Finding Momentum

Vacation

2014

A letter to Paris

Paris, I confess I don’t really get you. I mean, it’s amazing being here, walking your cobblestone streets, taking in the sights and sounds. Your language is beautiful, melodic, and silky, so much so that I’m embarrassed when I try to speak it — the words kind of slip out of my mouth and I lower my voice to avoid the embarrassment of mispronunciation (several people have assumed that I’ve simply grunted, and for some reason my face has flushed red).

2011

Sitting across from _老師 vis. his noodle soup

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.

(Feet down) on the road

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.