once i 

saw

live

and breathed in

a

bubble of bliss

now 

it’s just

a …

memory

“The transit is a very rare astronomical event that will not be seen again for another 105 years.”

Our lives are rare biological, social, cultural, emotional, fantastical, and incomparable events that will not be seen ever again

I get to go to Japan for a yearlong teaching program starting August.

I think this is the only place where I can say: I’m not terribly happy about my placement. It’s in a rural area with a population of >20,000 people. I don’t speak Japanese, and I’m socially awkward enough even with plenty of people around me.

I’m afraid of the isolation

I’m afraid that I won’t find inspiration

I’m afraid that life won’t get better just because I have an okay-paying job

I’m afraid that escapism is the root of my woes

I’m very deeply afraid.

Your light is here

waiting 

withholding its breath

to savor wonders all

colored in

very picturesque

Your night is here

beaming 

without darkness

to clench tightly

the mist

enveloping 

your grace

Your eyes are here

capturing

those feelings

you’ve harbored and sank

far far away 

below the frail surface

of my eyes

okay, i’ve decided that i need to rethink about the american values i have and reflect on which of them are actually truly good. i think about all the chinese values that i’ve adopted as a kid and abandoned as an “adult”, and i know that i’ve many too many mistakes there.

there is good and bad in the world, and i’m sick and tired of my complacency and excuse-making on the macro level. 

I’ve been told by a close friend today that I don’t have a sense of humor. 

I find it strange that I should feel guilty, inferior, and saddened by the comment. Maybe because it came from a friend. 

I think it’s okay that I don’t have a sense of humor. I laugh at things that are ridiculous and stupid to others and I like to swim in a sea of no-joke serious matters. I like to think that humor is reserved for those who have yet to experience real pain.

I hope that I’ll never have “a sense of humor”. I hope that those of you who have it are okay with us, the bunch who are deficient in it.

when i was a young little

i ate a lot of greens

good and proper behavior

made grandmother happy

now all grown up 

an adult apathetic

i listen to mingus

“meditation on inner peace”

facing jazz

i let out a whistle loud

and everyone in this empty room

can hear audibly clear 

i was not born a sumo wrestler

i have seen that world is big and full of fish

and oxes and goats and other meaty things

but though i had consumed them wholly

i was not born a sumo wrestler

i still cringe at the open wound of a broken limb

crimson colored full of sad contamination

from the children murdererstobe

i was not born a sumo wrestler

i refuse to gulp down that drugged miso soup before

up i stand dragging my beaten body

into a rigged ring where i lose proudly

i was not born a sumo wrestler

i crouch in a deskchair and mow down fleeting thoughts

of graceful yesterdays so i don’t have to

fight for another future day

i was not born a sumo wrestler

i was not born a sumo wrestler

but oh tell me why

why do i dream of becoming one

for just one starry night when

i would wrestle with the universe for just one time

and be it win or lose i would

tattoo some honor onto my cracked chest

and some good ol’ smiles onto the face of

grandmother

sumo wrestlers

and fish and oxes and goats and children murdererstobe

in their heavenly unborn graves

the tune swirling out of the piano

dissolves at the touch of my weak smile

and drips onto the dark pavement bitterly 

i contemplate my escape but all too late

the sad charm grasps a hold of my cold hand 

guides me to his warm bourbon ridden growl

he sits cross-legged  in a dim bar

(like the ones they built back in the old days

shackled in posters of “most wanted” personnel)

busy howling through a veil of smoke

all of it stabbed me deep

and i bled in the right places 

glued to his mischievous smile

witnessing spilt magic

in the shape of soothing gentle whispers

strummed out with his charcoaled fingers

fingers burdened in a shade of lovely loneliness

and that

lovely loneliness

a burden it’s all

is what i have always carried too

and i know that you know that we can never escape from it because we unwittingly signed a contract that declared that the burden shall breath on for as long as we live

through the crowded noise i scream so he could hear those words

i open my mouth but the words never came out

when the silence walks in 

a bartender walks out of nowhere

straightens his bowtie

and announces that it is 

“closing time”

[my attention span lowers further and further until i see the neighbor’s cat staring at me through the wall between her house and mine. across the invisible air of the street i stare back at her and inhale so deeply it hurt just a little and then i muse over the profound regrets the cat must never had.if she was on her first life she must be enjoying the perks of being a modern feline cutefluff. if she was on her last life she probably knows everything about the universe certainly more than i could ever know anyway and is therefore bored out of her mind. if by chance she has been reincarnated as a special bonus round the worst it could get for her is an image of herself in a “i haz razor” meme. i wonder how much electricity could be generated from people’s laughters from exposure to meme or other incomprehensible funnies that that tickle their comedic nerve-endings.i realized that i haven’t learned enough maths or neuroscience in college to tackle this issue one that concerns humanity greatly.kind of weird that such an important question is not being researched right now by me. afterall i am a trained researcher and this does have some pertinence to human biology. but no i have to stare at 10 tabs of Google Chrome OHSU job postings and try not to hyperventilate and think about how great a foe regret can be. so instead i stare at the cat through the walls and anticipate that in a couple of seconds from now she will do her gargled meowing thing. i call it gargled meowing because she doesn’t really meow but gargles up this freakish sound from somewhere in her catty glottis and then spits it out like a pretend meow. i call it pretend meow because frankly it all too closely resembles the cry of a human baby.

the cry of a human baby.

that’s what i’m morphing into. a bodiless voice flowing in primordial ether-goo. and that bag of cellular waste that i will still refer to as “i” will be in a deep slumber and unable to think about all the terrible horrible happenings of man chopping off the fingers of their young wives and planes to utopia crashing before landing and human society heading into robot singularity and the non-existence of god that we worshipped and knew. “i” will be in a deep slumber and unable to think about all the wonderful beautiful happenings of a watermelon popsicle in the heat of summer and geniuses everywhere making a positive impact on Earth and the sweet sound of music reverberating in my ears and false nostalgic memories of being embraced by everybody i’ve ever met and love all at the same time. 

and then i will be reunited with my bodiless voice and explode quietly and turn into a million a billion a trillion little parts and few of them will float far far far away into the deep vacuum of space and meet a meteor heading into the center of the universe

and then trillions or an unimaginably amount of time from now there will be a moment when the center of the universe explodes and is reborn into something else magnificent and benevolent and perfect and that little part of me will be part of it and shall laugh smile and cry.

and there a particle of me will meet a particle of the cat and say

gargled meow

hi.]

Beginnings of a short story? Spawned out of anxieties from job searching. I’m not actually that unemployed/wanting to be employed in a job that I know I’d hate right now. So I pondered: why so much anxiety over this? why so much anxiety thinking about the wrong turns i’ve taken and the right turns to unhappiness that i don’t want to make?