odds n' ends
どこでもいいよ
i. I like a yellow that is neither too bright nor too dark, a kind of transparent mustard, the murky sort of sunlight cast through sullied stained glass onto fragrant wooden floors. Not the floors that surround me right now—these have been owned by too many strangers. No, I am talking about the ones back home: red cedar planks that creak when you step on them, echoing the weight of your own existence. You jump up and down in attempts to amplify the sounds, and your mother shouts from downstairs to quit fooling around and come down for dinner.
ii. In this sense, my mother’s love is too much: the steady stream of WeChat links detailing everything from “How to Get into Top CS Grad Schools” to “The Secret to Happiness,” pulled from suspiciously sourced Chinese websites. The ringing of newly dusted wind chimes and the aroma of sun-baked sheets whenever I arrive home from a long semester. I never did say thank you. I still remember that time in fifth grade when she sat me down on a park bench and spoke about honesty and the weight of words. When she finally kissed me goodbye and said “I love you,” I heeded her teachings and replied with a “I don’t know what love is, so I don’t know if I love you.” And now whenever she tells me “I love you,” I instinctively answer “I love you too” because I hate to see her cry. iii. Too is too easy a word to say. The number of people who enjoy both Beach House and Yoga Lin is too little, so you cry a little too. i. The texture of rope in this tug-of-war dictates my idiosyncrasies. Half a year has gone by now, but I sometimes still let the hardened flax dig into my skin so they may form calluses already. A worthy distraction, but I was raised sheltered. Summers spent in a small corner of the bedroom where pixelations mimicked a delicate script. They took me to obligatory vows before I learned how to reason properly.
ii. I think about a hurricane somewhere. It drowns the fishermen to feed the fish. There is grace in the way their bodies were dragged from shore—a gentle maneuver on whose part? It is a shame I already knew how to swim. iii. A list of things that are not romanticized in memory: ambient music that does not complement the mood, a slow disregard for unsanitary windowsills, a stupid water boiler. iv. I’m probably crueler than you think. Even my mother tells me this. The same waves wash over me and I am no longer interested in your stories. Pillow talk is how you reveal your insecurities, but neither of us were kind listeners. Tonight, there must be some other incentive to dream: the promise of another mindless summer, a lack of jurisdiction for our depraved vagaries. There is an easier way to settle into this image, but the neighbors do not stop whispering sweet somethings. There is an irony in the way we should hold conversation: interruptions at timed intervals, a lingering politeness, noninvasive rhetoric. This awkwardness should be kind of nice: a pleasant diversion in lieu of denser topics. It was supposed to be a secret that I hesitated before the words I wish to say. Yet, this peppermint left my mouth burning. It does not stimulate, only coerce a more muted means of expression. Maybe I speak a little bit louder now. I am not too fond of this. I think about how ridiculous it is that people enjoy spicy cuisine. You, too, probably think I am ridiculous.
There is a large housefly trapped between the glass window and the mesh screen. It should die of asphyxiation by tomorrow morning. But tonight, the buzzing is consoling. The places we visit in imitation lucidity are far too practical for comfort. The smarter alternative is to wake up. Or go for a swim with birds. But these options do not coincide with your outdated philosophies. I sometimes wish we were less sensitive people, so I can still feign the sweet allusion of formality. What were we talking about again? Oh, I remember now. The way you cope with an uncomfortable situation is lethargic reasoning. But our very discourse right now stems from logical fallacies. Huh? My room is silent now. Right, misplaced irony. Someone more passionate should prove the existence of forgetting. Cautiously experimental. A tune you hum to yourself while tucking in your shoes. Today is an ordinary day filled with ordinary sounds: the faint rustling of leaves, the exchange of war cries between crickets and cicadas. Only if the melody from my speakers once belonged to a sparrow—maybe then can I understand.
Someone hand-washes her grandmother’s floral blouses, aged seven years and going. The new ones are neatly stashed in a suitcase somewhere. But she tells her granddaughter to not be afraid; she does not plan on leaving anytime soon. The child who grips her grandmother’s hands thinks of her calluses as natural. She stares into her cloudy eyes but only dreams of her own adventures in the rom she newly purchased for her Gameboy Advance. Her grandmother tells her to marry early but fall in love late but she grows up watching everyone around her. In middle school, a boy tells a girl that he likes her smile but the girl tells him that she does not really like to smile. Instead, her favorite expressions are smirk, derp and gasp because they were more fun to make. He promises her wonders but she prefers the monotony running through her blood: black hair and black eyes. The girl tells the boy in the next class that she likes his smile. He tells her that he prefers girls with eyes that light up with wonder. In high school, the girl dyes her hair. This is the apotheosis of retrospective narrative. She paints a blank wall in sedated differences. She makes a needlessly boring observation sometimes: eureka! In this picture, her grandmother walks a step ahead of her grandfather—that, too, is another interpretation. It is like inflating a helium balloon: bright red exterior, invisible traces of blood, a word caught somewhere down your esophagus. Aspiration is a possibility, so you down it with herbal remedies and end up with a sore throat instead. Desire is also biology. But I did not fear because I thought myself immune to the embellishments of memory.
And fear is a strong word, something only carelessly exchanged for currency by people who watch horror movies on rainy days. It is not the fear of diving into a deep ocean—they call that kind of hypothermia curiosity. This is a cold more akin to dry ice burns: when you chase away the smoky wisps under the tap, there remains a thin layer of unease. Like a filter over the camera lens, it lingers and obscures. Cinematographers call that beauty. A psychoanalysis: when staring into the mirror without corrective lenses, the blemishes on your face are concealed from view, so you like to observe the world with blurry vision as well. A convenience that developed into habit. You only want to cry when there is a pillow to catch the tears. I can water your flowers for you, but that does not prevent me from killing them. Maybe they are better than me at handling saline. This is not out of spite, as you are a kind person who can both envy Hamlet and hate Shakespeare—all the world’s not a stage if people are more sincere to one another. But I am a better actor now. We both grew up that day. |
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July 2019
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