Transition

Back in Hong Kong now, but in between was Vietnam. In between was boats, noodles, sun and sweat, friends, tapioca pudding and pineapple, motorbikes, sesame tofu, honking, garbage, buses, more boats. In the air I tried to remember each moment, a list of sorts, recalling what was special and what was mundane. I conjured only flashes of gold light and the heat, like a wave, like a blanket, like all the ways we can describe the kind of heat that both hits like a brick and lulls like a song.

I want to remember the last few days and record them in high definition, but am focused singularly on getting home. I am focused on my inbox, and this time tomorrow, when I will be back in my office, drinking an iced Americano after running at the gym, telling my stories to anyone who will listen.

My flight was delayed four hours; I chat to Marina online, and when I tell her its due to congestion in Chinese airspace, she messages back, the bad traffic has extended to the skies. I laugh out loud, and make up my mind to buy another fashion magazine to pass the time. Now I am drinking a beer, wondering why I feel a little sad. Vietnam was a wonder, an unfolding, but it seems so far away already. I have a nagging sense of abandonment, perhaps because I left my old friend and my new one in Hanoi, but I’m not sure. I’m tired and tense, and already trying to craft the story of this trip in my head. 

Travel writing is hard. Travel blogging is harder. It is a delicacy. Most of the time, it is a kind of wide-eyed arrogance. I remember a writing professor always asking, why, why are you telling this now, and something my friend Liz said a while back, about always keeping an eye on the narrator. Well, I am the narrator, and my eyes are all over the place. Looking right, left, forward, back, back, back. Why do I want to tell you about Vietnam? Because I am telling stories to anyone who listens. Because I am so happy to be going somewhere, to be moving forward, even it is simply from a plane to a bus to a boat and back again. 

This is all all I can come up with now. More soon, I hope. 

This weekend was a little rough, so obviously on Sunday night the only thing left to do is drink the last of the chardonnay, practice braiding my hair, and listen to this. 

(Source: Spotify)

Hungry

I asked my friend’s 10 year old daughter if she thought I would like The Hunger Games. She looked at me, squinted a bit, and said, “Well, you’re pretty into girl power, right? You’ll like it”.

I should have run out then to start reading. But I waited. A few more friends, my age, said, yeah, yeah, yeah, read them.

Read the first two books in big, hungry gulps, and now starting the third and final book. I read it on the subway, while crossing the street, in taxis, in bed and while making coffee.If I didn’t insist on B reading them as soon as I’m done, I think I would probably just start over from the beginning.

Getting super fangirly over Katniss. She’s everything I ever wanted to be.

sisterwolf:

Julie Andrews - 1950’s Promotional Photo

en route to hanoi

first, five hours in hong kong. outside the ifc mall, facing kowloon and directly above a construction pit, i am reminded how normal hong kong is. how high brow, even, compared to the mainland. my lunch was 80 dollars; some squishy eggplant and a salmon wrap from a grocery store downstairs, and aside from mcdonalds, it was the cheapest i found.

i walked laps around the mall, aching over whether to spend 200 HKD on a pair of sunglasses or fifty on a box of herbal tea. In the end, it was tea, and some make up fom clinique i bought rather rashly, after dotting a bit on my face to pass time. in the mirror i looked renewed, pimples covered or faded, my mouth a pop of cherry. I saw myself, and though: yes, good. i will take it. my future self, richer, better looking, creamy skin.

here i am surrounded by corporate workers on their lunch breaks, shoppers with lattes, and the occasional airport escapee. i know my own by the tennis shoes, the backpacks, the wrinkled khaki pants. We ring out like alarms amongst the crisp suits and high heels, everyone here is manicured, coiffed, poised and posed. the place is part of their purpose, and i keep forgetting where i am. behind me there was a rattling sound, like coins in a platter, and my eyes rolled up. a beggar, here? i can even conjure a face, the wrinkled woman who begs from the brunchers on anfu lu, her voice raspy and dry, the sound of it like a brittle leave skating over bricks. but when i turn, its a blond baby i see, shaking a plasic toy, squealing with glee.

and with that, i know i am an asshole and i gaze back out into the construction pit. start journaling, but just the fact that i am using the word journaling, and using actual pen and paper to do i, tells me i am of context. this is the land of smart phones.

transcribed from my journal onto my ipad, please excuse the typos.

it’s gonna take a long long time/but we’re gonna make something so fine

It’s kind of a strange day; wet and warm, the air is heavy with a yellowish fog.  It is the kind of day that asks, why?, and what for? Slowly emails roll in, with lines like lets see if we can do better next time and please reply at earliest convenience and looking forward to your ideas. I am only looking as far forward as the next cup of coffee, the next song, the next blink of my eye. Last night I was in a two and half hour meeting with scowling faces, eyes rolling, brows cocking. At one point, I thought: this is my life, slipping past me. I left with a headache but walked home anyway, dodging bicycles and beggars, silently saying to the green light of each available taxi, ‘go’ not ‘stop’. I thought how funny legs are, the grip of hips just above them, the delicate management of muscles.

A migrant worker smiled at me as I passed by the metro, shouldering a biandan with baskets filled with cherries on either end. Hello, he said. Hello! Cherry! The cherries were a deep purple tangle in the basket, something about them was promising, a bundle of sweet and smooth, summer is champion/lets get dizzy in the grass. I looked up then, for stars, but saw none. The night was warm enough for jackets to stay unzipped, for bare ankles. I let my breath expand across my ribcage, it moved horizontally and pushed my ribs, like a curled fingers unfurling inside of a balloon. Summer always comes, and comes earlier each year. That is our curse, and our blessing; the crux of it, really, is that summer is always comes, and we think it will be different. The street vendors will sell cherries and durian, the meat will spoil beneath the tiny fans whirring the flies away and we’ll smell it from the street corner and nearly gag, the exhaust from cars and busses will be sucked into our lungs and pulled into our pores, the heat will be oppressive. The city is a warden, the weather is her prison. Looking out my window now, I see cyclists in rain ponchos, and pedestrians with slick, dark umbrellas, like oversized beetles on the bridge below my apartment. The neighborhood below is crumbling, literally; ceilings caved in, trash piled up inside, tarps over windows and laundry flapping like a strange nation’s flag declaring, yes, we’re still here. In a year, it will all be gone, razed, and in its place an office or high rise. I wonder where I will be. I think of my body, how will it look in one year? Fatter, leaner? Which muscles will be sore? How many new gray hairs, how many eyelashes will have fallen out unnoticed onto my cheeks?

I have one eye on my inbox tab, the number ticking up every hour or so. I wrote two emails to old friends this morning, and I am waiting to hear from them despite knowing there is a fourteen hour difference between us. I open a few more emails, browse a news site. Today is a day for waiting. Tomorrow is a day for starting something new, and making it different from today. 

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sisterwolf:

Marlo Pascual, Untitled