liênletter-26may24

I’m visiting my parents’ house feeling cold in the kitchen and my mum comes in with her cross-body bag ‘cross her body going, “Do you wanna go buy some pea shoots with me?”

In the car, I ask and she tells me she found the seller on Facebook, and that they were selling them for $7/kg whereas at the markets it would be up to $12/kg. I ask her to repeat đậu Hà Lan a few times because we’re talking in Vietnamese, I’m rubbish at it, and I have no idea what kind of fresh greens we’re driving to Ardeer to get in the dead of 6pm winter.

We stop at a house with a white van parked diagonally in the front yard, Styrofoam boxes lined side by side on the grass filled with water-speckled sprouts. The porch is lit with a single white light and a Viet lady is weighing up a bag of them by her front door, gloved white hands shoveling greens into plastic pouches. A man stands by the van. A woman in fluffy pyjamas waits with her phone and wallet in hand.

It’s funny how it feels like I’m living through a childhood fever dream. I remember following my parents through someone’s back gate to buy burned DVDs of Hong Kong soap operas. I forgot that feeling was an experience, knew it only as a memory, relived it now as a Sunday night out buying pea sprouts with my mum.

Originally, she asked for three; two bags for two of her sisters. Then she reasons that her brother’s family lives close, so she’ll get them a bag and deliver it to them too. “You’ve convinced me with your magical words about these sprouts,” she tells the lady, who is telling her daughter to close the door or mosquitoes will get in. “Please give me four kilos.”

We bring the bags into the car and Mum searches uncle’s address on Maps. We’re not on excellent terms with him, but the address comes up after she’d only typed three letters.

“You’re so kind. You have such a good heart,” I tell my mother. “When you find something good, you want to share it with others.”

The divvying up of greens reminds me of that time in high school me and my dad picked all the heavy branches of our lemon tree and he told me to give some to a friend. Keilah’s dad picked up the many bags and the next day at school she told me her dad was so excited, divvying the lemons up on the kitchen table and deciding which friend or family member each pile would go to. The thought gave me a feeling, and that feeling made me both full and sad.

liênletter-18dec23

i’ve been thinking about reaching nirvana, and also people finding partners.
i think i want to fall in love, but it sounds difficult, and i feel like a lot of it is dependent on luck of the draw.
but i also want to reach nirvana, but keats thinks maybe in my next life, and so does atty, because i’m still enjoying worldly things.
i was eating that wild sour cherry tart on the train and enjoying the way the custard moved when i squeezed it gently in my hand and i thought to myself, comically: “this is why you’ll never reach nirvana.”

i always thought finding romantic love was unnecessary since i didn’t need anyone but myself, and also i have friends who love me, but my mum said friends will get married and become busy, even your children will get married and become busy, and you will have no one to go on walks with, and i thought: “oh no she’s kind of right.”
maybe love on my end is just, person you go on walks with when everyone is old and married. atty says i probably won’t have to worry because he probably won’t get married for a long long time. i say, “that’s exactly the attitude that gets you a lifelong partner within three days. i know you’ve watched that himym episode.”

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atty also says that in chinese buddhism, you can tell when a person is on their last life before reaching nirvana because they are recluse and don’t show those worldly feelings, have those worldly connections with others, harbour those worldly desires. i am a little mad because i feel i capture about 3% of that which means i have a long way to go.
at this time last year i took out all my piercings and threw away almost all my clothes and said i’d stop drinking and smoking and embrace an ascetic lifestyle. it changed me in one or two ways but ultimately i failed miserably. but nirvana doesn’t mind failures. it’s just a destination after all. the road is always ahead. i just like the way custard moves when i squeeze a tart gently in my hands.
“i’m so mad. i was so close to detachment earlier this year. and yet here i am.” in august i told all my friends i could leave them at any time on a whim and they would have to accept that. a cruel thing to say, maybe even a punishment i was issuing them for my own shortcomings. from october, my friends said “that’s hard to hear, and it makes me sad to think of, but i accept that. i accept you.” how i could cry.
i was so close to nirvana.
why did you love me?
(3% is close enough.)

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“buddhism isn’t about detachment,” explains keats. “the true buddhists were the ones who reached nirvana and then came back. they came back into the world to teach others how to reach it.”
siddhartha gautama came back and still associated with his wife and child from his former life. even his parents. “but the connection was different,” keats tells me. he’s right. even though there was so much of a certain love before, the worldly kind of love, now there was just–

in may i had wanted to die. so peacefully. in a very logical way. “the pain is not worth the minute happinesses. i have done some of the things i have wanted to do. i’ve helped a few people. i would not regret anything today if i died.” i resented my family for being a reason to stay. i quietly wished they would all die so i could too, without regrets.
“the true buddhists were the ones who reached nirvana and then came back.” “the connection was different.”
i want to love like that. in that different way. with only compassion and no desire. “no relation between people can be considered truly altruistic.” keats is talking about the relationships in this current world, in this current way of living.
i’m sunken in my armchair. it’s nearly 8am and i haven’t slept. we’ve been talking on the phone for hours to try to keep me awake for the palestine rally at 12.
“i think in relations of two, where one person is happy and carefree, the other is always suffering. there are winners and losers. there is always imbalance. someone is always making up for the shortcomings of the other,” i say, sleepily.
i’m aromantic. that’s what i say on the tin. this year, i was so happy to find that word for this part of how i live. i was so happy to tell people, to meld their expectations of me in a way that made me breathe relief.
i’m so scared of what people want from me. i always just wanted to run away, because running away was easier than testing my inability to say ‘no’. in october my friends said “i accept you”, and now the very expensive therapy is working, and now i want to stay.
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i woke up at four today with a tickle on my lips. it’s happened a lot recently. the wanting to be kissed.
yesterday i laid in bon’s lap at carlton gardens, hugged by mimi’s autumn coloured cardigan and the sun. bon is a friend i’m wary of, because he’s kind of better at caring than me, and i don’t like losing. they play with my hair and it feels better than anything in the world. i want to say “that’s nice” to encourage him not to stop, but that would betray that i am not sleeping. instead, i think to myself about how fun it would be to roll around in the grass with someone, and try to imagine which character from the webnovel i like would be best to roll around with. lan wangji? no. wei wuxian? ew. but maybe? no.
someone rolls on top of me in my head and clasps my wrists in their hands. it’s me. “you’re so stupid,” says me. i giggle, and we roll in the grass in my head, and i like it when she kisses my shoulder, and i know she wants nothing else, because i don’t. i feel so incredibly happy and safe in this fantasy, because i don’t have to worry about disappointing me, because he wants what i want, and i don’t have to say a thing.
i think it’s sad that i can’t imagine feeling that way about anyone other than myself. “no relation between people can be considered truly altruistic.” i’m terrified of sex because of the mysticism behind its wanting. i’m terrified of rolling in the grass with someone and the expectation of sex rising from the flowers. or is sex in my head just a representation of possession? of that worldly desire i observe as a sickness.

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“i was telling jin-ah about how liên is just so aloof and mysterious,” says thea, who’s stopped by level two of storyville to say hi. i’m shaking them a lychee martini and laughing. “that makes me so happy to hear. i want to be seen as aloof and mysterious so bad.” i strain the sweet thing into a coupette and top it with a lemon twist. the punchline when bon had told me about thea’s thoughts a week prior was “thea thought you were so aloof and mysterious, until you started talking about woozi from seventeen.” classic failure. i get so human when i think about that kpop boy from that kpop group. “i’ve started watching clips of seventeen,” says thea. i light up and feel so happy.
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keats tells me he’s good on the nirvana front. he’s not interested despite having a hyperfixation on buddhism, because he enjoys his worldly desires. we are both writers, and i’m trying to think of things i like and can’t let go of. “would you give up on nirvana for poetry?” i ask him. “no,” he says. he hasn’t written poetry in a long time. “would you?”
“yes,” i tell him. classic failure. i am half ashamed and half proud. “would you give up on nirvana for jiang cheng pussy?”
for keats, it’s an astounding “yes yes absolutely obviously any day”. i laugh. “pussy over eternal peace, huh?” keats isn’t even ashamed. “yes,” he laughs.

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i stop by sweet nata on my way to the train station to grab a coffee and a portuguese tart before the rally. there are bits of purple jelly mixed in with the custard. in theory, i can let go of almost anything. if any of my friends left me tomorrow, i wouldn’t ask them to stay. if i wasn’t allowed to listen to music anymore, i’d start brainstorming other ways to pass the time. i’d even give up on that beautiful boy woozi from hit kpop group seventeen.

when i was younger, i used to throw away a shirt if i liked it too much. i didn’t want to rely on anything. i used to lose things all the time, and the things i didn’t lose, i’d destroy with careless wear and tear. whenever i discovered i’d lost money dropping it outside, i’d tell myself “i probably would have spent it on something stupid anyway” and stop feeling bad. as someone who is always losing things, i am very well practised in the art of letting go. if you told me i could never squeeze a tart gently in a way that would make the custard move in an interesting way ever again, i would tell you i didn’t really like the tart anyway. it was more a symbol than anything. i enjoyed it only because i decided it was for enjoyment.

but perhaps if you told me i could never enjoy another tart, and also could never lay in a friend’s lap, could never smell the scent of fresh coffee, could never sit in my armchair, could never have a long phone call with a friend, could never listen to music, could never massage coconut oil into my nail beds, could never take a long hot shower, could never go on a roller coaster, could never put up posters in my room, could never go to singapore, could never watch a tv show–
oh, maybe, i would momentarily hesitate on nirvana.
after the rally, atty and i find a chair left on the street on the way home and we put it in the little smoking area outside our living room window. and i sit on that chair and atty sits on the one that was already there. 
“i think you’re enjoying your life right now too much to reach nirvana,” he says. we’re smoking the double happiness cigs aj found on the floor yesterday. when he’d offered it to me i’d almost cried.

i think of myself as an expert on self restraint. but i’m also a master of circumventing the need for restraint. on that chair, i tell atlas that all his repeated efforts to be a good friend and housemate to me this year has made me feel trust, has made me feel safe. i tell him i love him. i didn’t believe in such feelings before. but the expensive therapy is working, and unfortunately trusting the right people and being vulnerable in the most anxiety-inducing ways produces a wonderful connection. damn it all to hell.

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today i woke up from the sleep meant to stave off the effects of staying up for 36 hours, and my lips felt ticklish.

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i want to go to bar oussou soon, and run into that boy named hartley i met there in january. i think we could have some sort of connection. i’m scared of the expectations that may arise, but he would probably listen if i told him what i wanted or didn’t want.
in ten days, my friend levin will land in naarm, and it will happen to be my birthday, so the plan has been that he’ll come to my party and stay the night. he says he’ll tuck me into bed, and i’m excited to be tucked into bed.

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today i woke up from a very long sleep, and i made myself coffee and didn’t do any of the chores i’ve been putting off. i thought about reaching nirvana and of people finding partners instead. i put on a playlist i really like and sat in the armchair in the corner of my living room and wrote this, not knowing where it would end. not knowing where or how anything would end. perhaps, abruptly. i still want to reach nirvana if i can. maybe next life if i can’t. tomorrow i could have another tart, if i wanted. and i want to stay with my friends selfishly for at least a little while longer.