important, particularly in relation to your broader goals. You may need to employ various time management or prioritization methods in order to determine where best to spend your time and which tasks you can drop. 

8. How Others See You

The Emperor

The Emperor is a powerful leader who demands authority and dominance. He is most comfortable in a leadership role where he can command and direct others. He likes to be in a position of strength, where he can exert control and bring a sense of organisation to his activities. He often represents a solid establishment that is built on strong foundations. As a leader, he rules with a firm but fair hand. He will listen to the advice of others but he will always have the final say. He is not afraid of war and/or conflict and he will not hesitate to use his force and power to protect those he cares about. The privileged few whom he favors always repay him with the loyalty and respect he deserves.

9. Fears

Eight of Swords 

The Eight of Swords portrays a dilemma whereby you are faced with the difficulty of a painful decision and you are at an impasse, uncertain of which way to go. However, what you may not realize is that the decision in the Eight is the result of our own actions. Despite the fact that you have boxed yourself into a corner, there is a way out. The solution is simply to deal with the situation in the most direct yet tactful manner possible, and face your choice with inner strength. It is time to be honest with yourself and others in order to be free of the burden of fear or guilt that is implied with the Eight of Swords.

10. Outcome

Six of Wands

This is perhaps the best position for this card as it is a hopeful placement and a card of glorious accomplishment. This is an indicator that a victory is coming. When this card is paired with The Empress or The Emperor cards, a teacher, boss, parent or an older lover will heap praise on you. The Six of Wands is such positive encouragement to believe in who you are and your accomplishments so far. Have faith in what you have personally achieved and how this will be received by others. Do not let fear or guilt stand in the way of your success.The downside to the Six of Wands is that it can also bring self-importance, arrogance and egotistical behaviours. With victory you may come to think that nobody can be better than you and you end up with an inflated ego and a big head.

Dear Friend,

The season two finale of Doctor Who really hit home. Considering how much I view my life through the paradigms of TV shows, it was scary to see a show that mirrored my life so accurately. Obviously I haven't fought aliens or time-travelled, although one time I had a few hits of weed and it felt like I had the ability to freeze time. But the scene where Rose was brought kicking and screaming into a different universe, separated by The Doctor by being literally worlds apart, resonated with me. 

You know what it felt like, my friend? Before, it felt like anytime something went wrong in any relationship I could go home and say to myself, at least I know someone would still want me. There is still one more person left who wouldn't have treated me like a disposable toy. But now, now it feels like the last person that I could count on for that piece of comfort is gone. I can't because he's someone else's now, he's someone else's but no one has stepped up to claim me from the playpen of lost kids waiting for their ride home. 

The human mind is really too smart for its own good, isn't it? Because try as you might to make yourself think that your world and your life doesn't revolve around some stupid boy, some bitch of a girl, some societally reinforced image of what a relationship should be, at the end of the day it's still there. It resurfaces after a day spent trying to drown it in the clutter of busywork you surround yourself with. You can tell yourself that your life is more than who you're fucking but when the sun goes down it all boils down to one fundamental fear. No, your mind won't stand to be deceived by your half-ditch efforts. Your mind knows. It knows you hate this and you hate yourself for hating this. 

But the sun is a salvation. Because our misery and worries and born of doubt and darkness but it all fades into insignificance in the luminance of sunshine. We just have to be patient enough to see the sun again. 

With love,

Your friend 

Dear Friend,

I heard a story today. There was a psychologist who walked around a room holding up a glass of water, presenting it to the audience. The class was on stress management. The audience probably expected her to ask if they thought the water was "half empty" or "half full" (the right answer is that it is completely full, of course) but instead she asked how heavy did they think it was. The answers ranged from 8oz to 20oz.

The actual weight, she says, doesn't matter. "If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”

All I thought about was how I would have just drank the water. 

With love,

Your friend

Dear Friend,

I don't like to admit it, but sometimes I get sucked into a spiral of jealousy. When things seem to be going so well for the ones around me, I put on the face I'm expected to put on and I pretend that I'm happy for them. But I'm not. If you're not happy for yourself then what is the whole point of happiness? Personal happiness is a right you owe yourself, not a gift you can magnanimously bestow upon others. I think we can be happy for someone else when we already have what they have, and then we can go, "oh I'm so happy you've finally caught up."But I think it's really difficult to look at someone who has more and be happy when you see what you haven't got. 

But I have got a lot, I think. We are the human race but our existence isn't a race. I rather believe it isn't all a big competition to get to the finish line because there really isn't anything beyond that. I like to believe that we all have a time when something we desire will come to us, at the moment when we're most poised to receive it. When I go to bed tonight I don't want to see scenes of what could be, I want to turn that all off and be content in the warmth of the luxury I'm surrounded by. I know I'm loved. I feel it in the embrace of my family. I hear it in the laughter of my friends. One day I'll see it reflected in the eyes of someone I love. That day won't be today, but that's okay. It won't be for a while, that's okay too.

What do we do when we're most jealous of the ones we love the most? Let go of the pettiness? Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. 

With love,

Your friend

Dear Friend,

I miss you. Despite having been irritated by you, irked by you, frustrated by you and even repulsed by you, I miss you. I look back fondly at our laughs and our connection. Once upon a time I thought you were the most delightful, fantastic person, but like everyone who got to know someone well, we eventually see the sides that we don't like. At that moment we must make a choice. Do we accept their flaws and put aside our judgement, or do we decide that the ugliness of their character overshadow all the beauty? When we choose to accept their flaws, are we doing it because we're afraid to lose a friend? Are we sacrificing our own values? 

But here we are, years later, worlds apart- and I miss you. I want to bridge our distance with words, and I want you to know me, again. I want you to rediscover me the way I have rediscovered you, and grant me the light of your kindness rather than keep me in the shadow of our past.

These days I feel an anxiety, a gnawing seed of anxiousness that tells me there is somewhere else I need to be.The semester is winding down, along with my year as a junior, and the prospect of a summer in Paris beckons. I feel something out there, out of Madison, out of America, and it is calling my name. I hear it whispering promises of fulfilled opportunities. Something, someone, is waiting for me out there and all I have to do is to meet it. I will have a moment, we could have a moment, and it will pass, fleetingly. But it will be okay. Because I will have grown, and that is mine forever. 

I miss my mother, of her nurturing warmth and ready humor. I miss my father, of his unfailing confidence and boundless knowledge. But I lie to them and I deceive them. I am unable to be honest because of their failure to embody one aspect of parenthood, that of unconditional acceptance. But I realize that parents are children too. Mothers and fathers are also daughters and sons, and they deserve the unconditional acceptance to be who they are by the ones who love them. And I love them. I will be the mother and father to the ones I love, and I will be loving and supportive and accepting even when - especially when - they haven't shown it to me. Rather than try to be the child they wished I could be, I will try to be the parent they couldn't be.

Until next time,

Your friend

Imagined Heartache

Is it possible to mentally self-half? Because I think I'm doing it and in a perverse way it feels good to mentally put myself through horrible made up scenarios. I run make belief scenes in my mind and it feels good just to feel something, and these days I can't fall asleep without putting myself in a depressing place in my head first. It's almost comforting in a way to put myself back in a mental state of imagined heartache, night after night. 

My favorite ones involve betrayal. I picture myself walking in on an imagined lover in bed with someone else, for example. The scenarios are completely absurd but the twist of pain that spiders across my chest is real. I would then see the imagined me dazed and broken but never hysterically sad. I see myself crawling into a bathtub and curling up there, reveling in disgust at the faceless men that have scorned me in my mind and it gives me exquisite pain and comfort. For whatever reason I need this dose of imaginary hardship and its the last image I hold in my mind before I fall asleep.

The False Sense

After you cry there's always this odd sort of peace. You sill feel everything that made you sad in the first place, but you're too tired to go on tearing up and heaving and shaking, so you're just breathing. In and out you breathe, for that moment your body is forced into a false sense of calmness. Your mind is blank, and the only evidence of any emotion at all are your puffy eyes and stuffy nose. What now? What now? What now?

Boy From Ethics

I taste salt through ripped jeans
pink tongue over brown skin
I dream to create my reality
your day ends while mine begins
in mirrors I see your face in mine
where in poetry I see justice
my fears were sealed in a crystal jar
so I don't have to carry it with
so we still fall for gods
while we safeguard our distance
and I cherish the shadows
where I lurk in the darkness
with eyes shut I still see
lights - like desire
we set prayers on fire

Voice

I enjoy that every time you start a new book, it takes some time before you're accustomed to the author's voice. The first few pages always progresses the slowest, as if you've met someone foreign and is still in the process of figuring out their accent. The way they use breaths and phrasing, whether they enjoy short bursts of information or long, flowing descriptions. Sometimes they're warm and makes you feel like you're curled up in bed listening to a story by a kindly grandmother, sometimes they're cold and harsh and makes you feel dirty inside.

But after a while, when you're used to the author's voice, a wonderful thing happens. The words sort of disappear into the pages and instead a moving picture starts forming in your head. It's as thought your eyes aren't seeing the words any longer. Your eyes are still moving down the page but your mind is a step ahead of your eyes and its a movie you start seeing. You're allowed to cast anyone you want as the leads and supporting characters and the protagonists and the antagonists, but somehow they're always already cast in your mind before you start reading. I love that we bring our individual experiences to 'viewing' the book-movies, and that a hundred different people may read a book and walk away with a hundred different experiences, whereas a hundred people watching a film all see the same film. 

Such is the magic of words.

2012 Delights

Some delightful finds that tickled me jollies in the year 2012: 

Book  - Grace by Grace Coddington

Remember when you watched The September Issue and completely fell in love with the big-haired force-of-nature named Grace Coddington? The Creative Director of Vogue, also known as the only person who could stare Anna Wintour in the eyes and still maintain possession of her soul, released a memoir about her modelling and later editorial work in fashion. 

She begins by saying how little she wanted to be involved with the filming of The September Issue, and absolutely hated the intrusive nature of the camera crew. She was in fact horrified that she became the second most featured person in the documentary apart from Anna, but saw how the movie opened people's eyes to the creative process in shooting a spread. She had stories to tell, and boy are they fascinating. Her extraordinary life is like a who's who guide to designers, photographers, models and celebrities, and I loved the way she describes the inspiration for her beautiful photo-shoots. 

I found her writing is accessible and descriptive without becoming too alienating, and is often humorous, especially when talking about working with Anna. She presents a softer side to Anna that we don't hear about, or rather, wouldn't want to admit that she has, because we love nothing more than to villianize her. She isn't disillusioned about fashion being anything more than what it is, and wouldn't claim that fashion is anything as lofty as art, but appreciates it as a medium where designers convey their sense of beauty.  It was an engrossing read and her life of jet-setting to exotic locations for work was totally escapist for me. 

Vogue 2009 December Issue, Grace Coddington as creative director and Annie Leibovitz as Photographer

 Movie - Pitch Perfect

I adore movies about underdogs beating the smug popular kids, I'm obsessed with Rebel Wilson, I lactate with excitement for well-arranged acapella music, and I go balls-out crazy for absurd humor. It was as if all the planets had aligned for this movie, if planets were things that I liked and I was the Sun and all the planets did things just to please me and they made this movie to satisfy the needs of the Sun. (I enjoy metaphors with me in the center of everything.) 

The movie's about a fallen collegiate acapella girl-group fighting for the championships in acapella (which is apparently a thing), and they need the new surly girl who has all these great ideas about mixing songs but all she wants to do is be a DJ and wants nothing to do with your lame-ass harmonizing. Every line in this movie is laugh-out-loud funny, and when I say laugh-out-loud I really do mean you'll laugh, not just exhale more air out of your nose the way people do when they find something mildly funny. There's this really creative scene where all the acapella groups on campus come together and have a riff-off, where to win your group has to cut in with a song that begins with the last word of the song the previous group was singing.

The music's great, the movie's so adorable and I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm in love with Rebel Wilson.

   

Album - Night Visions by Imagine Dragons

If I were to compile a list of my favourite albums released in 2012, naturally Celine Dion's Sans attendre would be right there at the top, but that's predictable and gushing about how perfect it is would be too simple. 

An album that surprised me was Night Visions. I don't usually listen to many alternative rock bands, but their melody is addictive and their songs are all consistently powerful. It's Time was the first song I heard by them, and I was just instantly hooked. Now I listen to their songs when I want to imagine myself walking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland and striding through the bones of my fallen enemies. It's my go-to album when playing stuff from my iPod for someone else, it's universally loved and makes them think I have good taste in music when in truth I just want to spazz out to some One Direction.

My favourites from the album includes Radioactive and Demons.

Song - Read All About It (Part III) by Emeli Sandé

To explain my love for this song, I have to first explain what an OTP is. In the thrilling and scary world of internet fandoms, you ship characters (fictional or otherwise) that you believe would make a good couple, and the one you believe in the most is your One True Pairing (OTP), and if your shipped characters or celebrities do get together, it becomes canon. 

So my OTP is Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles of One Direction, and they are collectively known as Larry Stylinson. I know that both of them currently have 'girlfriends', but just remember that Ricky Martin used to be a womanizer and Lance Bass had 'girlfriends' till he was 22. There are many things I can't do but spotting the gays is something of a specialty of mine. The way those two give each other lingering eye-fuckings in interviews is just begging to be noticed. While I respect their decision to keep things on the down-low as their career is built, after all, on making girls think they'd be able to get hard enough for penetration, it's quite sad that their managing company seems hell bent on suppressing this beautiful love. 

Which brings us to the song, which seems just perfect for their situation. Reportedly Louis cried watching her perform this at the closing ceremony for the London Olympics, and just imagining him singing this to Harry makes me want to tear up. (I really should get a hobby.)

 

  

Real Conversations

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm sitting in the backseat of a friend's car. His dad is driving, with his brother riding shotgun. The dad asks where the brother is going after this, and he replies, "To Haley's, believe it or not." They make some joke about how unbelievable it is that he would rush off to his girlfriend's at first chance. 

I observe this exchange with a sense of wonderment. I have never, nor do I think I will ever, had a relaxed conversation with my parents about my dating life. My dad wouldn't go, "hey where are you going to tonight?" and joke with me about how often I'm at a boyfriend's place. The very idea of being open with dating in-front of one's parents feels alien and bizarre to me. All my life I've been conditioned to be evasive and flippant about who I'm seeing, or become defensive. I envy the authenticity of their exchange, and I value it.

Grandpa Leaves

It was the night after Thanksgiving when I received the news. I had been checking my phone for new messages and emails every few minutes, because for whatever reason I just had the strongest feeling that I was going to hear about my grandpa soon. It's the second Thanksgiving I've spent with the Piehlers, family of two of my PiLam brothers who adopt me every November, and sure enough, in the middle of a movie about Christian Bale fighting dragons, I saw an email from Dad. The words were simple and to the point: Grandpa passed away at home this afternoon: 25^th November 2012, 13:14.

"My grandpa just died." I said in a somewhat monotonous voice. "I'll go give my dad a call." 

I excused myself and closed the door of the study behind me, while dialing my dad's cell. Our conversation was short and strangely was in English. Perhaps using grandpa's native tongue would feel too close to home, so we both avoided Chinese. "Call mom," he says, and for the first time I hear his voice crack. I'm extremely susceptible to being influenced into crying if I hear someone else cry, and it set me off. By the time I dial the number for mom, who was in CQ at the moment with my grandpa, the sobs were coming on full force. 

I sat on the pull-out bed, white-knuckling the phone, trying to make coherent phrases but failing. At that moment I feel more distanced from my family than I ever have, feeling like I couldn't do anything for the people I love, feeling alone and isolated. Grandma was crying as she tells me to take care of myself, to not worry. I texted Damian for that was always who I went to first, and his words were calming. 

For the most part I felt a sense of relief. I had been dreading this moment ever since Grandpa's diagnosis of lung cancer. Mom flew over to help take care of him with Grandma, and since then I haven't been able to regularly skype with my parents since my Dad stayed in Singapore to teach his classes. I remember one time where I just felt overwhelmed by everything I had to do at school and needed to hear a familiar voice, so I gave mom a call. She started crying the moment she heard my voice, which of course set me off as well. Both of us were bawling before either of us even said anything. As she regained composure, she said that grandpa was getting worse and he couldn't even speak anymore. Grandma holds the phone up to his ear and I was calling out to him, and faintly I heard him say my name in a raspy whisper.

I'm relieved that he isn't suffering anymore from the pain and humiliation cancer puts one through. I'm relieved that my mother can finally return home again after she has performed above and beyond her duties for the in-laws who have never treated her fairly. The uncles from my father's side, with their good-for-nothing attitudes, have always claimed that the only thing our family ever contributed to my grandparents' well-being was money, that they're the ones being filial and taking care of the elders. In my mother's entire stay with Grandpa, the rest of them showed up for a total of maybe three times. They've since then gotten off their high horse and shut up about who's put in the most effort. It's just sad to me how fake or shameless they are, lying through their teeth about issues that don't merit argument. 

I'm not religious and I don't believe in heaven or hell. I don't think Grandpa's now floating in the clouds sipping on his favourite baijiu. But I do believe in the power of transcendent relationships, and I know that as long as one of us is still alive, then the love that existed between us is still thriving. I believe in taking a well deserved rest after the toil that is life, and I hope that he has finally found peace.

Paper Stars

The jar of stars sat on my bookshelf. There were thirty-seven of them left. I pick one up - it was blue and shiny, with imprints of Piglet on it. I unravel the star into its original long strip of gloss on one side and white on the other. Convenient for leaving messages.

"The way you close your eyes when you smell coffee in the morning," the star said.

A year ago you presented me with a jar of paper stars. Green and yellow, blue and pink, sparkly and cheerful and gaudy and bright. Your eyes held a mischievous glow, the same look preschoolers possess when they've done something they're proud of and couldn't wait to share. 

Three hundred and sixty-five stars, you proclaimed in that soft spoken manner of yours. You'd always look bashful, even at moments like these. As if you expected me to mock your efforts, that I'd laugh at you for trying. Still with your eyes slightly avoiding mine, like you were almost going to take the gift back and go "forget it, it's a dumb idea", you explained that I was supposed to unravel one star per day, every day until my next birthday. Three hundred and sixty-five things you loved about me were written on the back of the stars, to last me for an entire year. 

"You managed to think of three hundred?" My hands trembled slightly as I fished one out of the jar. 

A lump formed in the back of my throat as I unrolled the paper star. "I love the transfixed manner you listen to Michele McLaughlin," you wrote.

My fingers were already reaching for the next star when you caught my hand, literally in the cookie jar, and sternly (as sternly as you could get) made me promise I would only open them one at a time. On days when I was feeling especially down, however, you said that I was allowed to open one more - but just one! - as a pick-me-up.

I opened twenty-seven the day you left.

I originally intended to open them all up and mirthfully scorn all these lies that the stars have become. But then I realized I needed them. Because I realized that everything you've written down in those stars were pieces of me, pieces that you didn't and couldn't take with you when you left. The things that made me - me - were there before you and will be here after. 

In the midst of the wreckage and strips of unraveled paper stars around me, I came to this realization. I gathered up all the unopened stars and put them back in the jar. I intended to still open one a day as a reminder it now serves that who I am is inconsequential of who I am with. 

The coffee does smell delicious this morning.  

Sidewalk

I see them huddled by the sidewalk. Her hand was in his, and she was smiling - smiling so brightly. I walked by in a hurry, hurrying to get out of the cold. Homeless teens with nowhere to go, nowhere they needed to be. I rushed on in my expensive jacket and expensive boots, leaving them behind. And still they smiled while I scowled.

Grandfather

The sad invariability of life and the whole concept of the last-minute-epiphany is that we only rush to cherish that which is under immediate threat. The crushing news of my grandfather's possible lung cancer hit like a locomotive. After complaining of pain in his chest, he was brought to the hospital for a checkup, where the doctor assessed that it had a 50% chance of being lung cancer. Further tests were required. And the tests came back positive for cancer.

The cancer has had time to work its destructive magic; the lungs have all but fallen and the liver is its next intended target. For a man in his eighties, and for a cancer this advanced, chemotherapy is no longer an option. It would only make him suffer needlessly on top of the cancer that is already eating away at him. The worst case scenario for a stage-three cancer patient: three months.

I sit here very well aware that I will not get to see my grandfather again for a final time. The last time I saw him in Chongqing, his mind was on the brink of succumbing to Alzheimer's. He could still recognize who we all were, but frequently forgot where he was, and if he left the building there was a very real chance he wouldn't be able to find his way back. Seeing somebody you've known all your life to be intelligent and sharp slowly lose his most basic mental capabilities is an arduous and heartbreaking process. The person you've loved is slipping away, and in his place becomes a stranger, even to himself. At least he still has his physical health, we used to say. At least his body's still sound.

Growing up thousands of miles away from most of our family meant that the memories of my grandparents are few and far between. I remember going on a walk with both grandpa and grandma in the Beijing Aquarium, and grandpa would ask every so often if we were still in Chongqing. I remember him tending to the doves he used to raise, building little cubby holes for the doves to roost in. I remember his habit of raising terrified, timid dogs that never dared to leave the house. 

If stories were to be believed, grandpa has the exact same temperament as my dad. Excitable and easily agitated, then the storm would pass just as quickly as it gathered and to him it'll be as if nothing has happened while leaving everyone else agitated instead. Ask my grandma and she'll have hordes of stories of how he'd obstinately have an argument with a shopkeeper over something he deems completely logical, then walk away, leaving the shopkeeper flabbergasted and red-in-the-face. Substitute 'grandpa' with 'dad' and my mom will have almost the exact same stories.

I'm sorry that I can't say that I know my grandfather well. From what I've heard and gathered, he's an honorable, honest and hardworking man that has lived through far more during the Chinese cultural revolution than many of us will in our lifetimes. Our grandparents are heroes. They've planted their feet firmly on the ground when the world was shaking and crumbling around them. In a time too cruel for us to even imagine, they've thrived. Each one of us is here today because they were strong when they needed to be. I think it's time for us to be strong for him. In his time of dire need, where he will likely face the toughest challenge of his life, we will surround him with love, even from the other side of the world where I am.

What is the legacy, then, that my grandfather will eventually leave behind? Is it in the number of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren that bear his last name? Is it in the worldly achievements attained by his descendants? Or is it in the knowledge that a family loves and sticks through everything together, no matter the differences or troubles faced? Years from now, when I think of my grandpa, I want to think of the family I knew with him as the patriarch. The thing that makes me feel warmest is the image of all of us, extended family and all, sitting together at a table filled with a hearty home-cooked meal. In my memory, I look up and there grandpa is, sitting at the head of the table, and that to me is legacy. 

Three Discoveries

This summer I learned three things about my past. Previously tight-lipped about her past, my mother has recently been more willing to talk about the circumstances of our family's lives more than twenty years ago. Perhaps my mother and I are both realizing that these summer vacations where I get to spend months at home are going to become few and far between. In our time spent together this summer, I have strangely come to learn a lot about myself, things I would never have discovered on my own.

Incredible things like,

I. My godfather was a leader of a Taiwanese triad. 

When my mom was working as a waitress in Madison to support the family (Dad's measly income for being a PhD student couldn't feed 3 mouths), she struck up a great working relationship with her boss Bobby, who would later be named my godfather. According to their rival restaurant's proprietor, wee Bobby worked for said rival restaurant when he was just a laddy with a penchant for busing tables and sharpening katanas. (I'm assuming all Asian mobs use katanas, for why wouldn't they?) After having a irreconcilable disagreement with his boss, being the enterprising little mobster my god-daddy was, he rallied up his contacts and founded his own restaurant, while at the same time demanding that the rival restaurant be shut down. Only after certain negotiations,which I'm hoping involved machetes and outrageous fake-italian accented curses, were they allowed to keep their business open and running. He's not an unreasonable man, that god-daddy of mine.

Of course, after this casual reveal by my mom halfway through dinner last night, all I could think of was whether the crisp $100 bill he sent me for my 10th birthday (practically like handing over the keys of a Swiss bank to a kid that age) came at the cost of some high-stakes criminal shenanigans. I can only dream.

II. I was a left-hander by birth, right-hander through conditioning.

I almost cried when I heard this. All my life I held a deep obsession for left-handers while cursing the heavens for forcing upon me a life time of cheap, common right-handedness. As it turns out, it was apparently my parents who forced little defenseless James to switch over to using his right hand. Their reasoning was that the world was built for right-handers, and didn't want me to always have to be in combat with the right-handed chopstick user on my left at the dinner table. Friends have always asked me why I hold my fork and spoon the left-handed way, and I just always said it felt right. Mom and Dad, you can try to suppress this but my true nature will find dastardly ways to reveal itself. Soon.

III. I was a foul mouthed sassy little bitch at the age of 2.

This should come to no surprise to anyone who knows me, but it actually surprised me. According to my mother, when I was a little toddler just mastering the basic ABCs of pejorative curses and racial slurs, a woman walked into the elevator we were occupying. I took one look at the woman and proclaimed in a most amazed voice to my mother: "Mom this woman is TOO UGLY!". To my credit, years later when she told the story to me, mom did affirm that the woman was indeed of a hog-faced disposition. I can only hope the poor lass didn't have her life shattered by a sassy-mouthed toddler.

Beijing - Week 1

Day 1 of my captivity. Impending doom looms over my head. My oppressors, henceforth referred to as Mother and Father, have kept me in a cell, in a foreign land known to the locals as Beijing, with a bed so thin you can feel each individual metal rail beneath. Such utter cruelty, but my thin hide will have to weather the harsh conditions for now. My sentence was to infiltrate a Beijing law firm while keeping up the pretense that I could make heads or tails of their Chinese documents. I prayed for salvation at night, prayed for free WiFi, prayed for the children without fresh water or tamagochis, for the transvestites without the proper parts and the gays without Grindr.

Day 2. Like a common criminal, I was transported by car to the legal facilities under close supervision of two female guards. I was brought before the reigning supreme ruler of Lawyer Kingdom, and he decreed that I was to shadow their best lawyer and absorb her essential life-forces. She looked suspiciously like my previous boss from the hospital at UW, and for a brief moment I wondered if they were long-lost siblings, then wondered if asphyxiating from choking on bubble-tea pearls would be a tasty tapioca-filled experience. I was assigned a work-space, where all of my slavely duties were to be performed. I sneakily befriended the receptionist and received the WiFi-password to their facilities. Tumblr is making my life here slightly more bearable. God bless memes, and god bless kittens that haven't mastered typing.

I am to make my own way back to my cell, which is simply cruelty at its very finest. Navigating the public transport in Beijing is like rape - if you don't use some force, you'll never enter. The city of tens of millions are all mobilized during peak hours, and buses are a cesspool of inadvertent groping and awkward butt-to-butt/crotch-to-butt touching. After a few transfers, I am dropped off at the wrong gate by the zoo (which I live next to), and I had to flag an illegal taxi to bring me back to my quarters. I wave goodbye to the unscrupulous woman who charged me 25 yuan for a 5 min trip but she was already gone, leaving me amidst the ripe smells of monkey feces.

Day 4 finds me making my way towards the law firm once again by bus. Nobody looks good on a bus. The most dressed up, dignified looking gentleman can get on a bus and within a few stops, get reduced to a seating, frazzled and irritable chump. Something about the combined effect of closed quarters at high heat and engine vibrations, mixed with the foul temperaments of every other passenger nudging and shoving each other just breaks you. In my heat-induced semi-coma, I wondered if bus drivers regularly have love affairs with their dumpy conductors in the dark corners of bus-parking-lots, and if they use sexual bus-terminology like 'beep beep the bus is pulling into the station'. Before I could finish a compilation list of all the bus-puns they could use, however, my attention was unfortunately diverted across the aisle to the man persistently digging his nose with only his pinkie, because he's classy like that. He then used said pinkie to swipe across the screen of his white iPhone, and I wept for the hard work of all the Chinese children in Apple sweatshops.

I was summoned to King Lawyer's office, where I was told that they were slightly disappointed in my proficiency in Chinese. Their original plan for me to read cases and discuss them with my mentor is falling apart because I was pretty much only able to read Chinese take-out menus. As usual, Father had lied to me. When I expressed my concern about not being able to handle documents in Chinese, he assured me that my disabilities in deciphering ancient hieroglyphic-codes would be conveyed to the firm, but apparently they were expecting a student that grew up in China. The game-plan was changed, and I was now to study Chinese procedural law (if they can find the English versions) and go observe cases at court (if they'd allow non Chinese citizens in).

Hands

Madison at night, where the drunks emerge to sway to their tipsy tango, where hobos cuddle outside shopfronts for warmth in the sub zero winter. We avoided the busy main street to avoid the rowdiness, choosing instead a quieter, parallel street. On the way to your car, we talked about your work but I wasn't really listening, for you reached over and commented on how cold my hands were. That's the way it is, I said, freezing hands run in my family. In astonishment you rubbed my fingers between your own toasty palms, and I let you. Then I stopped you by interlacing my fingers with yours and we were holding hands for the first time, and you let me.

Greater Context

I had resolved to write you off as one of those types. The type that promises but never fulfills, that keeps you waiting but never delivers, the type that disappoints. I’d seen my fair share and I was tired-no, exhausted of them. I keep flying back and forth across the world always expecting it to be different on the other side of the world, but of course it never is. I was resolved to be strong, to be able to say that this was it and I’d be finally to move on without putting you on a pedestal that nobody else could ever reach. 

As fate would have it, I came face to face with you as I was rounding the corner by the waffle store. A flash of surprise, recognition, then panic, coursed through my mind simultaneously. For a split second I considered making a run for it. I had already taken a step in that direction but then turned back, for I was simply not capable of taking another step away from you, from the one person that I hadn’t been able to stop dreaming bout. I thanked the heavens for my foresight in doing up my hair, thanked the lord for not yet killing my will to look presentable while making my mid-day lunch run. I kept my composure as you asked if you could make up for standing me up previously, and somehow I kept my voice unwavering as I said you could come over that night. I only noticed how fast my heart was racing as I nodded and nonchalantly walked away. All the way home I couldn’t keep that stupid silly grin off my face.

That night, when you were here, I asked if you noticed we were sitting in the exact same positions on my bed as the day we first met. In the past year, I had forgotten how easy our repertoire was, how absolutely perfect our conversation and laughs flowed. I tried dating in Madison but no one came close to replicating this undeniable magic we could create. At that moment I knew that I still loved you, that I hadn’t managed to stop loving you despite how hard I tried, and maybe in a romance drama set in the mid-1800s it would mean something but apparently not today. In a better state of mind, I would perhaps ask myself if I had any idea what I was jumping back into, but then again, would they call it love if it didn’t drive you crazy?

“Come here,” I said as I lied down on the pillow by you. You were hesitant, halting, and I asked why you were so scared of me. You didn’t want us to do something we’d end up regretting, but aren’t we perhaps a year late for that conversation? I placed my hand on your face, then on the back of your neck, pulling you forward. You moved closer, closer till our lips were an inch apart, with only our breaths colliding. We were still for a moment, and it seemed as though all the heartbreak we had inflicted upon each other was lingering in the space between our lips and to seal them was to say that it had been all worth it and that the impending pain would be ours to willingly bear. When my lips finally met yours, I felt a sense of homecoming. I was back where I had been longing to, afraid to, but needed to. 

The following morning I woke up with a start, like that kind of awakening one gets as if remembering someone’s supposed to be in bed with you. Except you’re not, and that sense of grief I had felt a year ago came unwelcomingly back. I had been ready to do more that night, but you wanted to wait till I returned from my trip to Beijing. Was this what my love life boiled down to? The only one I could connect with lives in the one place I couldn’t even legally reside anymore, and instead of moving on I had only managed to reaffirm in my mind how fantastic we were together. 

How could two people that were perfect everywhere else be so fucked in the grand context?

Gazing

There we laid, upon grass that lightly tickled out necks, as we crossed off another cliche - star gazing. With the light breeze fluttering between our toes, you traced a finger across my arm and said that stars made you realize how insignificant we all were, in the grand scheme of things. In the eyes of the universe we are but a speck. I disagreed. Look at all those millions upon millions of stars, I said. Screw the stars because they are the ones that are insignificant. Each one twinkling with the same one-pixel glow, half perhaps already dead by the time its light found its way to earth. I turned to you and affirmed that there was only one of you, there ever only will be one of you, and what I had was more impressive than the stars.