I used to look over the sea at sunset.
The golden light was shattered by the waves and reflected as hazy stars into my eyes. The moon was already in the sky, curved into a tiny arc, just like your smiling eyes.
I thought your boat must be near. Its white hull would probably be lit up by the setting sun, like the seagulls accompanying the boat, as clean as an angel guarding travelers in the blue sea.
……
I haven’t cooked for myself in a long time.
When I was in middle school, my mother asked me to learn to cook with her every weekend, hoping that I wouldn’t starve to death in the future. Start from scratch, wash the vegetables, chop them, and finally cook them, all on my own. Two dishes per week. I am actually very afraid of knives, especially the heavy rectangular kitchen knives at home.
The cylindrical wooden handle is attached to the iron alloy blade, and when my hand is holding at the junction, it looks like a kitten’s tiny paw. There are water stains and red metal rust in irregular shapes near the spine of the knife. The thick spine of the knife gradually approaches from both sides and gathers into a sharp edge, which is shiny white because of the friction all the year round. I feel scared whenever the reflection of light from the long, sharp and thin blade pours into my eyes.
……
I am your worst fear.
I am the devil wandering in your dream.
When you are running in the ancient tower and flying down from its top, I am following you as your silhouette.
When wings grow out from your back, I stand on your shoulder to see your lands.
It is a vast and wild land. A kingdom that has no king.
You have inexhaustible strength. Your wings are strong. You are the lonely guard of this kingdom, who inspect its safety with your flight.
Birds chant anthem along your way, beasts bend their heads down upon your arrival. Every living creature surrender to you.
But not me.
……
Walking through the corridor set up in an art installation “Hub” by the artist Do Ho Suh according to the rooms in his childhood home in Korea, the transition between the orange room to the blue room reminded me of my transition from China to USA as an international student. I felt like I went back to my home, standing inside the old house in my hometown, the place that I had lived in until the age of 10. In a trance, dim yellow light struggled to permeate into the room through the closed curtains. Nervously, I was looking at the ceiling when a trace of noisy sounds of people talking coming from the street entered my ear. The noise grew louder and louder, as if they might break into my room in the next second—I was too young to know about the existence of auditory hallucination that came together with my fever. My grandmother entered the room in response to my anxious calling and lay beside to comfort me.
……
The car was running wildly in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya towards the heart of the endless African prairie, while I sit by the car window excitedly, waiting for stunning views of animals to appear. Minutes later, we arrived at a primitive Masai village. The tiny village was hidden deep inside the woods, hardly to be seen from a distance. Crowds of Masai people flowed out of the skinny doorway; the leading Masai man talked to our guide and charged each of us sixty dollars as an entrance fee before allowing us to walk beyond the circular wall made of mud and soil. The wall was much higher than the average height of a human; inside of it, a dozen of houses, small and low-roofed, scattered around sporadically, being completely separated from the outside.
……
It seems people can easily have maliciousness towards others. Where does the maliciousness come from? In my opinion, there are always some parts of other people that we cannot understand or don’t agree with, so a problem caused by the “conflict” between minds is born. According to Albert Einstein, “the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” A person is usually confined in his own way of thinking patterns, determined by his experiences and the education he received, so each person has different and non-repeatable pattern. This means the difference in our thinking patterns or level of thinking may not be resolved within our original thinking patterns. Once a conflict exists with seemingly no solutions, then the maliciousness enters people’s minds. The things we cannot understand in our own thinking patterns can be easily included into the category of nonsense.
……
The dark blue sky seemed close at hand. Ulamal laid on the roof of her house and looked up, trying to find something in the mysterious sky.
The villagers always say that gods ruled the world. If you pray to the sky reverently, you will see the gods.
But as Ulamal grew up hearing it, though she searched in the sky every day, hoping to have a peek at the beauty of the gods, she never encountered the appearances of any gods, neither a slice of divine gold color penetrated through the clouds.
……
Yuning "Anona" Yang 