The Transilient Flight: 2011

Walking Summer to the door

PREFACE

I’m still a baby.
And it shows. I’ve been wondering and wandering a lot these days, thinking a lot about making.
I’m a bit sick of all this waiting around at the dance, the grand hesitation. So fuck it, hold my shoes and my socks. I’m going for a swim in that big blue thing.

If you’re wondering what the purpose is of this blog, so am I. It began as a desire to chart the progress of my growth from an individual who made artistic things to an artist who made art, along with a not so subconscious desire to emulate one of my favourite artist slash photographer slash muse Traci Matlock who has a blog of her own, The Noumenon Revelation (see even the titles are similar haha). But what began with a promising start became a deliciously hilarious passive aggressive outlet for whatever emotional diarrhea I was holding in, which I abandoned a while ago. Now I think I just want to play with it and not take it too seriously, b/c in the eternal words of my mother, Who really gives a damn?

Good question, no?

I think anyone who starts a blog has to ask themselves this question.
There’s, hopefully, a universal fear of indulging in narcissism and exhibitionism. But I will be clear that this space will not be those things. This is a space for play, for practice, for storytelling. My platform to share my ideas, visions, life slices, inspirations, revelations, and insecurities too. So enjoy yourself, don’t take it too seriously, b/c I’m certainly not. If you can get down with it, cool. If not, well then have a nice day, b/c at the end of the day, my day, I just want to grow, and this platform is going to help me.

So upwards and onwards.
Dear lovelies, I’m tired of sleeping, and after a long period of hibernation, I’m ready to come out of my cave to share some of the dreams I had.
So, hello.
I’m awake now.
Good Morning!

CHAPTER ONE

A Southern Californian Suburb

I recently visited the home of my new friend, D.
In the interest of protecting her privacy, I’ll just say that it’s in a quiet suburb of Southern California. The kinds with white picket fences, proud American flags, lush manicured lawns, and 3rd grade teaching neighbors. It’s the life size reality of the picture from the American story book, the quintessential all-American childhood that hardworking middle class parents dream for their nuclear families. When I stepped off the bus with her and walked through her neighborhood, I was immediately struck by the familiarity of the place. I’ve been here before. Its summer visits to my grandma’s home in Sacramento and family bbq reunions at my cousin’s house in San Jose and Cupertino. This acute sense of déjà vu only intensified over the night. Her mother opened the door for us, and welcomed me in with a quick friendly smile. I shook her hand and smiled back, before she bustled over to the kitchen stove where something savory was happily bubbling away. D pointed to the corner by the door where a pile of shoes haphazardly spilled over from a small shoe rack, indicating that’s where I should take off mine. I glanced over at her feet, her shoes had already joined the pack, and I mentally scolded myself for forgetting. Of course, this is an Asian home! But it felt like ages since I had been to one. “Auntie, what should I call you?” I asked unzipping my boots. She turned away from the pot and smiled bashfully at me. “Just call me Auntie,” she finally decided, and then busied herself with the makings of dinner. As we headed to D’s room, I stole a peek at what was in the pot. It was tomato and egg stew…!!!

Oh… How I wish I could fully translate the significance of each detail! I was born and raised in the city of San Francisco. When D first told me where she was from, I hadn’t thought much about it at all. Not being from the region, I had no preconception of the place. The name of the town was just a word. D told me it was an ordinary suburb. Ok, I thought and downloaded a generic picture of white picket fences and SUV’s into my head and left it at that. I didn’t expect… well, I didn’t expect anything. I just thought that the place would be different. I never in my life would imagine how connected I would feel with a place.

How can I convey all that I saw, smelled, tasted in a way that fully illustrates this eerie sense of nostalgia and recognition that resonates through my body penetrating the very marrow of my bones. I’m positive that any second generation Asian American already knows, can see, has seen and experienced exactly the scene I just described. The universal Asian no-shoes-in-the-house rule. The prioritization of utilitarianism of the interior design that makes all sense of décor seem like an afterthought. The respectfully shy interaction with her mother. How she was friendly and clearly curious about this friend her daughter brought home, peering at me with inquisitive twinkly eyes behind wire rimmed glasses, but at the same time unable to look me in the eye for very long, a bit skittish and unsure of how to interact with me, or any of her daughter’s peers.

D's father camping out in D's room during breakfast

Regardless of the parents’ ability to speak perfect English, the norm for Asian American households with immigrant parents in my experience is that parents and children tend to keep to themselves when inviting guest over. If there’s not a language barrier, there’s at least the hurdle of a generational and cultural divide that makes all interactions delightfully awkward. Like a middle schooler’s first date. This uncertainty tends to relegate the parents and children to their respective camps. Not to say that the hospitality is lacking, it’s just of an entirely different sort. It’s quiet, thoughtful, unspoken and most conspicuously centered around food. At dinner time, Auntie was very attentive to my needs. Urging me to eat more, buzzing around me, getting up frequently to serve me soup or a special dish. Drink more soup! Want more rice? Take the soup home with you since you don’t have soup very often! Knowing that I don’t eat meat, Auntie was very conscientious to cook a vegetarian meal, with a menu complete with purple mixed rice (just like my mother’s!), fried tofu, mustard greens and egg drop soup, and tomato and egg stew.

Oh tomato and egg stew…
I love tomato and egg stew! It’s one of those provincial Chinese comfort foods that you would never find at a restaurant because it’s a little too commonplace, but one that pretty much every household eats at home. I can’t think of any American equivalent; it’s a uniquely Chinese experience, a dish that stews scrambled eggs in a sweet savory tomato sauce that’s meant to be enjoyed over plain rice. Every household has their own family variation. D’s family cooks theirs with diced tomatoes and ketchup and copious amounts of green onions; my family cuts the tomatoes into wedges, adds julienned brown onions, and holds the ketchup. It’s a dish from my childhood, when my grandmother would cook dinner b/c my mother was working late. Eating it there in her home, all five senses were flooded with deep nostalgia.

After washing the dishes with D, we went for a walk around the neighborhood.
She showed me her high school and told me her stories. I listened and saw in her the same restlessness and felt the same disconnect I had with the things around me. She told me she was Editor in Chief of the high school newspaper. Oh now I get it, I thought to myself. That’s why she’s been encouraging me to write about this and that! And that’s why her emails are always perfectly capitalized and punctuated and grammatically correct! I was also heavily involved with journalism in high school (features editor/photographer/illustrator) and instantly understood the microcosm and unique camaraderie of high school newspaper she must have been immersed in.

Lately I had been wondering why I was especially drawn to this person. It felt immediate and unexplained the first day we met. I had walked into a room full of people, took 2 seconds to scan the room, and chose out of 10 different souls to plop my ass down next to hers. After closing the day with a very warm hug, I knew that I would be friends with this person. It was a strong gut feeling, but one that I didn’t understand.

Suddenly, in the span of one night the pieces were rapidly coming together. Fuzzy inklings about her quirks gained new clarity.
I could see so vividly the colors and hues of her life, her childhood, teenage years, and probably college, b/c I had lived it. Those were my colors, my sheltered childhood, my nervous parents, my teenage youth. The names, faces, geographies are different, but the real things -- cultural values, relationships, and social environments –- these were the same, eerily and almost exactly so.

So then I ask myself, do we get along so well b/c we enjoy each other’s company? Or something much more? Maybe the physical and social environments have shaped our personalities in ways in which we can’t possibly even be aware of. Maybe I have the sense of humor I have b/c of the books I read, and maybe it gets along with her sense of humor b/c of the books she read. How much of our liberal politics has to do with our fiercely protective Asian parents and the lovingly cloistered upbringing they gave to us?

A father in Little Tokyo holding onto his child (who has my childhood haircut!)

Does coincidence exist?

Did our friendship begin because I randomly sat in the chair next to hers? I’m beginning to believe that it doesn’t, but rather, what appears random is actually the tangled intersection of a million unseen threads that lead two beings to find one another. The incredible thought that occurred to me is that these threads probably began long before we met, before we both decided to apply for the same internship program, before the day she was born even; but stretch as far back as the decision our parents made to immigrate to America, and even then you can continue tracing the steps backwards.

The first day that D and I met at the Chinese American Museum

Identity, Politics, History, Fate. All of it.
It was a night it hit me square between the eyes all at once.
You study it in school, talk about it in the conceptual, abstract sense, but how often do you actually see it unravel so clearly in your own life?
Not ten or twenty years after when you time has given you perspective, but immediately, 24 hours later, in present time?

I’m still amazed.

A map hanging on the wall of D's old room

Maybe some of you who grew up with me, or sheltered like us, are still living close to home so you can’t feel the weight of this idea. But I’m living on my own in downtown Los Angeles, in the Arts District, in one of the cheapest forms of housing available. Not a single day goes by without the blare of sirens or the rattle of helicopter blades ripping the air. In the last 3 months, I’ve befriended and bumped up against scarred souls who are running from their past. Some of them are so deeply damaged by life that they can’t even recognize a smile when they see it. These are people who weren’t sheltered enough in their childhood, exposed to the elements too soon. They’ve been beaten and battered and broken down so many times that they have to ask themselves if there’s a point to keep going. I’m beginning to realize how much the childhood I was given has enabled and propelled me in life.

Highway 101

My hallway

It’s easy to take it for granted, especially after living in Irvine for college, but there are very few plants and trees that grow in my neighborhood.
But the grass is green in the suburbs.
For a reason.

Here are some pictures of my neighborhood in Downtown LA.