Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, I think this is the first year that I really know what Christmas is about. I know, I know.  When you say something like this people think you are writing dialogue for a Hallmark movie (which really is a horror movie with fake tears wasted instead of strawberry jam).  But I am not granting myself a poetic licence to exploit. Let me vindicate me. I used to write a monthly column for a Chinese magazine, for years, and every December I would challenge myself to say something new about Christmas, something that would surprise even myself as  I was writing it. It is a tall call.  My self-talk, especially about my own writing, tends to be severe.  I don't know how Elvis did it with his Christmas songs, maudlin liquid fat with an air of authentic dignity, sacramental (sacred-minded) cheese-balls.  I was aiming for that every December. I think my Christmas piece did get better over the years (by the above non-standard).  Still, all thes...

Dear Eugene, Rain and wind, Sumi hates them. I don't mind them, sometimes even grow to enjoy them.  Still just as often hate them with the gusto of a mighty gust. I like them when I can afford to, such as when I was walking across the Granville bridge yesterday after a hearty lunch with a hearty friend, little umbrella in hand, head full of eager anticipation of what's waiting for me at the other end of the rainbow.  Usually a bookstore. "Raindrops keep falling on my head..." 🎵 The dreamy poet can afford to romanticize because the sickness in him only feels like dying but is nothing remotely close and his healthy steps know it. When he is up the roof in the rain and wind his sorry poetry would go down the clogged drain he's trying to fix, the word "hate" he spells in many different colorful ways. Peace in this world is a contingency.  It is the next autumn-themed specialty coffee in our warm hands, a vacation to escape from the hostility o...

Dear Eugene, Years ago in a residential basement where a fledgling young church was praying together for her highly anticipated take-off, an earnest young man basking in the collective enthusiasm nevertheless allowed an instance of uncynical clear-headedness to break open a little crack of imagination, seeing well into a future that sadly did eventually come to pass, a vision articulated then in these simple words: "I wonder how long this is going to last..." By this he meant peace and harmony among people, a like-mindedness all too rare even in church, not unheard of, not unexperienced either, only that the prophesy of its eventual demise always self-fulfilling, often with great efficiency and grand efficacy.  His words of simple lamentation shook me and since then in my recollection never ceased to. "Good things never last, Mr. Denham." Ann Darrow said that.  Ann is the scream-queen in the "King Kong" movie.  It doesn't take the father of En...