enfolded // five: landed

before the year is out

Dec 29, 2022

Before the year is out. I want to swim back to the surface. Touch base. Momentarily. Before diving back in. Burst into tears. Bask in that numbing winter sun.

We entered this year in tears. It is difficult to return to this period of myself. It feels a bit like intrusion. In each of my attempts to take pleasure in all that has since unfolded, I feel that I both fail her and free her.

By wallow, I want to believe I meant a tenderness for the present.

To muddy myself in the mild disasters of, say, an East London organic store trying a little too hard to be French. To fuss and moan and linger— to hover over the asymmetries of my fruit. Letting the sweaters droop from their packing bag and into the floor. Being mindless about how long it takes to find an outfit befitting of today’s new solemn self. Insisting on breakfast even when most rushed. Wallowing has supported me, provided me with warmth. I relish in the company of ridiculous behaviours which string together something rather loveable.

There is not much I can show for a year of so much doing. Nothing exactly completed or contained. But lest I forget that I did just secure one impossible thing after another. I moved country, moved flats, made moves. I must not, will not spoil myself in being upset that other things were not possible. I have been trying to let things gather for themselves, lift off in their own time, which often is no time. Things like writing, posting, producing, committing, returning to patience to admit that now is not the right time for even the most right of people and projects— I decide to take off the pressure and muster the courage to trust in their meaning for some later occasion. And if some later occasion is in fact never, well, then I must also somehow be alright with that.

In the meantime, I have found a family, who have taken me in, for lack of a better phrase. But perhaps being taken in is the truest way to put it. The day I moved in, both mother and son alternated in bringing my boxes inside. I have shelves among their valuables. A towel that hangs beside theirs. The neighbourhood could not be more ideal for the life I find myself living and wanting to enjoy. It is good for the daily. I do my best to see through the gentrification. I do my homework. Living with them helps. A lot of our conversations centre around what and how things have changed in the past fifteen years. I moved into this block when nobody wanted to. Now the demand is through the roof. I avoid impersonations. I get to know their routines, which help me stick to mine.

This space of theirs will obviously never be truly mine in any lasting way. One day I will leave. And yet I do feel at home, in her having made this a home in every small detail. She tells me this is also your home now, never feel that it isn’t. I suppose from her perspective, I must seem rather lonely indeed, always entering and exiting on my own. I try more and more to share portions of my plans and happenings with her, so she knows I am keeping busy and doing okay. Indirectly, I suppose I reassure myself, too. I fall in among an eclectic mix of vintage furniture that sits curated from across the years, us stragglers from whatever disparate heritage cumulating in this most natural setting. Until I had found this flat— which by some miracle and coincidence was also the first flat I managed to visit in the chaotic search around August— little did I realise how much I had missed the personal and the homely. And such things so willingly and fervently shared with me! For shame that I ever had my doubts about choosing them! I feel every bit chosen by them.

My heart bursts a little every time I get home. To be greeted by the door by this little meowing being. My camera roll a ridiculous documentation of every time he curls up in my lap. To be wished goodnight by her sweet little boy. And when I head off to work or he is off to dad’s— see you soon, Jasmine, when will I see you next?!

I decided against building a desk in my room. I could really use another screen when working from home, but this new proximity to the office permits an easier to and fro. After such a length of time spent making things work on my own, I need and look forward to the presence of others. The gaggle of us regularly in the office most days of the week build up solidarity. Why are you always in? we ask each other— I live with three flatmates all working from home every day and it’s all too much— I literally got my first job during covid and never saw any of my colleagues, and then I quit them for here and never really knew them, I guess I just want to know you guys— I just want some sense of routine, and I guess free charging and free snacks, too. Sans desk at home, I enjoy the comfort of being surrounded by clothes and books and their natural overflowing where I have had to make do sans furniture to house them. It is too chaotic for my liking, but I think it works, for now at least.

Friends ask me where I got my coat, my sweater, my skirt, my shoes from. My mother, my mother, my mother, my mother.

The reality is I have fallen in love with the routine of picking out what to wear each day. I feel most myself in the awkward shapes of lost items pulled together. In the layering of my parents’ clothes, I create a togetherness of their pasts, otherwise unfathomable. I wear what I can of theirs in this new life of mine. This comes close to an inheritance, and I do not take it lightly. The collection is mostly my mother’s from her working days in Hong Kong and Tokyo as well as those particular items I found in my father’s can-throw-out pile. I am moved to try and love them in place of his inability to remember them. I try to remember them for him. Either this or I remove them of the memory of him. It’s not like he hasn’t done the latter already. I have worn them in front of him, and I have no idea what he thinks.

I never imagined my own daughter would ever take up what was once mine. Had I known this, perhaps I would not have relinquished other items so easily in the years prior to having you. I tell mum, how could you have known. I wear what I do have of hers, which is more than I ever could’ve imagined holding, with the utmost care. It is through her garments I get a sense of her history. It is a much bolder, more fantastic story than I could ever tell on my own or attempt for myself. I cannot do with them what she gave to them. These shirts which she wore on the daily to work with their wide collars against knitwear with miniature pockets and pronounced buttons. This jacket— she recalls when and where bought and for what occasion and with what trousers paired. She lingers on the sleeve stitching before watching me try it on. I read in her eyes a commingling of a mother’s pain which seems somehow also to be the fullest kind of rejoicing over the fact— what was hers and always will be— it fits me. Her materials and small detailings and pops of colour have felt the closest to a hug this year.

If this was the year of anything, it was the year I grew into such things shared.

With regards to London, I have decided I will try to stay. There is so much I wish to do here and there feels to be reason to do them. There are people here I would like to stay for and see through the incoming years with.

What else?

I eat out of the pot, as tradition and ease and pure laziness would have it.

I retain as much warmth as I can.

Thank you all for your patience and support.

To my close ones who have walked long walks with me, held my hand, held your breath for and with me as I made my way over, all my love to you and see you all again in twenny twenny three.

When you come up close to a place, you nestle.

If you missed it, here it is again. Myself and Anthony Cheng made a short piece called Landing. Credits and enormous thanks to J.J. Hathaway for the music. It was a five month project that helped me mark this occasion of moving, touching on ideas of heritage, language, and many a strange contradiction therein. We had lots of fun making it and we thank you all for your lovely responses.