Shanghai International Literary Festival - Min Jin Lee

Late Bloomer, or Freedom From Failure: Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food For Millionaires

It’s a foggy Sunday afternoon and all I want to do is stay in bed. At the encouragement of my husband, I manage to crawl out of the warm covers, slap myself awake, hobble together an outfit, and speed taxi my way over to the last day of the Shanghai International Literary Festival. Only a few minutes late, I creep into the audience and break out my lap-top. There’s a good energy in the room and the moderator, Andrew Yang, is in the midst of introducing featured author Min Jin Lee. As she takes the mic, I’m struck by how young she looks for one claiming to be a late bloomer. Turns out, Min Jin Lee quit being an attorney when she was around 25 years old and working 300 hours a month. She contracted a major liver illness and decided to become a writer instead of dying as a lawyer. After saving $15,000, she embarked on her new path, thinking that she was going to publish a novel in nine months. As she retells her story, Min Jin Lee interjects with quips and jokes, often laughing at herself. She talks about being rejected by everyone on “really nice paper”. Then she says “ass” in public, and it’s the final nail for me. I like her and I want to be her friend. I’m that fan in the back of the bookstore, biting my fingernails and squinting at my beloved author as she reads aloud on a makeshift stage. Hmm. Right. Anyhow, Min Jin’s story unwound over twelve years of rejection and three unpublished manuscripts before coming out with her current best-seller, Free Food For Millionaires. 

Andrew Yang switches focus to the book itself. The background is about an Asian-American girl from an immigrant family, whose hard-working parents send her to an Ivy League school. She graduates with a lot of aspirations, some squashed and some accomplished, while a battery of quandaries and anecdotes buffet her along the way. The book is also very much about New York and Wall Street. During her writing process, Min Jin (we’re on a first name basis now) interviewed about 40 people in New York for the book, including many CEO and Wall Street types. As she interviewed more and more individuals for her book, she realized that people have very strong urges to unload, especially with regard to secrets about their sex life. She was very careful about establishing trust with her subjects upfront, and often the interviews became oddly confessional. 

Having heard so many different stories from men and women having extra-marital affairs, Min Jin also says she became increasingly indifferent towards infidelity. There’s a lot more going on between adulterers than sex and lies, and she began to develop a lot of respect for those who actually stay happily married. She tangents into an interesting tirade about the importance of sex between individuals, etc., and a tangible tension coalesces in the audience. Andrew helps break it up by changing the subject, while Min Jin herself diffuses any remaining “weirdness” in the room with a hearty laugh.

Money is a key character in her book and she says that a lot can be revealed in how a person eats, drinks and spends money. Her conclusion after much observation is that overall every person is a millionaire in their own right. There are so many rich people who have no clue as to what would make them happy. She brings up a Swingers reference, which is hilarious because I’m not sure how many people in the audience actually got the Vince Vaughn quote (“You’re so money, you are so money and you don’t even know it.”).

New York City is another character, a city of extremes, she calls it. She’s found Shanghai to be much the same, a place where you can’t say stupid things because you’ll see something immediately that will probably counteract the dumb thing you are saying. Living amongst extremes keeps you honest. Korean-Americanism is yet another character, and she expresses how much she appreciates being part of an immigrant family. She’s from a crazy tribe and she loves it. She explains how all these elements of your background create filters, the filter of being married, the filter of being a woman, etc., which is a just a great metaphor.

It’s Q&A time, and someone in the audience asks what was the critical point that brought her from three failed manuscripts to FFFM. Min Jin tells us how she spent seven years trying to write serious fiction, and a major turning point for her was when her friend told her that her stories were okay but why didn’t they sound like the way she talks? Min Jin was furious at first, but quickly found merit in her friend’s feedback. Taking the advice, she sat down and wrote in first person for the first time, and it was the first story that she actually got published. Seems a lot of firsts happened for her at year seven. Umm…year SEVEN?

Did she ever want to give up? Min Jin responds that she was so discouraged by the many rejection letters that she felt like quitting all the time. She had moments where she was so angry and upset and wondered, ‘Why isn’t this happening for me?’ Her sister wisely suggested that she focus not on the lack of acceptances, but aim to collect 100 rejections instead. That way, you are putting yourself out there and may actually get 10 acceptances amongst all those rejections. Min Jin also asked herself at one point why she wanted her book to be published so badly. Was that the end-all? She realized that writing is just something inside her. Having something published may not be the end goal after all.

The talk is over and I head over to the bar where copies of Min Jin’s book are for sale. I am completely mortified when I see the cover, featuring a side profile of a woman wearing a red fedora. I stand there, blushing as red as the fedora perched on my head at that very moment. Damn, I’m friggin’ dressed like the girl on the cover. Ultimate loser move. As I ask for her autograph, I giggle nervously and tell Min Jin that I had not seen the cover before donning my red hat this afternoon, it was purely coincidental. She looks up at me with a winning smile and says something like, “Hon, I’m glad you wore your red hat because it looks fabulous.” I smile sheepishly and almost trip down the stairs on my way off the stage. Such a nice lady. Leaving in a swoon, I am super-charged with inspiration for my burgeoning life as a writer. What is there to be afraid of when you’re doing what you love most? Bring it on, Failure and Rejection, I’m not afraid of you!

- Article originally posted on Urbanatomy Shanghai

Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale: A Review

Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale - performed March 8th, 2009 at the Lyceum Theater in Shanghai

Ever-susceptible to marketing, I was intrigued by a red Devil’s mask when flipping through the latest That's Shanghai magazine last week. The Soldier’s Tale? Never heard of it. Stravinsky? Igor, right? I’m pretty sure my piano teacher mentioned him once or twice. Best do some research on good old Igor. After a few hours online and listening to his Best Of, I’m sold. Stravinsky is known for his departure from the norm, his challenging dissonance, his cockle-warming melodies, and inciting a Parisian riot with the first measures of his controversial Rite of Spring back in 1913. The Soldier’s Tale, first performed in 1918, is a fairly unique combination of narration, mime, ballet, and orchestra. Having failed to recruit any other friends to join me, I head out alone on a crisp Sunday afternoon anticipating a healthy dose of culture at the Lyceum Theater.

The theater itself is reminiscent of an older Shanghai, not large but a generous size for the kind of production that Stravinsky imagined. This piece could have been played in an open field, as symphony liner master Edward Downes mentions in his Guide to Symphonic Music. The nerd/loser that I am, I have actually brought along the tome in case today's liner notes prove unworthy, but in fact they are quite well-written, providing the history of the piece as well as ample information covering Stravinsky, his partner and writer Ramuz, the Lyceum Theater, and the performers.

The orchestra begins and I'm surprised that the lights are still up as the Narrator starts her tale, sight unseen. Then I notice that she's actually walking down the left aisle and ascending the stairs to her spot slightly upstage of the apron. She is outfitted with a plush velvet armchair and ottoman, complete with wine glass and carafe as imagined by Stravinsky and Ramuz. Only, today's production has chosen red wine versus the original white. Turns out that the Narrator is the lady I saw earlier sitting alone in the back row. She'd reminded me of the lady in Edward Hopper's New York Movie, equal parts beautiful and forlorn.

The lights dim and a few stragglers crouch into their seats in my row, third from the stage. Next thing I know some guy is flashing a light in my face and riffling through a book, not only late but quite in your face as well, I'm thinking. Then I realize he's way too dramatic to be an actual person and my timing is fortunate as he is now extending a hand for mine. Holy bejeezus, I've just been chosen by the Devil for audience participation! I take the Devil's hand and rise from my seat, then pull back, thinking I may be in deeper than I thought, but the Devil is a wiley old fellow and he draws me towards him as chuckles ripple through the audience. He leads me to the front row and sits me down in an empty seat. Score! Definitely like where he's going with this. He gives me one last unctuous smile and hops over to harass other audience members.

The story is about a Soldier who gets tricked by the Devil to swap his fiddle (aka his soul) for a magic book (aka material wealth). Stravinsky chose to represent the Soldier's soul with the violin, and the effect is poignant. Writing this on a scant budget during WWI, Stravinsky lined up only seven members of the orchestra, compared to the forty plus members in his prior success, The Firebird. Influenced by the birth of jazz, he chose to represent the high and low of each section: violin and upright bass, trumpet and trombone, clarinet and bassoon, and one mad percussionist with a timpani and a sandbox full of tinkering toys. The bassoon is one of my favorite orchestral instruments and throughout The Soldier's Tale it provides a steady moral center around which the Soldier's violin and the Devil's percussion duel it out.

Times of distress and hardship bring out the most interesting of innovations, and The Soldier's Tale is a clear representation of this. The Narrator is a critical player and provides the only voice we hear, while three actor/ballet performers mime and dance their way through the story. The Narrator in this case was fantastic, drawing us in with her various voices and animated performance. For some reason the liner notes credit a Stephen Fung as the English Narrator, but she was no Stephen. I wonder who she is, and am grateful to have had the chance to experience her version of the Narrator. The Soldier is played by Tian Duo Duo, an invigorating young actor with energy and expression to spare. Angelina Lim plays a graceful yet stalwart Princess, managing to be coy and extremely likable at the same time. Surely both are young artists to watch. The Devil in his many disguises is humorously depicted by Tang Huang, whose comedic timing is on the mark. All in, I thought the performers were excellent, and have the director, Alison M. Friedman, to thank for that. However, I was not blown away by the orchestra, the Xinya Kongqi Chamber Orchestra hailing from Beijing. Although the music was great, they lacked the same enthusiasm that the performers so whole-heartedly portrayed. In fact, at times they seemed a bit bored.

Lights go up an hour later and I leave the theater encouraged by the talent I've seen and what it represents for Shanghai's cultural scene. Even though The Soldier's Tale is a story about a man eventually claimed by the Devil, the premise of the work itself speaks of creativity adapting to tough times, a lesson that seems appropriate as we flounder through today's global recession. Here's to finding a way on tightening budgets and dreaming up out-of-the-box projects to be enjoyed by current and future generations! 

Shanghai International Literary Festival - Laura Pugno

Session with Laura Pugno - 6:00pm, Friday March 6

Having quit the corporate world last autumn to become a full-time writer, I have been very much looking forward to the 2009 Shanghai International Literary Festival. What better way to get my feet wet in Shanghai’s literary world? On the first day of SILF, I head to Glamour Bar to see Italian poetess Laura Pugno. I park myself in full view of the stage and am thankful for the glass of red in my hand. Surrounded by a fairly well-dressed lot engaged in a whirlwind of chatting and catching up, I feel quite sheepish in my hole-riddled jeans. Definitely out of place in a lounge full of what must be Shanghai’s literary elite.

A petite brunette with a kind face, Laura Pugno takes the stage and there are blind stone eyes projected behind her. The program coordinators were savvy about providing the audience with a small booklet of Pugno's work in English translations. M on the Bund’s owner, Michelle Garnaut, kicks off the session, along with Paolo Sabbatini, who in a lovely Italian accent provides a much needed introduction to a poetess and novelist who has somehow eluded Google.

Laura begins with thank you's all around and is fabulously adorable as she notes that this her first time in “Chee-na”. She begins to read her poetry in English and a series of photos by Elio Mazzacane scroll behind her. There's something alluring about an accented voice reciting gently; she could be reading her grocery list and I would still be mesmerized. A section of the photos are dedicated to the color gold, juxtaposing her collection Il Colore Oro, but as my mind wanders I can’t help but notice that it’s really more of a mustard. Il Colore Mostarda.

After her reading, she answers questions from the audience. One stands out in particular: whether or not much is lost in translation. She responds thoughtfully that something is lost and also gained in translation. It forces you to make choices since the language may not fit perfectly, and sometimes you have to give your work a different twist.

She’s requested to read in Italian and we’re in for a treat. There's always a love affair between a poet and her words, and this passion is obvious when Pugno presents her own Italian words. The rhythm is so different, it cannot be compared to the English. I may not gather the meaning, but I certainly sense the beauty as her lips wrap around the beloved words that have been carefully selected, nurtured and coddled. The spirit of each syllable infuses her poems as she recites.

After the session is over, I finally locate Laura by the DJ booth and am hovering shamelessly for her attention. Looking around the room, I wonder who all these people are in their polished suits. I feel like I’m at an investment banking conference, except there are way too many smiles going around. Kudos to the lady in front of me who’s actually trying to read a book in this dim light. Starting to feel like a stalker after about five minutes, I decide that I better make my move.

More than twenty minutes later, I am all puffed up with the sense of achievement, having successfully pinned down the poor poetess for a heart-to-heart. Over a glass of red she told me everything related to Laura Pugno. Okay, not really, but it was inspiring anyway. A warm and passionate lady, she entertained my questions with the enthusiasm of someone not yet tarnished by too many interviews.

The Interview (note: Laura’s answers are paraphrased and should be read with her endearing Italian accent in mind):

Q1: Have you been in China long for this trip? What fascinates you the most about Shanghai?

A1: I’ve been in Shanghai for a week, and this is my first time in Asia. I’m fascinated by the contrast between the super urban and modern and the older parts of the city. As soon as I got off the plane, I was also struck by the intense language barrier. It really becomes an exercise in trust, getting in a taxi cab and showing the driver a piece of paper, and hoping he will get you to the right place. The city feels very safe, which is quite amazing for such a big city.

So far, Laura has visited various must-sees like the Jade Buddha Temple and Yu Gardens, as well as hipper parts of town like Tai Kang Lu. The life of a Shanghai expat reminds her of her own experiences as a foreign student in London. She surmised that expats here must have a hard time crossing into local society, as the expat scene itself is so developed.

Q2: How would you describe your poetry: melancholy, joyous, philosophical?

A2: I would describe it as coming close to something that you cannot easily reach, like a quest.

Q3: Did you always know that writing was your calling? Is there anything that you dislike about the profession?

A3: I have been writing poetry since I was seven, so I guess I have always known! The thing I dislike the most about writing is the editing process. You’ve written the first draft of the novel, and now you have to go through the tedious step by step process of cleaning it up.

Q4: Any advice for a wanna-be novelist?

A4: Endurance. That’s the toughest thing about writing a novel. Poems are easier in that way. Perhaps when I am an old woman I may stick to poems!

Laura’s got a ways to go before she can be considered an old woman. Her third novel (We Are All Made of Glue) is on the way and hopefully more of her work will be translated into English soon.

 

Waiting for Tripe and Balls - a fragment

It’s a Friday night over here and we are anxious for the doorbell to ring, announcing the arrival of tonight’s delight – Vietnamese  pho with “rare, flank, brisket, balls, tendon, tripe”. Nothing like an assortment of cow parts to get the evening going. Things couldn’t be better around the Lyman parts. Buddy Josh is hanging out with the Internet. Husband’s at his DJ booth, head-bopping to new and old records. “Just a little lovin’, early in the morning, just a little lovin’, early in the day…” reminds me of January 2006 when I was first introduced to his monkey mixing at a dark club. It has almost been three years to the day we married. Then again, I pretty much felt like we were married the day we met.

But enough cheese factor. The end of last year and start of this year are waiting to be summed up. We were chock-full of resolutions at the end of 2008. On the very last day of the year, we hiked to a little bay on the coast of Kona famous for sun-bathing tortoises, heading for a particularly inspiring tree we like to call the Planning Tree. Under its winding branches, we revisited the ups and downs, high-fives and do-overs of 2008 and got excited about the year to come. 2009 will be all about writing, writing, and writing. Getting healthier. Being stoked about each moment of every day. Taking it easy on the things that don’t matter and really going for the things that do. For the first time I feel like my life is my own. No one looking over my shoulder or demanding my attention. No more pushing myself down a track that I’ve been following since I was five. 

Ah, five. What a magical year. My birthday present was piano lessons with an amazing teacher who not only saved me from the embarrassment of being Jan Chan, but also taught me how to spell. Newly arrived in a foreign country and thousands of miles away from relatives, my brother and I were blessed to have found much more than a piano teacher. Ms. Davison was more like a stern yet gentle grandmother. As it often goes in a family of hard-working immigrants, by five I was already fully apprised of the expectations to come. A’s were a given; A+’s were better. College of course, but not just any college. The very university that Ms. Davison herself attended circa 1933 was my final destination. 

And there I went, circa 1995 after twelve years of mad studies. Then four years of not-so-mad studies; it was college after all. Then slaved and worked, worked and slaved in a soul-sucking, spine-buckling field for what seemed like forever. Then last September, I finally got around to quitting my job. It only took a few months for my shoulders to lose the up-around-the-ears look that I've had for as long as I can remember. I wake up every morning thankful for everything and stoked about the day. I practice unclenching my fists and find it easier and easier to let it all go.

So here’s to a brand new 2009: a year of Barack, letting go, and living the dream for the unforeseeable future. And here's to foot-stomping happy times in the days and months to come for every one of you out there. Except for you evil bastards - no foot-stomping times for you.

Mood: Ultramarine - playlist

It's been so long since I've put together a compilation that's not for a wedding! What was originally created as a pre-show mood-setter had found audience in my tiny amygdala instead. A bruised ultramarine haze has slipped under the door, slithered across the floor, spread itself thin, and upon finally settling in, has commanded a very specific mood for this nippy November weekend. All this to capture: "Um...I need music that makes you think, something to lead up to Al Green's Ain't No Sunshine". Hmm. Well, at least I'm thinking.

1. Heywèté / Ethiopiques: Volume 10
   
2. Una Música Brutal / Gotan Project
   
3. Love Song / Ofra Haza
   
4. Lament 1, "Bird's Lament" / Moondog (Louis Hardin)
   
5. Angkor Wat Theme 3 / Umebayashi Shigeru 
   
6. Like A Star / Corinne Bailey Rae
   
7. Anger Management / Nathaniel Merriweather 
   
8. Why Don't You Do Right / Alan Silvestri
   
9. No Quarter / Led Zeppelin
   
10. Time / Xiao Tu Do
    
11. The Sensual Woman / Herbaliser
    
12. Pretty Little Thing / Fink
    
13. Familiar Ground / The Cinematic Orchestra
    
14. Day Dreaming / Aretha Franklin
    
15. Ne Me Quitté Pas / Nina Simone
    
16. Ain’t No Sunshine / Al Green
    
17. Sonata No. 1 in G, BWV 1027, 3. Andante / Yo Yo Ma
    

An Oakland Memorial: Ginny Kleker 17jun77-08oct08

The heavy, uncomfortable silence was immediately familiar as we walked into the room, packed with mourners and hushed voices. My grip on my husband’s hand tightened ever so slightly as each step brought us deeper into the jittery crowd and closer to the somber reality of his dear friend’s sudden death. We were both caught off guard when her mother led us to the front row, where two empty seats awaited. As we sat down between a calm elderly lady and a young man close to our age, shaking between sobs, it dawned on me that this was the first funeral I’d been to since the one I hosted s0 many years ago. 

The memorial began and I glanced across at Ginny’s family. Her mother, Teresa, was huddled against her shattered and numb fiancé, Jon, who stared vacantly a few feet ahead of him. On her right, Ginny’s sister, Kate, was composed, features strikingly similar to Ginny’s. She rose to the podium and began reading a letter written by her mother. As her even voice faithfully delivering the heart-wrenching story of Ginny’s struggle, the stone lid inside me shifted a little bit with each word, uncovering a well I thought had long since dried out.

My face flushed and my eyes brimmed with tears as the pain unwound itself, slithering loose from the knot I’d carefully twisted over the years. I wanted to reach out to her mom, to her sister, to Jon, to all those she’d left behind to suffer her absence, and assure them that their incredible despair was not bottomless. That the massive hole ripping into their core would mend. That the heartbreak becomes a less demanding bedfellow in time. But I knew that nothing could penetrate the fog of grief that hung over them now. It was too soon. Levi squeezed my hand and I responded in kind, hoping beyond reason that somehow my tears could take away at least some if not all of his pain as he started down his own journey of grief.

Without her mother’s brave words, it would have been difficult to understand why Ginny had chosen to take her own life. I did not know her well myself, but from having met her a few times and what Levi had told me, she was young and inventive, recently happily engaged, and, as the bulging congregation attested, loved by many. Sadly, her mother related a daily struggle against relentless depression that eventually led her to choose death over life.   

It is hard to believe that someone has really passed away without witnessing the actual death. You always remember them as you last saw them, turning the corner, waving from the window. Who is it really, lying there painted in the coffin? Could a handful of ash and bone be all that remains? A name typed on a program or engraved upon a headstone insists on your acceptance, but barely breaks through the haze of disbelief. Rather, it is that continued void, night after haunted night, year after tormenting year, that truly carves their absence into your heart. 

The heart is a resilient organ, though. The dull ache of loss pulses thickly through your veins. Jagged shards of remembrance cut indiscriminately into the walls of your heart. Night after day after night. Then comes one evening, when the sun sets without dragging your soul behind it. Then one afternoon, when the curtains flutter unexpectedly, letting in a bit of light from the outside world. Then one morning, when your first thought upon waking is no longer of death.

Ginny lives in everyone’s memory. For me, she is looking back with a smile on a foggy December morning, picking up the paper as she walks up the steps to her house, her half smile fading from the rearview mirror as we wave and drive away.  

*in memory of Ginny with love*

Night, Elie Wiesel; Atonement, Ian McEwan; The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Uncannily, the three books I picked at random this February all feature arduous treks along which the characters’ livelihoods are at the mercy of some despised, faceless enemy. The tragedy behind each of these stories serves as a reminder of all that we have to cherish, and how short life really is. Strange coincidence, for sure, since all the while I am pondering my own dogged march for the past eight years and when I may finally be able to step off the track, fall out of step with my comrades and explore what lies in neighboring woods and inland lakes just beyond my current reach. 

Night, by Elie Wiesel 

This little dagger of a memoir has the power to gouge into your gut with a twist of its blunt edge. I never heard of Elie Wiesel before Amazon.com listed this book as one of my recommended reads. I learned quickly in the preface that “Night” was published decades ago in longer form and is a rather famous Holocaust memoir. This recently released version, however, is a new translation by Wiesel’s wife, Marion Wiesel, and edited down from the original. In short, the memoir recounts Wiesel’s trek as a young child from his hometown to Auschwitz. Separated from his two sisters and is mother, Wiesel endures the unimaginable with his father by his side. 

What I found most touching, besides the obvious father and son storyline, was the horror that Wiesel describes when witnessing his own humanity shrinking in fear. When your shaken soul cowers in the battered shell of your body, you find within yourself thoughts and actions you never thought you could be capable of. Makes you wonder how you much dignity you could preserve when reduced to a naked, shivering waif by so-called fellow humans. 

Atonement, by Ian McEwan 

Despite raging reviews and the whole Oscar nomination thing, I was not that impressed with this one. The writing is elegant, sure, and the characters all have their eccentricities, but I failed to find resonance in the stories unfolding through parts I, II or III. Maybe it is because I could not get Keira Knightley’s face out of my head from way too much media bombardment. Given the intricacies of the story, I found myself mostly unable to believe that “that just happened”. Something about it was forced. Or maybe it was I who felt coerced, obliged to plod on and on until the final kaboom. 

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy 

The style of this post-apocalyptic account brings you right back to the high school Eng. Lit. stalwart, The Old Man and the Sea. Throughout his methodically sparse storytelling, McCarthy chooses to go with character names of “the man” and “the boy”, seating the reader squarely in the mezzanine section of the third party observatory. At the same time, however, you find yourself leaning forward in the creaky velvet seats, drawn into a story that is much more personal than the prose lets on. In the event of some global nuclear disaster, “the man” could very well be you, and “the boy” your son. 

As in the other two February picks above, resounding themes include courage in the face of extreme adversity, humanity fraying at the seams, and the primal instinct to survive. Somehow though, where Atonement’s extensive imagery and lengthy character studies lacks a certain degree of soul, The Road’s simplistic depiction guides you straight into the heart of humanity under attack. Definitely a book I would recommend for the uniqueness of its style, subject, and characterizations.

Annette Vallon, by James Tipton

It’s funny how context and history change perception. Before I read Annette Vallon, William Wordsworth was simply a poet that I loved for his affinity to Nature, for the unrestrained passion pouring into his verse. After reading this historic fiction, carefully told by Tipton, I cannot help but notice a constriction in Wordsworth’s verses that I never noticed before, a catch in the throat that checks a person from speaking straight from the heart, and a slightly querulous limp in his laments of foregone Youth.

The heroine, on the other hand, shines in the novel against the wider backdrop of the French Revolution. Of course, it’s important to bear in mind that Tipton’s storytelling, although compelling, has woven a version of reality from selected phrases in letters, fragments of history, and faded parchments of verse, with the hypersensitive imagination of a researcher trawling the stacks in a university library. In actuality, not much is known about Mme Annette Vallon except that she was Wordsworth’s French lover with whom he had a little girl named Caroline Wordsworth. The English Channel and repeated wars separated the two, and a decade later, Wordsworth went on to Mary, a Mary Hutchinson he wed in 1802.

Tipton’s portrayal of the puritan influence of Wordsworth’s cherished sister, Dorothy, leaves a sour taste of cowardice and lack of will in the character of the celebrated poet. The frightful anecdotes of the French Revolution also impress upon me just how horrific Robespierre’s Reign of Terror was. The valor with which Annette Vallon survived the perpetual separation from Wordsworth and faced the French Revolution endears this mysterious figure to the heart. And when you reach the final page, you may very well feel impelled to launch into a close reading of Wordsworth’s works in attempts to discern a reference here or a line there alluding to this love he left behind.

“Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind.”

- Ode ‘There was a time’, lines 180-183, W. Wordsworth

my first snow day in shanghai

Inclement weather conditions have taken over all of China. Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but not a huge one, given that even Hong Kong is at nine degrees Celsius now. Kids in Guangzhou are apparently hanging out of their open crotched pants in the freezing cold. We've been snowed under for the past week in Shanghai and lugging around our space heaters from bedroom to bathroom, bathroom to living room, and full circle back to the bedroom in desperate attempts to stay warm. My furry Russian beehive of a hat has been a big hit - what once may have looked silly now looks perfectly well-suited collecting snowflakes on the top of my head.

En Route - a fragment

Dreaming of home, I passed grove after grove of naked trees, calm and dignified after yesterday's light snow. In the dead of winter, these man-made forests, measuring 50ft deep on either embankment of Beijing's airport expressway, stood as candid reminders of the pre-Olympic make-over that began years ago. Every so often we would whiz by a lone nest, dark and thickly wedged amongst bone-grey branches, indicating that these groves did not merely constitute a carefully planted backdrop for incoming and outbound travelers, but were a transplant of Nature itself in its delicate simplicity. A home, after all, for the feathered inhabitants scanning the dusklit skies above, akin to the humans peering out of frosted windows below.

Days have passed, and this particular human, having returned to home's dreamlike existence, has found herself back along that highway often, hanging amongst those tall boughs, swaying ragged in the dry winter winds, fate uncertain. Not because of anything lacking at home, far from it in fact, but a feeling of general displacement during that daily trek to and from the nest, gathering worms, acorns and what have you. I like to call this journey "work". Finding the gusto to run up and down the ice-cold tree trunks laden with worms a-squirm has taken more joules than two servings of oatmeal every morning have to offer. Sure, I find plenty of fascination in gathering acorns and worms and other fruits of the forest, but knowing myself, I could likely find something fascinating about almost anything.

Thing is, I'm not sure that this is all that new of a state. Winter's glacier-like crawl has surely played its part in overall weariness of the mind, but perhaps I've been this way to a certain degree since the summer of '99 when I took that fateful first job and nestled myself in the fat, wrinkled underbelly of investment banking. The topic's getting as old as that belly, surely. I consider myself a decisive person but my husband kindly points out evidence to the contrary: "maybe I should quit, maybe I should stay, maybe I am meant for the corporate world, maybe I'm not..." Get a grip already.

So when does it all come together? I suppose it does when you allow it to. I suppose it does when the hunger edges out the fear. I suppose it does when the crystal is all sold out and there's nothing left before you except the rolling dunes of soft sand calling your name and a hot, hot sun standing by. But will your limbs and joints be too gnarled from decades of minding the shop to outmaneuver the desert and make it to the first oasis? And then the next?

It seems my worldview has become even more idealistic and risk averse as time wears on. Waking up in the nest beside my husband every morning, I feel like there's nothing impossible for us, nothing out of reach. In the afternoon during a midday caffeine injection I feel as if I'm not even reaching. Do I take a leap and thrust off this paycheck parachute, see where I land? Or do I let the plane get closer to the tarmac and tuck and roll to safety? I don't have the answer, and much to the dismay of those in audible range, I may just have to keep batting back and forth until either the plane nosedives into the runway or I get booted out the hatch en route.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

Kostova’s tale of vampiric legend and intrigue overflows with deliciously researched details much like a Dan Brown mystery yet delights with the polished prose of an author who can actually write. Descriptions deep and lush draw you into the shadows of Central Europe, rickety carriage rides through lands and mountains with names like Wallachia and Les Pyrenees-Orientales. Different perspectives are told through letters ancient and new, illustrating how black ink continues to link the past with the present despite the harried hand of time.

Even more notable than the above is the ingenuous narrative of the main character. Neither a weathered Tom Hanks nor an “o”-mouthed Audrey Tautou, the young protagonist is propelled to the forefront of this adventure by curiosity and daughterly devotion alone. There are definitely portions of the 704 page novel that seem tedious and off-track, but as a whole, a wonderful way to pass hours of air-time en route from one city to another.

Catching the Big Fish, by David Lynch

This was an ideal way to kickstart 2008. I read this in one sitting on the afternoon of January 2^nd, soaking in wintry rays that slanted through the living room window and the charming eccentricity of David Lynch. In eighty-three mini-chapters, he contemplates a random assortment of facts and opinions and Muses that have shaped his life, including, of course, his dedication to Transcendental Meditation. What’s funny about David Lynch is, the more you get to know his films and the more you catch those occasional glimpses of his personality, the more you realize that it just doesn’t do to put him on a pedestal. He’s more like the guy at a diner you casually strike up a conversation with and recognize midstream you never want it to end. 

Just the other night, Levi and I finished our annual January Twin Peaks marathon, starting with the pilot and ending with the film. The first time I saw Twin Peaks, I remember being freaked out by the strange images and inexplicable plot twists. This time, entering the town of 51,201 was like a familiar homecoming, or, better yet, like revisiting a funhouse where you’ve already seen it with all the lights on. Nothing to be afraid of, the protective ego lies back and lets the rest of you climb aboard the ride to enjoy the sights and sounds for all their mystifying beauty. 

For all those Lynchian fans out there, I’d venture that this book is a must read. Much like having a conversation with an old friend over a piece of cherry pie.

Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld

It has been a long time since my last book review. The subject of the last was James Frey’s ‘non’-memoir, which was bashed to a million pieces in America’s openly Oprah-rific forum. Looking back years later, I still don’t feel like a helpless victim of Frey’s treacherous memoir con. That’s probably because I find as much truth in fiction as in reality, so am not that fussed about mixing the two. Anyhow, enough with the passé Frey defense, this is about ‘Prep’.

I first picked up ‘Prep’ a few months ago, but I did not choose to read it until this past week as I traveled to visit my father back home. From its opening line, ‘Prep’ hooks into the shreds of high school trauma still left inside you and cinches them out one by one for re-examination. I spent the latter hours of my journey captivated by the novel. Uncannily, when I arrived at my father’s, my high school yearbook, which I haven’t seen in at least a decade, was lying on the coffee table, unearthed during his recent move.

‘Prep’ is narrated in the first person by Lee Fiora (who, by the way, should have been cool just because of her kick-ass name), who applies and enrolls herself into boarding school at fourteen. The messy details of her four years at “Ault” remind you why even your most loathed enemies should never have to go through high school again. The only more brutal form of torture that comes to mind right now is that ball-breaker scene in Casino Royale, but I digress.

The title of the book caught my eye immediately since I went to a college preparatory school for 7 years that was literally (and perhaps a bit unimaginatively) called “Prep”. It was a day school, though, rather than a boarding school. My “boarding school” days were the subsequent four years of college for which I was ironically not prepared for at all. As you can imagine, Sittenfeld’s debut novel dug up queasy memories of my personal 11 year nightmare and was an unexpected exhumation of the awkward, acne-d adolescent self that I’d interred long ago.

Just as Lee does at Ault, I felt like an outsider all throughout high school, and after that, all throughout college. Never quite fit in anywhere, and always aware of it. Sittenfeld drums up these feelings well in her first person portrayal of Lee. The daily self-immolation through embarrassment, shame, confusion, or insecurity (often in rotation) burning in your cheeks. The hyper-self-awareness of how “being cool” was always just out of your reach. The trying on of outfits and facades and characters to see if any fit. Through all this mental distillation, the essence of who you are hardens, crystallizes, and burrows deep inside you, to be mined years later when you are finally ready to appreciate its value.

As much as the details of Lee’s narrative strike dissonant chords, the perspective from which she narrates wrenches even deeper. Sittenfeld not only chooses the first person, but a retrospective first person as well, as if Lee is re-telling the story a decade later. At once you are not simply back in high school, but you are in your late twenties, shoveling knee-deep in the graveyard of past personas. “Don’t go there,” the townsfolk cry! Sittenfeld’s narrative is tinged with an aged bitterness that bleeds off the pages, and you can’t help but squint at your own mordant memories through her vinegar fumes.

Some look back fondly on the yesteryears of young adulthood. I am not one of these people, and clearly, neither is Curtis/Lee. I’d like to think that I’ve moved completely past the bitterness of then and am able to look positively upon those years as the ‘preparatory’ period for who I am now, or better yet, for recognizing who I have always been. After all, surely the phases define the journey. But even so, as I dusted off my old yearbook and thumbed through its glossy pages, the familiar twinge that returned in my gut was a bit sharper than I’d like to admit. Funny, that of all the personas, the outsider is the hardest to decompose.

A Sketched Presence – a fragment *20&29may07*

Today is a day of thought bubbles overcrowding the space between the outlines of my sketched presence and the bold square framing this moment of my cartoonish existence. As of late, I have had better control of these overlapping bubbles, an ability to focus the synapses into maybe five separate highways instead of twenty crossed paths, but today is just one of those interwoven days. Could be from reading a couple of very disparate perspectives this afternoon, the dizzying whirl of Kurt Vonnegut mixed with the reassuring glow of Mitch Albom. Truly an odd couple.

Vonnegut is a satirical, bumpy roadtrip where the signs are in another language and the roads angle in boomerang fashion, taking you first in this direction and sending you spinning into the opposite with no warning. Cat’s Cradle: no cat, no cradle, where the meaninglessness of life is captured within a web as simple and complicated as a cat’s cradle itself, threads twisting and repeating one upon another. For One More Day: hand upon your arm, Albom gently guides you through another rite of passage experienced by protagonists and narrators who are close, always close, to the whispered wisdom of the dying and the dead. Where the meaning of life is captured between prologue and epilogue, always found within the pages if you care to look, manifesting as graceful dancers tiptoeing across the tense tightropes that connect you to those that you love. The cynic and the optimist, and I sandwiched in between, all within the fading in and fading out of a sunny afternoon.

It has been forever since anything landed from my mind onto paper. Funny how the hours shoved aside by days and replaced by months are so hard to slow once you get into a groove. Especially when the groove is double-etched with happiness by the hand of the partner in your life, and when daily problems seem to bounce right off the protective force field that activates when Wonder Twins unite and transform into something else entirely. Thoughts swan-diving just past the edge of the blank page to be forever forgotten, crumbling on impact into ashes around the page. A kind of collateral damage that happens when there is not enough time to sit and reflect, record and translate the language of the synapses flickering a personal Morse code in your mind.

[break]

As I pick up this fragment from where I left off more than a week ago, the visual of my sketched presence surrounded by grey ashes of forgotten thoughts still lingers. More than a week has zipped by, nine days plummeting deep into the archives of my existence as I whirl around, hands desperately groping into the indigo deep, but alas, Cher’s made it more than abundantly clear that one cannot “turn back time”. Ashes are piling up around the frames. Personal life, work life, and personal life at work have formed a cat’s cradle of overlapping lines. I can only thank the myriad of gods, lords and heavens above that I have my husband’s constant bass tempering the pace of these frames reeling past. The metronome’s tick, tock, tick patiently separating one sketch from another to form some recognizable linear storyline across the projection screen.

Yesterday we began his birthday celebrations as we count down to his thirtieth in nine days time. Although some may consider the thirties to be a good pivotal age for the separation between the child and adult in us all, we are much more the type whose stubborn fists refuse to release the naiveté, the wonder, the hope and the promise of remaining just a kid. Just a kid skipping along into another decade of inspiration and experimentation. I am so looking forward to what this next volume has to offer, now that sidekicks have finally joined paths, psyched and ready to face the trail ahead. Wizards and warlocks? Alien bounty hunters and never-dying one-armed dudes called Krycek? Smurfs and Oompa Loompas? What is waiting to be sketched into the shared frames of our existence? And more importantly, do we truly have any control over the hand of the Artist? Or are we talking about frames that have already been drafted and only await the livening touch of the watercolor brush?

A or B, it really doesn’t matter, does it? Our linear perception demands our reverence to seconds ticking one after another, skipping along as you hasten to keep up. This slice of reality electrified as the watercolor spreads across the plane, overtaking the monochrome skeletal frames, opening, expanding and soaking different wavelengths into the very fabric of our souls. Whether we are choosing each color now, or have mapped them out before in a color-by-number fashion, from this limited perspective it seems to make more sense to join hands and wonder at the spectacle of colors unfolding right before our eyes, rather than firing synapses into the why’s of what has been and what is to come. Hopeful to discover the meaning in the present frame, naïve to the rigidity of frames long established, and wise enough to enjoy each stroke of color for the singular beauty it represents.

Document1 - a fragment

In moments of sheer ennui the one thing I always have to turn to is the vast potential of the as yet untarnished white expanse of "Document1". I can't quite explain the nature of my languor. The nature is no doubt just as boring as the boredom itself. Hmm...what does that even mean? I don't really think it is even boredom...a quick Shift+F7 is giving me "world-weariness" and I think that's closer to what I'm feeling.

I just took a walk around the building and it was not the most soul-sating experience, although I did like the brief sun-baking. It's not that I'm not working or don't have work to do; it's just this inexplicable lack of motivation to do more than what's necessary to get through the day. I don't understand it, it's strange. I just downed a tall non-fat mocha like it was a tall glass of something special, but even it failed to hit the spot.

Let's turn away from my inexplicable insouciance and wind the reel backwards. I took a new route to work today. The junction of madness had a flashing red man denying passage and instead of standing with the rest of the herd I looked ahead and noticed another pathway that would eliminate one unpredictable stoplight out of my two stoplight commute. I headed down the sidewalk towards the elevated walkway arcing above the busy avenue below and felt a new energy surging through me. I sucked my belly in and reveled in the extra exercise of two winding flights of stairs, one up and one down. Whew! Funny I hadn't thought of this path before.

During this new and improved walk I reflected upon the past year, paging quickly through the incredible material covered since December. Let's see: renounced hope in male/female relationships; decided it'd be okay to live alone for the rest of my life and adopt only if that maternal itch got too unbearable; went to a place far, far away; met the love of my life (a man, wow!); moved to a country still rising with the crimson tide; agreed on the general approach to curtains; proposed to twice; married once; migrated to a new position at my job; and erm...what else?...right - moved a second time. Weave into this general plotline trips to Beijing, Hong Kong, Chengdu, L.A., Oakland, Beijing, back to L.A., San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Hong Kong again, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Devon, Singapore, Chongqing, in that order. Then just to throw in a bit more "spice" add the love of my life alternating between Beijing and Shanghai every week, with side trips to New York and Inner Mongolia. So as I was saying, an uneventful seven months.

It's all whizzed by so quickly. I find myself now happily married and anxious to hang out with my husband on those wonder-filled days when the Fates graciously weave us both into the same city. I actually have a full year calendar tracking the days we are in the same city and the current forecast has us together 52% of 2006's 365. No joke. I am not sure what's sadder, the percentage itself or the fact that I came up with a percentage at all. Ah well, now's not the time to examine my slight obsession with the wonders of Excel (for the record though, Sheet1 can be just as enticing as Document1 depending on the particular demands of the day, oh and don't get me started on cell A1...ah, the possibilities!).

I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to get at here. I rarely have a plan when I open up a Document1, the trip-hop of words/random thoughts forms its own rhythm on the page. But I have a sneaking suspicion today's fragment has something to do with the fact that life is just speeding full throttle ahead and at times I'm the one strapped into the passenger seat, braced against the armrests, my right foot grinding through the carpet as I slam on the imaginary brakes - reminiscent of my mom when I was learning how to drive. Ah, the exhilarating memories of those first left turns into oncoming traffic.

I still have ultimate control of the steering wheel, but more often than before obligations and responsibilities force a warpspeed auto-pilot I'm not accustomed to. Not only are there my own responsibilities, but now those of my other half as well. The Technicolor has become even richer than I'd ever imagined it could be, but along with it comes the occasional blur of white as the reel motors on with you in tow.

So perhaps this inexplicable ennui is in fact not languor or boredom or world weariness at all, but a kind of wide-eyed Rothko of white. White whooshing by as I struggle to grasp the reel and slow it down enough for the technicolors to separate and form actual images. This leads me to think...perhaps at this very moment my way of slowing the wheel is taking the time to send these thoughts skipping across the expanse of white that used to be Document1. Hmm...a Rothko overcome by typewritten text, row after row laying claim to the white expanse - a strangely satisfying image.