TW: mentions of mental health, xenophobia,
domestic/sexual violence, and grey suicidality
I remember watching the Korean Drama series "Hwang Ji-Yi" (2006) back in Taiwan and being obsessed with the story that's based on 황진이 c. 1506 - c. 1560 ("Hwang Jini" or "Hwang Ji-Yi"), also known by her gisaeng name 명월 ("Myeongwol" meaning "bright moon"). She was one of the most famous gisaengs in the Joseon Dynasty, and gisaengs (or "kisaengs") were girls and women from socio-politically outcast, lower class, or even slave families who were trained to be courtesans, providing artistic entertainment and conversation to men of the upper class... And though there were different periods, laws, and discourses on the relationships to prostitution as well as sexual exploitations and violence, they were carefully trained and frequently accomplished in the fine arts, poetry, and prose, and although they were of low social class, they were respected as educated artists. Hwang Ji-Yi was one of the most influential gisaengs that have inspired many modern medias of storytelling... It was said that Hwang Ji-Yi refused to follow social norms for women to marry and chose the life of a gisaeng, giving her the freedoms and access to learn not only dance and music, but also art, literature, and poetry - topics that were not normally taught to young women during that time. Copied below is one of the only preserved example of her sijo (traditional Korean poems/verses):
冬至 섯달 기나긴 밤을 한 허리를 잘라 내어
春風 이불 아래 서리서리 넣었다가
어론님 오신 날 밤이여든 구뷔구뷔 펴리라.
in loose poetic translations to...
I will divide this long November night
and coil by coil
lay it under a warm spring blanket
and roll by roll
when my frozen love returns
I will unfold it to the night.
And I remember the last episode of the 2006 Korean drama series, where Hwang Ji-Yi asks a man who was a teacher/academic/philosopher in the community for answers to being an artist in grief; The man sits down with her to have tea, referring to the dried flowers and tea leaves as the teacher he seeks when faced with existential doubts. Thus before they drank the tea to end the night, Ji-Yi watched a decayed and dried chrysanthemum flower opens and blossoms once more... She left a note in the morning for the man to thank him for his teachings of ego-death, and unpacked the lesson of relearning/embracing ordinary life as art before understanding, practicing, and aiming for extraordinary performances or artistic crafts. I was watching/taking this in at age 7-9, and I still come back to this 2006 series for this moment/teaching... Why do we create when we’ve not blossomed ourselves ? I ask this more and more, now especially in these moments after dropping out of University, like how the final episode started with Ji-Yi leaving the giseangs' corridors and fences to first find inspirations for art, but then she found aspirations to find herself instead. I know that deinstitutionalization will always be part of my journey forward and beyond, even if they were ways I had learnt to survive. I now understand that perhaps having potentials in academia was really just potentials of being a model immigrant with the violent bonuses of tokenization, and I don’t want to assimilate any longer. I’ve always been the most good at feeling even if people reject or repress theirs. I want to be good at feeling again, I want to play and care again, I want to feel my body to love and embrace again. With no dissection but just empathy; with no analysis and just practice. I remind myself each day, as I do the bare minimum to get by, while still making time for things like community events, friends, and family - that caring for and growing relationships is indeed my work and my current practice of art/craft, as I remember my high school art teacher saying that “art is about relationships”. Thus I say blossom not bloom because it refers to the whole process of blooming, even after it’s peak, as well as a reference to more than just one flower blooming, especially flowers on a tree or bush... Art has been a way for me to blossom for the world even as I decay, and I used to create for release but now I create for grief. I dream of creating for joy, but often I don’t know how when I don’t feel it long enough to hold. And yet, I still breathe softer each night trying to hold the sky...
"you broke the ocean in
half to be here
only to find nothing that wants you"
- Immigrant by Nayyirah Waheed
I remember sitting in front of the TV playing Disney Channel to repeat lines after lines, trying hard to soften my accent after people at school making fun of it. I remember being asked to eat outside the portable classroom because someone complained about the smell of my homemade dumplings. I remember the ways I distanced myself from my family, from food to language to spaces. I would do anything to rewind time to hug myself and them, to remind myself of how beautiful it is to be an immigrant, how humbling it is to be a guest, and how honouring it is to offer anew... Now like a seed dropped by a bird that flew across seas, I still sit in solitude with the ways my family are moving back to Taiwan for good during this pandemic. Not that I was ever close with my blood family, especially after I came out and moved to the city, but now I feel the need to hold onto my roots more than ever with being the only one here. I have been slowly trying to reroot and connect, but now it seems impossible stranded alone continents away... So I grieve, and I reroot here on stolen lands with many of my friends and chosen family still not knowing much about Taiwan, nor the original caretakers of this land. Thus we continue to un- and relearn in and from Tkaronto, I honour my mermaid journey from the island of Taiwan to Turtle Island, and I embrace the blossom of my time here even in grief. It's like after 10 years in Canada that people start to forget that I'm not from here, even if I belong, even if I start to learn the media and cultural references that I wasn't here to witness, even if I start to understand the meanings of slangs and local sayings, I still wonder if the same curiosity and understandings are offered to me... I remember during a drive back in high school with my mother that she asked me if I ever felt truly accepted by our white neighbours and peers, even my friends, and I understood why she would only make friends with other immigrant aunties and perhaps why she's deciding to move back home just a little bit more. I say my family love but don't like each other, it becomes bittersweet for me to accept the ways my family care for me without ever understanding, agreeing, nor aligning with me. And over the years I have learnt to celebrate and embrace our differences, as who better than immigrants, to identify and practice the love in-between the gaps of knowledge, the distance of borders, as well as the silences that come with a traveled and tired body... Thus I often lay my body to rest, for many would not understand the aches and longing I embody; I lay my body to rest on this sick and stolen land as I cry, hoping to water the cracks between concretes I still miss playing in the rivers back home. I say home is wherever water flows, but here I am with water as still as a mirror for me to only remember. So I will continue to weep, and remember...
"Immigrants came to these shores bearing a legacy of languages, all to be cherished.
But to become native to this place, if we are to survive here, and our neighbours too,
our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we truly be at home..."
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Animacy meaning alive, and to call this living place my home is a generous and comforting offer but also a violent one while Indigenous people still don't have sovereignty... As the moon softly fills that I shift my agency to gratitude, because it was Black/Indigenous, queer, and trans folks who have held me when I needed solidarity and chosen family the most. It is my responsibility to work towards contributing reparations as long as I occupy and breathe on Turtle Island. However it is not just gratitude but also still grief, as I feel my language, memories, and cultural knowledge slip out of my finger tips each day, I hope to make myself ideally helpful, but at least aware of the justice that's needed for Tkaronto and its first peoples. As Indigenous people have taught me love and elders have been ever more gracious in embracing newcomers, it is our duty to show up and give back, as reconciliation is dead without land back... So I grieve and give thanks, under this full blood moon in Taurus just after the lunar eclipse, I write this final blossom for this blog after 8 years. It has been the most humbling, messy, and honouring journey of storytelling. I look back and witness myself outgrowing myself: word after word and moons after moons; I remember the times I searched for myself through softer words and in hopes softening this world. Now like a dehydrated flower reblossoming in the waters of Scorpio sun, and under the full blood moon in Taurus, I grieve and I give thanks to the trees and land protectors, the wind and water walkers, the fire keepers, and the hearts in solidarity across all seas. And as we blossom again, we take soft care and rest, so we sustain, together beyond timelines of violence and uncertainties... We will blossom, again.
I remember arriving in "Canada" on August 18th 2011, shivering and unused to the colder chills of a summer ending. I remember the 4 of us living in a motel room for 2 months, I remember not having an address to write down on the first day of school when they asked for my home. I remember this house for 10 years now, even though I moved to the city in August/September 2017 for university; I remember not being able to wake up from this bed, tears wetting my sheets every morning, I remember wanting to die. I remember not knowing myself, nor the world. I remember screams and shattered glass, I remember punched holes in my walls and steps on my chest, I remember crying myself to sleep every night... I remember the violence around and within this house, now almost empty, but I can still hear the walls weep. I remember leaving in the nights only to come back bruised and used, I remember my virginity lost somewhere along the suburban curbs, I remember surviving violence in cars after cars, moons after moons... I remember surviving violence in this house, within myself, and out in this world. Yet still I remember an abundance of unconditional love, community care, and mutual-aid. I hope we don't just remember, but continue to dream of the possibilities that we deserve, because that's how I've lived beyond survival. And even if I still cry, I don't want to cry alone anymore... I want to grow and blossom with the world once more, again and again, moons after moons. And tonight with this full moon finale, I dream for us to stay soft, as "love is a moontime teaching" (Billy Ray-Belcourt).
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