flying home

to be honest, i am slightly anxious. i’m no longer certain of my ability to handle vendors clangorously tramping on the streets, scooters crawling without directions, crowds marching like colonies of ants, or any sight of snakes hissing in glass windows at night markets (waiting to be a crucial ingredient in someone’s dinner soup). what a strange city to be in. if so careless, i might even contrive an obvious error by losing my phlegmatic posture, exhibiting signs of palpitations that indicate my very foreignness in the city once called home, quite an unacceptable act in the chinese tradition: a being without root, they would call me, a person who forgets home. in school they taught that being rootless means a life in turmoil; a person without the binding of tradition is nothing but an outcast. under such overwhelming demand of stability and conformity, freedom-to-be becomes undesirable, and is to be feared for, thus silenced, crushed. even a slight shade of uncertainty is portrayed as a crevice of mayhem. how antithetical that home is at once so clamorous in appearance and so hushed in essence. and the self-questioning part persists, mostly regarding whether i should make noises, if so, how much and with what.