Chat on Fictionaut Blog

Susan Tepper talked to me about "Last Night On Oil Street" in this Monday Chat on Fictionaut Blog. It's a great conversation and it'll tell you something about Hong Kong too, if you're interested in my town. I hope you'll read it if you have a moment. Thanks!

Where You're Calling From

I think some people have checked up on this blog to see if I'm around/okay after I posted the news of my aunt's death on Facebook on Tuesday. Thank you, if you're one of these people.

I've been confined to bed more than anything else. High fever, chilled all over 24/7, coughing my lungs out and the doctor was worried that I might get pneumonia. Most of my family has fallen ill but I was the hardest hit of us all. Now, after sleeping most of the past days away, I'm still coughing and breathing funny and once I open my mouth to speak, I feel like I could choke. I can hardly eat.

This is really strange. All I had wanted to do was to clean up my flat, get some sleep, trim my hair, read, do some normal things. Now normality will have to wait some time longer. It's raining and chilly outside and when I need to go out, I'll have to wear a fluffy warm jacket and bring an umbrella.

At the Hospital

From left to right: me, not wearing any make-up for the day; Grandma, you can see she's feeling kind of sad; my eldest aunt Carmen, who turns 62 this year, likes to jokes, swears a lot when someone gets on her nerves; Patricia, who's dying; Sandy, Patricia's twin sister, who turns 49 in a month. She had been crying before this photo was taken; Jade, my second eldest aunt, gym freak in her early 50's who does Thai-boxing; the woman in a red jacket, my father's girlfriend; Sandy's daughter, my cousin, Mandy, 22-year-old who looks 16. You can click to enlarge the photo.

This is going to be a black-hearted post.

1. How do the women in my family look so young, esp. Carmen who smoked for 30 years, I have no idea.

2. Finally, I have a photo to prove how ugly my father's girlfriend is. If you're my friend in real life, you know I'm really laid-back about people's looks - it means very little to me - and it's very rare that I'd use the word 'ugly' on anyone. I dislike this woman quite a lot for the following reasons:

-The first time I met her at a family dinner years ago, she was talking about taking Patricia to some Buddhist temple. The Buddhism wasn't what bothered me--it was the way she tried to make it sound like there was a 'special connection' between Patricia and herself with that 'shared enlightenment' when Patricia was nodding out of politeness. My family is a bunch of straight-shooting folks - if you're here, you're welcome; eat, talk, do what you like. Just don't give us any crap or pretend. 

-She's dumbness personified. My father calls her dumb, too. My entire family appreciates her as a kind-hearted person who cares for my father, then agrees she's very dumb--only a dumb woman will love my father at this point in time.

When my family rushed to see Patricia in the hospital last month, my father's girlfriend was there, too. Right in front of everyone, she started stroking Patricia's hair and looked at her lovingly as if Patricia was a baby--who, at that moment, was a skeleton trapped in plastic tubes in a hospital bed with no voice. There, my father's girlfriend launched into this speech about going to see Chinese opera after Patricia had recovered--that she must not lose the battle, blah blah blah. I wanted to smash this woman's Pekingese dog face with a baseball bat and throw her out of the window. Or at least slap her in the face and scream. 

Even now, when I'm holding my aunt while she throws up, this woman--when she's around--says things like "Oh, so sad" that are perfectly audible to Patricia. Does this woman have any idea what "dignity" means? Does she not know who my aunt is: a woman who, even on her last days, lives for her pride?

-She was, and continues to be, the proof that my father's life is officially over. My father was good at being two things: 1. a tailor; 2. a womanizer who got his smarts and charms, in ways that would eventually destroy the women who loved him. My father stopped being a tailor long time ago because the times changed. Up until some years ago, my father dated only good-looking women (with one exception--and that one wasn't bad as such). His ladies' man career was over when this woman came into the picture. My father's identity as a charmer is probably the only thing I've ever admired about him as a person, if such a thing makes sense. The arrival of this dumb, ugly woman showed me - and everyone else in my family - that my father wasn't the man he used to be.

-That said, I can also see that she is a good-hearted person, and I'm honestly relieved - even grateful - that she's with my father. She puts up with and cares for him a great deal when he's truly undeserving. I hope she continues to do what she does until he drops dead, so to speak.

Last Night On Oil Street

Got a flash piece up at fwriction : review yesterday and it's one that I rather like. Thanks for reading, if you do.

On Hiatus

This blog will be on hiatus indefinitely. Read whatever you see around here, or if you want to know what or how I'm doing, talk to me in other channels.

My Days (II)

Music:

Liberation Von History, 2002 album by Wechesel Garland. Subtle, fuzzy electronic music. Don't ask me I cannot tell you anything more about this music than what you can hear for yourself. Or I can tell you about the man - a friend, not lover - who placed this CD on my desk, his eyes wild and distorted slits in smoke rising from an incense burner we had used as an ash tray. The man has problem with his eyes and his heart, a disintegrating castle from which familiar and unknown characters are running with their arms outstretched like books spread open--

to die. Because all stories are born to die within those who look at the world in hate. I was a passerby in lights dissected. "Here, here," he tried to shove the CD--endless CDs!--into my chest but it wouldn't crack. Nothing I could do about it except to throw the shield I'd been carrying to the ground the moment he walked.

Smoke:

I would smoke and I would smoke and I would smoke until I woke up heaving. My heart ached. My lungs were smash while I swam laps in breaststroke backstroke freestyle across the pool of old men who could kick to dissolve the spidery veins around their ankles onto my thighs or a clumsy woman grabbing me by the waist. 

Accidental attacks. I swim fast and turn a blind eye to others. But not fast or nimble as kids in a swim team who can flip or curl up in water like animated inflatable toys to wiggle out of danger.

To protect myself from other kinds of accidental attacks, I cleansed everything in my studio flat--from window frames to my bookshelf, down to the electric socket beside the door and the door--with a lemongrass scented cleanser. 

Ultimatum to self: "Smoke another cig in this flat and you're a loser."

Heat:

It gets warm in my flat--I pace around a lot. I shouldn't be pacing around as much because of a minor injury to my right foot that went unnoticed for too long and it's kept me off the dance floor and hiking trails for months now.

The truth is I don't miss dancing Tango at the moment. I miss the fun, but not the emotional connection. I've been walking along this long, occasionally circuitous path in that forest in my imaginary universe, where the trees are bent or they combust in such unison that the forest looks like a fold-up mirror open in flame, in tune with my tears and roots sprawling underneath the soil. I'm singing solitude and the song has many cadences. It's a row of bells hanging from my door frame. 

My foot hurts, anyway.

Hair:

Last week I visited my hairstylist of 10 years for that massive haircut I'd put off for months. That waist length hair was literally weighing on me--I'd even rest it on the back of my chair while working on the computer. 

I was just broke. Or I felt broke and my hairstylist is expensive.

We said, Let's do shoulder length, a bit longer. Let's do straight bangs covering the eyebrows so that I can brush that fringe in front of the mirror everyday to put on a new persona. The young guy who worked the chemical treatment ran the ionized straightener down my hair, looked at my reflection in the glass and I saw the lights in his eyes change.

The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology

Skip your Starbucks for the day and get a copy of this ebook, won't you? A collection of 30 flash stories from around the world, The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology is now available for purchase! All proceeds go to two children's charities  PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children and Children 1st Scotland. 

The project began as a flash fiction challenge when Fiona Johnson and Thomas Pluck dnoated $5 and £5 to the two charities, over at Ron Philips' Flash Fiction Friday and Fictionaut. 30 of the best stories were chosen to be included in this anthology, edited by Fiona, Thomas and Ron. Some of the authors are also past contributors of A-Minor Magazine including David Ackley, James Lloyd Davis, Sam Rasnake, Susan Tepper and yours truly. For the full list of authors, contributor interviews and more details, check out the anthology's blog here. Go get your copy on Amazon, Smashwords or Barnes and Noble (link to be updated for this one). We'll be looking forward to your feedback!