26 August 2001 - 23:04 - defessus9

As I promised, I am beholden to the person who sent me a link: the wonderful borogoves, herself. I have a brand-new table now. I'm very happy with it. Expect more futzing around as I learn more about html.

Right now, I'm doing my homework. I probably shouldn't be writing here at all, but it's too much to resist-

Something I found: my cello will always buzz as if it has a crack; we got it from Taiwan and when it came it had worms, and so the top had to be taken off and the wood replaced - but two of the worm-tracks went too far and cannot be repaired and so there will always be a buzz that no one save myself can hear-

which is unimportant in the long run but it will drive me crazy over that period, too, sick with worry, sick with grief- the best solution, the repairman said, is to take it far away, to the cold north, and play: and sell from a distance, hoping to make back what I paid and perhaps some more-

And yesterday I saw my friend, he's in from New York: he spent a lot of lunch complaining about people with accents: he's white but he speaks Chinese fluently, knows more hundred-dollar words than I do, speaks with a genuine Beijing-area accent, but: it's obvious I'm American from the moment I open my mouth in Taipei, obvious, and I find it grating when I open my mouth Stateside and out pops an only-in-Chinese construction or something oddly inflected and my god, English was my first language, it shouldn't be like this! and I envy him that and I hate him when he says "I don't get why they don't just eliminate their accents. I mean, I don't speak with an accent." I want to scream, "It's not that easy, jerk!" but I don't, another time when I wish I hadn't been taught my good Chinese restraint... good God, and not ten feet away my mother and father sit, talking to his mother in their Chinese-toned English which I've gotten used to deciphering...

And by the end I'm too tired for words, too tired for irritation, too tired to do anything but sit, mute, as he goes on and on about Puerto Ricans and Dominicans on the bus.

Today I learned about the races of China, the ethnic minorities: my father is a Han, my mother a Manchu, originally; Han people have a split pinky toenail (father has it, none of the rest of us do: it's recessive) and they tried to teach me the difference, Uighur, Tibetan, Miao, Korean, Manchu, Han, Mongol... my head swims and everything in the Vietnamese restaurant blurs as my parents astound me by speaking Mandarin to the waiters who understand it and English to those who don't, without even thinking.

...pallid, driven to the dark, by curious passions...

j