Ran into Jesus the other day at the thrift store. He was looking for new sandals because his other pair broke while he was playing badminton.
This is actually my friend Sam. He once played the lead role in Jesus Christ Superstar.
He was not looking for sandals.
December 2009 was a cold month.
What does warm feel like again?
For some reason, this photo reminds me a lot of American Gothic. Only less pitchfork action and more hipster-y skinheadish.
And wedgie-inducing.
Times is hard.
via Sean Marc Lee
Lee’s photograph reminds me of the good things that happen in the deepest cycle of unconsciousness, where people can sleep away this new year, and the next, and the next, and wake up in infinity.
(It’s
fun
to dream.)
This photo created some recent (and inelegantly argued) controversy on Tumblr. But let’s stop the intellectualizing and realize that the most important feature of this snapshot is how this gaggle of Sailor Moons look exactly like a badass J-rock mafia coming to stomp on our guitars in their kneesocks. Konnichiwaaa!
“What’s that tumor in the front yard?” I don’t know what everyone is so miffed about; the blizzard of the year made way for great side effects.
Comatose contentment is contagious in the cold.
(He just wants to be loved.)
(Whisper back: I will if you let me!)
Remember that one day in July when we were both walking through Shinjuku together? I said, let’s stop at the crowded McDonald’s to get a McSlurpy, and you said, a Mc-what? I repeated, a McSlurpy, but I guess I just got confused with all of the different names these people give milkshapes. NO—I mean, milkshakes. Milkshapes are a different matter altogether. Though that’s neither here nor there.
So anyway, we were walking, and you told me that you fell in love with a girl exactly two days and a dozen minutes ago. I asked, how do you know it’s love. You said, it’s just the simple negation of the opposite. The absence of anger. It’s not something that exists, but rather something that doesn’t not exist. Like when you crack an egg open and let the yolk and the whites seep out slowly until the shell is all empty inside. The sudden fragmentation of your exterior that lets in all the crisp air in the world rush right through your open spaces and sends shivers through your cavernous interior. That’s what it is.
You had met her not far from where we strolled. She was in a hurry, and when she ran into you, she didn’t fall down, but her glasses slipped off her nose and crumpled on her face, the black frames all askew and surrounding her almond eyes with a shadowed outline. And it made you hungry just looking at those black pools of soul because it reminded you how much you enjoy eating delicately-shaped nuts with red wine. You said, gomen nasai, but she was too much in a hurry to take your apology as sincere. Even after she started yelling at you and demanding who the hell you thought you were to get in her way, you couldn’t stop staring at her heart-shaped face and her glasses, askance.
We stopped walking suddenly. We reached a crosswalk where the light was red. The middle-aged man standing next to us on the curb was carrying a 7-Eleven grocery bag with a smaller bag of soba and a carton of a dozen white eggs inside. One egg must have cracked because, through the plastic, there was a slimy liquid settling on the bottom. As we stood there, waiting for the light to turn green and the crowd to push me against you, I grabbed your hand and squeezed hard.
Wakaranai. What if she never forgives you, I asked. Who will repair the crack in the egg? And you laughed at me, like I was a naive little thing. You’re so silly, you told me. You can’t fix the crack. Why do you think caulk will do anything? No, you have to let it stay there for the rest of eternity. You hope that someone notices and will catch the egg that falls out. But even then, it’s a precarious situation. Because you can’t stop the yolk from seeping right through your fingers.
The light turned green and we walked across the pavement striped with white concrete paint. Some lady wearing too much makeup shoved you aside with her umbrella when she was pushing through. A skinny boy with a backpack twice his size weaved right by me. And as we were both being pushed this way and that as we crossed that street in Kabukichō, my fingers seeped through yours, like yolk flowing down a drain, leaving an empty shell behind as proof.
A unique collection of images produced by Sean Marc Lee, inspired by Haruki Murakami’s “On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning.”
Yangshuo, June 2009. 44mm, f/4.5, 1/50s.
“I could use a cigarette right about now.”
“I’m not in love with you anymore.”
Or…
“Did I leave the stove on?”
Peppered meat balls
Sweet and sour bbq
Seasoned beef chips
Lotus roots with vinegar
Seafood platter
À table, vitement!
Summer ‘09 culinary adventures // Part deux: Hungry for Homecooked.
Yeah, I bitch and moan about being Asian a lot of times, especially after a semi-traumatic childhood of people asking me if any passing woman with black hair and Lucy Liu eyes was my mother, as if we could be related just as easily as Jack Black could have fathered Meryl Streep.
Most of the time, the self-pity is in jest (except for when I can’t tell among the yellow crowd exactly who’s sleep deprived and who’s contracted jaundice). Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my outcome in the genetic lottery, especially when it comes to metabolism. If I belonged to any other ethnicity and sustained my current eating habits, I would probably be one of those fat people you see on the subway that innocently and unknowingly take up one and a fourth of a seat, making it impossible for you to decide whether to stand and then deal with sore feet after the 30-minute ride to the airport or to sit down and sidle up uncomfortably against his or her extraordinary muffin top.
Yes, I’m a morally reprehensible person. Moving on.
I became especially grateful about this fortunate fact of life during the feast my uncle conjured up during an impromptu family reunion a few weeks ago. On the menu were things that should not be stuffed down anyone’s throat during one sitting—chili-seasoned beef chips, broiled chicken with red vinegar sauce, sweet and sour barbecued pork mini-ribs, snow greens with a dash of red peppers, stir-fried squid seafood platter with curry, a lotus root salad marinated in sweet vinegar with red peppers, and (as if we weren’t carnivorous enough already) peppered meat balls. In three, compact letters: F-A-T. But it didn’t feel gluttonous to come back for seconds or thirds; unlike much of butter-heavy food found in American cookbooks, eating a lot of these lightly seasoned recipes made with a mixture of vegetables and meat doesn’t leave the gourmand feeling like a giant piece of lard. Not only that, but when cooked with all of the bones intact, it counts as exercise when you’re patiently chewing bit by bit and not simply inhaling chunks of meat. Perhaps less for the stomach, more for the soul?
Right about the time after my eighth barbecue rib and when I started lapsing into a mild food coma, the rest of the family, including my 75-year-old grandma, each got up for a bowl of rice. Wait—so we aren’t even HALFWAY THROUGH THE MEAL YET? And here I was, already on the verge of defeat after round one of what they considered piddling appetizers.
What can I say? I come from a line of champions.
INTRODUCING my ultra athletic tour guide when I went to 金坑 (Jinkeng) to visit 龙脊 (Longji) a few weeks ago. Before eating lunch at her family’s restaurant, she took us from the bottom of the terraces all the way to the top in less than 45 minutes. On the way, she explained to us the customs of her minority clan, Yaozu, including sartorial traditions, such different skirt colors for single or married women. The women like to grow their hair out almost to their ankles and then tie it all up in a bun on top of their forehead each day, decorating it with an embroidered handkerchief. Putting American emo scenesters to shame, my guide wore heavy silver earrings that stretched her earlobes all out of proportion, like dumpling dough. How appetizing.
Besides trying to avoid looking at her ears, we were led on an exhausting yet knowledgeable trip as we trekked with her all the way up 1000 meters above sea level to the first and second “summits” of the Jinkeng (literally, Golden Pit) and listened to her mini-history lesson on the Yaozu people and their customs. I learned that she makes this steep hike daily during the summer time, when temperatures reach around 40 degrees Celsius in the valley. As we maneuvered our way on the precarious path constructed from rocks that jutted out in all sorts of inconvenient directions, occasionally, a farmer leading his ox or horse along would joust us for the right of way. “Rang kai yi xia!” he’d warn us with a slap of the bamboo rod he carried with him on one hand while he steered his four-legged companion with the other. “Step aside a little!” Each time, we sidled up against the mountain wall, letting the animal pass first, which made me doubt my worth as a commodity just a little. Hmm… maybe I’m not as priceless as I thought.
Up on the peaks, wooden hostels are situated next to homes of the Yao. Wayfaring travelers can rest their weary legs and stay the night for a mere 50 RMB, and the next morning, they can watch the sunrise from their windows as dawn breaks over the terraces, which are constructed by the village people in order to maximize land area for the agriculture on which they survive. After the trekker sweats more than a normal person ever should when he makes it to the top, he sees a sight that makes his breath short with fatigue, his legs crumble with vertigo, and his eyes wide with incredulousness.
If some of the tourists plan to stay the night on one of the peaks, she and other women in the village will carry their suitcases from the bottom up—on their backs. Even though this is a way for the Yaozu to conduct business and make a living of sorts, it pains me to see these dark, petite women shoulder things equal to their weight up a height equal to that of multiple skyscrapers. While hikers pay them to do this, I am curious as to what kind of people would be willing to dole out the money to witness this kind of manual labor.
Halfway down the trails as we were descending the mountain, it suddenly hit me that we didn’t even ask for the guide’s name. After all, she was a stranger in a strange place, and you don’t just ask for people’s names that you don’t know. But I should attribute all those stories to… who now? She’ll be a legend in my mind. Just a nameless one.
We returned to the city in a small rotund van (“bread car,” transliterally) popular in China for its versatility and good gas mileage (read: unsafe and cheap). More than one person made the trip on the verge of carsickness due to the driver’s less than steady driving prowess. The day after, the local news reported that the mountain road from Longsheng, the city most closely associated with the terrace landscape, and He Ping village had been blocked off by mud slides. Within the course of one rainy day, the narrow and winding roads up toward the village area became slippery and dangerous. Avalanches of dirt came crashing down within 24 hours after we left. Any vehicles traveling on the way to Longji would be swept off the path down into the steep ravines below. Was it a fortunate coincidence? Was it the bracelet I always wear for good fortune? Oh, to think about things that don’t have answers.
Then there are the people who say that whenever someone from the mountain village makes it to the city, he will never want to return to his roots nestled in nature’s layered cake after comparing his previous life to his current one. And true, after a close encounter with this different world, the peasant life in He Ping and the surrounding area is demanding, isolated, and predictable. Long days in the field turn the men’s skin permanently dark and rough, and people well into their 60s and 70s use canes to help them navigate the stoney slopes as they move back and forth between their homes and the fields. But whenever a villager leaves, never to return, he probably loses a part of the idyll that he won’t find again anywhere else. He will no longer breathe the cool and gentle mountain air. What’s worse, if he’s not strong enough, urban greed may rob him of what was his previously simple soul. So when he sleeps, I like to think that behind his closed eyes, he’s dreaming of a pink sunrise inching over the first peak.
Taken in July on top of the Longji Terraces in He Ping village, about 50 kilometers from Longsheng, Guangxi province.
I have a good friend who finds his greatest source of inspiration from stars. Literally. He studies planets and other things greater than humans, and as long as I’ve known him, he’s always been interested in all things astronomical and cosmological. When we were in high school, he unfailingly carried around a paperback copy of one of Carl Sagan’s books in his backpack on most days, and he’d point out different excerpts, read them to me, shake his head, and then say, “It’s just… just… just… ah.” He would often be rendered speechless by the meaning of it all.
At that time, I didn’t really know how to respond. The universe and my specific place in it was never really something I thought about that much, probably because subconsciously, I considered it pointless to wonder about my insignificant role in the immense scheme of space and time. After all, a speck of dust on the vast window gets washed away eventually.
But one of the quotes he read to me stayed in my mind for a long time, and it wasn’t until yesterday, July 22, 2009, that it rose to the surface of my consciousness. In Cosmos, Sagan writes,
“The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it’s forever.”
Witnessing the solar eclipse on top of Reed Flute Mountain yesterday clarified what my friend already realized four years ago. Climbing up and simultaneously seeing the seemingly eternal Sun become occluded by the paltry moon, the realization hit that millions of people died and will die without ever seeing this circumstance that’s so much bigger than all of us. Maybe it’s too much to ask from the cosmos to give us a reminder of just how trivial human lives are from time to time, but I’m now convinced it would do the human race a grain of good. I just want to thank my friend for wordlessly telling me something that I didn’t understand then but do now.
We are all just specks of dust on a window.
You finished the meal...
...but then you realize...
...you didn't finish looking.
“吃完这顿饭，不知道何时才能相聚？
People depart after the curtain falls. After this meal, when could we get together again?”
Found in the far corner of a shop close to the Timezone 8 bookstore in Dashanzi. On first glance, it looks like porcelain for sale. Not at all. Perhaps not for the faint or nostalgic of heart. How did he know that I always asked this after the main course? We’ve put down our chopsticks and sent for the bill. Do we have to wait years before eating at the same table again? Even so, I hope he can be content even though no one can answer the question. 只能等等，看看未来。
