Finding Momentum

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.