Texas Sun, Banff Cyan

I wait for the Texas sun to melt everything into one, to melt anticipation into surrealism so as for it to swim in cyan. Wait. I wait. There, I touched the title, although missing Banff, but it will come later, in the end, but it will come, don’t worry. Just wait.

I thought about The Southern Thruway a lot before my move. What a story. Will Texas Sun, Banff Cyan be a story like that? We’ll see. But listen to how it rhymes, sun, cyan, and close your eyes, see the colors, opposite, complementary, orange and blue… I like my title. Have you read The Southern Thruway? Yes, no? Oh you should read it, read it again if you have already, now. And come back.

Here are a few facts. 

Fact one: Houston is five and a half hours away from Paris. By car. Paris, Texas. Have you seen the movie? Have you heard the song? Have you been to Paris? Which Paris? I’ve only been to one. Which one? Guess. 

Fact two: Houston is essentially a coastal city, the closest beach is just half an hour away, isn’t that wonderful? Yes, an almost coastal city in the desert of Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico, with lots of hurricanes in the summer, southern live oaks covered by ball moss, and giant texan roaches. And those giant texan roaches. Here is another reference story of importance — Order of Insects. What a story. Have you read Order of Insects? Yes, no? Oh you should read it, read it again if you have already, now. And come back. 

Fact three: Houston is hot, humid hot. Houston is under the Texas sun, that texan sun, burning and shining as and like a true star. 

Fact four: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West is set in the mid-19th century Texas, a book by Cormac McCarthy about the American Indian scalp hunting and trade across the US-Mexico border. Have you read it? Yes, no? Oh you should read it, read it again if you have already, now. Perhaps. I haven’t read it. It’s in one of the boxes of my yet-to-be-unpacked books. I’ve been wanting to read it, but haven’t gotten the chance. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Isn’t it always so — haven’t gotten the chance? But I thought I should mention it here because it’s the most famous book set in Texas I know of. Maybe I’ll read it in the duration of the construction of this story, but I’m still working on The Obscene Bird of Night, how many months has it been since I started on that one? I’m nearly done, though, at least, thankfully. 

Am I referencing a bit too much here? Am I being a bit too scattered? I am scattered, it’s true. Lately, especially. I was moving, so it’s understandable. Guess where I was moving to? Houston, yes! Texas! I moved in the summer, and it’s still summer right now, only just tending to the end, that’s all, so it’s a good time to reflect. To sit down and reflect, to reference and write, to start, to end, so here I am. Finally. 

So here comes the story. Of waiting and anticipation. Of writing beginning and end on a Möbius band. Of claiming that aquamarines are the shades of coming of age because when you are young you are green like a raw peach, and you turn blue when you come of age as you come to touch and caress pains like necessities, but all shades of aquamarines are beautiful so it’s okay. Of moving into a townhouse with a skylight, and setting it up bit by bit. Of declaring that heaven is a bathroom. Of killing black roaches with bleaches, and chrysalizing them into dinner stories that might make you laugh and emerge as metaphors I type down in front of a screen. Of being wrapped in a sweater in July in a subtropical climate and having a complicated relationship with the AC. Of sadness and anxiety. Of happiness and peace. Of bidding goodbye to a long chapter of life so significant that it will become a novel that will contain this very story. Of realizing only later, only a moment only before only just now that I’d been wearing the embroidered gown of signs and symbols inside out. Of anticipation and waiting. And of finally getting there, and looking back at it all, and perhaps, looking forward as well. So here comes the story of —

Waiting. I was waiting. I had been waiting. Almost for a long time, for almost a long time, or for an almost long time? For how long, exactly? A few months, a year, three years, seven years, eleven years? What was I waiting for? Perhaps just for my life, for time to run its course. Oh I’m not dying, not yet, if I had you worried there for a second; or to be precise, I don’t anticipate myself dying soon of any natural or unnatural causes, as I suppose I am dying, because I’m alive. More specifically, though, I was waiting to move, to Texas, to Houston. It’s one of those things that just has to happen, for better or worse, and I didn’t have a choice. I was nearly okay with it, after the initial phase of “out of all places, why Texas?”, except that I was still terrified by the sun, by the summer, by the heat. It’s Texas, after all. And while waiting, I had to do something, walk, work, or else. But truthfully, mostly, I was just in a state of being, alive like a statue. Waiting, simply, thinking, stressing, anticipating, like a statue. Deep in my anticipation, I decided I’d write a story titled Texas Sun, without Banff Cyan yet. Do you know there is also a song called Texas Sun? I might have borrowed its title for the story, another reference, unimportant. I started to compose Texas Sun, a story about the Texas sun, the Texas summer, the Texas heat, completely based on anticipation and internet hearsay, a thousand miles away, in a cool apartment, in the shade, in my head, in May. And around the same time, I started to recall The Southern Thruway. I remember wanting to write Texas Sun as a story like The Southern Thruway. I wonder why. In my head, the story of Texas Sun went like this: 

I’m underneath the sun filtered by the glass of the skylight, cradled in the hammock. The heat is virtual because of the AC, but it’s real in my consciousness. I’m melting, blending into the brightness that’s almost whiteness, becoming almost a sense of nothingness. I’m entering the exit of reality, and I’m here now, in Texas, under the sun, after months of wait, I’m finally realizing, in this moment of pause, right now, I’m here now, but I’m already waiting for the next thing, as this isn’t the end of the wait, just a moment of pause, I’m not there yet, there’s still the next thing to wait for, to fuel my anxiety. The sun is as brutal as they say. A bird flew by. A plane flew by. A cloud flew by. Time flew by. I’m thinking about The Southern Thruway again. Why do I like it so much? Perhaps it’s because it’s a story about such nothing-ness, a story that turns such nothing-ness into something-ness — a traffic jam that becomes a stage showing an honest surrealist play, a play with honest characters, with an honest plot with an honest beginning and an honest end, when you are just about to suspect that maybe, maybe, it will never end, because, because it’s a traffic jam, after all. It’s nothing at all, a traffic jam on the Southern Thruway is nothing at all. That’s how I feel about my story, a story about nothing at all, just trivialities, because nothing happens, I’m just waiting, like a trapped car on the Southern Thruway, doing nothing, distracted but anxious, waiting, but I want to write, nevertheless. What should I even write about? Except for the fear for melting in the heat and puffing in humidity and shriveling in anxiety and shivering in awaiting, I have nothing to talk about. Under the sun, with my eyes closed, I wonder, but thoughts are already forming, aren’t they? 

And blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah. The story continues. Wait, no, perhaps it’s better to end with the paragraph I just thought of. Isn’t it a bit poetic to end with “but thoughts are already forming, aren’t they?” The story should just end there instead of keeping going. It can begin with descriptions of the townhouse I live in, the move-in process; and finally after I have settled in, I lie in the hammock, rest under the sun, start dipping my consciousness into the antipode of reality and I can write in a surrealist style, like in The Southern Thruway. The scene I just wrote will be the finale, if it deserves to be called that way, and I can flesh it out, add more details later. 

Something like that was my vision for the story Texas Sun back then. And yes, I live in a townhouse. Yes, it has a skylight. Yes, I have a hammock. I knew I would have those things months before I even set foot in Texas. Everything can be done online these days — I rented my house after a few email exchanges, a virtual tour through a video call, a few more email exchanges, a series of back-and-forth signatures, and a bank transfer to seal the process; it was so quick and easy that I got a bit paranoid afterward. But the place was a sold deal for me the moment I saw the skylight window that just looked like a pool of light, a big whiter square etched in the white walls reaching to me through another window electronically, on top of having zero carpet and an impeccable location; in retrospect, I think I won a small lottery back there. Let me give you my version of a virtual tour of the house with words. It’s in a quiet neighborhood around the intersection of the Museum District, Midtown, and Montrose. There is no front yard; a white crepe myrtle in bloom stands in front of the townhouse, just off the ramp. Facing the street, the face of the house has a stucco finish in a light crimson pink. The front door lies on the right side of the face, next to the big garage gate, and you can see the balcony hanging up there on the second floor above the garage shaded by the crepe myrtle. You walk into the front door, and there is a straight tunnel, parallel to the garage, leading to the actual door of the house. You open that door and you see light, lots of light, lots of white, but the floor is tiled with orange travertine. The living room is a big open space with two windows at the opposite end next to the staircase to the second floor. You decided to put a delicate twin-size rattan daybed as a couch just underneath the windows against the wall so you could reuse your twin-size futon mattress from your old apartment for it. Rattan and oak are the themes for your living room decoration — you have two more rattan chairs, three oak dining chairs, an oak dining table, an oak coffee table, and an oak console table. The floral seat cushions, the grid tablecloth are also in a similar color scheme, cool lemon, cold orange, sweet apricot, warm almond, steamed salmon, beautiful colors. You chose green to compliment the clementines and tangerines you cumulated and curated in the space, so you spread the big knitted throw blanket in deep emerald you got from mom across the daybed, and placed a big washable rug in brownish sap green with patterns of partridges and pomegranates underneath the coffee table. But you were greedier than that, you wanted more colors, colors that don’t just compliment, but contrast and complement, protrude and strike like tiny spikes of cacti, so you bought cacti, dragon fruit and blue myrtle, and olives, arbequina olive and sweet tea olive, osmanthus, that is, sorry, that’s not what I mean, those are still greens, you wanted colors that would go far and beyond, forming micro explosions and sparks, what about red, what about purple? Just a little bit, here and there. Yes, a lavender glass side table, then, next to the daybed, and pillows with mauve details, and red cushions for the two rattan chairs. Are you satisfied? Um, no. Is something still missing here? Yes, of course. You’ve been avoiding mentioning the most important aspect of the living room, haven’t you? On purpose, I suspect. The square atrium, the hammock, the skylight... Right. The hammock was the very first idea you had for the house after you saw the atrium and the skylight from your virtual tour of the house; you thought you’d hang the hammock down all the way from the second floor, you’d use long ropes to tie the two ends of the hammock to the balusters guarding the two sides of the hallways on the second floor, cutting diagonally through the atrium. You weren’t sure if your idea would work before you actually went inside the house and measured the accurate dimensions, but you bought the hammock and the rope way ahead despite it all, you were gambling, you were too excited, and you won. It worked perfectly. The hammock is in white and yellow strips with tassels hanging down on both sides; great that the colors worked out with the rest too, but perhaps the rest were all just decisions that stemmed from this very first one. You put one of the rattan chairs with a red cushion next to the hammock and you noticed that you got yellow and red here, so there was one thing that had to be done — add blue, complete the trichotomy of the primary colors. So there comes the woven blue rug underneath the hammock, it’s a beautiful shade of blue, kind of cerulean, kind of phthalo. Blue, the missing color, now it’s there too, you’re done, you feel complete, you feel happy. You surrounded the hammock with the plants, olives, cacti, etc., under the skylight, and you sealed the square space with curtain starlights cascading down from the ceiling like ivies… Okay, are you being a bit too fancy here? But this home is significant to me, I moved all the way to Texas from Charlottesville, Charlotte’s ville, to start a new chapter of life, shouldn’t I try my best to make it nice, as nice as possible as if I’m creating a piece of art? It’s my home, where my spirit resides, where my life resides. Alright, alright. Let’s just go to the second floor now. Let me be brief about the second floor. There are two rooms upstairs divided by the hallways defining the atrium from above and hugging the skylight from below. One of the rooms, the one attached to the balcony, is going to be my painting studio. I paint, yes, in oil mostly; oh right, I forgot to mention — you hung two of your paintings in the living room, “A Detail Study of Georgia O'Keeffe's White Iris and Other Still Lifes” and “If No One Loves You, I Do, (If No One Mourns You, I Do,) If No One Remembers You, I Do”, both huge, both in oil on linen. You hung your unfinished paintings in your studio: “Triptych: A Critique of Human History”, “I Am Made in China”, “Love in the Time of C”. And you hung “A Poetic Space, Dancing” and “Vipassana” in the other room, your bedroom. There is nothing too special about your bedroom, except for the bathroom. We’ll get to it. Just wait. The furniture in this room mostly came from your old apartment: the white mosquito net hanging down from the ceiling, the nightstand, the lamp, the vases, the book holder, the mirror, the low triangle-shaped coffee table placed next to the bed, the pastel pink rug placed under the coffee table, the big seat cushion placed on the rug between the bed and the coffee table so you can sit at the coffee table to eat breakfast, read books, or work, while comfortably lean your back against the bed leg — such is peace, a few more cushions, many more knickknacks, gewgaws and tchotchkes. The wooden queen bed is new; the beddings are new, in coconut white with flowers and light purple; the L-shaped alpaca plushie, L-paca isn’t new, a cuddly old friend; the giant corgi beanbag carrying your clothes too dirty for the closet too clean for the laundry is new; the small cabinet, the desk and the bookshelf are new, made by me, made by cardboard boxes, tapes, glues, wood sticks, clay, toilet papier-mâché, I’ll tell you more about them later, I’m sure you are dying to know, but just wait. Let me go to the bathroom first. Remember I said that “heaven is a bathroom”? It’s the bathroom attached to the bedroom I was talking about. The only way to get to this bathroom is by crossing the hallway connecting it to the bedroom and while you cross the hallway, you are showered by light, showering in light, you are the closest to the skylight, to sky, to light. White, you see white, everything is white, so bright. If you look down, you see the hammock crossing the square atrium, and you don’t look up because your eyes would get burnt. You feel like every step along the hallway leading to the bathroom is a step leading up to firmament, to heaven. And then, you are inside the bathroom, it’s blue, it’s white, it’s gold. Look, there are two sinks for washing your hands, one shower for washing your body, a big frosted glass window absorbing and refracting light from the sky for washing your spirit, and a porcelain toilet; oh the porcelain toilet, so divine, just picture how you cleanse yourself while sitting on it, releasing personal filth, reading a book about a Catholic Casa and getting confused by the differences between liturgy, litany and rosary (homomorphism, homeomorphism, and diffeomorphism), and getting further confused by getting distracted by starting to think deep thoughts deeply, becoming all philosophical and metaphysical, forgetting to flip the page, forgetting where you are sitting, breathing in slowly, breathing out gently, in heaven, you are. Regenerate, rejuvenate, every single day. Sometimes it even gets so bright that it’s overwhelming and your eyes hurt and you feel like almost eaten up by the light and you have to hide, heaven is powerful, powered by the Texas sun, you see? So yes, heaven is a bathroom, you can’t deny — it has two sinks, one shower, a big frosted glass window absorbing and refracting light from the sky, and a porcelain toilet, oh the porcelain toilet. 

I don’t think I have anything better to say about the house, I mean, not after you’ve just come back from heaven. I think we can call it a day for the virtual tour. How was it? Was it too wordy? Did I delve into it a bit too much? Did I mention too many unnecessary details? I mean, probably, I know I do that, oversharing is one of my things. But just you know, the details are important to me, because I observed them and I couldn’t un-observe them (why unobserve doesn’t exist as a word) and they became part of what was brought by the anticipation, part of this intermediate state of the wait, and just you know, I was waiting, I had been waiting, for something important, really important, so everything along the way became important too, everything was magnified, everything was highlighted, everything was a sign, everything meant something to me, and I couldn’t let anything slip by, I had to take everything in, I had to do everything right, so I took all the details in, and they became part of me, part of my voice, and this is me talking, this is my voice, this is my narrative, this is how I talk, and I had to tell you everything. Anyway, I moved into this house in June. The process was so precarious; the process of waiting and moving was so precarious. Waiting to move to Texas. Moving to Texas to continue the wait. I shifted, between moving and waiting, passive, active, still, dynamic, which one was it, where was I in one moment or the next? And Houston, Texas isn’t the only place I had to go to this summer to get to where I wanted to be, there are many more: Charlottesville, New York, Charlottesville, Houston, Los Angeles, Beijing, New York, Providence, New York, Charlottesville, Houston. And if I backtrack a bit more, there are even more: Charlottesville, Providence, New York, Pittsburgh, Charlottesville, Berkeley, Charlottesville, Chattanooga, Berkeley, Los Angeles, New York, Charlottesville, Washington D.C., Charlottesville, Washington D.C., Charlottesville, New York, Charlottesville, New York, Budapest, Vienna, New York, Charlottesville, New York, Vienna, Budapest, Bonn, Cologne, Budapest, Vienna, Nantes, Paris (now you know which Paris), Budapest, New York, London, Oxford, London, New York, Charlottesville, San Francisco, Beijing, Xiangyang, Nanzhang, Xiangyang, Shiyan, Xiangyang, Beijing, Xiamen, Beijing, San Francisco, Charlottesville, Houston, Charlottesville, Washington D.C., Charlottesville, New York, Charlottesville, Houston, Los Angeles, Beijing, New York, Providence, New York, Charlottesville, Houston. Lots of coming in full circles, lots of coming back around. Coming of age. I lived in Charlottesville for the past seven years; before that, I lived in Los Angeles for four years; before that, I lived in Beijing. Beijing; Beijing, Los Angeles; Beijing, Los Angeles, Charlottesville; Beijing, Los Angeles, Charlottesville, Houston; Beijing, Los Angeles (Berkeley), Charlottesville (Providence, Berkeley, Budapest), Houston. I moved around, time went by, very important years, coming-of-age years. I’d like to say that coming of age for me started when I moved to LA, and it kept going, on and on. From time to time, I thought I was there, but then later decided that no, perhaps not, not yet. Lots of coming in full circles, lots of coming back around. Coming of age. Is the process of coming of age more like moving, or more like waiting? More active, or passive? More still, or dynamic? More continuous, or singular? Moving, so as to get somewhere, waiting, so as for something to change? Sometimes, coming of age to me felt like a treasure hunt; I’d be looking for signs, or changes of signs, patterns, or breaks of patterns, proofs, or disproofs. I was proved wrong. I felt lots of pains, lots of pains, lots of pains. I wasn’t there yet. Sometimes, coming of age to me felt like holding my breath underwater; I’d be making a decision or creating a routine and tell myself to stick to it in forever repetition no matter what because I’d lose my breath underwater and drown if not. I was tired and hurt. I felt lots of pains, lots of pains, lots of pains. I wasn’t there yet. Why was it so hard for me? For a long time, I was confused. But at some point, I learned why — because I’m a blue whale, and around the same time, I knew I was getting close to getting there, to coming of age. I was tempted to declare I was there already at that point, but I had learned to be cautious and patient; it’d been long enough, a long way coming, I’d waited long enough, I could wait a bit longer, so I kept on waiting, through the summer, only getting ever more anxious, but when I was on the flight from Charlottesville to Houston, when I was on the flight from Houston to Los Angeles, when I was on the flight from Los Angeles to Beijing, when I was on the flight from Beijing to New York, when I was on the train from New York to Providence, when I was on the train from Providence to New York, and when I was on the train from New York to Charlottesville, I knew I was moving ever closer, about to come back in an ultra big full circle. And then, I boarded my flight from Charlottesville to Houston, again, it was the third time now, I knew I was getting ever ever closer — I was leaving for good this time, I checked out of my apartment, returned the office keys that I’d held onto for seven years, ate one more time at my favorite restaurant in town, went to get tea one more time from my favorite tea house in town, said bye to one of the only two people important to me who were still in town and decided it wasn’t important to say bye to the other one, and I carried my suitcase and backpack to the airport, and I boarded the plane, and then, and then I saw the sky gliding from azure to golden to deep blue to black. I was holding my breath, I was in front of the sign. 

I got back in Houston towards the end of July; I heard Hurricane Beryl stopped by to say hi but I wasn’t around. I turned off the AC while I was gone. It was a mistake. Let’s backtrack a bit: I moved into my house in Houston in June, stayed there for a week, give or take, and went on a trip for a month and a half, remember all the cities I listed, Beijing, Providence, etc.? During my short week-long stay back in June in the house, I did one important thing and many unimportant things — the one important thing I did was to put together my bed and among the many unimportant things I did, I made crepe paper poppies, Danish flag poppy, Iceland poppy, black swan poppy, white and scarlet pink, yellow and red oranges, black and violet, very time-consuming, very delicate, very verisimilar, I wanted a poppy collection, why poppies, why do I like poppies, perhaps it’s because I think they are subversive, so variegated, remind me of sleep and death and hell, opium, bloom in spring and summer, in all shapes and colors, so full of life, so beautiful, like beauty itself, like the embodiment of beauty itself; disintegrated several cardboard boxes worn-out from the move without having cleared out what they held inside first, so that I could start building the furniture set I designed as soon as possible: a small cabinet, a desk, and a bookshelf, all made of cardboard boxes, tapes, glues, wood sticks, clay, and toilet papier-mâché. I first learned the process of papier-mâché between the ages of four and seven from the children’s channel on TV; I first learned the term papier-mâché from the book I was reading a few months ago (and still reading now) — there is a papier-mâché mask in the book that holds high importance to the plot, right around the same time when I got the idea of building my own furniture set, a coincidence? And while researching the correct water-to-glue ratio for the adhesive mixture, I came across the word decoupage and of course, I got confused with the difference between papier-mâché and decoupage so I did some research, and of course, after my research, my understanding of papier-mâché and decoupage was completely tangled up so for a while, I’d been telling people that I was making furniture with cardboard boxes and toilet paper decoupage; nobody picked up on the itchy or edgy iwakan of what I was saying. The design of the furniture set is themed around gardens. For the bookshelf, I will cover the surface with papier-mâché — toilet paper provides an elegant texture, like the ripples of a tranquil glacial lake, and paint it over. On the top of the shelf, I will install wires poking out and attach small clay sculptures to the ends of the wires. The clay sculptures can be a leaf, an open flower, an open hand, an open mouth, a small vase, a middle finger, a bar, etc., etc., so one can put items on them, like a bee in an open flower, an open flower on a clay leaf, a leafy branch in a small vase, a small vase on a bar, a few chocolate bars in an open mouth, an open mouth sucking a middle finger, a middle finger sticking out of an open hand, so it’s both decorative and useful; also the wires supporting the small clay sculptures are like grass and flower stems growing out of the bookshelf and the overall theme of the shelf is a garden, as I said, and I will paint the shelf like a garden too, Meyer lemon, baby blue eucalyptus, celeste fig; and in the middle of the garden, I will put a small lamp of a mouse holding a lightbulb lighting up a small altar with a small Buda, two incense holders, and stones from the beach of Nice and Lake Louise. For the desk and the cabinet, they will also be garden-themed so the three pieces will form a matching set! The designs will be similar to the bookshelf as well, with cardboard structures and papier-mâché finishes, and I will paint the surfaces in warm pastel colors and attach wires skewing small clay sculptures, poking out like flowers or marshmallow skewers, decorative and functional! But the process of papier-mâché is long and tedious, I’m so far from being done. When will I find the time for it? I have so much to do, projects, exercises, groceries, reimbursement forms, life, when will I find the time for papier-mâché? And paint over, and varnish, and varnish again? Am I distracting myself too much with all these random ideas? While waiting. But I couldn’t let go of the ideas, just you know, the ideas are important to me, because I came up with them and I couldn’t forget about them and they became part of what was brought by the anticipation, part of this intermediate state of the wait, and just you know, I was waiting, I had been waiting, for something important, really important, so every idea along the way became important too, every idea was glorified, every idea had to be realized, every idea was a symbol, every idea meant something to me, and I couldn’t let any of them slip by, I had to take every idea into account, I had to put every idea into action, so I started all the processes and left with them unfinished, still dangling, half done half undone, but they became part of me, part of my story, and this is me telling my story, this is my plot, they are my characters, this is how I tell the story, and I had to tell you all about them. Anyway, I left the house in a messy state in June, with cut-open cardboard pieces and plastic debris lying all around on the floor, and I turned off the AC; after all, I’d be gone for such a long time, I thought. It was a mistake.

When I lifted the cardboard piece on the floor, I saw a flat black oval, about the size of my thumb; a second later, I noticed the antennas; it took yet another second for my bubble of delusion to burst into confetti of schadenfreude for whoever enjoys schadenfreude (me, but not this time) when I saw one of the antennas sway. A roach. Alive. There was a roach on my living room floor, the size of my thumb. Alive. A giant texan roach. To be fair, there isn’t a particular species of cockroach that's “texan”; there are the big, flying American cockroaches, the slightly smaller but still big Oriental cockroaches, the dark brown smokybrown cockroaches, and many more that live in Texas, but “giant texan roaches” is how I refer to them all, because there is something texan about them — they live in Texas, sure, but there is something more, there is a sense of pride, self-assurance and composure in these texan roaches, as if they think they have as much right as you do to be where you are, wherever you are, your home included, and as certain as you are that you’ll have to kill it if you see one lying on your living room floor, you have no choice but to accept that there is a roach lying on your living room floor and it’s what it is, with no questioning allowed, or even the prerogative of freaking out. I did still allow myself one second, the fourth second, to freak out, though — please, it was my first giant texan home roach. So how should I kill it? In the next thirty seconds, I contemplated multiple possibilities to achieve that goal without coming to its proximity and with a 100% success rate, knowing I didn’t have a vacuum yet, none reasonable, until I remembered that I bought Clorox bleach spray two days ago for cleaning toilets and it was just sitting on the kitchen counter — bleach is like the sun, so intense, discoloring everything, purging everything. Great. You can imagine the rest. After killing the second cockroach on the second day on the second floor in the second room, my studio, not my bedroom, thank god, I was no longer capable of thinking about anything else but those evil creatures, and I made myself learn everything about them, so here is one thing if you want to know: cockroaches prefer warm and humid environments; yet I turned off the AC for a month and a half, as I said, it was a mistake. Oh here is another thing: cockroaches are nocturnal; they commonly seek food and water in kitchen areas at night and sometimes they leave droppings that look like tiny black cylinders about 1 to 2 mm long; I found a few of those in the pantry. And here is one more: cockroaches molt several times as they grow and they shed their old exoskeleton that looks like a pale, translucent version of themselves; I found one under the edge of the oven. I started wiping the kitchen floor with lavender-scented surface cleaner every evening; I never left any dirty dishes in the sink; I took out trash every day; I lit fragrant candles and incense every night; I sprayed pesticides and sealed cracks; I turned the AC down to 75 degrees despite always feeling cold in a temperature below 77 because roaches also feel cold in a temperature below 77 and I hate the roaches more than the cold, but why do we have to be so similar? In July, in a subtropical climate, I wrapped myself in a sweater and was constantly cold and was constantly reminded by the cold to ask myself rhetorically “why am I always so cold?”, and to answer myself sarcastically “ah, it’s because I want to make the roaches feel miserable.” I started rereading Order of Insects, I had to and I wanted to. Dead, overturned, their three pairs of legs would be delicately drawn up and folded shyly over their stomachs; yes, it’s so true, and here is another thing about roaches: they always die upside down — when they are about to die you’d know, because they’d stop running away and use their last breath and remaining strength to flip themselves over, and that’s it, their end, it’s almost heroic, as if with that final act they are committing seppuku and shouting “To Victory or Death!”, or “Death before Dishonor!”, or “In Defense of the Realm!”, or “Long Live the Empire!” before going out, and you know you did it, you won, you killed it, but you feel at loss. Fierce, ugly, armored things: they used their shadows to seem large. The machine sucked them up while I looked the other way. I remember the sudden thrill of horror I had hearing one rattle up the wand. It rang inside the hollow of the wand like metal too; brightly, like a stream of pins. The clatter made me shiver. Oh that divine feeling of how your own feelings are captured so precisely and vividly and honestly and honorably by someone else’s words. Yes, yes, no need to say more, just another thing about killing roaches and taking care of their dead bodies after I finally got my vacuum. Skeleton. Exoskeleton. Order. Beauty. The dark soul of the world. 

Cockroaches. 

I lied a bit, I said I was no longer capable of thinking about anything else but those evil creatures who were even starting to creep into my dreams of insomnia, but that’s not true, because even during those darkest days, I hadn’t forgotten that I’d been waiting. How could I have forgotten that I’d been waiting when what I had been waiting for was right in front of me? Have you guessed? Banff, it’s Banff. I’d been waiting to go to Banff. Banff. Have you been to Banff? Yes, no? Oh you should go, go again if you have already, now. If you can. And come back. Or don’t, don’t come back. If you can. But here you are. Here I am. I still think about the aquamarines of Banff, or turquoise, or cyan, all the time. I picked cyan for the title, to rhyme with sun, but I like aquamarine better as a word. Aqua-marine, I learned this word from Nabokov, in Ada, or Ardor — Aqua and Marina, look how he names characters. And look how we name greens and blues — cerulean, viridian, Egyptian, Prussian, azure, magnesium, cobalt, turquoise, phthalo, cyan, teal, ultramarine, aquamarine, green, blue. There is a whole book about blue — On Being Blue. There should be a blue called Banff. Banff, I’m writing to you now, I’m talking to you now. Will you put up with my rigmarole?

I’ll begin now.

I’m sorry I have to begin with I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I stole a stone from you, in Lake Louise, and a few more in Bow River, I hope it’s okay, I wanted some mementos. And I also stole your cyan, and I’m sorry that I misunderstood it at first. I stole your cyan as a sign for myself without asking for your permission; I made your cyan into a symbol as I was looking for signs and symbols — I wanted something special as a grand opening, a perfect celebration for the beginning of the new chapter of my life, for finally completing the long, long cycle of coming of age. I thought your cyan was what I’d been looking for, waiting for, the grand opening, the perfect celebration, because look at you, you are so blue. But once again, I was ahead of myself, thinking I was already there, although this time I was only ahead of myself by one last missing step. I had to wait for just a little bit more. Just a bit more. But sorry nonetheless. 

I came from Houston, Texas to see you. The sun there that I’m still getting used to is so different from yours; yours hid a lot while I was with you, not at all like your cyan that was everywhere. But it was your greens, your forests and mountains, that I saw first. And then the blues. From green to blue, the colors of coming of age, aquamarines, didn’t I say this? — Of claiming that aquamarines are the shades of coming of age because when you are young you are green like a raw peach, and you turn blue when you come of age as you come to touch and caress pains like necessities, but all shades of aquamarines are beautiful so it’s okay. Can I tell you about coming of age? It’s what’s been on my mind lately. I had a really hard time coming of age. I’ve been a bit different all my life; maybe you’ve noticed too? I think it’s because I’m a blue whale. Really big, really slow. I live in a different rhythm, a very slow rhythm, and I hear sounds in deep waters and it’s really quiet in deep waters, so I get startled sometimes. And it’s really dark in deep waters, too, so I like to chase the lights, because they don’t come around very often. My time flows differently, very slowly. From time to time, I come to the surface to take a breath and I meet the sun and the colors and they are beautiful, but I always go back to the deep waters where I talk to myself a lot and don’t get talked back to often, but it’s okay, I have the books I read and the songs I listen to, they do talk to me so I'm not lonely. But I’m so big, so big that it was hard for me to see or understand what was going on around me; so big that I was always clumsy like a child, bumping into everything; so big that it took me so long to grow even bigger, to my fullest size. And there is a blue bird living inside me that was so hard to tame, too. I think that’s why it was so hard for me to come of age — I’m a blue whale hosting a blue bird, but I wear grey skin, and I couldn’t shed my green, and that’s why I had to come to you, Banff, to be washed by your cyan, to be dyed blue, so I could finally obtain the final shade of the aquamarine of coming of age, that blue that’s still green, that blue that’s also green, to obtain the blue without letting go of the green, to become a grey green blue blue blue whale. Your cyan wasn’t the grand opening or the perfect celebration, it was the final ritual, the closing ceremony, the end of my coming of age. I got it wrong for a while and I said sorry.

But now let me say thank you despite —. Your lakes are all glacial, your waters are so cold, I couldn’t swim inside. You are the opposite of where I came from, you are the opposite of Texas. Your cyan is the opposite of the sun I live under. There are no giant texan roaches within your periphery, but you know, even the giant texan roaches can be not so bad when I’m around you; they seemed remote, they turned into stories I told that were simply funny and surreal, and here come the metaphors I promised: the giant texan roaches are just like the nuisances of life, a very literal metaphor; the giant texan roaches are just like the black pepper flakes accidentally strewn on a lemon pie, is this one better(?); the giant texan roaches are just like the dark soul of the world, I didn't come up with this one; the giant texan roaches are just like the silly metaphors in a story that doesn’t quite dare to call itself literature. I think I’ll stop here, unless you want to hear more, in which case it will be offered at tomorrow's dinner. Oh but here is one more: the giant texan roaches are just like the signs and symbols I picked up on my way, on my wait, leading to my coming of age. The signs and symbols I picked up, interpreted wrong, like wearing an embroidered gown inside out, and sometimes looked back at to catch the wrong interpretations, like how the small painted god in a small oil painting on a small piece of wood looks back at something. I used to look at him without praying during my wait — he always looked so melancholic to me, the small painted god, so I’d play a sad song while looking at him, and it used to seem to me that he was looking back at a past he couldn’t go back to, but now I have decided that he is not looking back at a past from the present, the right now, he is looking back at the present, the right now from the future, and he sees me sitting there typing, he is looking at me living in the present, the right now a then past he can’t go back to in his future, even as the god. Speaking of god, the writer is the god of her creation, and I’m writing a letter to you and I want it to read like a prose poem. I like things that rhyme, the congruences and symmetries of sounds, sign, cyan, sun, sigh. Did I hear a sigh at the end of the sentence uttered in a letter that played with the sounds of words? Sign, cyan, sun, sigh, words with sounds. Writing to you, writing is so fun. Speaking of writing, during my wait, I was anxious about not writing, I couldn’t bring myself to — procrastination, as always. But now I can say procrastination is alright, because look, the story I’m writing now can only be written now, anytime sooner would have been impossible. It’s ok to wait, it’s part of the process, it’s how things have to be sometimes, like coming of age. Speaking of coming of age, again, because there is always more to say, what does it really mean? I mean, truly. What is it to you? I wonder. I say I’m there now, but I’ve said it before only to decide against it later. Am I really there this time? Can I be sure? I guess I can’t. As I said, I’d been moving and waiting, searching for signs and symbols, holding my breath, deciding routines, respecting them, drawing tarot cards, reversing them, going to a place, going to another… Am I still going in circles? But there is one thing I can say, though, that is, I’m happy, this very moment, and this happiness is brimming from within me, flowing strong from somewhere deep, because I have a rich story to tell, a story about “nothing happens except for going in circles”, a story about nothing at all, and there is literature, the only way to talk about nothing-ness and turn it into something-ness, so I’ll be alright. And beyond literature, there is also much much more, so I’ll be alright. I didn’t use to feel this way, so maybe this is a good sign? Of coming of age, I mean. Should I stop looking for signs, though, maybe? Perhaps the ultimate sign is to stop looking for them. Okay. I’ll do that. And coming of age has something to do with death, dying, I think, and I’m so in love, because I have accepted dying, because accepting dying is a way of loving, I think, and I’m dying right now, because I’m alive. I’m scared of death (is it a coincidence that scared and sacred are anagrams of each other), of course, but death and dying are different — death remains a concept for me, for now, as I’m still young, I still have time. One day death will become part of me, and dying is to get ready for death, to practice for death, to practice death, I think, which can be a beautiful thing, and to do it elegantly is to love living, to live loving, pains, and I do, I’m so in love, so alive. So thank you, I want to say, because I’m saying all this by writing to you, so thank you, for being the avenue that led me to my story. And thank you, for your beautiful cyan. 

And good bye. As I had to leave, as I belong under the Texas sun. But allow me to linger on for just a little bit longer from a distance. I have just a little bit more to say.

I’m back under the Texas sun, it’s as brutal as they say. I had been at times waiting, at times moving, always anticipating, always anxious for the next state of being. I mixed up beginning and end. I wore the reversed symbols and signs. I apologized, but the truth is I also have an apology in defense: While waiting, I was moving, too. Time carried me. Life and death are the same thing, living and dying are the same thing. Perhaps everything was happening all at once, moving and waiting all at once, always. The corpse flower. The 17-year cicada. Texas for its next snow. And I. We all wait, still waiting, still moving, always. And even though I wore the embroidered gown of signs and symbols inside out, only in a mirror do I see myself, and things are flipped again, so it’s been fine all along. The ending itself is the beginning, too, as they are written on a Möbius band. I’m back under the Texas sun, it’s as brutal as they say, and it’s alright, not as brutal as they say. I’m not as cold as I used to be, even without a sweater, even with the AC set at 75. I haven’t been seeing more giant texan roaches lately, and even if I do, it’s… There, I finished the story, and I touched Banff. Tonight I’ll rewatch Lost in Translation, now I’m ready to do it.  

*This story belongs to the manuscript.