27 Feb Hello, I see you.

I have some questions. Do I not remember how to dance or am I just caught up in trying to forget memories of toxicity etched in my flesh? Do I not hear the voice of the dance in me or are my ears just ringing with the messages of what I was told to be and do? Do I not know why I dance or am I just still living the process of learning to love something that obedience to whiteness and capitalism took away? Do I not want to make dance or do I just need a break from the exhausting vulnerability that comes with scrutinizing the trained, performing body? 

Moving on, changing, channeling resilience, healing – it doesn’t make any of the past goes away. It is there and it is ongoing and it’s repeating and it’s growing and sometimes I swear I can even hear it laughing at me under its breath. No matter how far I go, it haunts me through the black hole of my shadow. So can you support me in facing the ghost? 

“Hello. I see you. You are real.”

You can trust in what you feel to be true, for what you feel is another way of saying what you know.

I have a theory – perhaps I am expanding because my body is accepting that it does indeed have the capacity to hold it all. I’m making room for every truth I’ve lived and I’m creating space for what’s to come. What a thing to be bigger than I ever imagined I could be. This may not be the preferred body, and it most certainly isn’t the best dance, but it’s what I have, it’s what I’ve been given. I’ll take it. 

05 Oct Exploding heart, inverted uterus, cramping brain and dry hands

20 Sep crying holes, dripping sockets

I’ve been crying, often. Really, a lot of it. Crying because I dream of motherhood. Because furniture is expensive and mostly ugly. Because everyone left at once. Wong, winter, write, weep – these are words that start with W. On the week I feel the most depressed is the week where I eat mostly Chinese food – and not just any food, but dumplings. Wonton, xiao long bao and potstickers. I didn’t make them myself but they still bring me that comfort of knowing there were working hands behind them. Tough and tender, I love what I do and yet I cannot make myself do it. It happens when it happens but it’s also always happening anyways. I’ve learned that there is no escaping the embodied practice. The unfolding of a Big Change is followed by a parade of Tiny Changes, knees high and clashing cymbals. When the structure shifts, why wouldn’t you rearrange the entire room? You have to let go of the things that no longer serve you. It’s not just an aesthetic, it’s a lifestyle. It’s composition, the weight of details. I often wonder when it will be my turn. My heart is soft and breaking, still. Not as in not moving, but rather the opposite – still as in ongoing as in nonstop as in my muscles are cramping. And so I stand here dripping, the weight of another universe’s gravity on my eyelids and I don’t know. There’s no ending so I guess it’s not over. Ongoing. Nonstop.

22 Apr this time

I have been looking back on creations of past times and my words, drawings, dances, and thoughts take on new weight in the current situation. Everything feels highlighted, magnified, too close for comfort. Life has changed, but human fears have not. I see now that fears are not just imagined scenarios, but they are real and tactile. Loneliness, death, the unknown… I know these figures well. I remember an important moment I had with my therapist a few months ago. Eyes closed, I was picturing my younger self and my therapist asked me what I’d like to tell her. I said I love you. And I realized that every dark, depressed and fearful moment I’ve experienced was a time that lacked love. So here I am at home and I find myself falling back on things I’ve always loved: writing, dancing, baking, basking in the sun, putting on a good outfit. It feels like a return, like a homecoming, but not because of my physical surroundings but because I’ve arrived in my body. This time is not one of discovery – it is of remembering. 

Contribution to Italian artist Flavia Tritto’s project Per un nuovo agire sociale / Towards new social interactions as a reflection on life during COVID-19

08 Nov short composition with red

 
I made this the same way all things happen: in the middle of something else
I didn’t mean for it to be out of focus but I also didn’t intend to lose sight of tomorrow
Red has always been my favourite colour and time, my biggest fear
I am sleeping on my baggage in the airport at 1 am
I’m waiting and I’m about to be sick
Change places with me and maybe you’ll see the crooked crevasses between my parts
I am a fruit tree
And you are small spits of rain on the apples of my cheek