deluded dorky dancing girl's Journal

and Independence Day has nearly passed here in Hong Kong, where I have spent the entire day inside my apartment, a situation I wouldn't tolerate anywhere else. I hate to be at home, confined, but here, it feels like freedom not to be out. The thought of getting groceries is too much to bear -- I'd rather eat rotten spinach and the last scrapings of peanut butter than be in the crowd again. And I wonder how long this can go on? Tomorrow, I will have been a resident of Hong Kong for 6 months. A long time to deny being alive. I have made no friends. I do not know my way around. This, in short, is pathetic.
I contrast this with my experience in Germany. Now, a conference is tailor-made for meeting people with similar interests, but I met my baker-friend my first day of wandering and chatted amiably with several of the people in the class I took, including a Ukrainian Vaganova-trained dancer, a Japanese woman who married a German man, a Romanian folk dancer. I walked over the cityscape. Things are different in the West. I don't blame the Chinese for wanting to get there.
Everyone thinks that the reason I don't make friends here is my own fault. I will tell you what it is like. Half the people where I work speak little English, and I speak no Cantonese. We say hello. And they scurry out of my way, because I am "professional" staff (sadly, this is literal scurrying -- people actually duck out of my way if I am walking by. This is in stark contrast to the people on the street, who slam into you with their bags, poke you in the face with their umbrellas, rush to get in front of you only to plod when they are there). I say good morning each day to the security guard in the front. I occasionally chat with the other librarians, but even with the American librarian, things get old. We don't have much in common -- and it isn't facts that you need in common, it's the approach.
I am used to making friends at dance, but the girls in Hong Kong hate me. It's okay, the feeling is mutual, but it wasn't my intention when I went in. They are cliqueish, can't dance, and spend the whole 90 minutes giggling at the teacher. I say girls, but most of them are at least 10 years older than I am, and well beyond the age of giggling, in my opinion. They make me want to puke. On their sparkly outfits. A somewhat better girl showed up in ballet one day, and I decided I would try to talk to her after class to find out where else she dances. But before I could do this, I noticed her whispering, pointing at me, and making fun of my port de bras. We went across the floor together, and she smacked me with her arm -- and this might have been an accident, but she looks too well-trained for that. So much for that. I kicked one of them in the head in class a week ago -- hard -- actually by accident (because when they are not dancing, they do not clear the floor but stand there, not moving, as if they were the whole world, these skinny weak women. Why do they dance if they don't like to sweat and they don't like to move?). I spent about 10 minutes apologizing... because, you know, it's not possible to accidentally kick the ones you hate the most.
Somehow it's all impossibly stressful.
I planned to quit, but I ran out of courage. I get back here, and neurasthenia takes over. I see why it is such a common disease here: everything is too loud, too crowded, too smelly, too much. The only way to survive is to sense nothing. And I have resisted it, because I have wanted to be a feeling, thinking being, but god, it is tiring to resist. To insist on hearing the sound of the train doors bleating and the announcements wearying the ear with 3 languages and mocking with unheeded messages of good will (or legally required disclaimers, if you choose to hear them that way) (really, do I need to hear, "The floor is wet and may be slippery" on rainy days?). Every day I think I cannot stand it one more minute. And I don't stand it, but the minute passes, and I am still here.
Is life too short? So many people tell me to stick it out, to bear it until something better comes along. But nothing better will come along unless I write, and I feel that the urge has left me entirely.
I haven't even been able to keep up a journal.
It is part of not feeling.
To be wakened to feeling again, to have gone elsewhere -- I get ambitious. I plan another project. And then I am back to the waiting syndrome. I haven't committed murder yet, but I feel that I must explode. Or that I must sleep as much as I can, make the time pass faster on weekends.
The job is training in mediocrity. They like things simple. No, worse than simple. Simple-minded, stupid, photogenic. I do not smile.
My boss is an idiot. A powerful idiot, the worst kind.
In a way, it is better that I have not written. My thoughts are not worth having.
But will I be able to wake up when I get out?
Will I get out?

I'm not sure if I think in more than fragments and pictures anymore. I was just in Germany -- optimistically -- parasitically -- nevertheless, it was amazing. I remembered how to speak. I remembered how to smile. I remembered walking freely, even in rain.
I got off the plane before 5:30 in the morning -- walked into the empty train station, coaxed a ticket from the machine -- sat across the aisle from a flight attendant as tired as I was. They must be trained for beauty in repose: how to slump delicately? I sprawl. Outside the window, dozens of houses, narrow with peaked red roofs (demanding projection inward -- how to traverse such an odd space?). Switched at Mariensplatz, the city center overhead, the station a delightful hard 70s orange. On the window of the U-Bahn, someone had scratched a word in thick strokes, tall letters, no finesse. The train was dingy and quiet. This could never happen in Hong Kong, this negligent ugliness. I felt glad. Asked directions in German, did not get laughed at -- understood what was spoken to me -- found the right place.
In class by 11am. The world was weaving under my feet, but I haven't been acquainted with gravity in months, and there it was. The same CD is played in Chicago, Hong Kong, and Munich. Russian class, not my style, presumes a body I do not have and a placement that I have to find again every day. Nevertheless, real class, the real demand of covering space.
I came out after, walked around. Stopped for a coffee and salad in a place that simply advertised, "Good coffee here, 1 euro." There was only one other person sitting in a shop, a big beefy man eating the same lunch I was having. When he left, the man behind the counter began to talk with me. Is there anything good to see around here? I asked. He took a paper bag from behind the counter and drew a map for me. Go here, he said. There are at least 20 things to see.
There were.
It was raining. I passed museums. Watched people, their diversity of expressions: not the exhaustion and blankness of the people on the MTR, but a real range. People wear their freedom on their faces. People smiled. I wandered at random through passages into courtyards with endless twisting spires, suddenly into an art gallery -- and no one said "don't," and no one watched. An elderly man stopped me in the square. You are beautiful, he said, in German first and then English. (What kind of crazy place is this? I thought)
I passed museums, did not go in. To observe the city was enough.
The next day, Augsburg (at the station, I stood in the Information line, asked, Wo kann ich den Tram nehmen? (which was wrong -- it should be "die Tram" -- and who knows what I did to the syntax) And the woman behind the counter didn't even twitch, simply told me, and I understood her (it's the ticket machines that are incomprehensible. I bought a 1 euro ticket with a 20 euro note, got the change in coins -- no one once checked to see if I had a ticket).
The conference: I walked in, and the conference organizer welcomed me -- and it was all so strange, to be talked to, to have my hand shaken. I've been so isolated.
I put my things down in a beautiful minimalist modern-day monk's cell (facing red roofs and a garden. I leaned out the window and read the abstracts). I went downstairs and immediately saw the prof I'd come to meet (I had some vague sense of what he might look like, but I just *knew* when I saw him: kind eyes, sparkling). I went right up to him, and he read my nametag, and we picked seats next to each other for the conference, and it turned out that our rooms were adjacent, as well (hurrah, I said. We can talk out our windows to each other! and after dinner, we did, and just before sleeping, clasped hands across the casements).
And it was great. Oh, the days were tiring. But to be among people who are passionate about their work, interested in each other, genuinely -- I've missed that (also, we were fed cake twice a day -- can't argue with that).
The other days I met people, went to talks, danced, wrote. It was my vacation, to do the kind of work I used to do. Towards the end, I was despondent: it couldn't be real, and it couldn't last, and I couldn't believe it anymore. Maybe it will always be like this, distant, pretending. I don't dare to hope any more, the world in color. I said goodbye on the last day to the coffee shop owner, who shook my hand and wished me the best.

the racial identity crisis post, sort of
My parents are both Chinese by birth and both fled to Taiwan in 1949. They both emigrated to the US for postgraduate studies, where they met, Chinese-style, via a match-making introduction by a mutual friend. I was born in Canada, grew up in California, grew old(er) in Illinois. Still, I am Chinese to the Chinese, as well as to the 海外華裔青(少)年暑期研習營活動 (Overseas Chinese Youth Language Training and Study Tour to the Republic of China) (yes, I had to look both those names up), popularly known as “Love Boat,” which I attended one summer that I had planned to work as a volunteer guide at a national park on Staten Island (this was intended to serve two purposes—first, I was at the time entertaining the romantic notion of becoming a park ranger, though, even to this day, I have never once been camping. And then, I wanted to be near New York City, Greatest Metropolis in the Universe and Dance Capital of the Mortal Realm. Being 19 or 20 years old, I naturally saw no contradictions in these aims). (My grand summer initiative was foiled by the hyper-controlling but well-intentioned efforts of my father, who, unable to obtain my consent, wrote the application and forged my signature to it, and, unable to locate a single current image of me, shipped the whole thing off with my 5th grade class photo). (Needless to say, I had a miserable time, having totally missed the point that the program was meant to be parentally-sanctioned debauchery under the nebulous values of patriotism and culture within a zone neither independent nor the China of our ancestors. In the six weeks, I made one friend (hi, Gel) and otherwise moped. Surrounded by other Americans and Canadians, my Chinese didn’t improve, and, though we slept 8 to a room, I felt isolated and strange.)
The situation vaguely reprises itself in my present situation in Hong Kong: again, a romantic notion (I will adjunct at two schools! I will dance!) (will this seem absurd to me years in the future?) abandoned in favor of a parental mandate to return to the homeland (granted, they would never say it was a mandate. They say I have acted of my own free will – and at my age, how could I deny it?). Again, day after day, I work in a room with something like 70 people in it, and I feel completely and utterly alienated. And rather than grow more Chinese, I withdraw further into myself, into my lack. I have spent my life absorbing—valorizing—Western culture. I have a degree in English literature, listen to Tchaikovsky, Bach, Brahms, and Puccini, think the most delectable things in the world are cheese and chocolate (okay, add raw spinach and apples), believe in personal space, the right to individuality, and the value of silence. I arrive here, and, without a hundred Overseas Chinese Youth from the Americas to remind me that I’m not exactly normative at home, I feel profoundly American. The Chinese don’t accept that (a Taiwanese vendor, selling me蛋餅 for breakfast, asked me if I were Japanese. When I told her I was American, she laughed – “Americans are blond and have blue eyes! Of course you’re Chinese”). And Americans, however evolved, do not quite, no matter what they might say, because they notice, too: I sure look Chinese.
I studied Romantic poetry, and no one ever said I couldn’t or shouldn’t. But now I wonder. One of my friends who was born in Puerto Rico told me that when she was accepted by the program, she was heavily pushed towards Latino American literature. No one ever suggested that I should work on Asian American literature—is this because Asian Americans are so assimilated into American culture that we can slide into its literary studies without comment, or is this because Asian American literature isn’t considered as worthwhile as Latino American literature? (Do I think of it as lesser? I have to admit that in some part of my prejudiced little heart I do—or else why does it need to be something marked as other than literature in the English language? It sounds marginalized, limited. I read poetry.) I can’t decide whether to be more offended on her behalf or mine.
I have denied it forever. I went to Chinese school as a kid, sure. I kowtowed to my grandfather on his birthday and burned incense at his funeral. I ate rice every day growing up. But I have always behaved as if I were exactly the same as my blond and blue eyed friends and to this day have more of them than the overseas Chinese variety. But I do not know Chinese culture, just as I cannot claim American culture for my own. (My father remarked the other day, “Do you really think that when you send your applications out, they don’t think to themselves, How can a Chinese person teach English literature better than the English?” It had never occurred to me. But how can they not?)
Is there some culture for the displaced, and how do I apply for citizenship?

in which, even pondering the sichuan quake, i manage to be insufferably narcissistic
as the anniversary of the sichuan earthquake approaches (indeed, arrives), the south china morning post has had daily features on the casualties and efforts to rebuild. there seem to be no small numbers in china; just as melamine-tainted milk managed to sicken 300,000 children before the news broke, a shiver of the earth killed 70,000, wounded over 374,000, left something like 11 million people homeless (and numbers, as much as we grasp at them as things, are also loosely defined in china -- the number of schoolchildren dead, listed as 19,065 in this NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/asia/22quake.html?_r=1&hp) -- has now been contained to a modest, neat palindrome -- 5335 -- a number ideographically projecting 'case-closed.' a number the entire world knows is erroneous, whose scope is forcibly suppressed, insultingly minor. but in the end, what would satisfy? not this.

it's peculiar and tragic to read these stories just pages away from stories of the quarantined guests of the metropark hotel, ground zero for hong kong's single case of swine flu (set free at last just this weekend), to read the story of kids being pulled from the so-called "tofu" buildings, leaving behind an arm or a leg and 100 classmates (and i do cry, which does nothing).

even worse to consider my own unjustifiable claustrophobia. last night in ballet class, i noted -- as i note every day -- the rapid deterioration of my dancing and therefore my "self". i get this moment often in class, which is always a barometer of present consciousness -- of horror, despair, and utter misery which i have no right to feel. i can see all the things i've trained to do falling away, becoming unfamiliar -- and nothing has really come to replace it -- i grow more anonymous to the world and myself, and it's frightening to me -- even as i acknowledge that it is a private and selfish terror. -- i want -- oh, i don't know. i want to be myself again (or rather, i seem to have become a collection of all my least likeable characteristics, and i can't stand it) -- and yet, how dare i want, knowing that there are so many others who don't have at all?

dancing... sort of.
So I have been to a number of auditions in my life -- not "many" by any dancer's definition, but I've done my share of sweating with a number pinned to my chest. So when I saw the announcement (seeking 30 advanced/professional modern dancers...) on the Hong Kong Performing Artists facebook page... how could I not attend?
A hint that this would be different than the other auditions I've been to: I was the only one warming up before it started. At least two people were wearing jeans. One was wearing denim hot pants, thigh high legwarmers, and heels.
Another hint: the first thing we did was pray.
And we learned a combination and we danced. In big groups. In small groups. Stand with your number on and smile.
Something about auditions: the combinations are rarely challenging -- or -- what is really challenging is keeping your head. I do not do this particularly well. Similarly, showings. In life, I am fundamentally neurotic, shy, self-conscious. Strangely, the only time I am not is when I am performing. But in these moments of judgment, however absurd, no, I do not like it.
"I used to do it for the applause," said one of directors. "But that got old. I quit in 6th grade, I quit in 9th grade, I quit in 11th grade. Only when I realized that it didn't matter what I did, that I was dancing for Him -- that was satisfaction no one could take away."
I wouldn't put it this way, but I understand this perfectly. Dancing doesn't work when it's selfish -- not for me, anyway. That old question of separating the dancer from the dance doesn't exist for me: the dance makes you a dancer in that moment and you disappear inside it. Your imperfections become an art.

I started this more than a week ago, after the audition and suddenly feel no need to go on.

The difference between regular rehearsal and liturgical dance: getting to rehearsal 30 minutes early to warm up/getting to rehearsal 10 minutes late and hearing a sermon for the first hour. Does it matter in the end? Dancing is my prayer and the studio is my church.

and/not
i notice that i become less and less coordinated every day. it isn't just the bruises on the body that tell me of this. i can't sense my body in space, and i've accumulated an unreasonable number of injuries (finger, hand, wrist, both feet, left knee again) (other ills: headache, dizziness, nausea. i've also become accustomed to constant stomach pain and indigestion) -- unreasonable because an unused body SHOULDN'T hurt so much. but the other thing: i know this won't make sense to anyone, but my mind works somatically. as i became a better dancer, i also became a better thinker -- and as this nerve network retreats or dies, i also observe my thought process becoming unproductive, silent, absent.

Hong Kong, city in which
-people will step back to let you open the door for them and then push you aside to get through it before you (lest you think this was a one-time occurrence, it happens practically daily, men and women alike)

-a girl will smack you so hard with her bag that it raises a lump and a bruise, and she doesn't even turn her head to see what happened (obviously to expect an apology would be unreasonable)

-a man will BELCH -- loudly and juicily into your hair at the top of the escalator. when you turn around in shock, he'll do it again right into your face.
note that no one on the escalator is walking, so you stand, trying to figure out how to avoid his next missile, for what seems like forever

they say money can't buy happiness
but, in fact, i have the distinct impression it can't buy me anything at all in hong kong. which is not to say that i don't go to the store, drop money -- discover practically every time i've been overcharged -- but

my attention span is entirely gone. i can't decide if i hate other people so much i never want to see a biped again or if i hate being alone so much that i'm ready to take up fishing so someone will sit and stare at the water on the pier with me.

oh, who am i kidding? my thought process is soaked in goo. i don't have what it takes. it's that simple. i thought that writing a dissertation meant that i had it in me -- concentration, determination, a brain cell. all a sham. i can't make it through a paragraph. i'd sleep all the time if i didn't have to go to work. i don't leave my apartment on weekends unless i've run out of food. and -- i am not like this! i'm not! i'm not! (but i am -- it's what i've become -- and the answer, logically, is very simple. GO OUT. DO SOMETHING. WRITE. but i do not and hate myself the more for it). and this: it makes me sick to read the kind of language i'm producing, the utter absence of feeling -- it's not me, either -- i don't know where i've gone. i don't know if i'll ever come back.

all around me, the reminder: life is hard. why can't i put up with it when so many others do? and when, comparatively, my life is NOT HARD.

i'm not sure. i get panicked sometimes. my body aches and i've broken (?) my pinky finger (not absolutely sure about this, but it's at least sprained, swollen, painful as broken toes are painful; should tape the thing, once i figure out where one buys tape around here), have no memory of how or when, have massive bruises on my arms and legs, cuts on my legs and feet -- they kept me up last night -- every time i moved, some twinge would waken me.

i wanted to move because i was afraid things would always be the same and i would never figure things out. the major rationale: at least i won't be bored. but i AM bored, unbelievably, unendingly, terrifyingly bored. and i'm boring -- i could go on, but i'm tired, and you're tired of it, too, if you're reading this. you must all hate me by now.

now i'm really scared things will always be the same.

it's easter. maybe i'll join a church.
thursday night, walking on the overpass connecting mall to mall -- slipping through a swarm of bodies -- walking like that maniac driver who always guns for the space that isn't there (yet) -- oh, i realize it. i have that bottomless-pit-of-the-stomach loneliness, the kind that makes breathing seem a little hard. it's so familiar now that i resent it. i put my energy in hating, because that's a passion that doesn't require any reciprocation, and i must feel something (but underneath, i know -- i don't).

i've realized lately that i have a terrible imagination -- that i have the worst inability to see past exactly what is around me -- to escape -- though i think this is at least countered (exacerbated?) by the ability to see what is present with intensity -- but what if what is around me is only this? the crowd? or the white walls with the blue-tinted photograph of leaves -- the same photograph that is in every room in this building (when you move in, they make you do an inspection of all the furnishings; among these are the posters in frames, 3), the same wicker furniture (for the first time in probably 4 years i have a couch -- it is about 8 inches too short to permit reclining)? sometimes i stare out the windows and try to see what others are doing inside their apartments. everyone hangs their laundry in the windows. everyone's tv strobes.

i haven't written, i haven't danced. on occasion, i make myself exercise (i can do this: get on a treadmill and say i won't get off for 45 minutes or whatever), and i hate this, the mechanical use of the body. i did this in chicago, too, ran daily in the dull times to burn energy. to burn time. there isn't any real feeling or intention in it.

i get desperate or only pathetic -- the options are fighting a monstrous hysteria, the vacuum inverting, or doing nothing at all, acknowledging no needs, passing the time the old-fashioned way: waiting. i just really don't know.

i've always feared the moment i would meet someone crazier than i am
i find myself behaving more and more aggressively. i elbow aside the woman texting on her phone when she stands in front of the train door. i snap at the cashier who miskeys the groceries. i push past the people standing on the left side of the escalator. i whisper angry things as i fight my way through the crowd.
and today, i smacked the side of a van with my open palm as it cut me off at a crossing.
the driver leapt from his car and started shouting.
"sorry," i said.
"what do you mean, sorry?! i'm calling the police," he kept screaming.
"sorry," i said, "i'm here alone. i'm sorry. i shouldn't have done it. i had a bad day, too, you know."
"i want your id card number!" he screamed. "i'm calling the police!"
"why?" i said. "your car isn't damaged. can't you just let it go?"
"give me your id number!"
"why? why?" (i kept walking, and he kept following, running to stand in front of me. i stopped. he rolled up his sleeves as if to hit me. i stepped back. i looked him right in the eyes. there wasn't anything there -- he didn't even look angry. just eyes, black.)
i said i'm sorry.
he shouted some things in cantonese. he pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
i said, i don't understand you.
he said, i don't understand you. you wait right here, i'm calling the police!
(i wouldn't stop moving. he shouted into his phone.)

i'm not sure what would have happened, except a woman from the hotel came up to me and said, "are you going to take the shuttle? is this guy bothering you?"
i tried to explain. part of me felt that, yes, i should just stay and take it. i did do something wrong. i had behaved badly. i wasn't innocent.

we were going to the shuttle. she told me to get in. he kept shouting, following. he ran back to his van and drove it up to block the shuttle. he pulled out a flashlight to examine the "damage" i had caused (of course there wasn't any). i began to wonder whether touching other people's cars was a capital crime here, whether i would be hauled in and tortured.
whether he had a gun in his car and would blow my head off.

i was wrong. i admit it. every day that i let my anger defeat me, i am wrong. i wish i could control it better. i wish i didn't have so much of it.

some other people on the shuttle comforted me, which is just silly. i was guilty. they said he was crazy. yes, maybe. but so am i.
(and part of me is ashamed -- terribly ashamed -- to learn that my anger is only a front for cowardice, because i was afraid)

yesterday i saw a bird flitting about in the mall. it was a small bird, maybe a sparrow. (my father and i spotted one in xiamen by the shore. he expressed surprise: apparently there had been a concerted effort to eradicate them in the past. the chinese government was punished with plagues of locusts. this is what i love about the sparrow: their core of toughness) the mall's false surfaces flashed and glittered, manniquins, glass, lights, and chrome. i thought of bede's bird, flying through the meadhall, momentarily shielded from the tempest among the feasting men. how savourless our feast, and what horror our controlled climate master labyrinth. i watched it from the escalator. i could only watch.

the withering of things of little consequence
this place just breeds the most ruthless apathy. old man who almost falls over when the train starts to move? 26 year old guy will continue to sprawl on the bench next to his equally vapid girlfriend. entering the building with four bags of heavy groceries and a backpack full of books? a tour group of 50 strong will not only not hold the door for you, but march forward as an interminable mass, determined to assemble themselves in the lobby when all you want to do is get into the elevators they've vacated behind them. by yourself with a shrieking child and another in a stroller outside the building? people will push by you to get inside, leaving you to struggle with the stroller and the door and the child (i held the door for her).

it was lunchtime, the weather fine. i wanted to plug my ears up with a lecture podcast from the u of c and walk in the park. when i got there, who should i see already on the bench but my line manager. i did the "right" thing; i said hello. and intended to keep walking. "sit down," she said. i did. we made small talk. for twenty minutes or more. the lecturer addressed himself to my left pocket as i was regaled with an unending series of platitudes. finally, i was dismissed. i had only picked up the lecture again when i heard her calling my name. i knew i had lost my capacity for sympathy when she exclaimed she had lost her wallet, where was it we were sitting? and i could barely keep from rolling my eyes. i helped her look for... about a minute. then i walked away (okay, for another 5 minutes. then i guiltily went back, loaned her some cash, and said i was sorry for her loss. but i wasn't sorry at all).

i was in attendance at a meeting about collection development today with the chair of the chinese department and a visiting professor. "you like poems, do you?" the visiting professor said to me. "you could say so," i shrugged. "tell them about your article," the head librarian commanded. i gave a listless summary. then i spent the rest of the meeting trying not to cry (i didn't succeed) (there were only five of us at the meeting) (i'm going to start pretending i get headaches).

when i came out of the meeting, i stopped to fetch a memo from my line manager. "i want to remind you to dress nicely for tomorrow," she said.
(internally, i thought, i won't. despite my idiotic ideas to transform myself, i've begun wearing the exact same pants and shirt every day of the week. i don't sweat anymore; what's the point of changing clothes? what's the point of showering? (i still shower)).

i am boring.

(she got her wallet back with everything inside it -- someone had picked up right after we left and brought it back to the university)

Last night I chatted (in the online way) (god, that sounds dirty) with someone I hadn't spoken to for years. We met our first year at Berkeley. He was in the same dorm as one of my high school friends. I found him insufferably arrogant. Okay -- also smart, ambitious, fearless. He would sing, loudly, off-key. He was never afraid to talk to anyone he wanted to meet. He would TELL people he wanted to be a poet. And that his plan was to become fabulously wealthy. (I wanted to be a poet, too, and a dancer, and I'd never say -- people can hurt you terribly if they know what you love) (it's okay to admit these things now, under the penumbra of shame and failure -- somehow failure is easier to admit than ambition). I've hardly thought of him all these years (at that age -- perhaps even now -- it wasn't possible for me to love people. Ideas and ideals, yes, but a messy conglomerate of perpetually shifting qualities? -- no. no.). We had a relationship that was almost absurdly high-minded and at times deeply awkward -- with him always trying to get into my head and me always shutting him out, growing passive and silent and cold. He told me he loved me, and I could not say it back. I left him in a way that shames me to think of now -- I didn't think I was good enough to leave him (I still have no idea why he would have wanted to date me), so I did the best I could to convince him to leave me -- I grew colder and more distant and wouldn't answer the phone and wouldn't show up. And, the fool, he wouldn't do it. (Now I know from both sides that the best way to keep a person faithful is to treat them badly.)

At any rate, talking to him (maybe talking to anyone from a distant enough past) reminded me of so many things. I try to forget the past as a whole, but in the years of darkness and strangeness, self-alienation, the dark seeds of so many failures germinating, I suppose there was some of that spark that only a sheltered youth and a head full of ideas can guard. I'm flamed out. Talking to him -- well, he was always on the way up, and I was always, relentlessly, insistently, on the way down.

Melancholy? he said. Why would you write about that?
You don't remember me at all, do you? I said.
But now I remember it wasn't always that way -- that in fact it struck months later, with the first major injury. The leg is... mostly fine. But the mind never quite came back.

I have the tremendous desire to be medicated and done with it. Or dead.

in which I write a journal entry: I went to China for 29 hours
I flew to Xiamen on Saturday—I was expecting a quiet seaside city, but it looked an awful lot like HK from the air. On the ground, cars were driving any way they wanted, people were pedalling away on bikes (no helmets, sidecars filled with what seemed to be scraps of wood, not a flinch when cars passed within inches). The university there is beautiful—it has space, as a university should, and the buildings have red tile roofs with eaves that curl upwards, and, like most universities I’ve seen, it was under construction. We went to a temple by the university—my immediate thought was that I infinitely prefer the European cathedral, with all their amplitude in the height of their arches, their colors distilled and confined in panels of stained glass, the echo of footsteps on stone and hollow. But then I realized that this noisy temple--its blaze of colors assaulting the eye, its gods with bulbously exaggerated features twisted in ferocious grimaces, its inscriptions furiously rained upon by coins flung from a hundred devout hands, and smoke everywhere, weighting the air, billowing densely from thousands of sticks of incense—was alive—that as extreme and strange as these gestures seemed, they were gestures of belief. We climbed up (& up & up) the path behind the temple, and even as we left behind the thick air, the path was thick with people (and cigarette smoke) (girls climbing in—what else but?—highheeled boots). Finally we reached a turn-off into the botanical gardens (40 yuan, about $5.85), which, from the heat of the temple, was an opening into silence, peace, and the shelter of tall trees. We walked through the “rainforest” area and into the desert exhibit (I’m still curious to know how they maintain desert conditions in this humidity)—I think it must be reflex to feel as if you’ve landed on Mars among these prickly plants that seem more emphatically alive than the others, almost creaturely with their visible adaptations for survival—at any rate, it was as good as a zoo and the most crowded area in the gardens. The next day we did the other thing that one does in Xiamen, which is to take the ferry to Gulangyu Island. The ferry is jammed with people (I don’t know why this continues to surprise me). They don’t collect tickets or money on the way out, unless you want to pay an extra 1 yuan ($0.15) to stand on the upper deck, which, as a result, is about 75% less crowded and offers a view for the 3 minute ride. The island is apparently the former estates of wealthy Chinese who had built homes there to get away from the city and is now something like a public park with museums. It’s actually a giant maze of houses that seem ruined and unoccupied, but for the laundry hanging alongside the Roman columns. Take a wrong turn, and suddenly you’re in an abandoned playground with sharp and rusty equipment and a boy trying to use the slide and making his play out of the various frustrations involved in not sliding (tossing his shoes off, trying to slide on his knees, scudding down with his feet propped on the rails, etc—he was a delight to watch, all alone in this nightmare playspace, and STILL managing to amuse himself—I don’t think there are many children or adults who could… well, it’s a lesson to me, for sure). We went into a park with a “rockery” and a piano museum (yes, a piano museum!! Which absolutely forbade touching and photography, as much as I know certain people who would have wanted both), drank coconut juice from beheaded coconuts sold by a surly man stingy with his seat, bought noodles (and then wouldn’t eat them), caught the ferry back—well, it wasn’t a bad use of 29 hours, I think.

i hate this place so, so much. it appears to have everything, yet nothing is possible, and i feel overwhelmed by violent impulses that i recognize are out of proportion with what is happening -- i feel that i still have some awareness of what's ethically right, but the border between thought and action is diminishing. horrid speeches leak out my mouth. i could see it clearly: a handful of hair bound on one end by a curling oozing scalp -- of course i didn't. but i could. i know i could. and what it means is violence enacted on the self, and i hate that, too, the division of violence, the precarious unity of pain.

forthcoming experiment
There is a certain kind of Asian girl that I have always resisted becoming. (I say "resist," though I am sure I could not attain such a state if I tried, and I say "Asian girl," though I'm referring to a mode of femininity that certainly exists among other populations.) In Hong Kong there is one dominant varietal: she sports a uniform of miniskirt and high-heeled boots, lacquers herself with cosmetics, and shuffles along with hunched shoulders. If you should happen to reach the door at the same time, she will always allow you to open it for her. Her hair hangs into her eyes (so she can ignore you if you should try to get around her) -- she is never big, but she's often accompanied by companions, and they amble as a wall, or they stand, chatting, two by two on the escalator, and she always, always has a mobile phone, into which she might be screeching or, more likely, texting. But it isn't these particularities of the Hong Kong urban girl that define her -- it's the exposed legs, which are white, boneless, and muscleless; the downcast eyes fringed with false lashes; the prematurely-stooped way she drags her feet. This isn't a girl built for speed. In another time, she would have been ferried about on a palanquin; here, she latches rhizomically onto another body (in the airport, I saw one with phone in hand being fed sections of a tangerine by her gargantuan, luggage-bearing manfriend – he stuffed the segments whole into her mouth, and her cheeks bulged out indelicately as she struggled to chew and swallow – ohh lala, it was an idyllic scene of young lovers in the baggage-check line…).
Well, I suppose I don’t need to express what I think about her.
But what is clear to me is that this is the kind of girl they mean when someone admits to having an Asian fetish—and the kind of Asian girl that even Asian boys want to marry (I had a discussion with a Taiwanese girl who told me that educated girls in Taiwan don’t get married; men would rather buy a bride from elsewhere—and so there are suddenly populations of children in Taiwan who haven’t learned to speak Chinese by the time they get to school): someone submissive, subordinate, servile, unable to think or act for herself.
The funny thing is that I have recently had cause to think of this with respect to acquaintances I have who aren’t exactly this Asian girl—or even Asian at all—but who bear similar passivities and are roaringly successful at getting what they want, even as they appear to do nothing at all but smile adoringly at their benefactors. And I wonder if I have been going about this whole “life” thing entirely the wrong way. I’m not nice. I’ll never be a wilting flower. I’ve always wanted to do things myself, muscularly, in solitude. But this strategy has utterly failed in every aspect of my life, and I’m starting to think that I’ve worked too hard to chase an independence that just can’t exist. Would it kill me to get a pair of false lashes (lots of girls wear them here, and I’m jealous. I’ve never cared much for breasts, but lush long fluttery lashes—they’re so obviously fake, but if everyone else does it, why can’t I?)? Would it kill me to mince and simper and pretend that things are too heavy for me to lift (well, actually, right now they are because I’ve torn cartilage in my wrist—but I still lift things BY MYSELF. But why do I do this even when others offer to help?) (I know why: because I don’t accept these stupid weaknesses and I don’t need anyone’s help and I can lift my own damn suitcase/bookshelf/refrigerator).
On the treadmill last night (had I run to “rationality” yet? I’ve been at my desk all day today, so I cannot say), I thought I might as well give it a shot—conduct the experiment that all these girls live daily—give my hair a good brush and try painting myself a little and see what fortunes fall into my lap (of course I do not have any paint except the old cheap crap I have for dance performances (which I will probably therefore never use again), and also I did not get up until 7am and so did not have time to do this, plus I instinctively put on my work uniform of black pants which are too short for me and a black t-shirt-that-doesn’t-look-like-a-t-shirt—but this I know: wearing my nicest clothes and looking fairly clean on Friday morning, I was upgraded to business class for my flight to Taiwan with no effort whatsoever on my part).

philtres of philtrums (philtri?)
i was born in canada and have lived most of my life in california. before moving to chicago, there were always plenty of other asians at school and elsewhere, so i never felt out of place. this isn't the case in chicago -- chicago is a very race-conscious city, and most of the time, it only acknowledges two races, black and white. (i'm sure i have related how, when i worked at leona's, i was always given the tables by the door -- where no one ever wanted to sit. "it's because you're exotic," one of the other servers told me, "we put you there to draw people in") (exotic?!) visiting my aunts and uncles in san francisco after my first year in chicago, i felt a sense of relief: i fit in -- by which i mean i could move invisibly through the crowd.
here in hong kong, a peculiar sensation has seeped into my consciousness: in the crowd (and when i say 'crowd' in hk, this is a very different 'crowd' than that in sf -- it forbids conceptualization, an actual swarm, freakishly docile, epitomizing plural) -- i see my own face mirrored back to me. i have not had a clear sense of what i look like, particularly in a commercial society in which the 2nd person is inevitably a face which cannot resemble yours. but on the MTR, among the strangers packed tight against me, i occasionally experience a bizarre shock of recognition. and it's absolutely irrational, this recognition -- and so unfamiliar that it took me some time to realize what it was --
when i was in the dentist's office, i saw an ad for toothbrushes or something like that -- a picture of a woman's jaw, her smile -- no eyes or hair, but something about the way the nose and mouth meet (the "philtrum," google informs me), the subtler lines of the mouth, the shape of the teeth -- you can see immediately this is an asian mouth, and i'm not sure why. it certainly didn't make me feel like buying a toothbrush.
this is totally unfinished in terms of thought.

another thing i like about hong kong: seeing boats every day.

oh my god, it's actually happening. babelfish assists.
Manager Jing auspicious blessing merit warning: The Library national welcome expensive hall English literature discipline expert Miss Xiao Jia Yun in 20/2/2009 to 22/2/2009 to arrive at this hall to be engaged in the sinology scholarly research matters concerned take “the library/library personnel in the Chinese ancient times role” as the topic. Specially this respect duplicate Along praises the compliments of the season Library national manager attends to presents respectfully sensitively

i won a trip to taiwan
well, not exactly, but i am going to pretend this is the case. result of below incoherent exercise: i bumbled my way half-heartedly through a 2-page proposal (that is to say, i worked on some other things for nearly a full day, skimmed some articles and book chapters, and wrote a piece of propaganda about the library) -- and they liked it so much that they are sending me to taiwan to conduct further research. this makes no sense because everything i know about libraries in china before 1920 is contained in the two pages i wrote as my "proposal"; furthermore, i cannot read chinese at any functional level or speak it academically. the other thing that doesn't make sense is that the abstract they dismissed actually *had a point*, and this plainly did not actually "propose" anything in particular.
i can draw only one conclusion from this: rationality, knowledge, thought, and effort have nothing to do with my job.

i have somehow expected (erroneously) -- maybe "desired" would be more accurate -- that i could have a life of some coherence -- a life in which there would be no need to distinguish working from being -- in which work would be home -- and the kind of self-sufficiency that would exist in that -- having all feeling and all energy moving in one direction. i haven't wanted much of a private life (or maybe what i wanted was a life of total privacy). of course there is no reason to imagine such a life could exist, except perhaps in a monastery.

something i like about hong kong: the "door close" button in the elevators actually close the doors.

all this has forced me to admit how spoiled i've been my whole life, and how accustomed i am to an american way of life, and more particularly, to the standard of living i had in chicago -- which i had not thought was very high! it turns out i'm not very adaptable, and that's disappointing to learn. the teacher spoke to me after class yesterday -- she said i seemed unhappy. i said that i couldn't find a place for myself (by which i meant, i can't find a place where i fit in, people who dance the way i do -- not in terms of the physical nature of things, but in terms of intensity). she thought i meant that i didn't have enough space to dance (which is also true) and said, that's the way things are in hong kong. studios are all very small. people dancing here don't know how to travel (take up space) when they dance. and i just can't get my head around this: why dance if you don't love to move through space? it made me unbelievably sad.

i just had the most irritating meeting with my boss and the other library staff. they said they didn't understand the proposal i had written. they said "we will have to work to bridge the gap between you and the library" (this is one of the themes; it's like being in a bad dream. the library is a bridge! we want to bridge the gap between authors and students and researchers! we are constantly having to bridge the gaps that either never existed until we declared we were a bridge between them, or between essentially unbridgeable things. i had to write an essay on libraries and bridges when i interviewed -- which i did, tongue in cheek. little did i know). so now we are doing a dummy research project so i can "get to know" the library better. it's NOT ME who is incomprehensible! what the hell am i supposed to do with the head librarian babbling about a library (tianyige) -- which he says first is the oldest (me: actually, it's not the oldest. it's only the oldest still in existence --) he says, "not the oldest. but comprehensive. most comprehensive. the oldest. you do some project. you focus on only humanities. tianyige and ancient libraries. in the west. a comparative study." (me: are you talking about comparing humanities *collections*?) him: "no no. about ancient libraries. you write a proposal. tianyige. and ancient libraries. send it to me in one or two days." (me: i really don't understand what you are asking me to do) him: "ancient libraries! ancient libraries! you send me proposal." it went like that, only imagine that it goes on for 10 more minutes, and everything he says is even more fragmented. i have a feeling that whatever i come up with won't be acceptable. i can't believe it's only midway through february. it's sad, all i can think about is when i get paid. and how many months i can put up with this. i'm thinking about 1.

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