| officially and comfortably moved. I will come back once in a while to squirm around and slather things like a mucky land-fish leaves a trail
but meanwhile, friends:
talk to plants
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| i kind of waste money. this is not good.
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| wanted to scream at everyone to squeeze so that they could fit more people on. people don't want to invade other people's personal space. It is rude. but it is more rude to hog a bubble of air around you and others when other people might not fit on the bus to get to school.
damnit I'm bitter over small things.
once the bus drive hopped off and yelled at everybody in the back, "FORM TWO LINES. TWO IN THE HALLWAY. YOU CAN DO IT. PEOPLE IN THE FRONT, DON'T BE AFRAID TO PUSH!"
He fit at least 25 more people on the bus than previously.
why must we be told first before we do the uncomfortable thing that is right? I have to say I am unafraid to push. but maybe it is because I am a girl and it wouldn't really be sexual harassment.
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| on the eve of love i was walking alone in a beige hallway with low-ceilings, lit by dim, fluorescent lights.
alone in the quiet i empathized with darkening corners and the thin shadows of an electric socket forming two identical surprised faces, one on top of the other. I walk away and the lines disappear into a blank wall. What is it that makes the small things go away? In old pictures age spots and the freckles, the wrinkles around the neck, the moles, the exact whisps of hair. Then colors bleach and blend and blur, the lines of the nose, around the mouth. In the end we become smooth ghosts, our bright eyes the last to go. I idled down the long hallway convinced it was more than time that made the past look so much better.
Though my great grandmother's eyes are so far hidden in the deep wrinkles around her face, I remember them, edges of the black marbles gleaming through to me. Ashamed at my youth, i looked down. I see her the blue veins of her feet behind a thin sheen of skin.
A-Ta, what do you think about when you are so old? Do you think about a kind of tomorrow? what do you remember most about me, my little black head, my gold-rimmed glasses pointed to an english book? I am reading about fantasy and escape, pirates and magical ladies. you dream i am intelligent, studying so hard at a foreign language. you scold your other little great grandson bouncing around making the small kicks and troubles a 5-year-old makes, "Why don't you be more like this older sister here, ahn? Stop fooling around!" I don't remember your voice but I remember the grey concrete walls and the dark wooden ceilings of your countryside home when we sat at stools for dinner you've been preparing for for weeks. Before you moved out to your son's humble apartment you lived right on the edge a creek with a small bridge just like those idyllic images people sell to tourists in Beijing. Am I so jealous now, like the tourist, of your noble poverty? The hours you take to dry the vegetables for my father's favorite meal?
When your back began to bend, I was an egg in my mother's ovary and not even a worm in my father's testicles. Squirming in the viscosity, I was selfish with life. you smiled at my scrawny father who will study to be a doctor to make the entire family proud. You make for him his favorite pork dishes and you are happy.
I came to visit you when I was 15. my hair was short and bouncy, awkward like a 10-year-old boy's. still I was two heads taller than you. Without thinking you hugged me and bounced up and down while I bent over toward you. My mother gave you my earned pay as a filial gesture without my knowing. It hurts when you make a bowel movement and sitting down aches your bones. Everyday you must be carried on the back of your nephew who climbs up the stairs to their flat.
You are a microscopic ghost orbitting around my body.
on the eve of love I turn the last corner of the hallway to find a crammed dark area full of old, waist-high copiers and fax machines. The tables are littered with discarded papers and stubby pencils.
I turn back and float back into the hallway.
am I a monster? I turn away from any eye contact like a scared animal.
I drowned my fear out with laughter. I laughed so hard and so violently and drunk-heavy, that you went away.
Humor is defensive. It is secure in its insecurity. It emanates outward, ashamed at itself. It is democratic in everything and thus finds nothing important. I bathe in its warmth and heat, the pumping of it's blood.
I waited there until I found love.
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