Taipei, Taiwan
Work trickles in. On video repeating english phrases. Getting better at looking like I’m understanding Chinese in the meantime. Bought new clothes – did I mention that? – so I would not be so obviously a drifter. “Ryan, you look better than you did last time!” – This is intentional.
I was the brightest butterfly on the street, with my yellow, with my horizontal stripes. I need some new pants, like my Thai fisherman’s pants that I gave up, from somewhere, and a pair of flat-bottom Converse, and I’ll complete the return to the ‘90s, with some pizzazz and bright white growing around the jawline of my beard.
Massage number 3 today, a repeat of the first one, so I knew what to expect more this time, even though it’s hard to recall two hours of muscular and skeletal wrangling. The places that hurt the most have moved, which means I am healing.
I am studying language every day more consistently. I bought an application called Motion, and you type things and then don’t have to think anymore. It’s helping. It breaks your repeating tasks into chunks and arranges your day in real-time, like an assistant.
I fought with the air conditioner last night. It was humid, but not hot, so I plugged it in. It growled and flipped its robot fan blade at me like a tongue, and then started breathing out hot air. This was the opposite of the expected behavior. I tried twice and lost both times. The remote control has no batteries, so I knew I was playing with cosmic luck.
Today the remote control has batteries. The buttons are in Chinese. I do not know what they say.
I might go climb some boulders this weekend. I admire the people I see who do it. They look free.
I’m getting better at cooking rice and beans in water – no directions, just guesswork, and I eat them cold later. And eggs, with the gas on the lowest setting. This saves money.
I was intimidated. Several times. Trying to eat for cheap late at night. This neighborhood closes. There’s a popular place nearby. But I was intimidated. During my massage, I wondered why.
Things I’m not concerned with, or afraid of – looking foolish, asking questions, being wrong, being rejected, etc etc la la la.
But you know a feeling I don’t like? I don’t like feeling like I’m getting in the way, or that I’m causing people extra effort. Especially working people, or stressed people who are in a hurry. And some of the places here in Taipei, you gotta know what’s going on and you gotta order quick and you gotta eat and get gone. This is intimidating. I don’t care about being the dumb guy if nobody around me is in a hurry. But I care if I’m getting in the way, and sometimes asking questions and bumbling around makes me that guy.
So I was thinking historically about this, and massages are great places to let trauma exit the body. This is a thing. Pain, emotional pain, psychic pain – these are stories in your shoulders, your hips, the tendons inside your knees. And I remember the feeling of being a burden, because I needed help – I really needed help, and somebody made me feel like I was getting in the way. I was a dumb obstacle, and she didn’t have the energy to deal with my dumbness, my literal helplessness.
And I remembered the exact reason that I left for my journey a little bit ahead of schedule. I remember the pull in my heart, the fear that if I didn’t get there soon enough, something really bad was going to happen. So I hurried up, and I don’t like hurrying. And I wrapped up details faster than was practical, and made some sacrifices, and did what felt right.
Now this is some dark territory, and I don’t want to think about it. But these are things for me to resolve at my own pace when the time is right. I’m not mad about things. Not blaming or judging or bothering about wrong or right or whatever. But the timeline of events does still sting. And that feeling of being a burden. And the inescapability of the situation because not only was I a burden, but I was a dumb burden. And man, that burns the inside of my bones, all the way to the core.
And I was not mature enough for the correct conversations – even though this wasn’t all that long ago. I had not yet gotten the right tools from the right people, or had the right amount of time to reshape my life after I’d decided to turn it into a beautifully knotted ball of organic zucchini pasta.
I don’t know. Trauma leaving the burning skeleton, as a woman is perched behind me with her legs around my waist, holding me in a headlock, saying, “one, two, three, ready”, and she extends, which means we both extend, and bubbles of pain are popping from all my nerve endings.
It’s pretty wild stuff.
And I don’t *really want to think about these two connected events from the past, and how ripples of them keep appearing in my present. But when I do hold these thoughts in my palms, it feels like there’s a lot of interconnectedness, butI can’t see clearly because I’m in the middle of it.
But, you know, I know, there’s stuff there. Even after I’ve given everything away – there’s still stuff. Physical weight.
Inside my head.
