i have this reoccurring dream where it feels like i’ve never known unhappiness before in my life. like nothing’s bad ever happened to me and i wouldn’t even understand what that means.

and you’re always in them.

i dont know why, after so long that this should still happen. i go months without thinking about you, because why would i? and then, without any warning, you’re there in my dreams, and i don’t question it, i don’t remember you ever having left, there’s no reason why you ever would.

and we’re not lovers, we’re not friends, but the point isn’t to have those titles. we’re happy, we’re safe, we’re well, and nothing bad will ever happen to us.

and then i wake up and i don’t understand. i’m very happy with my life. i have cosmo, i have goals and accomplishments and loving, courageous people around me. 

but i wake up and i can’t pretend it feels like anything but loss. 

why does it always have to be you?

============================

jinryu recently said that he was able to conquer his inner demons because that’s a wisdom that comes with age. it never occurred to me before that those were things you could conquer. i thought they were just a part of you that you would always have to live with or fight. or you could hope to forget.

my own dreams betray me.

He is all comforting shoulders and strong arms around me. Snow-soft kisses and understanding eyes.

But I am not so concrete. What I wanted were his words.

I want to see them fluttering under your breath and hiding in your hair. I want to find them under the couch or in your gaping wallet, my currency of choice. I want to snatch them from the whisper trail of passing birds, to pull them from the open sky with my greedy fists and show you - ”These! These … Do you have them? Where are yours? 

Will you give me your words?”

Starr is recently girlfriended. She’s extremely pretty and fashionable and her long hair is piled into soft waves at the ends.

I don’t have a crush on Starr anymore obviously. I don’t belong with boys with fancy cars. 

It makes me thankful, I know I’m lucky, I don’t have to be any of those things for Cosmo. I’m always in old runners because most days I transit through three cities while carrying all my books. It’s been said that I’m pretty but I know that it’s at best in a homely way. I can’t shave often because the eco-product that I use takes two hours each time including clean up. And you can forget about playing dress up: I much prefer hand-me-downs and things from thrift stores. 

Also, I slouch. 

We can probably all make one of these lists. But Cosmo doesn’t ask anything of me.

It’s about more than just feeling okay about myself. He makes me happy to be me.

…gosh I’m spoiled 

I know drive Cosmo crazy with my ideals for how “green” a household should be. And yet he’s worked hard on changing his habits because he knows it’s important to me. Last week, I realized we no longer had any plastic bags in the apartment to line the garbage can with because we don’t bring them home anymore! I don’t know anyone else who’s accomplished that.

My parents immigrated to Canada with very little money. We always had everything we needed, not to mention luxuries like my art, piano, and martial arts classes, but I know my parents had to work hard for it. Statements like “See how how late your father has to work?” and “Your father has to work hard for you. Don’t bother him while he’s working,” were drilled into me often and at an early age.

That taught me two things: guilt and worry.

My parents are quite secretive so I only started realizing a few years ago that they now actually have quite a bit of money, which annoyed me severely, because what do you mean I didn’t have to penny pinch all that time? Actually, I still like being frugal … but what do you mean I didn’t have to worry about money all that time??

Trumon and I are annoyed that the parents are starting to behave like the other rich people we know, bringing home new ipads and cars and other designer items on a whim. It’s true what they say about rich people – money makes you lose sight of what’s really important. It is so easy for the freedom and the possibilities of money to make you forget that your wealth – no matter how hard you worked for it – is a privilege that shouldn’t be squandered. I hope I never forget that.

Anyway.

I still worry about money as much as the next 20-something in a university arts program. Especially living in Vancouver, one of the most expensive cities in the world, where $700,000 could – at most – buy you an old house that’s falling apart. How are [Cosmo] and I ever supposed to make it?

Cosmo was annoyed at first when I told him. I know it’s not fair that his family has always been struggling but that mine is now out of the red. But the sudden windfall changes things. My parents aren’t about to hand me free money; I still have to pay for my own education and expenses. But the safety net is there. Maybe it isn’t too foolish to dream. Cosmo’s working at a job that doesn’t realize his potential and that doesn’t pay him very much. I don’t want him to have to do that forever.

We can move to the Gulf Islands and watch the sun set and rise on the harbour every day. I can feed the world with my organic farm. We can find nonprofit work that is true to what makes our hearts beat. We can be ourselves in a world that asks us to be everything else.

I felt the last Guest Post was relevant because I wanted to show how far my little brother has come along. I’m fiercely proud of Trumon – it was I that raised him, after all (our parents are often terrible people and they were too busy to do the job anyway). I’m the reason why he has critical thinking and writing abilities that are far beyond those of his age group, the reason why he has respect for the poor and marginalized despite having been raised in a family of cutthroat, let-them-eat-cake capitalists.

It’s terribly endearing when my little burgeoning feminist says things like, “How come it’s okay to say, ‘Hey guys,’ to a group of women but it’s not okay to say, ‘Hey ladies,’ to a group of guys? I say ‘Hey guys,’ a lot and I can’t even help it.”

We spend less time together now because we’re both busy, and that’s fine. But it worries me that, as he becomes a teenager, he’s also acting like one too. He’s starting to become a bit of a douchebag, and as tempted as I am to say that he picked it up from school, I won’t insult his intelligence. It is, unfortunately, perfectly possible to become a douchebag through your own choosing. 

Because it really gets to me when he rolls his eyes and sighs loudly when he’s asked to help with chores, or when he puts up a self-righteous defense of his need to play video games until midnight on school days — and how dare the sister get all bitchy and criticize him for it! Parenting hurts. It makes you vulnerable. And we’re at the age where I’d rather we be friends instead of child and disciplinarian.

[Cosmo] says I shouldn’t take Trumon’s disrespectful behaviour as a personal failure, but it’s hard not to. I could have done better. Trumon is too much like myself. I taught him to be proud but I forgot kindness and empathy.

There isn’t much more parenting that he’ll accept at this age, unless he specifically asks for it. And anyway I’m too busy and too tired to have to deal with abuse from a teenager. I think the best I can do now is to let go, and hope that he’ll learn better.

My little brother is 15 years old this year and he’s quite an excellent writer for his age. We both play the same sport, Ultimate, and I thought his take on sportsmanship was articulate and relevant.

“What does it mean to win?”

Friday, August 24, 2012

Back in July, I played in the Canadian Ultimate Championships 2012 regional tournament with my team, Pandamonium. Even though we lost all our games, having savaged (playing with no player substitutes) with 9 people for 6 hours straight on a weekend, it was absolutely thrilling. Excited, I went home to share the news with my best friend, also an Ultimate player. It’s interesting to see how even though we play the same sport with equal passion, our motives are completely different.

I grew up playing Ultimate with my sister in her high school years, the good generation. For as long as I can remember, I was taught to play with sportsmanship. I was taught to play with integrity, to play your hardest, and to play for the enjoyment of yourself, as well as the opposing team. Win or lose. A good friend of mine, who I’ve been coached by and have played with on many occasions, has said many times what I will always remember. “Everyone gets a chance with the disc on the field”. I never questioned the ethics to sportsmanship or ever thought of any other way of playing a sport. Sadly, I recently realized there are people who play for a completely different philosophy: gamesmanship.

From wikipedia, sportsmanship “is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one’s competitors.”
“A sore loser refers to one who does take defeat well, whereas a good sport means being a “good winner” as well as being a “good loser”.

Gamesmanship on the other hand, “is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win or gain an advantage in a game or sport. It has been described as ‘Pushing the rules to the limit without getting caught, using whatever dubious methods possible to achieve the desired end’”.

Taking a little detour here, my sister and my father had a similar dispute a while back. “What does it mean to be efficient?” If I recall correctly, the argument was about the usage of resources in environment and construction projects. Something along those lines, at least. My dad debated that being efficient is to achieve the goal in the shortest amount of time as possible. My sister, in return, said efficiency meant achieving the goal while being as frugal and respectful of the resources and the environment you have. One side argues the end justifies the means, and the other argues the means justifies the end.

A little more in detail about the argument, in the beginning, we were talking about the other teams and how everyone did and whatnot. At one point, she asked “so who won?”. “you don’t know? What’s the point of a tournament then?”. “But you have to know if they did well or not. If you don’t know the standing you won’t know whether or not their strategies worked, or if their group dynamic worked.” And from there is where I put a foot down. During the time at the tournament, we did meet one team who played quite unfairly. They played dirty, they were disrespectful of our players (we had many new players), or to put it simply, they played by gamesmanship. What really had me furious at this point was her defending gamesmanship. “They huck* because they can. They play with their advantages. They use their strengths.”

*(Alex’s note: “hucking” in Ultimate is where you score a point in one move using only two players. Instead of passing in between players to work the disc up the field, you simply bypass everyone by making one long pass across the field into the goal. This demonstrates poor sportsmanship because other players won’t get a chance to play. However, that is not to say that hucks are always successful – they can be intercepted. Hucks are more acceptable when the game is about to end and your team is losing.)

I have a female friend who used to play the cutter position for her high school team (*the person trying to move the disc up the field). What did they teach her to do? Cut horizontally. What does that mean? Move to the side and make way for the guys to do the real cutting. Let the guys handle it, they’ll huck the point. The level of disrespect and disregard for your fellow teammates is unbearable. But hey, they won the game for their team, right? Even if they only used 3 of the 7 people on their team. It’s their strength, so they use it. It’s a no brainer, right?

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Not only did I attain perfect form for this pose recently at yoga, but I held it too!

shazam!

===============

I think the reason why I don’t want to write anymore is because bad things still keep happening after I write about them. It’s too much effort to articulate and to extract all your feelings and thoughts, only to have them shoved rudely back into you before the process repeats again. It might be easier to just live with it and to be complacent. It’s too difficult to get closure.

I live in Vancouver now, but I come back to my parents’ most weekend. I feel like a kid again when I’m listening to music upstairs with the door closed and trying to not care about parents arguing downstairs. I’m 21 now. You’d think these things would stop bothering you when the self help books for dealing with violent parents have long expired for those above the age of 18. 

I’m too cynical right now to want to think about anything. All this activism, feminism, environmentalism, social justice – who cares? It’s too much, we’re all tired, and every inch of progress is met with another two steps back.

I don’t know how people have the energy to be advocates all there lives — but that’s not true, of course I know how. I want to give up at the first sign of difficulty, but others simply can’t, maybe because their livelihoods are on the line if a tarsands pipeline goes through their city. Maybe it’s their own children that suffer when aboriginal schools only get a fraction of the funds compared with the mainstream schools. Maybe they’re just adults and they know that responsibility can’t be avoided. I do care, I do, but just not enough to keep going. That’s a luxury I can afford.

Why did I cry why Jack Layton died? Because he’s a good man. But also because I wanted to know that there was someone one there doing the work that I don’t want to do. 

==========================

Today

I find my optimism is tied closely with how well I’m getting along at the moment with people close to me. How can I even dream about getting entire communities hooked on sustainability when we can’t even get our parents to turn off lights when they’re not in the room without starting full-on family feuds?

Cosmo and I are happy together. But sometimes it feels like a temporary refuge, creating our own island of happiness before waking up and going back to work the next day.

But it’s different when I exercise. I feel strong when I will my muscles into being stretched and pulled beyond their limits. I love driving the dragonboat paddle with all my weight into the water and feeling propelled by my own strength. There’s nothing like chasing a disc into the ground to make global warming and hungry children not matter. 

I actually feel genuinely, unreservedly social when I’m doing team sports (!). I’m not worried about people’s use of plastic bags or their consumption of McDonalds or how much they enjoy rape and prostitute jokes. It helps that we’re all dressed extremely casually because no-one needs to look down on anyone else’s clothes. What matters is how much we cheer and look out for one another on the field and if I’m trying hard enough to hurt through the next week. I love that delicious, secret feeling of all-over soreness because it reminds me that I am more than how much I’m angry, tired, scared, disconnected.

It’s addicting, it’s liberating. I feel like I can run forever and never sleep. I want to stay there.

I’ve written a lot about how abusive my parents are. Sometimes I make excuses for them in my head. Other times, I recognize abuse for what it is.

These are the kinds of things my parents say to me / about me to each other:

• It’s pointless to love someone like you
• You think you make any difference in this world? Your efforts don’t matter 
• Don’t call me your mom anymore
• I wish you would leave
• Let’s just not bother and kick her out
• She’s crying. Again. 

Sometimes I’d only just hold myself together during school and work because I never knew what I’d come home to. I learnt to not hear what they were saying by staring at the wall and not breathing, a kind of reverse-meditation where, instead of embracing your existence, you pretend you’re not there. 

But everything changed when I moved out. I come back home only 2-3 times a month. Now instead of hurtling insults, my mom asks only if I’m eating enough or if I have enough groceries. It was strange and jarring to feel like I have a mom again. This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about the ugly, but it’s better and I’m grateful. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when the job finishes in September and I boomerang-generation back home. But that bridge comes later.  

I’d really rather deal with more important things. It’s such a waste of time to feel sorry for yourself. 

===========================

I pay my rent by working for the evil Conservative government. So I get to choose between living with abusive parents or working for an abusive head of state. 

As a part of my job for example, I helped to organize a big hotel seminar featuring a 1% CEO speaker who makes millions of dollars in international trade. His company is based in China. He spoke to a room full of small food producers who were hoping to break into the Chinese market.

“Every year during the Spring Festival,” the CEO explained, “all Chinese migrant workers return to their homes. After a year of living and working in the big industrial cities and sending paycheques to their families, they flood the train stations, all 230 million of them, in order to return home.”

He showed us two photos on the powerpoint: an aeriel view of a train station so packed with little black-haired people that they looked from that distance, like flies. In another photo, a few workers were walking down the street, many heavy bags in hand.

The CEO gestured to the latter photo and explained that migrant workers make $400 a month - if they are lucky, but still they don’t dare to return home without a gift in hand.

This, he proclaimed to the companies before him, presents a market opportunity. 

He said it so glibly and with such enthusiasm that I didn’t quite realize what he was saying.

“It’s very simple,” he explained. “These people need gifts, and your company can supply them. For example, [he clicked to a new photo in the powerpoint] here you see two $5 wines in a $10 gift box with a hand corker, and there you have it!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “French wines for only $20!”

“This is a niche whose potential has not yet been explored, and my company is prepared to fill the needs of this market.”

The room was full of 40 year old Canadians, people who had probably lived many years of their life supposedly in a democratic country which understood human rights. And yet nobody objected to this gruesome misconstruction. Nobody objected to the narrative of using some of the world’s poorest people as a way to make money and to get rich. No one said a word and the CEO kept lecturing.

I work for Stephen Harper. I try not to think about it much, so that I’m not too angry to do my job. It turns out it’s not too difficult to vacate your mind when you’re staring at a computer in a cubicle all day. 

I don’t mean to be ungrateful; dozens of people in my co-op program were unable to find work, and I get paid a good salary. I was lucky. But I have to recognize my work for what it is.

I took my boyfriend [henceforth "Cosmo"] to the small organic corner of the cereal aisle today because he doesn’t normally buy organic food, saying that it costs too much.

It’s true that my family has more money than his, but my mom always bought expensive healthy food for us even when we weren’t financially well off. I’m living on my own now and my paycheck isn’t huge either, but I want Cosmo to be healthy and I want him to understand that health is worth investing in. 

Tonight we cooked dinner and cleaned up the kitchen afterwards together. I was at the sink with the dishes, marveling at how easy the rice cooker bowl was to wash. “It doesn’t even need soap! All the rice just slides right off!”

My boyfriend suddenly looked very guilty. “That’s because it’s nonstick.”

“Nonstick?”

“…yes.”

“Nonstick as in Teflon?” 

He looked even more guilty. “Yes…But they’re so easy to wash!”

We’ve had this conversation before. He and his mom don’t use Teflon frying pans because his mom owns small cockatiel birds, and small birds die instantly when they inhale the fumes emitted from using Teflon cookware.

After Cosmo moved out of his mom’s house, he bought a $2 Teflon frying pan from IKEA because it’s so wonderful to finally be able to buy cheap cookware! But as soon as I discovered the pan I got him to put it away after reminding him about the grave consequences of Teflon. He knows about Teflon already of course, but he still looked disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to use his new frying pan. 

Cosmo is slightly overweight and he doesn’t exercise very much. I’ve been working hard since we started dating to get him to eat healthier. I got him to stop eating candy and fast food. I taught him how to cut down on oil, salt and sauces while cooking. I buy him organic food and I take him to vegan restaurants so that he would eat healthier without having to stretch his wallet.

He doesn’t like it when I criticize his normalized food habits, and he’s rather emotionally fragile (I only ever seem to date those kinds) so I have to be very cautious when I point out his food flaws. I work hard to take care of him – it’s not fun having to criticize someone that you’d rather just hang out and enjoy your time with. In many cases I’ve even coaxed him into liking healthy food, but there’s still a long way to go.

Now I feel betrayed because he’s been feeding me Teflon rice – toxic rice - all this time without my knowing every time we eat at his apartment. He knows that this is important to me. 

It’s not that Cosmo doesn’t love me and that he doesn’t wish to take care of me, but I don’t think he really understands what that means. He and I have experienced love and care in different ways. All my life I remember mom cooking nearly all our family meals from scratch – even while working full time and receiving zero help from dad in terms of household chores – because she cared about our health and she wanted us to eat only the very best.

Even today she’ll spend an hour washing leafy greens with her hands in freezing cold water (my family honestly eats that much. Remember: I used to live with Trumon) because she wants us to eat only the freshest vegetables. Mom took out a loan to buy a set of surgical stainless steel cookware because she wanted her family to only the most pristine foods. Trumon and I have been taught actively over the years to value our health and therefore our bodies and the food we put into it.

So now I understand why my mom never bought a rice cooker. It worries me how easily Cosmo justified his use of Teflon: “It’s just so easy to clean!” And just like that, he put out of his mind all notions of health and safety completely for the sake of convenience.

Cosmo isn’t stupid – he has a Masters and he knows about the dangers of Teflon. He isn’t unkind – he enjoys making dinner for me while I relax and read. He takes care of me without complaint when I’m sick. But he’s never been taught and so he doesn’t seem to be able to conceptualize this particular kind of caring, where you make only the most pure and nurturing foods for the ones you love.

How many millions of people think the same way? How many people injest these kinds of toxins because it’s easier to eat fast food, it’s more convenient to cook with Teflon, it’s cheaper to buy plastic kitchenware that contains BPA? How many people even know about all these dangers, but brush it off carelessly because “just a little bit won’t hurt you”? What is a safe amount of toxin to injest? Why aren’t we instead striving towards food and health excellence?

And if that’s the way we treat our own bodies and the health of our loved ones, then just imagine how much damage we do in the same careless way to the planet and the environment. It’s frightening.

So that last post was an accident and has now been made private – oops! awk awk awk ><

Backstory: Kevin and I met in Toronto last April and we dated for a month before I had to return to Vancouver. He still had to stay another 3 months in Toronto to finish his masters degree. In addition to our skype chats, he promised to write to me every night until he moved back to the west coast. I wrote back to him on a separate xanga account that only the two of us share.

He’s in the Vancouver area now but he still lives six cities away so we’ve continued writing to each other every night that we’re apart (that’s probably why I don’t post here as often anymore. I’m sorry I’m such a ditcher ). I was signed in to kaiori yesterday when I thought I was on the other account, hence accidental PDA! 

—————————

I told mom that Kevin and I wanted to move in together (it would make logistical sense because we both currently live 1.5 hours away from our workplaces, and it costs a great deal more to rent separately). Mom of course said NO. She then suddenly started visiting the Buddhist temple a lot. I get the creepy feeling that she’s praying for my virginity. Here’s why I think that:

1. Every time I get a new boyfriend my mom pulls me aside for The Talk. She doesn’t say anything at all about safe sex, but my mom will take great pains to warn me against excessive hand-holding. In Cantonese, that translates to “holding little hands”. (Accusation: “You’ve been holding little hands again haven’t you!?”)

   Kevin suggests that we should pull my parents aside one day and tell them, “You know Mr. and Mrs. Tse, sometimes when two people really like each other they…”

2. My aunt gave me a present today from Hollister. She was handing me the bag when my mom grabbed her arm and said “No! There are naked people making out on the bag! DON’T GIVE IT TO HER.”

   

   My aunt snorted (politely), pushed past my mom to give me the bag, and inside I found a new sweater

Mom also told Trumon privately that he had to help stop me from moving out. What will happen to her reputation? What if they break up? What if she gets a new boyfriend and he finds out that she once lived together with her ex?

I knew already that my parents were conservative but I was still caught off-guard. Who the hell thinks like this anymore? I remember reading in the news about virginity certificates for women in India (which must be presented to the groom’s family before they will approve of the marriage) and I remember thinking that this was completely barbaric and that nothing like that could ever happen in Canada. I forget that my Canada is vastly different from the one that my immigrant parents live in.

I don’t want my every action to have to go through an approval process. I don’t want my body to belong to my parents.

I’m also 21 and I think it’d be nice if I could hold hands with boys now ==