Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Another simple but essential human question: If I am not a Christian, would I want my kids to go to church?  (No, this is not a "church people" question, as you will see.) Let's say I did join my kids one Sunday and went through what they would go through in a day of "worship."  I think my answer will be, "It's all very neat.  Good things going on here.  But, honey, don't take it too seriously." Now I am not being unfair to church or church people.  In fact I think I am being more than fair.  I am not religious and I don't subscribe to their God and God belief, but I still let my children listen and take in what they give.  Like they are their parent.  So I am giving up a bit of myself to let them take over. And I really wish the church people would take over, take ownership to raise young people the way a parent would and do what a parent should.  Of course I don't mean in every way. Yet it is very telling, to...

Dear Eugene, Last night I wasn't feeling well and this morning I woke from a nightmare, nothing dramatic, more like a mild annoyance. So I was in this room, I think my son's room, and there were two switches on the wall (only one in real life).  I tried to turn on the light but it wouldn't, and in the dream somehow I already knew it's because I turned on the other switch shortly before, which was for some sort of ventilation.  I also somehow knew to turn off the ventilation is to enable the light switch again (don't ask me why) and proceeded to do so but only reluctantly (don't ask I said).  Then the light lit up. Into a ball of fire. I looked at the ball as if it's expected and  muttered, I will let this go on for a while.  But, like, die already, please.  Let's get a move on... And almost immediately the burning ball toned down its rhetoric, sizzled, then fizzled.  Every freakin' time, friend, every freakin' time ... but thank you f...

Dear Eugene, Words help us to make sense of things and also a nonsense of things.  Rearrange a letter and words become sword. To say I regret things I have done is to first grieve over words I have spoken, to myself before to anyone else.  Lies I told Alex.  Half truths.  Less than half. There are so many angles to look at one thing, we say, so what's the point of being fair?  You get nothing done.  People get confused.  Doubt paralyzes ambition.  People need the shallow water to secure a safe footing.  You need to make a living to keep living.  Everyone ultimately speaks for oneself; so why not be frank about my prejudices and use them to my advantage?  Didn't Jesus ask his disciples to sell their cloak to buy a sword? I am looking at two sermon collections from Rowan Williams: " A Ray of Darkness " and " Open to Judgement ."  What crazy titles to give to your own sermonizing.  What preacher would admit he is s...

Dear Eugene, What does it take to break me down?   One of the most human questions we can ask ourselves. Or more like How much . Or more like How little . It's the same question as What can I not live without?  Or What is the thing giving me freedom now that will become the biggest unfreedom when it is taken away? I said "taken away" not "gone" because it speaks about the reason for its going.  It is "taken away" because it was given at first.  It doesn't vanish by chance.  We don't lose anything because we acquire none.  Our fingers are not webbed. It is getting colder now.  We turn up the heat.  We say the temperature we choose has to do with our "tolerance."  A world as seen through my guts and my guts are all there is to see about me by the world. There was a time when life is about the wilderness out there and I grow to become more tolerant of it.  Even liking it somewhat.  Even finding solace and beauty in th...

Dear Eugene, In the beginning A brush of paint Water retained Life possible You take a side I take mine Let's compare mythologies Divide and thrive Your motto Heed the boundary between life and death Let not tomorrow encroach upon today The final sentence stayed Island people Happy I look over the yellow fence In silence Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, Write like it is a newfound liberty , the soul cries out. I have this little Chromebook on my lap that any writer of any age would die for.  Any age but this age.  Not this age.  Because we have it. If we don't have it, we might have imagined it: Wow, wouldn't it be nice to just move your fingers on a little slab of dark plastic and have words dance out of their tips and their steps go out to the end of the world in a nanosecond?  Wouldn't it be nice to correct the ambiguous pronoun  their , both of them, in the last sentence without reaching for a new parchment and cursing yourself for the stupid mistake...s? Wouldn't it be nice...? It's nice, very nice, and we have it very very nicely now.   But who writes?  We've found a little slab of dark plastic called liberty but lost our reason for finding it on our exodus journey. Not that it was a journey we took anyway, maybe that's the problem.  Someone else walked...

Dear Eugene, Saturday it was raining quite heavily and I was sitting in my car thinking Hey, what luxury that I am not wet!   The metal box of a safety shelter makes sadness almost edifying, at the least recreational.  This sight and sound is pretty theatrical.  I should do this more often. That's how it is, right?  The many coping mechanisms, abundant damage-control resources of the privileged.  Everywhere you turn there is a net to fall on for safe landing.  See, I was sad last minute and now I am writing and a bit less sad.  Words, how precious!  What a gift!  And--playing in the coffee shop where I was writing and waiting to pick up my daughter from work--music!  Words chirping about joy and pain and overcoming and if to no avail death. Yup, death, we speak that too.  We are not afraid, exorcise one and all. The first stomachache Adam had I wonder how he felt, what it was like to have no word for pain.  I t...

Dear Eugene, Have you seen a three-leg dog?  I have seen a couple, in real life, six legs I looked at, all common. Dogs are common.  Missing a leg draws a deeper common doggishness out of them.  Like an aging man sitting at the edge of his sick bed, an a-dime-a-dozen sight.  Seen it once, seen it all.  All gray hair is gray and finally speaks of death. The bouncing with three legs looks ridiculous.  Sumi just scraped her right front paw again, the second time in a month or so, now bouncing around the same ridiculous way as before.  Two days ago she was the crazy teenager pulling me down the hill (never up, that would be my service to her); now there is no energy gained or lost in our genteel tug-of-war.  The leash languished in a lethargic balance of power, diplomacy exhausted between the willing and the disabled. Seems like I've always been Looking for some other place To get it together Where with a few of my friends I could giv...

Dear Eugene, I can see from my kitchen that my neighbor's living room TV is always on.  Often playing news and weather.  Mostly weather.  As if when one stares at the screen long enough bad news will go away and good ones stay for good.  I don't know.  I am not my neighbor.  I am an alien from outer space arrived early this morning and find human being interesting in a sad way. Sad but lovable, like baby, can't hide their need and fear.  Laughable too.  I don't mean to be mean.  But what a screen can do to them-- for them?--is really quite strange, so effective that it must be called powerful.  What are they trying to see, to hear, to get out of it? Things are happening out there .  Issues and concerns.  We need to know, pay attention to, stuff them in our head, knead them to fit our heart.  But we don't really mean any of these--we can't--because there is no time, no space, no energy: our head running out of RAM,...

Dear Eugene, Big beautiful cars went up the hill beside me aiming for the top, a university up the mount waiting to take them to places higher still.  They were wandering yet going too fast for--in spite of--the truth: it's obvious even in low light that there is no through road.  Don't stop what you are doing; the stepping on the gas gives itself meaning, even with only a dead end in sight.  It costs no one nothing and it takes no time to turn around.  Who knows, maybe you can ram the big powerful thing through death and find life? I took transit in my university years so the bus route is the only path I knew to get there.  Mostly I didn't pay attention anyway because I would either be studying or napping.  The path was scenic but that's an adjective I found only years after; I aimed for nothing but the classrooms then.  I like swimming but haven't used the beautiful university pools, not any, not once.  I've learned to swim only after my ...

Dear Eugene, The fall is here and the morning stays darker longer, every bit of light feels brighter. There is this little window in my downstairs washroom with a glass pattern to defeat transparency and by 7 o'clock this time of year light would come through in a however distorted way and land on the linoleum floor to create a little oasis surrounded by darkness, a sight never failed to provoke fear in me even if it's been years since water last escaped to the floor and by now I've gathered enough resources emotional and otherwise to deal with a sight as such. In my weaker moments I would allow my toe to touch the little patch of fear no less artificial than linoleum to force a final word on the matter.  My pettiness is justified I suppose by the instant gratification of swift justice, casting out of demon on demand. And it was only 7 o'clock. Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, " Nobody feels any pain... " If you mumbled this line often enough it sounds like "Nobody diffused any pain..." Does it mean I can't diffuse my own pain, someone else's pain, or no one can diffuse any pain, mine or anyone or everyone else's? On one level none of the above can be true.  Just by speaking about pain we are already diffusing it somewhat.  Yet on a deeper level we know no amount of speaking can diffuse all pain, at least not to ever go deep enough to reach the root.  There are many painkillers on the market, but what we finally need is a root canal.  And not everybody has a safety net to afford it. My son doesn't floss.  He said he does and I saw his movement like phantom last night: I thought I caught a glimpse of him doing it and--there--he was done.  No pain yet; so much to gain in life.  Can't wait to rejoin the Youtube queue for another indifferent giggle. If you feel indifferent often enough you'd...

Dear Eugene, Nobody feels any pain Tonight as I stand inside the rain I often ask God, Why would you give such wise words to someone as stingy with love and frequently downright mean-spirited as Bob Dylan?  I sing these lines at least once a day and that's only counting my being conscious of singing them.  Bless this sonuvabitch. Of course everybody feels pain.  So it is a simple irony, isn't it?  But wait a minute: How do you know? You say you feel pain in you and I can accept that, but to say I am feeling pain and you know it too is a bit of a stretch.  I often don't even have words to describe how I feel; so who are you to say you know my feeling, give it the same name you have given yours and assume they are siblings, comrades, lovers? It's more than a loss in translation. It's a lack of common language, speechless, wordless, loneliness.  Like standing inside the rain...what else does a person need to say, what more can be added to...stand...

Dear Eugene, The idea of life being akin to going uphill maybe halfway and then going down for the rest is a dubious picture. It is to assume there is a hill to climb and I did climb it.  What is this hill then?  And how did I climb it?  The metaphor is leaking out of more than one hole. Let's take a step back (downhill?) and say there is a hill, whatever it be, career, family, intellectual ascent, even simply our daily rise to meet the morning sun.  Yet the givenness of a pair of healthy legs doesn't by itself take me to a hilltop.  To say life is "going downhill" when one's health deteriorates is then a bad metaphor if one means only the losing of a gift, albeit gradually, as if a "stepping down" of some sort is made happen. If I've been standing on flat ground with my healthy legs all these years I can't really say I am going downhill.  I can say I am being dragged to a lower place with a name that rhymes with yell.  I was hapless i...

Dear Eugene, Summer is gone, officially, in this part of the world with such sort of schedule and agenda being the officials. I came so far for beauty I left so much behind. I tried to embrace her Fumbled out of pride. She said she doesn't mind She serves one and all. Offered up to be taken I took her yet for more. Now that she's used up A full-stop in place By a man who stole a dot And marked the end of grace. Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, Last night my mom-in-law asked me why I am the way I am.  She is childlike and would often ask the darnedest question and really beyond adorable. In fact she asked a lead-in question first: Your family wasn't that poor when you grew up in HK, right?  She wanted to say I don't have a background of hardship and ask why then I would live like I have one. I answered in a typically very me way to speak about not just the Whats of me but the Hows and invite her to see the What-ifs. Reading , at one moment I allowed myself to be explicit, I am informed by what I read, by the stories of others.  My head (though I meant to say heart) is often somewhere else. Poland 1939, the Russian occupation.  That's where my head is recently.  I don't really talk about this part of me because this world is from a novel that is out-of-print but for whatever reason I have a copy of it.  Like, seriously, 1939? Someone told me I must be 143 years old, givi...