This picture speaks promises, promises of things yet to come. I've just gotten off the bus, and I've landed up in Kenting.
It's my brother's birthday today in the States, and I am reminded of home. What have I been up to? Where have I been? I started home in New York, went to Costa Rica for a bit, and now, I'm “home” in Taiwan.
New York was my place to regroup. I came back to New York from India, wanting to regroup, wanting to appreciate the city that once was my whole heart. Now, no longer, but still...
The rat race, the hipsters, the beautiful High Line. One could say the quality of life is much higher than what it used to be, but so are the prices. Generations being priced out of the city, neighborhoods changing...
Growing up, I never even thought I'd travel out of New York. I grew up the child of two immigrants, a humble Chinese woman from the southern province of Guangdong and a Taiwanese man coming to America in his late twenties with dreams of a different life.
I started my childhood in a first-floor apartment in Brooklyn hearing voices, sometimes arguments, late into the night outside my barred window in the living room/bedroom. I worried when my dad came home late at night from his work as a waiter in midtown. He'd been mugged many times already coming out of the subway. I remember walking home late at night during high school, feeling the cold metal of the longest house key of between the knuckles of my pointer and middle finger. When I grew older, I learned from my parents that those basement sounds were drug addicts shooting up and acts of prostitution taking place underneath the floor of where I dreamt each night.
Across the street, what used to say, “EGG AND CHEESE, $1.25” in bodega font, now profusely claims, “ORGANIC FOODS.” New York isn't the same anymore, for better and for worse.
I hold the memory dear to me. It's of a wide-eyed, probably midwestern college student just off the bus, staring up at the big city skyscrapers, and a black construction worker eating his lunch on the steps, talking to each other, not looking at each other, but just existing side-by-side, together on a wavelength for a moment in time. That New York still exists, but as each year passes, and we grow more and more into our grinds, I wonder how it can be that that New York will stay.
I should have never been able to go to college, let alone travel. Put more dramatically, I should have been a statistic. But through the POSSE Foundation and the generosity donors, I had a chance to meet people from a different walk of life, chances to see differently, think differently, and to not only see, but to share my own different thinking as well. Because of that opportunity, I had the chance again to study abroad for a year, first in Beijing, right after the Olympics, and then again, in Taipei.
On my way to the doctor in a rush on my bicycle, I got into a car accident while 2 days before my flight was to leave for Beijing. The traffic around me seemed to be in a rush too. Before I knew what happened, the red light shifted to green, and I was lying on the floor, a clean break to my left collarbone.Nursing the bruises a week later, I tried to avoid thinking about how close my legs came to being crushed under the tires of the van to my right.I tried to avoid thinking about the possibility of surgery, what that would mean if I couldn't leave for Beijing...
I wanted it.I wanted it so bad, to be abroad, to see yet another something new, and to have a chance...
I was determined not to waste it.
A few days later, with the doctors still unsure of whether I would need surgery or not, I left for my first international flight as an adult, 8-figure sling uncomfortably pressing against the airplane backrest and all...
I got off the plane with far too much luggage, and despite having studied Mandarin Chinese for 5 years, I was unable to spit the words out, “Bag,” “Help,” “Please?” After feeble attempts at words, I pointed to my sling with the most helpless look I could give to someone who I couldn't communicate with yet.
Long story short, I climbed the Great Wall of China with my arm in a sling, practiced calligraphy strokes using the elbow of my injured side to steady the paper, and had surgery in two foreign countries within the span of one year. I quickly learned the words in Chinese for “surgery,” for “bone,” for “pain,” and for “accident.” It's a conversation I had frequently with taxi drivers on the way to the hospital for physio.
I was a different kind of traveler then: fearful of the unknown, squeamish with tabletops and stools that had not been wiped down between multiple waves of customers, and stubborn about sticking to the habits and mindsets I had formed in America.
Yet still, I stayed. I didn't go back to the States for that whole year. I needed to make the most of this chance. I knew there was something there, something to it, even if I couldn't yet put my finger on it.
I didn't know it then, but being in another place, seeing another culture, was like breathing to me, breathing in polluted Beijing air, humid Taipei air, and then... years later, more polluted Mumbai air, I felt a fish out of water, gasping and grasping for something. For what, I didn't know what yet...
Tonight, I sit here legs crossed, in the dark, on a hostel mattress on the floor, side-by-side with 7 others. other travelers with stories, probably much different than my own. I think about chances, what it means to be where I'm from. I think about the promise of what is yet to be explored in the yellow-lit alleys of Kenting. I see prayer flags, and I reflect upon where I've been. The flags remind me of my time in India, of my yoga mat in Dharamsala. I go to the rooftop, see the light of the bright crescent moon reflected in the clouds, and I think about dreams.
In particular, I think about your dreams, Lawrence. I think about the dreams you listed and pasted on a piece of paper on the back of our living room/bedroom door.
To you, I dedicate this post . On the moon I see in Taiwan, the light from your New York sun shines. It's a new day. It's your day and what I hope will be another fantastic year. We are proud of you, but most importantly, you are proud of you, and for that, I'm glad. To you, Lawrence. I hope you take chances, see the dreams there in front of you to hold on to, and I hope you may believe in the promises of the unknown and unexplored, the treasures that they have yet to bring to you.
Lawrence, my brother, my heart, my home, Happy 23rd Birthday to you.
