Yesterday, I received the best gift.
It was given to me by a coworker. I was deeply absorbed in thought, meditating blue highlighter on yellow legal paper, when she peered into my cubicle.
“I have a late Christmas gift for you,” she said, looking in.
“I didn’t have any wrapping paper, but here you go.” It was wrapped in a FedEx delivery envelope.
As she walked away, I delicately tore away the tape. Inside
was a dark wooden box with a symbol etched on top. It looked like a calligraphy of nothingness. I opened the box to see if there was a definition inside. It was empty.
I asked my cubicle neighbor what the symbol meant.
“I think it’s ‘Om’.”
“Well, what’s ‘Om’?”
“I don’t know, but people say it a lot at the beginning and
end of prayers and stuff.”
“But what does it mean? Is it like hello? Is my box saying
hello?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
So we googled it.
It symbolizes ultimate Reality.
Another coworker came by as we were ‘Om’-ing.
“Oh ‘Om’?” He said. “Did you know that if you pronounce it
perfectly, it forms all the possible sounds you can make with your
tongue and mouth? It starts from the back of your throat like, like” - he pronounced it perfectly.
So a coworker gave me the gift of ultimate Reality and inside it was nothing.
(And she was worried about the wrapping paper.)
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While waiting in line at the post office, a grey-haired gentleman behind me informed me that I “looked like the girls in Gauguin’s paintings.” I did not know whether to feel flattered or lie in abject horror. I laughed it off, and attempted to deflect future comments with a “yeah, it’s probably because I’m so tan.” But he pressed on: asking me where I came from (China, not the South Pacific) and insisting that, I must at least be from Southern China (I don’t know).
“It’s like with the Africans,” he continued, his voice remarkably lowered. “You can tell the difference between the ones from Egypt and the ones from the Congo in their faces. Their bone structures are different.” And suddenly I felt further denuded before him, back turned, and reduced to a sheepish grin.
“Consider it a compliment,” he insisted.
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I waited for him at Gare Montparnasse. I spent the morning walking from Place d’Italie in flip flops and my backpack prepared for the next month’s adventure. He did not want to meet at the hostel, navigate the metro by himself, or use the French flashcards his mother made him from my emails. So I gave him directions from the airport into the city and parked myself by the kiddie carousel - our meeting spot. His plane was arriving at 8:30 am. It had been 6 weeks since I’d last seen him.
8:30 am came and went. The sun rose. I migrated to the bus station precisely where he would be dropped off. I asked the baggage workers if this was the only Montparnasse stop. It was. With each arriving bus, my heart rose. I scanned the tinted windows for his face, his build, him. Hours passed. Noon passed. Sank.
I watched a man pick a fight with one of the bus drivers. Although unclear about the argument’s cause, his violent intent became apparent when he barreled through the line - shouting, cursing in ballistic French - and punched. The bus driver reciprocated by unbuckling his seat belt, exiting his vehicle, and running into the street. Baggage workers held both back. The man’s wife and daughter watched from the sidewalk. Police arrived and filed a report.
By 1 pm, my endurance was quickly diminishing. I thought about my directions, possible miscommunication, the wrong bus stop, traffic. I forgot whether or not I included hostel information in my emails. I saw other people greet their families, other couples scamper off. I was getting hungry. I put on the sunglasses Aaron lent me in Amsterdam and tried not to let my disappointment show.
When he arrived minutes later, I did not even see him. He ran towards me and when it registered, I burst into tears. “Are you mad at me?” he asked, anxiously. “I thought you looked mad at me but how could you be? Ah man, I just got off the bus!”
We spent the next half hour under a tree just holding each other.
I think about that moment now, the month then spent, and how we were actually young; that is, our relationship was young. I had only known him for five months and most - if not all my relationships - were doomed by the four month mark. I could eyeball their detonations if I did not explode them myself out of sheer impatience. But there he was, in Paris with me, and more than a year later, here we still are.
I think about that now and I wonder how much harder the year(s?) long interim will be. How much more he will mean to me by the time of my next departure.
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Looking at the as-yet titled works, the fiberglass sculptures, the acrylic drawings, the colored pencil and envelope sketches, I started to wonder at what exact moment did the child die within me.
During dinner, I interrupted a conversation about post-graduation plans. To please the parents, one senior set himself upon the elaborate scheme of applying to graduate school though that is not what he aspires to. When I asked him the typical follow-up of ’so, what do you want to do?’ he equivocated so pleasurably that I almost hated myself for telling him he was equivocating. ‘I would do nothing ,’ he said, after my many persistent interruptions. ‘ Nothing at all.’ His quiet eyes and sheepish demeanor belied a seriousness I was ashamed of interrogating.
But what is nothing?
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cunning little bitch
i saw your face yesterday
that was the last straw
michelle said you build
live behind the dryer, make nest
we kill your children’
other roommates dumb
squeal like sissies in their rooms
not i, you bitch mouse
you think you are smart
fine, don’t eat the poison pills
die in painful trap
don’t give me mickey
that cartoon rodent bullshit
you’re not fucking cute
this is war, you hear
RIP 2004
i pity the fool
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The exact sequences of events was hazy.
I remember walking through a construction site, buying strawberries at a nearby SPAR, and finally happening upon Ooster Park after hours of wandering. By and by the p——— kicked in, and we just lay in the field, staring at the clouds and sun.
This was after his birthday dinner at La Coupole, the three bottles of wine at Les Jardins des Plantes, L’Eiffel, and La Gare du Nord (successively), the spat we had before we became transcontinental, and the phone calls in between. This was after the multiple last minute New Year’s celebrations, the neon green alien pajama set, the soda jerk days, and the letters after we hadn’t spoken in a year. And this was most certainly after the first time we had ever met, in a roller rink, when my summer roommate had a crush on him and the two of us would spent our late nights debating his merits and that of her current boyfriend.
“Aaron, do you realize that we’ve known each other for seven years? If someone told you when we first met that we would still be friends seven years later, you living in Germany, us spending weekends all over Europe, what would you say? Would you believe it?”
“Damn.”
And we lay there quiet for a moment longer, the weather just a little bit chilly, I wearing his long-sleeved shirt.
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Of course, as it always should happen, that night I didn’t even want to drink. It was late, I had a stomachache, and the chosen bar was a fifteen minute walk away. But at midnight she would turn 21 and for that, we mobilized.
She gave the call a half hour after and we trundled down Sansom. At door check we pilfered through our respective purses and wallets and I, being the faster, handed him my ID first. Suddenly, it was over before it had even begun. Is this really happening? Is he really doing this? He’s doing it. He’s actually doing it. He did it. There. It’s done. And I was turned away, my now dispossessed ID in his hands, Caroline looking at me with an awkward, distressed look. I mean, we’re all adults here aren’t we? I gave a quiet “oh, okay” and walked away.
You always imagine yourself saying something really smart or doing something overly dramatic in those moments. Pummeling him with your purse, tapping him on the opposite shoulder, making a scene. Groveling. Grabbing and running. But as soon as it occurs, it’s already over. It happens about you and to you at the same time.
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Scene - Thursday a few weeks ago. Around midnight.
Setting - Poorly architecturally designed apartment riddled with bad feng shui.
Enter N.
Roommate: Where were you? I was just wondering where you went.
N: Oh, I just got back from this monthly hip-hop thing. MC Battle.
Roommate: Really. Did you break?
N: Um, kinda. Not really. It was all carpet except for this little square of linoleum so I just kinda did my thing in the corner.
Roommate: Heh.
N: Yeah, and the thing was, Beautiful Boy was there.
Roommate: Beautiful Boy . . . ?
N: Yeah - the one that I saw before the Roots Concert.
(Beat)
N:I’m sure I told you about him.
Roommate: Eh . . . probably.
N: Yeah, so - he was there and he was so good. So! Good! I don’t think you understand! SO GOOD!
Roommate: Did you get to talk to him?
N: Well, there was this one time I thought he left already so I was just, you know, doin’ my thing, practicing going from baby to chair freeze. And he came over all the way from the other side of the room with his backpack, and put his stuff down to tell me what I was doing wrong. It was embarrassing.
(Roommate Laughs)
N: Yeah, I was like, ugh, I’m-an-ass-I’m-an-ass I suck, I suck, I KNOW I suck! And you’re so Beautiful! You’re not allowed to help me! Don’t look at me! You’re too good!
Roommate: Oh, so only Ugly People are allowed to help you?
N: Exactly!
Roommate: (Laughs) Well, look at the bright side. At least it means he was looking at you.
N: Yeah.
(Beat)
N: I guess it means he was.
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A part of me thinks I will shed this person, I will crack my candied shell metamorphosed and deny our past together. I feel as though I am growing exponentially - aging in dog years - and he is my mentor, my foil, my vitametavegamin. He says things I can unwrap like sweet, secret morsels of the mind, things at once cryptic and deciphered, things that I can so intimately cherish as they melt into my greater consciousness, settle and digest. And yet, I ponder the day of my rude awakening. When this moment will be gone, so touch-and-go, so tag-and-not-it. I fear he may be just a phase I am growing into growing out of, and that I may be deluding myself of a reality otherwise. So I think harder, push farther, propel forward, and quietly make these preoccupations with the Retrospective Now fall away. The way our minds together intended.
It doesn’t matter what I think I will think what I think when I think about him. Right now what matters is it’s him.
Today is such a Winnie-The-Pooh day.
The air is autumn, crisp and clean.
The leaves are eddying in the wind.
It makes me want to stick my paw in a pot of hunny and say, “oh, bother.”
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