Stories Of The Past

German, to me, is a true foreign language.

Whereas I can converse perfectly well in English, slightly less so in Chinese, much less so in French, and barely so in Spanish, I know not a phrase of German. I could not go up to someone in Germany and say, "Hello," in their own language, although I am sure if I said it in English there will still be people who understand me.

I know almost nothing of the German culture as well, and I am sure the bastardization of Oktoberfest that our university pushes out as a feeble excuse to drink (like they ever need one) is not a good representative. There is so much about the land I do not know, cannot ever know because I was not born and raised there. Even if, as a 20-something-year-old, I decide to move to Germany for the rest of my life, I will never know everything that a native German will know.

It is the subtle things. I am not sure I know all of those even in America, in Canada, much less in China. There are so many stories, so many faint traces of the past, that the Chinese value subconsciously, and that I am no longer a part of despite my Chinese heritage.

All I have are the visible things.

. . .

In Vermont, the mountains loom tall.

Not as tall as the Rockies, but mountains have no comparison. They are loners standing their ground. In Vermont, these mountains have seen through a revolution. They have weathered blood and rain. They have stood by as promises were made and vows broken and lives betrayed and dreams born.

As the car drives by, I look out the window. The lush trees of summer belie no hint of what Vermont is to most people, maple syrup and snow. I have told people Vermont is more than that, to many confused looks. I tell them it is a dairy state, perhaps not as famous as Wisconsin but a dairy state just as well. I tell them the history, the Green Mountains and their boys, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold.

This is their land. And the land never lies.

Vermont now is a peaceful state, or as peaceful as it can ever be. The green pastures and overarching trees lull people into a sense of nostalgia. It is the old East, and it still retains its dark past and poisonous shadows, but for now it is peaceful.

We stop at the rest area we always stop at. There is something to be said here, about habits, about coincidences, about many things in life that fit into convenient stories.

But we get off, stretch our legs, go inside and look at the map tacked onto the wall as if it were the first time we were seeing it. We take our hands and measure the distance we have traveled, and how much more we still have to go. We, too, are re-enacting history. We are forging our own terra incognita and charting them to fit the terrains of our hearts.

. . .

Our family is a family built upon road trips.

Ever since we got a car, back in 1999, every trip I had made that did not involve going somewhere half a world away were road trips. I have a special attachment to the land, to the roads. They are what I grew up on, like some kids grow up on sunshine and lemonade and backyard gossip circles.

We were living the American Dream, in a silly, distorted way. We would walk the sidewalk paved in gold and drive down every road. We went out west, we tried our hands at the "work hard and strike it rich" model. We walked out with resilient, optimistic spirits and an oddly-formed humor and our own shot at the American middle class, along with red knots hung on our doors and plastic bags stuffed inside our dishwasher for later use.

I built my dreams on the road. Trips were no longer about the destination, but about the journey in its most literal way. I hated it when the car slowed to a stop, because that meant the journey was over and the destination was here.

And once the destination was here, it would be over all too soon.

The first time we traveled to somewhere not half a world away in a plane, we went to Las Vegas. We hopped out of the plane and onto another car and headed straight for Grand Canyon. We were on the road, the only thing I was familiar with. Arizona roads are not anything like Massachusetts roads, but they are still roads. The desert sings its own song too, one of pioneers and settlers and miracles and tragedies and thousands of years of heritage shuffling in the wind.

But the destination.

The destination was different. The Grand Canyon was something beyond my imagination, beyond even my appropriations of its grandeur.

This was the first trip where we wanted to come back immediately, and the first trip where we were not driving all the time, where we had time to sit and watch the snow drift down without shivering in a car.

. . .

We read an interview of Murakami by Spiegel in class a few weeks ago. Peter said that Murakami was arrogant. He cited the two places where Murakami was asked about other people's books, and once he replied, "It's boring," and the other, of J. D. Salinger and his book Catcher in the Rye, "He did not win his fight against his poison," or something like that. He definitely mentioned the poison.

I do not remember the book as much as I would like to, but I do remember the poison part. I remember Holden Caulfield saying everyone was phony and thinking, that is true, that is very true. I have still not forgiven the backs.

I, too, write from my poison. I draw my sources from the darkest tortures of my mind and place them on paper. The pen is my sword, the page my battlefield, and I am waging war, against my past, against my fears, against my madness.

What that says about me, and about the stories I write, I am not sure. I write about death, even though I have never experienced death that hit too close. Is that symbolic of something? What of Katie when she sees Nick's ghost haunting her mind? Is that symbolic of something?

. . .

Pain is always close to me. So is separation.

Jessica asked me the other day how I dealt with it. The whole long-distance relationship thing. She was missing her ex-boyfriend. I told her we set aside time for each other. And as I was saying those words I felt the hypocrisy inside me.

Over the weekend, I went on a trip with our university's queer group to a cabin in a rural part of the area. One of the nights, we had a talent show, and one guy sat in front of the keyboard while another sang Coldplay's "The Scientist." I heard the words, "Nobody said it would be easy," and I could not stop the tears.

I had not spoke of the late night calls, when we would both be so exhausted and yet so mad at the other and so frustrated with ourselves. I had not spoke of the boxes of tissues lying in my garbage bin, the tear stains still on my laptop, the ribbon tied precariously on the ladder, the coins strewn on a grassy field near the river. Some nights I think I must be psychotic, to know how much this hurts me and yet still hang on.

I still wear the half of the ring, even though I know he does not wear the other half anymore. The other day someone in my English class saw it and asked, "Are you married? Are you engaged?"

I wish I knew the answer, but I am not so sure it is all that I need anymore. Yuma once said he was living through things day by day. I am not that kind of person. If I let things fall day by day, I will eventually lose it. It is what I do with everything.

Here, yet again, it is the journey, not the destination. I must remind myself that, and yet the destination blurs with each day.

. . .

I do not actually know much about my past.

For the past sixteen or so years, I have gone around piecing together my identity. Where do I belong? There is that generic statement of my heritage, what am I in terms of Chinese or American or Canadian or some mix of the three. But for me, this question is personal. It is tied with my longing for the road, my sense of safety among the land.

It is a question of where I belong, physically, not in terms of ethnicity or some arbitrary, culturally-entrenched definition.

If there is a past for me, it is a constant search for a place I can call home. Somewhere along the way, I have lost it, and I am now on the trek to rediscover it. Everything else is blurry. What places I have been to, what people I have talked with, they are constantly replaced with the new places I go to and the new people I talk with. I remember snippets, like Polaroids pasted in a scrapbook.

But this time, I do not want to let go. I do not want to forget. There is something here that is worth hanging onto, something that vaguely reminds me of what I never had.

Something not visible.