30 May 2009
my dreams before I forget them
I am in North Korea. They are holding a celebration of some kind for their beloved leader, and to commemorate their nuclear weapons testing. The festival is huge and glamorous and they have exotic fruits like mangos and strawberries that I wonder about. How did they get there? The street vendor has an icy smile.
Somehow the colors are vibrant, like a Chinese New Year. People dress up in costume. Am I insane? I guess I've never been here before and I walk around writing things down in my mind while over the loudspeaker spoke Korean and an English Translation by Michel Norris talk about the history of this wonderful nation.
I see my aunt and uncle and grandmother. I run to them surprised but when I opened my mouth no Chinese came out. They barely recognize me. My cousin is there too. He starts a chant
"Kim Jong Il!" And everyone would reply:
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
And screaming and shouting and clapping and everywhere there is noise as thick as the hot summer air. How did I get there? I am about to tell my family I somehow got a free weekend pass when a tall, lanky Korean man comes to face my cousin. The man has long hair. His beige button-up doesn't look very proletariat, I think. Glasses and leather shoes, he could snap in half if he leans down any lower, staring at my cousin, nose to nose. My cousin's mischievous smile responds look for look. When the tall man turns to look at me, I am ashamed and I look at my feet. He laughs, walking away.
"Dont pretend, we know", he says.
I walk along a hallway with my cousin I hadn't seen for a year. I want to tell him everything, but on the loudspeaker, Michel Norris started to talk about recipes and food.
"So, tell me about this dish, what's in it?"
I look at my cousin, I try to ask,
"Are you understanding this?"
I wake up to the radio. It is about a lentils recipe, under $5, the interviewer was Michel Norris. Bryce was listening to npr while I was asleep.
"Did they talk about North Korea?"
"Yeah, but that was about three minutes ago."
Somehow the colors are vibrant, like a Chinese New Year. People dress up in costume. Am I insane? I guess I've never been here before and I walk around writing things down in my mind while over the loudspeaker spoke Korean and an English Translation by Michel Norris talk about the history of this wonderful nation.
I see my aunt and uncle and grandmother. I run to them surprised but when I opened my mouth no Chinese came out. They barely recognize me. My cousin is there too. He starts a chant
"Kim Jong Il!" And everyone would reply:
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
And screaming and shouting and clapping and everywhere there is noise as thick as the hot summer air. How did I get there? I am about to tell my family I somehow got a free weekend pass when a tall, lanky Korean man comes to face my cousin. The man has long hair. His beige button-up doesn't look very proletariat, I think. Glasses and leather shoes, he could snap in half if he leans down any lower, staring at my cousin, nose to nose. My cousin's mischievous smile responds look for look. When the tall man turns to look at me, I am ashamed and I look at my feet. He laughs, walking away.
"Dont pretend, we know", he says.
I walk along a hallway with my cousin I hadn't seen for a year. I want to tell him everything, but on the loudspeaker, Michel Norris started to talk about recipes and food.
"So, tell me about this dish, what's in it?"
I look at my cousin, I try to ask,
"Are you understanding this?"
I wake up to the radio. It is about a lentils recipe, under $5, the interviewer was Michel Norris. Bryce was listening to npr while I was asleep.
"Did they talk about North Korea?"
"Yeah, but that was about three minutes ago."
26 May 2009
Congratulations! lai is boring
Karen: I need sleeping pills
Lai: you need a boring movie
Karen: nn.
Lai: you sound like you're almost there, though.
Karen: I'm faking it. Oh I know. you should read me GRE words.
Lai: haha. Ok. How about denigrate?
Karen: What?
Lai: Denigrate? probably has to do with lowering the status of a person. Or something. Like that other word relegate.
Tina: Oh.
Lai: Hm. How about hegemony? Maybe that'll be on the GRE.
(20, 30 seconds later)
...and that would be an example of hegemony, or a hegemonic system.
Lai: Karen?
Karen: nn.
Tina: That did it.
Lai: you need a boring movie
Karen: nn.
Lai: you sound like you're almost there, though.
Karen: I'm faking it. Oh I know. you should read me GRE words.
Lai: haha. Ok. How about denigrate?
Karen: What?
Lai: Denigrate? probably has to do with lowering the status of a person. Or something. Like that other word relegate.
Tina: Oh.
Lai: Hm. How about hegemony? Maybe that'll be on the GRE.
(20, 30 seconds later)
...and that would be an example of hegemony, or a hegemonic system.
Lai: Karen?
Karen: nn.
Tina: That did it.
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
seriously, I have a formula
Dinner conversation:
Nancy: Snide remark accompanied by lols
Karen: Sarcastic (?) comeback
Nancy: Accusatory insult accopanied by more lols
Karen: Sarcastic apology
Nancy: Genuine (?) forgiveness
Karen: Scoff
Nancy: Leftover lols
Stay tuned for the MadLibs comic.
Next: Pillow talk with Karen and Nancy
Nancy: Snide remark accompanied by lols
Karen: Sarcastic (?) comeback
Nancy: Accusatory insult accopanied by more lols
Karen: Sarcastic apology
Nancy: Genuine (?) forgiveness
Karen: Scoff
Nancy: Leftover lols
Stay tuned for the MadLibs comic.
Next: Pillow talk with Karen and Nancy
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.
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