unfoldings // april, 2021
punching at memory foam and the time it is taking to get from here to there.
I - swollen and not because of bees or bruises.
The scene along La Seine unfolds thus: though the runners just keep on passing, the old side-stepping isn’t as frequent or as necessary. The backdrop is there, beautiful as always. From the river, you can’t see the closed shops. The columns marking the 1910-2016-2018 floods remind you that you’re beneath the surface of the city. There are fewer people out on early morning walks and fewer people sat lounging with their legs stretched out into the pathway. My heart pangs for strangers when our eyes do meet, not in that sort of way, but because I wonder what they’ve gone through this year. Let’s blame the pollen for our vague and strained gazes. Let’s hide behind sunglasses. The temperature of conversation feels subdued, like everyone’s savouring the remnants of better pasts. Are we all pretending that right now is real? The warmth of occasional sun masks everything else. So this is how the French keep their cool. Every wave that hits stony hips feels a little more palpable in its reverberation and bouncing contours— but perhaps that’s because I’m paying a little closer attention.
II - livid.
Disparity has its advantages. This myriad of feeling is the feeling of home. It’s a return for me more than anything. I’m enjoying the wallowing, dabbling sensation. I’m living it— totally living it— for the brief moment that the little something passes through me. I let it leave me. It feels good to be punching at memory foam. How dare it feel this good.
III - in you formation, and no we’re not in love.
Notes I want to slide through the door to some extraordinary people I have had the joy of knowing (and in the case of a rare few, still getting to know).
Whenever you and I talk, we talk as though spurred by the mutual knowledge that over the next many weeks following, we will not speak again. Our conversations buckle like enormous sighs— well, more that you give me the feeling that I can sigh the greatest of sighs. A mutual exhale and a shared departure, until we meet again.
No one else would know, but you would— and that is the most frightening thing that could happen. You remember everything I tell you. You ask me persistently when I’ll return. I’m scared that when I do return you won’t be there— that despite all that we have gone through and learned of each other and our own selves separately, none of this has hit you in the same way it has, me. It’s not like you made out that I return to you— we never got that far. So what happens when I do find my way there? Proximity and distance have absolutely nothing to do with closeness. I want to tell you so much about what I’ve endured before you. I wonder if it would help you understand why I trust so uneasily and why distance is never an adequate excuse for me. But then again, you’ve shown me enough to think that you believe in this despite me being here and you being there. Tell me you see this. When and if we were to meet again, let’s not talk about circumstance and whether or not I’ll be here or there by this time or that month— I want to know of the belonging you are allowing, the space you are curating for yourself, and the odds you would place on two people meeting again after years of outgrowing their past selves. I don’t know if I can bear it if, after all this, you and I are strangers.
You should know that I unfortunately think rather highly of you, far more than I like to admit. I’m not sure whether that feeling extends to admiration though. When it comes to admiration, I am very very particular and I am very very careful.
I don’t know where I am in this picture of yours, even with all the time I took to step out and tentatively step back in. I hope you know how much I adore you and how much I hope you grow and start to learn about the place deep inside yourself that is beautifully resilient. I just recognise that I can’t be there for you right now in the same way I used to. I hope you feel as free as I’ve once heard you be on the phone to me in the early hours.
There was a post on LinkedIn the other day where you spoke about a work thing and I realised that it has been over four years since I last heard your voice. It feels almost unnecessary of me to write to you in this way because most of the thoughts I have about you, I tell you. I tell you all the time how important you are in my life. To this day, we write each other enormous email essays and I often end mine with an apology for how unbearably honest I become when writing to you. I really should be apologising less. I am always so humbled by how candid you are with me, Jasmine. Likewise. You entrust me with so much of yourself. This is where I could tell the world about our story. This is why I don’t. We have a phrase in Cantonese that can’t be translated well (like most Cantonese phrases). The closest it comes to is guardian angel, someone who quite literally was meant to show up in your life. They arrive in so grounded and steadfast a way that calling them miraculous feels like an affront.
I had to remind myself what you look like— or at least how you looked when we met. I worried that I had somehow forgotten, but I also wonder if it’s for the better. You’ve taken down your WhatsApp profile picture and you have no social media. I went searching for something, but have been left with the mere remnants of our last conversations. There’s the photo of you and your mates walking along a breadth of water. You’re wearing sunnies and you’re very far away. There’s also a glare from the sun, which is very helpful indeed. Like, I know what you look like. I think I’d know you if we ever bumped into each other again. But the ones we keep don’t do you justice— they don’t produce the person I remember. So ultimately, if we were to rely on photos, you’re going to be a stranger in the end. At least I have the ones I took of your hands— they’re more telling than any of the others. At least I remember everything else about you in what I know we shared. I hope you’re doing well.
The realisation that I have not yet been loved has me not at all upset but rather moved in the freeing realisation that I’m glad it was not you.
IV - remoteness reverberates in its closest association with proximity - walter benjamin
I don’t want to say that everything is on pause— because it isn’t. The makeshift memory of a nightclub is blaring genres across the ages in juxtaposing rooms. I am dancing somewhat manically inside this body. I am letting myself feel all the feels, trusting no one but myself. It is a good feeling that is somehow terribly conflicted with its own ability to feel this good right now. The truth about now is that describing how I feel wouldn’t make for a very good composition of words. I have been writing and rewriting the beginnings of sentences and then not knowing how on earth to keep going. When words don’t quite mean it, what do I do? The question rolls over in deep lulls across my tongue.
V - dear flame, please don’t go out.
When I meet the page, I want to imagine that tiny flickers rise up between us. If there is such a thing as divine compatibility, then this is that. Charcoal. This feels like the return of a first love and it takes the shape of myself. I see my own liberation through us. This is a crash-course in both my own fondling and my nausea— all my vulnerability and affliction in one. This is all that I give to myself and share to the world. In order to drive this home, I need me to come out in unreserved blows to the silence and nothing less.
No, I don’t need hurt to drive art.
What I need is honesty. Nothing happens if I go in half-hearted. It simply cannot happen if I go in without intention. I need to assume that there is nothing else but this unreserved present. It’s almost funny that amidst all this, I still can’t draw myself. Not even close. Perhaps I am still afraid. The more I’m trying to figure out my own act, I realise that no one can teach you about tension in craft.
VI - marching on.
The marché fills with hundreds of people every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Mum and I have our favourite stalls. The same familiar faces greet us fondly, and we speak our shared language of fresh vegetables and fruit. We speak through cling film that wraps around the tent’s poles at eye level. Through masked noses and mouths and now with wrinkled gazes, it’s almost as if we do not see each other at all. It seems our hands do most of the talking instead. There’s the pointing and counting and tap-tapping. There’s a few of them who always wave to us from afar. One man has started to hand over the goods to us unwrapped in his open palms.
Mum said that sometimes their fingers touch and it feels as though there’s been an understanding between them and us that we are close enough for this level of candid.
It’s the same with the other stall we go to— the one with the wife and husband who grow their own stock. They thumb through their crates for yellow and red carrots because they know we like those best. When it comes to onions, they know to fill an enormous sack full. The husband always smiles very completely with his eyes. He calls us la petite famille affectionately. I’ve taken a hard look at each of their hands in between rapid motions— the loosening of a wrist, the cracking of hardened knuckles, and the hurried resting of an arm against stacked crates.
There’s also, of course, the man from the northernmost regions of China. Mum always buys an enormous slab of ginger from him. They argue over small change and extra pieces with wide smiles— this one’s on me, he insists again and again while mum pleads against his generosity. There exists the highest level of care within the expression this time you, next time me. You can’t buy sincerity with money. When I watch the two of them, it is as if I see a whole world with only them in it.
Mum reminds me to never take any of this for granted. There’s a reason they treat us so— it’s because we meet them with shared humanity and humility. We actually ask them how they’re doing and mean it. This is warmth.
I often think up instances where perhaps them and us pass each other in the street in some other arrondissement and we have the opportunity to recognise and know one another in an entirely changed context. I realise how fondly I believe in a preserved trust founded and grounded beyond named difference.