catharsis

i remember:     how the wrecking ball danced madly

through the living room.     the waltzing bodies of two monks

burning until the war is over          if you are deeply in love, then dance.

maybe, there is little peace to march for.     

maybe this here was never peace,     but will you pocket me     please

the smallest piece of yourself?

after i learned to dance, i tied my sneakers together by the laces.

slung them over a big power line and walked away

from the neighborhood i grew up in.

home      was an electric place     was a body in shock

of what bodies can do to one another.     home

is a pile of brick mound of brittle bone dog and beast man’s best pal

her invisible friend     invisible child knows no better              

than to run from what she sees

and call it:     a mastery of the waltz.

the divine slowdance of her parents’ bodies

              burning until the war was never over

but the wrecking ball, too, is worthy of protection.         

every stubborn survivor wants to be saved.      

so when the bleach pinkens your favorite white blouse, wear it proud like flesh.

when the glare bullies your skin into a bruised submission,

let your body praise the seasons like a flower:

  my bloom and wilt belong only to you.  

i used to practice my grip like the muscle it is

i have since discovered:     it takes thousands of tries

to crush the heart’s thickest longing

in the palm of your hand

after all, things much bigger and heavier than the palm of my hand

still fit      in the palm of my hand.

i hesitate to hold          but there is no dishonesty

in falling headfirst from the sky to the ground

as the things we cannot bear to lose

appear most clear in our line of sight

because      the plunge of desire      is honest.

the stomach sinking wild with hunger

as the question courts the answer:     as the coin, mid-flip --

and suddenly

you know what you want from gravity

you know     that who you love

is who you have always known you have loved

always

you have always known who it is

Hi! I do find life absurd. Absurdity -- approached from a POV as per Camus/French existentialism/theatre, invites primarily the notion of freedom. To me, by first acknowledging that nothing has meaning, mankind can then choose to him/herself craft meaning -- rather than derive meaning. This implies that you can reconstruct all types of cause-effect relationships, or ignore them altogether. 

In admitting that life is absurd, however, I don't sit well with surrendering rationale and living a 'free-form', 'atonal' lifestyle. I want and like to think that I live deliberately, gauging decisions and passions in the context of my immediate, past, and long-term selves. How does X behavior reflect on Tiffany at the moment? How does the childhood Tiffany emerge in my present worldview, and how different of a person do I want to be after X?

An individual evolves when the passing of time -- though absurd and meaningless -- is filled with self-awareness. That kind of energy and decision-making reflects the act of crafting -- rather than deriving -- meaning.

That in my pre-college career, I was taught Jim Crow but not Fu Manchu, Reconstruction vagrancy laws but not six decades of Chinese exclusion legislation, feminist discourse but never comfort women, post-colonialism but not a single narrative from the Opium Wars -- that I was given much to hold, but little to hold onto -- should this break me?

History is a stubborn monument. It insists: this is precisely what deserves engraving in the rock, these 20,000 pronounceable surnames pass easily through America's mouth. You? We saved this for you: a hundred square feet in the Smithsonian, a groundbreaking Korean art exhibit at the PMA gallery, all 31 days in the month of May. Consider yourself a seasonal trend. Consider yourself a beautiful fiction. An outstanding orphan.

Asian America isn't and might never be in the books. But Asian America is real. A true story brought each of my parents here. It happened. We happen. Recognize that this diluted history is a lesser blood than the thick flood that runs through us.

Most of all, I refuse to call this a tragedy. It will not break me. I will give thanks that no memorial, syllabus, or sanctioned holiday cares to labor over our footprints. It is not their responsibility; more importantly, it is not their privilege.