An Illustrated Mind, Part 2

Music: Bloodbank by Bon Iver, Laughing With by Regina Specktor, and The Garden That You Planted by Sea Wolf

An Illustrated Mind, Part 1

Music: China by Chris Holmes, Postcards From Italy by Beirut, and How It Ends by Devotchka

Words

One morning I woke up not knowing where I was. My bed was suspended on a tightrope between grass and gravel, and it was tipping precariously towards the chasm beneath. I’ve never been able to balance.

Quark by quark I crept toward the grass, because grass is prettier than gravel, obviously. It wasn’t until hours later when I realized that I forgot two directions: Up and Down. I am mildly superstitious, the kind of person who always has to tie the left shoe before the right, except that I live in Marin now and I always wear flip flops, so I looked up first. I saw a cloud. It looked awfully fluffy and inviting, but what if it was only fluff? Besides, if I chose to go up then gravity would inevitably bring me back down, so I guess up and down are really synonymous in practice, even though the dictionary says they’re antonyms.

Below me I didn’t see anything, which was scary. I don’t know why nothing is scary, but it is. I don’t really understand the word nothing, because nothing is something. The word nothing shouldn’t exist. So I looked down at the nothingness realizing that it was actually something, and then I looked in front of me realizing that I was no further along than I had been before. I didn’t want to be suspended forever, but I didn’t have the courage to stop clinging (don’t we all?), so I go of myself to let go of the rope by making myself into an inanimate object, which is good, because when you’re relaxed the impact of the fall is weakened. Falling is only scary for a minute or two, and then you start to relax. That made me feel better. Then I got bored. Isn’t that strange?
I got really, really, really bored because I was just falling for what seemed like forever into nothing which was something! Gradually, boredom gave way to hunger (how long had I been falling?), but you can’t really eat food when you’re plummeting towards oblivion, not that I had any to begin with, except for tic-tac’s, which I always have, but I was afraid of choking on them, which has happened before because I accidentally fell asleep with tic-tac’s in my mouth.

So I ate words instead: big words and small words and articles and prepositions and verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs and I couldn’t stop.
Pejorative.
It.
But.
Fuck.
Catalyze.
She ran into a wall and didn’t stop.
And.
Louisville.
Ojala.
Acquire.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Respond.
Please.
And it went on and on and on like that (I should have known to savor them) until I felt sick but I was addicted (how could I stop?). Yesnomaybe as Halt! Finally came out of my mouth and I regurgitated the intoxicating libretti. It came out and out and out of me as if I were rewinding the last forever time. Blood. Guts.
Bones. I thought there would be nothing left inside of me.
And then I stopped falling and I stopped feeling because I had no words left.
Nil.
I had landed on a pile of words.
My own words, that is, if words can belong to anyone.
No, they can’t.
I landed on a pile of everybody’s words.
I’m still there, right now.
Searching for a way to put the words back inside of me.

A Day at the Beach

I went to the beach today. I frolicked with Grace. I ridiculed Lizzie and her boyfriend, Dylan. I saw the waves lick the beach and reach out towards my feet—I let them. I saw the vast sky of H2O inspire its curious tongue. I felt the vestige of the sea cling to my ankles and the fringe of my mahogany corduroy pants. I felt the soft foam and wished that all the world could be as tender. Remnants of seashells lay scattered across the shore, already picked apart by cavorting, rowdy children. But the ocean doesn’t mind—it likes to give, and every day it will continue to do so.
Lizzie and Dylan touched each other and clung to each other and doted on each other like teenage love. They danced and Dylan lifted her up and carried her in his arms and when he set her down they landed on a fury of sand and laughter. They petted each other like household cats and they were beautiful to watch because of their carefree happiness and sun-tousled hair. It was fun to watch them, or funny, because they took all their frivolous gestures so seriously and I couldn’t help harassing them even if I wanted to.
Grace and I pressed our bare feet on the air-pockets of the sand, delightfully satisfying some odd and inexplicable desire that neither of us knew we had. Every once and a while we would peer over our sun-brushed shoulders and laugh at the oblivious and inseparable pair behind us.
Days like this are never supposed to end… I would give everything for those minutes to be converted into years… and for those years to be the whole of my life. But my wish will not be granted, so I will content myself with my memory and when I find myself in my wretched bio class I will recall that this time yesterday or the day before yesterday or a week or a month or months ago I laughed and skipped and cared for nothing but the moment and dreamed of nothing but to be myself and be where I was forever.

An All American Girl (maybe)

I was blessed with a "normal" name.
Ashley is a normal first name. Qing, my mother's first name, is not.
Thompson is a normal last name. Yang, my mother's last name, is not.
At least not in America.
I have always been relieved with the fact that no one could ever immediately identify me as Chinese. No one could ever just look at my name and say "oh, she must be Chinese." Ashley Thompson is an average, American name, and as long as I do not join the Asian student alliance, eat rice and pot stickers, or associate myself with any Chinese stereotype, everybody will think I am American--one of them.
However, my face has betrayed me.
I do not look like Mulan or what you probably imagine a Chinese person looks like. I do not have "squinty" eyes, I am of average height, and I have an American nose (thanks dad). But there is something different about my face that makes me look Asian, especially when I smile with my teeth. I try not to smile with my teeth. Perhaps it is my lips and my round face. My mother thinks they are a good thing; she says I inherited them from her.

My mother is Chinese. My Dad is American. They divorced when I was two. A year or two later my mother married a very American man, my step-father--George. My dad married a very Chinese woman, my step-mother--Mae Sie. My primary custody went to my mother.
She is not easy to get along with; her normal voice is a yell, when I was little she was always in bed, talking to her Chinese friends, and she killed my pet rabbit and ate it for dinner.
When I was three my mother, step-father, and I lived in Ohio. I went to pre-school. They didn't speak mandarin or Cantonese there. English became my primary language, and my step-father became my primary parent.
He took me everywhere; he told my that my B's were backwards when I learned how to write; he tickled me and told me stories. He told me that I was American, and American is the best thing to be. He taught me how to do things the American way: fast food, cars, t.v., movies and pizza on a Friday night.
My mother made me frog legs when I was little. They tasted just like chicken, but Americans do not eat frog legs, so I spat them into my napkin when my mother was not looking. Once, I had a birthday party at my house. The pizza guy was late, so my mother served my friends dried seaweed, drumsticks, and fried rice. My friends loved it, but I was humiliated. I never had a birthday party at my house again.
When I was fourteen, I allowed my mother to go to a school function. She asked parents what grades their kids got, how much their house cost, and how many bedrooms they had. I never let her go to a school event again; but that was okay with her, she thought they were all snobs anyway.
When my mother and I go grocery shopping, she takes at least ten plastic forks, knives, and spoons, plus a stack of napkins from the counter. She only buys clothes from Nordstrom, so that when the season is over, she can return them. She detests American food and complains out loud about the prices so that everyone can hear. She tells me that when she was young, always when she was young, she was smart--the best in the school. I do not believe her. "This from a person who uses double negatives and has never been able to help with my homework once," I say.
My dad, my biological dad, whom I visit every holiday, is the parent I look up to. In my mind, he knows everything. He has speaks eloquently, he is presentable and up to date with the world, he is wise. This man, with an IQ of 150, is my father, and I'm proud.
In class a couple months ago, we were discussing nicknames or something and I exclaimed: "My dad calls kids turkeys!'" Some kids laughed, but a boy sitting across from whispered to his friend: "It must be some Asian thing." I replied: "My dad is from Kansas!" And in my mind I thought: "That's right, I am an American, just like you are."
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am seeing things from a different perspective than I need to. I speak like an American; I speak English. I do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese anymore. I think in English, my mother thinks in Cantonese. Maybe if I learned to speak Cantonese or Mandarin and think in her language, my mother would be smarter. If my dad were to move to China and speak a foreign language, I bet he would not sound all that intelligent either. I bet I would look up to my mother, and my father would be the one I was embarrassed of. Maybe, mom, I need to give you another chance.