#yujia21

[yujia21]

ten polaroids on my wall, as if faded light dissipates slower. - Apr 2019

[yujia21]

what remains of a year

late spring When I missed the bus for the airport that passed only once an hour, you gallantly offered to carry my bags down the hill to the train station. Ten minutes later, the RER pulled up, and hand on luggage I paused, unsure of protocol when we were saying goodbye for the summer. 'Quand même', you smiled, shrugging - all the same, this easy phrase that I would come to miss when conversing in my mother tongue - and then leaned in to touch cheeks.

mid-winter The s in desert has a z sound and in dessert an s sound - it was perhaps in the school canteen, this conversation, where you thought for a while before finding the mnemonic - because desserts are sugary. Another time, leaning against the fridge, I complained that I could never tell if I was saying 'deux' or 'douze' when it went in front of a vowel. While you did the dishes, you found the phrase to repeat - 'two dozen eggs, deux douzaine d'oeufs'.

autumn The details of that inconsequential quarrel are gone now. What I remember was standing in front of your off white door, and how incredibly hard it was to knock. This, too - your eyes when you turned the doorknob and saw me. I couldn't get any work done, I blurted out, and the only thing I could do was clean. Your features collapsed into a relieved, rueful smile, and you gestured to a meticulously tidy desk that mirrored mine.

early summer Dusk settled over the lake and the fireflies danced out. With startled joy we ran down to the waterside, wanting childlike to be among them. In their slow hypnotic blinking, we were momentarily caught up in some web of mystic quietness. It's beautiful, you finally murmur, and I find myself nodding, forgetting the threatening rain, the crackling campfire, the soaked tent, and only breathing in this soft stolen wilderness.

[yujia21]

20 haikus from Japan

Kyoto | 京都 -  temples cloaked in rain only the maples have turned their leaves yellow red 

Kobe | 神戸 - sunset on the pier fickle earth, how did you once tremble, trample this?

Himeiji | 姫路 - princess, your prayers hang still, like sun beams in this wooden corridor

Kurashiki | 倉敷- slide open the doors leave a space to contemplate flowers and a scroll

Okayama | 岡山 - melancholy caws resound over these black walls auguring autumn Miyajima (Komagabayashi Peak) | 宮島 (駒ケ林) - creeping through the trees a deer on the path startles 'ah, sumimasen' 

Hiroshima | 広島 - in the aftermath the photographer's shutter shuddered, could not click Hagi | 萩 - part the blue shadows to reveal soft hues of fall city tucked in time

Akiyoshidai | 秋吉台 - the long grass rustles. anxious cricket, stubborn flies: noon on the plateau. 

Onomichi | 尾道 - city guarded by cats with casual disregard perched on sacred shrines   

Shimanami Kaido | しまなみ海道 - muscles warmed by sun and gentle uphill climbs. breathe: tangy sea salt air. Matsuyama (Dogo Onsen) | 松山 (道後温泉) - sink into water's warm embrace. poets of old, your words linger still. Takamatsu | 高松 - unexpectedly childlike joy of ambling down unknown city streets

Naoshima | 直島 - wander in the wind through abandoned houses saved by an artist's eye Konpira-san | こんぴらさん - early morning mist dissipates when I descend down these old stone steps Mount Tsurugi | 剣山 - ask, and I would walk till the hills beneath our feet dissolve into clouds. Iya Valley | 祖谷渓 - two old vine bridges creaking duets in the wind river rushes by

Koya-san | 高野山 - freshly carved grave stones long forgiven by soft moss vestiges of time

Nara | 奈良 - fog like wool twirled through clusters of old firs. over the hill, grazing deer.

Osaka | 大阪 - billboards, vendor cries, wafts of fried food in the air - overwhelmed senses

- September 2018

[yujia21]

Jonah’s Song

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; All your waves and breakers have swept over me. Ps 42:7

In the humid jungle my thoughts are silenced by the steady flow of mountain water spilling over cliffs on every side. We stand witness at the bottom of a funnel to the heavens. I have been here once before,

in the middle of the desert, scaling wind-carved monuments swathed in ephemeral sand. Giving sand, forgiving sand. The night-soaked dunes rise and sink beneath my feet. A sea of saturated stars. I think of the prophet in the fish

in the belly of the ocean, running till surrender at the edifice of dawn. Some days, I want to run till submersion in deep forgotten grace. What can cradle my all-incessant longing, this groaning earthsong? I dream of waves. Fearful, hopeful, wonderful waves.

[yujia21]

August goes with surprising alacrity

August goes with surprising alacrity, and suddenly we are left with four months short of another done year.

'This time last year', passers-by lament, tethering memories to themselves with nostalgia. This time last year, we were making inevitable plans. 

I am good at making plans. But this waiting frustrates me, and I do not know how to number my impatience for these in-between-times, these in-between-things. 

So I start a collection of countable things. Two hundred strokes to lap the reservoir, eight semi-crochets in a piano sonata, three eggs cracked into choux pastry.

Then I make batches of pastry cream, send a letter, read a book. Some days, doing the necessary means nothing more than lying on the grass as the sunlight goes. 

[yujia21]

terap

Every so often, life in the city is fighting to breathe in beauty. Once, on a whim and with an hour to spare, I waited for the dying sun to render grace. Head propped back on arm, the mere act of stretching out on a wooden park bench felt like some form of quiet rebellion. Fittingly, it was without much fanfare that the show began: spiderweb-light flung graciously over the canopy of a terap tree, the last gift of the waning day; velvet seconds dipping the broad oval leaves translucent enough to reveal every vein. Under the golden-green patchwork quilt lay I, sole witness to this ephemeral concert on the age old hilltop fort. I find myself suddenly buoyed by an unsung insouciance. Here it is, a gentle chiding and resetting, that what I consider luxury is perhaps after all necessity. The city's best kept secret is this - a cloud strewn sky is superior company.

-

Mar 2020

[yujia21]

A young director makes a film

On Funan, a film set in the Khmer Rouge regime, directed by Denis Do, produced by Les Films d’Ici. Winner of Cristal du long métrage at Annecy International Animation Film Festival (2018)

When exile is in your blood, it is inevitable that your work should be informed of it. This is how it begins - as your only way of participating in past family lore. Over time, of course, it becomes a homage to your mother's tenacity and her first love's courage, then a gift of closure to your older brother, who you suspect has never quite forgiven his father for dying to give them life away from the despotic rule of a ravenous regime. You did not grow up knowing the sweet juice of mangoes in perpetual heat, yet the paddy and pepper fields flourish unbidden under your pen and paper, and perhaps, perhaps this is reconciliation calling from beyond an unmarked rainforest grave. Because here are the repercussions: you cross the ocean to where your brother cannot bear to set foot again. You seek out animators and artists, young men and women who in a gentler world could have been your childhood playmates. They tease the story in your heart to life and bring colour to a world they know, drawn from your visiting eyes. The slow unfolding of one family's history into two dimensional animation is unexpectedly healing for them, too. After all, these threads are ravelled around the notes of sorrow in their mothers' cooking, could well be the reason why their grandfathers never sing. In the end, the film premieres in your mother tongue. Behind every line is your mother's tongue, echoing in a subtle double, for now only audible to your ears. Civil war, let alone civil war in the ochre tones of a cursive script, is not easy to sell. But at a film festival you overhear a girl, her heart half lost behind this same history blocked by bloody walls, half sprouted from this country you both call home, call home. Tears in her voice, she apologizes for all the stories she has never heard. Some lives are too horror-bound to be put into words, even in explanation to your own children. In this sun-soaked lakeside city, your film will go on to clinch the highest accolades. For you, though, the best prize is the mountain breeze coming in from empires east. It carries pride and love softly twined into a breath, a whisper from the indomitable fallen, who will not yet be forgotten. You too, far-born child, you too are family.

-

Apr 2020

[yujia21]

Here are the things that will always be yours

-

March 2020