I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (13 page)

with snow-leopard fur. He constantly looks

back at her wagon, which is drawn by 2 oxen

with up-growing horns. The scroll ends

at the home with many roofs and courtyards.

But now people are everywhere, enjoying themselves,

the streets alive, the teahouse open; the baker

sells buns to the returning soldiers;

kids walk with their mothers and fathers.

And the house comes to life as Wen-chi

goes up the stairs toward her kinswomen;

one kowtows to her; the rest shrink

away from her, cover their mouths with long sleeves.

They are protecting themselves from her strangeness.

Wen-chi will help her father compile

a new library.

My father wrote

that her legend reminds him of 2 prisoners,

Su Wu and Li Ling. In 100
B.C.
,

during the thousand-year war, Su Wu,

ambassador to the Mongols, went to their country

to negotiate for peace. The Khan poisoned him, beat

him, kept him from leaving the desert. His labor

was to herd sheep to grass and water. Meanwhile,

in battle against the Mongols, Li Ling surrendered.

He was a valuable P.O.W.

because he could be forced to write letters

to Su Wu, and influence him to favor the enemy.

The 2 men carried on their correspondence

for 19 years, on paper and by wild goose.

“No matter I am in a foreign land.

No matter the hardship. My heart that loves

is always with Mother Earth / Land, China.”

My father wrote on the margin of my writing

on Wen-chi:

Su Wu

Li Ling

My biographies

I feel so bad. BaBa

lived in the Americas for over 60 years—

left for Cuba as a teenager, not

meaning to be gone forever—and never became

at home anywhere.
He
was a prisoner of barbarians. I

should’ve brought him with me to China. I’d gone

10, 12 times (counting Taiwan,

counting Hong Kong), but never thought

to ask him to come along. Because his papers

were fake. He was an illegal alien. We should’ve

chanced going, if only to join for a while

the hosts and hosts of people whose joy it is

to be a crowd walking along the river.

Without Father, without Mother, I traveled

to China, the Central Nation, and found out

that I myself am Empress of the Center. I

was bowed to; I was addressed “Your majesty.”

I walked down the steps of the music temple.

I walked with the crowd, my people, along

a stream of Pearl River. I felt the crowd full,

complete; they are all here—Wen-chi

and her retinues, Fa Mook Lan and her army,

the Vietnamese princess and her

celebrants, Chu Ping and the dragon boat

racers, the Long Marchers, John Mulligan

and the shopping cart soldiers, and old people

from long ago and from yesterday. All

these people belong to me. The ground

I’m walking belongs to me. I feel ownership

of the fields before me, and the hills I see and the hills

beyond my sight, and the river and the connecting rivers

to the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and more

oceans, and lands the waters touch. I own

and am responsible for all of it. My kuleana.

My duty. My business. Up to me. I walk

my land and territory, and see how, what

my people are doing. I’ve felt this majesty before—

at Cal Berkeley, my university, where I studied

and taught. I walk that campus of groves and daylight

creeks, and hills, whence I watch the sun

set into the horizon and compassing sea.

Mine: the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,

the Radiation Laboratories, the ones in Livermore

and Los Alamos. And the cyclotron and the stadium,

both sitting on the Hayward Fault, on the North

American Plate crunching past the Pacific Plate.

My failure: U.C. Berkeley sawed down

and wood-chipped the oak grove and Grandmother Tree.

The next task: Prevent British Petroleum,

which endowed 50 million dollars to Cal, from

building labs along—over—Strawberry

Creek and up and across Strawberry Canyon.

Jingyi, the English teacher who recognized

me—“your majesty”—teaches at Jinan

University. MaMa had a friend

who taught there, visited us in California;

I couldn’t find her at Jinan, moved to Australia.

I took Jingyi’s hand. Holding hands,

laughing, we walked from the music temple, walked

along the river, walked with our village.

(Ours, though she’s from Xinjiang, where Uighurs live.)

I joined, a day late, the 10,000

old people. And the crowd walking

jam-packed along the Red River in Viet Nam

(Red River too in Minnesota) and the Perfume

River through Huế. And the lines of mourners reading

the names on the Vietnam Memorial, and seeing

ourselves, like a platoon, like a peace march, reflected

in the black granite. Crowdstream everywhere

always walking, moving, moving, migrating,

connecting, separating, losing the others, off

on one’s own, finding them, losing them again,

finding again. We are a curl of the scroll,

“Along the River during Ching Ming Festival.”

People dressed in holiday clothes are leaving

their huts and villas, crossing bridges on foot

and on horses and camels, rowing little boats

along the banks and around islands and shoals.

Ladies are riding sedan chairs from out

the city gates. Men work the festival,

selling food and tree branches, juggling

balls and plates, staging a play, staging

a puppet show. Men carry loads.

Men drive wide teams of mules,

10 mules wide. Poor men beg;

monks beg. Mid-river, mid-scroll,

the Rainbow Bridge carries people and animals

up and over the river. Oh. Oh.

A ship is blowing sideways into the bridge;

sailors are lowering the sails as fast as they can.

Teams of men on the shore and under the bridge

are pulling on tow ropes. A few people

at the railings watch for the ship to slide beneath them.

I remember: I was one of many tiny people—

the grown-ups tiny as well as the children—

walking through blue space, nothing

above and below but sky. We were refugees

fleeing war, carrying babies, carrying

bundles of all we own, herding and leading

work animals and pets, yet we were

happy and gay, dressed in layers and layers

of our prettiest clothes, out for a walk

on a bright and sunny day. Warm sun

lit scarves and blankets red and turquoise,

colors everywhere. I looked down

at my feet; I was wearing high-ankle shoes

of white light. I was walking on a floor

that was gold-brown skin, the back of a giant,

who had made a bridge of himself. His hands held

on to an edge of a mountain crevice, and his toes

dug into the opposite edge. My father

walked alongside me. I was safe;

I was not scared. I have a sure memory

of this scene of my life, but could it be

memory of a dream, a former incarnation, a movie?

I have searched high and low through archives

of movies, and cannot find the Rainbow Bridge

Giant helping people like my family and tribe

walk across the sky. I found proof

of happenings which I have no bodily nor

mental memory of—snapshots of me

riding a camel, sitting on a red and gold

blanket between its humps, riding on a cold

windy clear day atop the Great Wall.

Behind me and before me, the Great Wall

rises and falls, rises and falls with the domes

and kettles of the Qilian mountain range,

crenellated spine of Dragon. Guard towers

at interval peaks. With mittened hands,

I am tufting and petting the tawny liony fur

on the hump in front of me. The camel’s hair

and my hair are blowing in the Gobi wind.

My hair—salt-and-pepper hair, not

long ago—blows across my face

and into my eyes. I should’ve said to myself

out loud, “I am astride a camel;

we’re traveling the Long Wall. We’ll take the Long Wall,

then the Silk Road, and arrive in the West.”

As Empress of the Center, I see from on high:

all/no space and time, human

populations and individuals forever

on the move, migrating like bears and whales

and cranes, walking, riding, flying along

and across rivers and oceans, islands and continents.

“You twain! and all processions moving

along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you

till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.”

I rented a bicycle, left my passport

as collateral, and joined a river of bicyclists.

Entering, merging, I pedaled, glided apace

in the steady, balanced surge of fellow cyclers.

Bells
burr burr-ring burr-ring
.

I wheeled along with families of 4, 5,

couples, babies with net over their faces,

high-heeled ladies, pets (an illegal puppy

peeked out of a box), poultry, furniture,

produce. All streaming along, streaming

on and on, rolling through intersections,

through markets, past pancake and corn-

on-the-cob venders, street barbers, podiatrists,

bicycle repairers, through the clink clink

clink of women breaking up rocks,

past the stadium, site of mass executions,

swooping left turns in front of honking

trucks, taxis, oncoming rivers

of other bicycles. Pulling, drafting, we flow.

We are blood. No moving over

to a curb, no getting off. Give in

to being lost; ride to unknown parts,

until the cycling mass lets me go.

Once I was on an airplane beside

a village girl in the window seat. At takeoff

I asked her, “Where are you going?”

“Waw!” She shouted in surprise, and grabbed

ahold of my hand, “You speak like me!”

“Yes, I speak Say Yup language.”

“Are you from the village?” “No, my MaMa

and BaBa came from Say Yup villages.

They left for New York. They lived in New York,

then California. I was born in California.”

I feel like a child, younger than this girl; I’m

telling about parents as if I still had them;

I’m talking in my baby language. “Waw!”

she exclaimed, loud as though yelling across fields.

“
I
am going to New York! I

am meeting my husband in New York. He’s

waiting for me in New York. He works

in a restaurant. He’s rented a home. He sent

for me, and waits for me.” She did not

let go of my hand; I held hers tightly

as we flew the night sky. She looked

in wonder at webs of lights below.

“Red red green green,” she said.

“Red red green green,” my mother

used to say, meaning, Oh, how pretty!

The lights were white and yellow too, and gold,

blue, copper. And above, stars and stars.

Mother, MaMa, as you leave

the village family you’ll never see again—

Grandfather walked her as far as he

could walk, stood weeping in the road until

she could not see him anymore when

she turned around to look. She’s off to that lonely

country from where he returned broke—“I felt

that I was dying.”—MaMa, girl,

you are not traveling alone. I am

traveling with you, here, holding your hand.

I know that country you’re leaving for,

and shall guide you there. I know your future.

I’m your child from the future. Your husband

will certainly meet you. BaBa will

be at the East Broadway station.

You will recognize each other,

though he be dressed modern Western style.

You will have a good, good life.

You will have many children, and live a long,

long life. You will be lucky.

“You are lucky. Your husband has work.

He’s rented an apartment, and made you a home.

He saves money. He bought your plane ticket,

he will be waiting for you at the airport.”

She listened to the wise old woman teaching her.

But how to instruct anyone the way to make

an American life? How to have a happy

marriage? For a long time in the dark,

dozing, dreaming, thinking, we sat

without speaking, without letting go

of warm hands. The red red green

green appeared again. I told her,

“That’s Japan. We’re over Japan now.

We’ll be landing soon in Narita.”

“Waw! You speak Japanese too.”

She admires me too much. Inside

the horrible confusion of the international

airport, how can a mind from

the village not fall to crazy pieces?

I found a nice American couple making

the connecting flight to New York, and asked

them please to take this Chinese girl

to the right gate. She thanked me. She said

goodbye, see you again. “Joy kin.”

She did not look back. Good.

Gotta go, things to do, people

to meet, places to be.

I betook

myself to Xi’an. Like everyone,

I’m leaving village for city. But a city

so old and deep in-country, it has a chance

not to be the same global city

as every city. Xi’an means West Peace,

and was the capital during 4 eras, not Sung.

I stood at the bottom of the gray rock wall

of the walled city, looked up its slope,

looked to the curved sides, could not get

a sense of the whole layout. More solid

than Long Wall. A granite bowl banks

the earth around (parts of?) the city. I stood

on top of the wall, walked the boulevard

paved with bricks. I enjoyed spaciousness,

few walkers that day, few bicyclists.

At the ramparts on one side, I looked down

at ponds and moats. On the other side, sky-

scrapers, like a mirage city, much higher

than the walls. Relics of military defense,

walls are no barrier to attack, no

barrier to in-migration, never have been.

Xi’an, like the dusty villages, pushes out of

earth, and earth pulls it down into earth.

Build upward, towers, skyscrapers,

pagodas. Dig out of engulfing earth.

The air is dark. Everyone coughs.

Cover the kids’ faces with gauzy scarves.

It’s not just the cars. It’s the wind

blowing sand into this city at the south-

easternmost edge of the Gobi desert.

The body of sand is shifting over eastward,

and uncovering rock ground. Down in the street,

though dirt gray (this day won’t count

as blue-sky day either), glass

and steel shine through. Cities are full

of mirrors. My whole time in the villages, I

did not see a mirror. I had not looked

at my image. Village people live so close

together—everyone sees everyone every

day—they know how attractive or unattractive

they are. Now the way I look

appears to me, here, there, in windows, on chrome,

in mirrors in markets and bathrooms. I have changed.

I am a dandelion puffball blur. My hair,

scribbles of white lines. My face. Lines

crisscross and zigzag my face.

My eyes. I am looking into eyes

whose color has turned lighter, hazy brown.

Wind and time are blowing me out.

The old women around me are vivid and loud.

Their hair is black. They’re beggars, soliciting

in a group outside the temple, selling

incense and matches, but don’t care whether

you buy or not. They’re out of the house enjoying

ladies’ company. A lone gray woman is

sitting on the curb by the crosswalk.

She’s begging, not selling anything;

begging is against the law. A policeman

and a cadre woman in charge of the street talk

to her for a long time. The cop kneels

to talk to her. She does not reply. I think

he’s trying to convince her to cease begging,

to get up and move on. The cadre

woman, an old woman too, is not

giving her a scolding. They’re treating her nicely,

speaking softly, secretively. They don’t want

to make a scene on the street, don’t want

this conturbation to be happening. Homeless old

beggar women? None such. I

keep watching. They won’t hurt her as long

as the American tourist watches. After quite

a while, I have more interesting sights

to see, and leave. When I come back

to that street corner, she’s gone. Why

is it that old women are China’s refuse,

and men, war veterans, America’s? When the society

is supposed to be honoring grandmothers, and admiring

macho men? “Do not let mother and father go

hungry; feed them meat from the flesh of your arm.”

Walking past the incense ladies, all

acting important, I go inside the temple.

Up on platforms, the fortune-tellers,

all men, perform their specialties—

coins, yarrow, the I Ching, magic

birds, turtle shells. They read palms,

read the loops and whorls and arches on

fingerprints, read words on sticks of

bamboo, read faces and freckles

and bumps on heads. I buy a fortune.

I point to a little cage in a row

of little cages. The magic man slides

open the door. Out hops a java

finch. It picks up a card in its diamond

beak: the Woman Warrior, charging forth

on her white horse, wielding her double broadswords.

“You are brave, you will live a long life.”

But he must tell everyone: You’ll live long.

Never death. Never suicide. The java finch

eats a reward of seeds, and hops back

into its cage. In Xi’an, there are drum

towers and bell towers, and wild goose

towers. Chinese contrary, the Small

Wild Goose is 13 stories

high; the Big Wild Goose, 7.

A poet was once seen riding a wild goose,

flying over the city, and away. All

had been golden, the goose, the poet, his robes,

the towers. The eyewitnesses watched until

they saw what seemed to be a golden insect

vanish into the sky. I give incense

and make slow bows at Big Wild Goose,

that I should write well, like Du Fu

and Li Bai, who had both come here,

and written well. That my writing give life,

to whomever I write about, as Shakespeare

promised. Chinese are mad for long life.

Quest and wish for time, more time,

more, yet more. Carve poems and decrees

on rocks. Erect forests of steles. 500

pyramids to safeguard the emperors

inside them, and their armies, and horses,

acrobats, and musicians, always. I myself

have tasted longlife medicine—bitter.

My mother gave it to us. Rabbit-in-the-Moon—

my father—mixes the elixir for immortality.

But I have seen poets training in impermanence.

Early in the paved city, when dew beads

the marble and concrete, the poets write with water.

He or she stands quietly holding

the tall brush, like a lance, like a shuffleboard

paddle, like a pole vault pole. Then touches

the writing end—a cloth-wrapped mallet, not a mop—

down upon the hard ground, the page.

Legs spread, the poet, straddling the coming words,

sweeps downward stroke to the left, upward

stroke to the right, dabs quick dots,

pulls horizontal lines, pulls vertical

lines, flips a sharp-curve tail.

Gets to the end before the beginning dries.

Onlookers, readers, and fellow poets

leaning on their own writing poles, read

aloud the transpiring words, one

word, next word, then the whole

fleeting poem, exclaim over it, criticize it,

memorize it, sing it once more as the sun

dries it up. They stand around the spot

where the poem had been, don’t step on it,

and discuss the writing of it, the idea of it,

the prosody of it with its creator. The sun rises,

time to wet the brushes in the water bucket.

Dip again and again, and write long

long lines. No corrections! No

reworking! One poet writes,

another poet writes—in answer!

I should’ve asked to borrow a writing pole,

and drawn an enso as big a circle as I

could make in one wet swoop all

the way around myself, me the center.

In Japanese Zen, on your 60th birthday,

you can draw a perfect circle. However

it arcs or squiggles, however black or faint,

large or small, one swoop or 2

discontinuous strokes—perfect.

You’ve brought to the making of it your lifetime

of ability. My perfect reader would know to read

my enso’s journey from Asia to America back

to Asia, from classical times to modern, to New Age.

In the park of formal gardens, the martial artists—

practitioners of the many ways of kung fu,

and disco, women with fans, women with the long

ribbon, swordswomen, swordsmen—are moving

and dancing to the rhythms of his own discipline,

her own discipline. Solitaries, too, claim

their places—the top of the round bridge,

the island of grass, the room behind a curtain

of weeping willow. Free to make whatever

expressions you like. Dance like nobody else.

I join this group and that one, get easily

into step, not worried, in sync,

out of sync, nobody’s looking at me.

I’m part of the Chinese crowd. I stand

in first-position chi kung, and watch

the teacher direct her advanced students, who

have their backs to her. She waves her hands,

and they in unison leap into the air.

Waw! Wei! She’s lifting, orchestrating

their jumps with chi. Her chi is mighty;

she is 90 years old. Teacher

walks up to me; she studies me.

I feel warmth from her eyes on my skin.

She adjusts my hands to make paws like

an upright-standing squirrel or bear.

She runs her hand straight down the center

of my chest. I feel power shoot

into me, heating my core, glowing. She’d

given me some of her chi, charged me with chi.

Chi is real; I am strengthened to this day.

“You stand for one hour,” she says.

I stand for one hour. Marveling, there is such

a thing as chi. Yin wind, yang

wind, real. Life, love, soul,

good. And there are people who can

control it and transmit it, and teach you how

to acquire chi, and how to use it. At the end

of my hour, Teacher comes to check on me.

Her eyes scan me, land on my hair.

“Keep working on your chi kung;

your hair will turn black.” Her hair

is jet-black. She doesn’t like

white hair. I won’t work chi kung

to change my hair; I want to change the world.

My body and mind taking on forms that

Chinese have been configuring for 4,000

years, my 12 meridians linking up

with the globe’s 360, energy will round

the globe, and heal the bombed-up world.

I’m not alone; people here and people who’ve

migrated everywhere are doing this work of

influencing wind and water (feng shui).

We continue the life of the world. Live,

live, live, live.

In Xi’an,

there’s a museum like the museum I made

as a kid for my collections, strange things

I picked up along the railroad tracks,

and in the slough, and in the cash register.

Deer hoof, a baby bat, counterfeit

money, fool’s gold. Behind dusty

glass, there lay the arrow with nock-whistle

that I’d invented for the barbarians who

played the reed pipe. The poet’s imagination

flies true. It works, it hit on the actual.

It can make up a thing that will

materialize, in China, in Time, the past, the future.

So, at the walled city of West Peace,

I come to the start of the Silk Road, which forks.

Southwest, the way Tripitaka Tang

and Monkey Sun Wu Kong went questing,

betakes you to India. Northwest, you’d end

up in Afghanistan, then Iran, then Uruk,

home of Gilgamesh—Iraq. Peace groups

invite me to these places, but I turn them down.

I don’t want my heart to break.

Fa Mook Lan would go. She’d join

the army of whichever side held her family

hostage. She’d win battles, and receive

honorable discharge home, though the 1,000

years war is not done. Now

I know: She killed herself.

She had P.T.S.D.; her soldier’s heart broke,

and she fell upon her sword. This month,

May 2009, more American soldiers died by

their own hand than killed by Iraqis and Al Qaeda.

So far this year, 62 suicides,

more than half of them National Guard;

138 in 2008. I have no words of consolation.