Sweet surrender, vague indifference

There's no greater burden on the soul than the specter of disappointment, and the fear of ultimate unworthiness.

And there's no greater sorrow than the promise of inevitable loss, especially the loss of something (or someone) that you could never make your own anyway.


The next months and years for me will be interesting. Suffice it to say, this is not where I expected to see myself, though I must admit I am neither too surprised or too anxious. Then again, I've been known to suffer from fatal underwhelming.

But the beat goes on...

Read the perilous future

Wiry sinews draped in dust
till the fields, scatter the pores
The hoary temple slumps in the mist
Wet black eyes and pointed ears
guard nothing and point to your weakness
All those who came before haunt their gaze
reflections rippled with a tremulous reach
as prodigal dreams drip doleful shame

Fear their honor, ache in guilt
Don't let them sustain your descent.

Those fitted jeans, those tailored shirts
that milky white belt with its steely rings
Light pours forth from its silhouette
Austere countenance and regal gait
reveal the stark difference in stature
Each and every one an ideal
whispering desire and rapture unrequited
as meager senses drown in reality

Mourn your worth, reject your pride
Don't let them kill your love.

Words and code rounded in anathema
trace the thicket of your fallow life
Dusk settles in with a sleepy haze
Idle hands and furious mind
hurtle toward the death of imminent certainty
Nothing can escape but everything has vanished
grasping and clutching for familiar ground
as horizons shift in ambivalent birth.

Possess your shame, bask in release
Don't let them decide your fate.

I'm going to China to escape my problems. Finally nomading again, right? Don't worry, they'll be waiting for me when I return in 2 weeks.

Charm swathed in strange

I drove home to Gainesville this weekend. I would have pictures but when I took out my camera's battery to charge, I forgot to replace it when I left Atlanta. Classic. So this entry is just one big wall of text. I'm sure you'll deal with it.

The trip down I-75 was relatively uneventful; traffic was nearly nonexistent due to the holiday. But then I passed Macon and out of nowhere, I realized I was driving side-by-side with a black Toyota Tacoma. At first I thought nothing of it, but after awhile I noticed that we were still driving parallel. It was a three-lane stretch of highway and we were in the left two. It makes sense assuming that we're both using cruise control and just happen to have selected the same speed. But that doesn't explain how we ended up like that to begin with.

We continued toward Florida like that until the highway narrowed to two lanes. Amazingly, our concert of automobiles was undisturbed by other traffic, namely because there was so little. I looked over at one point just to check if I knew the driver and he/she was madly beckoning in my direction, or if it looked like an ax murderer. None of the above, the occupant looked like some normal guy, the kind you wouldn't even notice when walking down the street. I thought we would've split up at that point, because driving side-by-side would mean no cars could pass us. I was right; we ended up driving front-to-back, as if one of us was following the other. And this alternated depending on if there was slow car in the left lane; the car behind would pull ahead and pass first, followed by the next one. I spent so much time behind this guy that I memorized his license plate numbers (Tennessee plates, by the way).

Crazy right? Eventually this system of driving seemed like second nature. We reached the part of Georgia where I-75 starts to expand and contract rapidly due to the amount of road work being done. Three lanes would become two, and then three, and then two again. What did we do? We stayed parallel, and the one in the middle lane would anticipate the road merge and shift into the right lane.

I know, I know. Sounds a little gay. And I have no comeback.

Around Valdosta, cars began pouring onto the road, and alas, we got separated. I slipped into "Florida-driving" mode and immediately started weaving in and out of traffic. My driving buddy opted to drive defensively and lagged behind. By the time I had crossed the border into Florida, there were no cars once again. It was a little sad, believe it or not. I had spent the majority of my 5+ hour trip with a companion of sorts, and now I had none. The hour from the border to Gainesville seemed longer than the previous four.

I was about ten miles from my exit, and it was about 8:30pm. It was near dusk, and the sunset was brilliant. I was (remarkably) still feeling a little down about my lonesome driving. Then all of a sudden, bursting forth from down the road came the black Tacoma. And while we didn't end up driving parallel to each other again, he maintained a three car-length distance behind me, one lane over. And then before long, I pulled off the interstate as he continued on his journey deeper into Florida.

As I lose sight of him, I think to myself, "Mr. Black Toyota Tacoma from Tennessee, thanks for keeping me company."

Say what you will about my experience. It was serendipity; it was kismet; it was an affirmation of the human condition.

Staying with my parents was what it usually is. Lots of good food, lots of stagnant boredom.

I met up with Andrea on Saturday night to go have dinner and play catch-up. Bitch has her own apartment finally! Hallelujah for cutting the cord. She feels the same way, more or less. We went to Harry's, which was as delicious as I remember it being. (Note to self, by the way: you are so predictable.)

And then before I knew it, it was time to come back to Atlanta. I didn't meet as many people as I would have liked to. Apparently Belle lives here now, and Jenn came through the city at some point. Didn't find out till yesterday.

I guess that's life.

Delving into deeper districts

So I was instructed to continue the trend of posting pictures of food. How can I say no?

But first things first. My parents drove up from Florida again on Saturday, and we spent our time together doing the usual things: exploring Doraville's immigrant haven. I stupidly forgot to bring my camera along, but toward the end of the day I remembered that I still had my phone. And thus, after months of gathering dust, I polished off that once-fabled camera function and snapped the first picture that phone has seen in months.

That's kind of sorta completely not really weird. I just thought it was worth taking a photo of, at the time.

Ok I can't stand it anymore. Onward to the food!

So as I said, I didn't actually have my camera with me all day. And by the time I thought of my camera, we had left our restaurant already. It was some hole in the wall Chinese place with the cutest and most awesome staff. The mother worked the kitchen, the father worked the dim sum cart, the daughter waited tables, and the son was the busboy. This picture is just some of the leftovers that I ravenously crammed down my neck earlier today for lunch.

Starting at the top and going clockwise, this is what I had. Green beans stir-fried very simply with garlic, shoyu, and pork cracklin' (I don't know the technical term for that stuff) and awesomely delicious. Next, after the patch of barely visible white rice on which everything is resting, is something that can only be described as the pinnacle of Szechuan cooking. What you can see is the white fish pieces (it was either tilapia or Dover sole, or perhaps flounder), napa cabbage, and tons of red pepper flakes. What you can't see completely is the deliciously saffron-hued broth that had made its way into the nooks and crannies of the rice bowl. When my parents and I divvied up the leftovers, I thought I had the better end of the deal when I got most of the fish. But I took that broth for granted as I ate my meal and realized how lacking my rice bowl was without that fish broth soaking every single grain of rice. My parents called me when a couple hours afterward and described the soup they had made by recycling the broth into a concoction of cod fillets, winter squash, and more napa cabbage. The bastards. Anyway, rounding out this bowl is something that looks like spinach, but isn't. They're actually the greens of the soy plant. I like to think of them as the collard greens of Chinese folk, though I'm sure some people would smack me in the face for making such a comparison.

Aside from what you see there, we also got some amazing little wontons of shrimp, pork, and leek that were eerily reminiscent of dimsum, but served cold in a bowl, drenched in a hot-and-sweet sauce that can only be Szechuan. There was also the ubiquitous Szechuan eggplant that we always get, and some fried rice noodles that managed to keep their crispiness despite the pool of sauce that they were sitting in. We snapped up that junk like we were starving, so there are no leftover pictures of them.


But of course, my parent's are not to be outdone by restaurants, no matter how authentic.


I don't know what else to call these except buns. But they're not buns, though my grasp of Mandarin tells me that the literal translation of what my parents call them is buns. In any case, these are filled with pork and some vegetables that (to this very day) I don't know names for. All I know is that I saw a lot of them while growing up. Normally, you would eat these right as they came out of the steamer, and you'd have to be careful because the juices inside from the meats and veggies would squirt out and dribble down your chin if you bit into it too eagerly. But alas, these had been sitting into an icebox and all the juices had soaked into the dough part of the bun already. Still, awesome.

Don't be fooled by the shadiness of this shrunk-wrapped pork. It's remarkably delicious. My mom (in her infinite wisdom) bought a vacuum sealer off of QVC and has been using it on everything. The only reason you don't see it in any of the other pictures is because those items contain liquids or necessary air pockets. In any case, if you've ever walked around in a Chinatown, you've seen those stores with the ducks hanging in the window. That's what they're famous for. Equally delicious but often ignored by the masses are the cuts of crimson pork that are produced from the same venues. Think of these places as Chinese charcuteries. It's not quite ham, not quite barbecue. But they're very noticeable and very distinctive. I don't know how my parents found the time to make all of this, but I'm glad they did. I shall eat well for weeks. I'm sure if I did some research I could find out what they're called in English or Chinglish. But take note: study the red hue of this pork and keep an eye out the next time you're in the neighborhood.

TEA EGGS!! These require no further introduction or explanation. They are little bundles of delicious craziness.


The end.

Shrouded by faceless compatriots

So it's been quite awhile since I've last stepped into the shoes of my belovedly feisty dwarf priest or my quirky but deadly gnome warlock. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just sit tight.

I never understood why people liked to put down other people over something as minor as internet gaming. And I have yet to draw a logical conclusion as to why some people make a distinction between console gaming and PC gaming, targeting PC gaming as something inherently unacceptable. Some people look down on this hobby seated on lofty pedestals while expending hours playing Halo or some other equally mindlessly violent console game. And then there are people who pass judgment without ever even trying to grasp or understand the experience that is loved by millions of their peers.

It's so easy for people to focus only on the negative aspects. And it's true; I will be the first to admit the dark side of this hobby and industry. In 2001, a man left his infant son to cry to himself in a closet while he played Everquest, and after a 24+ hour session in front of his computer, he discovered his son's corpse. A 13 year-old boy in China lept to his death as a supposed result of his addiction. And nevermind the countless students around the world that have failed classes or dropped out of school/university because of their time management.

Recently, there was a Virginia Tech suicide that people are linking to his World of Warcraft addiction.

But the percentage of players who fall into these categories probably wouldn't fill more than 1% of the entire population, and I'd bet money on that. And besides, where would you place the blame? Do you blame the product, the producer, or the consumer? So many people are quick to blame the product and the producer, and this fact transcends markets.

People place blame for obesity on McDonald's, but don't recognize the fact that they hop into a car to travel the 3 blocks it takes to get there. Why not walk off some of the calories that you're going to consume?

People blame cigarettes and Big Tobacco for health issues, and seem to invest nearly incontrovertible effectiveness in the power of cigarette marketing. It's as if we don't know any better and can always be easily swayed by neon lights and beautiful people.

People blame guns for the deaths that result from them, thinking that if they're outlawed, the amount of gun fatalities will magically decrease. Well, illicit drugs are illegal, have we seen a drop in deaths from them?

It's time to place accountability on the individual. People need to take responsibility for themselves and their children. And everyone else needs to recognize this. If your child is spending 8 hours a night in front of the computer, put your damn foot down and stop it instead of blaming Vivendi for internet nicotine. If you have to choose between studying for that chemistry final or joining your buddies on a raid-and-pillage, opt out for the textbooks. And if you see a loved one losing themselves in such a game, recognize the fact that helping them and removing the game are two completely different things.

Life has rolled on, and my obligations elsewhere have built up to the point where I can no longer devote a couple hours every day to relax with my WoW social network. If I had the time to spare, would I go back? I think I would. That's the thing that most people have a hard time understanding, I think. It is a real, tangible social network that you build in games like these.

Look back to the Virginia Tech kid that shot himself. His internet network were the only ones who knew something was wrong, and they gave enough of a damn to try and intervene. They were the outlet of his cry for help.

Back in high school, when I was a subscriber to Everquest, I spent every night with a group of no less than 60 people from around the world. And I knew each and every one of them personally. There was Raoul from Stockholm, a college student who liked to rant about tourists and talk about his dreams of moving to South Africa. There was Jody and Harold, a married couple from Minneapolis that got pulled into the game because of their son, Mark, and they decided it was a healthy form of family bonding. There was Pattie from New Zealand, who got up early every morning just to go on adventures with us, and imparted her love of cooking to me. She was a pastry chef. And the list goes on.

My experience with World of Warcraft was nearly identical. Ryan and Reagan are two high school sweethearts that moved to Houston for college, crazy kids who still insist that I come visit so they can buy me that long-awaited beer. There's Tim, Don, and Sarah, three thirtysomethings from New England who meet up every month to go barhopping in NYC and yell at the college kids. Over the course of a year they've expanded to include Sarah's husband and Tim's brother and wife, all of whom have started playing. They always tell me that if I lived closer, they'd drag me along with them. They don't seem to mind that I'm the same age as the kids they enjoy heckling. And then there's Paul and Lena, a married couple right here in Atlanta that live in Decatur. Paul's an architect, and Lena's a homemaker for their two infant children. Ironically, both are staunch defenders of the gamer lifestyle, but readily admit that they'll drop the game as soon as their children are old enough to require more attention. That is, until their kids head off to college. And of course, the list goes on.

And I'm still in touch with the majority of both groups.

Is it a substitute for the real world? No, and I'll never think so. But there's real value there.

In a lot of ways, it's similar to why I'm still with AIESEC. You come together with people from around the world and establish a wordless rapport based on common ground. With AIESEC, it's a desire to develop ourselves and improve the world. With MMO's, it's wanderlust and curiosity for an internet dreamscape. And with the advent of software like Skype and Ventrilo, those personal relationships are much easier to build.

I feel like I've digressed. Suffice it to say, it's an experience and feeling that is hard to describe. And it doesn't always induce negative responses like those portrayed in the media and pop culture.

Ravages of distance

When I think about all the times in the past when I'd wax philosophic about the effects of time, location, and circumstance as the pivotal dynamic between individuals and groups, the historic trend of my output strikes me as something approaching absurd. And when I say absurd, I say it because I have yet to discover a word that can completely and successfully encapsulate my feelings on the matter. I can only step out of myself and look on in wonderment.

Each time, my vantage point changes. The permutations of time, location, circumstance, and people are never the same, and it's only now that I realize duplicity is virtually impossible. Consequently, anxiety about these differences becomes ridiculous, so I think I'll be easier on myself. All that's left is to consider each situation as a unique, separate entity.

Still, it seems inevitable that I'll repeat this cycle ad infinitum until the day I die. And I don't know if I'll ever reach a suitable conclusion to satisfy my need for rationality. For now, I'm still telling myself that it's all research for potential literary ambitions in the future.

On Christmas Eve, there was a party at one of the neighboring houses. It was the old school Chinese crowd from the past decade. It was an odd experience. I hadn't seen everyone in nearly a year, at least not all gathered into one house like that. All the parents seemed to have shrunk, while all the kids became veritable goliaths. All the parents simpered over me like some communal prodigal son, even though in reality I'm now not any better than the other children. In grade school, they all fawned over me because of my affinity for the piano and my enrollment in magnet programs. Compared to the 9 year olds still learning long division and the socially awkward, pubescent 12 year olds, I'm sure they thought I was the second coming of Asian Jesus. But now? Some of those kids are being courted by Ivy League schools, some are more musically talented than I ever was, and I'm sure they're more driven than I am. But that's how the Chinese mindset works sometimes, I guess. In their minds, I'm still the paragon of filial excellence, regardless of the truth in front of their faces.

Sometimes I think that's why Asian cultures produce such motivated, passionate, and unhappy people. They spend so much time trying to achieve a state of faultlessness and still never seem to satisfy their parents. It creates a quagmire of festering bitterness, directed to all fronts: their parents, their perceived rivals, and themselves.

Walking home from that evening presented myself with even more food for thought. There's nothing more startling than the realization that your grief, no matter how anguished and sincere, is merely a smokescreen for something else that lies beneath. I came upon this epiphany when I passed Seymour's house for the first time since I last blogged about him. I hadn't mustered up enough courage to ask his other students where his grave was, and it seemed reckless to ask his family direction. As I gazed at the quaint house, similar to mine but wearing a different coat of paint, I was inundated with a flood of memories that I wasn't prepared for. I never expected to react that strongly to his memory, and I didn't. What surprised me was everything else that rushed into my consciousness. Middle school anecdotes, feelings of inadequacy, all of the inner turmoil associated with those teenage years. They had snuck out and into the forefront of my mind hiding under the memory of my former history teacher. I still don't understand why all these things correlate in my unconsciousness. And I don't know if I want to know.

Speaking of death, it turns out one of our nicer neighbors is beset with prostate cancer. I never really took the time to get to know him or his family, but as I drove my mom home from work today, she rattled off the entire history of his illness. To be honest, I didn't catch all of it because I had instinctively started to tune her out; she can be really long-winded sometimes. But what I did hear was heartbreaking. He'd be fighting his diagnosis for years, probably ever since he had his house built across the street from us and moved in. I never saw much of his wife, but according to my mom, she was always working as a waitress somewhere to supplement their mounting costs, even though they'd retired long ago. Apparently chemotherapy is really expensive, even more so than I had ever thought.

Anyway, for years my parents swapped produce with Jack and his wife. My parents grew prize greens and various other vegetables in their garden, and Jack had an orange tree and banana tree. Over time, my parents had planted an orange tree of their own, and Jack had started his own modest garden under my mom's supervision. My mom is especially proud of this rapport. Our other neighbors only trade furtive looks with each other, ourselves included. Every chance she gets, she sighs and laments the poor sense of community that surrounds us. But I digress. This past fall, my parents' orange tree yielded no fruit, and they had none to share with Jack. In response, he sent over nearly all of the oranges from his own tree, but he had to ask his daughter to deliver them. When my mom started talking to her, she found out that he had decided to stop his treatment before his illness completely drained the money that he had saved with his wife. He didn't want to leave her destitute and dependent on their daughter, who had flown in from Alaska to spend time with him in his remaining days. He was so weak he couldn't even walk across the street with a bag of oranges. My mom told me that he probably won't survive past this winter.

My mom has already offered to teach Jack's wife how to maintain the bed of leeks, bok choy, and Chinese broccoli that Jack had so lovingly maintained. She declined, and my mom can't figure out why she'd let it go fallow. I have a hunch though, and it has nothing to do with an interest, or lack thereof, in gardening.

I finally got my hair cut on the 28th. I went back to Scissors and, hilariously enough, got attended to by the same nice lady that cut it back in August. She seemed to remember me and we had a nice chat about what we did in fall. She tried to convince me to grow it out again and come back in a year, when I had another ponytail to donate to Locks of Love. She even promised to style my hair for free. She almost had me convinced, but the thought of maintaining a wild mane for another year scared me into demanding that she give me the cut. As I left, she called out after me, "See you again in 4 months!" Who knows? Maybe I will.

To end things on a much lighter note, DEATH TO YOUTUBE AND THE WRITER'S STRIKE. I've lost too many hours of my life in the viewing of reality TV.

Ties that bind

My parents came by to visit today. The usual stuff happened, they brought stuff for me to take and we went out to dinner to chat. It was a veritable food Christmas this time. But then again it usually is.

This stuff will always hold a very dear place in my heart, aside from the fact that it is the physical, gastronomical manifestation of ambrosia. More on this later.

My parents had some rather unique stories to tell me today, all of them tragic and involving birds. This pair of cardinals had set up a nest in the small tree outside of my parents' bedroom. My dad stumbled upon them one day while trimming said tree and found three little chicks being nursed. Naturally, he left them alone. One afternoon, the two parent cardinals were raising hell so loudly that my parents could hear the ruckus from the living room. They went outside to check what was wrong, and discovered that one of the chicks had fallen out of the nest, and hadn't been able to fly back up. The other two chicks were nowhere to be found; my parents deduced that they were able to fly already and had left home. My mom immediately took pity, and rushed over to pick up the bird to place it back in the tree. No sooner than when she got within three feet of the bird, she collided head on with a hawk that was divebombing the same bird, supposedly to eat it. The hawk retreated, and so did my mom, temporarily, until she realized exactly what was happening. The two parent cardinals flew off to fight the hawk, and my dad chased off our two cats who had apparently wandered in and were ready to pounce too. My mom got a hold of the bird, but realized that the nest was too high to reach. She was too afraid to let the bird fend for itself, but also didn't think it was right to take it in and care for it herself. My parents were at a loss; surely, this bird was doomed. If they let it go, some predator would come and take advantage of it. If they took it in, the parents would give it up as lost and leave, leaving my parents with no way to raise an adolescent cardinal. They reached a compromise that seemed logical at the time. They would leave the chick in a moderately sized cage outside, with holes too small for both the chick itself and other predators to get in or out. Meanwhile the parents would see that the chick was still alive, and could still feed it. My parents went to bed satisfied.

Later that night, at about 4 AM, my parents were woken up by more ruckus outside. The cardinal parents were screaming bloody murder. It was so bad that my mom was too afraid to go outside. My dad went outside, and checked the cage.

A snake had gotten into the cage and had eaten the chick. In a sick twist of irony, the snake was now stuck in the cage because of the lump of the chick in its digestive system. My dad wasn't able to tell my mom what happened until the next day. He promptly threw up and found the nearest weapon to kill the snake with. He's not a violent person, but... something snapped after all they had done to save that bird.

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened either. My parents had installed a bird house prior to this, and a family of mockingbirds had taken up residence. Every day my dad would come home from work and be greated by the birds flying in and out of the house, switching off nursing duties and then to foraging for food. One day he came back and everything was suspiciously still, and he thought the chicks had finally grown up and left. Just to check, though, he went to the bird house to open the door and check inside.

Inside he found a snake within the bird nest with several different sized lumps, apparently taking a nap.

I'm not sure how I would have reacted in such a circumstance. Part of me doesn't even want to think about it. At first I was horrified that my dad killed the snake. After all, things like this happen in nature all the time. But the more I thought about it, it was much more symbolic than anything. The chick wasn't my parents' child by any means... but they took the same kind of concern for it that its actual parents did, and I guess were able to empathize with their situation. I suppose this is what all parents go through when their children are in danger. Ah, yes, such is the quagmire that is the ethics debate, isn't it?

It later occurred to me how memorable these monthly visits from my parents had become. They are now so regular, so expected. The itinerary is always the same, even. We always go to the same hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and we've had the same waitress for three years now, and she goes out of her way to get us seated at one of her tables so she can catch up with us. There's not much to say other than that... but it really does change ones perspective when one realizes that in twenty, thirty years... they'll look back on those times as vivid, fond memories.

So yeah, hence my earlier statement about dim sum, and its role in my history. I wonder if I'll be able to enjoy them as much as I do now when I my parents pass away. For now I'm not going to think about it. It's too unnerving.