Imagine that

Been awhile since I've written here.

Or anywhere, really. I guess the past year(s) I've been alternately too busy and too stressed out to think about writing. But I've missed it, in a way.

That said, I haven't structured my thoughts in blog-format (or essay-format) in a LONG time so whatever comes out here is going to be stream of consciousness. It's just for me to remember, anyway.

I just recently got back from Taiwan. I traveled with my whole family this year, which is pretty unusual - typically I am just there with my parents. I haven't spent a lot of time with my sister since we usually have different schedules. For a long time, from high school to the beginning years of grad school, I didn't really talk to her, but we reconnected after some time. Now I think we're quite close. At any rate I know her pretty well. Not perfectly, but well enough.

Recently in my life I have been doing a lot of looking forward and looking back. When I was in college, ironically, I was mostly looking backward and terrified of the future; in grad school I was looking mostly to a hazy and nebulous future (namely the end of the PhD); and now, I have to be responsible and reasonable and efficient but I also often think about the past. No longer do I think back with the clinging desperation I did when I was younger. Mostly it is just a fond acknowledgment of times gone by.

But I was thinking about this while I was in Taiwan, how I have made so many years of memories there, even though my time there was very transient, and how my parents have also made their memories there, even though theirs was also transient to an extent. How much does our physical presence determine our belonging to a place? How is it that I can leave a place and, within a year, lose complete contact with people I thought were my best friends, and my mother can leave a place for thirty years and still have friends so close they will do anything for each other? Maybe I have never had really good friends.

I thought I did once.

I once agonized over the people I knew and the people I wish I still knew. But the more time I spend with myself the more I realize I don't really need any more people than I already have. A sprinkling of people I can relate to from various aspects of my life, and my family.

It is interesting to see how families grow and change over time. My parents' relationships with our relatives in Taiwan have changed much over time. My sister and I started close, then she pushed me away for years, and we finally got back together again. My relationship with my parents also was close, then far, then close. Maybe it's orbits, maybe it's a natural processing, maybe it's psychology or changing stages of life. It's life.

There are a few images I think I will remember from this trip.

Mosquitoes and desperation, huddling under a net draped over a couch, prowling the apartment with an electric flyswatter in sleep-deprived fury.

Attending church for the first time with my aunt - not the aunt I'd expected - on Christmas Eve.

My dad with a puffy face, miserable in the waiting room, after an allergy scare.

The lonely feeling of peering at the top of a tower in Kaohsiung at the construction below; again peering from the top of the ferris wheel at the Dream Mall at more construction below; the feeling of a tired country and tired people wishing for things to get better, without much hope. The feeling of a country in decline. Possibly thanks to disastrous political leadership.

Seeing my dad's brother actually smiling and being kind to children and happy, talking about things like politics and economics, things he knows much about and I know just a bit but enough to understand. Maybe it's old age that makes him less angry. Maybe he is more satisfied with his life, now that he has grandchildren.

Visiting Yehliu again, this time in the winter, with aunties Hu, and my sister this time. Seeing her love the place I loved the previous summer, and seeing my mother's good friends, and having a wonderful time.

Seeing my cousins and my aunt at a hotpot. I had wanted to talk to my aunt but it is hard to actually have time to do that, and she is pretty shy, and I wouldn't know what to say anyway. I had also hoped to talk with my cousin but I think she avoided me. Ah well.

Enough thoughts for tonight. Three minutes to bedtime. I'm old!