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.