Grown.

Hi.

A lot has happened. I've gained weight. I've married. I've started a career. Yet. I careen sometimes. Sometimes I find myself staring, thinking; waiting for the weight to fall and crush and hurt.

I'm trying to stay happy. I promise. I miss everything.

Same as I ever was.

Aged and primed, the paint dries as I attempt to stay awake. Funny that it used to be the opposite. Instead I stare at the pixels and pockmarks of the white wall curved around my granite, speckled counter. If I could, the interference that continues to pock and pixelate my own life would be buried deep within that wall. It would be trying to crawl out--left in its own cyst, a horizontal climb for air.

I cannot believe things, especially at such a late time frame. Life is being eaten by minuscule particles, breaking down my interior flesh-parts through enzymes and pollution and time itself. Yet, I cannot tear myself away from the underlying feeling that something big will occur. Soon? We may have to sit here just a little longer, tired, barely awake, and waiting until morning comes again.

Layers and layers

There are some days that reveal themselves as messed up as the thought of jotted down manuscripts--which can only describe these minutes as days or the faded back light as lexicon. Just as you can believe in something greater, I can find something under the sheets of, say, a lover, or behind the motives of a friend, or behind the legends of your inherited past.

Let this trickle in--let the days pass by and with felt renditions of your favorite songs fading by. Warbled. Genuine in their own sensations; an apt way to end a meal or to begin a slumber. The best ones when the midday grows cold, when there are blankets old as you laid criss-crossed, legs criss-crossed, unbeknownst who's skin is gripping who's.

Let these words become beautiful. Stay as they are. Don't let this forget who I am. What I am in this.

Dad.

The rain inks my shirt as I take a casual through the lot.

My right is apparently worse than my left, only noticeable really when distances are stretched. Regardless, the droplets adhere; my frames cloud the cars and lamp posts on the street seem smudged.

Thinking. Deep in it. Is this for the taking? Will the opportunity flash itself in front of me? I get in the car and let the engine sit still as I collect myself. Glasses are off.

Deep breath number four finally hits the nerves. "I think I'm going to be just fine."

I think I'll call my father tonight.

Forever.

He knew that once he got it he had it. In an act of self-preserverance, the decision was to not clean up the shards of glass. New day was striking individual pieces if as the grains were invested in such physiologic manners. The ink had run out many minutes before. No matter. Time was nether a constraint.

He had read Faulkner. Dabbled in Pynchon. Fantasized Wallace. Drank in Burroughs deeply. Yet, no ordinary person would sense the envelopment of hysteria bulging at its precipices. The sheet was like a cat at its owner's finest leather. The stubble was apparent and the odor overtly keen.

But he had finally made it. Through hours of erasing the very notion of it. A clock was no longer. Time was more like language than ever before--the most beautiful tongue he had ever heard.

I need a pickmeup.

Not of the effervescent bottle.

Nothing inheritable.

I've ingested too much already.

When I was a child, I planted the apex of my nose on our car's backseat window. Peering, I wasted eyesight--instead, my mind strove to achieve greatness. Downside Hill was the name of the band that I imagined would tear up each subsequent coast with an eagerness to please its fans while staying true to its nature. I saw birds. There were cars stranded on burning asphalt. But I dreamt past them.

In a blur of December ragweed.

I found that somehow and then lost it. But did I ever dream up newness? Did I find a new apparel?

I now see birds that float effortlessly above the the current and sing to the wind without the movement of a single feather while basking in the weather it is given while I lay on my back on my burning asphalt. I'd like that.

Foam

I think I will buy an espresso machine. The image of roasting and foam and packing grinds makes my mouth tingle.

But of course--I say this. Knowing fine as grain that the process will edge my nerves. The constraint of time.

But things look up. I can smell again. I can see what is ahead. And though there is that tinge of bleakness, ugly, I can scrape the clay off and revel in something else. Some American, dark, and strong.

Maybe I will get that espresso machine.

Currents

"Let me correct this," the boy said his son.

"There have been mistakes made."

The outside was bright and blue. The temperature that of which chilled you if in the current of its shadows.

It had been raining for three days straight.

Those around him talked about volunteering, introducing so-and-so as their roommate.

The boy looked at his son with passion. He loved him very much.

The baby had tussled, stringy hair. It reminded him of his grandfather's.

It was brighter outside than he could remember.

"Something you will learn is that time is a piece of cake. but it is that sloughing of the wait which hurts the most."

-----

In that moment he realized what he had in front of him. It was his moment.

He looked outside and dreamed of that current.

"Life is good, man."

Back.

Where am I?

I've just woken up. There are white walls surrounding my periphery. I see white. And a ceiling fan. My feet curl as I pull myself through convulsive like stretches. Kneading and yawning, I pick myself up by the hair. I'm home.

It's been quite a rough week. I had never had such an excess of cortisol in my body before. Stress does funny things to you. To me it did both bad and good. While the former was just a bit more prevalent than the latter, I will tell you this, I'm still okay.

I went through the two rounds of interviews. I still feel funny about one of them. While my conversation was friendly, the subject matter was lacking. However, I cannot stop. Three more to go and hopefully more after that.

I'm about to shower in a shower that harvested so many of my showers in the past. My mother is downstairs clapping and dancing to L.A. Top Pop Idol, an L.A. Asian version of American Idol. I listened to a young man blow the audience away with a rendition of "Ice Box". The judges seemed to like it.

I'm back to Austin tonight. Soon. I have this funny feeling. It's almost in the back of my chest. I'll try to get it out. Just keep praying. Just keep going.

Sitting, waiting for the airplane that never came and the pilots that never flew.

There's this part of me that wants to change.

I can't help it.

It's almost alarming. To think. Isn't it?

You sit and stare and think. About the lame ducks and missed calls. And you eat inwards.

Your body, it shrinks. Because you eat it. It's almost gone.

And then. You forget.

Transforming.

I'm transforming.

It's a silly process really. First, you start with your hands.

It doesn't really hurt.

Then you look down and realize that your feet are different.

And when you drill your first hole--you realize, this ain't the first time this has happened.

Then you look inside, what do you see? Dreams, dirty deeds, romance, residual mess, phone numbers, the 90's -- this is all you.

Next step. Let it drain. I know its hard. Its hard to feel that creeping out of you. Its hard to figure your self in a such a way, such a masochistic, dirty way.

Hello past, you damn bastard.

You remember the good, the bad, the etc, the volatile, the obsessive, the fads, the unfads, the loneliness, the joy, but mostly the brevity of it all. You see youth in a way that is irreplaceable. And that's when you crumble. You ask your best friend or lover or mom to sweep you into a vase. Not one of those pretty vases. Just one you find at Ross or the side of the road. Its no use to find a great, shiny vase. Details of this are just a waste of space--remember brevity, its no use if you meander.

You add water, you add hope, you add cheap food and some good stuff too, you add light, you add sex, you add money, you add dreams, you add insurance, and you find...age.

You find yourself looking back, seeing if you've left anything behind. You look for the 4 a.m. escapades, the lunch at 6 manifestos, the discovery of what you think--what you goddamn think--is the rest of your fucking life, the woven rants, the shredded wallpaper that seconds as your skin, the dirty magazine that was dirty for more than dirt between the creases, the friends that were along for those brilliant shout-out-loud rides, the automatic seats belts, and air that when breathed in felt like the world that bomb-blasted your name across this universe.

You realize that its gone or its missing or you miss it because you can't find it. So you start over. You call it a crisis. Or you call it going mad. I call it transforming. Or reforming. Picking up the pieces. Slitting the membrane through its second layer. A second chance.

My Grandmother's American Accent.

Let me count the words.

There's Hello. Bye bye. Cheese. My grandmother also recently acquired the name of the nationwide book store chain: Borders.

Of course these words sound nothing like they should--with the exception of 'Bye bye'. You see, in Mandarin, certain tones and syllables that are prevalent in the English language--for instance the 'ruhr' in words like ratio and retrovert and retarded--are like a mystery to us folk. Rivalry is the ultimate in tongue-twisting diction--even I can't churn it out on a consistent basis.

But 'Bye bye' works. It's her best English word. She uses it on more than one occasion on most days. I'm pretty sure she's proud of it. 'Hello' squeezes out like 'Hurroh' and cheese is accented with a staccato beat that sounds forced and constipated. The two-syllabled good night is broken into four pieces, churning the ignivomous rage in any frat-boy closet racist.

But I'm pretty sure 'Bye bye' was the first word she learned and, in fact, spoke to me in English.

--------

When I saw my grandmother as a child, I was always elated. She would never bring me toys, but she would bring me grandma or pou-pou, as we would call her. She had the most distinct smell, as if she was part of those hazy Hong Kong dramas, with the flying warriors doing their flying fights in mid-air--the ones playing in the back room of a musty Chinatown Laserdisc store.

Usually, these stores would have porn in them. I remember this, because I also remember being very curious as a kid. I wouldn't say horny, but perhaps in a sick narcissistic, self-violating way, I was. I remember trying to make the quickest glance, always peering towards my father or mother or ugly storekeeper through my peripherals, terrified that my pre-pubescent fantasies of videotape voyeurism was to be found out or ridiculed.

There would be two 'worst of alls' to this plot if I were ever to be found out. (Actually, I was found out by my horrified mother once, who put me to shame for popping in the old man's Showgirls on a rainy schoolday morning. I took the day as my last and when I came out of my 7th period Accelerated Reading class, I was to the brink of tears. Nothing happened though.)--

--My father would scold me in English: it was better this way, the storekeeper would know half the words anyways. My dad was keen in public sociology in these ways--in front of my friends, he would scream at me in Mandarin. Terrifying, to say the least.

--Or they would tell my grandmother. And I would be shamed to the depths of shame for the rest of my life.

---------

I've kind of grown up with porn. In fact, I guess all of us have in some way, at least my guy friends. I remember catching a peek at late-night HBO, through the crack of my bathroom door. A sly fellow I was, leaving the showerhead on, peering at the full-length closet mirror while the reflection of my uncle's grotesque television taught me the way of the American bossom. That was until, I almost passed out from the tremendous heat from the steam.

But I could never look at Asian porn, or 'oriental' smut for the pron-gen purists. At first, I thought I was just a boob guy, turned off by the flat-chested, light-skinned sluts making themselves available for my every digital desire. In fact, I never even found them attractive in real life. For some time, I tried donning the crotch-rocket look, but I never found the full effect of my double cricket antennae bangs or hand-me-down Jnco jeans. So I left that phase and stuck with other things. American things. Football, nachos, and white girl porn.

But as I grew older, so did these oriental smuts. They grew older and I grew fonder. I now knew of why my white counterparts were so infatuated of them. Their soft features; their dark hair; their closet oriental smuttiness.

So for a month, I tried out Asian porn.

Bad news bears. Very bad news.

---------

So as I sit here, I look at my grandma, dying and breathing through tubes. The caffeine is wearing off slowly and it shows. I cannot help but stumble in expressing how I feel, at this certain time, when my pou-pou is melting away. Stroke runs in our family. I've never heard from anyone how a stroke feels, but I can imagine it. Like the air is knocked out of you. Like everything goes white. And you see something in the distance so beautiful that you die in the moments in which you are infatuated. Like that sweaty, steamy, pre-pubescent bathroom, in clear view of inverted porn and big fake analog TV tits. Like the water that falls into your lungs when all you can do is look up, where there is air.

I couldn't watch asian porn because of the fucking accents. They drove me insane. They reminded me of my aunts, of my cousins, and god-forbid, if I ever had a sister, probably my sister. But most of all, the accents reminded me of my grandma, my pou-pou. They reminded me of innocence behind those loving eyes, ones that had seen wars and refugees and distant lands and flying warriors. She had seen countless stories and had forgotten all of them. There was no more scent to her that was pleasing. All I smell is her dying and the crisp white hospital sheets in this goddamn hospital. In the elevator on the way up I was stuck in the box with some fake-blonde bitch with even faker blonde tits. The whole way up I wondered who was enjoying that silicon. Probably some fake blonde asshole who still watched oriental smut while his fake American inverted girl lay in bed with other men on her mind. I wanted to throw up.

So that's when I gave up on porn. The whole thing. It wasn't the fantasies that attracted me to it. It was their eyes, the way they looked at you. But it was as fake as that blonde's boobs or all the fake accents that pleased men as they turned up their headset volume while they took a shit in their girlfriend's bathroom. I wonder if they turned on the showerhead as well. But it was fake. The porn was fake. Because as soon as the camera was off, they were off. They probably shut their eyes and leaned back their head to stretch their cum-splattered necks. To look up and wonder silently why the fuck they just fucked some random dude with a name like Damon Revolver or Andre 3-millionth. They wonder why they don the accents. They wonder what their grandma would think.

I bet they throw up sometimes too.

--------

My grandma didn't have last words. Because that's how it usually is. But I guess it would be in her best American accent, speaking her best English word. And I would love it because it wouldn't be fake. It would be real. As real as her musty clothes. As real as the memories I will never forget. As real as her accent. Every syllable, every word.