So Nailed It

“Time was gay men were more likely to opt out of hetero-normative relationship structures than to seek long-term partners. Multiple boyfriends were in, serious dating was out.” (Bay Area Reporter, 31 May 2007)

“It’s not the collapse of morality (for I think there has never been truth based on memory) but rather the triumph of intellectual property, that blizzard of invented realities–artificial lives, Photoshopped photos, ghosted novels, lip-synched rock bands, fabricated reality shows, American foreign policy–through which we daily slog. Everyone, from the president on down, is a novelist now.” (The Book of Air and Shadows, p.91)

Don’t you think sometimes relationships, or dating, could be like a ciphered text that you would prefer leaving it intact? Because the more you know, the more you regret and hurt.

Last night Ken and I had dinner at the little jewel hidden in the Portreo Hill Aperto, where the attentive and seamless service made the dining experience all the more enjoyable. The food, which was country Italian, is always delicious. Over walnut and pear salad and sweet-pea rivioli we shared about how grateful we can still be friends. Friendship would supersede and last. I told him I still don’t exactly understand why but I’m happy that he doesn’t become another ex who simply disappears without a trace.

“So…tell me. How do you get to buy so many more books then I do but not read as much as I?”

A warm fuzzy feeling engulfs me when I realize we can still share a meal, toast the wine glass, browse the bookstore, and argue about things.

Intersection@Pui Ching Middle School 培正中學

I woke up early to the orange bruise of the sky and birds’ chirping. The alarm clock (but why? Wasn’t I on vacation?) spoke 5 minutes short of 7. I quickly groomed myself, had a quick breakfast and headed out, as if I’ll be late for a job interview. The street was already cooking up, air stuffy and undulating, promising another sultry day. I walked through the very same streets that I had been walking for 12 years some quarter of a century ago to where I used to go to school–Pui Ching (培正中學).

The notorious intersection bound by Waterlo Road, Pui Ching Road, and Soua Road had witnessed generations of Pui Ching students, locally aliased monkeyheads, myself included, rushing off to school, darting off from the gate at the last bell, panicking for incessant tests and quizzes, hopping on and off buses. As I made the way around the triangular maze of alleys flanked by myriad food stalls, hole-in-the-wall eateries and 7-11 store, the school complexes came into view. The small Victorian mansions that used to house kindergarten and primary school were torn down and are now replaced by multi-storied buildings with air condition and wireless network.

Literally hundreds of bespectacled (most of the kids are now) little ones, in their snow-white, spruce, ironed uniforms crossed one of the busiest thoroughfares in Kowloon and streamed into the school ground. Some scrupulously clutched a textbook and others riveted at review handouts–must be exam day. Still others, the vivacious and bouncy kindergarteners and low-graders took strenuous sip of vitasoy or juice off the paper containers. They were still excited about school as they were yet to be victimized by the rigorous and demanding academic system.

I must have wreathed a smile on my face as I reflect on my own commute to school some 25 years ago. The road, the vista, the intersection, the morning hustle-and-bustle, the aroma wafting off the stalls–they also contribute to my journey. The vicissitude is more a mental one than a physical one–the thrill of the thought that once upon a time, I was hoisting the same heavy backpack walking up the stairs and going to class in block D, then C. I can’t help but feel an inexplicable bondage, a mystic bondage of affectation for these little ones who don the exact same uniforms as I once tried so hard not to blemish with stain. Circumstances have long changed, remained is the silhouette of memories that are ingrained in me.

[Picture taken on Waterloo Road, 10/16/06.]

[79] Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky

Irene Nemirovsky began working on Suite Francaise on the eve of German occupation in Paris. She wrote the two books that form the novel in the shadow cast by menacing circumstances. For over 60 years after her death at concentration camp in Auschwitz, manuscripts of the work in progress novellas remained unknown. As the translator has noted deferentially, had she survived, Nemirovsky would certainly make revisions to the drafts, which afford a photo-sharp, perceptive and true-to-life vision in an emotionally detached voice owing to her experience.

The first book is titled Storm in June, which set in Paris, in 1940 and satirizes the incipient indifference, self-deceit, and disbelief, and captures the panic, flustering, to the flummoxed massive exodus of the Parisians, who were dogged by misfortune. Her alert eye is unrelenting in ridiculing the human folly that manifested in every imaginable way. So naive were those who were educated and socially privileged, thinking they would share hold on to their wealth and jobs; so disgusting were the rich and elite who refuse to dismantle their sense of social supremacy under such exigency. So pathetic are these people who had no more common sense than animals, for even animals can sense danger.Her sharp observation confirms war’s indiscriminate nature–it encroaches all age, status, and faith.

The style echoes Chekov–so brimming with the fullness of humanity and yet refraining from any sentiment. She’s not so much concerned at telling us what these evacuees look like as letting the extreme circumstances reveal their inner turmoil. Tension mounted as the narrative following various households progresses. That people who were normally calm and controlled were overwhelmed by anxiety and fear marked the slow crumbling, sliding descent of an entire society into catastrophic disorder. Panic obliterated everything that wasn’t animal instinct Storm in June. The sadness seething from the writing is one that had nothing human about it any more, for it lacked both courage and hope, like someone waiting disquietly for the end, with a heightened sense of the remaining time.

The second story, Dolce, takes place in a village town Bussy deep in the countryside after the Germans had marched into Paris. A regiment of German soldiers were billeted into French households in which not only did the enemy not do any harm but also cultivated humane relationship with the French people. This fragment is subtly linked to the first through ribbons of memory in which the villagers had embraced the urban refugees with kindness. The narrative focuses on the Angellier House in which any topic of conversation between the elder Madame Angellier and her plantive daughter-in-law was like thorn bush that they, if not dodged one another, had to use caution. Bound by an unhappy marriage that was out of her will, Lucile scornfully took a blind eye to her husband’s affair.

Nemirovsky surprisingly takes a turn to portray humanity and vulnerability of the enemy, one Lieutenant Bruno von Falk who stationed with the Angellier. Despite the old lady regarded him the personification of cruelty, perversity, and hatred, Lucile felt a kind of warmth in her soul she’d never felt before. This warmth ironically consoled her all of mother-in-law’s snapping, carping and snarling at her. The extreme circumstances had thrown her and the lieutenant together, evoking something indestructible. Their mind’s eyes could see through the troubled heart which can be comprehended only when one looked back in life. The enemy is no more than a human being–who is looking for happiness, the unhampered development of his abilities, the fruition of dreams–all justifiable desires that were constantly thwarted by certain selfish national interests called war.

The message of Suite Francaise is limpid: War is the culprit, the universal evil that wreaks havoc. Those who are involved in warfare are nothing more than a pawn who is stripped of their humanity.

A Quiz

The university has randomly selected some courses in humanity and liberal arts this summer to conduct a verbal aptitude test. The instructor is to pass out the test paper on the first day of class (how daunting to set the mood) to complete the assessment. Here are some sample sentence-completion questions:

1.Today Wegener’s theory is ____ ; however, he died an outsider treated with ____ by the scientific establishment.

A. unsupported – approval
B. dismissed – contempt
C. accepted – approbation
D. unchallenged – disdain
E. unrivalled – reverence

2. The revolution in art has not lost its steam; it ____ on as fiercely as ever.

A. trudges
B. meanders
C. edges
D. ambles
E. rages

3. Each occupation has its own ____ ; bankers, lawyers and computer professionals, for example, all use among themselves language which outsiders have difficulty following.

A. merits
B. disadvantages
C. rewards
D. jargon
E. problems

4. ____ by nature, Jones spoke very little even to his own family members.

A. garrulous
B. equivocal
C. taciturn
D. arrogant
E. gregarious

5. Biological clocks are of such ____ adaptive value to living organisms, that we would expect most organisms to ____ them.

A. clear – avoid
B. meager – evolve
C. significant – eschew
D. obvious – possess
E. ambivalent – develop

6. The peasants were the least ____ of all people, bound by tradition and ____ by superstitions.

A. free – fettered
B. enfranchised – rejected
C. enthralled – tied
D. pinioned – limited
E. conventional – encumbered

7. Many people at that time believed that spices help preserve food; however, Hall found that many marketed spices were ____ bacteria, moulds and yeasts.

A. devoid of
B. teeming with
C. improved by
D. destroyed by
E. active against

8. If there is nothing to absorb the energy of sound waves, they travel on ____ , but their intensity ____ as they travel further from their source.

A. erratically – mitigates
B. eternally – alleviates
C. forever – increases
D. steadily – stabilizes
E. indefinitely – diminishes

9. The two artists differed markedly in their temperaments; Palmer was reserved and courteous, Frazer ____ and boastful.

A. phlegmatic
B. choleric
C. constrained
D. tractable
E. stoic

10. The intellectual flexibility inherent in a multicultural nation has been ____ in classrooms where emphasis on British-American literature has not reflected the cultural ____ of our country.

A. eradicated – unanimity
B. encouraged – aspirations
C. stifled – diversity
D. thwarted – uniformity
E. inculcated – divide

Enjoy the quiz and the long weekend! I’ll post the answer next week.

On Writing, Voice, Reflection

My friend Stephen and I were having brunch at the new Stacks Restaurant in the Hayes Valley the other day. Bustling with neighborhood cats and curious tourists, the French-inspired decor, with two gargantuan bouquets towering in the middle of the space, radiates a very relaxing and inviting atmosphere. To our delight we scored a booth that spared us from the weekend madness but at the same time strategically put us in a spot where we could indulged in people-watching.

Our conversation slowly found its way, like water trickling its way into parched dry land, into my ongoing writing and of which the voice it will take. I have yet to decide the voice the story–partly autobiographical, partly fictitious–will adopt. He could see my taking a similar stand and style of James Baldwin, who had encapsulated much of the anger of his times in his book. He always remained a constant advocate for universal love and brotherhood. During the last ten years of his life, Baldwin produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and turned to teaching as a new way of connecting with the young.

True, Baldwin wrote about taboo life (homosexuality). But the voice I wish to adopt in my novel is one that is more poignant, poised between alienation and helplessness to wield social awareness of his inmost virtues. The immigrant experience, the leaving his families behind, the growing up without his parents’ being on his side, the dwelling unconnected in the state of expectation (in both living and relationship)–will reflect the making of a man who is forced to be rough and relying only on his own intuition and perception. At times he risks being too mistrustful and unyielding to what is being thrown upon him in life.

I’m taking my time on this project. The accumulation of life experiences and awakenings are conducive to the richness of this novel.

Day 4 of Hummingbird – On Death

I haven’t been so riveted at the pages recently until I started reading The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. It’s the story of a young woman whose gifts as a healer lend her the aura of a saint. Partly a fairy tale and partly an adventure story, the Mexican landscapes and meaty story remind me of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

This is what gripped me over coffee and bagel this morning, rendering the rest of the world oblivious:

‘You,” she said.
“It is I.”
“Have I died?”
“No.”
“Is this Heaven?”
“Hardly.”
“Are you a spirit?”
“We are all spirits.”
“Have you come back to take me to Heaven?”
“No.”
“Hell?”
“No. Wherever you are going, you must go alone. No one takes you.”
“I don’t like that.”
“You and I don’t make the rules.”
“Things would have been different, let me tell you.”
Teresita said: “I am alive. They did not keep me.”
Huila laid her head back down. Sighed.
“Well,” she said. “That’s good.”
“They told me I had work to do.”

Then a deep thought surfaces on my mind. Aren’t people, when their days are numbered, struggle with these inevitable questions. What makes death so scary is the fact that nobody knows what death is like. The kind of death that we see is a third-person demonstration. Those who are dead couldn’t tell us if death hurts. Death, after all, is one looming, irretrievable, and dreadful reality.

“Can you help me?” she asked. “Spare me from death?”
Teresita scooted her chair across the floor, leaned forward in her seat, and passed her hand up and down the old woman’s body.
“No.” she said.
“Will I die now?”
“Yes.”
They were silent again.
“I don’t want to die.”
Teresita closed her eyes.
“I know.” she said.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Will I be afraid?”
“Oh no.”

I put down the book, had another bite of the bagel and pondered. Clearly after death we would have no information coming in via the senses and therefore no sense perceptions. How could we experience a world? It would surely be a kind of dream world: when asleep we have no sensory input but still have experiences. After death one would really come into his own and produce objects of awareness about which we could have thoughts, desires and emotions. The next world would, on this argument, be a world of mental images.

If this is the case, what are we afraid of?

A Change of Wind for Summer

Today is a kick-back-and-relax kind of day. The spring term concludes uneventfully and early: the professor decides to devote his undivided attention to the final exams and kindly spare us (the graduate student instructors) the rut of grading a question 120 times. Summer session, which will not begin until June 4th, seems like a mere speck on the horizon. I sat at Cafe Flore, nibbled the usual all-seeds bagel with avacado, touched up some final details for the syllabus for the class over cups of coffee. O kindly offered me bottomless coffee (with steamed soy) as a gesture to console the end of my opus. I’m really fine, I told him.

The course would be listed under Comparative Literature, English, and Slavic Studies. It’s an upper division course for liberal arts majors that surveys selected works of modern Russian literature, with an emphasis on themes like good and evil, redemption, compassion and revenge. The succinct reading list consists of:

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov

We will also read a couple stories of Anton Chekov. It would be a very proliferative summer in terms of reading (2400 pages in 8 weeks) and writing (3 papers and daily in-class writing assignments), as well as exchange of ideas during class discussion. My own qualm is that students might flinch at the amount of reading expected of them per week and thus drop the class. True, that I posted the reading list and writing requirement early is meant to weed out those who who are neither serious nor indecisive about the course.

After getting the syllabus out of the way, I went to check out the new-release book table at Book Inc., and picked up a copy of Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, who had previously published River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which points reader to the nub of his experience in China. In the maze of the shelves I ran into my friend Ben who invited to this 30-Something Queer Men Group for Celebrating Our Creative Minds Group sponsored by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Initiative. So I googled this group, which I have honestly never heard of and read about the description of this event:

“Are you a queer man in your thirties looking for alternatives to the bars, the gym, or online? Meet other men in their thirties in a relaxed, social setting. We share our unique perspective as thirtysomething men by discussing short readings, poems, art, film, contemporary culture, politics and more. Join us for the next gathering of this new, exciting group!”

I like that–the alternatives to bars–makes it very appealing. I think that being summer time, the sun goes down later in the evening, being out of a relationship, being in a different mental atmosphere, it’s time for a change.

End of a Symphony

It’s like a symphony in which the explosive opening and intertwined with a repeated theme, the ending slowly fades into a trickling of a few tender notes. After much deliberation and thoughts, Ken and I have decided to be friends after all, owing to a different scope in relationship. We will still see each other, hang out, and go on vacation in Kauai. It’s a happy ending in case you might worry about my slumping into a state of depression. We both value our friendship and consider it a celebration.

Thanks for the love, and all the memories.

The Eight Random Things Meme

Given that Danielle, Iliana, and Robin have kindly shared, I consider myself tagged and think it’s a gesture of good karma to contribute.

1. Although I was hardly ever bullied and roughed up by other boys, I had always been that chubby kid who never got picked to be on either side of a soccer game in PE class. But I cared less about that. Never was I conscious of my physical appearance until I was 24 or 25, about 7 years ago, when I weighed 205 lbs. My paunchy body burst under my t-shirt, my belly brimmed over my belt and the jeans hugged my calves too tightly. I gasped and wheezed walking up those cable-car hills in the city. I realized the success to weight loss is to be my own cause. I quit all the junk food, started working out, ran about 2 miles twice a week, and adopt a healthy way of life. Over 18 months I lost 55 lbs and I have kept off the pounds since then.

2. I have a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, with an emphasis on organic synthesis. I worked in pharmaceutical industry for about 3 years conducting protein research pertaining to the HIV infection before I made a drastic, life-changing decision to pursue an advanced degree in comparative literature. The road to the resolution is enlightening but not without struggle. I was thriving to reinvent the passion for language, words, and literature that was inevitably inundated by the Asian-family-desire for science and engineering. I know I made the right decision when I fascinate over the beauty of prose, the elegance of writing, and how words snap neatly into sentences.

3. I received my very first iPod as a birthday gift from my sister. It was a green iPod Mini with 4 GB memory and my name engraved on the back. I’ve had that for a little over a year and I forgot to bring it back from Hong Kong. On the day before my birthday last year, I treated myself a new black iPod Nano with 8 GB memory. As much of an appendix to me as my messenger bag and Moleskine journal, the Nano has already partnered with two pairs of headphones, of which the protective coatings have both worn off and peeled. So I’m on the third pair in 6 months! I only have classical music and Chinese pop music on my iPod and most of the time I set it on shuffle.

4. I’m a decent, generous tipper. I usually drop a buck or two in the jar for the baristas unless they fail to follow my instruction to make the latte with non-fat milk. Am I being too much? Consider that I usually go to the same spots for my coffee, I think it is fair to take care of the people who have taken note of my preference and cultivated an ongoing relationship. I’m grateful for Be and O at Café Flore, who also, have become my friends. I’m also a scrupulous abider of the unspoken rule in San Francisco that you’re to double the amount of tax on your check to make the 15% gratuity, regardless of the size of my party.

5. That I have a fear of height would be ridiculous consider that I fly long-haul flights at least a couple times a year. I’m riveted to the airliner seat with composure but it’s a different story for suspension bridge. I remember walking that rickety wooden pedestrian overpass in Hong Kong when I was a little boy. When I got older, I rather took a detour that would add an extra 10 minutes to my way home from school than to brave myself on that life-threatening scaffold. After moving to SF for almost 20 years, I have yet to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

6. I am a naturally shy person but depending on the conversation and social atmosphere I can warm up quickly. (I hope this doesn’t sound like a profile…) I’m more at ease and in my element with a small group. Large crowds make me claustrophobic—that explains why gay bars and dancing clubs do not appeal to me. A quiet evening with a movie, a book, and a companion is more than suffice to relax.

7. I was born and raised in Hong Kong under the British flag. My birth certificate, in the field for nationality, says I’m a British National Overseas. I never graduated from elementary school there but I’m now working toward my graduate degree. I speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and English. I have a Hong Kong Permanent Residency Identification Card, a California Driver’s License, and a US Passport. Sometimes I’m confused who I am in terms of nationality. Talk about globalization, I’m a living artifact of it!

8. I like the sound of riffling pages of a book. I find myself engaging this act imperceptibly in the library, at the café, in the TA office, on the bus, anywhere when I’m reading a book.

Consider yourself tagged if you read this. Feel free to participate! It’s always to see bloggers getting out of their rut and blog about different things.

[78] The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

We say America is a melting pot owing to the diversity of culture that immigrants have brought into the country over generations. It’s like a tureen of rich porridge simmering over time, that a thorough stirring and mixing of all of its precious ingredients are conducive to the delicious taste. The Gagulis in The Namesake is like lump in this porridge–adamantly clumping up the ladle and refusing to blend in with the rest.

The Namesake, seeping with an exquisite and subtle tension, is a closely observed family saga spanning two generations and two continents. It is an aching story of a Bengali family caught in the crossroad of preserving their heritage and assimilating to a strange terrain. The struggle to retain their root never fails to seep in throughout the novel. Cultural disorientation is depicted with a heart-breaking candor: Ashima cannot raise a child in a country she doesn’t call home. In spite of giving in to American customs and celebrations, the Gangulis thrive to imbue their son native language, culture lessons; for when they close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.

But the trouble of the Gangulis roots even deeper than the occasional smirking at their thick accents, it is the peculiarity of the name they bestow on this firstborn–Gogol. The piteous life and morbid death of his namesake, the Russian author Nikolai Gogol–unnerves him. He hates questions pertaining to his name as much as he is baffled by the obscure reason for his name. Little did he know that the name bequeaths significant meaning to his father Ashoke, who has named his son after the author not only because he is a fan but also of the glimpse of hope and the blessed life after stepping one foot in the throe of death. That he has miraculously survived a tragedy, which was shrouded wittingly from his son, makes him utterly grateful for his life. Gogol not so much reminds him of the catastrophe as the name reminds him of everything that followed the accident.

In so many ways, the life of the Ganguli family feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen and unintended, one incident begetting another to fate’s ingenuity. It had started with a train wreck near Calcutta, paralyzing Ashoke at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life out of the world. There was the disappearance of the letter bearing the name Gogol’s great-grandmother had chosen for him, lost in the mail somewhere between calcutta and America. This had led, in turn, to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many years. He thrives to correct that randomness and error. He alienates from his family of whom he doesn’t feel attached. He immerses in his Caucasian girlfriend’s family, hoping to dislodge his Begali root. It isn’t simply the fact that his parents don’t know about his girlfriend, instead it is his embarrassed knowledge that apart from their affluence, his girlfriend’s parents are secure in a way his parents will never be.

And yet Gogol has not been able to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His life in fact has been something of a series of mishap. Like his parents, he realizes there were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spends a lifetime looking back at, reflecting upon, trying to accept, and to comprehend. It is then does Gogol perceive his parents’ sacrifice: Leaving their respective families behind, seeing them so seldom, dwelling unconnected (and sometimes helplessly) in a perpetual state of expectation, being oblivious of anything that might have gone amiss. For they have lived their life and grow to love each other in America, a distant, unknown horizon, in spite of what was missing is a stamina Gogol fears does not ever possess himself.

The Namesake portrays an immigrant family at its most frail and vulnerable, making the best out of what it was missing for the sake of their children. It silently praises the strength that the family cultivated through the tangled ties and the clash between generations.