[ o v e r f l o w ] @tales-from-the-roof - Tumblr Blog

late night pastiche of cliches and lies

When the rain falls as hard as it does in the night in Taipei, it sounds like the world is falling to pieces and cascading onto rusting corrugated steel sheets above me.

I am thinking of you, but not because of the rain, not because this hard rain reminds me of that storm-drenched summer night. I am thinking of you because I am awake at 4 a.m. and I cannot sleep.

So I am flipping through all of the things that I have left unthought because it is not productive to think about those things during the day. I came across you by accident in that untended jumble, the mental detritus I have not had the time or the courage to sift through.

Now I am thinking about the downpour that took us by surprise in the gravel parking lot as we ran to the porch. You were radiant, backlit by the violent lavender flash of lightning. I kissed you because it seemed like a thing to do in the warm-sweet grass-scented rain and somehow you smelled fresher than an entire summer spent in Appalachia.

tales-from-the-roof

The air conditioner rumbles and churns through the late-summer night, and I’m listening to sad songs for dirty lovers.* My apartment sounds like half-drunk glasses of boxed wine, unspoken resentments, and the disappointment of unfulfilled promise.

It’s been six-and-a-half years since that rainstorm in Taipei, and I am thinking of a different you. Things change all the while, and yet they don’t, do they?

I am thinking of you, because of course I am. I’m allowed that, just over a month removed from a phone call I half-expected from you, half-expected to make myself. It’s funny, how the creeping suspicion that we weren’t going to work doesn’t do a damn thing to lessen this hurt.

That’s what they say when you’re about to take a punch. Tense up, brace yourself. It’ll hurt less that way, when you expect it. I’ve never taken a punch, so I don’t know if it’s true, but it doesn’t seem to be here. So here I am, lurching and gutted after having stared down this sucker punch in slow-motion as it came my way.

I am thinking of that night we drove to Asheville last year; when we had oysters and ran into your friend serving at the restaurant, and how we puzzled over how you knew her and what her name was; when we went to the Top of the Monk and ate bite-sized cold cuts and cheap cheese and potato chips from an old card catalog cabinet and your raven hair, full lips, and devilish smirk said you have no idea what you’re walking into, and I felt then — and knew later — that you were right. I didn’t have a damn clue what was coming, but it didn’t matter. I was bedeviled. Or in love. Just caught up.

Now I am thinking of how, somewhere along the way, it started to matter to me. Life came at you like a sledgehammer. One big blow, followed by another big blow, followed by another, with just enough space in between for you to see the glimmer of hope that would be obliterated next.

I’m thinking of how I tried to be good for you through that, and how you tried the same. And how, at some point, trying just didn’t seem to be enough. Or maybe that we just tried the wrong things. I’d like to think I kept at it, but maybe that’s just the idiot in me: doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results. I think I just wanted to hang on and see that devilish smirk again: full of mischief and promise.

You were always more intuitive, so maybe you stopped trying before I could admit the idiot’s ways because you saw the writing on the wall. I want to admonish you, say you gave up too soon, why did you give up? But who’s to say? If the ship is sinking, it doesn’t matter much to the ship when you get off. But it sure as hell matters to you: if you wait until the bitter end, you’ll get dragged down in the sinking ship’s suction. Better to get off and get clear.

I tried to drag us towards some imaginary finish line in the distance, when those sledgehammer blows would stop and you could nurture that hope and let it become something you didn’t have to hide and protect. You could let that your cloak of cynicism and disdain slip off because you wouldn’t need that armor anymore. But we never got there, and maybe we never would have.

I’m thinking of not knowing if we would have ever gotten there — would it have been possible? Maybe if we were both trying, if we were both on the same page. And maybe at some point, we were. But at the end...I guess that’s why they call it an end.

I have to say this, because it is the dumb hope of every desperate person who’s been recently dumped: I want for us to have a second chance. I hope we get a second chance. I want it to work.

And I know, too, that it’s horseshit. We won’t work, not as we are now. Maybe we never will, but I guess there’s no deadline for second chances.

So here I am, just over a month after your call, a year removed from that night in Asheville when I fell in love with you without even knowing it. I’m still staggering from that slow-motion sucker punch, but my feet are finding themselves more and more by the day.

* Not The National album; I’ve just always liked their turn of phrase. It always seemed a little tragic, a little inevitable in that tragedy, and just the right amount of disdain for the unfolding tragedy.

#personal #writing #clair

dinner parties with church ladies

Emotional vulnerability is not something I've ever been comfortable with for a number of reasons: cultural practices, toxic masculinity, a desire to be taken seriously, the outsize importance of self-sufficiency in a first-gen immigrant family with a limited support system...

It's something I've been working on (and will have to continue working on), but earlier tonight, I was reminded of a reason I'd long since forgotten.

I didn't grow up speaking English as my first language, so of course, I lacked knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. But packaged with that was a lack of cultural fluency.

That rears its head in a lot of ways, but one I remember is this: when I got made fun of in grade school, it was usually about my cultural background. And there was a period of time where I understood from context that what was being said was intended to wound, but I couldn't understand the actual content of the joke.

There's a deep kind of shame I associated with being made fun of, but not understanding why I was the butt of a joke. I mean, how stupid do you have to be if you need someone to explain to you why you’re being laughed at?

I think I reacted by culturally acclimating as quickly as possible: by reading and observing and learning everything. I figured if I’m going to be a joke, I damn well am going to understand it at least.

And that turned into a desire to excel, because what can people say about you when you’re better than them? And so maybe that turned into something like ambition, which in turn has hopefully morphed from a toxic response into a healthier drive for self-improvement and constant learning.

Earlier tonight, my mother hosted a dinner at her home for some of her friends from church. It was an insane meal: dumplings, mapo tofu, a seafood stew, pork chops, a Japanese-style potato salad... It was a meal that took ages to make, and tons of effort and labor.

So when her friends started cracking jokes like, “So is everything drenched in soy sauce?” Or asked me, half-joking, half-derogatory, if my mother was a Tiger Mom. Or talked about how beautiful and ancient Chinese culture was, but that they wouldn’t want to actually live there, I got upset.

And what made me even more upset is that they were making these jokes at the expense of my mother, who treated these culturally ignorant statements like honest inquiries.

I’d like to think my reaction was instinctual and protective -- that I wanted to shield my mother from that kind of abuse. But I know it’s also, in part, a reaction to my own remembered shame of being a punchline I didn’t comprehend.

I don’t think my mother’s friends intended to be malicious, but that, if anything, was even more illustrative of why my walls are up, why I deflect. You can’t trust anyone not to diminish your core being, so why even leave an opening for that?

#personal

myrtle beach 2018

i left my phone in the hotel room. even so, my pockets feel heavy, sticking to my thighs from humidity and sweat as i walk down the boardwalk. it’s quiet, mostly just wind blowing across the atlantic, the beach, the dunes, and whistling around the high-rise beachfront hotels. as i walk under balconies, the wind brings voices from above — fragments of conversation that should maybe leave me curious, but in reality just blend in with the windy white noise.

i’m agitated. i’m walking quickly down the boardwalk, camera in hand, simultaneously chasing the remaining golden hour light and running away from my phone upstairs. without my phone, it doesn’t matter how much i’m thinking of her. i can’t do anything about it. it’s a lesson i’m trying to teach myself — to leave things be and accept that i can’t do anything about this breakup.

(but god do i miss her right now.)

i’m thinking about how i’m going to write this down when i get back into my hotel room. it reminds me of what i did in kenting years ago, when i wrote about a girl i was no longer with, on a windy beach, in the fading light of summer. (and hoped that girl would see what i wrote and know it was about her.)

and i’m pissed, because i don’t think that writing about this girl on this windy beach is actually helping me understand what i feel, or how i feel. it’s vanity, an indulgence in sentimentality and nostalgia that’ll no doubt send me into a spiral. and i can’t afford that, because i’m working mustang week the next three days and i know i’m going to need all of my emotional reserves just to get through. but i’m going to write anyways because goddamnit what else do you do when you’re alone at a beach at night.

for the most part, i’ve avoided nostalgia and wallowing for a month. i can afford a little of it, can’t i?

i stop on the boardwalk and stop down my lens to f/8 — i’m trying to get a sunstar off a streetlight. my breathing slows to steady the camera for this 1/5 second exposure.

my mind slows.

my heart slows.

#personal #clair

electric-daisy-forest

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dieworkwear

Seven New Brands I’ve Been Watching

I love finding new and interesting brands. And luckily with fashion, the pace is fast enough for there always to be something exciting around the corner. For the last two years, I’ve been doing these posts on new brands I’m watching – and with every post, the number of companies I want to talk about seems to grow. I’ve worked to keep these lists down to seven, but this one could have easily stretched to ten.

Granted, not everyone here is actually new. Some are actually old, heritage companies that have been around for ages – they’re just new to me (and hopefully, you). The scope is also more on contemporary casualwear, not tailored clothing, but if your interests are as broad as mine, maybe you’ll find something to like here as well.

(To see previous years’ posts, you can click here and here).

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