All posts filed under: Personal

Reflections 2024-2025 Part 2

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English-only content today. I realized something while I was in the gym. Since my teenage years, I have known one of my biggest personal challenges was my impatience. Case in point, my violin skills never developed the way ten years of private lessons would have suggested. I don’t know if it was the need for instant gratification or the need to prove myself, but I focused my energies on fast. Track and field, basketball, video games – clear objectives with quick-to-see progress bars. You sink enough practice time, you will see your sprint times improve. Practicing crossovers, dribbles, and shots – it was still a lot of hours but it didn’t take long to see results. It was the outward manifestation of my inner impatience and need to prove myself. I don’t think I was ever…grounded. I was always in a rush, chasing one thing or another. That did give me the ability to react quickly to situations. Fast forward half a lifetime of experiences, I knew that I wanted to be more grounded, steady, …

記

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I’m a mad man traversing this wasteland. The sun scorches with invisible thermals that even birds burn. 一步一步 screams of mental anguish, 荊棘遍體 binding all the things I carry. 沒想過黑暗也可以是豔陽. No shadows but they drag on long and dark from my heart. I’m mad, burned by circumstance, burned by undernourishment, burned by 沙漠夜裡的冰風. 不一定要山脈才有peaks and valleys. Desolation of this desert wasteland produces the same whipsaw of edges. Jagged, 我還是向前走, I need to and I want to. Eyes up 我不在乎腳底, 我的心輕盈, 望著飄在遠方的雲. They are beckoning. 是不是有久未降臨的甘露? I don’t know 也沒有期待. I’m gazing towards where I need to be. Where I hope to be. 一切也不過如此 midway through this journey we call life 我並不迷失, having walked beyond the dark forest. 但我承認我還是會怕, 怕我看到曇花一現的 mirage. 我嘗過的甘露 might just be there beyond the horizon, under the cumulus. I can just feel the zephyr 安撫著傷疤, 帶走內心的 anguish. 就算真的是海市蜃樓 the clouds will still be there. 我也還是會繼續, 我不可能放棄 as I figure out how to shed these things that I carry.

Reflections 2024-2025

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This is way overdue. I had intended to put some ink to paper in January. This year, I want to try something different. I want to write in my natural state of mind, so my English readers, please bear with me as I switch to my inner bilingual universe. 這兩年應該算是我這一生中最tough最低潮的 period. Getting laid off without any notice or any support 是我想也沒想過的結果. The whole team in New York basically disappeared. 剩下的那位 I’m not going to talk about. If you know, you know. My personal life also changed pretty significantly. 住了7年半的家也搬了. I basically got forced out 因為房東想把房子收回. Yet, there was a verbal agreement that because they wanted me out as soon as possible, I can cut my lease short as soon as I found an appropriate place. 但搬的時候卻被要求要 finish the lease terms. I ended up paying two rents for two months. 最後連 security deposit 也不還我. This was after providing a glowing tenant recommendation to my new landlady. 我把 apartment當成自己家照顧 but this was how I got treated after being a model tenant for 7 years. Sometimes, life gives …

Ready/Unready

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Can you ever truly say that you are ready? What does it mean to be ready? I thought, I always thought, it means that you have prepared for scenarios. You have practiced, trained for what is coming. Yet, what is coming? Life, never comes in a straight line. When has a significant event in your life ever been something you can practice for? Everything, despite lessons from history, is unique when it occurs. As they say, “the only constant is change”. A reinterpretation, recombination, reformation of what we already know leads to something unexpected. Sometimes, you really do encounter something you never have before. I know I have many times. (Am I lucky or unlucky?) So how can you be ready? Perhaps being ready is a mindset. It means you recognize you are unready but you have the ability to adjust accordingly. Yet, how do you know you have the ability to adjust to something you have never encountered before? Maybe, we are all and always unready. Ready is just a framework in hindsight. When …

Uncertain Nightmares

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My mind is in a dark place, encroaching my nightmares every day. The dark is not quite the oppressive black veil that you can’t escape from. The sort of black so black it distorts light and sound. It’s not quite that. The darkness in my mind comes from the various closets and cabinets I have forgotten about. I have long lost the keys to them, after I sealed them shut. Yet, I now hear knocking on the old doors. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft with splinters echoing down from the farthest reaches of my remodeled halls of memory, over and over again. I feel my way along the walls, to find these lost doors down the hall, blackening by whatever is knocking behind them. The dark on the doors spreads like old mold, slowly creeping when I’m conscious and paying attention. It spreads faster like an infection when I drown myself with poison, dripping from little windows that peer into other worlds. I worry about the unaffected doors of newly built rooms. Touching a blackened door …

Why I Write

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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.

回家

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I must make decisions for regret For my decision isn’t mine The multitude of spacetime Allowed only in the silences of timespace Set forth By the past Formed By the present Limited By the future I made a decision to regret 拿著吸塵器 我打掃著似曾相識的客廳 一張黑沙發 石牆上一排欄杆 右前方廁所的燈亮著走廊 Brrrrrm om om om 就在這時 他們回來了 茶几上放下一桶切過的蘋果 表哥坐在左邊的書桌 繼續打著沒結束的電動 我收好坐在沙發的一邊 外婆微笑著 在旁看著電視 一起吃著那蘋果 How I longed to see her As I woke up I knew I will soon be back Next Thursday Then I remembered 原來一場夢 Time flows Right through your soul As the wind blows Softly through your cloths What is this feeling

The Years

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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 …

Ramblings

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In the dark of the night, under the faint city lights, my fervent thoughts whisper through my alcohol-soaked mind. My thoughts scream; nightmares that remain primordial and waiting to unveil. They linger, throbbing in the ebb and flow of my breathing. Deep inhale; a slow exhale creeping into focus. My thoughts chatter; an intricate description of a tomorrow with loved ones and passion projects to be. The futures I want to achieve, the verses I want to shape for my creative works – all dancing on the edges of my periphery and begging to be captured. Is it hate or regret? Is it hope? All I know is change. All I have is change. Two weeks here; a month there. I know you. I don’t know you. A fellow foreigner in a strange land but you left, just like the others, yet again. It’s restless. We both know how we must struggle to make a stand, to claim a place amongst the supposed numerous opportunities. We are framed. A year has passed. I chose to …