It is the last straw. vegetables are ok, but eating flowers?
We have fenced off our garden with a white fence to protect our greens. The petals of all the small soft flowers are mostly nibbled off.
no more rabbits. now it is ant season.
Though smaller, ants are definitely less cute.
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
18 June 2009
I gave my cousin some chocolate.
My mother is against unhealthy foods, so fried things and sweets are banned from my cousin's diet as long as he lives in the US.
Although, a couple of days ago I was abetting his sweets addiction. But I did get the bag of candy for free. I mean, who else is going to eat it, right? No one under the age of 10 at this point is within reach, and why waste a perfectly good bag of candy.
In broken English, he acts out the situation in which I am the dealer and he is the addict, my mother being the police interrogator.
"Ey, do you have the?"
"Oh yeh yeh, I have" (opens imaginary jacket)
(gunpoint) "STOP! FREEZE. WHAT IS THAT"
"OH nonono , nothing!"
"GIVE ME IT!"
I gave him the Funsize Mr Goodbars, Crunch and Hersheys and I took out the dark chocolates. They sit on my desk next to my computer. I started out with 5 and I have only eaten 1. There are only two left.
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 2:
"咦， 孟凡、我这么只有剩3个糖？” (Hey Meng Fan. How come I only have 3 left?)
“哦～我吃掉了一颗” (Oh...cause I ate one.)
"I knew it."
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 3:
Later, I am online buying books for him I eye him pop another one of my darks in his mouth.
"Hey! I thought you didnt like dark chocolate!"
"(mouth full) Oh... Sorry I didn't realize. I just saw candy so I ate it."
"What! So you stuff it in without even thinking!?"
"Heh heh..."
Never again! No chocolate for you.
"Lailai, can we go get fried chicken?"
"Oh. Okay."
Although, a couple of days ago I was abetting his sweets addiction. But I did get the bag of candy for free. I mean, who else is going to eat it, right? No one under the age of 10 at this point is within reach, and why waste a perfectly good bag of candy.
In broken English, he acts out the situation in which I am the dealer and he is the addict, my mother being the police interrogator.
"Ey, do you have the?"
"Oh yeh yeh, I have" (opens imaginary jacket)
(gunpoint) "STOP! FREEZE. WHAT IS THAT"
"OH nonono , nothing!"
"GIVE ME IT!"
I gave him the Funsize Mr Goodbars, Crunch and Hersheys and I took out the dark chocolates. They sit on my desk next to my computer. I started out with 5 and I have only eaten 1. There are only two left.
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 2:
"咦， 孟凡、我这么只有剩3个糖？” (Hey Meng Fan. How come I only have 3 left?)
“哦～我吃掉了一颗” (Oh...cause I ate one.)
"I knew it."
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 3:
Later, I am online buying books for him I eye him pop another one of my darks in his mouth.
"Hey! I thought you didnt like dark chocolate!"
"(mouth full) Oh... Sorry I didn't realize. I just saw candy so I ate it."
"What! So you stuff it in without even thinking!?"
"Heh heh..."
Never again! No chocolate for you.
"Lailai, can we go get fried chicken?"
"Oh. Okay."
17 June 2009
learning chinese
from the zero-start, first grade level is pretty sore-thumbs and brain-freeze, also bringing to the surface again in a sort of stirring-up-the-starch-in-the-miso-soup kind of way, and suddenly the tofu-cubed memories of a horrid chinese school experience are in motion.
(In this metaphor, the slimy seaweed pieces are the curly-permed-almost-pubic-like hairs atop the chinese teachers' heads, the gritty taste in my mouth similar to the one i would feel in my stomach when they read things in an exaggerated tone, as if we were babies.)
on the one hand I really wish I had continued to learn chinese, but on the other hand, going through such a vulnerable stage as puberty with added psychological trauma was something I am glad I cut out of my life early. I don't think I would have been strong enough to overcome the situation with the right attitude either. Continue this Saturday-School terror and I would grow resentful of these gracious volunteer A-yi's and Shu-shu's and my fellow students instead of now looking back on them with a sort of forgiveness and understanding.
My least favorite memory of Chinese school:
For most of my Chinese school years I had one close friend. Kun abused me much to her amusement, but I knew she was probably angry or bitter at things that had nothing to do with me. She was funny and we shared the common and perplexing suffering of being in the same class as 2nd and 3rd graders while we were already in middle school. We laughed together at our silly and hopeless situations.
People also confused us both in Church on Sunday for being the same person, probably because we both were social outcasts, had large foreheads, wore thin and round gold-rimmed classes, and parted our hair in the center. But we shared the loneliness and thank God. I didn't mind, not even when she kicked in the back of my knees to make me trip. I didn't mind because I didn't trip and it was kind of a funny feeling, your body propelling forward without you knowing, and then at the last minute, pulling yourself back as if you were a spring bouncing up.
Her father taught Go as one of the after-Chinese school extra-curricular culture class. Go is the game with black and white pieces and the object of the game to win as much territory and kill as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. It was a war game and Kun was aggressive. She'd be my partner because we were friends and that's how you did it in middle school; you cling as hard as you possibly can to social safety, lest you be swallowed by the waves of-- uh
whatever it is we were so afraid of.
In Go, when the opponent's pieces surround you from four sides, your piece gets removed, like in chess. But even when the opponents pieces may not surround a cluster completely, you could be stuck anyway. If you try to escape, you end up killing even more. The opponent doesn't need to remove them, and you can't touch them. The pieces are left sitting there, stuck in this limbo, liminal space, in a double-bind, a catch-22.
One time, Kun was winning all the games. Well, actually, she always wins, but this time I wanted so desperately to win one. For some reason, perhaps out of deep resentment, I felt an evil hateful feeling each time I saw her pluck my little black pieces out. When I saw that I was losing, I felt as if I wanted to cry. But I didn't cry because I kept the tears and convulsions deep in my stomach so no one could see it. I almost-cried because I thought I was a failure. At Chinese, at math, at Go, and at making friends, at just keeping my cool. I almost-cried because I thought I was so stupid to cry about a game. But as much evil-hate as I had for Kun building up at this point, I almost-cried most of all because even if I won, the thing I wanted most desperately and stupidly, I thought maybe Kun would be mad and she wouldn't be my friend anymore. I sucked it all up and had it storm up in the nerves of my brain. I stormed, thinking I couldn't win at all.
My favorite memory of Chinese school:
I am in my Junior year of high school, 16, my self-esteem perhaps above-average for most girls my age. I haven't been in Chinese school in a couple of years. The principal asks my mother if I'm available to teach an after-Chinese school culture class. It's a 1st to 2nd grade drawing class, and all I have to do is do a step-by-step drawing on the board in front of the class and have them copy it. It's rough at first, handling 20 kids. At first they are reluctant. I know how it's like. More school after Chinese school? Come on. I want to go home.
But I am determined to make this class cool. To make this my anti-experience of Chinese school.
They warm up to it. They like that I am young and understand English. They also like my choice of stickers for rewards. My stickers are awesome and are not lame like other A-Yi's, and I let them choose. I do not punish them for telling me that I do things wrong. I say sorry when I make a mistake.
I ask the kids what they want to learn how to draw next. I offer them the options for a vote.
"So, next time, do you want to draw DINOSAURS?"
"ooh! ooh!"
"let me finish...or Pokemon?"
"OOOHHH! POKEMON!"
"POKEMON!"
"YEAH!"
There is no vote. Next class is Pikachu.
The youngest kid in my class is in kindergarten and his mother must sit in class with him. He calls me Miss Lai Miss Lai and his mother says he talks about the class at home and wonders when the next drawing class is, is it tomorrow? No Joshua, it's next Saturday. How many days is that?
The class is such a silly class. I teach no long-lasting skills whatsoever to children who will forget how to draw sharks and animals the next day. But I am filled with pride. His mother calls me over and tells me that Joshua has something to show me.
He flips to a drawing of a tree with a million apples, on the tree, off the tree, filling the page up to the sky. The next page is the page he wants to show me: A million colored Pikachu's filling the page from the left to the right.
"WOW," I say. "That's good! Very good. He's talented. And ... 真的很努力， 哦." (very hardworking)
His mother smiles a tired smile. I will think later maybe Joshua had a learning disability. Just being 5 years old doesn't mean your mother must sit in class with you.
One time he asks me how to draw a cockroach. I draw it on the side and he copies it dutifully, down to the lines in the wings.
It is the best damn cockroach ever drawn by a 5-year-old.
It is the cockroach to dominate all the bad things that have ever happened to me ever.
In my psyche, Joshua's cockroach leads an army of Pikachu's across a huge Go board, destroying the rigidity of black and white, replacing each piece with a small and crayon-red apple.
(In this metaphor, the slimy seaweed pieces are the curly-permed-almost-pubic-like hairs atop the chinese teachers' heads, the gritty taste in my mouth similar to the one i would feel in my stomach when they read things in an exaggerated tone, as if we were babies.)
on the one hand I really wish I had continued to learn chinese, but on the other hand, going through such a vulnerable stage as puberty with added psychological trauma was something I am glad I cut out of my life early. I don't think I would have been strong enough to overcome the situation with the right attitude either. Continue this Saturday-School terror and I would grow resentful of these gracious volunteer A-yi's and Shu-shu's and my fellow students instead of now looking back on them with a sort of forgiveness and understanding.
My least favorite memory of Chinese school:
For most of my Chinese school years I had one close friend. Kun abused me much to her amusement, but I knew she was probably angry or bitter at things that had nothing to do with me. She was funny and we shared the common and perplexing suffering of being in the same class as 2nd and 3rd graders while we were already in middle school. We laughed together at our silly and hopeless situations.
People also confused us both in Church on Sunday for being the same person, probably because we both were social outcasts, had large foreheads, wore thin and round gold-rimmed classes, and parted our hair in the center. But we shared the loneliness and thank God. I didn't mind, not even when she kicked in the back of my knees to make me trip. I didn't mind because I didn't trip and it was kind of a funny feeling, your body propelling forward without you knowing, and then at the last minute, pulling yourself back as if you were a spring bouncing up.
Her father taught Go as one of the after-Chinese school extra-curricular culture class. Go is the game with black and white pieces and the object of the game to win as much territory and kill as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. It was a war game and Kun was aggressive. She'd be my partner because we were friends and that's how you did it in middle school; you cling as hard as you possibly can to social safety, lest you be swallowed by the waves of-- uh
whatever it is we were so afraid of.
In Go, when the opponent's pieces surround you from four sides, your piece gets removed, like in chess. But even when the opponents pieces may not surround a cluster completely, you could be stuck anyway. If you try to escape, you end up killing even more. The opponent doesn't need to remove them, and you can't touch them. The pieces are left sitting there, stuck in this limbo, liminal space, in a double-bind, a catch-22.
One time, Kun was winning all the games. Well, actually, she always wins, but this time I wanted so desperately to win one. For some reason, perhaps out of deep resentment, I felt an evil hateful feeling each time I saw her pluck my little black pieces out. When I saw that I was losing, I felt as if I wanted to cry. But I didn't cry because I kept the tears and convulsions deep in my stomach so no one could see it. I almost-cried because I thought I was a failure. At Chinese, at math, at Go, and at making friends, at just keeping my cool. I almost-cried because I thought I was so stupid to cry about a game. But as much evil-hate as I had for Kun building up at this point, I almost-cried most of all because even if I won, the thing I wanted most desperately and stupidly, I thought maybe Kun would be mad and she wouldn't be my friend anymore. I sucked it all up and had it storm up in the nerves of my brain. I stormed, thinking I couldn't win at all.
My favorite memory of Chinese school:
I am in my Junior year of high school, 16, my self-esteem perhaps above-average for most girls my age. I haven't been in Chinese school in a couple of years. The principal asks my mother if I'm available to teach an after-Chinese school culture class. It's a 1st to 2nd grade drawing class, and all I have to do is do a step-by-step drawing on the board in front of the class and have them copy it. It's rough at first, handling 20 kids. At first they are reluctant. I know how it's like. More school after Chinese school? Come on. I want to go home.
But I am determined to make this class cool. To make this my anti-experience of Chinese school.
They warm up to it. They like that I am young and understand English. They also like my choice of stickers for rewards. My stickers are awesome and are not lame like other A-Yi's, and I let them choose. I do not punish them for telling me that I do things wrong. I say sorry when I make a mistake.
I ask the kids what they want to learn how to draw next. I offer them the options for a vote.
"So, next time, do you want to draw DINOSAURS?"
"ooh! ooh!"
"let me finish...or Pokemon?"
"OOOHHH! POKEMON!"
"POKEMON!"
"YEAH!"
There is no vote. Next class is Pikachu.
The youngest kid in my class is in kindergarten and his mother must sit in class with him. He calls me Miss Lai Miss Lai and his mother says he talks about the class at home and wonders when the next drawing class is, is it tomorrow? No Joshua, it's next Saturday. How many days is that?
The class is such a silly class. I teach no long-lasting skills whatsoever to children who will forget how to draw sharks and animals the next day. But I am filled with pride. His mother calls me over and tells me that Joshua has something to show me.
He flips to a drawing of a tree with a million apples, on the tree, off the tree, filling the page up to the sky. The next page is the page he wants to show me: A million colored Pikachu's filling the page from the left to the right.
"WOW," I say. "That's good! Very good. He's talented. And ... 真的很努力， 哦." (very hardworking)
His mother smiles a tired smile. I will think later maybe Joshua had a learning disability. Just being 5 years old doesn't mean your mother must sit in class with you.
One time he asks me how to draw a cockroach. I draw it on the side and he copies it dutifully, down to the lines in the wings.
It is the best damn cockroach ever drawn by a 5-year-old.
It is the cockroach to dominate all the bad things that have ever happened to me ever.
In my psyche, Joshua's cockroach leads an army of Pikachu's across a huge Go board, destroying the rigidity of black and white, replacing each piece with a small and crayon-red apple.
23 May 2009
lies
Fiction exists to become myself? Fiction is love?
ok. I stop with abstracts and make picture instead.
I am 4 and I'm not eating vegetables. rice is yummy because it tastes like mini-water sponges.
"lai-lai, what is your favorite dinosaur?" mom asks
I point to the brontosaurus in my dinosaur book.
"he isn't mean, huh? he doesn't eat other dinosaurs, right?"
I nod. I imagine riding on its back through the jungle, telling it to run whenever I saw velociraptors. I did not cry but I thought maybe I was supposed to when all the dinosaurs started dying of thirst in the Fantasia movie.
"it eats green leaves, right? that's how it gets bigger. so you should eat green leaves too. they make you bigger and stronger like the long-necked dinosaur. I'll even measure you tomorrow to see if you get bigger, okay? On that wall over there. Quick, eat!"
she rigged it so that I was an inch taller everyday. I ate that bok choy voraciously - especially the green parts so that I would meet up with Little-foot later and share stories about our favorite vegetables.
"lai-lai you know you cannot have a baby brother or sister. look at my tummy."
her huge c-section scar was purple, and went from her belly button and dove under her pants. I imagined the pain of falling down compared to the huge knife that must of split my mother in half. I couldn't.
instead, I imagined the little ant that i found crawling up my thigh. I tried not to kill it, but I smashed it under my fingers while guiding it away from my shorts.
I almost killed my mother, i thought.
whenever i scraped my knee my mother would tell me to hold my breath.
"There's no blood, lai-lai! that means it's ok!"
I look at the huge scrape on my leg. I look back at my mother. She is smiling. I look around. everything is the same. There must be something wrong with me, I want to cry.
"Don't cry, lai-lai. You are brave, huh, lailai?"
I want so bad to be brave.
I don't even cry, not even for dead dinosaurs.
ok. I stop with abstracts and make picture instead.
I am 4 and I'm not eating vegetables. rice is yummy because it tastes like mini-water sponges.
"lai-lai, what is your favorite dinosaur?" mom asks
I point to the brontosaurus in my dinosaur book.
"he isn't mean, huh? he doesn't eat other dinosaurs, right?"
I nod. I imagine riding on its back through the jungle, telling it to run whenever I saw velociraptors. I did not cry but I thought maybe I was supposed to when all the dinosaurs started dying of thirst in the Fantasia movie.
"it eats green leaves, right? that's how it gets bigger. so you should eat green leaves too. they make you bigger and stronger like the long-necked dinosaur. I'll even measure you tomorrow to see if you get bigger, okay? On that wall over there. Quick, eat!"
she rigged it so that I was an inch taller everyday. I ate that bok choy voraciously - especially the green parts so that I would meet up with Little-foot later and share stories about our favorite vegetables.
"lai-lai you know you cannot have a baby brother or sister. look at my tummy."
her huge c-section scar was purple, and went from her belly button and dove under her pants. I imagined the pain of falling down compared to the huge knife that must of split my mother in half. I couldn't.
instead, I imagined the little ant that i found crawling up my thigh. I tried not to kill it, but I smashed it under my fingers while guiding it away from my shorts.
I almost killed my mother, i thought.
whenever i scraped my knee my mother would tell me to hold my breath.
"There's no blood, lai-lai! that means it's ok!"
I look at the huge scrape on my leg. I look back at my mother. She is smiling. I look around. everything is the same. There must be something wrong with me, I want to cry.
"Don't cry, lai-lai. You are brave, huh, lailai?"
I want so bad to be brave.
I don't even cry, not even for dead dinosaurs.
rabbit update number 3
our backyard is blooming fruit and vegetables and finally my dream of the demise of my father's useless flat-green lawn is slowly becoming manifest. i do not know where my father got the idea that a perfectly trimmed and green 10 square feet is a status symbol of any kind, yet it makes him happy to sit on the patio and look at it.
i am happy because there are rabbits who come and go and eat my grandma's chinese celery. i am even more contented to know that it is actually my grandfather who baits the nibbling beasts, but leaves just a small space in our fence so that it is only the baby one that comes.
i am happy because there are rabbits who come and go and eat my grandma's chinese celery. i am even more contented to know that it is actually my grandfather who baits the nibbling beasts, but leaves just a small space in our fence so that it is only the baby one that comes.
19 May 2009
18 May 2009
guilty pleasures
Bryce sent me this over OMGPOP, an embarrassingly addictive multiplayer game site.
It made me lols.
15 May 2009
mouth ear. and drawing fail.
life as a mouth is pretty awesome. you eat what you want, you spit out what you don't want and you bite what you hate.
life as an ear sucks. no one even knows how to draw you cause no one ever looks at you. you're too complicated looking for your own good. I mean what the fuck are all those folds for anyway. like those hexagons on soccer balls. what was that all about? it is like the hardest thing to draw ever.
life as an ear sucks. no one even knows how to draw you cause no one ever looks at you. you're too complicated looking for your own good. I mean what the fuck are all those folds for anyway. like those hexagons on soccer balls. what was that all about? it is like the hardest thing to draw ever.
sometimes cant keep my mouth straight for my face
seriously. characters are how i feel right now.
Chuppa Jai could be anything really-- he's mostly male and frustrated and jaded like a sort of noir character, 'cept he's no genius at anything. He's angry and ironic and hangs out with other, cooler ethnicities.
He's like this one kid Karen worked with-- Yi who's the tallest 18 year old chinese kid i've ever seen and talks deep and ebonic even though he goes to the most well-off high schools in town.
no idea. he's cool though, maybe he just moved there or something.
anyway, Yi is a pretty awesomefuckin name for a kid that's 6'5'' or sumshit cause it's one syllable.
and it's just a vowel. its feral like a grunt but its one of those sophisticated vowels.
You look up to meet his eyes, like a nod, and you say as cool as you can, "hey eee."
yeah. but Chuppa jai got his name stuck on him cause he's just no good. His Hispanic friends make fun of him. He's ok with that. He's ok with most things cause he thinks that will make him seem cooler.
Chuppa Jai is half panda. I mean half panda like this:
Chuppa Jai is inspired by that one man my mom talked about, one of those isolated incidents she's never told me ever again about this boy who liked her in college, he was big and people called him panda SHONG MAO like literally BEARCAT.
maybe he smoked or something so my mom didn't like him.
I just have these old visualizations of him while she's talking about this guy and Chuppa Jai's born from that too. In my mind, the memory is sepia tone like in the old photos and they're sitting all lined up in birch desks in a classroom with rotting concrete walls. Panda sits in the behind everyone looking at the back of my mother's parted hair into two braids.
He makes a joke, my mother darts him a death stare. Her face is smooth and he stops laughing.
Chuppa Jai is my own masculinity. By that I mean my noncommittant and wimpy refusal of femininity. was against it my entire adolescence because I was jealous, i think, of those girls who had that weird sexual power, even at age 10. I decided i wanted a different kind of power and wanted to be a boy. But I never really got rid of my mindset fully and put a dick and balls on or anything but definitely dreamed of shaving my hair off and wearing cheap flannel, huge boots and ripped jeans, smoking out my brains while being badass like kurt cobain. wanted to be cool and have an addiction to something like music or cigarettes. caffeine would be ok. anything.
Also wanted to take kung fu since i was 5 years old.
Chuppa Jai is made up of 4th grade lai imagining herself beating up Katie and Katrina and that one German kid who made fun of Jenny and I wasn't brave enough at that time to defend. Cause if it had my doc marten's then I would have been invincible. At least i thought.
Chuppa Jai is when I am insecure about everything - including my fake masculinity- when I'm not ballsy enough and I chicken out. When I'm being a chode and I cant talk to attractive girls because I think they're better than me. When I give up on shit cause I hate failure
Chuppa Jai is demon #4.
Demon #5 is Meijuun
Meijuun is born from the girl who asked my cousin to sing the French National Anthem.
Meijuun is born from my cousin singing the French National Anthem.
Meijuun is born from when my grandfather subsequently picked up his harmonica and played the french national anthem.
Meijuun is all four of us singing ALLONS ENFANS DE LA PATRIE! LE JOUR DE GLOIRE EST ARRIVE!
Meijuun is my 16-year-old nanny from when I was 1 years old. she never talked much, they said. she liked books. A proper girl from the countryside. Not like my cousin's who went out all the time with him to talk with her friends. Meijuun stayed home and taught me chinese words on baby blocks. Useful ones like"chicken" and "cat".
It's important for a girl baby to have a pretty nanny. Because if the nanny's ugly it will rub off.
Meijuun was not bad, they said.
My cousin's was good too, but for boys, they say, it doesn't matter.
There's one picture of all of us in winter clothes, sitting in a knock-off disneyland spinning cup in a chinese park. Her hair was parted in the center and her cheeks were red from the cold, her eyes were closed. she held me up like a puppy.
Meijuun slept on the side of the bed when she was tired from me. She slept there so that I wouldn't crawl off the bed without her knowing.
Meijuun is calm and collected like a flight attendant. She makes drinks and her living room is cute. Sometimes she leaves for months and months and doesn't come back . Is she being cold on purpose, or is she just distracted?
Meijuun is the dream girl of Chuppa Jai number1 chode.
Chuppa Jai's real name is Jonathan. Meijuun does not need to make fun of Chuppa much to get him embarrassed.
In fourth grade, Jenny's eyes rolled to the side of her face when she talked. Was it a lazy eye? Her messy hair and acne gained her no friends. and even I abandoned her. i have been ashamed since. After defeating the evil kids with my ultimate Jackie Chan powers, I would gain the respect of all other playgroundmates and would make peace, counsel people, and give advice like the Dalai Lama.
Chuppa Jai is over that shit cause feeling guilty is for pussies.
Meijuun shoots Chuppa Jai a fierce stare. Her hair is parted in the middle and her face is smooth.
Chuppa Jai could be anything really-- he's mostly male and frustrated and jaded like a sort of noir character, 'cept he's no genius at anything. He's angry and ironic and hangs out with other, cooler ethnicities.
He's like this one kid Karen worked with-- Yi who's the tallest 18 year old chinese kid i've ever seen and talks deep and ebonic even though he goes to the most well-off high schools in town.
no idea. he's cool though, maybe he just moved there or something.
anyway, Yi is a pretty awesomefuckin name for a kid that's 6'5'' or sumshit cause it's one syllable.
and it's just a vowel. its feral like a grunt but its one of those sophisticated vowels.
You look up to meet his eyes, like a nod, and you say as cool as you can, "hey eee."
yeah. but Chuppa jai got his name stuck on him cause he's just no good. His Hispanic friends make fun of him. He's ok with that. He's ok with most things cause he thinks that will make him seem cooler.
Chuppa Jai is half panda. I mean half panda like this:
Chuppa Jai is inspired by that one man my mom talked about, one of those isolated incidents she's never told me ever again about this boy who liked her in college, he was big and people called him panda SHONG MAO like literally BEARCAT.
maybe he smoked or something so my mom didn't like him.
I just have these old visualizations of him while she's talking about this guy and Chuppa Jai's born from that too. In my mind, the memory is sepia tone like in the old photos and they're sitting all lined up in birch desks in a classroom with rotting concrete walls. Panda sits in the behind everyone looking at the back of my mother's parted hair into two braids.
He makes a joke, my mother darts him a death stare. Her face is smooth and he stops laughing.
Chuppa Jai is my own masculinity. By that I mean my noncommittant and wimpy refusal of femininity. was against it my entire adolescence because I was jealous, i think, of those girls who had that weird sexual power, even at age 10. I decided i wanted a different kind of power and wanted to be a boy. But I never really got rid of my mindset fully and put a dick and balls on or anything but definitely dreamed of shaving my hair off and wearing cheap flannel, huge boots and ripped jeans, smoking out my brains while being badass like kurt cobain. wanted to be cool and have an addiction to something like music or cigarettes. caffeine would be ok. anything.
Also wanted to take kung fu since i was 5 years old.
Chuppa Jai is made up of 4th grade lai imagining herself beating up Katie and Katrina and that one German kid who made fun of Jenny and I wasn't brave enough at that time to defend. Cause if it had my doc marten's then I would have been invincible. At least i thought.
Chuppa Jai is when I am insecure about everything - including my fake masculinity- when I'm not ballsy enough and I chicken out. When I'm being a chode and I cant talk to attractive girls because I think they're better than me. When I give up on shit cause I hate failure
Chuppa Jai is demon #4.
Demon #5 is Meijuun
Meijuun is born from the girl who asked my cousin to sing the French National Anthem.
Meijuun is born from my cousin singing the French National Anthem.
Meijuun is born from when my grandfather subsequently picked up his harmonica and played the french national anthem.
Meijuun is all four of us singing ALLONS ENFANS DE LA PATRIE! LE JOUR DE GLOIRE EST ARRIVE!
Meijuun is my 16-year-old nanny from when I was 1 years old. she never talked much, they said. she liked books. A proper girl from the countryside. Not like my cousin's who went out all the time with him to talk with her friends. Meijuun stayed home and taught me chinese words on baby blocks. Useful ones like"chicken" and "cat".
It's important for a girl baby to have a pretty nanny. Because if the nanny's ugly it will rub off.
Meijuun was not bad, they said.
My cousin's was good too, but for boys, they say, it doesn't matter.
There's one picture of all of us in winter clothes, sitting in a knock-off disneyland spinning cup in a chinese park. Her hair was parted in the center and her cheeks were red from the cold, her eyes were closed. she held me up like a puppy.
Meijuun slept on the side of the bed when she was tired from me. She slept there so that I wouldn't crawl off the bed without her knowing.
Meijuun is calm and collected like a flight attendant. She makes drinks and her living room is cute. Sometimes she leaves for months and months and doesn't come back . Is she being cold on purpose, or is she just distracted?
Meijuun is the dream girl of Chuppa Jai number1 chode.
Chuppa Jai's real name is Jonathan. Meijuun does not need to make fun of Chuppa much to get him embarrassed.
In fourth grade, Jenny's eyes rolled to the side of her face when she talked. Was it a lazy eye? Her messy hair and acne gained her no friends. and even I abandoned her. i have been ashamed since. After defeating the evil kids with my ultimate Jackie Chan powers, I would gain the respect of all other playgroundmates and would make peace, counsel people, and give advice like the Dalai Lama.
Chuppa Jai is over that shit cause feeling guilty is for pussies.
Meijuun shoots Chuppa Jai a fierce stare. Her hair is parted in the middle and her face is smooth.
04 May 2009
Extremely over-crusted sugar on top of some terribly bad-for-you raspberry turnovers, or the sounds of pleasure
"Mm. mm. it's pretty good."
"Why are you making moaning noises."
"What, are those those the sounds you make during sex?"
"No, I keep my mouth shut."
"How can you keep your mouth shut then when you can't keep your mouth shut normally."
"Why are you making moaning noises."
"What, are those those the sounds you make during sex?"
"No, I keep my mouth shut."
"How can you keep your mouth shut then when you can't keep your mouth shut normally."
03 May 2009
the clammy kitchen linoleum under my feet and other stories
1. Karen, Nancy and Melody are all asleep on the floor in the living room, curled up in blankets. Yes. It is 5pm. They also slept there last night. They win in our unofficial sleeping marathon for team-sleeping.
Compared to these kids I have insomnia.
2. grandpa updated me on the rabbit status. he asks is it the same rabbit that comes back every week to eat in our garden. I'm not sure.
The date of the rabbit was December 26th, and we watched it from our window. grandma wanted to catch-it-kill-it-and-eat-it, grandpa says, no such thing! they are not even tasty. grandma says, wild rabbits are nutritious, grandpa says we will leave rice out there for tomorrow. and the rabbit didn't even notice. its entire brown body sat there immobile like a rock except for his vibrating trembling nose-and-jaw-for-chewing.
the date today is May 2nd and I'm not sure if I am the child and grandpa is the adult or if I am the adult and grandfather is the child when he says to me lai-lai! the rabbit is this big, and he holds out two cupped hands holding an imaginary loaf of bread.
3. Nancy hates the crumbs on the kitchen floor during bare feet. Now I notice when I step on a hardened piece of food on the ground in the kitchen. I pick it out between my thick feet-skin and wonder for maybe about a second or two about it's life story and then proceed to throw it away. We also found an entire avocado pit once, in the corner, hiding underneath the cabinetry. That, of course, deserved a bit more time/recognition for its biography.
"What the hell"
"When the hell did we get an avocado"
"Maybe January"
4. "When the snow falls and covers everything, I hardly know that it is snow. The sky is the underbelly of a fish." (249, Obasan)
Compared to these kids I have insomnia.
2. grandpa updated me on the rabbit status. he asks is it the same rabbit that comes back every week to eat in our garden. I'm not sure.
The date of the rabbit was December 26th, and we watched it from our window. grandma wanted to catch-it-kill-it-and-eat-it, grandpa says, no such thing! they are not even tasty. grandma says, wild rabbits are nutritious, grandpa says we will leave rice out there for tomorrow. and the rabbit didn't even notice. its entire brown body sat there immobile like a rock except for his vibrating trembling nose-and-jaw-for-chewing.
the date today is May 2nd and I'm not sure if I am the child and grandpa is the adult or if I am the adult and grandfather is the child when he says to me lai-lai! the rabbit is this big, and he holds out two cupped hands holding an imaginary loaf of bread.
3. Nancy hates the crumbs on the kitchen floor during bare feet. Now I notice when I step on a hardened piece of food on the ground in the kitchen. I pick it out between my thick feet-skin and wonder for maybe about a second or two about it's life story and then proceed to throw it away. We also found an entire avocado pit once, in the corner, hiding underneath the cabinetry. That, of course, deserved a bit more time/recognition for its biography.
"What the hell"
"When the hell did we get an avocado"
"Maybe January"
4. "When the snow falls and covers everything, I hardly know that it is snow. The sky is the underbelly of a fish." (249, Obasan)
25 April 2009
journal 2
at night my feet freeze up like ice. the coldness comes from inside. My hands less so, when I move them close to my chest. there I wait for hours for the physics of tiny molecules vibrating from the almost artificial hiccuping of my heartbeat to conduct thermal energy through lungs then ribs then muscle then fat then skin to my fingertips where my internal blood circulation was not fast enough. Progress is slow. The chill in my feet ends exactly up at the ankle. A useless and arbitrary line was drawn between the tijuana of my heel and the california of my calves. I blame my heart for whatever reason it has for being slow and weak. Is it unmotivated?
Afraid? and what would a heart be afraid of?
I have a hard time knowing that these parts of my body are mine. Most at home is the feeling of being surrounded by water, not knowing where my fingers end and the ocean begins. Then I am the entirety of the earth, a movement in the wave, a small physical purpose who happens to be conscious, my whole body reduces to the cold and sloth of my slow and stupid heart.
As a result my blood pressure is undeniably low, and I have no temper. maybe I do not even love at all.
Afraid? and what would a heart be afraid of?
I have a hard time knowing that these parts of my body are mine. Most at home is the feeling of being surrounded by water, not knowing where my fingers end and the ocean begins. Then I am the entirety of the earth, a movement in the wave, a small physical purpose who happens to be conscious, my whole body reduces to the cold and sloth of my slow and stupid heart.
As a result my blood pressure is undeniably low, and I have no temper. maybe I do not even love at all.
23 April 2009
journal 1
i just cleaned out my ears. it's definitely a pride thing to sigh in self-satisfaction and relief at the tremendous amount of earwax one's own body had produced in just a couple of days. Even more so is it a boost to the ego when one manages to coax it all out in one large sheet.
Do you believe me when I say writing is listening? as a writing major I don't even write everyday. It's as much a crime as a strawberry refusing to taste like a strawberry. And believe you me those strawberries have committed the ultimate crime of it's kind. It's fine to look green and unripe and taste like shit, but if you're shiny, big and red, you better taste like you promise.
I know it really isn't the fault of the strawberry. It got drugged up. It had bad parents. or both.
But as creatures of free will I am at fault for not growing up and ripening properly.
So I must set aside time everyday to write whatever the fuck comes to mind, even about the mundane parts of life. Because even so, there are kernels of meaning waiting to be made and understood about everyday.
Earwax becomes a metaphor for my refusal to listen to my own conscience.
Earwax doubles as another symbol for the relief of finally writing, and writing something amusing.
Earwax is also, thank goodness, out of my ear.
I can't wait to see what other refuse my body comes up with today.
off to class.
Do you believe me when I say writing is listening? as a writing major I don't even write everyday. It's as much a crime as a strawberry refusing to taste like a strawberry. And believe you me those strawberries have committed the ultimate crime of it's kind. It's fine to look green and unripe and taste like shit, but if you're shiny, big and red, you better taste like you promise.
I know it really isn't the fault of the strawberry. It got drugged up. It had bad parents. or both.
But as creatures of free will I am at fault for not growing up and ripening properly.
So I must set aside time everyday to write whatever the fuck comes to mind, even about the mundane parts of life. Because even so, there are kernels of meaning waiting to be made and understood about everyday.
Earwax becomes a metaphor for my refusal to listen to my own conscience.
Earwax doubles as another symbol for the relief of finally writing, and writing something amusing.
Earwax is also, thank goodness, out of my ear.
I can't wait to see what other refuse my body comes up with today.
off to class.
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