All posts filed under: Essays

Why I Write

In my life of twists and turns, 我沒想到我現在可以用中文. I turned to experimenting with writing in Chinese six years ago. I started to incorporate pieces of it into my work – something more representative of the amalgamation that is me. Spoken word became more of a medium I explored. 從 “三歲離開台灣” 到 “回家”, 每一篇都是我獨特的中西合併, 語言摻雜的作品. Again, it functions as a mental puzzle. Every rhyme, every cadence was a hurdle to overcome. 如何讓中英押韻, not just random add-ins, 一種和平的共鳴, like the peace I started finding.

The Years

On the windowsill, my cat sits staring back at me — staring deep into the dark blue abyss of the night sky lit up by the skyscraping lights. I cough, he blinks. It isn’t a flinch but a look of curiosity at his sick man, feeling the icy chill of a wildfire spreading in his body. I should turn on the lights but I can’t. I couldn’t, bedridden alone. My mind is filled with foggy, gray memories of times long past but shouldn’t dreams be in color? I remember being eighteen gazing with wonder at the green plains, the first snow on the lawn just before dawn, ready to be carved by hands and shoes. Yet somehow, the memory of those years stops there. Just the pristine white snow. Next thing I know, I was in the shower, head down and angry. Angry and sad. Sad and broken. Or was it unfulfilled? I do not recall.  The mind fog carries me through the next ten years. There was the heat and the humidity somewhere in …

Flowers for Algernon – Knowledge and Distrust

Where do I even begin to discuss this book? With everything that has happened over the course of my life, the impact now is more profound than if I read the book any earlier than I did. To put it simply, it is about the journey of a man who undergoes an operation that lifts him from ignorance to knowledge. The book contains a multitude of themes I have yet to ruminate over, but here I want to discuss the issue of knowledge breeding distrust. As Charlie becomes smarter, he wants to learn more to know more about himself. Through that process he realizes that the people around him all have something to hide; they all have imperfections. He becomes ashamed of himself as well, because of his own past and imperfections. His coworkers at the bakery, though they take care of him, laugh at him because of his lack of mental acuity. The professors who performed his intelligence enhancing operation are not motivated by his well-being but rather their own professional advancement. His mother …