No Wonder

[Hook]And I wonder if you know What it means, what it means And I wonder if you know What it means to find your dreams

[Verse 1] I've been waiting on this my whole life These dreams be waking me up at night You say I think I'm never wrong You know what, maybe you're right, aight

[Hook]

[Verse 2] You say he get on your fucking nerves You hope that he get what he deserves, word Do you even remember what the issue is? You just trying to find where the tissue is You can still be who you wish you is It ain't happen yet And that's what intuition is When you hop back in the car Drive back to the crib Run back to their arms The smokescreens The chokes and the screams You ever wonder what it all really means?

[Hook]

[Verse 3] And I'm back on my grind A psychic read my lifeline Told me in my lifetime My name would help light up the Chicago skyline And that's why I'm Seven o'clock, that's primetime Heaven'll watch, God calling from the hotlines Why he keep giving me hot lines? I'm a star, how could I not shine? How many ladies in the house? How many ladies in the house without a spouse? Something in your blouse got me feeling so aroused What you about? On that independent shit Trade it all for a husband and some kids You ever wonder what it all really mean? You wonder if you’ll ever find your dreams?

You open the window for the first fucking time since the seven day smog siege and it feels good. You let the brisk air hit your nostrils and for the first time in seven years you appreciate breathing. You appreciate the act of pulling air from your nose and your mouth down your sore throat to fill your lungs. The air is filled with wounded diseases here, but you only hold on to the moment when being alive and being awake makes so much more sense than walking with a wound or not sleeping.

It took you a year and seven smog days to figure this out. Guess it's as they say, epiphanies only come after hardship. This is your crucible and you can let it kick you in the ass or you can go on humming "I Am a God." There are only two choices you face everyday and the right one, ladies and gentlemen, is always Kanye.

KANYE.

However Delicate

Annie said, "one day you'll regret this, you know." Two and a half years later you are not regretting so much as registering. Suddenly you remember the peacefulness of the tiny one bedroom, a home built together. You had purchased everything in the apartment together, down to the thin mattress pad you'd used to sleep on for a month and probably permanently damaged your necks and backs from. Eventually a bigger mattress was purchased, and finally a bed frame even. You'd gone from using scrappy notebooks to keep a budget to Mint. You were only able to carve out a life, in some ways, as a unit, in a city of wonders. You don't regret, can't, because regret doesn't really exist in a dimension you could really comprehend.

With time, you only learn to be more thankful. For every moment that was bestowed on you. And it is because of the past that you learn to appreciate the present, however delicate it might be.

With Love

This woman stitches you back, from the heels to your neck down all your joints, even tears she's strung them together like pearls and threw out with a peel of laughter. We spend an hour in the bakery then go shopping. She cooks for you at her place, the only three dishes that she knows: cauliflower with Laoganma, bamboo shoots with pork meat, eggs with tomatoes, and yes, a dessert made under five minutes in a microwave. She spends the entire day putting you straight and back together, piece by piece. To her you've let out every little angst twisted in a ball, and she untangles them with the astuteness of a sage. You don't understand how you are the same age and yet lack all the analytical abilities. Except maybe we're all experts in life except our own.

You owe her for this day.

You've heard of stories of a helping hand at our most destitute, or unfortunate moment, and how some years later you go back to this person and help them when they most need help. Well, you owe her for this one. You owe her for her patience, for her strength, for all the tales of men she regaled you with.

Thank you, Camilla.

List Making

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." - Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises I've been making lists.

I've been making lists of movies, of my clothes, and of everything in between. I've been making lists in order to spot the trends and re-organize. Psychologist Meg Jay in a Tedtalk remarked that "our brains are re-wired in our twenties." In my late twenties, I begin to regret all the books that I haven't read, all the films that I haven't seen, and all the people that I haven't met and loved. In an attempt to reclaim the hours, I've been reading and watching and I've been making lists.

List 1: The Good People One of the best interviews I've heard on Fresh Air is Terry Gross' latest interview with Joaquin Phoenix. In a segment that is ostensibly filled with tension, awkwardness, and blunders, arises one of most frank and heartfelt conversations. There's something so feral and weird about Joaquin that he seems to be teetering between laughter (Mockumentary!) and a breakdown.

Usually this type of performance is reserved for an Oscar nomination. The idiosyncrasies that are spotlit on screen and deliciously drawn out, the scenes from movies where your soul accidentally pops out (like the Processing scene from The Artist). Then there is Joaquin Phoenix talking to Terry Gross, and it makes me feel like maybe we should all be a little bit weird around each other more often.

List 2: Places In preparation for a trip to Israel, I've been reading and I've been watching. The vast deserts of Lawrence of Arabia and propaganda segments from Youtube (Do not, for God's sake, search for "middle east" on Youtube). The stories of wars after wars and one failed treaty after another is brutal reading for anyone, but I'm growing increasingly excited to go because I love places of conflict. I don't love it for the atrocities, and the tangled knots of pain that may never be resolved, but I love those places because of the weight of the narrative. It's like riding a fixie. You have to be constantly alert and aware of your surroundings, because everything is history, a point of contention. It keeps you on your feet. It forces you to devour as much information as you can. Even if in the end there is no right.

List 3: Ideas Ken and I have started this daily exercise of submitting "fresh ideas" to a shared Evernote notebook. I was skeptical of the task of coming up with 365 ideas, but it seems to be rolling along. I guess the saying is true, "ideas are cheap." It's what you do with it. This will be the main challenge and goal for the year. One, to keep working, staying on top of management, learn about finance, and then finally, have time to realize one of these ideas. We spend too much time in school, or working for other people, sometimes not because we're not ready, but only because we're just too fucking scared. Well, before you get into an accident like T.E. Lawrence, make sure you've done something noble for someone, some continent, or just for yourself. Make yourself proud.

Don't be chicken shit.

List 4: Movies

I've never understood how my film buff friends did it. How they can watch three movies in a day. In fact, I remember a hazy afternoon in Santa Cruz spent with Ashley. It's sunny outside but we were inside with the shades drawn and I think we were on our third movie when I moaned: "how the hell do you guys watch so many movies in a day?"

Recluse I am now, movie-watching, or that is, good-movie-watching is becoming one of the most enjoyable experiences to kill a day. I don't do it often, but when I do, it's a matter of submerging oneself to the swirl of colors, experiences, worlds, and characters. Don't stop the swirls.

In my list-making, I'm learning that my favorite movies are Chinese-language ones. The lyrical Hou Hsiao-Hsiens and pitch perfect Jiang-Wens. American movies are great, brilliant, big-minded, but in the end what robs my heart are apparently Chinese sensibilities. I don't know if a heartbreaking gaze from Shu Qi or Ning Jing's piercing look is equivalent of a particular Chinese sentiment, but it's hit home, literally.

List 5: Moods It's one thing to keep track of your clothes and know that you have 19 sweaters (no more!!) than a desire to track your moods. Emotions are a fickle beast (and it makes us beautiful and unique, chime in the music). One reason I make lists, organize and try to spot trends is so that I have a deeper understanding of whatever subject at hand, to improve upon it, and diagnose the problems. All in all, I do it so I can control it. Not sure whether this is a sign of maturity or loss of sanity actually.

But really, who needs sanity. Keep it weird folks. That's the lesson of the day, and ongoing. KEEP IT WEIRD.

The Year

The year started with this, "your soul has direction." Actually, to back track properly, the year began with sickness prolonged by food poisoning and general uneasiness in the stomach, which to this day you still feel like you haven't fully recovered from. The fact of the matter is if you get sick in China, you don't just get sick for three of four days. Your body goes through thrashes of being permanently weakened, and full recovery may not happen until you leave the country for a bit. That's how I feel about this ever since getting hit with a cold that took a month to recover from last last year. Not just sickness, the China sickness. It's a sickness from the brows to the bowels.

Good thing your soul has direction. When Re said that, you quipped back with something like, "as long as it all ends in a crescendo." Sometimes you're pretty sure your mind hasn't changed from your fourteen-year-old self, and though lately you've begun to regret that you clearly didn't read enough at fourteen, you miss that sense of unabashed dreaminess, and weirdness, and everythingness. Everything is much more graceful and correct now. When you hear yourself speak with such gusto and move with purpose, when you work out and listen to NPR, when you subscribe to all the smart things and eat all the right brands of chocolates and listen to all the right bands, what's left? Where's the weird niche or the tiny universe that you could tuck yourself in?

But you're not Fei. You have this proclivity to appear together just to prove your type isn't some pushover dreamer type, until this effort to prove something has already re-wired your brain, and you can no longer not freak out when people are already four minutes late to the meeting and haven't called to let you know why.

But you go on, and you wade through, and you learn, hopefully you learn. That, beyond anything else is the New Year's resolution, that no matter what happens, you will learn, and you will love your parents. Right, you'll really have to do something with your two favorite people in the world, mom and dad. Who knew the tune of this one is going to you, but this year's for you guys.