scruta

[Ayi is cleaning Ferret‘s house. Ferret is on his way out the door when he notices Ayi‘s black baseball cap with the words “Hot and Sexy” written on it in pink. He feels he should say something.]

Ferret

这是你的帽子吗？

Is this your hat?

Ayi

对的，我的帽子。

Yeah, it’s my hat.

Ferret

你知道那个英文词是什么意思吗？

Do you know what those English words mean?

Ayi

不知道。什么意思？

No. What do they mean?

Ferret

意思是性感。

The meaning is “sexy”.

Ayi

[not sure what he’s trying to say]

什么？性噶？

What “xìnggá”?

Ferret

性感。

Sexy.

Ayi

性感！真的吗？

Sexy! Really?

Ferret

真的。

Really.

Ayi

那我不应该戴啊！

Then I shouldn’t wear it!

Ferret

但是大部分的中国人不知道是什么意思，所以我觉得没有问题。

But most Chinese people don’t know what it means, so I think it’s not a problem.

Ayi

可是我的客户都是外国人啊！

But my clients are all foreigners!

Ferret

恩，我-我不知道。

Well, I- I don’t know.

[Ferret awkwardly makes for the door.]

我走了。

I’m going.

Ayi

好的。谢谢你告诉我啊！性感！啊呀！

Okay. Thanks for telling me! Sexy! Jeez!

I was dead, Shanghai. My heart had stopped beating and the world was retreating into gray. All the things that I loved swerved through my head as my brain came to rest. They were converging, growing lighter, as I hung onto those last vestiges of myself. Soon I would be nothing.

But you, Shanghai, wielded a mighty defibrillator. When I thought that nothing was left to me, you shocked me back to life. You with your winding pathways and towers of power! You with your haughty homebodies and woozy wayfarers! You with your never-ending expectancy and unrepentant gaudiness! You with your energy flying through the streets at dawn, wailing low, calling the dead to life!

And you saved me, Shanghai. You saved me.

On July 1st, myself and millions of China Mobile subscribers received a service text message from China Mobile with the following message:

小时候，爷爷对我说：《没有共产党就没有新中国》；长大后，爸爸告诉我共产党带领我们《走进时代》；新世纪，共产党让我们过上了《好日子》，我心怀感激；在党的九十华诞，让我们共产党和祖国《明天会更好》。

When I was little, Grandpa told me: “Without the Communist Party There’d be no New China”; when I grew up, Dad told me the Communist Party is taking us “Into the Modern Age”; in the new century, the Communist Party is helping to make “A Great Day” for us, my heart is full of excitement; at the Party’s 90th anniversary, our Communist Party and our motherland will “Make Tomorrow Better”.

[Forget the Orwellian commandeering of psychic and telecommunicative space, the predictable Chinese appeal to family for validation,  the best part of this message was the classic patriotic song titles interspersed throughout. Check the links for the lyrics!]

Every time I say the words “break a leg” I’m suddenly reminded of a shampoo commercial from my childhood, late 1980s to early 1990s… and I realize that this is something I’ll never have back. There’s something about the way that this seemingly innocuous advertisement for hair care product haunts my adult life that I find incapable of expressing to anyone who’s never seen this commercial.

It’s something that I don’t feel comfortable sharing either, those public moments that suddenly become private connections, bridges that once linked my consciousness to the world destroyed forever, known only to the souls that dare to walk through the ruins, scrape off the moss growing on them and ruminate on their existence.

Is this what contemporary consciousness has been reduced to? A semantic wasteland waiting for us to play archeologist? To fill out the meanings of the past for a crowd that grows less and less attentive?

I do not feel bad about writing terrible poetry anymore because I have been consumed by the idea that given infinite (or near infinite) time for the progression of humanity all variations, all possibilities of language have their moment, their genius.

BUT

Then I think of history. I think of the change of the world, the atrophy of language, the evaporation of time meaning fewer and fewer people will be able to know that genius.

BUT

Aren’t there timeless ideas?

Yes, but they are only accessible to the timeless.

BUT

Aren’t you just stroking your oh-so delicate ego? One that could be crushed by a snide remark at some cocktail hour? Or even just the terrible – oh, dare I say it? – mispronunciation of a word while trying to pontificate fluidly on the weather?

BUT

Don’t you have your own writing to save you? Don’t you have the internet? It is open (in some locales) and (barring the destruction of the servers that host your content) eternal. Yes, you ARE eternal. Oh scream it out in silences in cyberspace! Here nobody will know about the cluttered events of your pathetic existence! Here everything is neat and straight and pure!

BUT

You get ahead of yourself. Relax, poet. Dare to be terrible and perhaps you will make a small contribution, a subtle change in the way that people discuss having a cold or meeting a potential lover or mourning for the dead. This is still the immortality you live for, a glimmer of permanence in this vast sea of change.

BUT

But nothing…

I had it wrong about the present. I thought because it was something I couldn’t grasp it was constantly fleeing me. I thought the only thing I could hold onto, the only thing that would save me were my memories and my dreams. I was wrong.

Memories fade. Dreams are bent and warped over time, sometimes erased altogether. The present – fickle and fleeting – is the only thing that remains. There it sits, always before you – the great, eternal now.

Parturient

喁唼

(yóngshà)

(For Chinese geeks, I found this word in 徐志摩’s poem 《私语》.)

[Ferret is getting his beard trimmed at a local barbershop. It’s a quaint affair run by a Husband and Wife team. An Old Woman walks in with a strange request.]

Old Woman

你们是烫头发的，对吧？

You all do perms, right?

Husband

[while maneuvering a buzzer around Ferret‘s face:]

是，烫头发可以的。

Yeah, we do ’em.

Old Woman

假发呢？假发是真发的假发，不是假发的假发。

How about wigs? It’s a real-hair wig, not a fake-hair wig.

[The Husband is confused. Ferret is even more confused. Note: The word in Mandarin for “wig” 假发, jiÇŽfà literally means “fake hair.” All well and good unless you’re talking about wigs made out of fake hair. “Fake hair fake hair?” It’s enough to confuse anyone, including a native speaker.]

Husband

什么假发的假发？

What are you talking about? Wig what?

Old Woman

那个假发是用真头发做的，是上海最有名买假发的店的。质量很好。头发是真的。

The wig uses real-hair. It’s from one of Shanghai’s most famous wig shops. The quality is really good. The hair is real.

Husband

哦，你要烫真头发的假发。真头发的话， 可以的。

Oh, you want to perm a real-hair wig. If the hair’s real, no problem.

[The problem is solved. As to why the Old Woman felt the need to assert the quality and source of said wig is anyone’s guess. The Wife walks in.]

Wife

你好。

Hello.

Old Woman

[to the Wife]

我要烫真发的假发。可以了吗？

I wanna perm a real-hair wig. Can I?

Wife

什么意思？

What?

Husband

真头发的假发，真头发的假发。

Real-hair wig, real-hair wig.

Wife

哦，好的。真头发的，没问题。

Oh. Sure. If it’s real, no problem.

Old Woman

好的，我去拿假发吧。

Okay. I’ll go grab the wig.

[The Husband finishes trimming Ferret‘s beard. Ferret pays and leaves. He ponders the oddities of the Chinese language and one important question: why in the world the Old Woman was so keen on perming her wig?]

Shanghai caught me.

It caught all of us.

It caught all of us who wanted to change into something else, spread their wings and fly far, far away.

(I go to sleep at night hoping that I might again be released and not end up tacked together under glass, watched occasionally by a great magnified eye.

I wake up hopeful. My wings are still strong, and this net is full of holes…)

I found this simple poem scrawled on the bathroom wall in a local coffee shop. What most impressed me was the usage of the word “了”. The symmetrical repetition of this character worked well to illustrate the author’s desire to put all of these things in the past. I came up with two translations where I tried to maintain the rhythm and repetition of the original.

剪了发

戒了烟

忘了她

Translation #1 (more literal)

Cut my hair

Quit the cigs

Forgot her

Translation #2 (a stretch)

Cut off hair

Stayed off cigs

Swore off her