Apathy

Standing alone atop a tower of apathy she shades her eyes from the sun. It’s a flat view that stretches out. Time isn’t linear but spreads in all directions. The past isn’t behind her but a part of her.  Yesterday and before is today and after. 

From the haze an indistinguishable horizon comes into focus; Years sink down into the ground, rooted. Days are fallen over, tumbleweeds rolling across her chest with the consistency of a slow water drip. 

She turns in small circles, and it all merges, shakily. Beliefs and experiences slip into one another, held together in damaged motion. Slowing down her eyes readjust, as each object settles back into its previous existence, held down by gravity. Her singed shoulders radiate the naked, desolate light. Her life holds the places in between greatness and desire.  

A Peter Pan Suicide

I’m twenty-six, almost twenty-seven actually.  I haven’t watched Peter Pan since I was a kid; I don’t really miss it. How could I? The concept crawls around in my subconscious crowding out any hope of normalcy.

The line between imagination and reality wraps around my neck in a tight cord. I don’t want to live in Neverland, or London -only two choices and they both erase me. Black fades to light, and I arrive in the place I don’t know how to get to. Where do giants grow up to?

And then I’m breathing. The oxygen is again and my feet are touching the ground. Wendy wants to grow up, but Peter didn't tell her how. 

In the Future, Eveyone Will Eat Food. Maybe.

She's my favorite produce lady. Maybe because she recognizes me, giving our exchange meaning. Her shop is a corrugated tin shed that sits across from the first of two 7/11's on Bu Xin Street.


Bags of tofu, requiring more than the standard adjectives of soft or firm to adequately describe them, rest in wooden boxes like coffins, awaiting the next hand. Huge stalks of green onions, measuring in length from my elbow to my fingertips, are piled high upon plywood tables, and across the dirt aisle blue plastic crates house a variety of greens that evade singular preference being collectively known as "suda" or greens.


Upon reaching the register, my hands are always full when I realize I've almost forgotten my last ingredient. I turn and look at her and in my broken Mandarin attempt an effort. But she already knows what I want; with a practiced look she grabs a handful of Coriander from the large, waist-high plastic bag and waits for my affirmation. "Dui, Dui", I say. 


She tallies up the cost, and says her first words to me "Yi bai san shi quian", $130. As I dig through my change purse she throws a handful of small, red chillies into my bag.


I say "Bye-bye" with an accompanied head nod and walk back to my scooter contemplating food, the future, and my produce lady.

Zelda: A Link to the Future. Maybe.

Maybe it's the realist in me but maybe you won't ever "have it all"- the moment where life will coincide with the right place, the right person and the right time.

Maybe it will happen all out of order, in a way where you actually become something that you never could have imagined for yourself. something that you don't see or understand till it is upon you. and then maybe you'll find that you're asking different questions.

Sometimes i think maybe it's the unhappy people that live life trying to reach the apexes. the same apexes we find ourselves looking for and measuring ourselves against.

And the happy people? maybe they're just living and life happens to them. some good. some bad.

But maybe they've figured out time travel too. the kind where they realize that their now is also their future. simultaneously. like a steno graph connected to a canvas they make their futures, but they don't plan them. in this sense, they understand that planning is futile.

Maybe it's about living every present moment as an opportunity to a hidden, limitless future. princess zelda didn't know who link was. link didn't know who he was. but he collected treasures, acquired skills, and worked hard- all for something he wouldn't realize until the end. that was a good video game. and maybe it would be a good life too.