Neuroplasticity (1)

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I can’t change my father, so I must change myself. This is what my mother said to me this morning and what she says to me every time I have an argument with my father, every time about the same stupid things.

This morning it was about pancakes. A few days ago I bought a single box of Aunt Jemima pancake mix along with a jar of maple syrup, intending to bring both on our family trip at Big Bear Lake. I never got to make pancakes because the adults packed too much other food that would spoil if we didn’t eat it. The pancake mix came back intact, along with the unopened bottle of syrup.

My father’s pantry is stuffed to the gills with teas, dried beans, and ten different types of ramen. On the bottommost shelf my mother stores rice alongside aerosol cans of weed and ant killer. In the cupboards, there are extra pots and pans, serving platters and most irritating of all, empty jars that stand like a silent mismatched army, waiting to be repurposed for my parents’ homemade prunes and date wine. There is little space for something as silly as pancake mix. My father opens the cupboards every morning, sees the pancake mix, and finds it necessary to point it out to me, to remind me that there is no place for pancake mix in his pantry and would I please just use it up so that it won’t have to assault his vision anymore. The first time he points it out I nod and say, “I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it.” The second, third, fourth times, my reaction is the same, though increasingly more exasperated.

“I’ll make it when more people than me want to eat pancakes,” I say to him, and far from resigned, he closes the pantry door in a huff, as though I were trying to poison him with the presence of pancake mix. I didn’t understand, but now I do: it’s his pantry. His and my mother’s. I’m at the age where I shouldn’t be putting my things around his house. I should be employed, moved out, living my own life and only occasionally stopping by to eat meals bought and prepared by them two, not to plague their storage space with my own American foodstuffs. Every time he opens the cupboards, Aunt Jemima grins at him, a strange black face occupying precious space in his already overpopulated shelves.

I know this. I don’t want to be at home either, screaming at my father to stop pestering me about my damned pancake mix. But moving out requires money, of which I have very little. What little I have my father gave to me. Thus goes the tune of my predicament.

This morning my father brought it up again and I erupted like Mt. Vesuvius, my anger smothering the optimistic mood of a family just waking up and threatening to overshadow the sunlight. I was violent. I hit my father twice on the arm, stunning both him and myself. I am not one to strike out, finding physical force distasteful. But this morning all the calm I had ever prided myself upon went flowing out my mouth with the escalation of my voice and soon I was screaming, clutching the pancake mix and the organic maple syrup to my chest and stabbing my finger at the cupboards, daring him to find in its depths anything else that was mine.

“Look!” I screamed, “Look! Find and purge anything and everything that is mine and I will put it away where you can’t see it!”

My father tried in vain. I could see, as he slowly pulled out each drawer and examined the contents, the glimmers of realization settling on his face; I was right. He knew it. Nothing else in the cupboard was mine.

I have since relocated the pancake mix to a seldom-used cupboard stuffed with empty jars. The chances of my father seeing it there are slim, but possible, and I hope I’m not around when he finds it. My mother spoke for me during our argument: “This is her home too, cannot she have some things of hers in the cupboard?” My father wanted to, but could not bring himself to agree. No longer will I ask him to. He is right in his gut – that I should not be here much longer. Though our house is big and the cupboards many, space, both tangible and visible, is limited.

I did not eat breakfast. Instead, I returned to my room and waited for my father to leave for work. My mother and brother took turns coming in, comforting me and urging me to change.

“You know how he is,” my brother said, “He can’t change. He can’t control his tongue.”

“If you don’t change, your life will be very hard,” my mother said, “Your father, unfortunately, is fine with the way he is.”

I listened to him shuffling in and out of my brother’s room next door, grimaced at the sound of his voice and imagined a life on my own, of my own. It seemed very far away. I thought I heard him leave and stood up to make my bed when my door opened. my father came in.

Always, this pattern. We fight, I cry, he is indignant and insensitive, and then when I least expect him to, he comes into my room and apologizes in his own way. It means everything and nothing. Everything because I have only one father. Nothing because we will argue again and I will scream again and cry again and want to strike him again.

Unless I change. My father apologized and as he did, I realized I would change. I will change because my father cannot. This pattern works for him – this is the only way he knows how to operate: put the fire out after everything but the hearth has burned. His mind is set, but mine is not.

“There will always be room for you in this house,” he said, “Not just this room, not just that cupboard.”

It was the truth, and I love him for it; it has changed me for the better.

The Digital Park Bench

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“Neuroplasticity” is taking me longer than expected, most likely because I’m spending too much time
a. reading other things
b. eating pop chips
c. waiting for laundry to dry
d. trolling my favorite websites, among them: http:thesartorialist.blogspot.com.

A few days ago, he posted a mini-documentary in which he starred, by Intel in a series called Visual Life. It’s always interesting to see the man behind the camera, and I can’t help but compare his face, his gait to that of a pro-fighter. But his voice is smooth and there is something resolute about the way his lips are pursed. An artist at work, and one who understands his place both in the streets and in cyberspace. Beautifully, he called it the digital park bench.

The Meadows

Betty1 Comment

I like to tell people that I grew up in Las Vegas. This, of course, is far from the truth. Two or three weekends out of every year does not a childhood make, but that’s the impression the city leaves on a young mind, where a string of similar smoke and light filled weekends blend together to form a distinctive period. I grew up in Vegas the way some people “grow up” in boarding schools or summer camps or their own homes before their father started to drink – when they are older and look back on these halcyon days, they are bemused both by how far they have come and how little they have changed; by the strange, distant familiarity of the face peering back from their memory.

Las Vegas, more than any other city, is a static paradox. It is both an oasis and a mirage; it is a living, breathing, growing organism and yet, a place where time – youth, to be more precise – stands still. Visitors go to change overnight, but only to temporarily revert to some youthful, fresher, wilder version of themselves at the tender age of twenty-one. Some go to change, period.

Hard to imagine that it began as a rest stop. Las Vegas, like most cities in the United States, began as a discovery in 1829 by a Spaniard named Rafael Rivera who, admiring the abundant grasses supported by underground wells, called the land Las Vegas or “the meadows.” News of beautiful places spread quickly in those days (as was possible by word of mouth and telegrams) and Las Vegas was then visited by John C. Fremont whose descriptions of the area attracted more visitors. The Mormons followed with their Mormon Fort – a rest-stop between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City – and then came the railroad which sped things up for the Mormons and cemented Vegas as a perfect rest-stop. Had you told the folks back in the early 1900’s that less than a century later the name “Las Vegas” would conjure up images of everything from go-go dancers to more Louis Vuitton boutiques per square kilometer than Paris – conjure up everything except for, perhaps, meadows – they might have scratched their heads, spat in the dust, and gotten back on the train.

Now of course, there are no meadows, at least not in what most people know as Las Vegas. Aside from expansive man-made golf courses and the strangely jungle-like conservatories of various seven star resorts, nature is nowhere in sight. She has been razed or smothered, pushed to the edge of the city to make room for manicured lawns and imported flora. The only bodies of water (on the strip at least) are man made, worthy mirrors of their natural originals: Lake Como, the canals of Venice, Mandalay Bay… I say worthy not because one can see these reproductions and say, “Ah, now I need never to go abroad,” but because these bodies of water exist so effortlessly, it seems, in the middle of the desert. Do know that one must pass geographical graveyards such as Barstow (now the premier rest stop en route to Vegas) and Baker (home to the world’s tallest and most-often-defunct thermometer) on the way to Vegas. If you have never been and are going, you cannot imagine how the city will hit you. As a handsome Australian once said to me, one late, loud night at Tao, “You have to see it to believe it.”

The idea that it was lush nature that first attracted visitors to the area is almost comical. One never hears, “Certainly, those showgirls just paled in comparison to the natural scenery I saw in Vegas,” and only when your hotel room is facing the right way (and mine rarely does), do you say, “The view from our window was amazing.” But that is not to say the the view is not amazing – and this is the beauty of the place. It began as the meadows and is now, not even nearing its end as the city of sin, of light, of excess, of sex and drugs and alcohol. The view you see today is not only the meadows, but the evolution of the meadows into America’s Playground.

Anyone who has ever driven into Las Vegas at night from southern California on the I-15, knows this. Every time I go to Vegas, I drive and in nearly twenty-five years as a passenger of this drive, and several times in recent years as the driver, I have yet to grow tired of that opening view. Somewhere between Sloan and Arden, just before Paradise, the road takes a slight curve uphill through a low mountain range. It is around the time you and your carmates get restless, eager to get out, check in, stride across the ringing casino floor, unpack, start drinking, eating, dancing – in that order. The minutes are ticking away and half your party is already there, half in your car, another half on the way (in Vegas, no one does math). So the climb uphill. The last leg. Anticipation builds. It’s dark and despite your headlights, you strain your eyes as though you’re driving through dark, cosmic chaos.

Suddenly, the road dips and nature herself nudges you along. The mountains recede with their craggy arms outstretched, bowing wickedly to present to you the sprawling, sparkling spread that is Sin City. A sharp intake of breath. Glittering lights, geometric improbabilities – a pyramid! A Castle! A vortex of steel, concrete and glass! Paris! Venice! Imperial Japan! – all less impressive than their originals but no less startling when one encounters them in the desert. And always, without fail, as the car glides downward into the glittering mouth of the Sierras, I think with such pride as though humanity itself were my son, “Look at what man has done in this desert.”

The Genius Agenda

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Today I walked up three flights in Wheeler for what may be the last time. I dropped off a small box of almond cookies from Trader Joes, along with a garish, glittery Christmas card, addressed to my Hitchcock Professor, the one who, though gay and single, taught me so much about looking and about love.

In the middle of the year, I had gone to his office hours.

“You need to speak more in class,” he said. “You have an intelligent face and I’m sure a brain to match. Share the wealth.”

What else could I but agree?

“What other classes are you taking?”

“Nabokov and Milton,” I replied.

“And Hitchcock,” he added, leaning back into his chair, “You’re taking the Genius Agenda.”

Two weeks ago, he threw a small party for our class in lieu of a screening, and, holding an alcohol free spritzer in his clean, well-manicured hands, went around to each group and asked after our winter plans. He was going to Tokyo, a one-man tradition he undertook each year, preferring to spend the holidays in a foreign land that has since become familiar to putting up with the trials of being a single, gay man at large family functions.

“I just love Tokyo,” he said, “It’s just my absolute favorite city. It’s a shame I just can’t learn the language.”

Later, as the rest of the students thanked him and milled out, a few classmates and I stayed behind to invite him to drinks.

“I’ll just have one,” he said, and gaily donned coat, scarf and beanie, and walked down to the bars with us. Though young at heart – outfitting his lectures with vivid gesticulation and quick steps – he is an older gentleman nearing seventy. His soft white hair is cut close. His skin is always a pale pink, his eyes bright and twinkling (had he been straight I would have pegged him to be one of those “wicked old men,” who, having pinched a girl’s bottom, would wink slyly) and his pecs disproportionately robust compared to his rather thin legs, accentuated by his fitted trousers and denim. From his CV, I gathered he has an interest in body building, health and wellness, which he somehow worked into his academic work at Harvard, Yale, and now Berkeley. He was born in San Francisco. And now, he has returned to San Francisco.

He had two martinis, all the while regaling us with stories from his past, which was far less wild than we had assumed. “I did have a wild period,” he said, “but it came far after everyone else’s wild period and, now that I think of it, wasn’t very wild at all.” Though he was open – a rarity for professors, in my experience anyway – there were certain subjects we didn’t broach. But I gathered that he lived alone in the city, had no lover to head home to, and that at his age, finding a partner was no less difficult than for a single woman in her forties. I wondered if there was a special someone waiting in Tokyo. Nevertheless he smiled often and before bidding us farewell, went around and hugged each of us (he smelled, I imagine, of Bond no. 9 cologne). I asked if he would drive home.

“I take BART,” he said.

I was surprised. The man dresses as though he were a Fashion Editor at GQ – his office is strewn with bags from Barney’s and Hermes, his tennis shoes are LV, his belt and laptop case unmistakeably Bottega, his watch, a simple, understated stainless steel Cartier. His pecs, hard as they might be, are unfailingly wrapped in the softest cashmere. His eye for fashion is not limited to himself. It is from him that I learned that Doris Day’s gray suit in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” was, in fact, Dior. I didn’t peg him as a BART man.

“A few years ago I had an accident,” he said, “And you know, some people, they shake it off. Get back on the horse. I never got back on the horse.”

I understood, I said, the BART is fine, even though we both knew the BART was awful, especially when compared to Tokyo’s unfailingly pristine and punctual transport system. But I had a hunch that in Tokyo, he was a cab man.

“You were a wonderful class,” he said, before slipping out the door.

—-

Today I took the elevator up to floor F of Dwinelle, for what may be the last time in a long time. I slipped into his box another garish Christmas card, this one filled with a small essay, written with love, restrained. I walked down the hall to my lovely professor’s door. It was closed, but through it I could hear his rich, low voice discussing something or other with a young female. A graduate student, most likely. I lingered outside for a moment, pondered knocking, imagined being let in, and giving the man a hug, breathing in his laundry fresh scent (what else could he smell like?) and rushing away before he could see my eyes tearing up.

Yesterday evening I handed him my final exam and he stood up like a gentleman to hand back my final paper (A minus).

“Let me know how the Fulbright turns out,” he said, and I was so moved by his concern (feigned or not) I nearly wept in front of my classmates bent heads. They scribbled furiously. My mind raced. What could I possibly say to this very special man?

“I will,” I whispered, “Thank you, Professor.”

I walked home in the rain, knowing God was indulging me my melodrama. But truly, to know that I would very likely never see him again… it was a strange thought. People tie you to a place. I wanted him to know that. In the garish card I thanked him for his patience in discussing papers and my plans after college. I thanked him for encouraging me to stay in school – “I think you should finish,” he said, when I went to him feeling lost in the art history department. “Change your major, do what you have to, but you should finish.” I changed my major. It meant I would stay an extra semester, but an extra semester led me once again to his classroom, and to him.

Earlier this semester he sent an email to say he would be missing one lecture and one office hour:

“My mother has been ill for a while and has taken a turn for the worse. I will be back in class on Tuesday and hold extra office hours…”

Two weeks later, nearing a paper deadline, I went to see him. I asked about his mother. Perhaps she had recuperated? He never indicated that anything grave had happened and had reappeared the Tuesday following his email with a rather humorous lecture.

“She passed away,” he said, “She was sick for a long time.”

I was startled. Watching him teach and discuss so earnestly our silly paper topics, one would never have guessed his mother had just passed away. He had, in fact, leading up to her death, been flying to and from New York to see her and in a week, would return to New York for her memorial service.

And that was all. His mother was ailing. His mother died. And through it all he taught and taught, never once letting on.

And now I stood by his closed door. The empty hallway echoing like an old, bad dream, but for the future rustle of an envelope being torn open, a tasteless, glitter-covered Christmas card extracted, opened, and read. My prim penmanship burning into his eyes. At least for that. I too, had never let on.

—–

Today I am studying for my last final exam, on Milton. I cared little for my Milton Professor and more, surprisingly, for Milton. He recommends change, and cautions me with a warning as I leave Berkeley for home and other places:

“Farewell, happy fields
Where joy forever dwells; hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
Receive they new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter were, if I be still the same?”

Literary San Francisco

Betty1 Comment

Grace sent this link to me today: “Literary San Francisco” and it churned a memory:

On the BART I once sat next to an elderly man who worked at Bolerium Books in San Francisco’s Mission District. I know this because he was answering letters to prison inmates who were requesting books and the letters all had “Bolerium Books” stamped upon them. I nearly missed my stop because the letters were: funny, sad, hilarious, surprising, awkward.

A clip, if my memory serves me right:

“Hey Dave! (and I assumed the man’s name was Dave, even though according to the article, the owner of Bolerium is named John Durham.)

Thanks for those books you sent me last time – they were so great. I can’t believe we bombed Hiroshima just like that and it was so devistating. I am sort of talking to this girl now though and she is really into astrology so can you send me some books on astrology and what ever else you think would be a good read. Time goes by pretty slowly here, you know that Dave, so anything interesting would be greatly apreciated. Thanks, Man you are the best!

XXXX”

There were a dozen more, each written in a boyish hand and varying in neatness – mostly though, the letters seemed to be carefully written. I imagine there is little to do in prison but to write carefully, letters to elderly men in bookshops. I wanted to ask him if I could just read them – (and of course understand the logistics of how a convict could suddenly be “talking to a girl”) but of course letters are very private.

He was a wiry gentleman, with a salt and pepper beard and wearing faded green fleece vest with an even more faded plaid shirt underneath. He sat with a simple canvas bag in his lap and with wrinkled fingers with lead smudges on the tips, thumbed through the letters. He licked his finger before turning the page, boldly, I thought, considering where the letters were from and in the quiet, steady way he read and took notes, his expression static, he seemed to me from another era. He jotted notes at the end of each letter, marking what types of books (ranging from history to religion to health) each inmate wanted and then put the letters back into their envelopes, which I saw were from at least four different prisons up and down California.

Anyway, after that I always meant to visit Bolerium, but never got around to it. But they do some good work. I think it’s great that convicts want to read.

The Road

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On Facebook, a high school classmate recently changed his profile picture to one of him and his son. If there’s a surefire way to alienate certain Facebook stalkers (or just, you know, members of your high school class who are still in college) it’s putting up a photograph of you, your kid and your wife/husband (whose presence is implied as the photographer). It’s even more startling than the status updates that say So and so is “engaged” or “married,” not least because of that old adage: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Continue reading “The Road” →

Preparations for Unrequited Love

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Five days before my second lunch with Ben, I did that creepy thing where I whitened my teeth. Whitening one’s teeth is not in itself creepy per se, but to whiten the teeth in anticipation of a lunch with a boy whose interest in you can be summed up with an amiable shrug – why, he lunches with anyone who asks! – is just the tiniest bit creepy.

Continue reading “Preparations for Unrequited Love” →

Creativity vs. Energy

Betty2 Comments

Lately, I’ve been feeling like an editor. It’s not a bad thing.

By chance, always by chance, I came across a wonderful book by Betsy Lerner, a former book editor and current book agent. I like to think that fate brings me to the same authors over and over again and that these writers carry me through various critical moments in my life even though I gravitate towards certain sections of the bookstore (fiction and literature, cooking, biography, etc.) Having stopped in Moe’s between classes, I was in a hurry to attend my next class but the fastest passage out of the tightly packed bookstore was blocked. To avoid a rather large and surly man who had parked himself in between “New Non Fiction” and “Sale Literature,” I took a right into “Resources For Writers,” a section I normally avoid. It’s populated by writers whose take on craft is often too personal or narrow for me to truly learn from. Their advice, though varying in degree, never strays too far from what I already know: write what you know; set a schedule; write everyday; don’t kill yourself, etc. etc. But the cover of “The Forest For the Trees” caught my eye (pencils that sprout into trees) along with the author’s name. I picked the book up, knowing in the back of my head that I would be late for Milton; after all, I had just become reacquainted with an old friend.

Six years ago in New York City, I teetered on the brink of self-destruction. I was a college student, but went seldom to class except to turn in poorly written papers. Instead I divided my waking moments between a twenty-four hour grocery store near my dorm and the cozy interior of Shakespeare and Co. and similar bookstores. Thus: when I wasn’t buying pints of ice cream, pots of double clotted cream, Oreos and scones, I was in a bookstore trying to feed what psychologically, was the same hunger. No drugs, no alcohol, just sugar and salt to (vainly) satiate some insatiable loneliness. One afternoon, after a particularly loathsome episode which most likely involved all four aforementioned foods, I came across “Food and Loathing,” Lerner’s memoir about her struggles with her weight. She had written it after her first book, “The Forest for the Trees,” but looking back, I am grateful to have read them in reverse order.

“Food and Loathing” was a paper mirror: two hundred or so pages written by a woman I had never met and who was many years older. At her core however, she was essentially the same person as I. She was a writer. I aspired to be one. She had come to New York to do an MFA; I too, was a student in New York. The city was a foodie’s heaven, but we were bingers, not foodies, and thus we were in hell. I hated the book because one hates the ugly parts of ones reflection but loved the book because she was I and her words, my thoughts.

Lerner’s book did not propel me out of my despair as I had hoped it would, but like a good friend her words held my hand and sat with me in the dim dorm room and showed me that I was not alone. The sad irony of course is that everyone struggling with their weight knows they are not alone, that there is most likely (especially in college) a girl next door going through the same self-inflicted ordeal, but like the desire to become a writer, it is a lonely struggle and as much as we would like to, we seldom talk about it.

Eventually, I returned home and in the warmth of family and friends, reestablished myself as something more than just a mouth, stomach, fat. The rewiring of my brain took some time – in fact, it is undeniably a work in progress; sometimes the wires twist and tangle and I feel I am back at square one – but what I had never lost was rediscovered and, I like to think, strengthened. I began to read in earnest and to open my eyes, to look and see at the folks around me and question my place in the world only in my ability to understand it. This is what I have begun to accept about my abilities as a writer, and as in her first book, Lerner’s “The Forest For the Trees” reaffirms this notion. That it is okay to think like this, to recognize potential in shortcomings. I am not a creator but an interpreter.

Lerner was a both: a poet, promising enough to be accepted to Columbia and later, a successful editor and memoirist. But it signifies something to me that her most successful works are a memoir and a book about her experiences as an editor, the latter which she crafts into advice for writers. In “The Forest For the Trees,” she mentions “giving up on poetry.” She says this almost matter-of-factly, and I am moved by her bravery.

In a previous post I wrote about my struggles to write short stories and fiction in general – I still hope to do so some day, but there is also a satisfaction in knowing that there is a place for writers like me (and perhaps a steady job too, in editing) where real life provides the framework and we put our lens over it, our brush and color in the flesh, the flowers, the fruit and the trees. When you read, you see our colors – and in this sense we are artists too, but there is no fantasy involved – nothing imagined or created, just the language of our illustration.

This too, I think, is what I like about editing – regardless of what – a friend’s essay, poem, or personal statement – you give me the body (with too little or too much flesh) and whatever I return, is hopefully enhanced with my energy.

In her book, Lerner quotes the famous editor Maxwell Perkins, most known for editing such literary greats as Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Wolfe:

“An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to an author. Don’t ever get to feeling important about yourself, because an editor at most releases energy. he creates nothing.”

In a sense, this is what I aim to do in writing. Not to create worlds a la Rowling or Orwell, but to re-create the worlds you and I already know: my worlds – Taipei, Berkeley and where ever else I will eventually explore – and the people in them. Once it seemed a strange goal – flat, underwhelming. But honest. After all, one must build the vessel before attempting to reach the stars.

Procrastination Kills

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Recently, loved ones have taken to congratulating me prematurely.

“You’re almost done! You must be so excited!”

“Just three weeks away!”

“I’m so proud of you! Do you want anything for graduation?”

“A graduate! You’ll be just like Dustin Hoffman in that one movie with the ambiguous ending!”

No one’s actually said the last one to me, but it’s the statement to which I can provide the most accurate response.

Lately I’ve been stalling. I haven’t been writing except for lame one pagers in my diary (pining about ‘Ben,’ mostly) and I certainly have not been reading for or participating in class discussions. True, “graduation” is only three weeks away (two, if I subtract the week of Thanksgiving, as I will be home for its entirety) and true, time, in its inevitable way, will fly, but right now, this Tuesday evening, the unwritten pages of final papers are piling up and I haven’t a clue as how to tackle them. It’s no longer a question of motivation – I haven’t been motivated to do well in school since senior year of high school – but rather, an issue with…”What now?”

I didn’t expect this stupid, common question to hit me too like the proverbial ton of bricks, but it has and my face hurts and so I’m asking: What now? I can see into the immediate future. I will graduate. With above average grades, below average affection for my alma mater. (At the department store the other day, I overheard a teenage boy discussing Berkeley and Brown – “I like both,” he said. I looked up from black boots that didn’t exactly fit, my face red, “Choose Brown,” I said.)

I know myself – writing papers assigned by youthful and elderly professors alike is, regardless of my attraction to them, like pulling teeth – and I will write them. I will turn them in and if they are graded by professors, will garner generous grades. If not the professors, then bitter, stingy GSI’s (graduate student instructors), who, if the holiday spirit vacates their hearts at the wrong moment, will damn my papers and final grades to scholarly hell (any grade below an A minus). I don’t want to be cast into that hell, especially not in my last semester, but while it’d be great to leave Cal with an academic bang (3.9 decibels loud!), I am wearied by all this relentless reading and writing and listening. I have waited six years to tune out higher education and on the 17th of this December, 2010, I will finally plug my ears and walk away.

My dear aunt called from Taipei two evenings ago. It’s been my spoken plan now, to leave the States for one or two years and fashion a little expat life for myself on the seventh floor (the most modest penthouse there ever was) in our family’s building on Dong Fend St.

“There’s a fine English cram school near my work,” my cousin told me happily. Both she and my aunt anticipate my return, as though my presence would somehow breathe fresh life into their self-perceived dull ones.

“There’s no one here to make waves,” my aunt sighed into the phone, “And Karen wants to live with you on the seventh floor. Perhaps things will be more exciting this way.”

And I’ve no doubt things will be exciting – I’ll teach English, make a killing (especially now, with my degree!) and shop, dine, watch movies whenever I please – it will be a more mature, more fabulous version of my life in Taipei nearly five years ago, when I tutored privately and taught at the National Taipei College of Nursing. Karen and I grew up together and the plan is to continue growing (or perhaps halt the aging process) while living out our single girl life in Taipei. Is this viable? Is it possible? Am I merely planning some elaborate escape? Taipei, despite its cloying humidity and bustling streets, is my mental cryogenic freeze. I go there to pause. To put “real” life, whatever that is, on hold. Ought I do that for more than six months not to mention a year? Or two?

I have my concerns, not least of which is Taipei’s dating scene- a veritable pond sans fish for a big-boned, deep-voiced, giant shark like me. (I believe I did, yes.) The year and twenty-three summers I’ve spent in Taipei have revealed that my “type” of man does not exist in Taipei. And if he does, he is there only briefly, on a stopover perhaps to bigger and more important cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong or Tokyo. No, Taipei gets the stringy foreigners from Europe and middle America – the guys who are misinformed about but endlessly by idiot Taiwanese girls. They come with pale, blotchy skin, holey t-shirts, and those disgusting sandals with the velcro straps and in the heat, break out in the worst cases of yellow fever known to man. Speak perfect English and their eyes glaze over – they don’t want communication, they want dumplings spooned into their mouths with submissive coos.

Equally repulsive are the wealthy ABC’s (American Born Chinese) and TEABRGHTWFD (Taiwanese Educated Abroad But Returning Home To Work For Daddy). When we were younger, my cousin and I studied my aunt’s wealthy friends, dreaming that marrying into one of these families was certainly the fast track to wealth, power and consequently, happiness. Thank god we developed brains along the way. Despite our meager (future) jobs and pitiful paychecks, we still have, in our fathers and other men we admire, standards to adhere to. And I confess there’s a bit of self-loathing going on here – I’m terrified of being my parents’ charity case (hence the plan to teach English in Taipei) but I would hate to date or marry another charity case, regardless of how lucrative the source of the charity may be.

Thus one setback Taipei might pose is the potential throwing away of two perfectly good years of my twenties. I’m not getting any younger. The crows feet that have stepped into the corners of my eyes are only getting deeper (and funny, I’m not laughing all that much). I’m not thinking too much. I’m thinking critically about my situation as a woman in the world.

Another crux: professional progress. Of course I can pledge to write everyday about the sights and sounds of Taipei and of my family – and most likely, I will, but how diligently will I revise? And how ardently will I complete the applications for the MFA programs I’ve also been crowing about? That was the whole plan, after all – graduate, move, teach, write, apply, enroll (Brown, UCI, Iowa – in that order), learn, write, publish, teach at Harvard. The master plan.

And now that’s it’s written and will soon be posted, I feel better. Now that it’s written, I can see how far this plan is, how strange my fears sound and how very achievable it all is. My imagination is quite vivid. My age still young.

My essays all due in less than three weeks, still unwritten. As long as they remain unwritten, the master plan will seem hazy and far. I can’t have that now, can I?

To Nabokov, Milton, Hitchcock and Wagner (the last not a famous writer but an adorable professor with an unfortunately dull class) – may you all see me to the end.