"Why did you choose to come here?"

Every time I am asked this question, I will gravitate towards a templated answer which I will adapt with some slight changes here and there to accommodate to different settings.

It's a perennial question - why are you here?

My answer is standard and maybe strategic and impressive to some. A senior at work in Singapore said to me, she wished she had that courage and the wisdom to make this move when she was my age.

Why am I here?

This question was popped again most recently by a thirteen year old girl from Hunan.

She fired a series of questions at me in a manner that was part old soul and part naivety.

"Jiejie, why did you come to Shanghai? How long do you intend to stay here - indefinitely or a few years? Do you miss your family? Do you think it's important to leave home, to leave your parents at some point? Would you do this again (volunteer)?" 

She probably had no concept of expat living or relocation, yet she quizzed the same questions that were running through my mind the past few weeks.

Maybe she could tell. Maybe my face said it all - a composed countenance, but under still waters were crazy currents waiting to capsize a boat or two, adrift in a strange country that I call my roots.

Between both of us, perhaps she understands the confusion that is brought about by migration more than I do -  she lives in a boarding school away from family, away from love and security... she reached out for my hand more readily when we were walking through the aquarium - she knew what to do.

That night when I was exchanging texts with a friend in Sydney in a world that is completely different from mine, I suddenly came to terms with this - my answer - my standard answer - was a three-quarter of the truth.

It was there all along - I had evaded this reason because it was not cool. It was not cool to admit that in my first weekend here in Shanghai, the feelings i dreaded and loved the most were still there, easily reignited with a few texts.

Because how silly it was to say out loud you left because you would like to escape, shake some demons off, stopped being hit by waves of unrecognisable emotions when you had too much to drink, because you wanted to dot your journal and postcards and posts and pictures with something fresher, new stories, new feelings, a new sort of pain! How shameful it was to say you grew tired of your own unreciprocated love.

How silly it was to say I left because of love or lack thereof even if that formed only a tiny part of the reasons.

Ten months had passed.

In a small room where I once had a conversation with a senior a year ago:

"I know... everyone will have this China or overseas work dream some point or another in their lifetime. I know you are extremely resilient... but you know, it is not for everyone."

"I know, Liz*. But I ask myself, what is the worst thing that can happen? If I like it, I stay on. If I dislike it, I come back. What's the worst thing that could happen?" I said passionately, with that note of urgency, impatience, persistence that my mentors perceive as (a healthy dose of  - my interpretation) defiance.


I knew I had to go before I drove myself crazy thinking about the future and letting the past eat me up.


That’s why.



*Liz: fake name.

Knotty

Knotty
[not-ee]
adjective, noun, adverb, verb

Can be defined as:

1. Tension, possibly unresolved and never will be
2. A dance between distance and intimacy
3. A war between belief and delusion

***

Knotty
isn't a pretty gift bow
it is tense,
twisted in summer twilight,
frays kneaded
skin on skin,
hands clasped,
legs locked.

isn't logic
it is art,
extraordinary
souls hooked
biting lips
neck burns
imagine and real,
deeply, deeply
seared.


isn't sad, no,
it is what-ifs,
echoing in the
hollows of the
kinks, high and dry,
wrung, and
high again
trembling
awakenings
in the middle
of the night

defy, sink, resist, cave in
fall, guard, open, close,
open, close

a trance on repeat, lost
in the unwritten lines
running across us,
from your body to mine.
where do they start?
where will they end?

you and i crossed
so tight, so snug, so taut,
with the ends turned away from each other

that is -
the knot.

snip it off,
shall we?

could we?

image credit: @wuukasch and @chema_madoz

True Story

Someone asked me today, "Are your stories true? Are they your own stories? Did they really happen?"

"What do you think?" I said invitingly and wistfully.

It is a question I have asked myself from time to time too.

Did they really happen or were they figments of my imagination?

Bali

Busy but slow.
Lazy, very lazy but delightfully so.
There was no agenda or no strategy.
It was just making sure I got to the next rock that was right ahead of me,
a rock that I could just slip and fall on yet overcome anyway.
It was a place of 'yes, let's just roll with it.'
It was saying yes to dirt, grime, mosquito bites,
to feeling the wind in your hair on a motorbike ride offered by an overly confident local
to an accidental exchange with a Dutch that I share a bit of a common history with while walking down the flight of stairs to Bingin Beach.
Even falling ill seemed like an eternity.
Drifting in and out of consciousness while curled up on the starched white bed
with a thin linen blanket over me, I was happy to recover
in my own pace. There was no hurry to get somewhere.
or anywhere for that matter.

P/S:
Fresh coconut water and great friends
add to the magic of Bali.

Portraits of TwentySomethings: The Spark

She woke up with a start. She felt the summer heat creeping onto her face that was now blotched with make-up from yesterday. The first rays of sunlight were streaming in through the balcony. Had she slept at all or had she really been in a state of reverie for the last four hours?

She felt exhausted. She pulled away the starch-white bed cover and sat on the edge of the bed. The carpeted floor seemed to beckon to her earnestly. She wanted to collapse on the ground, lie flat and then wait for the rest of the room to dissolve into the blots of colours she saw that night when she was intoxicated with psilocybin mushroom.

And finally she thought they should just all vanish together.

She closed her eyes for three seconds. She straightened her back with dignity, and as crazy as it might sound, hoping that the straightness would somehow make everything right again.

She opened her eyes.

Nope, nothing has changed. This is fucking real.

She stood up and started picking up and putting on her clothes strewn around the room piece by piece in an almost robotic fashion. A gust of wind slapped her face. She was glad it did.

Slap me a few more times.

She walked to the door. Is that door her escape or a trap? She couldn’t tell anymore. She turned back and took a long and

meaningful glance at the man. She could finally see his face again. Perhaps there were a few moments in the last four hours when she could feel every ounce of the energy radiating from his body, count every pore on his face, smell the bittersweet, stale fragrance of the cigarette lingering in his ash-brown hair. Yet when she opened her eyes, still on his bed, she felt nothing but the emptiness that wrapped tightly around her little lithe body. His back was facing her. He was about eight inches away then. She had wanted to reach out to him.

Now she felt like she was overlooking this entire scene like a tourist and he was the citadel standing on the hill in Vilnius or another ancient city, just some slabs of rocks stacked on each other. Irrelevant and far away, like a tiny peck on a panoramic photo taken from an even taller tower in the city. Been there done that and crossed off from the itinerary, she heard the voice of a tourist who had ambitiously conquered every attraction. The following day, the tourist would feel the ache in his calves and the fatigue taking over his body from the day of scaling the hill. You almost always feel something after.

What am I feeling?

The silence was too hard for her to bear. She closed the door behind her. 

***

Portraits of TwentySomethings is a series that capture the dilemmas, struggles and dreams of the TwentySomethings whom the curator believes have the flow and are courageous to choose the pain in a bid to achieve their dreams. They are pretty much (amazing) work-in-progress. 

*** 

30 Days of Writing - Write Yourself Alive - Day #3

I.

She was a hurricane; she crashed into his world, uninvited but welcomed. Who wouldn’t want an awakening? He knew all she needed was just a hiding place. The entrance was made with grandeur, her eyes alit with candour, yet when the curtain fell and the wind died down, the wailing was no more than a whimper.

He fell deeper every time she tried to threaten the sturdy pillars of his but he would not fall just because. The tendrils from the trees around the house came alive in her presence but extended themselves too to grip and pull him down to earth. She wanted to blow him apart and have him concede defeat. Do not fight nature! Yet this house had sheltered her well. Her conscience had to be clear. From the outside, the house looked splendid with its white picket fences and the swing in the porch. He would make a handsome home for others. But as the hurricane, she had made a tour of the interior, and she knew there was some plumbing to be done.

***

II.

She is unthinkable. Up till now.

He can’t let his thoughts linger any second longer.

Nor can he tell the difference between frisson and fear.

Knees knocking, arms crossing, eyes locking and averting, sighs colliding.

Fingers, light against her shoulder.

***

III.

She is unfazed even amid turmoil but she knows that she knows.

Between a giver and a receiver,

That shared knowledge alone is assurance and reassurance.

***

Writing Prompt #3: Write a short story about yourself as if you were psychic and able to read the thoughts of those around you. A brief character study of the inner workings of the people around you.

30 Days of Writing - Write Yourself Alive Day #1

Every time I lay my fingers on the keyboard, something mysterious will clench my heart tightly – a signal sort-of for me.  Don’t go there, it seems to say.

I browsed through the scribbles in my Notebook. 

Half-formed sentences. 

Tangled mess of quotes. 

Well-crafted, slightly neurotic observations that may never see the light. 

Power-packed one-liners. 

If I have them strung together and inked in black and white, they will come alive. They will no longer be the fleeting products of intoxication or extreme rumination. Real. Ugly. Scary. 

Please don’t, it whispers again. 

I broke my wrist once. After the cast was removed, I tried turning my wrist. When I failed to feel anything initially, I freaked out. Maybe, I thought then, I wouldn't be able to do anything with my hands anymore. I'm typing now.  In the end, my wrist still works after much wriggling. 

So it will be ok --  learning to write again will be ok.