Glutton For Bad Karma

Every time I travel, I transform into this furious magnet for bad karma, and today is no different. It’s not a long flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai, and if you’re on a good airline, like Dragonair of Cathay Pacific, the two hours fly by fairly sweetly. They serve Haagen-Daaz for love of Jesus. I’m a snuggly little camper under two felt blankets, finishing Junot Diaz’s Drown and picking up Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes. It’s a short story kinda day.

Then the flight rumbles to a landing, jolting me from the slumber that knocks me out as soon as the captain announces descent. Gets me every time. The plane taxis to the gate and the sardines are restless. As soon as the lights pops on and the bell goes ‘ding!’ the madness begins. First there’s a clatter of unbuckling seatbelts and the sardines rise in messy synchronization. I expect to hear the grumblers, complaining about someone in their armpit or knocking the dust off their hats as overhead baggage is yanked from above. But this particular can seems to be stuffed with fairly polite travelers. I maneuver around to grab my tiny little roller bag and manage to return to my seat unscathed.

A bumbling old man, the bellowing upright kind, rather than the muttering stooped, begins stepping all over everyone, still stationary and awaiting release, to find his luggage in the overhead compartments. He’s so polite, however, that everyone lets him by, ignoring his elbows in their ribs and his buttocks in their hips, as he chants in a singsong voice, “Wang ji le fang na li, wang ji le,” (“Don’t remember where I put it, don’t remember.”) I love the politely rude. I find them fascinatingly slick. At this point a slow fart escapes me and I make a face, pretending I don’t know who just smelt up the aisle.

We all trundle off the plane after the doors open and I beeline for the bathroom because the life of my bladder depends on it. Then a race to the immigration line, walking fast with my heels kicked up and Nocturnes sticking out of my roller bag like a tongue. I ignore the ambulators and enjoy the scuff of the carpet. Walking feels good after sitting still for a couple hours. So far, so good. No one’s getting in my face, the sun’s shining through a hazy sky in Shanghai and I’m almost home after too much time away.

I head for the China Immigration lane. As soon as I file in behind some older dude ahead of me, his buddy cuts in front of me as if I wasn’t there. Ah, here it comes. The switch under my sternum that tells the Happy Buddha hanging from a chain around my neck to back the fuck off.

“What are you doing?” I say to him, immediately embarrassed by my stupid-sounding Mandarin.

“I’m with him,” he replies, brushing me off and stepping ahead. I’m not gonna point out that he’s Chinese here, because I’ve seen plenty a white guy do the same in crowded airports.

We’re at a bend in the snake line, a perfect place for negotiating rank and file, and I sidestep him and say, “It doesn’t work like that.”

He ignores me, steps forward.

“Did you hear me?” I say.

“I’m behind you now, okay?” he responds gruffly, flickering his disdain towards me with his beady eyes. I can say that because my eyes are beady, too.

I reclaim my position and feel ambivalent. I won my little battle, haven’t I? Somehow I feel like a douche. The grumps have been introduced, however, and when the officer at the booth asks me to take my hat off I scowl. The lights blink on the electronic comment box as she hands me back my identity, and out of the five options, I press the Greatly Dissatisfied button with the unhappiest frowny face. Oh, dear, I think to myself. I’m in that mode.

I stride on to the baggage claim but now my head is full of the kind of remorse I feel after I’ve yelled at a taxi driver who’s deriding my pinyin pronunciation. I’m a big believer of karma. If you dish it out, prepare to have the shit served right back at you. Did I just spitefully press the frowny face button because the officer made me reveal my oily hat head, or because I have a fat face on my I.D. card, or because I scuffled with my mom before she saw me disappear into the Departures area?

My mom gets grumbly whenever we’re at the airport. It makes sense. She lives alone now and my visits break up otherwise long stretches of alone time. Watching her wave as I round the partition, a big, fat lemon squeezes all over my heart and I chastise myself for being less than patient. I hate these moments. They allow the latent anger at my father to rise up, and it’s takes awhile to tamp that sucker back down again.

I’ve grabbed my luggage, clearly marked with cute little ornaments by my mother, and made it to the taxi stand, which is empty. The snake line is welded in place with metal bars, however, as unrelenting as the crowds that usually bloat against them, and it takes a minute for me to wind up and down and back up to the waiting taxi. The driver gets out and helps me with the luggage and I slide into the seat, grateful to be on the last leg home. I brace myself for attitude as the driver asks me where I’m going, but there is none. I open up my laptop, and by the time I finish chronicling my own nastiness, I am finally home.

Curse of the Overly-Enthused

During this brief sojourn, I've collected a few recurring observations of Hong Kong's 'literary world.' I apply quotations to 'literary world' since surely one cannot presume to have experienced any sort of 'world' based on a two-day symposium and a flurry of random talks, but here I go, presuming anyway.

1) Introducing yourself to others is a big and scary crapshoot. The person you just introduced yourself to could be any of the following: bored rich person, executive know-it-all, celebrated author, cultural dabbler, eager young student, crusty old creep, avid reader, or just plain asshole. There goes half an hour. Guzzle, guzzle.

2) A LOT of people like to quote Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." May want to reconsider the Prufrock references in my current manuscript. ... Screw it. Keeping 'em.

3) Passing out your card to everyone may elicit mockery from time to time. Get over it. There's the off chance that someone will not turn around and bin it, but cherish it for all it's worth. $0.07 and a truckload of gumption.

4) Unabashed enthusiasm tends to make others wary, especially authors and agents. It's possible they are on the look out for potential stalkers. The wide eyes of enthusiasm are too difficult to distinguish from the wide eyes of mania.

Let's focus, for a moment, on 4. I am a ridiculously enthusiastic person. Well, most of the time. I'm the one who's shaking your hand and telling you how great you were onstage. Thing is, I actually mean it. It doesn't take a whole lot to impress me, so take what you will from it, but the enthusiasm is genuine. What I've found in the past week and change is that this enthusiasm can sometimes lead others to employ the slow back away, wondering what it is you want from them, or what it is you expect to glean from their awesomeness. I get it. I was approached by an eager member of the audience when I was the featured reader at an open mic recently and I remember being a little bit afraid of his wide eyes.

The thing is, I've never been the cool, collected type, and do not wish to be. What I do wish, however, is that I was just a tad less sensitive about being a dork.

Dialing down sensitivity is not one of my strong suits. It's not even near the closet. This leads to the following scenario, which has been happening quite often:

Jenn goes up to [insert author, artist, person with the cool hat, here]. Grins. "Hi, I'm Jenn! Can I give you my card?" (Yes, Gauche is my middle name. Right after Dork.) Subject [smiles/raises eyebrows/laughs] and accepts the 300 gsm matte with spot UV card shoved towards them. A few [seconds/minutes] of chit chat before parting ways. Fast forward to next run-in with said [author, artist, hat aficionado]. Jenn waves excitedly. "Hi, how are you?" Subject smiles uncertainly, employs slow back away. Jenn's bold, over-excitable, self-conscious slug of a soul shrinks, slumps into the safety of its shell, and replays scenes of rejection, imagined or real, until the emergency generator of reason kicks into gear. The lights turn back on.

In literary festival wonderland, the one author/VIP that has made the slug in me feel most welcome has been the Pulitzer winner, the one you'd actually expect to be stand-offish. Junot Diaz was hands-down the nicest and most unassuming. He seems to have true compassion for wanna-be writers. It's encouraging in the best way: each time I've heard him speak, I run home and write.

I Am A Writer, Goddamit

In part of my recent attempts to embrace this identity I've created for myself as a Writer/Dreamer, I am in Hong Kong attending my first writers' symposium called Writing Across Cultures at City University. Nothing more unnerving for a so-called writer to step into a room full of writers.

Identity is tricky. About two years ago I declared myself a writer. It was easier than I'd imagined in all my twenty-nine years. My wonderful friend designed me a business card and there it was: Jenn Chan Lyman, Writer. Wow. If I'd known it to be that easy, I'd have gone out and printed business cards when I was five. Owning up to myself being a writer has been much more difficult. It helps when you don't have a job and tell everyone you're writing a novel. But I wonder if I will ever truly consider myself a successful writer until something I've written (that I truly love, i.e. not random magazine articles) is published somewhere other than on A4 paper in my study. So, how to get published?

Over the past week of attending Shanghai Literary Festival events and talking to authors and writers and non-writers alike, it seems that the success of a writer in the publishing world is not solely based on writing, but the entire package of the writer herself (or himself, or itself). You want to be published? Shameless self-promotion is part of the repertoire of helpful skills. Have a business card. Have a website. Go forth and meet the world via Twitter and Facebook. Blog away like a fruitful little blogger. Then, when you have time, write. Okay, no one actually said that, but it feels like it, especially this week where I've scuttled off across the seas to attend symposiums and talks and festival opening parties. Mmm...alcohol. What about that novel of mine? Oh, right. Crap.

So far the key point I've absorbed in all these talks is that I seriously need to work harder. And harder. And harder. Wake up earlier. Develop a schedule. Finish that second draft of Frozen and start on the third. As long as my vpn continues to work, I'll be blogging more than once a week from Shanghai. I've created a public Facebook account for the writer in me. And, oh dear, Twitter. Yesterday I joined the 60 million twitterers of the world. Lord help me. Now, back to the symposium...