Joe was tiered as a ghost. As he sat hunched against the cold cement building, his eyes looked down at the ground, looked beyond the cement, looked at nothing.
His legs were bent, one arm resting on a knee, the other collapsed between his legs, his fore arm resting in the crook of his crotch. His mind was quiet, empty. He barely knew if he was alive or not.
The clopping of expensive shoes walking by barely peeked his interest,
“spare some change?” he muttered, loud enough for the young woman to hear, but quiet enough for her to pretend she didn’t. She sped up, or slowed down, to Joe they were the same, as two loose quarters fell at his feet. His eyes fell on them, drawn away from the nothing that’d had him transfixed. He collected the coins one at a time, using his broken blackened fingernails to pry them from the concrete.
In his early days, the very earliest days he could remember, he had called himself the cardboard poet. He’d fancied himself a noble artist, if only as a joke. On old boxes confiscated from behind restaurants he’d scrawl his works.
“too old to work, need money for food”
“lost my job, need your help”
“sick and tiered, will work for food, god bless”
These had been his haikus, the sonnets of the street, his contribution to the world. He would often think to himself that, if everything else was exactly the same, ever blade of grass every drop of rain was in precisely the same place, but he wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be the same world would it? He made the whole world what it was.
Joe once watched a woman walk across the street to avoid him, she tripped over the curb, and broke her wrist as she hit the ground. Where ever she had been going, now she wasn’t. Joe had wondered how many things would change as a result of that woman not getting to where she was going. Watched as people stopped to help her. in 2 minutes simply by being, Joe had changed the whole street.
But that was so long ago, and even a man who knew he made the world what it was had hard times. As year after year went by, and he spent night after night in the cold, Joe began growing old. And as hard as life can be to a man, life can be harder to a man on the streets. Soon Joe started losing his memories, losing his thoughts. He stopped holding signs, his beard grew long and grey, blackened only by dirt.
Joe had stopped bathing himself in public bathrooms, stopped roaming the streets. His clothes seemed to become his unchanging skin, his face covered in wrinkles deep and long.
The less Joe thought, the faster his mind slipped from him. And since it took no intelligence to beg, his mind almost completely disappeared. He forgot everything, his name, his past. It seemed a man with no history had no cause, except that to live. He would scrape just enough change together to buy a burger across the street. And then return to his spot and sit again. His body taking the look and shape of a pile of trash, so that people walking by sometimes didn’t even know they’d passed a living being.
Joe could hardly even be said to exist anymore. He no longer effected the street, he was merely a prop, akin to a light post or a post. A dead body would have meant more than him
As the day wore on, and darkness fell, Joe stood. He walked the 3 blocks to the shelter. He got in line with the other bums, all in their own stages, all in their own type of poverty. Joe sat on the ground between them. And stared back at the nothing.
At 7 the line started moving, Joe stumbled to his feet again, his muscles as atrophied as his brain. The man in front of him stepped up to the desk,
“What’s your name sir?” the woman behind the desk asked, ready to write it down in her log book.
“Mark,” the man replied gruffly and walked on.
“name sir?”
Joe couldn’t remember so he muttered “mark” and followed the man down the hall.
Joe sat on the cot, then lay down. The lights were all still on, the men around him talking loud and soft. Joe fell asleep.
Black, as Joe slept there was black, nothing. Nothing like the nothing he stared at all day. Black, but not black. It’s was not black at all really, but blue, dark blue, but it was getting lighter. It was a sky, a sky with a sun. The sun bust into Joe’s eyes and Joe gasped. He flung his head around and looked down at his body, it was small. He looked around, grass, a driveway, a car. This was his house. This is where Joe had lived. As he floated around this old memory, suddenly a car pulled in behind the one in the driveway. Suddenly from the car bust his family, his parents. All his friends, all the people he’d ever known. They smiled and laughed as they ran to him. His eyes awake with strength. He ran to meet them. That burning golden orb above them heating them, warming their beaming hearts.
But now the day was done, and the sun was gone. In it’s place a bright full moon cast shadows over the grass, but it’s wasn’t his yard anymore. As Joe stood there in the white light of the moon he saw he was in an infinite meadow, with small trees here and there. He marveled at the expanse. Unimaginable space was covered in uncountable stars. Joe held his hands up to drink it all in, but at his feet he felt rubbing. He looked down to see a fox, playing around his ankles. He laughed and bent down to pet it but it darted away, stood still, then looked back at Joe
“Play with me” he seemed to say and Joe chased after him. Joe flew. His feet carrying him faster than any man could go, over grass and trees and suddenly up into the air. He laughed as he and his friend bounded through the earth and sky. Spinning and darting with every imaginable trick. They soared together up higher and higher, to touch the moon.
But the fox was falling now. And Joe couldn’t do anything. Suddenly he could no longer soar through the air but was being drawn down to earth slowly. He wanted to dive after his plummeting friend but he seemed stuck as in a snow globe. He watched the fox falling, for days, for weeks, as the sun and moon flew faster and faster around him, and all he could do was watch. The fox hit the ground, and as quickly as he hit Joe was with him.
Joe stood next to a eucalyptus tree, glowing with it’s own moon light. He bent next to the fox, he picked up the soft red body. He screamed at the eternal heavens, and dug into his friends warm fur. His sadness filled the universe, his pain echoed through everything. Joe cried.
The lights popped, and Joe’s eyes popped open. Laying on his cot tears still on his cheek. He looked at the crusty grey ceiling, the men around him raising for the day. The dreams were still buzzing in his head, he remembered the grass under his feet, the smiles of his friends and family, the joy of flying, the pain of his loss. He thought about the wolf, or was it a lion? or was it… well he was in the woods right? no, he couldn’t have been flying in the woods, was he flying? He had seen his friends, he couldn’t remember who had they been, they had called his name, what was it…?
Every moment the lights above him flickered, more and more memories of the night faded. He sat up in his cot to try and remember, but by the time he’d reached an erect position, it was all gone. And all Joe felt was confused.
Joe stood, his legs week and shaking. He walked down the hall, past the desk, the woman calling after him,
“good day mark!” Joe just kept walking, out the door, down the street, three blocks to his spot.
He put one hand on the side of his building, and slid slowly down to sit. His eyes looked at the fast food place, the few people already on the street, and then settled on nothing. His eyes fixed, his mouth dry, Joe couldn’t sense the passing of time, but with the sound of shoes again approaching, Joe muttered softly,
“spare change”
The sound of walking stopped, then coins were placed in Joe’s hand. The woman tried to catch his gaze, but Joe didn’t look up, seeing only nothing.
As she walked away the quarter in Joe’s hand fumbled and fell to the ground. Joe looked up, as it rolled a few feet away. He leaned forward, crawling onto his hands and knees to reach out far enough to snatch his piece of metal from the walk. But as he reached, the coins still left in Joe’s pocket from the day before came tumbling out onto the street.
Two dimes, five pennies, a quarter and a nickel all hit the pavement in order. And suddenly with the sound of 9 coins ringing in his ear, Joe remembered the stars.
With the stars the moon and with the moon the night, and then day. From the day everything flooded back. His eyes were broken from nothing and Joe took in everything. He saw the world as if for the first time, and as he saw it all, Joe gasped. And with his head suddenly full, awakened and dreaming, Joe stood,
Joe smiled,
and Joe slowly walked away.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
the story of Rye part 5 the end for now
Part 5 the final part for now
I had been thinking about earthquakes all day. I’m not claiming psychic powers by any means, but that day I was thinking about earthquakes. Actually I was wishing for an earthquake. It is a common fantasy for me, when things start going really bad in my life, or I’m just unhappy with where I am, I imagine an earthquake that destroys my home, and everything I know. I fantasize about being a hero and saving lives, about mourning the deaths of those I couldn’t save, but most importantly starting completely and utterly over from scratch, having no food no money no life at all and having to build it all up from the bottom again. Of course it’s not something I would actually wish for, but when things start going wrong, it’s just what my mind goes to.
May 12th 2008 I came home to my mom telling me about the earthquake in China. I was surprised. My first reaction was not all that bad, China is huge, about the size of the US. I thought it was rather unlikely that it had effected people I knew. But I did jump on the computer right away to check it out.
It took me a moment to find out that it had been a massive earthquake. It was rated a 7.9 and had been felt across almost the whole country. A second later I found the epicenter had been right in the center of rural Sichuan. Sichuan, the capitol of which was Chengdu, which is where Rye lived, and where I had spent so much time.
I started franticly searching for news stories. I turned on all my messengers and wrote an e-mail to Rye, I tried calling her but the phones weren’t working, though that was normal. I was terrified. I tried everything in my power to get in contact with her. And every moment I waited I was looking up and learning more things about the quake, like how the epicenter had been in Sichuan, but they had felt it in Beijing. that’s like having an earthquake in LA and feeling it in Ohio. The stories of how many people were being found dead under piles of rubble that used to be apartments were growing. And I began to be convinced that Rye was dead. And then for the first time in 5 months, for the first time since I had heard about Rye cheating on me. I finally started to cry. I cried about everything that had happened, I cried because I knew even though I hated her, and even though she had hurt me so much, I still loved her. No matter what happened I couldn’t stop that.
I don’t remember where my parents were then, I can’t remember if they were watching me cry or if they noticed at all. I did it quietly to myself, just let my tears start pouring down over my cheeks. I had lost so much already. And now I thought I had lost it all.
Finally though as my head was leaning against my desk, I heard MSN alert me to a new message. It was Rye, and I was suddenly so relieved. I immediately started asking if she was ok, if her parents were ok, I asked about all the other people I knew in Sichuan, asked if she knew about them.
She told me the earthquake had hit while she was at home. She said she thought6 she was going to die because it was shaking so hard. They were getting after shocks regularly. And every time one hit she thought it was going to be another big quake, her and her family were scared to death they would not live much longer. They wouldn’t be sleeping in their apartment anymore, they had built a shelter out in a local park.
For the next few days I would hear horror stories about how every time some alert would come about another earthquake, they would jump in their car to get away, though they didn’t know where they were going. And there never was another earthquake, though the after shocks kept coming for over a month. All her friends were ok, and her family was fine. But everyone was terrified.
The epicenter was right near the Wolong Panda Reserve, a place I had gone to 3 times with Rye, we would later find a few of the pandas had died. I also found out that the town at Qingchen Shan, the town at the bottom of the mountain we had climbed had been leveled. And most of the buildings on the mountain had been destroyed. I still don’t know, but have little hope for the fate of the little hotel perched so dangerously on stilts hanging over the cliff where me and Rye had our first kiss, and have no way of knowing what happened to the family that lived there.
Me and Rye started talking regularly again. Mostly we talked about the earthquake, I was still so worried about her and her family, but as worry dissipated, eventually we came back to old topics, and in time the pain started flowing back into me. I of course found out she was talking the Australian guy still, probably more than she was talking to me. She was still making her plans to go to Holland, she had her visa and all her papers ready, she was just waiting for the time when she would go. In the 3 months I had been planning my trip to move to Holland, I had looked up everything I could about surviving in Europe with no money. Camping spots, where to get money, where I could sleep for free, I was going to invest in a tent and sleeping bag and all the things I would need to survive there. So even when I decided not to go, I felt at least that I would know a bit about the place she was going because of all the research I had done.
But as we started to fight again, and I started feeling all that old pain reforming. I decided it was still too soon, I told her I couldn’t talk to her for a while longer, I wasn’t ready to be her friend yet. I was working at a camp that summer, and so I figured I could just spend the next 3 months away from her, and when I got back I might feel better.
A week or two before camp started though we started talking online again every once in a while. This was tense, but fine. She was just a few weeks away from going off to Holland, and I was happy to be going to camp. I was still in a lot of pain pretty much all the time, but I at least felt like things were going to be ok. I made plans to not check my e-mail for the next 5 or 6 weeks, at which point we had a mid summer break and I would go home for 4 days.
Camp was great for me. It didn’t quite take my mind off things but it kept me busy at least, so I just kept working even though I would have liked to just sit and wallow quite a few times. It wasn’t perfect though. Sometimes when we had our weekend break, and I didn’t have any people around me, I would end up in a tree house, usually end up screaming kicking and punching the trees with as much force as I could. I had a lot of pain still in me, a lot of anger that wasn’t going away.
After the 5 weeks though I came home for my break. It was the 4th of July and I was happy to be home, though more happy that it was only a short time, I liked being on my own out in the woods more. As per my decision I only then finally checked my e-mail and turned on my computer. I opened MSN and there was Rye online. And next to her name, where it said her status were just the words “Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane” now immediately I was a bit worried, a little confused. As far as I knew she had left for Holland a week or two after I had gone to camp. I said hi, and after a long wait she said hi back. I asked her where she was and she said “guess” and I said I was pretty sure she was in Holland but why does her thing say Brisbane? It took her a lot of time where she said a lot of things that weren’t answers before she finally told me that in fact she was not in Holland, in fact she was in Australia at that moment. It seemed in 2 weeks she had suddenly made the decision to cancel her long held plans to go to Holland, and instead enrolled in a school in Australia. In a city very near to that son of a bitch boy. I kept thinking that I had learned the last truth, that there wasn’t going to be any more of these horrible surprises. But every time there was something new. There was some new item she would tell me that would send me right back to the beginning of this whole episode. My heart had been crushed, and then healed slightly, then shot, then stepped on then run through a paper shredder. Of course I immediately started shouting at her in type. I was so angry again. I couldn’t stand how she kept doing this to me, how she kept hurting me over and over. How could she be so down right mean? I mean cruelly horribly mean, like she didn’t care how much she hurt me, like it didn’t matter to her at all?
Before I returned to camp, I sent her one more angry e-mail. A long cruel angry destructive e-mail because I just wanted her to feel as bad as I did. The rest of camp was less good. At one point I punched a large saw blade in front of the kids though I don’t think anyone saw me. It busted up my hand pretty bad and they were afraid I had broken it though it turned out to be ok. I spent more time on the weekends alone, more time sulking. I could believe my life had turned this way. I couldn’t believe I was the one going through all this pain. The thing about having your heart broken is that you live entirely in clichés. Everything you do is exactly the same as every break up song, and every emo poem you’ve ever read, and suddenly you understand that lots of people have gone through the same thing, but you didn’t realize that it was this, that this is what they were talking about, how this is how bad it felt.
To have the person you loved and trusted more than anyone in the world, come at you with a knife, and just cut you over and over and over, not caring that it hurts you, just doing it. To have the person you taught you what the meaning of love really was, turn around and tell you they don’t love you anymore.
I was suicidal at that time, not while I was at camp, but during the events, earlier, I had thought from time to time about just ending everything. It was a very very dark time for me. I lost some friends because of how dark I got. I hurt the people around me.
When I got home from camp, there was a response to my angry e-mail waiting for me. She told me that I was manipulative, that I was cruel. And she said she didn’t want me to write her any more e-mails. After all this time though, after all this anger I finally realized that I could never move on as long as I was still talking with her. I sent her an e-mail telling her I agreed, we shouldn’t talk to each other anymore, I said I was sorry for the monstrous things I’d said in the last half year. I said I was sorry that this is how love had to end.
She sent back this e-mail “Tian yi you don't need to worry about anything. I don't hate you and never will. whenever I think back, it's all the happiness I shared with you.. I know you dont mean for what you did and said after our breakup. You are not angry or bad person, i know who you are and I always believe you for who you are. I hope you well and there's something between you and me is eternal for me. I am happy that your the first person I ever loved. Yun”
I always hated how she could make me love her more, while twisting the knife.
that was the last I’ve heard from her. I haven’t talked with her since august of 2008.
Right now, I am still very hurt. I hate the lessons that I’ve learned, that I learned against my will, the things I believe now that I never wanted to believe and that I hate my self for thinking, that love cannot conquer the world, that I cannot trust anyone, that the world is not magical like I thought it was, instead it’s just plain, an average place where horrible things can happen everyday. I hate that I don’t think I could ever love someone again, at the level I loved her, and that I will always compare everything I feel in the future to the love I had for her. I will never feel safe again giving my heart to someone and so I don’t know if I ever will.
I believe I am suffering from PTSD now. If I see a picture of her, or hear something about her, my heart starts to beat so hard I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I’ve stopped crying again for the most part, though any time I see something about the earthquake again the tears start flowing. I don’t know what will happen to me, the worst part now is I’ve lost a great deal of hope. I feel like I experienced the most wonderful thing of my life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that again. Life these days feels so dull and boring. Even exciting things don’t excite me like they used to. I just feel terrified a lot of the time, and I hate when fear controls me, but now it does. Now I am under the finger of fear, and it tells me what to do and where to go. It tells me what I can’t do.
Most importantly this story never ended, there was no conclusion. I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know if I will ever see her again. It’s hard to believe I could go my whole life and never see her again. She was everything to me, there was a whole year, over 12 months that I thought I would be with her for the rest of my life. How can you just say goodbye to someone like that? I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. I think I’m on my way up. I am slowly getting better. The bad days are getting fewer and fewer, I’m not as depressed as I used to be. I am, one step at a time, moving back to a regular life. But at the moment I feel like the man who fought the dragon and lost. What happens to those people? Are there any stories about them?
I had been thinking about earthquakes all day. I’m not claiming psychic powers by any means, but that day I was thinking about earthquakes. Actually I was wishing for an earthquake. It is a common fantasy for me, when things start going really bad in my life, or I’m just unhappy with where I am, I imagine an earthquake that destroys my home, and everything I know. I fantasize about being a hero and saving lives, about mourning the deaths of those I couldn’t save, but most importantly starting completely and utterly over from scratch, having no food no money no life at all and having to build it all up from the bottom again. Of course it’s not something I would actually wish for, but when things start going wrong, it’s just what my mind goes to.
May 12th 2008 I came home to my mom telling me about the earthquake in China. I was surprised. My first reaction was not all that bad, China is huge, about the size of the US. I thought it was rather unlikely that it had effected people I knew. But I did jump on the computer right away to check it out.
It took me a moment to find out that it had been a massive earthquake. It was rated a 7.9 and had been felt across almost the whole country. A second later I found the epicenter had been right in the center of rural Sichuan. Sichuan, the capitol of which was Chengdu, which is where Rye lived, and where I had spent so much time.
I started franticly searching for news stories. I turned on all my messengers and wrote an e-mail to Rye, I tried calling her but the phones weren’t working, though that was normal. I was terrified. I tried everything in my power to get in contact with her. And every moment I waited I was looking up and learning more things about the quake, like how the epicenter had been in Sichuan, but they had felt it in Beijing. that’s like having an earthquake in LA and feeling it in Ohio. The stories of how many people were being found dead under piles of rubble that used to be apartments were growing. And I began to be convinced that Rye was dead. And then for the first time in 5 months, for the first time since I had heard about Rye cheating on me. I finally started to cry. I cried about everything that had happened, I cried because I knew even though I hated her, and even though she had hurt me so much, I still loved her. No matter what happened I couldn’t stop that.
I don’t remember where my parents were then, I can’t remember if they were watching me cry or if they noticed at all. I did it quietly to myself, just let my tears start pouring down over my cheeks. I had lost so much already. And now I thought I had lost it all.
Finally though as my head was leaning against my desk, I heard MSN alert me to a new message. It was Rye, and I was suddenly so relieved. I immediately started asking if she was ok, if her parents were ok, I asked about all the other people I knew in Sichuan, asked if she knew about them.
She told me the earthquake had hit while she was at home. She said she thought6 she was going to die because it was shaking so hard. They were getting after shocks regularly. And every time one hit she thought it was going to be another big quake, her and her family were scared to death they would not live much longer. They wouldn’t be sleeping in their apartment anymore, they had built a shelter out in a local park.
For the next few days I would hear horror stories about how every time some alert would come about another earthquake, they would jump in their car to get away, though they didn’t know where they were going. And there never was another earthquake, though the after shocks kept coming for over a month. All her friends were ok, and her family was fine. But everyone was terrified.
The epicenter was right near the Wolong Panda Reserve, a place I had gone to 3 times with Rye, we would later find a few of the pandas had died. I also found out that the town at Qingchen Shan, the town at the bottom of the mountain we had climbed had been leveled. And most of the buildings on the mountain had been destroyed. I still don’t know, but have little hope for the fate of the little hotel perched so dangerously on stilts hanging over the cliff where me and Rye had our first kiss, and have no way of knowing what happened to the family that lived there.
Me and Rye started talking regularly again. Mostly we talked about the earthquake, I was still so worried about her and her family, but as worry dissipated, eventually we came back to old topics, and in time the pain started flowing back into me. I of course found out she was talking the Australian guy still, probably more than she was talking to me. She was still making her plans to go to Holland, she had her visa and all her papers ready, she was just waiting for the time when she would go. In the 3 months I had been planning my trip to move to Holland, I had looked up everything I could about surviving in Europe with no money. Camping spots, where to get money, where I could sleep for free, I was going to invest in a tent and sleeping bag and all the things I would need to survive there. So even when I decided not to go, I felt at least that I would know a bit about the place she was going because of all the research I had done.
But as we started to fight again, and I started feeling all that old pain reforming. I decided it was still too soon, I told her I couldn’t talk to her for a while longer, I wasn’t ready to be her friend yet. I was working at a camp that summer, and so I figured I could just spend the next 3 months away from her, and when I got back I might feel better.
A week or two before camp started though we started talking online again every once in a while. This was tense, but fine. She was just a few weeks away from going off to Holland, and I was happy to be going to camp. I was still in a lot of pain pretty much all the time, but I at least felt like things were going to be ok. I made plans to not check my e-mail for the next 5 or 6 weeks, at which point we had a mid summer break and I would go home for 4 days.
Camp was great for me. It didn’t quite take my mind off things but it kept me busy at least, so I just kept working even though I would have liked to just sit and wallow quite a few times. It wasn’t perfect though. Sometimes when we had our weekend break, and I didn’t have any people around me, I would end up in a tree house, usually end up screaming kicking and punching the trees with as much force as I could. I had a lot of pain still in me, a lot of anger that wasn’t going away.
After the 5 weeks though I came home for my break. It was the 4th of July and I was happy to be home, though more happy that it was only a short time, I liked being on my own out in the woods more. As per my decision I only then finally checked my e-mail and turned on my computer. I opened MSN and there was Rye online. And next to her name, where it said her status were just the words “Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane” now immediately I was a bit worried, a little confused. As far as I knew she had left for Holland a week or two after I had gone to camp. I said hi, and after a long wait she said hi back. I asked her where she was and she said “guess” and I said I was pretty sure she was in Holland but why does her thing say Brisbane? It took her a lot of time where she said a lot of things that weren’t answers before she finally told me that in fact she was not in Holland, in fact she was in Australia at that moment. It seemed in 2 weeks she had suddenly made the decision to cancel her long held plans to go to Holland, and instead enrolled in a school in Australia. In a city very near to that son of a bitch boy. I kept thinking that I had learned the last truth, that there wasn’t going to be any more of these horrible surprises. But every time there was something new. There was some new item she would tell me that would send me right back to the beginning of this whole episode. My heart had been crushed, and then healed slightly, then shot, then stepped on then run through a paper shredder. Of course I immediately started shouting at her in type. I was so angry again. I couldn’t stand how she kept doing this to me, how she kept hurting me over and over. How could she be so down right mean? I mean cruelly horribly mean, like she didn’t care how much she hurt me, like it didn’t matter to her at all?
Before I returned to camp, I sent her one more angry e-mail. A long cruel angry destructive e-mail because I just wanted her to feel as bad as I did. The rest of camp was less good. At one point I punched a large saw blade in front of the kids though I don’t think anyone saw me. It busted up my hand pretty bad and they were afraid I had broken it though it turned out to be ok. I spent more time on the weekends alone, more time sulking. I could believe my life had turned this way. I couldn’t believe I was the one going through all this pain. The thing about having your heart broken is that you live entirely in clichés. Everything you do is exactly the same as every break up song, and every emo poem you’ve ever read, and suddenly you understand that lots of people have gone through the same thing, but you didn’t realize that it was this, that this is what they were talking about, how this is how bad it felt.
To have the person you loved and trusted more than anyone in the world, come at you with a knife, and just cut you over and over and over, not caring that it hurts you, just doing it. To have the person you taught you what the meaning of love really was, turn around and tell you they don’t love you anymore.
I was suicidal at that time, not while I was at camp, but during the events, earlier, I had thought from time to time about just ending everything. It was a very very dark time for me. I lost some friends because of how dark I got. I hurt the people around me.
When I got home from camp, there was a response to my angry e-mail waiting for me. She told me that I was manipulative, that I was cruel. And she said she didn’t want me to write her any more e-mails. After all this time though, after all this anger I finally realized that I could never move on as long as I was still talking with her. I sent her an e-mail telling her I agreed, we shouldn’t talk to each other anymore, I said I was sorry for the monstrous things I’d said in the last half year. I said I was sorry that this is how love had to end.
She sent back this e-mail “Tian yi you don't need to worry about anything. I don't hate you and never will. whenever I think back, it's all the happiness I shared with you.. I know you dont mean for what you did and said after our breakup. You are not angry or bad person, i know who you are and I always believe you for who you are. I hope you well and there's something between you and me is eternal for me. I am happy that your the first person I ever loved. Yun”
I always hated how she could make me love her more, while twisting the knife.
that was the last I’ve heard from her. I haven’t talked with her since august of 2008.
Right now, I am still very hurt. I hate the lessons that I’ve learned, that I learned against my will, the things I believe now that I never wanted to believe and that I hate my self for thinking, that love cannot conquer the world, that I cannot trust anyone, that the world is not magical like I thought it was, instead it’s just plain, an average place where horrible things can happen everyday. I hate that I don’t think I could ever love someone again, at the level I loved her, and that I will always compare everything I feel in the future to the love I had for her. I will never feel safe again giving my heart to someone and so I don’t know if I ever will.
I believe I am suffering from PTSD now. If I see a picture of her, or hear something about her, my heart starts to beat so hard I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I’ve stopped crying again for the most part, though any time I see something about the earthquake again the tears start flowing. I don’t know what will happen to me, the worst part now is I’ve lost a great deal of hope. I feel like I experienced the most wonderful thing of my life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that again. Life these days feels so dull and boring. Even exciting things don’t excite me like they used to. I just feel terrified a lot of the time, and I hate when fear controls me, but now it does. Now I am under the finger of fear, and it tells me what to do and where to go. It tells me what I can’t do.
Most importantly this story never ended, there was no conclusion. I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know if I will ever see her again. It’s hard to believe I could go my whole life and never see her again. She was everything to me, there was a whole year, over 12 months that I thought I would be with her for the rest of my life. How can you just say goodbye to someone like that? I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. I think I’m on my way up. I am slowly getting better. The bad days are getting fewer and fewer, I’m not as depressed as I used to be. I am, one step at a time, moving back to a regular life. But at the moment I feel like the man who fought the dragon and lost. What happens to those people? Are there any stories about them?
Monday, January 5, 2009
story of Rye part 4
Part 4
We stayed together for about 3 or 4 months, I can’t remember exactly how long, with no major problems. It was painful to be sure, being separated from the person you love, trying to maintain a relationship though a crappy phone line that constantly disconnects, internet that fails, and snail mail that is unreliable and slow. But we made do. And despite the problems, I thought we’d found a good coasting speed. We could talk with each other face to face on web cams when the internet was working well enough. And though we were both trying to live our lives, we were making time for each other. But unbeknownst to me trouble was brewing.
I didn’t want to see it, and so continued to believe that things were fine. But there were signs a less consumed person might have seen. Though we had always had out little arguments. They usually ended pretty quick, and I though they usually made us stronger as a couple, at one point she told me about these doubts she was having, she told me it felt like I was drifting away from her. I reassured her as best as I could that I loved her as much as ever, and that I could never imagine my life with out her. It alleviated the situation in my eyes, but I didn’t see that it had simply made her not want to talk about it any more, because it wasn’t that she felt I was drifting away from her, it was in fact that she felt herself drifting away from me.
Around this time she told me about a new friend she’d made online. This was nothing new, Rye was constantly making new friends on her various networking sites. She was the type of person to have 500 friends that she didn’t know that well, but she had a fair bit that she actually knew very well. She would generally tell me about all the ones she was close with at all. So When she started telling me about this new friend of hers I wasn’t surprised. But from her words I felt an instant and deep loathing for him. I knew in an instant that he was flirting with her, and I chalked it up to naiveté that she didn’t see it. She told him about me and she told me how he had discounted me, told her he was better than me. I hated him, though it didn’t get me very angry. I had no reason to be afraid, I trusted Rye with every fiber of my being. I trusted her with my whole life. I knew she would never cheat on me. Besides she was in China, and this guy was from Australia. It really wasn’t an issue at all.
A bit later another of Rye’s friends came to visit her in China. A British girl named Jo. Rye was constantly making friends with people from all over the world. She was an amazing person who had a gift for friendship. She had literally hundreds of friends all over, which is why I had always felt so lucky that of all the people she knew in her life, she had chosen me as her life partner.
I understood lately that Rye had been lonely. Most of her close friends lived far away now, going to schools in other parts of China or studying abroad in other places. So I was really happy when Jo came to China. I was happy that Rye had someone to be with, and though it meant Rye spent less time online I knew it was only temporary and I was much more happy that Rye was spending time with a friend than just sitting around talking to me all the time. Besides this, after me and Rye decided to make this long distance thing work, she had also recommitted herself to the au pair America program. She was going to try for another family, this time in New York. In our eyes New York seemed infinitely closer than she was now, we were idealistic and believed that I would be able to go visit her, and hopefully she could come live with me afterwards for a few months before returning to China. But it was a stressful process still, which further made me glad she could go out with Jo and go to clubs had have fun and forget about it for the most part.
Pain, worry, confusion. After Jo had been there about a week I was talking with Rye online, and out of the blue she told me that the boy from Australia, the one and only friend that she had out of the thousands that I actually had a problem with, was coming to China to visit her, in fact he would be there the next day, she said she didn’t know why she hadn’t told me this. I was confused, because she had never been purposely dishonest with me before, but confusion is really where it stopped. In the same conversation she asked me if I thought she should not go hangout with him, and I responded “I trust you” because I truly did. I was worried of course, but I was more worried that he was going to try and pull something. That he might hurt her, or attack her or something. I never in my wildest dreams thought that she would ever cheat on me at all. I couldn’t imagine that.
I can’t remember if I talked with her after that. I think I’m sure I must have, in addition to chatting online, we were also sending e-mails so I can’t remember if I ever talked with her in real time. But just about that time was her Visa interview for her American visa. We were both sure it would go through, though I can’t remember why. But just at that time I got an e-mail from her saying that she had been turned down for her visa again. I was so sad. And above all I know she felt that she had let me down, because she wanted it, but she knew how much I wanted it too. This is when I lost contact with her.
For 4 days, I didn’t talk with her, I was online every day, I tried calling her, tried messaging her, and e-mails. But I didn’t hear anything. I started getting depressed, started getting terrified. Though maybe she had been kidnapped, been raped by that son of a bitch. I was so scared of what might be going on on the other side of the world. But finally after 4 days, I was on the computer and she came online. And I was so relived. I asked where she’d been and why I hadn’t been able to get in contact with her and she told me she’d just been going out to clubs with Jo, and that guy and one of her Chinese friends. I pushed a little asking why she hadn’t been able to even send me an e-mail or anything, and that was apparently all the pushing she needed to tell me, suddenly out of the blue, that she had kissed him, kissed that Australian fuck!
I fell out of my chair. My heart beating so hard I thought it would explode and send chunks of my flesh and bones splattering against the walls. I punched the cement ground of my basement 3 times, hard, as my hard started to swell up I started shouting through my key board. Not sentences, just WHAT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? YOU KISSED HIM? RYE, RYE, ARE YOU THERE? HELLO? WHY AREN”T YOU TALKING TO ME? She didn’t respond for a while. And I couldn’t stand it. How dare she not respond how dare she say that and just leave it. I can’t explain what I was feeling at the time. I felt like I shouldn’t. every part of me felt like it needed to be doing something other that what it was. I felt like I imagine a slug must when it‘s covered in salt, so much pain it will crawl out of it’s own skin. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin at that moment. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t stand it. Finally she told me, she said she had kissed him in a club, the were drinking a bit, and that they had been holding hands, which frankly made it hurt so much worse. If they had simply been making out it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, I could understand drunken making out. To know they had been holding hands on the street, they were having a real relationship. Sex would have been better than that.
I didn’t cry, I couldn’t, in fact I wouldn’t cry for the next 4 months or so. I didn’t eat anything for the next 3 days, because everything in my body was trying to evacuate as fast as possible. If I ate anything it would fly through my system and out the other end in an hour. I didn’t sleep for 3 days either. I spent all my time online trying to talk with her. Calling her on the phone, sending her text messages. I started making demands, told her she couldn’t see him any more, she agreed, told her she couldn’t go out with friends anymore, she agreed. Told her she needed to commit to staying around and talking with me at least every day so we could work this out, she agreed. In fact anything I said she agreed with instantly, but in practice she didn’t agree to any of it.
At this point I’d gone so far off the deep end, I was trying to control her in every possible way, I was trying to make her do exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t think of anything but her all the time. She didn’t stop going out to clubs, I’d call her regularly, and if I even got through she usually wouldn’t pick up, and if she did, there was loud music in the back ground. I would yell at her. Scream at her. Tell her how I was trying to hold everything together, why wasn’t she helping me, why didn’t she want to fix this? Why wouldn’t she talk with me, I told her I was dieing, told her I couldn’t stand to do anything in my life now, told her how much pain I was in. Why was she making me do all the work. Why couldn’t she meet me half way?
At one point a few weeks later, she left on a ski trip with Jo, and her Chinese friend. I called her while she was there. She was with her friends when she picked up and I could hear them in the background. And I heard a distinct male voice. I asked who it was she told me it was a friend of the other Chinese girl. That he was from Ireland. I didn’t question it, I couldn’t stand to question it. But in fact I would find out later that that was in fact him again, that Australian ass hole. She was on a 3 day trip with him in the mountains.
Of course I can’t remember all the things that were said. It took about 3 months I think, though I could be wrong about that, 3 months of me desperately trying to hold things together. And in this time I came up with the following plan. Since Rye had failed to get a visa to the US she was going to Holland to go to school. She would be there for 3 years. I was willing to do anything in the world to hold us together, and I could see that we couldn’t maintain a relationship while being so far apart. So I decided I would move to Holland. I would get a job, and work till I had a bit of money, then go to Holland and live there. I would sleep in the streets if I had to, though I was looking for programs in which I could get a place to live and food in exchange for work. I was ready to spend my days in any manner of pain and suffering if it meant I would be with her. I would die for her. I knew it. Even if she was now telling me she didn’t know if she wanted to be with me. Even though she told me that her love had faded. Even as I heard her voice telling me she didn’t love me anymore. I would give everything I had to this.
I took a job painting my house, getting paid by my parents. Then took a job at a summer camp I’d worked at before. With a plan things were looking up. But the conversations online and on the phone continued. And by the end of 3 months I was beginning to see something. Though that guy had gone back to Australia, she told me she was still talking to him regularly even though she said she wouldn’t. she told me she didn’t think that kissing him was just a mistake, she said a lot of things, and when I asked if she loved him she said “I don’t know”
Among the things I said: I hate you, you’re killing me, you are a terrible person, how can you do this to me, bitch, slut, fuck you, go to hell, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Me: “how can you do this, don’t you see how this is killing me, you are killing me!!”
Her: “well what do you want me to do?”
Me: “I want you to die, I want you to just go in a small room and kill yourself”
Her: long pause “that’s not your choice.”
She took a lot of abuse from me, a lot of days of me simply screaming, me yelling maybe she felt that she had to take it, maybe she felt that she deserved it. But she almost always stayed calm through it. She would cry, she would listen quietly, and sometimes she would yell back, but rarely. She mostly just stood it. I hated how she could be so calm, it was unfair that she could do something like that to make me love her more, while I hated her so much.
I sometimes wondered, if she had just died, If she had been killed by someone or something, would it have hurt as bad? I thought if she had died, at least I would always know that she had loved me. I wondered how many people who had really found complete true love, love that had grown and matured, love that had been shared love. How many people had heard the person they loved turn around in an instant and tell them they didn’t love them anymore.
I realized after that 3 month period that I had failed. I realized that our relationship was doomed, and it was time to simply break up. Finally I told her, I wouldn’t come to Holland to see her. I hoped we could be friends, but I needed some time alone to not think about her for a while, so I wouldn’t be talking with her online for a month or two.
But once again bad luck would intervene, because soon, the earthquake would break our silence.
We stayed together for about 3 or 4 months, I can’t remember exactly how long, with no major problems. It was painful to be sure, being separated from the person you love, trying to maintain a relationship though a crappy phone line that constantly disconnects, internet that fails, and snail mail that is unreliable and slow. But we made do. And despite the problems, I thought we’d found a good coasting speed. We could talk with each other face to face on web cams when the internet was working well enough. And though we were both trying to live our lives, we were making time for each other. But unbeknownst to me trouble was brewing.
I didn’t want to see it, and so continued to believe that things were fine. But there were signs a less consumed person might have seen. Though we had always had out little arguments. They usually ended pretty quick, and I though they usually made us stronger as a couple, at one point she told me about these doubts she was having, she told me it felt like I was drifting away from her. I reassured her as best as I could that I loved her as much as ever, and that I could never imagine my life with out her. It alleviated the situation in my eyes, but I didn’t see that it had simply made her not want to talk about it any more, because it wasn’t that she felt I was drifting away from her, it was in fact that she felt herself drifting away from me.
Around this time she told me about a new friend she’d made online. This was nothing new, Rye was constantly making new friends on her various networking sites. She was the type of person to have 500 friends that she didn’t know that well, but she had a fair bit that she actually knew very well. She would generally tell me about all the ones she was close with at all. So When she started telling me about this new friend of hers I wasn’t surprised. But from her words I felt an instant and deep loathing for him. I knew in an instant that he was flirting with her, and I chalked it up to naiveté that she didn’t see it. She told him about me and she told me how he had discounted me, told her he was better than me. I hated him, though it didn’t get me very angry. I had no reason to be afraid, I trusted Rye with every fiber of my being. I trusted her with my whole life. I knew she would never cheat on me. Besides she was in China, and this guy was from Australia. It really wasn’t an issue at all.
A bit later another of Rye’s friends came to visit her in China. A British girl named Jo. Rye was constantly making friends with people from all over the world. She was an amazing person who had a gift for friendship. She had literally hundreds of friends all over, which is why I had always felt so lucky that of all the people she knew in her life, she had chosen me as her life partner.
I understood lately that Rye had been lonely. Most of her close friends lived far away now, going to schools in other parts of China or studying abroad in other places. So I was really happy when Jo came to China. I was happy that Rye had someone to be with, and though it meant Rye spent less time online I knew it was only temporary and I was much more happy that Rye was spending time with a friend than just sitting around talking to me all the time. Besides this, after me and Rye decided to make this long distance thing work, she had also recommitted herself to the au pair America program. She was going to try for another family, this time in New York. In our eyes New York seemed infinitely closer than she was now, we were idealistic and believed that I would be able to go visit her, and hopefully she could come live with me afterwards for a few months before returning to China. But it was a stressful process still, which further made me glad she could go out with Jo and go to clubs had have fun and forget about it for the most part.
Pain, worry, confusion. After Jo had been there about a week I was talking with Rye online, and out of the blue she told me that the boy from Australia, the one and only friend that she had out of the thousands that I actually had a problem with, was coming to China to visit her, in fact he would be there the next day, she said she didn’t know why she hadn’t told me this. I was confused, because she had never been purposely dishonest with me before, but confusion is really where it stopped. In the same conversation she asked me if I thought she should not go hangout with him, and I responded “I trust you” because I truly did. I was worried of course, but I was more worried that he was going to try and pull something. That he might hurt her, or attack her or something. I never in my wildest dreams thought that she would ever cheat on me at all. I couldn’t imagine that.
I can’t remember if I talked with her after that. I think I’m sure I must have, in addition to chatting online, we were also sending e-mails so I can’t remember if I ever talked with her in real time. But just about that time was her Visa interview for her American visa. We were both sure it would go through, though I can’t remember why. But just at that time I got an e-mail from her saying that she had been turned down for her visa again. I was so sad. And above all I know she felt that she had let me down, because she wanted it, but she knew how much I wanted it too. This is when I lost contact with her.
For 4 days, I didn’t talk with her, I was online every day, I tried calling her, tried messaging her, and e-mails. But I didn’t hear anything. I started getting depressed, started getting terrified. Though maybe she had been kidnapped, been raped by that son of a bitch. I was so scared of what might be going on on the other side of the world. But finally after 4 days, I was on the computer and she came online. And I was so relived. I asked where she’d been and why I hadn’t been able to get in contact with her and she told me she’d just been going out to clubs with Jo, and that guy and one of her Chinese friends. I pushed a little asking why she hadn’t been able to even send me an e-mail or anything, and that was apparently all the pushing she needed to tell me, suddenly out of the blue, that she had kissed him, kissed that Australian fuck!
I fell out of my chair. My heart beating so hard I thought it would explode and send chunks of my flesh and bones splattering against the walls. I punched the cement ground of my basement 3 times, hard, as my hard started to swell up I started shouting through my key board. Not sentences, just WHAT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? YOU KISSED HIM? RYE, RYE, ARE YOU THERE? HELLO? WHY AREN”T YOU TALKING TO ME? She didn’t respond for a while. And I couldn’t stand it. How dare she not respond how dare she say that and just leave it. I can’t explain what I was feeling at the time. I felt like I shouldn’t. every part of me felt like it needed to be doing something other that what it was. I felt like I imagine a slug must when it‘s covered in salt, so much pain it will crawl out of it’s own skin. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin at that moment. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t stand it. Finally she told me, she said she had kissed him in a club, the were drinking a bit, and that they had been holding hands, which frankly made it hurt so much worse. If they had simply been making out it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, I could understand drunken making out. To know they had been holding hands on the street, they were having a real relationship. Sex would have been better than that.
I didn’t cry, I couldn’t, in fact I wouldn’t cry for the next 4 months or so. I didn’t eat anything for the next 3 days, because everything in my body was trying to evacuate as fast as possible. If I ate anything it would fly through my system and out the other end in an hour. I didn’t sleep for 3 days either. I spent all my time online trying to talk with her. Calling her on the phone, sending her text messages. I started making demands, told her she couldn’t see him any more, she agreed, told her she couldn’t go out with friends anymore, she agreed. Told her she needed to commit to staying around and talking with me at least every day so we could work this out, she agreed. In fact anything I said she agreed with instantly, but in practice she didn’t agree to any of it.
At this point I’d gone so far off the deep end, I was trying to control her in every possible way, I was trying to make her do exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t think of anything but her all the time. She didn’t stop going out to clubs, I’d call her regularly, and if I even got through she usually wouldn’t pick up, and if she did, there was loud music in the back ground. I would yell at her. Scream at her. Tell her how I was trying to hold everything together, why wasn’t she helping me, why didn’t she want to fix this? Why wouldn’t she talk with me, I told her I was dieing, told her I couldn’t stand to do anything in my life now, told her how much pain I was in. Why was she making me do all the work. Why couldn’t she meet me half way?
At one point a few weeks later, she left on a ski trip with Jo, and her Chinese friend. I called her while she was there. She was with her friends when she picked up and I could hear them in the background. And I heard a distinct male voice. I asked who it was she told me it was a friend of the other Chinese girl. That he was from Ireland. I didn’t question it, I couldn’t stand to question it. But in fact I would find out later that that was in fact him again, that Australian ass hole. She was on a 3 day trip with him in the mountains.
Of course I can’t remember all the things that were said. It took about 3 months I think, though I could be wrong about that, 3 months of me desperately trying to hold things together. And in this time I came up with the following plan. Since Rye had failed to get a visa to the US she was going to Holland to go to school. She would be there for 3 years. I was willing to do anything in the world to hold us together, and I could see that we couldn’t maintain a relationship while being so far apart. So I decided I would move to Holland. I would get a job, and work till I had a bit of money, then go to Holland and live there. I would sleep in the streets if I had to, though I was looking for programs in which I could get a place to live and food in exchange for work. I was ready to spend my days in any manner of pain and suffering if it meant I would be with her. I would die for her. I knew it. Even if she was now telling me she didn’t know if she wanted to be with me. Even though she told me that her love had faded. Even as I heard her voice telling me she didn’t love me anymore. I would give everything I had to this.
I took a job painting my house, getting paid by my parents. Then took a job at a summer camp I’d worked at before. With a plan things were looking up. But the conversations online and on the phone continued. And by the end of 3 months I was beginning to see something. Though that guy had gone back to Australia, she told me she was still talking to him regularly even though she said she wouldn’t. she told me she didn’t think that kissing him was just a mistake, she said a lot of things, and when I asked if she loved him she said “I don’t know”
Among the things I said: I hate you, you’re killing me, you are a terrible person, how can you do this to me, bitch, slut, fuck you, go to hell, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Me: “how can you do this, don’t you see how this is killing me, you are killing me!!”
Her: “well what do you want me to do?”
Me: “I want you to die, I want you to just go in a small room and kill yourself”
Her: long pause “that’s not your choice.”
She took a lot of abuse from me, a lot of days of me simply screaming, me yelling maybe she felt that she had to take it, maybe she felt that she deserved it. But she almost always stayed calm through it. She would cry, she would listen quietly, and sometimes she would yell back, but rarely. She mostly just stood it. I hated how she could be so calm, it was unfair that she could do something like that to make me love her more, while I hated her so much.
I sometimes wondered, if she had just died, If she had been killed by someone or something, would it have hurt as bad? I thought if she had died, at least I would always know that she had loved me. I wondered how many people who had really found complete true love, love that had grown and matured, love that had been shared love. How many people had heard the person they loved turn around in an instant and tell them they didn’t love them anymore.
I realized after that 3 month period that I had failed. I realized that our relationship was doomed, and it was time to simply break up. Finally I told her, I wouldn’t come to Holland to see her. I hoped we could be friends, but I needed some time alone to not think about her for a while, so I wouldn’t be talking with her online for a month or two.
But once again bad luck would intervene, because soon, the earthquake would break our silence.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Story of Rye part 3
Part 3
As I write this the question of why I’m writing is continuing to mull through my mind. And I’ve come up with something. I don’t believe that there is a single part of my life, who I am now, that hasn’t been effected, in a big way or a small way, by this story here. So if you are to read anything I’ve written, or anything I will ever read again, you have to know this story. Now as to why I want you to understand, and understand this part of me, you friends and strangers who might come across this, I’m not sure exactly. I have always tried to write honestly to people no matter who they are, it’s the only way I can do it, if I don’t tell the whole truth I feel like I’ve been fucking a stranger. It’s pointless and useless to me. For me to enjoy anything that I’m doing in this atmosphere, I have to have truth and love, it’s not just an assignment, it’s an instinct of the heart. So here is the continuation.
After our period of discontent, things just kept getting better, and for the rest of my time in China, we were just happy. I want to get the description of this just right though, because this was the important part, this is the state of things that you really need to understand. The problem is that I’m not sure if it’s possible to write this purely. Because I want to remember it as it was, I want to remember how I felt at the time, how I was happy, how I loved this person. How I felt my life was complete now, and that I could start a whole new chapter in my life with this new partner. I want to see her how I saw her then, and not let the things that would happen later taint my view of her, don’t want to read into things that I didn’t notice at the time. But in doing this I wonder if I glorify her more than I did at the time. As time passes it scares me how unsure I am about how I really felt. I know I loved her, I know I spent a lot of time with her, and I know I felt that I needed her, but I don’t know what feelings I truly had and to what degree they were there. This happened a long time ago, almost 2 years ago now.
But here is what I believe I felt. I felt passion, I felt agony when we were apart. I loved everything she did. When I spent a month starving because I ran out of money, she would bring me food from her house. As I wrestled with a stomach parasite for 4 months straight, she held my hands because while I was in the most pain, and I clung to her as my stomach rocked my body in fire, she was the only thing that comforted me. I dreamed of the day I could show her my country, and my city, and my home. I marveled as our love matured, because it felt like it was boundless, that the longer I lived, all I would ever feel was the continued growth of our love, the greater understanding of how we worked in each others lives.
While I was in China I became tremendously skilled at letting things go. I didn’t worry about anything, I just let the universe direct me and that’s where I went, it’s that relaxed way of looking at the world that led me from one end of China to the other. It’s what took me to Rye in the first place, it’s what let me love her with no boundaries, because I had given up being worried about what I felt, or what I should feel, I loved her in an instant cause my heart was open to find my soul mate, and that’s who she was to me. The person that clicked in with my soul.
So though me and Rye both knew we had a time limit on our relationship, I didn’t think about it much. And when the day finally came for me to leave. At the airport I had the same kind of departure that I’d had from my parents nearly a year ago. A simple goodbye, a hug, but no kiss because that was unseemly in China. No tears, no great emotion, because in my heart I felt like we were only going to be apart for a short time, I was just saying good bye for a moment. Though I knew it might be a long time intellectually, I couldn’t feel it. Also we both believed she would very soon be an au pair in America and I would see her in a month or two. As for me though I was off on my trip to Beijing to meet my parents, then with them to Tibet, before I we made our way home. I continued to talk with Rye on the phone and through texts while I was in China, and in Tibet. Tibet was amazing, but a different story. But important in that, a few days after I got home in the US, she also went on a trip to Tibet, it was a few weeks where I couldn’t talk to her, but I felt closer to her knowing we had shared such an amazing place even if not at exactly the same time.
At home though as time went by we started getting bad news about the au pair program. It was proving much harder to get a US visa than we had expected, in fact it was pretty near impossible for Rye to get one any time soon. For a month or two we kept trying though, she would get connected with an au pair family, and stuff, but then they would turn her down in favor of someone who already had a visa lined up to come to the US. It was getting frustrating because even if she were to get with one of these families, she would most likely be living somewhere on the east coast, in New York, or at the closest yet, in Minnesota. After a while it became apparent things weren’t going to work out. And we made the very hard, but seemingly necessary choice to break up. To go our separate ways but remain friends. And who knows, maybe someday rekindle something when we were both done with school and ready to undergo something like that. It was hard to let her go, of all the acts of faith I had been asked to make as a result of my China trip. All the times I would be on a plain or a train and have no idea where I was going, or where I would be sleeping that night, how many times I knew so little about anything that I was doing what just kept walking forward out of faith that things would work out, this was the hardest, and quite honestly, it’s a choice I failed, and it’s this failed test of my faith that I believe led to all the hell to come.
A few weeks after we had broken up, I got an e-mail from Rye, attached was a letter from a family in America that wanted her to be an au pair. A family that lived here, in Portland. We were both shocked, and excited. And we both decided that we would try for it. I took it as a sign that the universe really was backing us up, that it was really going to support us, we were soul mates for sure. The next month or so involved Rye franticly getting paper work turned in to every necessary place. And finally having her visa interview. For Chinese people they cannot simply come to the US, they must be interviewed and evaluated before they are granted entry into the US, to determine weather they are a risk of over staying their visa, staying in the US illegally.
We started talking about all the things we would do when she got here. How she would come over to my house for holidays, she would meet my family, I would show her every wonderful thing about my city, there wasn’t a second that I was walking down the street and not imagining her walking beside me, telling her everything about the places we were seeing, all the stories of my life that had taken place there. My heart was on fire, because I was sure she would be with me soon.
But of course as things turned out, it didn’t work. On the day of her interview, she sent me an e-mail telling me that she had failed, she said the woman who had done the interview said that a girl her age, with no college degree, and with no clear bonds to China that would require her to come back, had basically no chance of getting a US visa.
We were both so sad, but as the time to move on came about again, I realized something, realized that I needed her in my life. And this is where I realized wrong. This is where I failed, Because I felt like I had let the universe run so freely for so long, that it owed me this one thing and so I told Rye that I loved her, told her I only wanted her, and I said I would rather be with her in spirit for the 3 years it would take the two of us to finish college than to just let it go. I asked if she felt she could stand being in such a long distance relationship for that long. And she agreed. We were going to be strong, we were going to persevere. I had the ultimate trust in her. There was no one in my life EVER that I had trusted this much to be strong. Because I loved her, and I knew she loved me, and I knew this was a rare type of love that only a few people were ever lucky enough to feel. And this is when I finally made that choice to turn from trusting of the universe to simply trusting in my own strength. But inevitably, the fall would come, and it fell hard.
As I write this the question of why I’m writing is continuing to mull through my mind. And I’ve come up with something. I don’t believe that there is a single part of my life, who I am now, that hasn’t been effected, in a big way or a small way, by this story here. So if you are to read anything I’ve written, or anything I will ever read again, you have to know this story. Now as to why I want you to understand, and understand this part of me, you friends and strangers who might come across this, I’m not sure exactly. I have always tried to write honestly to people no matter who they are, it’s the only way I can do it, if I don’t tell the whole truth I feel like I’ve been fucking a stranger. It’s pointless and useless to me. For me to enjoy anything that I’m doing in this atmosphere, I have to have truth and love, it’s not just an assignment, it’s an instinct of the heart. So here is the continuation.
After our period of discontent, things just kept getting better, and for the rest of my time in China, we were just happy. I want to get the description of this just right though, because this was the important part, this is the state of things that you really need to understand. The problem is that I’m not sure if it’s possible to write this purely. Because I want to remember it as it was, I want to remember how I felt at the time, how I was happy, how I loved this person. How I felt my life was complete now, and that I could start a whole new chapter in my life with this new partner. I want to see her how I saw her then, and not let the things that would happen later taint my view of her, don’t want to read into things that I didn’t notice at the time. But in doing this I wonder if I glorify her more than I did at the time. As time passes it scares me how unsure I am about how I really felt. I know I loved her, I know I spent a lot of time with her, and I know I felt that I needed her, but I don’t know what feelings I truly had and to what degree they were there. This happened a long time ago, almost 2 years ago now.
But here is what I believe I felt. I felt passion, I felt agony when we were apart. I loved everything she did. When I spent a month starving because I ran out of money, she would bring me food from her house. As I wrestled with a stomach parasite for 4 months straight, she held my hands because while I was in the most pain, and I clung to her as my stomach rocked my body in fire, she was the only thing that comforted me. I dreamed of the day I could show her my country, and my city, and my home. I marveled as our love matured, because it felt like it was boundless, that the longer I lived, all I would ever feel was the continued growth of our love, the greater understanding of how we worked in each others lives.
While I was in China I became tremendously skilled at letting things go. I didn’t worry about anything, I just let the universe direct me and that’s where I went, it’s that relaxed way of looking at the world that led me from one end of China to the other. It’s what took me to Rye in the first place, it’s what let me love her with no boundaries, because I had given up being worried about what I felt, or what I should feel, I loved her in an instant cause my heart was open to find my soul mate, and that’s who she was to me. The person that clicked in with my soul.
So though me and Rye both knew we had a time limit on our relationship, I didn’t think about it much. And when the day finally came for me to leave. At the airport I had the same kind of departure that I’d had from my parents nearly a year ago. A simple goodbye, a hug, but no kiss because that was unseemly in China. No tears, no great emotion, because in my heart I felt like we were only going to be apart for a short time, I was just saying good bye for a moment. Though I knew it might be a long time intellectually, I couldn’t feel it. Also we both believed she would very soon be an au pair in America and I would see her in a month or two. As for me though I was off on my trip to Beijing to meet my parents, then with them to Tibet, before I we made our way home. I continued to talk with Rye on the phone and through texts while I was in China, and in Tibet. Tibet was amazing, but a different story. But important in that, a few days after I got home in the US, she also went on a trip to Tibet, it was a few weeks where I couldn’t talk to her, but I felt closer to her knowing we had shared such an amazing place even if not at exactly the same time.
At home though as time went by we started getting bad news about the au pair program. It was proving much harder to get a US visa than we had expected, in fact it was pretty near impossible for Rye to get one any time soon. For a month or two we kept trying though, she would get connected with an au pair family, and stuff, but then they would turn her down in favor of someone who already had a visa lined up to come to the US. It was getting frustrating because even if she were to get with one of these families, she would most likely be living somewhere on the east coast, in New York, or at the closest yet, in Minnesota. After a while it became apparent things weren’t going to work out. And we made the very hard, but seemingly necessary choice to break up. To go our separate ways but remain friends. And who knows, maybe someday rekindle something when we were both done with school and ready to undergo something like that. It was hard to let her go, of all the acts of faith I had been asked to make as a result of my China trip. All the times I would be on a plain or a train and have no idea where I was going, or where I would be sleeping that night, how many times I knew so little about anything that I was doing what just kept walking forward out of faith that things would work out, this was the hardest, and quite honestly, it’s a choice I failed, and it’s this failed test of my faith that I believe led to all the hell to come.
A few weeks after we had broken up, I got an e-mail from Rye, attached was a letter from a family in America that wanted her to be an au pair. A family that lived here, in Portland. We were both shocked, and excited. And we both decided that we would try for it. I took it as a sign that the universe really was backing us up, that it was really going to support us, we were soul mates for sure. The next month or so involved Rye franticly getting paper work turned in to every necessary place. And finally having her visa interview. For Chinese people they cannot simply come to the US, they must be interviewed and evaluated before they are granted entry into the US, to determine weather they are a risk of over staying their visa, staying in the US illegally.
We started talking about all the things we would do when she got here. How she would come over to my house for holidays, she would meet my family, I would show her every wonderful thing about my city, there wasn’t a second that I was walking down the street and not imagining her walking beside me, telling her everything about the places we were seeing, all the stories of my life that had taken place there. My heart was on fire, because I was sure she would be with me soon.
But of course as things turned out, it didn’t work. On the day of her interview, she sent me an e-mail telling me that she had failed, she said the woman who had done the interview said that a girl her age, with no college degree, and with no clear bonds to China that would require her to come back, had basically no chance of getting a US visa.
We were both so sad, but as the time to move on came about again, I realized something, realized that I needed her in my life. And this is where I realized wrong. This is where I failed, Because I felt like I had let the universe run so freely for so long, that it owed me this one thing and so I told Rye that I loved her, told her I only wanted her, and I said I would rather be with her in spirit for the 3 years it would take the two of us to finish college than to just let it go. I asked if she felt she could stand being in such a long distance relationship for that long. And she agreed. We were going to be strong, we were going to persevere. I had the ultimate trust in her. There was no one in my life EVER that I had trusted this much to be strong. Because I loved her, and I knew she loved me, and I knew this was a rare type of love that only a few people were ever lucky enough to feel. And this is when I finally made that choice to turn from trusting of the universe to simply trusting in my own strength. But inevitably, the fall would come, and it fell hard.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
story of Rye part 2
Part 2
When we came back from the mountain, we had two weeks left. In that time I met Rye’s family, aunts uncles, nephews and nieces. I was introduced to her friends, started learning more and more about her, and her history. I learned about Tim, her mentored and confidant through her teen years, an old American man who was a Vietnam vet, and now traveled the world teaching English. He was a published writer and sounded like an amazing person, a spiritual and accomplished man.
And in that time, out physical relationship felt like it was being rocket propelled. We would take every free moment to sneak a kiss, or hold hands behind Rye’s parents backs. And in longer periods of freedom we would indulge our passions as far as we dared. Experiencing everything we’d never done before. Our hearts and minds were opening so fast to each other, and out clothes seemed to only hinder the progress. Though we didn’t make love at the time. We were both virgins, both unsure.
As this was going on though, I was becoming sure of something. There was no way I could go back to school now. My heart was calling so strongly for Rye, I had no choice. And at the end of my 2 week visit. When I went back to Jinan. I began the process of moving out and packing my bags to move to Sichuan permanently. It took about 2 weeks back in Jinan to get my things together. To move out of what had been my home of 4 months. I threw away everything I couldn’t give away. I opened my door and let anyone that wanted to come and take anything they wanted from the pile of things on my desk. I kept a few things that I had bought there, and mailed them back home to the US. But my guitar, my Chinese chess set, books, water cooler, everything that I wouldn’t need was discarded. And when it was all done. I had only my bags filled with clothes, and a few books.
This whole time I talked with Rye every day, on the phone, on the internet, any time I was free I was talking with her. She told me about how she was planning to go to Holland, but she had learned about a new program called Au Pair America. A program where she could travel to America and work as an au pair for a year. This was something she had started looking into before she had met me. This would be the makings of our plan. This was what we hoped would lead us to hold on to each other, she could come to America and we could be together. I never expected it to be the sword through my heart that it would later become.
Finally when I had everything worked out I boarded my plane and headed for Sichuan once again. It was just one of the eventual 14 plains I would fly on through this year long adventure, but I think this one is when I was the happiest. I was so excited to be with the person that after only 2 weeks together, I already knew I loved. When She met me at the airport, I still didn’t know where I would sleep that night, I didn’t know if I would live near her, I didn’t know anything. But when I saw her I was so happy, my heart felt so at ease with her. We hailed a cab together and went towards her house.
I ended up living a few floors above one of her best friends. There was a food market, and the bus terminal near by, it was an hour or two bus ride to where Rye was but I had no other plans so it wasn’t so bad. In the beginning Rye came over almost every other day, taking the long bus ride to see me. It was only days after I arrived that we did finally make love. And from that, a dam broke, and it was all we could do. We would spend every waking moment together in bed. We laughed, kissed, told stories. We would engage in epic tickle wars that would reduce us both to uncontrolled laughter, and lay next to each other so tiered that we would fall asleep still breathing heavily.
There was no feeling in the world like being in her arms, it was the warmest feeling of “home” I could ever describe. And I could fall asleep in an instant if we were tangled up with each others limbs.
When we made love, I have to explain something. Though it was out first time, and we were awkward at first, flopping around you might say, as rookies in a new sport. Her eyes were key, because as passion would overcome us and caution would disappear, her eyes would lock with mine, and as the act took place, the intensity of those eyes, there was meaning there that could break your mind to try and understand. In simplest terms her eyes said to me that she would follow me anywhere. That she would give everything she had to me. That she would follow me into hell because she trusted me. And as we moved together I did everything in my power to live up to that promise, each kiss, caress, each whisper of love and devotion, everything I did I did to be worthy of the message she gave me with those eyes.
After a month things began to change, as they have to, relationships don’t stay the same they evolve. And for us the change came when I suddenly had to go to Hong Kong, for a new visa. I was gone for a week and when I cam back, I needed a place to stay again. We decided though before we found a place for me to stay, we should go on a trip together
After my trip to Hong Kong (another long, and horrifying tale) I found that I had to go back to jinan to withdraw my money from my bank account at the Bank of China there. So we decided to go on a trip to the near by city of Qing Dao, a beach town with plenty of tourism, most famous for Tsing Dao beer, which is shipped all over the world, including here in the US. On the way back we would swing through Jinan and get my money.
The trip was fine, but along the way for the first time we started to fight. Little arguments that would cause major problems. And much of the trip was spent rather darkly. In this time of restructuring, I feel like we were just learning how things were going to work together. We began to figure out how to deal with our problems together. But the fighting didn’t end soon.
I began to think that our relationship was simply at it’s end, that we had hit the natural end to what was an incredibly powerfully burning love. But of course that’s not what happened, after about a month of on and off fighting. We finally came to a place of peace, I can’t explain quite what happened. I just remember at some point. She came over to my hotel. She sat in my room with me, and we talked, we talked for a long time about us, about what we wanted, and by the end we were both crying quite a lot. And with tears rolling down our faces. We both agreed that we needed each other. That night we held each other for hours. And kept telling each other how much we were in love. And this new feeling washed over me. Not the same as the feverish love I had felt, this was matured, it was stronger, but more subtle. And again my heart filled, ever more full and more beautifuly than it had been filled before, with this new, and even more amazing feeling of pure love. That was the beginning of me wondering how much I didn’t know at all. I wondered what this love would feel like in a year, in a decade.
After this time, we began to talk much more about the future, something we hadn’t really discussed. We talked about getting married, about traveling all over the world together. We would go to Australia, Holland, new Zealand, Tib6et. We would go everywhere together and never stop. It was a dream that we just knew would come true. It almost seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. And as it had happened so many times in her presence up till now, I had never been so happy in all my life.
When we came back from the mountain, we had two weeks left. In that time I met Rye’s family, aunts uncles, nephews and nieces. I was introduced to her friends, started learning more and more about her, and her history. I learned about Tim, her mentored and confidant through her teen years, an old American man who was a Vietnam vet, and now traveled the world teaching English. He was a published writer and sounded like an amazing person, a spiritual and accomplished man.
And in that time, out physical relationship felt like it was being rocket propelled. We would take every free moment to sneak a kiss, or hold hands behind Rye’s parents backs. And in longer periods of freedom we would indulge our passions as far as we dared. Experiencing everything we’d never done before. Our hearts and minds were opening so fast to each other, and out clothes seemed to only hinder the progress. Though we didn’t make love at the time. We were both virgins, both unsure.
As this was going on though, I was becoming sure of something. There was no way I could go back to school now. My heart was calling so strongly for Rye, I had no choice. And at the end of my 2 week visit. When I went back to Jinan. I began the process of moving out and packing my bags to move to Sichuan permanently. It took about 2 weeks back in Jinan to get my things together. To move out of what had been my home of 4 months. I threw away everything I couldn’t give away. I opened my door and let anyone that wanted to come and take anything they wanted from the pile of things on my desk. I kept a few things that I had bought there, and mailed them back home to the US. But my guitar, my Chinese chess set, books, water cooler, everything that I wouldn’t need was discarded. And when it was all done. I had only my bags filled with clothes, and a few books.
This whole time I talked with Rye every day, on the phone, on the internet, any time I was free I was talking with her. She told me about how she was planning to go to Holland, but she had learned about a new program called Au Pair America. A program where she could travel to America and work as an au pair for a year. This was something she had started looking into before she had met me. This would be the makings of our plan. This was what we hoped would lead us to hold on to each other, she could come to America and we could be together. I never expected it to be the sword through my heart that it would later become.
Finally when I had everything worked out I boarded my plane and headed for Sichuan once again. It was just one of the eventual 14 plains I would fly on through this year long adventure, but I think this one is when I was the happiest. I was so excited to be with the person that after only 2 weeks together, I already knew I loved. When She met me at the airport, I still didn’t know where I would sleep that night, I didn’t know if I would live near her, I didn’t know anything. But when I saw her I was so happy, my heart felt so at ease with her. We hailed a cab together and went towards her house.
I ended up living a few floors above one of her best friends. There was a food market, and the bus terminal near by, it was an hour or two bus ride to where Rye was but I had no other plans so it wasn’t so bad. In the beginning Rye came over almost every other day, taking the long bus ride to see me. It was only days after I arrived that we did finally make love. And from that, a dam broke, and it was all we could do. We would spend every waking moment together in bed. We laughed, kissed, told stories. We would engage in epic tickle wars that would reduce us both to uncontrolled laughter, and lay next to each other so tiered that we would fall asleep still breathing heavily.
There was no feeling in the world like being in her arms, it was the warmest feeling of “home” I could ever describe. And I could fall asleep in an instant if we were tangled up with each others limbs.
When we made love, I have to explain something. Though it was out first time, and we were awkward at first, flopping around you might say, as rookies in a new sport. Her eyes were key, because as passion would overcome us and caution would disappear, her eyes would lock with mine, and as the act took place, the intensity of those eyes, there was meaning there that could break your mind to try and understand. In simplest terms her eyes said to me that she would follow me anywhere. That she would give everything she had to me. That she would follow me into hell because she trusted me. And as we moved together I did everything in my power to live up to that promise, each kiss, caress, each whisper of love and devotion, everything I did I did to be worthy of the message she gave me with those eyes.
After a month things began to change, as they have to, relationships don’t stay the same they evolve. And for us the change came when I suddenly had to go to Hong Kong, for a new visa. I was gone for a week and when I cam back, I needed a place to stay again. We decided though before we found a place for me to stay, we should go on a trip together
After my trip to Hong Kong (another long, and horrifying tale) I found that I had to go back to jinan to withdraw my money from my bank account at the Bank of China there. So we decided to go on a trip to the near by city of Qing Dao, a beach town with plenty of tourism, most famous for Tsing Dao beer, which is shipped all over the world, including here in the US. On the way back we would swing through Jinan and get my money.
The trip was fine, but along the way for the first time we started to fight. Little arguments that would cause major problems. And much of the trip was spent rather darkly. In this time of restructuring, I feel like we were just learning how things were going to work together. We began to figure out how to deal with our problems together. But the fighting didn’t end soon.
I began to think that our relationship was simply at it’s end, that we had hit the natural end to what was an incredibly powerfully burning love. But of course that’s not what happened, after about a month of on and off fighting. We finally came to a place of peace, I can’t explain quite what happened. I just remember at some point. She came over to my hotel. She sat in my room with me, and we talked, we talked for a long time about us, about what we wanted, and by the end we were both crying quite a lot. And with tears rolling down our faces. We both agreed that we needed each other. That night we held each other for hours. And kept telling each other how much we were in love. And this new feeling washed over me. Not the same as the feverish love I had felt, this was matured, it was stronger, but more subtle. And again my heart filled, ever more full and more beautifuly than it had been filled before, with this new, and even more amazing feeling of pure love. That was the beginning of me wondering how much I didn’t know at all. I wondered what this love would feel like in a year, in a decade.
After this time, we began to talk much more about the future, something we hadn’t really discussed. We talked about getting married, about traveling all over the world together. We would go to Australia, Holland, new Zealand, Tib6et. We would go everywhere together and never stop. It was a dream that we just knew would come true. It almost seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. And as it had happened so many times in her presence up till now, I had never been so happy in all my life.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
pictures from the story of Rye
These pictures go with the last post I made, they are all mixed up in no particular order, you can guess what part of the story they're from. after I got off the boat the batteries in my camera died so that's why there is nothing that takes place after the picture of the boat landing with the buddha statue. The girl in the pink coat is Rye, the woman in purple is her mother
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Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The Story of Rye: Part One
What Happened
The story of Rye
Intro
When I went to China I had a very unclear idea of my goals. I thought I was going in order to learn Chinese, but really there were so many other hopes for my trip, things I knew only on a subconscious level. I looked at this trip as a time for growth, this would be the thing that would change me, make me a man, it would be the journey of life and change. And I did change, and I did experience, and I did grow. So many things happened while I was there, so many little stories, but the important story, the big story that has shaped, and will continue to shape who I am for who knows how long into the future is the story of Rye. It is a painful story for me to tell, but one I can’t get away from. I don’t know what effect writing this out and posting it for the world will do. I don’t know why I want to do this, only that it is a story I want to tell.
Part 1
When I first came to china I stayed at Shandong University in Jinan city. The Capitol of Shandong province, Jinan was exceedingly boring. But it didn’t matter to me because I was so caught up with being in China, a place I had dreamed about for so long, and I had many many adventures in my time there. The classes were difficult for my ADDled brain, as I was expected to attend 4 hours of straight class 5 days a week, and I quickly started to fall behind in school work. The friends I made there were good people, and I was so excited to get to know people from so many different backgrounds, people from Australia, Hungary, France, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea and of course China. But I didn’t connect with anyone on a very personal level. No one of these details would have been such a bad thing but combined I started to feel depressed. Started to feel that living in a tiny dorm for 10 months wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind when I dreamed of the far east all these years.
As I became more and more depressed I started spending more time feeling sorry for myself sitting in my dorm room talking with strangers online. I found that with Skype, I could do random searches for people from anywhere in the world. And I began talking with hundreds of Chinese people. People from all parts of China. Again no close friendships were made, but it was simply a minor form of social interaction to take the edge off the encroaching loneliness. But one day in one of my random searches, I came across Rye. Rye was a girl from Sichuan. And the first time I talked to her lasted about 2 minutes. I said hi, she said “hi, sorry I am just about to leave, I can talk with you later”. the only thing I saw of here was a tiny 1 inch by 1 inch photo of her in her profile, but for some reason that made a pretty strong impression. And the next day I went to look for her again. I couldn’t find her on my buddy list, even though I knew I had added her. And I started to panic, I felt a great deal of loss thinking that perhaps she had blocked me for some unknown reason.
Eventually I found her, she had simply changed her name online, something I would learn she did a lot. And I suddenly felt incredibly foolish, I hadn’t said more than one word to this girl, I couldn’t explain why I had reacted that way and I was a bit embraced at myself for the strange lack of control I’d suddenly experienced.
When I was able to talk with her again, it was right after class had let out for the day, I’d gone straight to my dorm, flipped open the computer and found she was online. We wrote back and forth for ages, I took breaks to get food, and to go to the bathroom when I needed to, but for the most part we talked non stop until, the sun had gone down, and then, come up again, and suddenly it was time for me to go to class again and I hadn’t slept a wink. In class I couldn’t keep my head up. 4 hours later though I was back online again and we talked for another many hours till I fell asleep at my computer.
3 more times before I would eventually go see her, I stayed up all night long talking with Rye. I could talk with her forever, even though her English wasn’t perfect, I had never felt so connected with a person, and it had happened so fast. It was in the realm of love at first sight, I had seen her and my heart cried out for her. An instant was all I had needed.
The school term was coming to an end, and of course there was only one place I wanted to go for the month break we got to celebrate the Chinese new year. After a failed plain ticket fiasco, and a number of other troubles, I finally made it to Sichuan, in Shuangliu, a suburb of Chengdu, the capitol city. Rye’s parents had graciously allowed me to stay in their apartment for 2 weeks. I was staying in Rye’s room while she spent the night in the guest room. They were very excited to have me, they loved playing host to a foreigner, and were happy to teach me everything they could about China. Though that was limited since they didn’t speak any English. Immediately I noticed the difference between Jinan and Chengdu. Chengdu had so much culture, the people were friendlier, the world was more colorful. There were interesting buildings, and ancient back allies. I loved the city.
Rye’s family had made a number of plans for my visit, as it was also marking Rye‘s return from her university, they took me all over the place. Showing me temples, and parks, and beautiful parts of their city I would never have found. They took me to festivals, to parties, to tea houses, and about 15 weddings. So much of the really amazing memories I have from china I own to Rye’s family, who somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see, and the best things to show me. But the first trip we went on was the most memorable.
Rye’s father was a police officer, and as such had access to the police vehicles. So one day, early in the morning, we had gotten up, gotten bundled up in warm clothes, and piled into a big police van. It was not the first time I’d been in a police car in China, but that’s a different story. I wasn’t sure where we were going. Rye was never very keen on explaining things like that to me, but I didn’t mind that much. Rye was often under a lot of stress trying to be the 24 hour translator between me and her parents so I tried not to ask too many questions. We drove for about an hour, leaving the city, and getting into the mountainous farmlands of Sichuan. When we finally got to a new city it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The mountains had grown taller and taller as we’d driven. They had such steep sides that they seemed more like pillars shooting out from the flat ground than any mountains I knew. We had driven between these mountains and gotten into a world so surrounded by marvelous topography one couldn’t see anything but sheer cliffs and surreal streams.
In the midst of these mountains we came to a city that was entirely white. The buildings were all constructed out of white stucco and the streets were paved in ancient cobble stones. The tiny little town sat next to a stream and a railroad, and at the far end, rose the biggest mountain we had yet seen. The streets of the town were all edged with streams that had been funneled into aqueducts that ran under your feet, to enter any of the houses meant crossing a tiny stone bridge.
We drove to the end of the town, the foot of the mountain, where a massive courtyard and Taoist temple sat. Rye’s father parked the car and let us out. We were carrying a box of oranges. We took it into the Taoist temple and Rye ran off to find one of the Taoist priests. She talked with him for a moment, as I stood with Rye’s mother. She finally came back with a little slip of paper with a note written on it.
“the priest wrote us this so we can climb up the mountain with out paying” she said. Rye walked and I followed her to the gate at the bottom of the mountain guarded by another Taoist priest. She handed him the note and he let us in with a smile and a quick word that I didn’t understand. We started to climb.
The climb took over 5 hours. Ever hour or so we would come across another Taoist temple nestled in a crevice or around a corner, and at each temple Rye would kneel and pray to one of the alters, and put a piece of fruit in front of one of the marvelously painted statues of Taoist gods. Rye’s mother wasn’t built for the climb though so me and Rye spent a great deal of time far ahead and out of sight of her mother. We talked about all kinds of things. As we walked the terrain changed, sometimes in dense forest, sometimes in almost desert like worlds, every so often waiting for Rye’s mother to catch up with us. (Rye’s father had left after he had dropped us off).
Finally we reached the top. There was a final temple, and in it, a 2 story tall statue of Lao Tzu riding a giant Golden water buffalo, it was so bright it was almost painful to look at. It was an amazing world, and an amazing thing to see. But it was starting to get dark, and there was no way we would make it down the mountain in the day light. We started climbing down none the less. When we got to the last Taoist temple we had passed on the way up we stopped. Rye’s mother talked to one of the Taoist priests, and was directed to another. And finally she beckoned me and Rye over. The woman priest led us around the back of the temple and to two rooms. That night we spent the night at the temple. We ate with the priests in their kitchen then went back to our rooms. The rooms were very small, with no plumbing, or insulation it seemed, but with electric blankets to keep us warm. Out side was a view off the mountain to the valley below, surrounded by the wild forest it was amazing.
Rye spent a little while in my room that night, we watched movies on the laptop I had lugged up the mountain side. But in time she went back to her mothers room and I we went to sleep.
The next morning we got up early. The sun was up and we started down the mountain. But this time we took a different rout down, surrounded by bamboo forests, and sometimes walking along cliffs that seemed to drop down for miles, to farms that were so far below it looked like we were in an airplane, looking down. We passed still more temples on the way down, and when we finally got down, we found another city at the base, and another stream, though this one was smaller, and more pure. We at lunch at a small restaurant next to the water. It was a marvelously small little café, and they had great food.
Much to my surprise when the meal was over Rye told me we would be climbing back up the mountain again, but this time on another side. I was still sore from the hike the day before, but I didn’t mind. And was very happy to hear that Rye’s mother was not going to accompany us. It would be just me and Rye.
We started our climb, and instantly I could see the difference on this side of the mountain. First of all, there was the stream, a stream that we would follow all the way up the mountain. Secondly this side had a very strong religious connotation as well, but this time it was all Buddhist. Buddhist statues, were carved right into the rock face all the way up the mountain. And this time it was all forest all the way up, walking along the crystal clear creek, over bridges and through caves. And it stayed cool even as the climbing made us sweat.
Again it took as all day to climb. Finally as we got on to the 4th or 5th hour of hiking we came to a building, and a damn. Beyond the damn was a very large ravine. And a long dock. We started walking across the loud wooden boards of the dock, when from up stairs in the two story boat house we heard scuffling, and a man came running down. He immediately told us the cost of the ferry and ushered us onto his little gondola. He pushed the boat off with a very long pole that he then used to propel us through the water. His friend accompanied us in the boat.
The still water was surrounded by trees and as we glided through the jungle you could never see too far ahead, the water bended this way and that turning left then right. Coming around one bend we finally saw another dock, with a large Buddhist statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin. We got off the boat with a smile and payment to the boat man. The other man in the boat got off with us and started talking with Rye as we walked. He told us that he owned a hotel just a few hours walk away with his wife, and that we should stay there. We thought that sounded good and finally he told us to come this way. We went down a path that seemed to hardly be a path at all, it curved around a large out cropping of earth and as we rounded the bend we saw a building half on land, and half floating in the sky.
It was perched on the edge of a massively tall cliff, that dropped down so far you couldn’t distinguish where the bottom was. Looking out from the cliff we saw it was a huge canyon. across on the other side was a tall hill, and on top of the hill a gigantic Buddhist temple dominated the view.
Long stilts anchored the building to the side of the cliff. The man took us up stairs to show us the rooms, more like little shacks than rooms. We asked the price, and asked if we could just get one room, he said if we wanted to share a room we needed to give him proof that we were married. We laughed a little, but didn’t argue, we just got two rooms. I dropped my stuff off in my room and then went over to Rye’s. It was freezing cold here as well, and I kept all my coats on.
I pulled out my laptop again. And we started to watch movies. It was starting to pour mercilessly outside, and in the last light of the day it looked like a waterfall was pouring off the roof. We cranked up the electric blanket all the way and watched movies all night. Sharing the bed. After the 3rd movie, it was almost 2am, we decided to watch one more movie.
By the end of that, the rain had stopped, and in the dark emptiness that comes after the credits have ended, I kissed her. For maybe another hour we tried to stay awake enough to continue what I started. Though we were both exhausted. And in time we both lost the battle, we fell asleep together in each others arms.
The next morning we woke up at 7. We opened the window to find that the rain had not stopped, but had simply turned to snow. The temple on top of the mountain on the other side of the gully was ringed perfectly in a halo of white, as it was right at the perfect altitude, everything below it was merely water. We stepped outside to see the white lay all around.
We said our good bye’s to the hotel owner and his family, and started walking back down the mountain. It took us all day.*
I’d never felt this way before, to have something begin like this, it felt like the whole universe was standing up for me. I couldn’t help but feel like this was the beginning of my new life, that the world had finally opened up for me. I felt so happy and so good about this whole mystical event. I had never been so happy.
*not to ruin the beauty of the night, I was in sever pain from blue balls the entire next day. If you’ve ever spent 5 hours hiking with blue balls you know it‘s the most awful thing, especially when you‘re trying to act normal so no one suspects a thing. )
The story of Rye
Intro
When I went to China I had a very unclear idea of my goals. I thought I was going in order to learn Chinese, but really there were so many other hopes for my trip, things I knew only on a subconscious level. I looked at this trip as a time for growth, this would be the thing that would change me, make me a man, it would be the journey of life and change. And I did change, and I did experience, and I did grow. So many things happened while I was there, so many little stories, but the important story, the big story that has shaped, and will continue to shape who I am for who knows how long into the future is the story of Rye. It is a painful story for me to tell, but one I can’t get away from. I don’t know what effect writing this out and posting it for the world will do. I don’t know why I want to do this, only that it is a story I want to tell.
Part 1
When I first came to china I stayed at Shandong University in Jinan city. The Capitol of Shandong province, Jinan was exceedingly boring. But it didn’t matter to me because I was so caught up with being in China, a place I had dreamed about for so long, and I had many many adventures in my time there. The classes were difficult for my ADDled brain, as I was expected to attend 4 hours of straight class 5 days a week, and I quickly started to fall behind in school work. The friends I made there were good people, and I was so excited to get to know people from so many different backgrounds, people from Australia, Hungary, France, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea and of course China. But I didn’t connect with anyone on a very personal level. No one of these details would have been such a bad thing but combined I started to feel depressed. Started to feel that living in a tiny dorm for 10 months wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind when I dreamed of the far east all these years.
As I became more and more depressed I started spending more time feeling sorry for myself sitting in my dorm room talking with strangers online. I found that with Skype, I could do random searches for people from anywhere in the world. And I began talking with hundreds of Chinese people. People from all parts of China. Again no close friendships were made, but it was simply a minor form of social interaction to take the edge off the encroaching loneliness. But one day in one of my random searches, I came across Rye. Rye was a girl from Sichuan. And the first time I talked to her lasted about 2 minutes. I said hi, she said “hi, sorry I am just about to leave, I can talk with you later”. the only thing I saw of here was a tiny 1 inch by 1 inch photo of her in her profile, but for some reason that made a pretty strong impression. And the next day I went to look for her again. I couldn’t find her on my buddy list, even though I knew I had added her. And I started to panic, I felt a great deal of loss thinking that perhaps she had blocked me for some unknown reason.
Eventually I found her, she had simply changed her name online, something I would learn she did a lot. And I suddenly felt incredibly foolish, I hadn’t said more than one word to this girl, I couldn’t explain why I had reacted that way and I was a bit embraced at myself for the strange lack of control I’d suddenly experienced.
When I was able to talk with her again, it was right after class had let out for the day, I’d gone straight to my dorm, flipped open the computer and found she was online. We wrote back and forth for ages, I took breaks to get food, and to go to the bathroom when I needed to, but for the most part we talked non stop until, the sun had gone down, and then, come up again, and suddenly it was time for me to go to class again and I hadn’t slept a wink. In class I couldn’t keep my head up. 4 hours later though I was back online again and we talked for another many hours till I fell asleep at my computer.
3 more times before I would eventually go see her, I stayed up all night long talking with Rye. I could talk with her forever, even though her English wasn’t perfect, I had never felt so connected with a person, and it had happened so fast. It was in the realm of love at first sight, I had seen her and my heart cried out for her. An instant was all I had needed.
The school term was coming to an end, and of course there was only one place I wanted to go for the month break we got to celebrate the Chinese new year. After a failed plain ticket fiasco, and a number of other troubles, I finally made it to Sichuan, in Shuangliu, a suburb of Chengdu, the capitol city. Rye’s parents had graciously allowed me to stay in their apartment for 2 weeks. I was staying in Rye’s room while she spent the night in the guest room. They were very excited to have me, they loved playing host to a foreigner, and were happy to teach me everything they could about China. Though that was limited since they didn’t speak any English. Immediately I noticed the difference between Jinan and Chengdu. Chengdu had so much culture, the people were friendlier, the world was more colorful. There were interesting buildings, and ancient back allies. I loved the city.
Rye’s family had made a number of plans for my visit, as it was also marking Rye‘s return from her university, they took me all over the place. Showing me temples, and parks, and beautiful parts of their city I would never have found. They took me to festivals, to parties, to tea houses, and about 15 weddings. So much of the really amazing memories I have from china I own to Rye’s family, who somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see, and the best things to show me. But the first trip we went on was the most memorable.
Rye’s father was a police officer, and as such had access to the police vehicles. So one day, early in the morning, we had gotten up, gotten bundled up in warm clothes, and piled into a big police van. It was not the first time I’d been in a police car in China, but that’s a different story. I wasn’t sure where we were going. Rye was never very keen on explaining things like that to me, but I didn’t mind that much. Rye was often under a lot of stress trying to be the 24 hour translator between me and her parents so I tried not to ask too many questions. We drove for about an hour, leaving the city, and getting into the mountainous farmlands of Sichuan. When we finally got to a new city it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The mountains had grown taller and taller as we’d driven. They had such steep sides that they seemed more like pillars shooting out from the flat ground than any mountains I knew. We had driven between these mountains and gotten into a world so surrounded by marvelous topography one couldn’t see anything but sheer cliffs and surreal streams.
In the midst of these mountains we came to a city that was entirely white. The buildings were all constructed out of white stucco and the streets were paved in ancient cobble stones. The tiny little town sat next to a stream and a railroad, and at the far end, rose the biggest mountain we had yet seen. The streets of the town were all edged with streams that had been funneled into aqueducts that ran under your feet, to enter any of the houses meant crossing a tiny stone bridge.
We drove to the end of the town, the foot of the mountain, where a massive courtyard and Taoist temple sat. Rye’s father parked the car and let us out. We were carrying a box of oranges. We took it into the Taoist temple and Rye ran off to find one of the Taoist priests. She talked with him for a moment, as I stood with Rye’s mother. She finally came back with a little slip of paper with a note written on it.
“the priest wrote us this so we can climb up the mountain with out paying” she said. Rye walked and I followed her to the gate at the bottom of the mountain guarded by another Taoist priest. She handed him the note and he let us in with a smile and a quick word that I didn’t understand. We started to climb.
The climb took over 5 hours. Ever hour or so we would come across another Taoist temple nestled in a crevice or around a corner, and at each temple Rye would kneel and pray to one of the alters, and put a piece of fruit in front of one of the marvelously painted statues of Taoist gods. Rye’s mother wasn’t built for the climb though so me and Rye spent a great deal of time far ahead and out of sight of her mother. We talked about all kinds of things. As we walked the terrain changed, sometimes in dense forest, sometimes in almost desert like worlds, every so often waiting for Rye’s mother to catch up with us. (Rye’s father had left after he had dropped us off).
Finally we reached the top. There was a final temple, and in it, a 2 story tall statue of Lao Tzu riding a giant Golden water buffalo, it was so bright it was almost painful to look at. It was an amazing world, and an amazing thing to see. But it was starting to get dark, and there was no way we would make it down the mountain in the day light. We started climbing down none the less. When we got to the last Taoist temple we had passed on the way up we stopped. Rye’s mother talked to one of the Taoist priests, and was directed to another. And finally she beckoned me and Rye over. The woman priest led us around the back of the temple and to two rooms. That night we spent the night at the temple. We ate with the priests in their kitchen then went back to our rooms. The rooms were very small, with no plumbing, or insulation it seemed, but with electric blankets to keep us warm. Out side was a view off the mountain to the valley below, surrounded by the wild forest it was amazing.
Rye spent a little while in my room that night, we watched movies on the laptop I had lugged up the mountain side. But in time she went back to her mothers room and I we went to sleep.
The next morning we got up early. The sun was up and we started down the mountain. But this time we took a different rout down, surrounded by bamboo forests, and sometimes walking along cliffs that seemed to drop down for miles, to farms that were so far below it looked like we were in an airplane, looking down. We passed still more temples on the way down, and when we finally got down, we found another city at the base, and another stream, though this one was smaller, and more pure. We at lunch at a small restaurant next to the water. It was a marvelously small little café, and they had great food.
Much to my surprise when the meal was over Rye told me we would be climbing back up the mountain again, but this time on another side. I was still sore from the hike the day before, but I didn’t mind. And was very happy to hear that Rye’s mother was not going to accompany us. It would be just me and Rye.
We started our climb, and instantly I could see the difference on this side of the mountain. First of all, there was the stream, a stream that we would follow all the way up the mountain. Secondly this side had a very strong religious connotation as well, but this time it was all Buddhist. Buddhist statues, were carved right into the rock face all the way up the mountain. And this time it was all forest all the way up, walking along the crystal clear creek, over bridges and through caves. And it stayed cool even as the climbing made us sweat.
Again it took as all day to climb. Finally as we got on to the 4th or 5th hour of hiking we came to a building, and a damn. Beyond the damn was a very large ravine. And a long dock. We started walking across the loud wooden boards of the dock, when from up stairs in the two story boat house we heard scuffling, and a man came running down. He immediately told us the cost of the ferry and ushered us onto his little gondola. He pushed the boat off with a very long pole that he then used to propel us through the water. His friend accompanied us in the boat.
The still water was surrounded by trees and as we glided through the jungle you could never see too far ahead, the water bended this way and that turning left then right. Coming around one bend we finally saw another dock, with a large Buddhist statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin. We got off the boat with a smile and payment to the boat man. The other man in the boat got off with us and started talking with Rye as we walked. He told us that he owned a hotel just a few hours walk away with his wife, and that we should stay there. We thought that sounded good and finally he told us to come this way. We went down a path that seemed to hardly be a path at all, it curved around a large out cropping of earth and as we rounded the bend we saw a building half on land, and half floating in the sky.
It was perched on the edge of a massively tall cliff, that dropped down so far you couldn’t distinguish where the bottom was. Looking out from the cliff we saw it was a huge canyon. across on the other side was a tall hill, and on top of the hill a gigantic Buddhist temple dominated the view.
Long stilts anchored the building to the side of the cliff. The man took us up stairs to show us the rooms, more like little shacks than rooms. We asked the price, and asked if we could just get one room, he said if we wanted to share a room we needed to give him proof that we were married. We laughed a little, but didn’t argue, we just got two rooms. I dropped my stuff off in my room and then went over to Rye’s. It was freezing cold here as well, and I kept all my coats on.
I pulled out my laptop again. And we started to watch movies. It was starting to pour mercilessly outside, and in the last light of the day it looked like a waterfall was pouring off the roof. We cranked up the electric blanket all the way and watched movies all night. Sharing the bed. After the 3rd movie, it was almost 2am, we decided to watch one more movie.
By the end of that, the rain had stopped, and in the dark emptiness that comes after the credits have ended, I kissed her. For maybe another hour we tried to stay awake enough to continue what I started. Though we were both exhausted. And in time we both lost the battle, we fell asleep together in each others arms.
The next morning we woke up at 7. We opened the window to find that the rain had not stopped, but had simply turned to snow. The temple on top of the mountain on the other side of the gully was ringed perfectly in a halo of white, as it was right at the perfect altitude, everything below it was merely water. We stepped outside to see the white lay all around.
We said our good bye’s to the hotel owner and his family, and started walking back down the mountain. It took us all day.*
I’d never felt this way before, to have something begin like this, it felt like the whole universe was standing up for me. I couldn’t help but feel like this was the beginning of my new life, that the world had finally opened up for me. I felt so happy and so good about this whole mystical event. I had never been so happy.
*not to ruin the beauty of the night, I was in sever pain from blue balls the entire next day. If you’ve ever spent 5 hours hiking with blue balls you know it‘s the most awful thing, especially when you‘re trying to act normal so no one suspects a thing. )
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