poem 2 in progress

linked, hand to hand across the street
you steer your eyes in fear
that, is where the white van lurks
we're both exposed

what's there to fear I ask, you
drift in a distant zone, how
you surrender before you've even fought
this horror before you lives beyond

me, look, let you be snatched will I?
my power's quiet, beyond you, within me
keep faith, and watch, me, confront it,
white van, bring it

insurmountable, hopeless, all in vain,
you know more than me -- sadness.
even so we ought together stand
linked, hand to hand, embrace tragedy

poem in progress

the way you walk, your feet unmoving

are you fairy-like, an inch above the ground or
denied your soles, suffering and vexing?

is it sheer confidence in the road you walk or
an inkling you might anytime snap and fall

then am I to rally strength to catch your fall or
to stack fences to guard your capriciousness

and be content to observe this fond mystery or
to vainly retain pebbles of your humanness in a jar

only to have not retained enough for me to see you or
have I too much retained, to see you when you're not here

the way I...

Vivified

Roaming around the mall looking for a table where I can read and write. The mall is for shopping and browsing goodies, who brings a sack of books to the mall to read and write? This is the kind of unbalance I'm living through.

I settled at a reposeful corner on the steps of a sunken platform, under the skylights of the grand atrium. I opened my books and scribbled away. I wondered if at any time during my meditation someone had stolen a contemptuous glance at this solitary figure scribbling alongside a sack of books in a mall. It doesn't make you special, I told myself, not by sitting there, feigning romance, looking pretty, teetertottering your head as you ponder pies in the sky.

As I finished with relative satisfaction the work I had set out to do, I turned on some music, and things came alive. What had resembled a band of hollow-eyed zombies marching monotonously (as they always did in malls)now suddenly vivified, on the surface, at least, as if they were sprinkled by things glossy and colourful. It was electrifying. That people were ascending and descending on the escalator called to mind an assembly line of dolls in a toy factory. Their heads looked bigger too.

I need a break >_<

Just taking a break from my storywriting today. It's actually not easy trying to write an unplanned story like this, just adding on, episode-by-episode, day-by-day. Each day I try to advance the story, I try to put my characters in new perspectives, new dimensions, explore new vistas of chaos along the way, then polish it -- the latter being the most difficult part! I fear showing my writing raw, it feels like stripping in front of people. I'm not superficial. I just want to see it clearly, and I want you to see what I see, that's all.

I don't know how the story will unfold. I don't know what'll happen to them. I don't know what's wrong with Adelaide, to this day, I still don't know. How confident are you in this storyteller? Is this the way to write a story, unplanned!? Have you tried driving out in the country at night with no headlights?

This afternoon I revisited an old box of music. Inside, a song, a few lines in particular, kept whirling in my head.

假使愛長存心裡 假使我共你相距 就讓呼呼風雨問我怎面對...

Untitled Story - Episode 6

Andy waited the entire Friday evening. It was almost midnight when he gave up waiting and called her. A woman picked up and asked him why he called this late. Andy apologized and asked for Adelaide to call him when convenient. When he asked if everything was okay, the woman said yes and hung up.

On Saturday he waited all day. He was surprised that he could wait like this, in an absolute vacuum, having only Adelaide on his mind. He observed the entire birth and death of a shadow as it slanted and stretched along his bedroom wall. Then he went to the bathroom mirror to wipe a layer of dust off his forehead. It was dark. He wandered off to Victoria Park to catch a football match just before kick-off. Night games were usually more exciting because the lights accentuated a player's every movement, but tonight, the players chased the ball around, there was no formation, no strategy, no passing, no goals. Still, one team celebrated in the end, so he figured somebody had won. He went home. Adelaide hadn't called.

On Sunday he waited until five o'clock when the sun was setting. He thought it more worthwhile to watch the colours of the sky than to watch shadows move along the wall. So he took his bicycle. It gave him immediate freedom. He rode to the village square. He bought chips from the snack bar and ate it sitting on the bench, observing the neighbourhood from an angle never before explored. Then he moved to another bench and caught a different view from a different angle. Then he sat on a curb to catch a dog's view of the streets. He felt very small. The sky changed from orange to purple to night. He went home. Adelaide still hadn't called.

Andy stared at his telephone. He saw it change from white to orange to purple.

Finally, Andy picked up the receiver and dialed. The operator put him on hold. A panicky voice came through the radio airwaves, it was a man, his age Andy couldn't tell, but it didn't matter, the man talked about his dying wife. There's no hope, he said, I just make time to see her everyday after work, sit with her for four hours, and do everything possible to make it less painful. There's no hope, he reinterated. Then, he tried to justify his decision to call the radio station by saying he didn't know why he called but only wanted to tell somebody, and that there are surely people in situations more miserable than his own. A child's crying was faintly audible. The man became sadly apologetic, as if he was embarassed to be telling his problems on the airwaves, so he said goodbye abruptly. Then it was Andy's turn.

"Well, I just wanted to say... That whatever happens I like to stay positive and I think we can change things. Sometimes it's just hard to relate,"

That was all he could say, so he said goodbye very quickly, and hung up.

He had actually forgotten Adelaide for a few seconds.

When Adelaide came back into his mind, a bottle of despair struck him so deeply that he switched off the radio and fell into bed.

He imagined the view outside Adelaide's window.

Then the phone rang. She finally called.

"I called you so many times, why didn't you pick up?" asked Adelaide, in a whispery voice afraid of being heard, unmistakenly Adelaide.

"I was on the phone."

"Who were you talking to?"

"I was talking to this person, a very unhappy person."

"Did you call me?"

"Yeah."

"How many times?"

"Well, I got the impression you didn't want me to call so I just kept waiting."

"Did my mother say something to you?"

Andy remembered he had called earlier and it was Adelaide's mother who answered. That flet like a long time ago.

"I know you share clothes with her."

Andy heard the shuffling sound of Adelaide's suppressed laughter

"Don't be stupid!"

"That's what you said. Listen. I thought about the things you told me, but I still don't know what's bothering you. I know something isn't right, but I can't piece it together just yet, so you need to tell me more."

There was long pause on Adelaide's end.

"How was your weekend?" she asked.

"I had a lousy weekend."

"Me too."

Then they would meet very soon and they would talk about their lousy weekend, Andy thought, and it cheered him up. He would tell Adelaide about the spectacular lights at Victoria Park, the neglected details of the village square, and the hopeless man on the radio. More importantly, he wanted her to know that he could listen, and that he wasn't happy all the time neither.

Untitled Story - Episode 5

On Friday, Andy and Adelaide stood together at the bus stop. There were other highschoolers too, in clusters and pairs, all stood like clay figures disproportionately molded and sprinkled with cigarette dust. Andy took this moment to study the girl next to him. Not until this moment did he notice how Adelaide was very neatly dressed. The turquoise sweater she wore now she had worn many times leading up to yesterday, but only now did Andy notice how simply and elegantly it fitted her, as a thin outer layer that folded firmly over her chest and fastened in a series tiny round glossy buttons. Her dark trousers, formal like curtain, barely touched the surface of her black leather shoes which were slightly elevated at the heel, making her stand very straight with toes pointing forward at all times. It only occurred to him now how shapely and mature she looked, how aptly wrapped on this sunny warm afternoon. She held a brown leather handbag for her books.

"You look very proper. I just noticed it now. You look quite different from that mad woman on the grass yesterday."

"Are you mocking me?"

"No, I think you look great. I'm just afraid that I don't match up,"

Adelaide tucked herself closer to him.

"And I think my mother has the exact same handbag."

A few eyes looked their way because Andy had said it a bit loudly. Adelaide leaned towards him.

"I share clothes with my mother," she said.

"What?"

"And she shares them with my aunties."

Then Adelaide left her utterance floating in the air for Andy to ponder.

That makes you very old-fashioned, Andy wanted to say to her, but then Adelaide had already zoned out into the distance, the way she always did, as if she was examining the pattern of random dots in the unknown sphere. Then he thought she belonged in a hospital where she could be both a nurse and a patient. Turquoise is a nice colour, he wanted to tell her.

The bus arrived.

"It's too bad you can't join me today. I'm not as understanding as I pretend to be," Andy said.

"I'll call you, okay? I promise. And please remember what I told you today."

"That you share clothes with your aunties?"

"And everything else!"

Adelaide watched Andy watching her through a window frame as the bus rolled, a wind passed through her hair and the space around her became infinitely grand and ultimately lonely. Adelaide smiled and waved her bandaged hand while she shrank to a tiny pebble and was swallowed by the blocking streetscape.

Andy sat back and felt as elated as ever. Then he tried to recall the images of their conversation.

There was Adelaide, neatly dressed, and there was a sister with green hair who ran away from home, and a sister with green socks who ran all over the place, and there again was Adelaide, neatly sandwiched amidst the black and glossy and angular furniture and the black piano with a white bottle on top of it, I'd be as happy as a milk bottle, she said, something like that, and it was night, and he fancied watching a football match with her under the lights at Victoria Park but, I just want you to know that I'm really happy we're together, she said and she smiled and there stood behind her girls with green hair and green socks and a series of neatly-dressed mothers and aunties, and you need to remember everything, she said.

Bits and pieces spun in his head. Then he shuddered at the fact that he was bound to forget something, and how ought to write, or at least listen carefully. But he would see her soon. I'll call you, I promised, she said, and that made him feel better.

Untitled Story - Episode 4

The next morning, Adelaide sat in the classroom dressed in black, which only accentuated her pale visage, while the contour of her hazy figure faded under the monotonous fluorescent tube, showing her much like an unhappy apparition. She did not say a word to anyone, not even to Andy, who felt as if Adelaide had overnight turned into a complete stranger, awfully sick and awfully out of reach. It was hard to see that they had only laughed together yesterday.

At break time on the bleachers sat the boys and girls and Andy who was in a heavy fog under the clear bright sky. He thought about pianos, black pianos, brown pianos, shiny pianos, pianos with three legs, pianos with four legs, pianos with none, pianos with keys missing, pianos that fly in the air, pianos that shatter on the ground, pianos cobwebbed in very old houses. He thought about Adelaide and wondered what Adelaide thought about last night. He thought about how Adelaide liked to wander through the building by herself, and how he might be able to catch her if he started to wander through the building by himself, so he got up, just as Adelaide was plodding her way toward the bleachers. But instead of sitting with the group, she moved to the near corner of the football pitch and plunged onto the ground, heavily, and it looked like she was kneeling on the grass with her legs tucked under the draping of her oversized black shirt, her hands hidden in the drifty long sleeves. The boys and girls all gathered around her.

"What's wrong, Adelaide?" said a girl friend.

"What's wrong, Adelaide?" repeated Adelaide herself, mimicking.

"Nothing can be so bad. Cheer up."

"Nothing can be so bad," Adelaide repeated.

"You can tell us what's wrong."

"Yes, I'll tell you and you and you and you. That's what I'll do! What's wrong Adelaide? Oh! What's the matter with you? Making gloom in raw daylight. How repulsive Adelaide!" she rambled, waving her long black sleeves like a mad and mournful young woman.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you okay? What are you people doing? Go enjoy the lovely weather! Can't you see I need space? I'm brewing up a storm!"

"Let's just leave her," said one of the boys, as he led the other boys and girls away, annoyed at Adelaide's antics.

"And may it rain on you!" Adelaide shouted back.

Andy stood still as the rest of the group peeled off. He noticed a pinkish streak along Adelaide's eggshell cheeks that did not blend.

"Don't you have something to say to me?" she said in a defeated voice.

"You don't have to do this,"

"I've heard that before! Don't tell me things I've heard before!"

"Let's go."

Andy grabbed Adelaide's left wrist, the unbandaged hand, clutching and crumpling the shirtsleeve, he pulled her to her feet.

"Where?"

"Back to class. It's time."

"I'm not going there!" Adelaide jerked her arm childishly.

Andy tightened his grip.

And that was what she needed.

Her body and the wobbly thing inside her chest came to a rest like a feather's landing. Adelaide looked down and saw the many delicate patterns of the grass, every shade of green came suddenly clear, with perspective, texture, shapely tips and vivid contours. It almost brought her to tears. She felt her pulse and its exquisiteness within his grip. With her other hand, she bent and stretched her fingers within the boundary of the bandages. There was plenty space. She was alive! A light breeze brushed by her face, replacing the shade of sadness with subtle and gentle colours. Andy saw it too. He traced her smile, faint and calm and deep. He thought of many things, but he would ask her later. Now was now, and now was beautiful.

It was a mid-summer Thursday morning on a random patch of grass in a corner of a football pitch. They stood still.

Untitled Story - Episode 3

"Let's talk about something else," said Adelaide, deflecting attention away from her bandaged hand. They were sitting on a curb by the school driveway, away from the bleachers, entirely to themselves.

"So tell me, what do you like to do?" asked Andy.

"I like to play the piano."

"Do you write any songs? I always ask people when they say they play an instrument whether they write songs. If I had the skills, I'd be writing many songs."

"Well, I don't play all that much to tell you the truth," replied Adelaide, "I only play when it's safe."

"And when is that?"

"When I feel it is. Playing a piano can be very dangerous. Most people don't realize. I don't mean falling off the bench in the midst of an emotional rush and hurting yourself in the process or something like that, though that'd be kind of comical,

"One time I actually saw something, something I'll always remember, though I don't remember where I saw this, maybe I was peeking through a window, maybe I saw it in a drama, or I might have imagined it, I don't know anymore, all I know is that it's vivid in my mind. This beautiful girl was playing the piano. There was something sisterly about her, maybe she was a family friend, or a cousin I never I knew I had. She was a marvelous player, lucid and responsive. She was beautiful too, or graceful, to be more accurate. Her slender body swayed to the highs and lows of the music like tall grass in the breeze. She was made for the piano. She had very delicate fingers too. They were very white,

"She played on a grand piano. It was solid black and very heavy. I could only imagine. She had this lovely kitty too. The cat would rest on the flat surface on top of the piano while the girl was playing. It was heaven for the little kitty to stretch on its stomach against the polished surface with the melody running through its tiny body. Every now and then it peered down at the girls' fingers as they danced on the keyboard,"

Andy listened intently, so Adelaide continued.

"She was playing Moon River. A lovely piece. The kitty on top of the piano was mesmerized by the fluid movement of her white fingers. Then something horrible happened. Maybe it was a subtle movement. Maybe there was something wet or oily. Whatever it was, the kitty slipped, and fell onto the opened lid that folds over the keyboard, and the lid with all its weight caved in, while the girl was playing,

"I saw it as it happened. There was a sharp and sudden silence that destroyed everything. She didn't scream, and she didn't pull her fingers out right away neither. She turned stiff and was shivering a little. I could only imagine the shock, the horror, to see your fingers crushed before your eyes. Then she uttered something which I couldn't make out, and tears were falling, from her eyes and all over,

"I think I was crying too, but I closed my eyes, or I must have run away. I never saw her again. But the image has haunted me ever since. I love playing the piano. But whenever this image appears, whenever the lid takes on a larger life, I would stop playing. Even if I was in the middle of something beautiful, I would just stop and move as far away from the piano as I could."

Andy was clutching his collar. Adelaide zoned out for a few seconds, until she noticed Andy looking at her bandaged hand.

"No! That's not it! If that had happened to me, I wouldn't be able to do this. Look,” Adelaide wiggled her bandaged fingers, "I can move them. Hello!"

"You should take the lid off the piano."

"But that doesn't prevent other things. An anvil from the ceiling. A madman with a hammer," said Adelaide, checking Andy's reaction, "What a messed-up head."

And that was what Andy thought, but he didn't say that. It only made him think of other things to say.

"At least your ankle recovered quickly," said Andy, after a fairly long pause.

"That was nothing."

"You should count your blessing. One time, I kicked a goal post by accident, broke my right ankle and limped for the whole summer. So I thought you might have had it bad."

"Why did you kick the goal post?"

"I was sliding for the ball, it was very close to the goal line, then I got pushed from behind and went in awkwardly, you know, it's part of the game."

"So now whenever you're on the football pitch and you see the goal post, do you fear that the same thing would happen, or out of nowhere your ankle might be completely destroyed and you'd never play again?"

"No. It was just an accident and that's that," said Andy without thinking much of it, until he caught a shade of sadness in Adelaide's expression and felt a big gap that he needed to fill.

"But hey, we all have those fears. It's morbid. It's all up here," said Andy pointing to his head.

The words did not register. Adelaide only gazed into the open air.

"You know what's one of mine? Sometimes I see it in dramas. When a character wants to kill herself, she'd take a blade and…"

"Don't tell me!"

"I can never watch that! I'd get sick all over!"

They pressed their hands into their bodies. Two squeamish children slouched over the curb wincing and giggling while people passing by must have thought them crazy. Andy thought of her hand again.

"Adelaide, tell me, please. What happened to your hand?"

"I was pouring water into a cup and the water was boiling,"

"And?"

"I missed the cup. And I was holding the cup."

"That's it?"

"Yeah. It was hot you know."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Really," said Andy, then he started laughing.

Adelaide laughed too, very loudly, openly. They both agreed that she was stupid, and they both forgot themselves for a little while.

Untitled Story - Episode 2

If we turn off all the lights in the classroom, we could see a tiny trail of blue pebbles, like a chain of hovering blue dots, very deep blue, deep and neon, made visible only by the pure darkness. It is a current of deep thoughts, that flow from a spot between a person's brows to a spot between another person's brows, and vice versa. The kinetics of these pebbles is quite amazing. The subjects in question are Andy and Adelaide of course: the children who had earlier fallen and frozen. If only we could see these pebbles that were traveling between them. Then we could say, convincingly, match!

And that would have been a fine demonstration for this science class. But the lights were on. Class was on. A white fluorescent tube hummed solemnly above these young minds. Optics, sounds, and motion were some of the topics of the students' science projects today. Each student had to present their project in front of the class. Andy had just presented.

When it was Adelaide's turn, she said pass.

What pain it must be that keeps you from even standing up. What pain you must have endured yesterday and have still to endure now. So quiet this morning too, not saying a word to anyone. What complication in your expression. What mystery. How pale you still look.

Don't make me stand and talk. I'd rather sit here in one piece than to crumble before your eyes. I have no mystery. My misery is many folds. I just hope I don't have to crumble before you for you to know that I'm already broken.

Silence is tragedy. How many stories would have been and could have been had it not been our own suppression? How we want to turn off the lights!

For the rest of the day, Andy and Adelaide were each encased in his and her own bubble of deep thoughts. They drifted. They felt their bodies were shrinking to invisibility, very light, but sometimes heavy. At night they scribbled nonsensical sentences, until these sentences were all extracted from their heads, only then could they sleep, only to hear more of these sentences through their spinny heads, but still they slept well.

The next morning, Andy arrived in school through a quiet corridor. A pensive figure was coming towards him from a fair distance. It was Adelaide. She was only wandering about the building in this early morning, but now they happened to be walking toward one another and they were both internally glad. She walked perfectly, like she had recovered, or was never hurt at all. They were alone in the hall. She waved her little hand in a disconcerted greeting. It looked like she was holding a hand puppet. A fuzzy rabbit perhaps. No. They were bandages!

"What happened?"

Adelaide stood still, her eyes rolled big, unsure of what to say. She gave a face of quiet reassurance, and it looked like a funny sentence was running through her head at this moment, which gave her expression a touch of cheerfulness and irony. You're broken, he was about to say. I suppose, she would have replied. A funny wave swept over them.

Untitled Story - Episode 1

That summer, the Czech Republic made it all the way to the Euro Finals when nobody thought they'd come close. Meanwhile, in England, they still couldn't get over Gazza who in extra time had the ball on the German goal line and all he needed was a little tap.

That summer, on one of its many curious mornings, Andy and Adelaide were sitting and talking on the bleachers. More correctly, Andy and Adelaide were sitting on the same set of bleachers. Andy was surrounded by his group of friends; and Adelaide, the same. A group of boys and a group of girls were mingling. Andy and Adelaide might have exchanged an utterance or two in the midst of it all.

The bell rang. The children hopped off the bleachers and were heading back to class. We can still call them children. At least from this angle, from this distance, they look like children. Only children do what they do.

Andy walked slowly. He always did. Adelaide walked slowly too. In this sense, they matched. But as they reached the door, Adelaide tripped over the pedestal and fell on her right ankle. Her friend rushed over to help her. Andy froze.

The friend helped Adelaide walk up the stairs one step at a time. "You'll be alright. It's not too bad," the friend said to Adelaide. The poor girl was now watching her steps very carefully, her long black hair was now messy and her whimpering sounded like tse tse tse. Andy stayed close. "Go ahead. You'll be late for class," the friend said to Andy.

But Andy stayed close anyway. He felt his limbs out of place and his face very warm. Adelaide was languid and pale.

It was their fifteenth summer.

A Clear View

safe in his unshapely bubble
pondering tomorrow
he said he's thought about it.
are you seeing someone?
yes, he replied, can't help it.

til I know it's over
never would I see anyone
though I too 've thought about it
safe in this unshapely bubble
pondering tomorrow

Fences Fences

Below my bedroom window lies a row of backyards like neatly-packed juice boxes, each lot the same length, an exact rectangle juxtaposing another lot by their longer sides where wooden fences stand, separating individual backyards. I turn to my left and I can see as far as the fifth lot to my left. The lot to my right has a tall twig for a tree and the lot to the right of it is a bit wider than the rest because it lies at the end of the street. From up here the fences look short and I fancy I can hop over each fence one by one by one and hop one by one by one back to my lot like hopscotch. I tap the veneer with my index and middle fingers, skip, skip, skip, how easy it looks from up here, how fickle and unprotected.

The air is damp. It rained last night. The wooden fences are soaked from the foot up. They look like pointy shadows with layers of black and chestnut and pale green. The fading of the wet dark parts into the dry light parts is quite gothic.

Cubicle

Last night I dreamt I had my own apartment. It was on the first floor, in the backside away from the main street. My flat was very small, condensed, and clean, and had everything I needed, a bed, a closet and a writing desk, all shimmering in a coat of white enamel. The carpet was glossy peppermint green like astroturf. The flat included a tiny balcony, nothing flattering, a mere concrete cubicle that I could only curiously access by climbing through the little window next to my bed. I climbed out and was snipped by the excitement of the distant urban view. Shiny cars and shiny people moved along the main street. The streetscape was as if coated by white chocolate, and I was a part of it, at least observing from a distance, detached yet incorporated. Then I looked across the row of balconies and noticed that the layer of concrete supporting each balcony was very thin. As I scrambled for the little window, the balcony floor slanted and cracked like melting ice-cream cake and I fell, thankfully, only from the first floor.

Portrait of a Middle-Aged Cantonese Man

A middle-aged man sitting in a coffee shop speaks in loud Cantonese to his two middle-aged friends. He talks of the war and the army, raising an open hand before thumping his index finger repeatedly on the coffee table. Is there a world map on the table? Does he see, on the decorated paper cup of his coffee, soldiers sprawling in the line of fire? Has his wife been mean to him, or vice versa? He can readily name the historical events in our world. He has nicknames for people of different nationalities, and knows for sure that if one American eats cereal for breakfast then all Americans eat cereal for breakfast. He says that America is a conspiracy, that Canada is a useless land, and that terrorism is a piece of cake, all the time the Sing Tao Daily sits folded on his table, the Sing Tao Daily being the one publication that tells him all he needs to know. His exterior has the appearance of an overused ashtray. Even though his voice is hoarse from cigarette dust, he has achieved a voice so authoritative, so worldly, that it makes another middle-aged man think everything he says is right. His friends sit and nod in unison. The man leaves no space in-between his sentences, which is also why his friends only sit and nod.

Paper Stars

I had always wanted it like this, this kind of story, you on the other side of the planet, meeting once every few seasons, each time all the more special having been apart for so long, the exchange of letters and longings and the hovering feeling of having you being here without you being here. I had always wanted this. But today I feel espeically empty, even though I confirm once again I am blessed with what I've always wanted -- a glass jar of paper stars. People are always eager to throw a clump of their reality at me. They would say, "This is impractical. You've learned your lesson and it's time to move on." They don't know how lifeless they look when they say things like that.

The past seven years have given me much hope, a face, an expression, a muffled voice that awaits me at the end of a broken day. I remember many nights in my room under orange lights, pressing ink into my rarely-used stationery paper, with most certainty, all the time thinking of you and how you say you'd wait, assuring me there'll always be a place where things are in place.

You were always on my mind. How my young heart likes to drift about, but at least in the countless times I think of you, at least in those moments, I am ever so ready to give you my open palm and on it you'd see a flickering tint and I'd say to you, "this is truly me," and we'd stand there and watch it flutter in the air, curling and wavering about. It's probably easier that way, just let its movement tell the story. I wonder why in moments like that I couldn't have sat down to write you something, or taken a picture of the street and with its foreign billboards and the pedestrians that are looking or not looking at me while I think of you. You would have a whole collection of boxes by now. It's always as if the act of making something would cut into my thoughts which end up fading and I'd find myself in real place and real time again: a table, a chair, a cool night in Toronto. But that's okay, I'd tell myself, I'll tell you all about it the next time we meet.

It's not impractical. A person who spends every summer morning tending to her flowers in the garden is not impractical. A person who wakes up early eeryday to run the the same track around the neighbourhood is not impractical. A person who prays before bed every night is not impractical.

There's one thing I don't understand. I know, I know, that I'll always love you. I know it. Yet a mist has come over the image of the two of us together. There's a gap in my understanding that I'm trying to fill. There's something grand about it. People try to fill it for me with their clump of reality, and they'd say it's everybody's reality, with it comes a tone of resignation and submission to their sad truth. They don't live here. They're just passers-by. But if I had the chance to articulate it to you, I'm sure you'd understand.

Let me tell you this much, there aren't many of us left in this world. At least I'd like to think about it that way. As long as we wait patiently and unselfishly, there will come a time when we'll find our own truth, where things have always been in place and will always be in place.

---------------------------

***It was a grayish day in actuality... It was brewing up a great rain but it never came, instead the air was wet and suffocating. I wrote at home in the morning, made lunch, then went to my favourite coffee shop and settled in a bright corner just behind the brick column to relieve myself of the sight of the gray sky. I tried to continue from p.70 of Mrs. Dalloway but I couldn't. The words just passed through my head and I found myself rereading the same paragraphs. So I turned to writing instead, and wrote what I have posted above. Then instead of making the necessary turn for home, I went straight to explore the mysterious patch of land to the east of my home. I came across the 'Hamlets' of Green River, Brougham, and Claremount. What placid names, and not too far from my home. When I got home there was still plenty of daylight but I fell into a coma and slept for 13 hours.

Another Sad Happening

There's nothing more depressing than the sight of a family at a dimsum table on a Sunday afternoon with each family member perfectly content with their own intimate companion: the father with the business section, the mother the entertainment section, the daughter the Sunday magazine, the son the game boy. It's worst when they've just ordered the last dish of egg tarts, and they're just sitting on the table getting cold.

Lover's Concerto for the ESL Classroom

This song is great for the ESL classroom.
Not for the grammar. Grammar's boring.
For the beautiful language it contains.
A word here and a word there opens up a vista of meaning

How gentle is the rain
How beautiful a day it is
How I love you
How expressive our language
How archaic it feels to talk like this

Meadow... What's the difference between a meadow and a field and a park?
Meadow happens to rhyme with rainbow and window and willow and mellow

What pictures comes to your mind upon the word 'serenade'?

See there beyond the hills...
not behind the hills
not over the hills
but beyond...
crossing over, into the distance, what grandness....

Magic from above? From the rooftop? From the ceiling? From the chadelier?
Made this day for us 'just to' fall in love...
Does that mean we do nothing today but fall in love?
So this is a day we have set aside and we call it fall-in-love day.
How lovely.
Good morning dear. I'm not going anywhere today cos the day's for us just to fall in love
Are you okay?

And everything will be just as wonderful
not just wonderful but
'just as'
wonderful
cos it was wonderful before and it's wonderful now and it will be wonderful like it's always been
just as
wonderful

And while they usually love you until it's over
she says she'll love you until forever

Is it just me or do the walls really look purple?

Falling Tree

A cascade of late afternoon sunlight seeps through the holes of an intricate layer of green maple leaves, except for one spot where the contour of a girl's figure can be traced sitting on a bulky branch. She sat very still, her ankles were dangling and unmoving. A little man entered under this umbrella of a tree for a closer look. The foot of her brown dress was torn and the loose ends of the fabric fluttered in the breeze. The man observed for a good minute before he cut in.

"Must you be reading your book up there? It's dangerous," he said.

"What do you know? Have you been up here before?" she replied, still buried in her book.

"Isn't it just the same to be reading down here? Look at this carpet of green grass. Would it not be more comfortable to sit down here? What about resting your back against this trunk, or that little rock over there? Wouldn't that be safer and just as comfortable?"

She was unresponsive. The man's emergence irritated her. She began to kick the air.

"Miss, it worries me that you're reading up there. There's something unnatural about what you're doing. I'm just concerned about why you went up there, what was going through your head, and whether something happened,"

She stopped kicking. He continued.

"But then you seem to be reading so intently, not once looking at your surrounding, that I become angry over your arrogance, to be sitting up high above us, all to yourself. Look, you aren't even looking at me as I'm talking to you. Do you think you know more than the rest of us?"

She snapped her book close. She looked up for a second few seconds as a wincing expression brushed over her and she became wobbly, perhaps from having to suddenly adjust to the infinite space she had abandoned during her meditation, the same way one would react to bright lights that suddenly cut into a dark room. She dropped her book and fell. The man motioned to support her, but he doubted his ability to support her weight. A glimpse of a thought took hold and he backed up.

She landed on her left side somewhere between the knee and the hip. Then the rest of her body folded together to shield her injured body in an action that was neither a hug nor a roll but rather a desperate struggle of a person whose bare limbs were not enough to attend to her aching body. It was a frantic sprawl of a human on the grass. She pushed herself up and dashed past the man before he had the chance to make up for his inaction. He picked up the book on the ground.

"Your book, Miss! Your book!"

He only yelled once, and yelled no more. She showed no intention of wanting to go back for her book, and the man couldn't move his feet to run after her because his body was burning from the realization of something distasteful. She was now limping away, but moving awfully fast, pushing down her right side and softening on her left, in a determined rhythm as if the adjustment to this way of movement was nothing new. At what point she became totally invisible he couldn't remember. The grassfield stretched afar and there weren't any trees in the visible distance.

----------------------------

*** I wrote this story but I can't make sense of it...

Gregory's Girl

“Okay Mr. Spaceman. I’ll walk you home.”





It's amazing how the memory works

I had only seen this movie once. It was about ten years ago. Tonight I watched it again, and for the last twenty minutes of the movie, I anticipated every line, every expression of the characters, accurately and vividly as if I had seen it yesterday. I discovered once again why I have always claimed this film to be my favourite. It’s funny, honest, nostalgic and hopeful. This is how you tell a story. They don’t make movies like this anymore. There’s something charming in every scene, every line.

A movie like this more than cheers me up from a broken day.

Bubbles

Before each trip downtown, the anticipation is great. Take this morning for example, I skipped out of bed early, ate an apple in the kitchen, brushed, showered, changed. I was light and my feet moved quickly. I took minimal time to prepare myself, walked out of the house and sauntered across a green carpet of grass to get to the bus stop where four ladies in wavy long dresses were already waiting with bubbles floating above their hair. I thought to myself, after completing the day's tasks, I would enjoy the clean and crispy comfort of settling at the round tables of Hazelton Lanes where I could sit back and make faces at the people having lunch buffet in the garden restaurant and write about them.

How ironic that each time I start this journey with a complete heart, only to come back with half of it, or bits and pieces of it, and I end up feeling incredibly small. The subway ride on the return trip is usually difficult because the people and the things and the ideas I gathered from the trip and the monologue that played throughout would begin to expand and whirl in my head, making me unbearably heavy. It's worst late at night, when a person is more likely to travel with a companion, when the subway cart is more spacious, making each cluster of persons visibly warm within their own bubbles. This observation, and the exhaustion from the day's walking, only magnifies my loneliness. Times like this, though, I remain hopeful, for I'm only adjusting to the heightening of my senses which will give me much to share with you when you finally find me and sit with me; or rather, I will by that time have cultivated much space inside of me to listen to all of your stories as we sit in the subway cart encased in our own bubble.

Assembly Lines

It's a Wednesday summer afternoon in the underground shopping arcade at Bay and Bloor. The midday is alive and functioning. In front of me are two moving escalators. The right side goes up. The left side comes down. They remind me of assembly lines. People coming down from the left side have light blue and peachy tennis shirts, spotty tans, puffy chests, slippery contours, flowery sandals, ruddy faces, meaty arms that permanently hang outwards, shaved heads, greasy heads, silky textile tucked and folded under diagonal straps, a visible smell of deodorant and sex. People going up the right side are also jaunty and colourful in their own ways, but to where they are ascending I don't know. The same for those descending down here, where they come from I don't know. From my angle, the ceiling blocks the view, I cannot tell.

Misty Minty Mornings

When you wake up early with no cobwebs and bounce off the bed with relative ease, it's usually because the morning is nice and sunny and the air is breathable and you slept well. It makes no sense to spoil it by thinking about what's to become the rest of the day. Even if the day turns out to be hurtful, there's always next morning and as long as it comes, one can experience this feeling of nice morning again. This is why if I go through a day of regret, I can't wait to get up early next day, and have the morning air purge my poison. The more I hurt in the day, the more I look forward to next morning. It cleanses my heart.

More baseball pics

Players I like at this year's All-Star Game

More baseball pics to cheer you up









Yes I know ballplayers were on strike too. Don't mention it.

Hijackers

They say the librarians in our city are going on strike. Does this mean having our perfectly functioning facilities closed and our access to books denied? They say they'll close some programs for children. I makes me so sad when I hear about people going on strike. I don't understand. Why do they do it? Can somebody please explain?

I remember when my teachers went on strike. I went to school and I saw teachers outside with funny signs hanging on their necks walking around blocking the entrance in order not to let the students go to school. I remember that image vividly because a confused emotion swept over me. I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry. I just thought it was absurd.

I can't shake off the image of hijacking. Yes, hijacking. A strike is like a hijacking. What's the difference? They're basically saying the same thing, "You give us what we want or they die." As a student, I didn't appreciate my teachers pointing guns to our heads. And now the librarians are at it too. I thought people of these professions would be somewhat civilized.

It just makes me really sad to hear things like this. One time I was so sincere to make a suggestion to a librarian about the computer sign-up system. The librarian replied, "That'll be too much work." This happened in a time when I wanted so badly to work in a library. They should just fire him and let me work there.

If they're not happy about their earnings, is it possible to just fire all of them and give their jobs to more dedicated people? On the one hand we have people, myself included, hustling for employment. On the other hand we have people with jobs who complain.

Unions. Economics. Tapioca.

Hijackers.

I'm so mad today.

I think I'll go drink some tea and read some Jane Austen.

How I Want To Be Traveling!

One day after work, I went to the supermarket for there is a cafeteria in the upper level where I often have my lunch. There's nothing spectacular about the cafeteria. It's the only place within the walkable vicinity where I could sit, have lunch, look out the big windows, and even do some writing on their relatively clean tables. This is often enough for me to pass a few meaningful hours. I sat down with my tomato penne and my phone rang.

"Adam, what're you doing?"
"Just got off work, preparing for more lessons tonight."
"I'm going to Milan on Friday."

Our conversation ended abruptly because my friend's phone card ran out. A split-second stillness fell on me. The short conversation repeated itself in my head. "Just got off work, preparing for more lessons tonight," was exactly what I said and exactly what I meant. It sounded incredibly lame and I caught its lameness the second I finished the utterance. A man's laughter from a nearby table hit me rather loudly.

How I want to be traveling! -- is the moral of this story. There was a time when I was in university when I thought, after handing in my final final exam, I would pinpoint the place on the map and say to myself, "I'm going there," and I'd go there, flashing a high nose at all the boring people who want me to play their boring games. I even drew plans, stacks of them, which I never threw away, which still serve as a reminder of the hopeful days in which I contemplated Beijing, Hokkaido, Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Prague, California, Vancouver... I still want to go away, just not right now. I have responsibilities now. And in the meantime I will keep writing to give my heart its daily water and sunlight, all in preparation for the day I embark on my journey to wherever. Toronto is a lovely place, there just happens to be an awful lot of boring people which would be the same wherever I go, as long as I keep my head about me and not fall like them I'll be okay. When I do go away, it will be special, and I will be my better self.

Back in the cafeteria I remember the sky was cloudy and smoggy and slightly yellow and the cafeteria was unusually crowded, but the pasta tasted pretty good and I still go there for their good pasta.

Uploading my first blog pic.

Go Pudge!

When We Meet Again On The Gentle Slope

When we are together we ponder parting and we cry over simple matters and become confused about what we can control and what we cannot. Then things become a cluster of gray clouds. We see it as a cluster of gray clouds because we're still young, and young hearts tend to be stormy.

I fancy twenty years from now on a sunny morning I walk up a grassy hill as you walk down and we meet somewhere on the gentle slope and instantly we recognize each other though our eyes barely meet, we merely dip our heads, "good day," and smile to each other, most effortlessly, no need to trace how our faces have changed, no storm whatsoever -- for all these years we have placed each other in a place deep and bright, so that our "good day" is most natural and appropriate and is all we need for we have been for all these years meeting in this deep and bright place all along. A passer-by would not know this and would think us very old-fashioned.

We saunter on, each beaming as always in our own sphere of happiness, and reflect, for no more than a minute, the silly episode that it was, and marvel at what silliness we are capable of, and become thankful, knowing we would not have arrived in our current happiness had we not had what we had, hence our silliness only makes us more apt to love. We saunter on, and for a minute we try to find in the grass beneath our feet, traces of you and I having just walked upon the same grass, and we linger. Let's be fair. We are mortals and we were lovers. Ripples form and ripples subside. Seamlessly we return to where we come from by returning each other to the deep and bright place that had always been there, and the rest of the day will be as wonderful as it had been in the start of the day and tomorrow will be just as wonderful and we are happy for our children.

On this distant day, we will find within ourselves the same idealism and compassion that we've always had, only the cluster of gray clouds will be gone. We will have learned along the way. But for now, we live with heavier hearts because we're both still young.

-------------

***I started writing this piece on a lazy Sunday afternoon at my local cafe. I bought me an Orangina, sat down, and before I got to lean back to take in my surroundings, a tune entered my head most unexpectedly. It had no connection to any thoughts I had at that moment or the moments before it. It was something I hadn’t heard in awhile. I began scribbling from there. I arrived at some very delicate ideas and spent time polishing my words in order to capture it, but the more I cut and pasted, the more I lost its form.

In The Streets of Fukuoka, Alone

Towards the darker end of the street, the vending machine stands looming like a reposeful light for the traveler. With relief he looks at the silverish blue can, Georgia, the name, he pronounces under his breath for at this moment it seems to offer him the most accessible solace: the warmth of a hot can of coffee on a cold night.

Happy as he is to find the right coins in his purse, he proceeds to insert them through the slot. But an empty trickle ensues, and the coins slide and fall into a little cup in the bottom. He picks up each coin and reinserts them carefully, upright, with a desperate push, one by one, but the same empty trickle ensues and the coins end up lying helplessly again in the little cup. The night is cold and the heart is ailing and the coins are available but the machine is unresponsive. An unbearable stillness comes and goes.

He doesn't kick the machine. He merely pushes the glossy button to feel the compression, and while looking down, he presses his forehead momentarily against the glass, all the time telling himself to be as kind to himself as possible, as kind to the world as possible, and without being vexing, he ponders the delivery of the silverish blue can that could have happened and is supposed to have happened. The night is cold but he knows there'll be other vending machines further down, and who knows, maybe by that time he would have found something, and the can of warm coffee becomes a mere afterthought.

A Flying Person

While sitting comfortably in the middle of my writing class, an incredible air stream surrounds me and transparent pebbles begin crisscrossing. At anyone time they would come. It feels like now. The air makes a cushion underneath and lifts my chair off the ground by just an inch, hovering awhile until the calling is fully-ripe, when my chair and I ascend slowly like a soap bubble, my head making for the roof, disregarding the material, I penetrate through.

As I ascend above the building, I look down and find no hole in the roof. Yes, I think to myself, all the while sedentary, calm and upright, my arms extend before me, palms on my knees, thighs parallel to the ground, for what, dear heaven, have I to fear? If they are so confident in me to choose me out of the millions, I have no doubt to trust them, with all my being.

A little man walking out of a coffee shop looks up in the sky, his feet parted to grip the ground, barely balancing himself, points at the sky, "A flying person!" He hollers and hides his head in his hands in horror. As I brush through the morning sky, fingers point at me, most of them hysteric, dumbfounded, but on one occasion I see an old man with his right hand above his eyebrows in a gesture of distant observation and salute. "Yes," he says to himself, "he's seeing the light."

Hidamari

Fingers dance on the keyboard. Fingers slow down. What will he say next? What will she do next? Will it make sense if he does this and she does that and after a series of complex waves and doodles they meet again in the blue fields at which time he says this to her in a combination so vivid in the mind yet so deep and delicate that it wrecks the mind to think of putting it in words or whether it could ever be transcribed? The writer picks up his pen and scribbles on scrap. His strokes become stretchy and stringy. An air bubble expands in his head. Ideas vaporize where blood doesn't reach. Soon he cannot follow. He submits himself to bed. A ribbon curls and fades in midair.

Two figures walk on the street. They converse, and every here and there they say something interesting, a sentence of revelation, a neat juxtapose of words that take shape, become vivid, enlarged, expanded and lost in extreme close-up. But the two figures keep walking and the streetscape repeats itself. A speckle of consciousness calls for pause. Pause. A light cuts into the scene. The writer wakes up.

He winces at the light bulb in the ceiling. He has slept with the light on again. He knows he has not had good sleep, so he scrambles to switch it off and scampers back to bed in pursue of better sleep while the desk lamp stays on. The lamp makes a sun-puddle on his desk. A shapely shadow grazes the wall and the texture of his papers accentuates. A spirit watches over. Does he shake his head or does he reach out to touch the side of a face that is for now restful? For now, the sun-puddle does not disturb the writer. It's dark enough for him to get some sleep. In a few hours he will wake to sunlight and the chirping of birds. He will not immediately notice the sun-puddle because the sunlight will have diluted it. We pray that he doesn't notice the sun-puddle.

Vivian and the Colours of the Airport

Vivian decides to go to the airport. She arrives there with a packed suitcase and settles in a corner of the upper level coffee shop to watch arrivals and departures flicker in numerals. She sees that travelers are light and jaunty and move like they're hovering. She sees that some of their boxes even have pastel colours and flowers on them. Men in suits, however, drag black and gray boxes, whose mobility is confined to their shiny leather shoes. They're not travelers. Two green guards with machine guns stand by a door like an ugly smudge. They aren't travelers neither.

Vivian observes and ponders from this privileged spot, completely detached, with a mind like sputnik. A series of colours flash before her eyes: pink for Osaka, orange for Amsterdam, yellow for Stockholm, green for Johannesburg, and indigo for… hmm… Vancouver. Then the colours blur into a puddle like the water in which an artist dips his brushes, or the colour of coffee and cream, whirling and fermenting inside her. The aftertaste of indecision is heavy and nauseating.

"Would you like another cup?"

"Yes, please."

Never before has she finished a whole cup of coffee.

The Scream

The girl asks the boy to take her to the beach, and they are here finally, because she has found him finally, someone kind enough to do her this favour. They sit on a boulder watching the colours of the sky dilute, turning blue, turning dark, until the stars become barely visible, and they remain only barely visible for the whole evening while waves lap over waves, washing sand away and bringing sand back. She thanks him many times, and he accepts it each time, not knowing why she says it so many times.

A few campfires glitter and scatter along the beach. There are tents, muffled music and carefree laughter in the background. Maybe there are fireflies too. After sitting for two hours talking about school and jobs and family, the girl gets up and heads for the water. She wants to make space. She takes him with her. She carves a boundless alcove for two.

"Sometimes you want to make this change in life and you need this big moment, and after that you live different, you become happier, you know," says the girl whose words can never say what she wants to say. "That's why I've been wanting to come here, for once. I only need once. I'll just scream like mad and there'll be change and I'll feel better."

The boy nods in anticipation.

The girl lets out a scream. An unpracticed, spontaneous scream, short and flat with a wavering pitch.

"A mouse can scream louder than that," the boy says. The girl shrugs. Her face feels warm.

The boy lets out a scream. The deep sound vibrates through his inner hollow; the soundwaves charge against the wind, ending in rough breathing, a beastly scream. He turns to her with an expression playful and satisfied, "That feels great," he says, "Now you try."

The girl knows she mustn’t scream like that. She wouldn't want to scream like that. So she walks closer to the water.

This time she takes a deep breath, and lets out a scream, pulling her spine, lunging her shoulders, locking her elbows, folding her knees, uncontrolled. But there's no sound. The wind smothers it. There could have been one huge scream or ten short ones or none at all. No one knows. She drops to the puffy sand. She is scared to know that her voice box could screech and scratch in this unthinkable manner. Now her cheeks, her ears, and her eyes are warm, but the cold air cuts into her wound. She tastes blood in her throat.

The boy comes forward and puts a hand on her shoulder, "Hey there, take it easy."

She feels his presence sharply in her sphere and she wonders why she couldn't have come here alone.

Seven Years in a Tuesday

The kids laugh their hearts out, that's the way we end each class, I tell them silly stories. We are so happy. They say bye and they file out and I remain in the room to pack my books and the silence resonates. I walk to my car. I stand in the parking lot for awhile, the breezy freshness after a day of boiling rain makes me hopeful, the sun retires before me, behind two silhouettes of trees, streaks of orange pink and purple brush across the sky. The hydro lines dip and stretch into the distance and I confirm once again I am hopeful.

I would tell her right here, right now, for all the pebbles are in place, I could fall back into this scene, I could cry here until I go blind and then tomorrow is a new day, a new start, and we move on. I think so simply. It's the only way to think. Seven years is a long time. How funny that I choose to stamp this, on a casual and merely beautiful Tuesday evening, and for the rest of my life attach special meaning to this date? I dial the number. I can't reach her.

I don't know when I'll call her again, probably when the pebbles are in place again, whenever that is. I've been pensive for seven years. What is another day, another month, another year? It wouldn't hurt as much if I were hurting alone.

-------

I spend the night in my favourite teahouse. I settle with a glass of lychee bubble tea in the corner table looking through the window into a dry and crisp evening, now completely dark. The decorative tree in the teahouse has sparkle lights on it that reflects off the window so it looks like there are sparkle lights both inside and outside and I'm hovering somewhere in between. Teahouses like this tend to play the perfect songs on perfect evenings.

窗外陰天了　音樂低聲了　我的心開始想你了...

A malfunctioning billboard flashes incessantly, and occasionally, a young couple walks by. I seem to only notice couples these days. Tonight would have been the perfect night.

Anguish Thoughts On The Way Home

While driving home on a narrow highway on this muggy Monday evening, I was disturbed by the presence of a loud white Honda. It disrupted my pensive mood and brought anxiety to my drive. While trying to ignore its headlights, I began to paint a picture of a young male, driving with the windows down, a hairy arm slouched over the edge, cigarette smell, greasy leather, rugby shirt, collars flipped, a hideous symbol hanging from the mirror, bones protrude from a scratchy face. It was totally unfair. Maybe he was just in a hurry to get home to put his ice-cream in the fridge. But my mind was anguish tonight. It was too late. There already came to me ideas for a bumper sticker:

Loud Engines Don’t Compensate
Turn That Sh*t Off
Tailgaters Eat A**

Other than that, my evening has been serene.

Vivacious Vivian

I’ve been carrying Vivian around a lot lately. Today she went to a coffee shop. She had a croissant, a bowl of fruit and a cup of coffee of which she only drank one third. Vivian went to a coffee shop because I like coffee shops. I wrote about Vivian today while sitting in a coffee shop. I never drink more than a third of my cup of coffee.

Who denounces the autobiographical way of narrative? What writer can claim that his plot and characters are independent of the writer’s lived experiences? My concern, however, is that my characters can’t seem to get away from being pale and frail and ailing in coffee shops. And ultimately they resolve their problems by throwing things, whether it be a cup of water at somebody or a rock at a window. This kind of unrefined behaviour is seemingly incoherent with their café-dwelling poetic-monologuing attributes.

In the minutes leading up to my writing here, mild panic gripped my chest. I read somewhere that John Updike admits to being overwhelmed by a ‘religious fear’ every time he approaches his writing desk. John Cheever ties himself to a chair in the basement in order to stay productive. I will not go that far, but I do ask a question: Does it make sense that I love writing so much that I fear it? Will this fear ever go away? I fear fear, for fear takes me close to depression, and I felt it, just now, for a split second in which I was compressed by floating cubes of air.

O Vivian, have I many places to take you. Why must I name you Vivian? Life! You are to live vivaciously. You are to be characterized by vivid verbs. I will put you through hell but you will triumph ultimately, hopefully, without throwing things. But I must say I like the way you hold that stone in your hand, screeching unspoken words from the depth of your watery eyes.

Bird's Last Minutes

I arrived home late tonight. As I turned into my house, I heard, from the sidewalk further down, kicking sounds and sounds of feathers, struggling. On the sidewalk was a bird's body, kicking and flapping against the cement. Its body was under the shadow of a tree where the orange lamplight didn't reach. I took a few steps towards it. The bird's strange position scared me. At first I thought it was on its back, flipped over, perheps hit by a car and managed to drag itself to the sidewalk. But then a closer look revealed that it was on its stomach, with its bare legs kicking painfully under flapping wings. It flapped and flapped, relentlessly, in an odd rhythm that was no rhythm. It was sheer panic. Its head I couldn't see. I was scared. I wanted to do something but I was scared about moving the bird in its strange position with its head invisible in the darkness. I was afraid it might attack me. I was afraid I might see a stretch or tear of a delicate section of its body. As I walked closer, I saw that its beak might be stuck in the cracks of the sidewalk. I rolled up the newspaper, approached it from behind, tried to retain from my squeamishness as much compassion as I could, motioned to give it the lift it might need to fly away. At that moment it stopped kicking, its wings stopped. The plump wings covered the tiny muscle, feathers neatly in place, a complete bird body in the middle of the sidewalk. I still couldn't see its head. It never occurred to me that a bird could end up like that, with its head stuck in the ground. It was a painful, most helpless way to die. What was going through its head while I was hesitating for a good five minutes with the roll of newspaper in my hand?

Starting Line

Dear me

Will I ever get this right?

I'm here because nobody listens to me. And so I begin this blog in such a self-judgmental manner. I tell myself: I will write here, I'll have them read, I'll say things of relative importance, and they'll tell me what they think about what I've said. I want my words to be out there. I am so scared. I can't deny it.

The picture is of me, a very small me, sitting on a sidewalk curb under orange lamplight looking up and surrounded by four very tall apartments with balconies and windows and somewhere in there are eyes (how many pairs of eyes I know not) looking at me looking very small feeling very small.

But my words are out here now. Isn't it wonderful? I am talking as if... I want your feedback, dear cyberspace, and tell me, how I can release myself of this morbid fear of seeing my words in print to be read?

All I have to do is click 'post' and I can see how it looks. It can't be so bad.

You are laughing at me. I know. I am so paranoid.

Plunge.