small small


bicyling in beijing is a bit like an action movie - you're patrick swayze, your bike is the big sky, and you've just jumped off an airplane! it's the sort of sport (lifestyle) that makes your bones elastic, your nerves electric, you believe you can fit through anything - and you try. you cut off cars, circle around buses, squeeze in between motorcycles, construction trucks, and old men drinking soup on blue plastic chairs, you live inch by inch, fight for any space you got, you forget words, all you got is the rattle of a bicyclist next to you hauling blue plastic war jugs, the growl of taxis speeding up to cut you off, the honk of vans, the murmur of engines driving by you, and the confident ring of your tiny silver bike bell.

moop! maaaap! daaaaaaaaaap!

in other words: my life needs some geometry, structures, and paragraphs. i noticed: when i don't write, i feel a tension under the skin where my neck meets my shoulders.

last few days of berkeley, last few days of los angeles were a ridiculous blur, it was like we heard drums wherever we went, small drums, crazy drums, with hands flailing, shadows stuttering, and dust swirling all over the place... someone took my guts and made a paper airplane out of it, swirling everywhere, between freeway overpasses and telephone lines, into the butt cheeks of anyone in my way.



and in a few hours, i'll be on an airplane, staring at my sneakers, trying to imagine the ocean beneath me, wondering how many seagulls are cawing "MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!" below.

next time we see each other, we'll speak in putonghua.