Finding Momentum

I’ve been wont to com­plain about how it sucks to be doing my train­ing in the gym. Ever since I tweaked my foot I’ve been feel­ing caged on the tread­mill and ellip­ti­cal machines. On the machines I can’t think about any­thing, it’s too stuffy and hot and I’m always drip­ping with sweat. I’m always star­ing at num­bers, cursed num­bers. It makes me remem­ber how I hated run­ning track in high school, and the unfor­giv­ing num­bers that come with it.

On the flip side it’s been breath­tak­ing get­ting out and real­iz­ing that I’ve been tak­ing nature for granted. It’s a gift to have your mind wan­der. It’s a gift to roam over mossy earth. I ran out over the Oak­land hills this morn­ing to see a blan­ket of clouds glow­ing through the sun­light and pour­ing out over the hills into the Bay. I both wished I had my cam­era with me and was glad I didn’t.

My grand­fa­ther (ah gong, or 外公, but we call him gong gong), dri­ven by winds of Com­mu­nist change, arrived in Tai­wan in the 1940s. He was a Fuzhou busi­ness­man, 26 at the time. He was a busi­ness­man, rel­a­tively wealthy and edu­cated, and fled from the incom­ing Communists.

He met my grand­mother (ah ma, or 外媽 — but we’ve grown up call­ing her puo puo) while they both worked as school­teach­ers at the same ele­men­tary school.

“Your ah gong was a hand­some man” my grand­mother says with a chuckle and a glim­mer in her eye. She is dig­ni­fied, lady­like, and pre­cise. She bears eyes with depth, hold­ing her teacup with delib­er­ate old-world del­i­cacy. My early mem­o­ries are sprin­kled with her con­stant pres­ence in our house, mak­ing fan­tas­tic food and read­ing me chi­nese fables for bed­time stories.

They met in the years in between the world wars, when the world was chang­ing. My grandma was native Tai­wanese, telling me about the world she grew up in, hear­ing Amer­i­can bombers fly over­head, when alarms would sound and they would have to head to the moun­tains to hide in the hills. Tai­wan was dif­fer­ent then, they were raised to believe they were Japanese.

They fell in love, but they don’t speak much about it nowa­days. I won­der how it was back then. She was trained as a school­teacher, and he must have been good with the kids given his gre­gar­i­ous charm. It’s not hard to imag­ine why they fell in love, but how? I won­der if they can still remember.

These days, they live in Taipei in a mod­ern apart­ment, pan­eled in mar­ble and dark wood. His hands trem­ble when they reach for the dishes on the table. She reaches for the dish and stead­ies it for him. After each meal he silently shuf­fles to the couch and picks his teeth with a tooth­pick and looks out the win­dow at the glassy beams of the Taipei 101 tower.

Her fam­ily would have noth­ing to do with him. He was an out­sider, one of the KMT occu­piers. Sto­ries ran ram­pant about KMT men look­ing for Tai­wanese wives while keep­ing a wife back in China. What did my great-grandfather think of him? Did they ever meet? Or did he for­bid their love from the outside?

So they eloped.

Annie asks if puo-puo gets tired of cook­ing for us. My dad laughs. “I bet she loves it that we’re here. She loves to cook.”

The spread is enor­mous. Taro fish ball soup, fresh steamed fish from the mar­ket, boiled chicken, dumplings, radish salad, an array of steamed veg­eta­bles and guavas and wax apples for dessert. We lay there after each meal, stunned and deliri­ously happy.

My mom would tell me about how in the years down the road after their mar­riage, gong-gong would even­tu­ally win over my grandmother’s fam­ily with his kind­ness, gen­eros­ity, and charm and twin­kle in his eye. I won­der what it was like, a slow, grad­ual warm­ing, a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that may have taken years to mend.

My uncle calls us when we’re there, ask­ing if they want to come with them on their upcom­ing vaca­tion to Japan. Puo-puo hes­i­tates, smil­ing a bit, think­ing. When she is think­ing, she knits her brow and blinks slowly. It’s her reserved nature that defines her ele­gance, I decide. But she is like a wall, dif­fi­cult to read. I want to ask her about her young love.

“No,” she finally says, “I should stay here. It’s cold in Japan. And I need to be with your dad.”

Later as we sit around the liv­ing room shar­ing our hopes for the new year (my dad puts us through these things) gong-gong makes an inno­cent face and tells us that his hope is that “your puo-puo should visit Japan and get out of the house and not have to take care of me.” She smiles.

Gong-gong is always dressed well: suede jack­ets, pressed wool, a sleek Kan­gol cap and shiny loafers. These days, he’s still dap­per but much less mobile. His walk is reduced to a shuffle.

He’s shrunk over the years, but his charm is still there, shrouded by ail­ing health. As we leave, he grabs my arm and tells me he’d like to attend my wed­ding soon and leaves me a kiss on the neck.

On the days when the weather is right, I swear I can feel the tickle of young love: the kind that’s radi­ant, invit­ing, and easy to fall into. It’s sim­ple and charm­ing and as light as goosefeathers.

On some odd days, I can vaguely remem­ber the approach to the precipice of old love, woolen, worn & mon­u­men­tal. We knew we were on the verge of cross­ing, but never sure how to look over to the other side. Young love is easy, I real­ize, but old love is not.

Old love is famil­iar yet ill-fitting, like bump­ing shoul­ders with strangers in ele­va­tors. You never notice it arriv­ing, and when it has, it’s mor­phed. The taste changes in your mouth; the notes go all blue and glassy like black piano keys.

I tried to hold her lone­li­ness once, bal­anc­ing it between both palms and guess­ing at its secrets. Like most note­books go, it was silent and weighty and impor­tant. We bound it back up quickly, leav­ing crin­kles in the seams. Some­times I still won­der if I could have borne its weight.

Look­ing back, it was my embar­rass­ment that caught me off guard. Nobody told me about it, a bottled-up outside-in feel­ing, a silly and shame­ful con­fu­sion. I felt child­like, at a loss of answers, want­ing to hide. This I’ve learnt, too: I must run quickly to the father, before my armor thickens.

Yah­weh is my father I heard some­one once cry, and I will do the same. He has gifted us a hun­dred sad­nesses for our good, and we will soon (soon) sing songs in fire­light and know again the barely-floating sen­sa­tions of joy. He is the one who has ordained for us the sea­sons. I will yield to his grip and sub­mit to his kiln. Stay low to the ground I heard once, and felt it True.

He slowly slurps his noo­dles in front of me, and I take him for a pro­fes­sor, an old man with a cer­tain aca­d­e­mic flair. Of course, I have no such rea­son for think­ing so, he could be any old man at this non­de­script, jam-packed hole-in-the-wall restau­rant (the best kind). A sky-blue col­lared shirt hides beneath the neck­line of his sweater, the kind that men in their fifties protest­ingly receive from their smil­ing wives and chil­dren on their birth­days that they don’t remem­ber themselves.

slurp slurp slurp he goes, maneu­ver­ing his chop­sticks to take in the noo­dles one by one. They are oily, and slide pleas­antly off his chop­sticks. I’m across from him, wait­ing for my bowl and writ­ing in this jour­nal, won­der­ing if he notices that I write in Eng­lish, no way can I write in Chi­nese any­more, won­der­ing if he picks out the bro­ken Man­darin I offer the waiter (炸酱面 (zha jiang mian)? I offer wilt­ingly) (it slips out of my mouth and flops onto the floor).

He is method­i­cal, I can see him in the same light in his lec­ture (Physics? Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence? Geol­ogy? Ren­nai­sance Lit?), per­haps paus­ing thought­fully after a student’s ques­tion (look­ing up at the floures­cent bulbs, absent­mind­edly twirling the query around his chalk piece as it hov­ers over the board. So much hes­i­ta­tion: the stu­dents wait with bated breath). Then he writes some­thing with bold force­ful strokes, say­ing noth­ing, but it is pro­found! I can’t see the board, but it is bril­liant and the class­room gasps (but not too loudly, for a Con­fu­cian respect of teach­ers). If you look closely, a wry grin tugs at the cor­ner of his mouth.

Five min­utes pass, ten, fif­teen. He just keeps his eyes down and soon the egg­plant on his plate is gone, the soup lays placid, the red chili oil pools on the plate. I recon­sider: he looks uncom­fort­able, maybe even lonely.

He never looks up to acknowl­edge my pres­ence, but per­haps that’s because that’s the cus­tom here when strangers are seated at the same table. It was bound to hap­pen (I walked in alone this after­noon; there was no way they would give me my own table at this crowded noo­dle shop).

That would never fly in the good ol’ USA (God bless the USA). We believe in per­sonal space, as in spa­cious skies and as in amber waves of grain! God bless the USA where we have six-lane main streets and cow­boys and hip­sters and Wal-Mart™ and Cafe Grat­i­tude (the Berke­ley cafe where the cheese­cake there is called “Beau­ti­ful”, and to order it you have to force your­self to tell the waiter I am… uh… Beau­ti­ful). God bless the USA where every­thing is Occu­pied and peo­ple are angry and proud and scared at the same time. I too am proud of being Amer­i­can, see my Reeboks™ and crisp Eng­lish and my silent, snobby men­tal cri­tiques and my Mole­sk­ine™ full of Eng­lish let­ters, aye be cee dee yee whoops—a flick of a stray noo­dle stains a page with sesame oil.

Slurp slurp slurp, the Senior Gen­tle­man in front of me takes it all in stride, which is to say he never notices me. Does he want to leave? I half hope so, because the for­eign, Amer­i­can me is feel­ing awk­ward sit­ting across from this stranger. He rum­mages in his bag, com­posed as ever, smack­ing his lips. Stand­ing, he takes an awfully long time to put on his wind­breaker, but­ton­ing from the top to the bot­tom, pop, pop, pop, shuf­fling as he walks out to pay the bill.

But no, I decide he car­ries an air of sim­plic­ity, not in a short­sighted or fum­bling way, but in a sagely man­ner that qui­ets me and piques my inter­est. The way a laoshi should teach. I let that image float for a bit, then get up to pay my bill.

I’ve been run­ning for the past week or so, despite my grandma’s protests (“you’ll catch a cold”). It used to be eas­ier with the jet lag, when I’d get up at 5am and stare at the wall and catch myself won­der­ing where exactly I was.

It’s been gen­er­ally driz­zly here for the past week or so, which is a bless­ing and a curse. I’ve felt self-conscious since arriv­ing, notic­ing that nobody here runs, and I won­der if I’m being too aggres­sive, push­ing too fast when I dodge the passers­bys. I’ve decided there is no bet­ter feel­ing than run­ning with the rain slip­ping off your skin, hot breath hov­er­ing between your chest and your shirt while dodg­ing cars and scoot­ers and dis­ap­prov­ing old ladies. It’s a pow­er­ful feel­ing, and a very liv­ing thing to be doing.

—

Everything’s con­crete here, and my knees are feel­ing it. It’s not like it used to be, when my dad would run bare­foot on the banks of the Xin­dian River in his boy­hood home­town. Nowa­days the whole deal is paved over with asphalt and tile and bas­ket­ball courts, a ver­i­ta­ble con­crete jungle.

“Let’s go see the river” my Dad announces one day. On the day we are to go, pre­ced­ing events yawn and bil­low and sud­denly we can’t work the visit in.

One morn­ing I decide to visit any­ways and head out early, step­ping out into bril­liant sun­light (it’s been rain­ing the whole week). I’m tak­ing the roads, out behind fuz­houshan park, down keelung road, past trea­sure hill and on out to the bike paths by the river. It’s exhaust­ing, and an hour later I’m there. The river is mud­dled, unin­spir­ing; it cuts a wide swath and lies flat and unper­turbed (life­less, I decide). Cars and city noise roar over bridges, express­ways. Con­crete frames the land­scape, creep­ing into the banks of the river and damming its tributaries.

I try to imag­ine my dad as a kid again, play­ing bare­foot in glassy waters and catch­ing fish in a care­free Huck­le­berry Finn–esque exis­tence. Maybe I’m in the wrong place. Maybe he lived in an alter­nate space, time, and river­bank where the fac­to­ries and sky­scrap­ers haven’t yet grown and his toes sink into moist earth. What­ever it is, the sun is in my eyes and I want to go home.

I get some book cred­its to spend at work, so I decided to make a photo book with some of my favorite pho­tos from the past cou­ple of years. I think the hard­est part was culling the pho­tos, but I’m pretty excited to get this in my hands.

REVERIE by Andrew Hao | Make Your Own Book

Annie asked me this morn­ing in the LAX ter­mi­nal if I was look­ing for­ward to doing any­thing once we arrived in Taipei. I froze because I really hadn’t thought about it. The only thing I had thought about was what it would be like to see yie yie (my grandpa on my dad’s side), now 90 years old–the man that shaped my father, who shaped me. This may be our last time together.

I feel dif­fer­ent this time around (I was eigh­teen the last time I vis­ited). Older, but not nec­es­sar­ily in that way. Like I have the wits about me to wrap around peo­ple and feel their bumps and bruises. I feel like I can under­stand him more through the lens of my dad. His faults, and his irrefutable spirit are at play in my dad, and most likely in me. Maybe I’m more alert to the forces at play in his life, my father’s life and mine: the legacy of the Rev­o­lu­tion, his time spent in the KMT mil­i­tary, and my father’s child­hood spent along the banks of the river.

I want to know the source of yie yie’s joy

Show me what a life lived in grace looks like: unfet­tered, joy­ous, rampant.

I told some­one once that I wanted to have the guts to laugh at myself and loosen up a bit. I think I was born melan­choly (and I protested as much when I tested so in a per­son­al­ity test–this much is true about my artist tendencies–but I hated the word. It made me sound depressed). Mainly what I saw and dis­liked in myself were my per­fec­tion­is­tic ten­den­cies, because it’s eas­ier to deal with knowns and facts and details and my capa­bil­i­ties than to face the chaos of messy-and-human.

Show me how to hold onto life loosely.

Per­haps what C.S. Lewis says is true, that hav­ing a grasp of our mor­tal­ity does us a lot of good. I want to under­stand that our good moments don’t last for­ever, and that to savor them slowly is a gift in itself. And maybe the guts I wanted are the insides that I want filled with thick, hearty grat­i­tude, shared and spilled over in the com­pany of friends (I’m using soup imagery because Eric made a frickin good stew the other night. And it’s cold in here.).

Hearty, joy­ous, wise and gra­cious. I think that describes the man I’d like to grow into.

There was some sort of relief, I decided, in hav­ing set foot in the Occupy camp and find­ing it quiet. Wednes­day, Oak­land was paraded across the global con­scious­ness as national news media dis­played scenes of urban war­fare, with ghostly images of terror-stricken faces sent helter-skelter across the air­waves. Zach showed me the front­page of the BBC web­site (Occupy Oak­land pro­tes­tors dis­rupt city) and made a cut­ting remark about how the pro­tes­tors were mak­ing fools of them­selves on global media and how Oak­land was going to suf­fer. The next morn­ing we all got wor­ried emails and well-intentioned text mes­sages from friends and fam­ily: hey, you doing okay? to which we’d respond with sheep­ish grace that no, we weren’t part of the protests and no, Oak­land hadn’t burnt to the ground. Yet.

That Sat­ur­day we walked the down­town Oak­land area and stood among the pro­tes­tors in Frank Ogawa Plaza and I tried tak­ing it in, inhal­ing the hot, musty mess, sidling up to the sleep­ing giant. I’m not quite sure what I had expected: chaos, row­dier cit­i­zens, wide­spread aggres­sion and dis­quiet? Instead we found sleepy-eyed campers, dread­locked pony­tails, and hand-drawn raggedy signs. You could smell the weed from blocks away. Nate con­firmed the portable toi­lets were over­flow­ing and rancid.

Self-conscious, I real­ized later, is how I feel, not know­ing how to iden­tify with this spec­ta­cle. My sen­ti­ments about the whole thing are less of explo­sive out­rage than sub­tle help­less­ness. Here I was, middle-class and Asian-American, walk­ing through the tent city of the dis­pos­sessed, and I felt both a repul­sion to the sideshow and an iso­lat­ing sense of guilt know­ing that I was a stranger to racial and eco­nomic injustice.

We bumped into Bon­nie on the way over, a home­less friend of ours who makes appear­ances often at the church. “You should have been there, they had us cor­nered” she exclaimed with wide eyes, gig­gling in her two-toned accent. “Pohh-leece got us trapped up on both sides. I got some of that gas stuff in me, and it make you tear up real bad.”

Bon­nie had stayed with the pro­tes­tors for a cou­ple of days. “It was like a war, let me tell you, and the sad thing”–her voice dropped to a whisper–“is nobody can help you.”

I won­dered what Bon­nie must have felt; my mind replayed scenes from a Free Speech Move­ment doc­u­men­tary I once watched at Cal. Observe: an aer­ial shot from what must have been a tall build­ing or a heli­copter, riot police on either ends of the block, smoke ris­ing from the street in lazy, ele­gant arcs. Notice: a cou­ple of fig­ures limp for cover, fum­bling to cover their eyes. See: grainy film, shot black and white, viva free speech & the cause of jus­tice, fin.

So I was relieved to find Frank Ogawa Plaza rather pleas­ant. A tent city had risen, built on fresh-laid straw, with hyp­notic Native Amer­i­can drum­ming drift­ing through camp. Smil­ing ston­ers sat cross-legged in a cor­ner beneath a tarp and gazed intently into the dis­tance. A mini-rally pro­ceeded in another, where a megaphone-toting Latina woman was orga­niz­ing that afternoon’s march on Wells Fargo. In other words, it was amus­ingly like col­lege. We opened our bur­ri­tos and ate on the steps of the City Hall amphithe­ater and watched the tent city pulse as it awoke.

The Tues­day night that things got bad, I was run­ning the lake under the assured hum of news heli­copters, but I couldn’t tell you if things were out of the ordi­nary. It was strange, I sup­pose because I had imag­ined that should my city go down in flames, every­body should know about it and share in the panic and out­rage. Women pushed mur­mur­ing babies by in fancy strollers. The wind whis­pered through the grove of trees around the lake’s finger-bend. Run­ners grunted to each other, push­ing gravel through the ground. Starlight & Lake Merritt’s neck­lace, swan, geese, & ghetto birds all there to wit­ness war, but some­body had for­got­ten to remind me.

Sat­ur­day, Kylan and Betty and I walked up Tele­graph and prayed for Occupy Oak­land and I felt rather fool­ish for not know­ing what exactly to pray for. I remem­bered Silvia’s weight of sad­ness, when she showed up and wound up feel­ing lost and help­less and hurt for the bro­ken­ness of the world she lived in and the chaos unfold­ing around her and the need for Jesus to show up right there and occupy…

Proverbs 29 was a com­fort, the words breath­ing and expand­ing in my thoughts:

When the right­eous increase, the peo­ple rejoice but when the wicked rule, peo­ple groan

and,

The poor and the oppres­sor meet together, the LORD gives light to them both

Ear­lier that morn­ing I dreamt we were evac­u­at­ing our city in long single-file strands. We wound through our neigh­bor­hood, and I remem­ber stand­ing in our liv­ing room argu­ing with Justin whether we should load this or that couch into the U-Haul. Peo­ple shuf­fled by out­side in col­or­less cloth­ing, feel­ing here and gone at the same time. Chil­dren whis­pered to each other in shy, hushed tones. The heli­copters were there again, whirling lazily, watch­ing over­head. In that moment I knew (though a dream) the ques­tion had become not how we would leave, but whether we would stay.

I woke far too early, thirsty, try­ing to recall how the air felt against my cheeks: thwup thwup thwup thwup thwup.