All posts tagged: Life

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 …

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

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 …

Discourse on Fate and Free Will

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Some ten years ago, Nathan and I were sitting on the floor of our college dorm in St. Louis, waxing poetic about nothing and everything at 3 AM. On this particular night, which I remember vividly, we were focused on the topic of fate, destiny, and free will. Over the years, I kept thinking about what I described and my thoughts have changed much on the subject. Personally, fate, destiny, and free will all fit together as pieces to the greater whole of life. So how do they fit together? The idea is really quite simple, despite debating all night about it. Fate is generally the idea of things happening as preordained by some higher power. Destiny is that specific or necessary events will happen – set points in life like having three kids. An apt analogy would be a book. Fate is the existence of that book while destiny is the chapters of that book. Free will, then, is the unwritten or forgotten details in between the chapters. This seems contradictory, because is free …

This is Not the End

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You die at sunrise; you died in your sleep. Every night, you dream. Every time, you fall in a little bit. Six inches under, six inches deep. Just as the sun is below the horizon, your destiny is in the East. Rise from the last day’s ashes; you find yourself sweating, unable to breathe. Is that fear I see? Yesterday’s knowledge congeals into baggage. Today is another day for mistakes. Tomorrow, you know nothing. So you died in your dream, over and over again, chasing what you want to believe. What you want to believe is the gravity holding you down, the air above. What you want to believe is tomorrow. Tomorrow, the sun will rise. Yet, at sunrise you are dead. You see nothing in the light. You see nothing as the night fades from your blinds. There is only one thing you see. One person you actually see. Who am I seeing? Who I am seeing? The one person you see, staring back blindly, blinking. The face is familiar, the smile is peculiar. …

Letters on Tues(Thurs)days – Departures

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Dear Wilton, The shift in delivery from Tuesday to Thursday has been unintentional. With the holidays coming up, my schedule has been packed full, both inside and outside of work. In many ways holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, are about reunions and returns, however I wish to take up the topic of departures. It is the opposite side of the same coin; to return and reunite means that you are departing from somewhere, some place you currently are. Therefore, it is not necessarily an unrelated or opposing topic. Finally, I am sure it is a poignant topic for you, as our family returns to Taiwan after 20 years abroad. It is always hard to imagine leaving a place for good, or even for a few years. You might not know it, but bonds are easily developed and can quickly thicken. Like roots, they hold you in place and they want to hold you in place. Yet, you will find as you approach and finally go into your twenties, departures become more frequent. The bonds you develop …

The Bus (in America)

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It’s always darker in here. There are days without light. Even those loud colors are subdued on the upholstery. Then there are the bangs, shocks and impacts, direct hits of the road rattling up backs and spines. Rain dampens the floor with sun baked crumbs, gums and who knows what left behind, left forgotten. — The morning swell through the doors of untold routines and responsibilities. These weary eyes and ears time for signs to disembark. Yes, all is trapped, on routes dictated by stops. Outside the window, single passengers throttle by. It struggles to navigate the sea of more nimble cars. It struggles to maintain a timely pace. — Waiting could mean five minutes or twenty, with a near miss. Sometimes, a short sprint is required. It doesn’t wait. A suit and tie is rare among sweaters and hoodies, just as an unwashed shirt always lingers in the corners. It’s a decisive non-decision, collectively by those whose only way to get somewhere, is trapped together with some bodies. – Fu Lien Hsu Oct 27, 2016

Letters on Tuesdays – Defining Success

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Image used cause my friend, pictured above, is a very successful man. I am sure you remember him. Dear Wilton, Last week I wrote about failure and accepting failure. In light of the previous discussion, it would make sense to discuss success. Yet, I do not believe we ever talked about how you defined success or what you saw as success. I remember when I was your age, thirteen years ago, I believed that success consisted of a few things: the best grades in class, the most friends, and the most athletic. Some of my friends, if they knew what I thought, would probably laugh at how absurdly unsuccessful I was and, to be honest, I am chuckling to myself right now at how absurd  my definition of success was. Yet, this might very well be how you are seeing success right now: getting that A in class, getting into that boarding school. You see, like failure with its internal and external components, success can either be defined by you or by people other than you. …

Letters on Tuesdays – Failure is Inevitable

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Dear Wilton, Today, I want to write to you about failure. This is related to the first letter I wrote you two weeks ago, but this time I want to directly tackle your fear of failure. The timing is, perhaps, impeccable as you make your way with our parents to interview at various boarding schools. You have mentioned how you feared that you are not good enough, that you are going to fail to impress the admissions at the various boarding schools. Well, the truth is, we all face failures throughout our lives. Whether it be failing to convince our parents to buy us that toy when we were a kid, to failing to be accepted by our dream school when we were in high school, to failing to land that “perfect” job when we graduated, or to failing to complete a project to satisfaction when we are worked. You see, failure comes from having expectations. Expectations are standards of achievements we set for ourselves and sometimes for others. Not that there is anything wrong …