Tuesday, November 13, 2018
11.12.18 | Cal Academy #cnftweet
Hearing about my therapy, she invites me to the natural history museum. She understands, she tells me—she’s gone through something similar. Our first exhibit is the stingrays. They swim laps below our feet. “Do you think they ever get sad?” we ask, simultaneously.
Monday, October 22, 2018
10.22.18 | Impostor: A 53-Word Story about Doubt
Lee graduated as valedictorian from Princeton. It’s a small school, she’d say. But when she promptly got her dream job, then a promotion within months, she grew anxious. Could this all be an elaborate prank? She paused to check the difficulty settings. Oh—she’d been playing as a white male this whole time.
Monday, April 27, 2015
04.27.15 | Lunghwa
1
I take a break from researching the Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre. On Facebook my friend posts a photograph of the windy desert of Manzanar. She is there on a "pilgrimage," she says, to honor her heritage. Japanese internment: 1) the interning of Japanese; 2) the interning Japanese. One so well-known it has become a cliché. The other a whisper among international students in a high school in Shanghai.
2
When things are not named, do they disappear?*
If a tree falls in a forest onto the man who felled it, does it still make a sound?
3
We sat on the steps to the Big Auditorium, sipping our black tea from wax-covered cartons. We were a landmark at the school. If a teacher needed one of us during lunch break, they would know where to look. We made it onto our high school's Wikipedia page—one would instantly recognize us if they knew where to look.
You know that new indoor swimming pool by the dorms? someone asked.
Yeah? someone responded.
I heard that someone hung himself there before it was a swimming pool.
Hanged.
What?
What was there originally?
I heard our school used to be a concentration camp.
An azure-winged magpie shrieked as it fluttered across the grid-like forest of dawn redwoods.
Who was interned here?
I don't know.
Who'd you hear this from?
My English teacher heard from someone else.
Wasn't there also a teacher whose daughter drowned in Zhongxing Lake while chasing after her ball?
I think I've heard that before too.
I wonder if any of these stories are true.
4
The Shanghai Civil Assembly Center consisted of eight branches. The largest one was Lunghwa Camp, or the Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre. During the war period, it incarcerated a total of 1 756 people. Of these, Britain yielded 1 584, Belgium 39, the United States 37, Australia 32, Canada 24, the Netherlands 17, New Zealand 11, South Africa 7, the Soviet Union 3, Portugal 1, and Norway 1.
There were seven main buildings and several large wooden barracks. In the 59 dorms were 127 rooms for families. The death rate was one in twenty. James Graham Ballard lived amongst the incarcerated.
Lunghwa Camp had been converted from a school—longmen shuyuan, or Dragon Gate Academy—in 1943. In Chinese mythology, a carp becomes a dragon once it leaps through a particular gate. Dragon Gate Academy was intended to be such a gate. Inside the main classroom building, the Chinese character for "dragon" has been written in 115 different styles and engraved upon the lobby walls. The chandelier above has an upward-jumping carp as its body.
5
We loved exploring the vast university-like campus. We spotted out-of-place cement formations and hoped they were tombs. We slunk into the Big Auditorium through windows left open because the doors were locked to keep us out.
The building was under partial renovation but we climbed the scaffolding above the stage, through off-limit corridors and bedrooms that belonged to an older era, through metal bars, and more windows. We found our way onto the shingled roof. We stood there triumphantly, overseeing the campus hiding beneath the lush canopy of trees. We saw our director walk by and we felt an excitement that came from being above authority.
6
J.G. Ballard: English novelist, writer of Empire of the Sun (1984), which was adapted into a film by Tom Stoppard and Steven Spielberg three years later.
Jim Graham: the small English boy with sad-looking eyes who often sat on the balcony of the assembly hall, gazing down at Lunghwa Camp. The assembly hall would later become Shanghai High School's Big Auditorium, upon which my friends and I also perched.
7
Near the cafeteria, we stumbled across a gate. Behind the gate was a garden. A few days after we discovered the garden, a padlock was added to the gate.
Across from the garden gate, we found a derelict brick house among a yard of weeds. We began circling the structure and believed it to be deserted, until we heard the sound of a radio through one of the windows. We found the front door—a screen door—and saw an electric white rectangle shining through. A dog inside jumped at the door, scratching and barking at us.
We bolted.
Who could possibly be living there? Staff members of the school?
No, that can’t be.
Freeloaders?
Why would there be a house here?
I would later learn that the house was a ruin of the Japanese guards’ dwellings, but I never found out who was living there that day.
8
The tree lies on the ground, but the act of falling is imagined, a hypothetical.
9
To verify the location of certain buildings, I look up Shanghai High School on Google
Maps. For some reason the satellite image shows rows and rows of apartment buildings where the main entrance should be. Has even the school been erased from memory? I have not returned in two years, but how can I not have heard of such drastic changes to the campus?
10
A history teacher at Shanghai High School International Division argues that while the Chinese government has been calling out Japan for its atrocities against the Chinese, the sufferings of foreigners who lived in China remain unseen and unheard. Though Empire of the Sun was set on the campus, very few at Shanghai High School realize that it is their campus.
He suggests that a reason for this suppression is the many Japanese students on campus.
11
Stumbling across the fallen tree is imagined, but the incarceration truly happened.
The history teacher now gives tours and is making a mobile application as a guide for the school’s devastating past.
12
On Google Maps, the satellite image map for Shanghai is not aligned with the map of the
roads. The realization took me several refreshes of the page and ghostly streets through buildings.
13
The tree lies on the ground, and we are putting up a cautionary sign for those who fail to see it. The history of Shanghai High School and the incarceration of civilians from members of the Allied forces shall be remembered. At a school whose curriculum teaches the World Wars and Cold War three times between grades 6 and 12, its own role in the story is finally heard.
———
* A line from Gina Apostol’s novel Gun Dealers’ Daughter.
I take a break from researching the Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre. On Facebook my friend posts a photograph of the windy desert of Manzanar. She is there on a "pilgrimage," she says, to honor her heritage. Japanese internment: 1) the interning of Japanese; 2) the interning Japanese. One so well-known it has become a cliché. The other a whisper among international students in a high school in Shanghai.
2
When things are not named, do they disappear?*
If a tree falls in a forest onto the man who felled it, does it still make a sound?
3
We sat on the steps to the Big Auditorium, sipping our black tea from wax-covered cartons. We were a landmark at the school. If a teacher needed one of us during lunch break, they would know where to look. We made it onto our high school's Wikipedia page—one would instantly recognize us if they knew where to look.
You know that new indoor swimming pool by the dorms? someone asked.
Yeah? someone responded.
I heard that someone hung himself there before it was a swimming pool.
Hanged.
What?
What was there originally?
I heard our school used to be a concentration camp.
An azure-winged magpie shrieked as it fluttered across the grid-like forest of dawn redwoods.
Who was interned here?
I don't know.
Who'd you hear this from?
My English teacher heard from someone else.
Wasn't there also a teacher whose daughter drowned in Zhongxing Lake while chasing after her ball?
I think I've heard that before too.
I wonder if any of these stories are true.
4
The Shanghai Civil Assembly Center consisted of eight branches. The largest one was Lunghwa Camp, or the Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre. During the war period, it incarcerated a total of 1 756 people. Of these, Britain yielded 1 584, Belgium 39, the United States 37, Australia 32, Canada 24, the Netherlands 17, New Zealand 11, South Africa 7, the Soviet Union 3, Portugal 1, and Norway 1.
There were seven main buildings and several large wooden barracks. In the 59 dorms were 127 rooms for families. The death rate was one in twenty. James Graham Ballard lived amongst the incarcerated.
Lunghwa Camp had been converted from a school—longmen shuyuan, or Dragon Gate Academy—in 1943. In Chinese mythology, a carp becomes a dragon once it leaps through a particular gate. Dragon Gate Academy was intended to be such a gate. Inside the main classroom building, the Chinese character for "dragon" has been written in 115 different styles and engraved upon the lobby walls. The chandelier above has an upward-jumping carp as its body.
5
We loved exploring the vast university-like campus. We spotted out-of-place cement formations and hoped they were tombs. We slunk into the Big Auditorium through windows left open because the doors were locked to keep us out.
The building was under partial renovation but we climbed the scaffolding above the stage, through off-limit corridors and bedrooms that belonged to an older era, through metal bars, and more windows. We found our way onto the shingled roof. We stood there triumphantly, overseeing the campus hiding beneath the lush canopy of trees. We saw our director walk by and we felt an excitement that came from being above authority.
6
J.G. Ballard: English novelist, writer of Empire of the Sun (1984), which was adapted into a film by Tom Stoppard and Steven Spielberg three years later.
Jim Graham: the small English boy with sad-looking eyes who often sat on the balcony of the assembly hall, gazing down at Lunghwa Camp. The assembly hall would later become Shanghai High School's Big Auditorium, upon which my friends and I also perched.
7
Near the cafeteria, we stumbled across a gate. Behind the gate was a garden. A few days after we discovered the garden, a padlock was added to the gate.
Across from the garden gate, we found a derelict brick house among a yard of weeds. We began circling the structure and believed it to be deserted, until we heard the sound of a radio through one of the windows. We found the front door—a screen door—and saw an electric white rectangle shining through. A dog inside jumped at the door, scratching and barking at us.
We bolted.
Who could possibly be living there? Staff members of the school?
No, that can’t be.
Freeloaders?
Why would there be a house here?
I would later learn that the house was a ruin of the Japanese guards’ dwellings, but I never found out who was living there that day.
8
The tree lies on the ground, but the act of falling is imagined, a hypothetical.
9
To verify the location of certain buildings, I look up Shanghai High School on Google
Maps. For some reason the satellite image shows rows and rows of apartment buildings where the main entrance should be. Has even the school been erased from memory? I have not returned in two years, but how can I not have heard of such drastic changes to the campus?
10
A history teacher at Shanghai High School International Division argues that while the Chinese government has been calling out Japan for its atrocities against the Chinese, the sufferings of foreigners who lived in China remain unseen and unheard. Though Empire of the Sun was set on the campus, very few at Shanghai High School realize that it is their campus.
He suggests that a reason for this suppression is the many Japanese students on campus.
11
Stumbling across the fallen tree is imagined, but the incarceration truly happened.
The history teacher now gives tours and is making a mobile application as a guide for the school’s devastating past.
12
On Google Maps, the satellite image map for Shanghai is not aligned with the map of the
roads. The realization took me several refreshes of the page and ghostly streets through buildings.
13
The tree lies on the ground, and we are putting up a cautionary sign for those who fail to see it. The history of Shanghai High School and the incarceration of civilians from members of the Allied forces shall be remembered. At a school whose curriculum teaches the World Wars and Cold War three times between grades 6 and 12, its own role in the story is finally heard.
———
* A line from Gina Apostol’s novel Gun Dealers’ Daughter.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
11.01.14 | Coincide
The universe is trying to tell me something, she thought, when she finished her shower gel and shampoo on the same night. The bottles sighed pomegranate and mint when her fingers embraced them, but they oozed no fluids—they were dry. Empty.
Both of them.
This is rarer than cosmic alignment, she thought.
It’s like— like emptying a jar of peanut butter on the same sandwich as a jar of jam.
And three days later, it happened.
She did not have time to wash the jars before work, so she left them to soak in the sink. She did, however, have time to make coffee and discover that—of course—the lone coffee filter remaining in the carton would contain the last of her coffee ground.
No doubt about it, the universe was definitely trying to tell her something.
Everything’s dying.
In pairs.
And I will die alone.
—
When predicting a series of coin flips, one typically would not predict more than five heads in a row. The coincidence would be too absurd.
But when a coin is actually flipped and yields ten consecutive heads, people flip.
Statistically speaking, any permutation of such binaries would have the same probability. Heads-tails-heads-heads-tails is just as likely as heads-heads-heads-heads-heads.
That was what she told herself.
Assuming a fair coin, at least.
Coincidences aren’t supposed to mean anything.
—
The next morning, two doors down.
He held his milk carton vertically over the bowl, and shook it slightly, examining the white beads as they fell. The cereal crumbs that had been at the bottom of the bag now floated at the top of the bowl, trembling as the milk drops struck the surface.
He blinked.
Finishing these on the same day—what could this possibly mean?
Both of them.
This is rarer than cosmic alignment, she thought.
It’s like— like emptying a jar of peanut butter on the same sandwich as a jar of jam.
And three days later, it happened.
She did not have time to wash the jars before work, so she left them to soak in the sink. She did, however, have time to make coffee and discover that—of course—the lone coffee filter remaining in the carton would contain the last of her coffee ground.
No doubt about it, the universe was definitely trying to tell her something.
Everything’s dying.
In pairs.
And I will die alone.
—
When predicting a series of coin flips, one typically would not predict more than five heads in a row. The coincidence would be too absurd.
But when a coin is actually flipped and yields ten consecutive heads, people flip.
Statistically speaking, any permutation of such binaries would have the same probability. Heads-tails-heads-heads-tails is just as likely as heads-heads-heads-heads-heads.
That was what she told herself.
Assuming a fair coin, at least.
Coincidences aren’t supposed to mean anything.
—
The next morning, two doors down.
He held his milk carton vertically over the bowl, and shook it slightly, examining the white beads as they fell. The cereal crumbs that had been at the bottom of the bag now floated at the top of the bowl, trembling as the milk drops struck the surface.
He blinked.
Finishing these on the same day—what could this possibly mean?
Monday, June 11, 2012
06.11.12 | Ginkgo Biloba
Goethe wondered
Whether the bi-lobed ginkgo leaf
Represented a rift
Or a marriage.
All I know
Is that in this golden grove
Our minds intertwined
And became One.
Whether the bi-lobed ginkgo leaf
Represented a rift
Or a marriage.
All I know
Is that in this golden grove
Our minds intertwined
And became One.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
2011.11.12 | poeir
Published in the Oct 2011 issue of SHSID|Times.
I spilt the sun and drank the clouds and slept among the winds.
I learned their songs and stole their hearts and locked myself within.
I spilt the sun and drank the clouds and slept among the winds.
I learned their songs and stole their hearts and locked myself within.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
09.25.11 | An Ode
To love, or not to love?
That is the question—
Whether ‘tis nobler for the soul to suffer
The golden arrows of mischievous Cupid,
Or to take arms against a sea of passions,
And by opposing, quell them?
That is the question—
Whether ‘tis nobler for the soul to suffer
The golden arrows of mischievous Cupid,
Or to take arms against a sea of passions,
And by opposing, quell them?
Saturday, July 30, 2011
07.30.11 | we play our cards
Cometh.
Don't tell me
someone
taps
on the porch.
I don't want to hear
sudden touch
crosses slowly.
Don't ask questions.
The Cardinal's.
I see you,
we met before.
His name and
settled first
smiling for the photo.
We play our cards.
I may change,
I was doing wrong.
There was a mad dog.
We've been waiting.
Don't tell me
someone
taps
on the porch.
I don't want to hear
sudden touch
crosses slowly.
Don't ask questions.
The Cardinal's.
I see you,
we met before.
His name and
settled first
smiling for the photo.
We play our cards.
I may change,
I was doing wrong.
There was a mad dog.
We've been waiting.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
06.02.11 | What I Should Have Done (But Didn't)
I saw what you did
with that unripe Persimmon.
It had fallen off its Tree,
wanted to be free,
but it shriveled up
and died.
You picked it up,
just as you always did
with all the other little things
that caught your eye—
but you didn't put this one
in your pocket,
to my surprise.
You cupped it in your hands
and walked to the side of the road.
You placed it there
in the fertile soil,
to return it to the Cycle,
fulfilling its dream
betimes.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
05.20.11 | Image of Imago: The Cabbage White
From afar it looks complete—head, thorax, abdomen. The antennae protrude from the head proudly but limp, and the four fragile ivory wings look more elegant than ever, as they are motionless. The feathery scales are silky as my fingers skim over them.
What delicate creatures, butterflies are.
But this one's dead.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
04.05.11 | Just the Two of Us
I dreamed we were geese. We were sitting there in the grass, just the two of us, neither of us talking, but both fully understanding the other, without words. The sea breeze smelled of tears that day.
Monday, April 4, 2011
04.04.11 | Just Shoot
She loved taking photos. Just for the fun of it. She didn’t care about how artistic her photographs would turn out or what she could do to make them “prettier”: they captured the teensiest points of time that would have otherwise slipped away, forgotten, abandoned, thrown into the realm of all the other things—whether joyous or tragic—consigned to oblivion, because she knew that behind every point lived a story.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
03.27.11 | Like Sand through my Fingers
Isn't it just so damn annoying when you wake up in the morning and think that you did not dream, only to be proven wrong later during the day when something you do triggers a sudden memory of what you dreamed of the previous night, after which you, just as suddenly as the familiarity came, forget what triggered the memory as well as the memory itself?
Saturday, December 4, 2010
12.05.10 | Imitation of a Notebook
(As written on the inside cover of my notebook.)
This is an imitation
of a ‘notebook’.
It appears to be
a stack of thin sheets of pulped wood and fibre,
bound by metal rings,
sitting here in your hands,
waiting,
waiting,
waiting…
But what does it wait for?
you ask.
Does it await
the settling of your dreams
into this curious integration of squiggles
called words?
Does it await
the spilling of your ink and graphite
after battles
of ideology?
Or does it await
the true awakening
of your enigmatic mind?
Ah,
I say.
It does not await a thing,
for this imitation of a ‘notebook’
is merely a figment of your imagination.
This is an imitation
of a ‘notebook’.
It appears to be
a stack of thin sheets of pulped wood and fibre,
bound by metal rings,
sitting here in your hands,
waiting,
waiting,
waiting…
But what does it wait for?
you ask.
Does it await
the settling of your dreams
into this curious integration of squiggles
called words?
Does it await
the spilling of your ink and graphite
after battles
of ideology?
Or does it await
the true awakening
of your enigmatic mind?
Ah,
I say.
It does not await a thing,
for this imitation of a ‘notebook’
is merely a figment of your imagination.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
07.27.10 | Amelia Earhart
To delve into a sea of blue
And not get wet
But still feel the exhilaration—
Now, that is the magic
Of flying.
To hear the sound of wings
And imagine
I am a bird, whisp'ring
To the people and trees
That swish by,
I am victim
To the lure of flying;
I am a hobo of the air.
(Note: the last line is a quote by Earhart herself.)
And not get wet
But still feel the exhilaration—
Now, that is the magic
Of flying.
To hear the sound of wings
And imagine
I am a bird, whisp'ring
To the people and trees
That swish by,
I am victim
To the lure of flying;
I am a hobo of the air.
(Note: the last line is a quote by Earhart herself.)
Saturday, May 8, 2010
05.09.10 | Alphabet Soup
I am swimming in a sea of commas and semicolons, trying to reach punctual shore, but these raging asyndetons and clauses and appositives and polysyndetons keep crashing, crashing, crashing at my power of will, trying to push me below literal surface. What is the meaning behind all of this?
But I don't want to drown in its seemingly bottomless sea. I wish to just stay on the surface, to make my way to Euphoria as soon as possible, where I'll finally be free of the strict rule of Syntax. Just swallow the words, I told myself. No need to digest—just keep going.
There are now predicates on my tail. Looking for their subjects, perhaps? But I have none to spare, for I am trying to survive; I have a goal.
I swim faster to prevent their action-verb teeth from chomping off my toes and feet, but homophones are straining me, pulling me in all directions but up. Who commanded all these actions?!
My body is tired. I have gained quite a distance between the predicates and myself. I take one gulp of air and decide to let go for a moment, to immerse myself briefly, just once. Beneath the surface I saw monsters - metaphors, similes, symbols, allegories. Terrified by their overwhelming complication, I resurfaced.
The shores of Euphoria are closer now. I see the waves of words crashing on the shores and breaking into letters and sinking into the sand to settle there as forgotten lore, meaningless. I could feel the sea loosening its grip on me, but due to my fatigue, I could not swim much faster.
After a while, I finally am washed ashore, out of breath.
But I don't want to drown in its seemingly bottomless sea. I wish to just stay on the surface, to make my way to Euphoria as soon as possible, where I'll finally be free of the strict rule of Syntax. Just swallow the words, I told myself. No need to digest—just keep going.
There are now predicates on my tail. Looking for their subjects, perhaps? But I have none to spare, for I am trying to survive; I have a goal.
I swim faster to prevent their action-verb teeth from chomping off my toes and feet, but homophones are straining me, pulling me in all directions but up. Who commanded all these actions?!
My body is tired. I have gained quite a distance between the predicates and myself. I take one gulp of air and decide to let go for a moment, to immerse myself briefly, just once. Beneath the surface I saw monsters - metaphors, similes, symbols, allegories. Terrified by their overwhelming complication, I resurfaced.
The shores of Euphoria are closer now. I see the waves of words crashing on the shores and breaking into letters and sinking into the sand to settle there as forgotten lore, meaningless. I could feel the sea loosening its grip on me, but due to my fatigue, I could not swim much faster.
After a while, I finally am washed ashore, out of breath.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
08.26.07 | The Phaeton of Death
Riding up and down the streets
Does the driver steer his horse;
In and out of alleyways
Does Death keep his destined course.
Turning corners big and small,
He looks forward and behind.
At every stop he welcomes
Spirits of varying kinds.
Some are young, and some ancient,
Others guilty for some crime.
All are being sent to be
Either tortured or divine.
The Phaeton so dark and drear
Was made of sable hawthorn,
By mischievous Death himself
On the day our Earth was born.
Death and Phaeton shall remain
As one, doing what they must.
They wait, counting our every breath,
For, what is Life without Death?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
2007 | Tears of God
the no
rain . wa- . more . a- . a-
comes . -shing . does . -mong . -mong
down . a- . man- . our . our
like . -way . -kind . own . own
tears . our . have . cha- . blood
of . sin. . to . -grin, . gin.
God, plod
rain . wa- . more . a- . a-
comes . -shing . does . -mong . -mong
down . a- . man- . our . our
like . -way . -kind . own . own
tears . our . have . cha- . blood
of . sin. . to . -grin, . gin.
God, plod
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