love letters from my 34th summer

If we were meant to
Know each other only in China
And our branches
Never again scrape against the same window,
Or even if they do,
I want you to remember
Us floating with the moon on the South China Sea.

While postcards from yourself
When you were young,
Pencil drawings of necks and ear lobes on napkins,
And other varied
And loose papers
Cram into the heavy gray cabinets of your memory,
Don’t let this scrap of a night flutter away.

Don’t lose the five of us making our way outside,
And squeezing past street vendors
Selling lamb on a stick
And past the row of parked mopeds,
And into the muggy tightness of that taxi
At three in the morning and asking for
The beach outside of town.

Of that tiny red taxi bumping to the sea,
Bursting at it bolts and door hinges
With all our knees, elbows, shoulders and shins.

And how the sea, duly impressed with our
Stripped-down boldness,
Made molds of ten feet in the soft sand
Before we three Americans
And two Chinese
Flung ourselves into its salty yawn.

While the rest of Haikou tossed and turned,
The warm tide embraced us
Before carrying us out to a raft
Anchored at dreaming distance from the shore.

Maybe we all met one week before that
So we could reflect the moon together
That night while lying on that raft.
Our eyes were open like traps,
Our bodies dripped with the moonlit sea,
Our breathes were heavy with wonder,
And the air was filled with the names of
Constellations
Whispered in unison
First in English
Then in Chinese.

I took the following pictures several months ago. Because I was busy planting mint, weeding lettuce, and sleeping at my friend’s farm I haven’t had the chance to post them until now. You have all seen pictures of helicopters. I am sure some of you have seen pictures of cheese and crackers. However I am quite confident nobody has seen pictures of helicopters and cheese and crackers together.

Why am I so confident? Because I invented the genre. Go to Flickr. There is no Helicopter/Cheese/Cracker group. One reason these pictures are so rare is because people never have them all together at the same time or the same place. You could Photoshop those things together, but that would pathetic. Photoshop makes my blood boil, so don’t get me started. Anyway, think about it. Lot’s of people have had crackers and helicopters, or cheese and crackers, but never all three at once. And if they did, it wouldn’t occur to them to make a life-changing-word-view-altering-statement via avant guard photography like it did me.

My mom told me once that I had an eye for photography, and I thought she was just being nice because she was my mom. But no, as it turns out, she has an eye for people that have an eye for photography. She’s right, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.

Another person on the boat, who shall be known as The Near-sighted Medic, saw my genius and decided that since cheese and crackers and helicopters was my thing, he would be a pioneer in the world of sliced sausage and helicopters (see picture below). The results were uninspiring. One of my friends did get a picture of me holding up his rainbow-shaped sliced sausage. I look like I am trying to help because I am nice, but really I am thinking: “I am thirty-two years old, I am holding a piece of rainbow-shaped sausage as a helicopter flies away for a Near-sighted Medic, I don’t even have health insurance, and I will die alone.” Later I told The Near-sighted Medic I wouldn’t be able to talk to him anymore because I didn’t support his vision, plus I didn’t like him making light of my new life’s work. I still had two more weeks out there with him. Thankfully it wasn’t awkward because he couldn’t see me unless I was within a two feet radius of his thick glasses.

I have lost a lot of weight since that picture, so I don’t need a lot of people commenting how fat I am now. I saw I had problem and stopped eating so much cheese. I am almost back to my normal/sexy weight. Oh and just so you don’t think I am limited in my cheese and cracker genre, have a look at this fast boat, cheese and cracker picture. Coming soon to a fine gallery near you.

These days I find myself back on a boat. Work, despite harshing my mellow, is a welcome distraction from deep inside my brain. It seems, sometimes, when I am sitting around doing nothing, waiting to go back to work, I think about the beautiful mess/ ugly structure my life has become. I am happy to working again after over two months off. Seeing the words “happy” and “work” so close together makes me wonder what I am talking about.

So the plan is to work through the summer and maybe some of the fall. I am not sure yet. Then I will move to Chengdu, China. There in Chengdu, China I will resume Doom in China. I will finish my novel about China. I will also be more diligent about updating this. I hope.

So this boat is pretty nice. I have a cabin to myself, with internet in-cabin. The gym is huge, so I have been carefully getting ripped. The vessel is large. The crew seems laid back. I am not certain how long I will be out here, but at least I am on such a nice big boat.

I want to thank those of you who patiently come to my little coffee-stained page hidden in the back of the internet. I realize I don’t reward you often enough with updates, inspired writing, or exciting news. I do appreciate your kind words and the knowledge that a few people I have never met show up occasionally to read my writing. Thanks.