send me upstate
send us upstate
see friends we might like that
my friends might like that
we'll never be late
we'll never be late
those halls are like train tracks
I swear we might like that
at least upstate
there's the illusion of telling all the inmates from the guards,
and the cell blocks from the yards,
and you can run but you know well that
those who run don't make it very far
I'll write every day
I'll write every day
and smoke a whole soft pack
I really would like that
we'll get into shape
we'll get into shape
situp my six pack
curl up my bicep
at least upstate
there's the illusion of telling all the inmates from the guards,
and the cell blocks from the yards,
and you can run but there's no point cuz
those who run don't make it very far
and no one will say
you punks have it made
cuz we live in a deathtrap
we really would like that
and no one can say
we're faking our way
I really would like that
I really would like that
cuz at least upstate
there's the illusion of telling the inmates from the guards
and workhouse from the yards
and running's just for suckers we know
those who run they never make it far
---------------
write moar versus!! write a bridge! I will think of you every time I sing them
29 April 2010
19 November 2009
am i cool
a questioning culture is what i would like for us to be. then people would realize that no one really has any answers at all. the world wouldn't mind if you were an aimless traveler, a human without a home; we would all recognize it in each other. we'd hitch hike to Albuquerque or Denver and rummage through a dusty dumpster on the side of the highway in the desert, or kick an old tomato soup can around with our feet and boots in the snow. i would remember that it is November 16th and i would get you to smoke a pack of cigarettes with me through a simple smile or a laugh or a longing look in the eye. then, we watch a meteor shower and drink whiskey and take photos with our phones-
which reminds me, you know when you move a camera real fast and snap the shot, the pictures come out and there are fantastic streaks of light which sometimes zig-zag or are beams or light rays or precise lines which are all blurry but sometimes more aesthetically pleasing than the actual image itself, or the actual moment of the image? like streaks of light emanating from the boyfriend or pockets the kitten or the weeping willow in bloom on a rainy sunny day outside grandma's house.
well, i think that is very much like a meteor shower.
it could be a prerequisite to be chilly when viewing the meteors. so you can have someone close to warm you. for the opportunity of embrace. so you can meld with him and the moment, and the stars, and yes, the crickets and the air, crickets and air.
which reminds me, you know when you move a camera real fast and snap the shot, the pictures come out and there are fantastic streaks of light which sometimes zig-zag or are beams or light rays or precise lines which are all blurry but sometimes more aesthetically pleasing than the actual image itself, or the actual moment of the image? like streaks of light emanating from the boyfriend or pockets the kitten or the weeping willow in bloom on a rainy sunny day outside grandma's house.
well, i think that is very much like a meteor shower.
it could be a prerequisite to be chilly when viewing the meteors. so you can have someone close to warm you. for the opportunity of embrace. so you can meld with him and the moment, and the stars, and yes, the crickets and the air, crickets and air.
perhaps
... i am nocturnal because in my body the blood which flows knows that home is not here, it is in korea. and so day is night and night is day. it may sound outlandish, but i just can't escape the blood in my veins, the spirit of my ancestors which makes my nights strange. it does not just up and go. doesn't when i look in the mirror, or try to say 'rural', or eat a big mac at mcdonalds with my parents. certainly doesn't when i am called a chink walking home from the bar.
so of course i would be up now, at 3am, wide awake as if it were the middle of the day. no, i am supposed to be at the doctor for a 4pm appointment instead of being in columbus, oh twelve hours earlier writing in front of my computer with a chestache. my parents should have never left. should have realized how hard it is to adjust and no, not to the culture, to the time: i am always ahead, feel ahead, feel as if i was lead here against my will and my body is telling me that i am not in the right place. it is obviously why my mind will race at the wrong time of the day, and i cannot sleep, cannot dream of beautiful things. cannot meet her out at the east bank of the stream; cannot skip rocks into the moss-covered electric machine; cannot not speak and hear, nonetheless, everything.
a shame but it can happen often, when nocturnal; goodnight moons are said too soon. before you know it the sun is up and the sky is maroon, and birds are chirping, and cars are honking in traffic, and children wait at the bus stop with sesame street umbrellas and yellow duck rain boots. but even then, when said too soon, my body knows that back home the land where my spirit was born, it will always be a true goodnight moon.
so of course i would be up now, at 3am, wide awake as if it were the middle of the day. no, i am supposed to be at the doctor for a 4pm appointment instead of being in columbus, oh twelve hours earlier writing in front of my computer with a chestache. my parents should have never left. should have realized how hard it is to adjust and no, not to the culture, to the time: i am always ahead, feel ahead, feel as if i was lead here against my will and my body is telling me that i am not in the right place. it is obviously why my mind will race at the wrong time of the day, and i cannot sleep, cannot dream of beautiful things. cannot meet her out at the east bank of the stream; cannot skip rocks into the moss-covered electric machine; cannot not speak and hear, nonetheless, everything.
a shame but it can happen often, when nocturnal; goodnight moons are said too soon. before you know it the sun is up and the sky is maroon, and birds are chirping, and cars are honking in traffic, and children wait at the bus stop with sesame street umbrellas and yellow duck rain boots. but even then, when said too soon, my body knows that back home the land where my spirit was born, it will always be a true goodnight moon.
11 September 2009
9th Grade History Exam, Christopher Yeng
....
4. Explain the phenomena of terraforming and lunaforming in contemporary lunar history and the relationship between the two.
After the terraforming of the Moon, much of the remaining labor was left to lunaform the Earth in order to provide a familiar comfort for lunar inhabitants. Lunaforming was funded by Russia, Brazil, China, and India--where lunaforming was minimized so as to temporarily preserve pre-existing biological economies and environments. Many bodies of water, large and small, were already drained for the terraforming of the Moon. After that point, lunaforming the Earth was just a matter of speeding up an already existing process of biological and ecological simplification.
....
B+
4. Explain the phenomena of terraforming and lunaforming in contemporary lunar history and the relationship between the two.
After the terraforming of the Moon, much of the remaining labor was left to lunaform the Earth in order to provide a familiar comfort for lunar inhabitants. Lunaforming was funded by Russia, Brazil, China, and India--where lunaforming was minimized so as to temporarily preserve pre-existing biological economies and environments. Many bodies of water, large and small, were already drained for the terraforming of the Moon. After that point, lunaforming the Earth was just a matter of speeding up an already existing process of biological and ecological simplification.
....
B+
09 September 2009
FILLMORE JIVE
instead of being up and awake at four in the morning while a monsoon rain rakes against my windowpane, while i rummage through luggage and suitcases filled with album after album of old family photos, i need to sleep. rather than impossibly yearn to go back in time to the precise moment captured in the particular photo i hold in my shaky hands, of my father when he was ten years old, a stone faced boy in a navy blue school uniform with a cold smile sitting on the steps of a temple in North Korea, i need to be comfortable and cozy, dozing off to dream of snacking on Klondike bars and playing guitar in a fort with a golden retriever who smokes cigarettes and plays the bass.
i would like to not be nostalgic – to not have this deep desire to get dirty and dig into the depths of time, to infiltrate history, to be transposed to the precise moment my father prepared for the snapshot and squinted from the flash of the camera. i cannot help it though; i want to know him then, know what he thought of when he woke up and felt a chilly breeze blow in from the window, when he would dip his legs into a cool lake on a summer day, when he laid on dewy grass in the morning staring up into the clouds. i want to have known him before he gave me a name, before, on lonely days, i would drive in the snow on the back-roads of Ohio forgetting to relish in the beauty of winter because the darkness of my mind put me in a slumber; before i read a poem that told me that we learn the most from what's fallen. he would not have known then, in that moment in 1953, as boundaries were drawn across the land, that one day i would figure out that all life is is an imprint on my brain of a hummingbird who came by to say hello as i rainbow-watched and smoked a cigarette; that would have been before another day of gray sky, when i would happen upon a couple of teary-eyed folk in embrace kneeling in front of a grave and would find myself in wonder and want to feel and know the depths of their anguish, and the reason for their pain; before i would take long walks along the beach for a good while, a mile or two, thinking of all of the lonely aimless souls who walk as well, wondering under the chandelier of night, asking themselves quietly under their breath, how many children want for the love of someone else?
i'd like to sleep but for some reason i can't, not even when i try to meditate. i will try to sleep soon and want to sleep soon and will give up this fantastic idea of transportation to another time and place because it is impossible to actually time-travel – and if i could, i don’t think i would be able to change anything because if i did the photo would not exist in the same manner in the future, and would not have inspired this insomniac state. so i do not wish to go back, after all; i do not wish to change the past—would not even for the chance to see pavement reunite. i just need to sleep.
but i am writing now, instead of searching, rather than sleeping. i write because to write is to be in a kind of sleep; it is free like a dream; you can write whatever and it all has meaning (or none at all). instead of being awake rummaging through paper memories i will write and it will suffice—it is nearly better than sleep.
i would like to not be nostalgic – to not have this deep desire to get dirty and dig into the depths of time, to infiltrate history, to be transposed to the precise moment my father prepared for the snapshot and squinted from the flash of the camera. i cannot help it though; i want to know him then, know what he thought of when he woke up and felt a chilly breeze blow in from the window, when he would dip his legs into a cool lake on a summer day, when he laid on dewy grass in the morning staring up into the clouds. i want to have known him before he gave me a name, before, on lonely days, i would drive in the snow on the back-roads of Ohio forgetting to relish in the beauty of winter because the darkness of my mind put me in a slumber; before i read a poem that told me that we learn the most from what's fallen. he would not have known then, in that moment in 1953, as boundaries were drawn across the land, that one day i would figure out that all life is is an imprint on my brain of a hummingbird who came by to say hello as i rainbow-watched and smoked a cigarette; that would have been before another day of gray sky, when i would happen upon a couple of teary-eyed folk in embrace kneeling in front of a grave and would find myself in wonder and want to feel and know the depths of their anguish, and the reason for their pain; before i would take long walks along the beach for a good while, a mile or two, thinking of all of the lonely aimless souls who walk as well, wondering under the chandelier of night, asking themselves quietly under their breath, how many children want for the love of someone else?
i'd like to sleep but for some reason i can't, not even when i try to meditate. i will try to sleep soon and want to sleep soon and will give up this fantastic idea of transportation to another time and place because it is impossible to actually time-travel – and if i could, i don’t think i would be able to change anything because if i did the photo would not exist in the same manner in the future, and would not have inspired this insomniac state. so i do not wish to go back, after all; i do not wish to change the past—would not even for the chance to see pavement reunite. i just need to sleep.
but i am writing now, instead of searching, rather than sleeping. i write because to write is to be in a kind of sleep; it is free like a dream; you can write whatever and it all has meaning (or none at all). instead of being awake rummaging through paper memories i will write and it will suffice—it is nearly better than sleep.
05 September 2009
What is Life?
Life is when Scott says twist up some bud, or when Rachel calls small objects, like baby banana’s or cute miniature sized toys, little guys. Life is riding a roller coaster or acting pretentious at a coffee-shop porch, basking in an afternoon summer sun with a tattered novel and lit cigarette burning in the ashtray; or, swimming in the ocean. Life is pop rocks and shoes and wrist clocks and hot apple cider on a snow day, funnel cakes and bicycle rides when you were ten – or when you turn thirty-five and decide to randomly and drunkenly cruise on your son’s Huffy as if you were ten years-old again; and, watching marshmallows melt into hot chocolate. Life is the way a tack moves into drywall as it is pushed in, or the way you can miss a pretty stray cat on the side of the highway because you are driving 60 MPH and not paying attention to the wonderful world around us. Life is witnessing people jump out of tall buildings which are on fire, or a man who would want to eat the brains of another man, or woman, for that matter. And life is staying up late kept going by the chirps of birds and early morning dew on grass, writing, and then reading and then not even knowing what it means or meant or how it was even written in the first place. Life is the ocean air and pumpkin spice drop cookies and cafe mochas and shrimp and pita’s delivered at five in the morning. Life is a little girl at work who holds your hands the whole time so you can't work at all and just think how cute it is to have a 7 year old girlfriend.
Life is a brown skin-and-bones child on a swing-set alone near a dilapidated jungle gym I saw one day during a walk I took to feel better about the fact that my wife left me. It was on a gorgeous afternoon in Spring, a day whose air was roses and freshly cut grass. He was on the swing, in the air like a bird or a paper airplane or a Frisbee; basically anything that defies gravity and rises on currents of invisible breaths with a backdrop of a crystal-clear ocean-blue sky where swirls of clouds wisped around like the steam after a hot shower once its free and liberated. Life was transcendental and universal, and beautiful and gorgeous, and interesting and fun, and cute and crazy, and funny and nostalgic, and everything. He was on a swing and he went back and forth and I could only see the top of his head or the bottom of his butt but every now and then I caught his open-mouthed smile in the middle of his pendulum swing and I thought to myself, This is life, man.
Life is a brown skin-and-bones child on a swing-set alone near a dilapidated jungle gym I saw one day during a walk I took to feel better about the fact that my wife left me. It was on a gorgeous afternoon in Spring, a day whose air was roses and freshly cut grass. He was on the swing, in the air like a bird or a paper airplane or a Frisbee; basically anything that defies gravity and rises on currents of invisible breaths with a backdrop of a crystal-clear ocean-blue sky where swirls of clouds wisped around like the steam after a hot shower once its free and liberated. Life was transcendental and universal, and beautiful and gorgeous, and interesting and fun, and cute and crazy, and funny and nostalgic, and everything. He was on a swing and he went back and forth and I could only see the top of his head or the bottom of his butt but every now and then I caught his open-mouthed smile in the middle of his pendulum swing and I thought to myself, This is life, man.
02 September 2009
A Slow Education
A loud clank sounded off Marguerite’s marquis-cut diamond as her hand slapped the glass which covered our black wicker table at dinner; a small bit of mashed-up blueberries and soft, brown crust squished out her mouth. She made a shield with both her hands in front of her face – mush spewing out – her cheeks bright vermilion; she could not stop laughing. I chuckled, took my eyes off of her for a moment, and watched a frumpy woman with subtle facial hair walking her miniature poodle down the road.
The day started off unusually considering that Marguerite, who typically sleeps far longer than I do, was already up and about early. A hazy light came in through the cracks of our lace curtains; she slid about on the hardwood floors in knee-high socks singing Hey when she sings, when she sings when she sings like she runs moves like she runs with her wet hair wrapped in a blue towel turban-style, cuddled in her Princeton literary society sweat-shirt, sleeves rolled up, taking whispering sips of a cup of fresh decaf Sumatra while I migrated and awoke, abruptly and literally, on her side – the wrong side of the bed.
We spent that evening at a cozy restaurant under a wide red and white umbrella when the sun slathered the sky with a Clementine coat; fat, pregnant pigeons parachuted from the flat tops of tall plane trees which lined the sidewalks every fifteen feet or so, swooping down, causing a loud commotion, eager for a free meal.
While I watched Marguerite eat the remainder of her croustade aux bleu, pausing every few seconds to pat her belly with a satisfied look, I felt that I could picture in my mind with clarity the revolution that took place here hundreds of years ago; the women in Parisian markets demanding that they have their bread; men with garden tools, makeshift weapons and pots for helmets marching through these very streets on the way to Versailles; the birth of a new modern age conceived by the purging of God’s sons and daughters.
Well, that pleasant Bastille Day evening the air was warm and wrapped around my body like a flannel blanket on a cold winter’s day. While we waited to pay for our dinner Marguerite, whose eyes were large and wide, put her hand on top of mine lovingly as we watched two pigeons peck at a piece of old crust, politely, together. Her hair, a mix of burnt rust and sunny blonde, flowed gently like a thick liquid, levitating on the currents of a light summer breeze. She wrote “I love you” in the condensation of her glass and took a sip of her water.
“Going to have a cigarette?” she asked, scooting her chair back so as to recline, “I can wait here for the check. Besides, I don’t think I can get up and walk at this point.”
I said yes and offered her the rest of my crème Brule. She gladly accepted. Taking the last gulp of my glass of Chianti I stepped away from the table and walked towards the front doors, away from the patrons, to smoke a cigarette.
I happened upon an elderly Asian man sitting on the street on top of a bamboo mat with sunglasses on, humming what sounded like the Time’s Are-a-Changin’, shaking the loose change in his cup as if it were a tambourine. When he saw me he stopped altogether and stared up.
“THIS IS WATER!” he exclaimed, in a amalgamation of accents, French, Chinese(?), English.
“Excuse me?”
The man began to rock back and forth violently, pointing at random objects around us (a fire hydrant, a piece of old gum on the sidewalk, a newspaper blowing away in the wind).
“THIS IS WATER! THIS IS WATER! THIS IS WATER!”
At first, I thought what most people in this situation would think to themselves, This guy is absolutely bat-shit crazy. I remembered, right then, my graduation ceremony at Kenyon in 05’. David Foster Wallace spoke and I remembered vividly his opening remarks, a story. It goes: “There are two young fish swimming, and they meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”
Everything is water; this is water, all of this – it’s water.
I highly doubted that this French-Asian man had heard of David Foster Wallace, let alone a commencement speech he gave at a tiny liberal arts college in Ohio, and assumed that Foster Wallace had stolen the idea from this mystical Eastern French Asian man.
Leaning against the brick of the building I made a wreck of my cigarette and pondered the morning, the uneasy and unfamiliar feeling which crept into my spirit from deep within my depths, the sudden transformation that occurred to me as I confronted a history not my own, but still partly my own. Taking time to be mindful, I began to imagine all the wide-eyed precocious young American students filing into the Louvre with backpacks and marble black notebooks and red pens behind their ears; tasted the beef and potato stew that was being boiled in a tiny tenement home while young black children wrestled one another; felt the reverberations of waves crashing against the bank of the Seine; and, could even hear the whipping cast of a fisherman’s line as it flung out towards some innocent fish.
I sat cross-legged, in a lotus position with my hands on my knees chanting in a perfected language: “THIS IS WATER THIS IS WATER THIS IS WATER, THIS IS WATER …”
The day started off unusually considering that Marguerite, who typically sleeps far longer than I do, was already up and about early. A hazy light came in through the cracks of our lace curtains; she slid about on the hardwood floors in knee-high socks singing Hey when she sings, when she sings when she sings like she runs moves like she runs with her wet hair wrapped in a blue towel turban-style, cuddled in her Princeton literary society sweat-shirt, sleeves rolled up, taking whispering sips of a cup of fresh decaf Sumatra while I migrated and awoke, abruptly and literally, on her side – the wrong side of the bed.
We spent that evening at a cozy restaurant under a wide red and white umbrella when the sun slathered the sky with a Clementine coat; fat, pregnant pigeons parachuted from the flat tops of tall plane trees which lined the sidewalks every fifteen feet or so, swooping down, causing a loud commotion, eager for a free meal.
While I watched Marguerite eat the remainder of her croustade aux bleu, pausing every few seconds to pat her belly with a satisfied look, I felt that I could picture in my mind with clarity the revolution that took place here hundreds of years ago; the women in Parisian markets demanding that they have their bread; men with garden tools, makeshift weapons and pots for helmets marching through these very streets on the way to Versailles; the birth of a new modern age conceived by the purging of God’s sons and daughters.
Well, that pleasant Bastille Day evening the air was warm and wrapped around my body like a flannel blanket on a cold winter’s day. While we waited to pay for our dinner Marguerite, whose eyes were large and wide, put her hand on top of mine lovingly as we watched two pigeons peck at a piece of old crust, politely, together. Her hair, a mix of burnt rust and sunny blonde, flowed gently like a thick liquid, levitating on the currents of a light summer breeze. She wrote “I love you” in the condensation of her glass and took a sip of her water.
“Going to have a cigarette?” she asked, scooting her chair back so as to recline, “I can wait here for the check. Besides, I don’t think I can get up and walk at this point.”
I said yes and offered her the rest of my crème Brule. She gladly accepted. Taking the last gulp of my glass of Chianti I stepped away from the table and walked towards the front doors, away from the patrons, to smoke a cigarette.
I happened upon an elderly Asian man sitting on the street on top of a bamboo mat with sunglasses on, humming what sounded like the Time’s Are-a-Changin’, shaking the loose change in his cup as if it were a tambourine. When he saw me he stopped altogether and stared up.
“THIS IS WATER!” he exclaimed, in a amalgamation of accents, French, Chinese(?), English.
“Excuse me?”
The man began to rock back and forth violently, pointing at random objects around us (a fire hydrant, a piece of old gum on the sidewalk, a newspaper blowing away in the wind).
“THIS IS WATER! THIS IS WATER! THIS IS WATER!”
At first, I thought what most people in this situation would think to themselves, This guy is absolutely bat-shit crazy. I remembered, right then, my graduation ceremony at Kenyon in 05’. David Foster Wallace spoke and I remembered vividly his opening remarks, a story. It goes: “There are two young fish swimming, and they meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”
Everything is water; this is water, all of this – it’s water.
I highly doubted that this French-Asian man had heard of David Foster Wallace, let alone a commencement speech he gave at a tiny liberal arts college in Ohio, and assumed that Foster Wallace had stolen the idea from this mystical Eastern French Asian man.
Leaning against the brick of the building I made a wreck of my cigarette and pondered the morning, the uneasy and unfamiliar feeling which crept into my spirit from deep within my depths, the sudden transformation that occurred to me as I confronted a history not my own, but still partly my own. Taking time to be mindful, I began to imagine all the wide-eyed precocious young American students filing into the Louvre with backpacks and marble black notebooks and red pens behind their ears; tasted the beef and potato stew that was being boiled in a tiny tenement home while young black children wrestled one another; felt the reverberations of waves crashing against the bank of the Seine; and, could even hear the whipping cast of a fisherman’s line as it flung out towards some innocent fish.
I sat cross-legged, in a lotus position with my hands on my knees chanting in a perfected language: “THIS IS WATER THIS IS WATER THIS IS WATER, THIS IS WATER …”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)