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.

Ella Fitzgerald's Love Songs

DJ: Thnx. Don't let Beijing get to u. Enjoy it for what it is. Q: What does that even mean DJ?

DJ: just means enjoy the awesome people u meet here and don't let the temporalness of it get to u. So many good people here to "figure things out." Anyways, maybe too deep for 3:30 in the morn.

I met DJ maybe two weeks ago, the night of Fei's going away, music trading party. DJ is leaving next Thursday, back to the States, back to Seattle. He asked for music event recommendations in the Jing because, judging by the fact you had a hardrive ready for that music trading party. He's right. I invited him to Mongolian throat singing, Hanggai, and almost didn't recognize him. Joan and Banning were there, so was TJ, but I just stood in the front and danced, because at the end of the day, when everyone leaves, all you can do is keep on dancing like a fool. All you can do is press your body against giant speakers and let the vibrations pour through your very being.

Joan and Banning will leave too, in a month. One day, maybe, I'll have a going away party. Who will settle here. Who will remain. Who will continue the threads and unwind their lives. TJ says, I'll be here at least for the next few years. I owe him too much. I owe him all the hurt that I've saved for myself, but instead, I launched it all on him. The amount of cruelty of capable of, paralyzes me. But at the end of the day, the music goes on, and friends will come and go, and men will stay or leave, and all that is left is you and the speaker.

Speak up.

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.

She Must Have

She must have a face that says it's okay to wake her up three in the morning--the dead of the night neither here nor there. The first time it happened, it had been a barely friendquintance. The call came piercing through the silence of Saturday at 4AM. He sounded incredibly solemn for someone who had been drunk and threw his keys in the snow. She'd been his second choice and last resort because she could speak Chinese and direct the taxi driver to her address. Still her place wasn't easy to find, and through the fog of her mind she'd been tempted to just turn off the phone and close the world off the way you'd pull down the blinds. The second time it'd happened, the guilt from the friendloverquintance climbed from his cell phone deep into her throat. She could hear her groggy voice reverberate against his shame-tinted tones. It'd been 3AM on a Tuesday morning, the morning before an important casting. She wanted to kill but she had no heart to do it. Instead she took out the knife that was insomnia and let its silver gleam in the dark until he's fast asleep and she's swallowing sleeping pills.

The third time it'd happened, she was just plain fucking mad at friendloverquintemisises. He cursed like an Irish sailor, whispers of "beautiful cunt," "men as shadow," "blue eyes" and lovely sinister things that made her blood run cold. When he held her like a raft adrift in the sea, all she could do was listen in fear and come to the profound conclusion that it's always the sane, slick, wise ones who are the hopeless, the cray, the devastated.

She thinks about New York all of a sudden. In the dead of Beijing night, she thinks: "New York, Did I really use to sleep safe in your womb?"

Hearts Like a Fool

"My real name is not Angie, you know. It's Anna, Anna Panskova." I'm talking to Angie, no, Anna Panskova: 22, model, Muscovite, lead singer of her indie band "Tony Sopranos." She's wearing a Mika Miko punk rock shirt and I'm staring into her emerald eyes and suddenly I get it, I just get it.

I get why Salvador needed his Gala Dali and Man Ray his Kiki de Montparnasse.

"This is just a day job," she says. "I'm touring Europe with my band in three months." When she talks about music, her whole body moves with her eyes. She plays a song. She writes all their songs. She says her band is young, except her, she's getting old. Then she sings: hands out, lips pout, eyes fierce, everything else joyful, and I'm seeing a stage floating behind her already, swallowing Anna Panskova whole in glitter and gauze, light showers and applause. She lights up like she does in the photos. Her eyes hard vials of poison.

It was something close to love at first sight. We had a room full of models for casting, and there she was -- chopped blonde hair, black eye liner, technicolor shirt. My playlist was on the 349 Music Monday tracks I jacked from Ronald. She moved the whole time -- the whole damn time like the universe was hers and all these other beauties around her? Amateurs.

I love the girls who dance in a stuffy studio to my iPod. I love that when I tell them, "sweetie, you've got a sensual look, but I need you to bring out your inner man, bring out your fierce." First they look scared and then they do what you say like professionals. We all fake it until we make it. When they get it, I shout an awesome and there's that power, there's that smile, and I smile back at the beauty puppets. I feel the power too.

Anna Panskova was literally our next to last model, and when she strut I didn't say a thing. I just told my photographer JP to keep going, keep shooting. When she's done she said to me. "Hey, this was fun. I love it. I can look like man so this is fun."

"I like her," I said to JP. "Let's keep her."

Two days later Anna Panskova crashed through the doors of our photo studio, wet haired and a vision, right into me for a hug and kiss on both cheeks. I'm feeling kindred spirit burning and that damn, I kind of miss beautiful white girls.

During hair and makeup, she asked the makeup artist what song was playing. "Is this your music? I loved what you played at casting! What is this song called?" Later that afternoon, we spent a good 10 minutes looking for that song on my 349 song playlist.

"You know, it's that guy, then he's joined by a girl in chorus," she sang here, but my mind was a blur.

When we finally found it, she's happy and I was secretly too. She played DJ for half of the shoot and I jacked a few of her titles myself. The Tings Ting, Museum of Bella Artes, Russian indie bands. I thought of the days back in Brooklyn. We were 20-year-olds and lying on the floor of some basement apartment listening to Sigur Ros. The floor was cold and Rob asked Sasha, "what is she doing on the floor like that?" Sasha said, "she's listening to music."

From Brooklyn to Beijing six years later, some things don't really change. We keep on falling in love with the people who love that song that meant something that take on another layer of meaning because hey friend, do you love it too? Do you? Do you? Cuz if you do, I heart you like a fool.

Wake Up

Mos Def. So sexy. Light and shadow, beats and drum, beautiful people. Fine dining. Harsh work, overtime. Ladies and gentlemen, toss your boogie man in the closet. Get your train badge, your mile high gold badge. Break some hearts. Most of all, WAKE THE FUCK UP EARLY SO YOU CAN GET MORE WORK DONE & live longer. You're making me stronger. I'm much more stronger now.  

I'd be lying if I didn't admit I can't keep up with life lately. Work, friends, men, wine, movements, moments. The beat goes on, just gotta keep up, keep things in order, keep it tightly wrapped.

Whispers glide past my ear, and the next we're zipping from office to the Hutongs. The beat goes on. I'm meeting up with my nineteen-year-old skateboarder parkour  spoken word friend and we be chasing French folk, Brazilian funk, dub step around the drum tower. Later T.J. said "Clem had a Mohawk" and I'm all like, fuck, really? All I remember was he had a small, tanned head and a voice that spoke like it sang and sailed. Clem and I met at some writer's group with nice, Christian people. The second time I saw him was at some Open Mic night he organized that happened to have a lot of Christian missionary kids who read from the Bible with tears stinging their eyes. During the middle of it, with Goon Squad in my hand and Jesus Christ on my mind, I gestured to Clem aka Tseng Xiaolong, "hey, hey Clem," I said. "I'm Atheist."

My eyes zeroed in on him like it was an ultimatum. I'm down with Christians, but if Clem was one, he'd be one of those Young Life hippie Christians who scares the shit out of me. So when I say my eyes zeroed on him, I mean it was a question chipping at the foundation of this budding friendship. Hey kiddo, what are you? I asked. Clem laughed like an Indian guru. He looked like one that day, with his wispy white tunic and bare feet. I remember that his feet were slim and tanned and he had a gentle smile of a cat. He said "no no" like he was tossing an apology, but I like that he embraced people with that smile of his.

I smiled back to let him it's chill, that somehow I already knew the answer, that Christian or not or whatever else, we were on a weird wavelength that made sense, and maybe that's all that matters in this city of Hutong mazes and impossible friendships.

That night it rained and we hopped over fences until we lost our shoes but not our hearts. Clem bought us four 老Beijing popsicles and cigarettes in exchange for T.J. taking care of the bill. T.J. always takes care of the bill. But he does it so unobtrusively and sincerely, that it actually makes you feel good. When you do it not for face, not for any ulterior motives, all you need in return are four 老Beijing popsicles and a pack of Nanjing cigarettes.

Failure in Traumatic Colors

2:44AM, on a bike, bleary eyed, heavy heart, orange lights, a soundtrack for the times that's more emo than the College collection. I think, fuck you Beijing, why do you make me crawl home at the ungodly hours with my stomach in a knot. Even worse is this ridiculous craving for raw instant noodles, the kind you ate during second grade. You'd pour the pocket of MSG flavoring all over it and eat it with a crunch, but the majority of the flavor would be devoured in that one bite but that's okay because the raw noodles themselves are just as good. When life was simple all you cared about was how to devour raw instant noodles after extra sessions of math class. It's a single-minded goal delivered with the most satisfying bite. Instead we're here again Beijing, at your ungodly hours, at your service, at your fucking whim.

and I'm sorry for it already, I'm so sorry.

Bath Tubs, Purple Rain

Sometimes I have no idea how conversations begin to unfold. There are the obligatory "what do you do's," followed by an awkward silence. You try to conjure all your charm because, didn't someone just say you were charming (of which you misheard as "she's drunk"). You're getting closer and closer to an age where small talk no longer matters, and if the conversation falls down a cliff, then so be it. You take your wine elsewhere to someone you've seen twice around these parts but don't really know his name because both times you were either 醉了 or 高了。He takes this in with a grain of salt and acknowledges your third fateful meeting with the same insouciance that confirms that he's still 醉了 or 高了，that in fact, the most likely scenario is that he's probably in that state of mind most of the time. The most infuriating thing is that the backdrop never really changes. It's the same silver lined condo building that you've taken a photo once four in the goddamn morning and wishing you could howl.

"I hate it when night turns to day."

Once upon a time, when we were young and in New York and it was cool to stumble home at 7AM walking barefoot on cement filled with broken glass and broken hearts. We're missing those days by a thousand miles+ and I count the nights that mean something: the nights at Zhonggulou, gazing at stars with drunk brits and drunk us, crawling home by three and wake up at a proper nine o'clock.

Bath tubs and purple rain, here comes round two.

Deadlines

"I worry you don't get enough sleep." "Don't worry about me. I don't even worry about me."

I don't. I don't worry about group break downs in the office, when we start howling and break out the beer, when we start kicking trash cans and cabinets, when the black cat tries to commit suicide by the window ledge, when fruits are tossed on the walls, there's always someone (Qingrui) who'll patiently clean up the mess and make us feel sane. I don't mean to make work sound like an asylum. What I'm describing are only two separate occurrences on two separate days with two separate people.

I don't worry about me because even on five hours of sleep I know I'll drag my ass up to rehearse a presentation to hell. I don't worry about me because I'm wired to be good, be responsible, be smart, be that girl.

"I know I'll be okay."

I know I'll be okay to that point that I actively create chaos in my life, like falling down the stairs and cutting open my right knee, or riding my bike wicked fast through Beijing traffic and banging my left knee. One day all that'll be left is a giant bruise, purple and green, and I'll still be ok. You can't really change who you are, even if you work more, drink more, date more, play more.

I think I'm ok with being ok, too. I'm good with happy, thanks. No more of this nonsense, let's be adults, pay the rent, earn hard cash, brave a little.

Inspire More Misery

Between frantic calls from aunts, my mother's suddenly soft tones, love from friends, I realize there's really no point in denying it, I am entirely not miserable, and any attempt at misery, cynicism, or sadness, is sheer self-pity and indulgence and bullshit writer crap. I am as normal and wholesome as it gets. Maybe I'd hoped moving to China, like moving to America once was, would be a cataclysmic rip in my life that might inspire momentum and tears. There were those, of course, moments when it felt like the floor was about to cave in, but let's be honest here: I have six aunts and every one of them is ready to drop their life, come to Beijing, and take care of me at anytime. How bad can this life be? Mao Mao says she is attracted to people like us, that there is a light that screamed we came from good, loving families, that we are ok, we aregood. Rong Rong says hardship is written all over Mao Mao's face. That beyond the beauty and brilliance is an indomitable sadness. I wonder if it's my own lack of tragedy that makes me love her too. It makes me want to look at her in the eye and say: hey, listen, one day the bubble will burst and I'm gonna crash hard, but I'll be ok because you're the toughest woman I know. Then she'd smile one interminable smile, the one where her eyes light up through painstaking makeup and say: baby, I know, and you'll be fine, I know.

But Mao Mao, if I look for destruction in all the wrong places, would you still be there in the end to salvage the pieces. Would you drag my fake poser poet body from the mob and slap me upside the head and go: baby, five glasses of wine is all the excitement you need in this life. Don't fight the good girl. Don't fight.

I need air. I wanna fight. I wanna drink. I wanna bleed. I wanna fall all over the place so I can finally wake up.

Instant Noodles

Hearts grow smaller with time. You cushion it with a layer of fat for protection.  Instead of other hearts, you learn to love the moments, you learn to take apart the scene anatomically so that they are no longer attached to faces. If this makes us a little paranoid, I'd rather blot out the heavy gazes and replace it all with noh masks. I'd rather focus on the soup pan at hand, the way it is being pushed across the table, steaming and sad, back and forth, spice and soup. Objects as vessels of emotion, like a perpetual movie set, we shuffle in silence.

Coping Mechanism

Dear P: I don't know why I'm so unhappy about being happy. "Seems like everyone's got a crisis these days," says S, with his unbearable astute observations. "I wish I had better advice for you, perhaps it will help you grow?"

JP asked at dinner, "Why are you carrying a bag? Are you leaving?"

"No," I will go back to hacking at work until 10PM. "Carrying a bag makes me feel safer." I gave my usual response.

R whispered to JP, but I could hear every word, "If we were in an art house movie, this would be where the music cues in and the inner monologue begins... 因为很有安全感..."

G says. "It is much easier to be power hungry than altruistic."

I'm beginning to realize that I need to rip the shades off, and when I do, maybe the sky will be lighter on my shoulders, and I can finally calm down and breathe.