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I took a trip to Dallas between Christmas and New Year. Wei and her family were very generous and welcomed me to their new and big house. The trips were rough, mostly my own fault. I was overly confident of me pulling off in rush hours in airports, but thank goodness I was on track for every leg of the flights.
Several people warned me that Dallas is a city that doesn't have anything. I will re-confirm then. There is a deep cultural difference for people who live in the east part of the country. This is a city that is built on nothing and therefore it has almost nothing other than everything you can find from your own neighborhood in your own city. There is hardly any plantations along the highway, in the middle of highway, or around the living communities. So the place looks huge because there's hardly any barriers preventing you from looking far and beyond. The buildings use a lot of red, brown and mustard yellow for colors, and my interpretation is that these colors probably make the city look like being aged and heavy.
Wei's house is huge like a castle, lots of passages, hidden doors (to visitors), high rise ceilings and heavy wall papers. I enjoyed the conversations and the time with their little daughter Serena.
Final shot - Dallas sunset by light rail tracks
Red museum in sunset
In the front of Red Museum
JFK's memorial
Taking a break on the steps of the Red Museum
Dallas streets
Red Museum
The Ball is closed for renovations
Downtown Dallas
Six Floor museum in the background
Wei and Serena walking along the quiet streets in the Dallas suburbs
The big house
Dallas Galleria, the giant Christmas tree and skating ring
Skating ring
Giant Christmas tree
While I was in NYC, I wasn't able to connect to my mother on home phone or cell. I became very worried, sitting on the roof top of a building just across the United Nations, very windy and cool, gorgeous views of the mid town towering over Citibank buildings and the east river on the angle, while I impatiently waited on Ronald's reply as I had him check on her home. Luckily, she was fine.
But someone was not fine. I came back to work and as any other e-mail that comes to my outlook, it was labeled as "Something about Bill", and this message came from Wen. When I got time to check on it, I was shocked. Wen was telling me and a few others that Bill "unexpectedly passed away ... ". Words could hardly express my frustration and fear, as if the bad feelings on that particular day, when repeatedly dialing my mother's phone numbers on the streets, maybe hundreds of times, were becoming real because tragedies were right there happening. Why do they have to be real?
We are taking turns to take care of Wen and Jimmy. I do not know if we need to do that, I would've preferred some quiet times for meditation, looking for the peace in my mind (and why does it have to be the same for everyone?). But obviously there are worldly things (or inventions) that take chances helping people find their ways of understanding salvations, I mean the people who live, the leaving ones are freed, and they should be happy. The emotions that a human being experiences throughout his/her life are a lot to bear, to be exempt and to go back to the earth is probably the best thing in the end.
However, that is not the end of it. I was just told that the aunt from my father's family left us at 2am on this day July 4th, 2008, same day as my father three years ago. I could not not feel the immense sadness, and the greatest loss. This uncle and aunt, they had been very generous, the most kind in the world. They were simple people but they loved me so dearly when they could barely have enough to support their own family. I was still very young, but I remember the visits to the uncle's hospital and my father's village, every little detail was marked deep to my brain, now as they left me, the memories suddenly seem to be cruel.
It is the third passage within three months. I cannot hold back tears. I need console. I need that piece of mind to survive longer, but the strength comes inside myself. I was describing the premium service (ironic that I should ever use that word) at the funeral place to someone, it has a power of putting my mind all together for a whole. At that moment, I am a very extreme chemical person, I wish I could just remain that chemical in life, I really wish. But I am not. I rattle with news. I get emotional. I show a lot of sorrow.
My mother, she sounded very firm. I lit up a candle when I walked into the St. Patrick, for my father, he is gone for three years ... but he is with us forever and ever and ever.
NYC is a sad place. Dad, Mom and me three visited the place in a tour package in 2003, and that was almost the only travel I did with both parents in adult life, except those in Guangzhou of course. Memories are still crispy clear and they sometimes over powered this hustle and bustle of this metropolitan city offers. And in 2000 sprint break, we old buddies from ISU drove 14 hours and I hardly talk to any one of them nowadays, it isn't that we don't have time or something like that, simply we don't want to talk to each other for whatever reasons. Now five years later in 2008, here is my 3rd visit in the year of 2008, and as usual, it is full of destruction, damage and it's just tragic.
6/12 -
Fancy that I am taking Amtrak for the first time. The Richmond station is really a small boarding place with the minimum amenities. Passengers are mostly elderly, blacks and young students. The train is Regional 94, stopping almost every station. People coming after the Washington DC station are totally different, all businessmen, well suited, professional (litigation) bags, all with the corporate looks. Seatings are very busy and the trains are more like the metros in cities from DC, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington Delaware, Trenton NJ, Newark and finally NY Penn Station.
I walk out of the station from underground, and immediately I am in the middle of the massive people crowd in the busiest street of NYC. It is very overwhelming, and I was not mentally prepared to turn the switch between city and suburb. For one second in my life, I am a little scared, but here it is, I put myself back to the city mode, it is decisiveness, determination and money talks. I wait in the taxi line outside for 15min and get onto a cab to my hosting place.
6/13 -
I live on the 46E street, right beside the Trump Tower, within 5min walk to UN. I thought I hadn't gotten a tour inside UN, so I go up there first thing in the morning. Then my memories seem to pick up that I had been to the tour in my 1st visit. Anyway, the tour guide is a lovely Korean girl, young graduate, very cute face, nice and professional figure also very naive and innocent speeches about poverty, disarmament and environment ...
On a different day, I walk over to the middle of the 1st Ave where me and my parents stood over and watch the traffic go through the underground tunnel. Dad was loving the place, as I recall, and I feel so much and so much for him ... but he is not coming back ...
I walk along the 1st Ave to the 42 street and turn over towards Lexington for the Grand Central metro station.
Lunch time, I take the train up to Flushing, trying very hard to find the shabby place where we stayed in 2000. Everything changes, but finally I find the overpass and the HongKong market gives me senses of directions that lead me there.
MET is my second stop. It is huge. As usual, the most interesting art pieces are religious paintings and sculptures that tell biblical or real histories. Very grandeurs, very powerful and ton of pleasures, and I start fancying myself to be an art person to be born with. I purchased a couple gifts for Mom, a flower calender and some Christmas cards.
At 5:30pm, I sit down in the St. Patrick church for a mass. Light up a candle for Dad. The church is Catholic, situated in the corner of 50th street and 5th Ave.
6/14 -
This is my shopping day. First is Century 21, a discount store in the corner of Cortland and Broadway. Taking the metro #4/5 will get you there. I am totally disappointed with the place, like Marshall's or TJ Max, clothes are badly displayed, and most designer pieces are still priced above $150. I end up with three easy tops for $81.
Lunch is in China Town, 3/4 blocks to Mott Str, then Huster, it is the XO eating place. I order the most delicious fishball, lettuces porridge.
Afternoon and dinner times are the best with a dear friend Wang Ju. We girls spend four hours in just two shops, H&M and Zara. She introduced me to high waste skirts that I would never dream of wearing. The skirts are perfect and perfect, and I cannot refuse buying them.
6/15 -
Ground zero. Hardly any progress that the construction hardly surfaced above the ground.
Wall Street -
It is almost the last day of March, maybe an end of a very long winter season, but not at all the end of an unsecure future. The weekend is miserable. I am mostly bed resting, and in and out of sleep which has been like coma to me because of the medicine in-take. Those are the usual meds that I was used to for years, but this time they are hazing, hoarse and uncomfortable. On top of that, I felt heart racing and burning right below the shoulder, which is ironically quite expected.
It is very low profile in the past several months and I reduce myself to a small area for maneuver between the office and the apartment, all for health. The rare occasions when I do move around is when I have to say goodbyes. March has the great exodus, many and I do many people are leaving and left.
It was shocking when Aim sent me a message that she is going back to Thailand. I saw here last week for a farewell lunch. She had a strange blush on her face, one of those harsh strikes right at the cheekbone, but she is a tasteful girl wearing a fitted grounds hounds pattern coat. She has been not quite the she that we knew back in 2006. She is hardly seen, rarely heard and no chance to be understood. She puzzled us, but there must be a reason and there it is. We were all desperately in need of help, and so she was. She is very true to her feelings, there is no denial, no concealment, no shame. I understand her at the end.
The other shocking moment was when I got a message from Todd from his circuit city e-mail account. Karen and I met him in the weekend. He told the horrendous meet with the electronic tycoon, honestly not surprising to me, when I heard that he was from my home province ... all years I've had these prejudice against my hometown fellows, but almost all times reality proves that I am not incorrect. Never had I explicitly acknowledged upbringings would make differences in views of the world, but all attempts to rationalize would end up somewhere in the buckets.
Very little progress in reconnecting with the few friends that I hadn't met in years, but I did all of them. Sun, my heart breaks, such a nice girl, but it's not fair, not fair ... In the middle of all this, none of which is an upbeat, I was trying very hard to be calm, not to be excited with anticipations or reactions. Yes, I wish there is a controlled substance in me that the real love or hate doesn't get revealed instantly. Do not let emotions control my life, do not waste time, be a strong person, be kind to everyone ... but there is so little to think of, just to come out of the sickness ...
