PART I: Beijing, February 2024. Printed for daddy’s day, June 2024.
春节: Part I
Leave a reply
All Posts Tagged ‘Portrait’
Scotland, from a million years ago
Almost ran off a cliff, fell into the gravity of a time-bending book festival on the Isle of Mull, gorged on the Scottish delight that is blood sausage, witnessed in the love and union of Camille and Gwen, met *the* Highland cattle, shared time and space and laughs and life’s deepest ruminations, and, as always, photographs with friends, old & new alike.
November, 2022.
A love letter
In February, one day after my 30th birthday, I received a package in the mail. I opened it to find a small wooden box, small but sturdy, with a chunky, lego-like heart magnetically affixed to its detachable lid. Underneath the lid was a digital screen with instructions on how to configure this “love box,” which I would soon come to learn is an ethereal portal to capture love notes, buzzing with energetic anticipation as new messages wait to be opened.
After a *difficult* year having extinguished the last of my spiritual reserves, splitting from a love I thought would last a lifetime, and slowly, helplessly watching myself wither into a vacuous casing of my former self, family and friends rallied to show up for me in ways that I neither felt deserving of, able to reciprocate, nor previously imagined possible. From my hard-ass mom offering her most tender shoulder to cry on and attentive ears to listen as I recited the same frustrated incantations over and over again, to Dean who created boundless space to hold me during grief, lifelessness, and utter despair, continuously brining me back to myself after years of slow decay, to my brothers, who gave me faith in myself, in the life I’m pursuing, and hope for a beautiful future, to my dad, who infused in me the strength, tenderness, and care that we are capable of, to my dearest friends, Lisa, Kasey, Nick, Haley, Tessy, Carolyn, Andrea, Louie, who buoyed me when I was sinking with strong and understanding hearts, an abundance of warmth and laughter, and a feeling of home, to the Dream Maker’s circle, a group of 16 women with whom I explored the depths of my being and reimagined what a thoughtful, unapologetic, “big” existence could be, to new community who has shown me the grace and power of friendship, and of what is possible when we care for each other, even when it isn’t easy or convenient.
So it came as little surprise, but with an ever melting heart, that I received a literal love box at my door for a momentous year—momentous for bringing me to my 30th year, and for seeing me through my darkest hour. What came as a bigger surprise though, was to learn that it had been sent by my dad (after rejecting my mom’s appraisal of it as “just a gimmick” no less)—my dad, an upbeat and supportive but altogether unemotional person, who would prefer to shoot the shit about work and fitness regimens than feelings and sentimental ruminations.
Over the past month, I’ve received dozens of love notes, the overwhelming majority from my mom, who sends me heart littered love notes, uplifting greetings, and empowering mantras, among a myriad of other loving digital mementos. Scattered between these notes have been messages from Anne, Neal, Michael, and, of course, my dad, who, unlike all other authors, sends his notes anonymously, on a black background, bookended by a series of red hearts that fill the borderless screen.
In more recent weeks, the frequency of these notes, in particular from my parents, has waned. This is perhaps because I’ve been traveling but perhaps more realistically, I had thought, because the novelty had worn off. But today, as I frantically hurried to wind down the work day with a frenzy of messages and to-do lists, I heard my little box buzz in urgent commotion. I hastily ripped off the lid, expecting to read a sweet scribble overlaying an endearingly kitschy background, before getting back to work. What I saw instead, I instantly recognized as my dad’s calling card—no author’s name, black background, white text, adorned by red hearts. The message read “Hi Sweetie! I’m listening to a podcast the dream hunter. I realized that through your life, you have been your own dream maker to be where you are! Keep dreaming and dream big! And you are our dream! ❤ ❤ ❤ [ ❤ ad infinitum]”
(Beat)
My relationship with my dad has been far from perfect throughout my life, often times far from intimate, and certainly complicated by life’s messiness, and subject to its mistakes and lessons. Yet, or perhaps for this reason, this message hit me deep in the gut, for its beauty, its simplicity, and its recognition. So many women, myself included, suffer the violence of men in their lives, whether it be at their physical hands, or the more silent cruelty of their thoughtlessness, carelessness, selfishness, ego, inability to express emotion in healthy ways, if at all, and so on. To say that the same has not been true of my dad, albeit in what feels like a far removed past, would be an omission of certain realities, as would saying that it hasn’t complicated my relationship to myself, to men, and to being in partnership with them. And so to read these words is to mend wounds accumulated over years of self-doubt suffered at the hands of indignity after indignity. It is to feel relief and protection from the constant onslaught that the world, including those I’ve most foolishly cherished over myself, would have me believe is my lunacy, my misstep, my deficiency. It is to feel solid ground under my feet, so that I may stand tall in my conviction of character and self, without judgement or reprieve. It is to be nurtured and honored, truly, by the love of a man who means so much to me, after facing the brutality of those about whom I had believed the same.
2022 has been the year of the divine. Manifesting my deepest intentions, finding community in women who possess and radiate the undeniably divine, and rebuilding a life that finally feels like my own. I cannot believe in the coincidence that, despite speaking very little with my dad about this journey, he writes about being a dream maker (the literal name of the women’s group with whom I continue to work), and about dreaming “big,” a mantra repeated in this same group. I cannot believe in the coincidence that he writes this to me after months of committing these very ideals to my life—unbeknownst to him— sometimes faltering, but all the more proud. In a year that continues to surprise me, I’m overcome by a deep feeling of awe and alignment, one that’s supported by the big love around me, engulfing me as it pushes me forward.
To more big love in 2022 and beyond,
For All Them Mamas
On Ze Sweden Beaches
On Ze Hong Kong Beaches
Occupy Central with Love and Peace
It’s not easy to always have a clear picture, partly because information is distorted by those who own it, partly because misapprehensions are made by those who don’t live it. So as best as I understand it, this is what’s been happening. In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to China after 150 years of British rule with the promise that in 2017, it would be able to democratically elect a leader, a function of the “one country, two systems” principle that acknowledges Hong Kong as a semi-autonomous state that, unlike Beijing, is not communist. But as of this year and breaking its promise, China decided that a committee from Beijing was still necessary to appoint its leader (presumably to carryout the interests of the mainland). This violation of basic recognition and political trust rippled through the region as people united in their outrage and took to the streets. Their position stands that Hong Kong citizens deserve the right to a democratic election and society—a right to which they were promised. Instead, they’ve been faced with mounting force tactfully used to villainize and silence the movement. On our fourth day in Hong Kong, we met two 20 year old students walking in Admiralty, a zone of peaceful protesting bustling with door to door single occupancy tents decorating a major highway. They were passing out yellow ribbons for individuals to wear in solidarity with the movement. A few minutes later and our interest piqued, they were wide-eyed spewing their passions and frustrations about the government conspired police perpetrations against the protestors, urging us to stay away from more dangerous areas of protest where the police employ third party triade members to ambush peaceful protesters, often times with harassment and violence. They explained that the peaceful movement was being falsely demonized for refusing reconciliation efforts when in fact it was government representatives that had purposefully missed scheduled negotiations. They confided their concerns for the future—the growing class divide, the increasing unaffordability, and the fissuring culture of Hong Kong. They lamented on the immigration policy that has allowed a fast growing population of mainland immigrants to overwhelm the Hong Kong population, resulting in fewer jobs for Hong kong citizens and exorbitant housing prices. The students worry about their present lives, their future selves, and how they’ll get a job and place to live after college. They seek to be heard, considered, and validated as a member of their own community, condemning the abuse of power and failure of mainland China to recognize Hong Kong’s right to democracy and autonomy.
A few days earlier in Beijing, my brother and I met for the first time, and my mom for her third, an old friend of my grandmother’s. Uncle Feng Cheng was wistful and stoic, as evidenced from his entirely unexpected yet poignant Christmas letter that we received last Christmas to our Michigan address after decades of lost contact. Dressed each day in tan khaki slacks, a navy wind breaker, and Nike tennis shoes that predate the ’90s, he recounted stories of his impoverished youth, his love of Jane Austen books, and harangued somewhat sarcastically and somewhat seriously about the power and inevitability of cats to mystically possess their owners. We spent an evening in his home, which is sparse but well adorned– turn a corner and you’ll find a collection of classical music records even though there is nothing with which to play them because he has given both of his record players away to friends. The small details, and the big ones—his overt and unfaltering generosity, his openness and warmth, his calm and collectedness reveal a whole, contemplative and earnest person. In the following days in Beijing and then on our travels back to Hong Kong, we shared brief but resonant discussions of his views about the protests (of which he was not in support but neither vocally opposed). He recounted fleeing with his father to Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation of China at a time when there were only roughly a million people living in Hong Kong. Desolate, removed, and extremely poor, they lived on the beach in a small hut. From an early age he began to memorize lines of English literature on his way to and from school, eventually memorizing whole books at a time. Finally at 16, he left for the states to attend Harvard, and came back two years later to Hong Kong where he’s lived and worked at Hong Kong University ever since. He reflects on this with a certain air of melancholy, emphasizing that he grew up in very dire circumstances but insisting that hard work, above everything else, created opportunity for him. It’s with this conviction that he believes that everyone deserves an opportunity, and, defined by his experience, believes that mainland China is in a very good position to provide everyone with that chance. To him, he sees the economic boom and prosper of his country, a country that not long ago was vastly poor and rural—the empowerment of his people and reform that has transformed living standards, social rights, infrastructure, education, and global involvement & prominence. He believes in the strength of China, in its values and politics that have given rise to a rebirth of a faltering country. He believes in its future for him, for Mainland, and for Hong Kong. His experience is as genuine as the students’ handing out ribbons of solidarity in Admiralty, both equally as valid and supported by experience and passion.
I personally don’t know enough of the history or current political climate to make a claim as to who’s more “right” or “wrong,” but see the purpose in at least trying to understand the emotional and intellectual reasons that affect both sides of this or any conflict, because undoubtedly if you don’t no progress will ever be made.
NYFW and somebody find me my hair crimper
FIFTH AVE
MAMA MAMA
The Grown Up Kids 