Fifty tiny cakes

I made it back to Soho from Kowloon Tong carrying a tray of fifty tiny cakes - leftovers from the discussion at HKBU. The topic was "Writing the Reality" and featured a dialogue between the international writers and Pulitzer Prize winning journalists from the U.S. (there is a journalism workshop going on at the same time this month). The concept of reality and time interests me; we often connect "reality" to the present, i.e. breaking news or reporting the "real", right now. But I'm interested in the reality of the past. And the thin line between reality and imagination in thinking about memory. Also, when writing a fiction based on real events in the past, how we must depend on someone else's sense of reality at that time.

On another note, I feel like I have a million mini writing projects happening right now and I haven't quite settled on one (maybe I don't have to?). But I just started writing a few "portraits" today, since I realized that writing about Hong Kong means writing about the people I see every day, on the street, in the subway, etc. This is a people watching city. Which is awkward to do since it's considered rude. But I can't help imagining what their lives are like. This is that blurred space of reality.


Portrait of a Couple and a Tote Bag: Immigration Tower, Wan Chai

They are old, maybe seventy-four, and he is wearing a white sweater she crocheted for him last winter when it was just cold enough to sleep in the same bed. She needs new glasses and asks him to read the screen in the waiting room, the screen which directs applicants to the right booth. He says “297” and scratches at the dirt behind his ear and finds that it isn’t dirt but a mosquito bite and is shocked, for he thought they only bit the young. She nods and nods and looks away. The air conditioning feels like what they imagine snow to feel like.

They are waiting in the fifth row and there is a tote bag between them, sitting in its own curved seat and heavy as a rain cloud. The tote bag is bright green and is a promotional item from a cell phone company. It is good for carrying vegetables, newspapers, house sandals. It is not good for carrying bottles of sauce or red meats. Today, it does its job and carries papers of various size and weight in zip-lock bags, folded neatly – like dinner napkins over the lap. Last night, she emptied dried mushrooms and ginger from these bags, washed them, and let them dry on the windowsill.

The tote bag is sitting between them, but it is moving, is being moved. She moves it like a lake moves when a rock is thrown in. She moves it and puts it down on the floor and is about to move closer to him, but he picks up the tote bag and places it back on the chair and she is a lake untouched, a lake where the eelgrass does not even move. Their number is called, but she still does not move, not even when the tote bag falls over and the zip-lock bags and papers scatter across the floor.