Happy Refrain

 

When he turned and looked at me and said "New York?" and I nodded back with a smile, "_New York_" I knew right there and then that someday, oh someday, I'll be back to you, my New York, with a lot more love and even more heart than before. Believe me.

Contentment is a strange thing. You find it inadvertently, maybe it's always been there in your lap but you didn't, couldn't notice it, because you were too preoccupied by work, and parties, and rage. Then one day you calm down, ride your bike, and all you know is that bundle of joy, and it is a joy that blooms from deep within, not even by the number of wonderful people you know, have gotten to know, but an inward feeling of: yes, I'm singinggg in the rain.

I am... happy. Like, cheesy, Disney-cloud happy. Like, a happiness made of layers of mesh and fiber that all together, is unbreakable. Like, the type of happiness that you hang onto in remembrance of all the memories, and all the good people you've known and touched, and have touched you.

Happiest Thanksgiving to family, friends, near and far.

My Best Friend's Wedding

Your best friend from grade school gets married. You go to the wedding in your hometown only 30 minutes by train. She lives in the same apartment that you used to always knock on as an eight-year-old -- right after lunch at home, you'd both ride to school, always. You didn't know the meaning of best friends until you met her in second grade. When you get to her apartment almost 20 years later, when you knock on that same door, when you walk into her room and see her again, your heart breaks a little. Pieces.

You'd never been the type of girl to care for weddings. You'd never collected clippings or a Pinterest for wedding ideas. You'd never even dreamed about the big day when you're swept off of your feet. Then you see her, darling and dolled up. It reminded you the first time you met her. She had such a kind, pretty face.

You hung out all the time as kids. You secretly took pride in the fact that you were the two prettiest girls in class, or so you thought. Well, maybe you have your off days, but she was, had always been, and on this day, the most beautiful. On the day before you left for America, you spent a whole afternoon with her trekking across Nankai, your stomping ground. You don't even remember what you'd talked about, but it was like being outside yourself, watching two little girls standing tall, grabbing onto each other and already worlds apart.

You wrote letters. You wrote letters and you wrote letters. Letters were precious those days, and hearing from her always felt like a tug from a parallel universe. You lived your life. She lived her life.

In a way, being apart kept you together.

Regularity

All of a sudden you calm down. You read books. You go to bed by 11 and wake up by 6. You become obsessed with cleaning. You start cooking with recipes in hand. You really like fluffy scrambled eggs. You go to work early. You read books related to work. You read fiction. You spend as much time as you can with one of your best friends leaving in less than 16 days. Your conversations largely revolve around his girlfriend that you both love. You live vicariously through that love. You like living vicariously, because it seems 10x more real than love on your own. Your friend says you love everyone and no one. You're in love with love. Then you get bored, and you become cold, and you start to like cats. You almost, almost took one in, and if it weren't for the fact that she meowed all night, you really may have just done it. You called her Minako. Even the office cat likes you more, because she could tell that you changed. The office cat's name, Xiao Bi,  is homonym for "Little Cunt." You're still not sure whether it's a boy or girl, but you can stroke it now with all the calm in the world. Your friend calls you "keener" because you're waking up early, and eating healthy, and cleaning, and biking, and turning in work on time. He's a sloth on the other hand, not the deadly sin, but the one that clings onto trees. He looks like Buddha and occasionally the Madonna. You tell him he has a face that needs to be drawn by a 17th century painter. A large expressive face with big water pools for eyes and a half-smile that could rival Mona Lisa's secrets. His description made you feel old, like you've given up on being young. Instead you're too busy honing yourself, burying your head in books, loving in a different way.

Your body loves you. You have no idea how you sustained a lifestyle where you drank until 4AM and woke up at 9AM to do more work. You kind of miss it, but you kind of don't.

Beloved

Just got the first draft for our short short documentary for 本能 PAPER INSTINCT. It looks good, with much much gratitude to friends, without whom this will not be possible. In the space of four minutes looking at this, I am simply thankful to my job, my boss, my co-workers, and hours of overtime. Hard work pays off. Hard work pays off. There were moments in this journey when he and I were on the verge of giving up. I remember it so clearly, hunched by his desk, we asked ourselves, "Can we really do this? Is this really possible? Is it a dream?" Then the inexplicable weixin message that came late at night: 我们要留名北京设计周! 十一黄金周全国旅游的大婶大叔小孩学生都要走过我的展览! 我们的*。妈了个逼的!

That was that. I know we're young and naive. I know the hours don't ever seem enough. I know I'm married to my job, but everyday I'm thankful deep down inside. I'm thankful for coming to Beijing, for all the people I've met here. Just the other day, sitting at Re's home, we counted off nationalities around the circle, and there were 7 different countries represented between 8 people. Not even in New York is there diversity like this, but what's more important is this collective zen for something more, more than what is predictable, to be in a roller coaster life that is China.

Next up at work is Johnnie Walker. Excited, just.... excited.

Sniffing yadong with my taxi driver

So I really like that they give you these giant straws for your drink like it's absolutely foul to drink from the bottle, and while I'm sucking on this herbal fruit tea concoction that promises to "bring down the fire," I watched this dog that's been passed out on the floor like he's dead or deliriously happy. All the cats and dogs I've seen in Bangkok are always passed out from the heat, and, I hope, deliriously happy. The heat is nice. It's like a constant hug, deliriously happy.

As for the people, well one thing you gotta remember is that the king really is everywhere. I went to the Art & Culture center, and half of the Thai art history timeline seemed to be about the King, i.e., and in 1970, King Bhumibol really got into painting, five years later, really into sculpture. But it really is hard to not like a king who speaks four languages, plays jazz with Benny Goodman, and looks damn good in round spectacles.

Everyone besides the king seems nicer and more Buddhist than the Chinese. I'm retracting my spikes and littering thank yous with a smile like a bad American habit. Must fortify spikes so as to not get jibbed back in the mainland, a girl's gotta be tough in the Jing, either that or be a pale delicate flower.

I'm kind of enjoying relying on gestures and stupid English. When people ask me where I'm from, I still find myself saying China, though the American inside me swells a bit too. My taxi driver said he only knew four words in Chinese, and he proceeded on saying them with the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old: ni hao, xie xie, zai jian, and ke ai! He looked young himself, maybe my age, is that still young? He keeps on giving me mint candy and rubs yadong, this palm oil that's slightly sweeter than fengyoujing on my hand. "Put against nose." He instructed, and repeated this four more times before we reach my destination, each time with smirk.

We listened to the latest Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce that sounded exactly like the old Gaga to me. He's singing to it and I remember the days when I used to fall asleep to the radio, and now I have no idea whether the latest Gaga got flack from Pitchfork or not. So this is when you know you're getting old.

"Ke ai!" I laughed. "How to say ke ai in Thai?" This is what I mean by stupid English.

"Norak," he laughed back then pointed at me, "norak like you."

This was when I regret not kissing a few more Italian boys in my life, and also my Thai taxi driver who knew long ass sentences in English but only four Chinese words.

Beastie

This urge ain't healthy. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol or man for two weeks, and while that's fine and all, while it's liberating to write a dozen letters to buddies, ten dozen words to the blog and Field Notes, read three books and sketch buddhist temples, I fear a backlash coming soon. It gets especially bad at night, when the playlist swings from some hipster croon and drops to a club beat. I get a little itchy and antsy. Beijing has made me into a beast, ready to burst and rage. Most of the times I just want to be a man, so I can sit with my legs uncrossed, wear a wife beater, glide on my longboard, smoke a bunch, pick up women. Maybe my perception of men has gotten a little skewed (you think?), but that's all I thought about while shuffling down Patong, leaving without much more than a furtive glance at the go go bars.

Bangkok's famed red light district has now degenerated into a zoo, filled with tourist friendly vendors selling fake Rolexs by sun down. It's just as well, but whatever images I had fueled by fiction, it all comes down to the fact that walking down the streets of Bangkok, I just wanted to be a dude. None of this weird checking you out girl you so cute shit. Thai men are like the Italians of the east, and I like them, I like the nolas and I think they cute, but a girl just wants to feel real sometimes.

When I was 21 and he was 27 (and I'd thought he was so old), Ollie said once that you gotta cherish it, because one day this beauty will fade, and that's when you'll really feel sad, because no one's checking you out on the street, that's when you know it's all gone. I get that too, I do. But for once it'd be nice to switch the roles so I can check out some fine ass without hiding it, pick em up, pick em up, play some games, use what God gave you.

Don't let the beast eat you alive.

I can't wait to turn 30.

Crater City, Elephant Building, and The One That Got Away

{The Elephant Building} …a 40 storey building that was being constructed in the mid 90’s. It was almost done when the Asian financial crisis hit and the construction had to be halted and was never finished. The bottom half of the building is in use but the top half is abandoned. To get to the roof you have to walk up 20 flights of stairs as there’s no working elevator past the first 18 floors. On the roof of this building is a overgrown rooftop garden, a pool covered with algae, a helicopter pad, and the most incredible city view that I’ve ever seen. In every direction there you can see to the horizon, and late at night the lights of Bangkok seem to stretch on forever. - Yuer in Bangkok, Summer 2008 Bangkok swelters like a crater city. If you told me all this heat and wonder was built on a large impact crater that collided seven years ago, that it's the simmering remnants from this meteorite -- zinc, iron, rock and metals that pave these streets -- I'd believe it in a heartbeat. This city is a post-apocalyptic scene, a metropolis racing to the future built on ashes. Crisscrossing between unfamiliar lanes and stalls, I get flashes of scenes from slick scifi visuals like Bebop or Tekken. A future that couldn't quite catch up with itself, a mesh of cultures old and new. The explosion of markets, traffic, people, motorcycles, decrepit buildings from a bygone era, modernized buildings next to stalls held by tarp.

This place is manic. It's coming undone at the seams, and yet, there's something deeply deeply serene and humane about it. I'd probably burst with it, if I could make any sense of it. But, reflections should be saved for later, maybe in front of the computer back at the desk job, or in a handshake with a client, when a sudden and consuming urge for the heat, the city jungle, seizes.

Bangkok is build on memories. With every step I take, I think of the boy and girl who wrote endless emails on the ways of this world. Back in California and New York, she lived vicariously through his journey. His journey could be tracked over the map of Southeast Asia through Internet Cafes. Calls were made. Emails were written. She told him, hey, you go have fun, don't get stuck in Internet Cafes. He would reply, babe, I wouldn't be doing this if this isn't fun. Darling, babe, sweetie, and any other derivatives of affection always sounded so crass before him. She'd actually visibly flinched once overhearing her roommate in college. Because isn't it domestic. Isn't it so...old? Isn't it so...settled?

She called him by a nickname that was by no way a derivative. It was a nickname that he hated because it reminded him of some douche bag in high school, but the name stuck because she was selfish like that, and because he deserved more than babe, darling, sweetie.

Maybe what all great loves need is a great distance and a deadline. In California she paced all over San Francisco and Santa Cruz, met all sorts of hippies who said she looked like Guanyin while she chewed on what stood before them. To go, to not go, to go, to not. He moved too, the most beautiful boy she'd ever met. He'd moved with the audacity to take on continents, devour food and books, endure long hours of bus and trains rides, drank like a dirty expat, and at the end of it all, romanced via Skype at rundown Internet Bars to find her across the world.

He said, I could probably write a guide to the best Internet Cafes across South East Asia. She said "no" to drinks and "no" to new friends in order to cradle a phone instead in New York. She had no idea what love was, but it probably happened sometime during the long email chains on Laos and Jungle Beach.

Maybe what all great loves need is an expiration date. So we raced against time. So we loved against tides. So we broke at the seam, when continents finally took it apart, and maybe that's fine, because in Bangkok City, I see the boy and girl together. She's piling on the street food. She's praying in the temples. She's trekking everywhere, nowhere, pressing memories that will always remain, and will always be loved.

The Luckiest One

Greatest Birthday EVER. Thank you Joan & Banning, I love you guys. Thank you Ronald, best partner in crime ever. We don't hug enough. Thank you JJ, for still being so boss and Johnnie Walker, even though I know tomorrow I'm gonna complain about it. I still have so much to learn from you. Thank you Chris, for being the best ex-boyfriend ever. I LOVE YOU. Thank you WIFE, see you tomorrow. People are great.

The Taco Attack

It all started with tacos.

I had to have it, have it like I had it too easy living four blocks away from the best street for Mexican food in New York. Any late night taco cart would do on Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn. Problem was, this is Beijing, and finding good Mexican food is as hard as finding a good man. All week I had been bugging my expat friends about tacos, dropping the idea during dinner conversations, slipping it in while they sip on their drinks, prodding gently during cigarette breaks... "How about them tacos...?" Until finally, it took a fellow New Yorker to take the bait, and we set out, entirely unplanned, to find this crazy hidden taco joint owned by some guy who used to live in Texas that I'd read about on some food blog a long time ago.

"How about them tacos," came New Yorker friend's text on an unsuspecting Sunday night. "Yes, I think it's on #9 Dongsishitiao." I texted back, this all based on the fallacy of somebody's Foursquare info.

New Yorker friend corroborated that his friend just went yesterday and said it was the best tacos she's had in Beijing.

"OMG tacos okay let's meet up. I come by bike!"

10 minutes before our meeting time, I was turning on Dongsishitiao when two dudes on motorbikes ripped my phone from my jacket pocket. The robber had a quick hand and light touch. I almost didn't notice it if it weren't for my bad habit of listening to music while biking too fast. All of a sudden the music stopped and I'm standing at the intersection with my white handphones dangling in thin air. I watched the two guys speed away. The guy on the back, presumedly the one who had my phone/Internet/gps/camera/ipod/weibo/email/LIFE tucked warmly in his jacket looked back with the most unaffected expression -- no glee, no guilt, no glint in his eye, no evil cackling, nothing.

I'll remember that look. I'll remember his middle aged face, his sunken eyes, and the wisps of hair while I considered chasing them down and the slightest possibility that my bike might morph into a batmobile so I can bamboozle, bazooka, and bat the shit out of these motherfuckers. But I'm no catwoman. I was a woman on a mission to find tacos, and all of a sudden I was left without a phone, Internet, or GPS, and worst of all, after a couple of loops, #9 Dongsishitiao did not exist.

My friend later said, yup, no #9, no tacos, no Qing Qing. While he was circling around for the mysterious #9 in the labyrinth of Hutongs before confirming with his friend that oh... it was actually in another Hutong a couple blocks away, I was oddly serene. Angry. reeling, shellshocked, yes, but my brain secretly enjoyed being finally woken. The events that proceeded were as mundane as dirty laundry, except this story didn't take place in 1998.

1) After giving up asking poor old Chinese grandmas about a "small taco restaurant," I suddenly realize that I was... 2) Right in front of another friend's apartment complex who's from L.A. and liked tacos. What if he knows?! Of course he would know? What if he's home? Should I just knock on his door? Is that a faux paux without calling first? 3) Five minutes later, a door swung open and he's all confused and I'm all hahaha sorry and he's all you're crazy and I'm all where is this taco place?!?! and he drew this nifty map. It was all great, except it's definitely not #9 Dongsishitiao and I was so late. 4) 15 minutes later, I biked home, ran up six flights of stairs, and wrote an email to New Yorker friend. "Phone stolen, call my landline." 5) When I realized my friend had a landline in this new apartment that I took over for her, I remember thinking "what a waste of space..." I didn't like things that weren't functional and shoved the phone in a corner. When it rang for the first time since I moved in, I thought a ghost was shaking me alive, hallelujah! 6) I told him my address. He showed up later, calling my landline saying he's here. I ran all the way downstairs. No one there. I ran all the way back up. "Where are you?!" "I'm here?" "I don't see you?! Ok I'm gonna shout from my window, stay on the street." "HEY!!!!!!" 7) "Hey!" He shouted back, a shadow of a figure emerging beneath canopied trees.

I got you. I really did. Not through a million digital bits through iMessage or Weibo. I got you face to face, feet planted, knocks on door, with all you can eat tacos.

Welcome back to the dumb phone life.

Damn Son

Becoming evil was never quite apart of the plan. Becoming evil is the three hundred pound gorilla descriptor I'd like to use to summarize all the other adjectives people have used to describe me: nonchalant, distant, regal, polished, cold, weird, careless. There's never been such a gap in my own perception of myself despite an unwavering phase of selfishness, but I'm pretty sure those adjectives are close to queen bee bitch at this point. I guess that's what being selfish is all about. In order to tone it down a notch, I'm going to practice the following:

1) Smile more 2) Read more 3) Work less

I kind of want to go back to New York for a little bit just to make sure that I'm still a real person. Was I even real in New York? Did we really sleep on a Ikea mattress pad for like, half a year and folded laundry as a Sunday afternoon ritual? Does that make us real? I met a friend of a good friend in New York and he talked about biking to Fort Tilden, living in Chinatown, and food trucks. It made him all flesh and bone. It made him not Beijing but New York, as if the sticker of permanence is still between Gramercy and Upper East Side. I wonder if that's partly why I love Joan so much, that some corner in my brain has programmed New York as home, and that I know one day I will curl up on her couch probably, back to the place where I had a role, a place, and where tacos are nearby.

All of a sudden I get what he means when Ryu said, "I wish we'd known each other in New York instead of Beijing, not this crazy place." It's appropriate that he forgot he ever said such a thing.

Everyone of us talk with so much ambition about living and working and striving in Beijing, but let's be honest, on some level we're all running away a little bit. On some level, we're not just looking for opportunities and help change things here. We're running away from Ohio, from New York, from stability. We're running away from parents, from the hurt, to pull revenge by being the best we could ever be. We're running away from dead ends, routine intersections, boredom and mediocrity. Does that make us cowards? No, I don't think so. I think it makes us a very deeply conflicted group of well-meaning, idealistic, lost kids who are too bold for our own good.

I want all of us to be ok. I want the idealists in all of us to be in tact even if we fall and break our pride and bruise our courage. We're too lucky not to.

Super Nova Heart

ORANGE

You love these Beijing nights. We make circles with our bikes. We make circles on our backs. We take the bikes out on the road, blazing past pedestrians under orange lights. We make circles, half circles, zip through half-hearted AM traffic, past the Forbidden City, cops and public servants, holidays merrymakers. We leave a scene exploding behind us, the noise, the bickers, the flags, the harsh love. Once you take a corner, everything changes, the laughter on your face, the tenacity, the vulnerability. Once you go far enough, everything turns...

BLACK

...and you're chasing after your own shadow between the tree branches, the ancient buildings that don't so much glower, but sit serenely gazing at you. The city exhales finally, 2AM in the morning. It's been a long day. Bus loads of tourists from all over the country at the heart of the capital. They came by train, by flight, by car, by foot to the womb. What they found instead is only people mountain people sea. You wish you could have told them to come out at 2AM, when all is still and shadows roam like black lights.

WHITE

You love these Beijing nights. When you stumble into a 7-Eleven, let the fluorescence wash over hair and skin. The aisles so fresh so new so everything you'd ever need. You grab a pack of gum and bop to some electronic dance song in your headphones. The middle age man look at you with a weary look. You watch his mouth move. You observe it. Then you suddenly realize, shit, he's talking to you. Stop being such an asshole and listen. By the time you pull out your headphones cuz your such a misanthrope, you realize he's done talking to you. You say thanks and dodge out, hop onto your bike, and it hits you that one day soon you're gonna be middle age too, and maybe it wouldn't be so cool to bop to Good Time by Crystal Castles anymore then.

BLUE

You think about the concert on your way home a lot. The way the blue light danced on the singer's every movement, as if the music - bass, guitar, drums - were only her puppets, an accessory to her stage. She threw herself in the blue light, barefoot and fierce.  She had it down to an art form. She had the crowd going crazy. She had you and your friends exclaim like fanboy-girls, "this girl is phenomenal." You remember this is Beijing and you're watching a Chinese-American girl sing in English and be so boss in China. Good for her. Good for all of us. Keep going. Don't get so jaded. Don't be sick of Dada and Modernista and What Bar, it's only your second, third times there.

Most of all, take a vacation. Go sit in some cafe in Singapore and mediate on this crazy Beijing life where your world systematically shifts every two months, and be okay with that, really be okay with it.

Lost in Canton

First, take off the exhaustion, layer by layer. Then, wash the terror off, bit by bit. Soon I'm just gonna go away. Escape to some lonely road in Canton, disappear into the city lights. Have to get out of here soon. Got to get out.

The Simple Days

Remember the simple days? Right, neither do I. There was a month tucked in the volumes of time, when I used to bike in circles around Prospect Park, pick up a few books at the Brooklyn Library, then meditate on text as if the concept of time didn't exist. New York felt deeply deeply real. Beijing is fiction at work. I can almost write a novel from a night's worth of text messages and expressions. Of this cast, I just never thought I'd ever become a character myself. I almost wish I could bring a camera to my face, and scrutinize the instant when I say things like: "Please don't stand so close to me. I need at least this much space." I wonder what that face looks like after a series of yawns and forced perkiness, then collapsing in one stroke, I laughed and cried at the same time, in that quiet space amongst the cold crowds. I hate faces that return a look of absolute understanding, and maybe worse, affection. Because don't you understand that this is a melodrama and no rom-com. Please don't return recklessness with a look benevolence. Someday this beauty, this intelligence, this craziness will all fade, and so too will this benevolence and affection and this...

I was in a car going to work when I saw this beautiful little girl today, and when I smiled at her she smiled back with the most heartbreaking smile and she started waving and kept on waving until we lost each other at the bend.

Life, baby girl, is good.

That Street

"It would probably make more sense if I smoked." "Yeah, it would go with the writer thing."

He makes a motion right here, cigarette between the fore and middle finger, eyes flickering away, an expression of deep insouciance and, if you can imagine, he feigns womanly mystique. He smokes for real since age 15 on the island of Malta. I knew nothing about Malta until I met him. He smokes like a man. He doesn't dwell on it. I imagined Malta (the first time I heard about it on a rooftop bar at 4AM when a blackout hit the block just as the sun began to peak), to be filled with blue lagoons and tall tales. I liked the way the syllable melted in my mouth like dark chocolate with hints of orange spice.

Malta.

Malta with the boats and the lonely days and the hungover cuts and the cameos from dreams. Malta to him might be like a cloak of memories, warm, intangible, cold, distant. I take this cloak, and I think about Malta like I could own it too, because a place Malta just sounds like the opposite of here, this place, this Beijing.

It takes me exactly 45 minute to bike from work to home. I work crazy late so whenever I get off work I'm biking home furiously from fourth ring to the heart of forbidden city like I'm fleeing orange demons. Then I get to this street, and I'm talking about this particular street where my new apartment lives on. It's a narrow street with a little park, and canopied trees, and old people strolling, and when I make sharp turn there, everything just mutes, and I can hear only the trees, and the moon.

New place is sick. It's like a new life, and my only priority is seeing that moon framed perfectly in my window.

The Most Beautiful

"All things in moderation." I'm always rushing to spend time with friends leaving and new interesting people that at times I forget that time is actually the most important factor in any relationship. So as I walk with him in the Hutong, calmly and away, digesting his remark, "that was weird," with a simper, I think of the past year of friendship and how, somehow, I've only recently gotten to know this person, and just how different, but the same we are, I think, this is probably one of the more profound friendships I've nurtured, stitch by stitch, forced by the quantity of time we spend together, this boy, this man: I'm really proud to know him. I'm really proud of us.

The most beautiful, moments of epiphany, late night breakdowns. The crazed people driven by something: a revenge, an ambition, a obligation to God-given talent. Humility is for the weak. The proud, we fake it till we make it, till yesterday when we smirk, "so, this is really happening?"

Is it?

Hard work and trials ahead. Best of luck to us, and this friendship.

You Break

The second time to the edge of the Forbidden City at 1AM, the pagoda was no longer an eerie outline in the dark. It was lit up like a museum artefact, clean lines and fresh paint, picture perfect and ready for a movie set. The second time zooming past the Forbidden City at 1AM, still on the back of a motorcycle, but the shoulder that I clutch was different, and I'd traded wine for a White Russian that wasn't quite a White Russian. The second time passing by that river bank, I think of sitting there, I think of his arms circling around my waist, he said: "don't do that, you're making me nervous." Like Michael Jackson dangling a baby. Time dies. When Tian held my hand and talked about what crazy bag of random I was, I think we're two nut jobs who are a little too sane together. He always tries to untangle my moodier moments with a pinch of maturity, but I tell him sometimes I just need to brood, forgive me if I'm cold and moody. I don't mean to hurt.

I hope in the end, we all didn't mean to hurt, and you and I can walk away a little lighter.

Exploding Balloons

One of these days, we're gonna need a balloon release. The kind that wheezes and whistles in thick air, smacks against white walls and the white in our eyes until there's nothing left but sagged wishful thinking. When the Russian boy said goodbye at dusk, he said it with a tinge of laughter and three shades of regret: "thanks for the friendship," he said to Tian. "Thanks." He was sitting on his motorcycle when he took out the cigarette and lit it, and for a moment I wished I didn't have my headphones on earlier while he talked about the girl he moved in with five days after he met her, the girl who'd gone all the way to Qingdao to deliver a lie, the girl he's leaving because there was nothing left for him here, anymore.

I wish I wasn't so wind up lately, like a clam, my universe a vacuum of deadlines, clients, deliverables, and a smattering of passion, that I'd miss stories like these, because the moment when he said to Tian, "thanks for the friendship," my heart broke to pieces, and when he moved away into the apartment, disppearing to a shadow, I wanted to grab him into a hug and tell him, "Mr. Bird, thanks for the music."

Exploding ballons like these seconds squeezed into minutes. I live so much each day I can't breathe. Thanks Mr. Bird, for poking at these taut exteriors, and reminding me that that was it, those moments, these moments, with you and I gazing at the stoplights, with you and I watch ing the light glaze over the trees, with you and I and the city and the incandescent thought bubbles balloons balloons balloons.

Pop. 

Coffee Shop, Saturday Night

Combing through books at 11:35PM on a Saturday night, I feel a strange sense of comfort. TJ and Maomao are just behind me in a corner, chatting over tea. I'm not sitting with them because of work, but I feel their presence, and having them there makes it easier for me to plough through the words. I get a call from Ronald asking, "are you out?" (because, of course I would be out on a Saturday night). I reply matter-of-factly, "nope, I'm reading" (those books that JJ gave us). He wows a little and asks for club recommendations. His Canadian friends are in town, and apparently I give off the vibe that I go clubbing a lot, not the case, not anymore. I tell Maomao, I'm never going to Sanli to drink again. This will probably not be the case, but I mean it on a spiritual level. Sanli has no hold on me now, and I will probably not seek it out. Maomao asks, "why are you giving yourself so much pressure?"

"It's a passion project," I explain. After all the drinking, the men, the rage, all that's left is a sea of calm and a penetrating focus. I get up seven in the morning -- weekdays, weekends. I ride my bike to work. I'm using ABCD goal setting rules. I'm inching toward whatever that feels right, what feels good.

All is well.

150% Commitment

It's a two months hurtle from here, and for ridiculous dreams we're gonna fight fight fight. No one is going to take this away from us. We're gonna fight fight fight. No one is going to take this away from us. We're gonna bite our hearts and go go go. Rewards, unclear, but all our talks of concepts, instincts, in the end, maybe we're the ones who really need to do it, who do it out of 本能，because we can't stop our heads, bodies, from going. Maybe, maybe we need to compensate for certain regrets, to prove that we can still do right, but whatever it is, I hope you and I and you can do it, can take all the tears and struggles and the long hours and stuff it down our hearts until we'll make it.... We'll make it.

Vacation of God

Called a workaholic again. Wasn't sure how to respond. Becoming more and more obsessed by work. The more difficult, the more challenging, the more stress, the more incentive to get better, be stronger, move faster, strike harder. Yes, I'm talking about work, not just the daily bike ride, the inclination to fight while drunk (I recently learned how to really pack a punch), the proclivity to want to fight in general both mentally and physically, but just work. I'm getting better at it and I like it, even if cells in my body scream for a vacation. It's important your work aligns with your 70% passions. I say 70% because it's not your full passion, because if it's your 100% passion, you'll lose the love for it in the daily grind, better that it is something that piques your interest and expand your horizon, be it typography or grids or design or kerning or...

I just love dowsing myself in a world of organizational pretty. It calms my nerves.