I want to let go - so I don't give a damn about fine writing, I'm rolling my sleeves up. The dough's rising... Oh what a shame I can't bake cathedrals... that sublimity of style I've always yearned for... Child of our time - haven't you found the right shell for your soul?

Before I die I shall bake a cathedral.

I got this poem this morning via the poetry mailing list and I think it provides a great point of entry to things I want to write about. To begin with a digression, last evening when I was at my American home i.e. Granpa's garage for supper, we were talking of this and that with Geroge and Carrie(AC), when granpa bought up the topic of my "relationships", rather the blackholes they ended up as.

To which AC said sometime it calls for hope, which I haven't much left in the "women" section of the moneky race, atleast the part that calls on some guts when they matter. And Granpa, who never got married, was telling the fable of the scorpion and the spider. The moral of that story: with friends like those who needs enemies.He really had us in stiches with his various ranges of falsettos: from a southern belle to a French courtier in this telling. Great irony does life have.

Again going off on a tangent I was wondering on what I call the "chickening out" problem as I lay in the darkness last night staring at the ceiling. And then I was remembering the lines from the book "Lust for Life", a sometimes too melodramatic biography of one my heros: Vangogh. They go something like this:

"You can never be sure about anything for all time, you can only have the courage and strength to do what you think is right. It may turn out to be wrong but atleast you would have done it and that is the important thing. We must act according to the best dictates of our reason and then leave God to judge of its ultimate value."

I hope I still have the courage left in me to say "yes" to something and still mean it, without doubting and to stand solid like a rock. For without this kind of courage it's hopeless to hope for semblence of permanence in what is at the heart of all things here, impermanence. The evidence: these bare trees outside my window, through whose leafless branches sunlight is pouring into my room.

And while I am at it, I hope to bake a cathedral out of nothing more than this light and this cool air . For now I wonder if there is that someone who is the "right shell for the soul" present in this world of shopping lists for whom this cathedral would be enough.

I hope so.

"I am a landscape," he said. "a landscape and a person walking in that landscape. There are daunting cliffs there, And plains glad in their way of brown monotony. But especially there are sinkholes, places of sudden terror, of small circumference and malevolent depths." "I know," she said. "When I set forth to walk in myself, as it might be on a fine afternoon, forgetting, sooner or later I come to where sedge and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps, mark the bogland, and I know there are quagmires there that can pull you down, and sink you in bubbling mud." "We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy, a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot on his head, if you happened just to touch it he'd jump up yelping and bite you. He bit a young child, they had to take him down to the vet's and destroy him." "No one knows where it is," she said, "and even by accident no one touches it. It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills, sleeping on green moss of my own woods, I myself without warning touch it, and leap up at myself -" "- or flinch back just in time." "Yes, we learn that. It's not a terror, it's pain we're talking about: those places in us, like your dog's bruised head, that are bruised forever, that time never assuages, never."

Dear Cary,

I grew up as the good daughter of two conservative Asian parents. I got into the best college (fulfilling the Asian-American dream) and then came the liberation of me. Now, I swear occasionally, I'm a goddamn liberal, and I almost didn't go to medical school (I took a few years off after college). I learned to drink beer, did pot once, smoked cigarettes, dated non-Asian men, and lost my virginity. Now, I am dating a non-Asian man who sleeps over when he comes to visit from far away. I am not the person of my parents' expectations.

Problem is, my parents had no inkling of my evolution. They still don't know, or want to know, that I drink, although they've caught on to my liberal inclinations. This blindness is no longer tenable for a number of reasons. The main one is the sweet boyfriend who is unfortunately caught in the crossfire of culture. I told my parents about him, they met him once, and they don't approve: You're not compatible, he's too old, he corrupted you, etc. My mother is having a hard time dealing with the fact that I might be sleeping over at his place when I visit (I now evade her questions when she asks where I'm staying). This has meant that my parents treat my boyfriend very coolly. They refuse to see him. He was specifically not invited to come over for Thanksgiving, for example, which really hurt his feelings, and mine, too. From a distance they can still make their feelings pretty apparent. The disapproval is taking its toll, as I feel that I constantly have to choose between boyfriend and family, and both feel that I choose the other.

At the heart of it, I really think my parents would love to see me set up with a nice Asian surgery resident, one who preferably speaks the native language. I want my parents to accept that I've grown up and that they must love me as I am, because I like who I am. I mean, I'm 25 fucking years old, for fuck's sake, but I hate myself for feeling like I'm 15 when I'm talking to them. They don't bring up the subject of boyfriend, or the subject of what I do after 10, unless I do. In fact, they don't really bring up much of anything.

I do love my parents. We have a good relationship. But how do I get them to accept the man who might be The One, and more important, to understand who I am and what that means? Does this mean brutal honesty about everything that I've ever done, or does it mean that I continue to not discuss certain parts of my life (like the part that streaked across the freshman quad my senior year)? Meanwhile, how do I get the sweet boyfriend to understand that the disapproval is no reflection of how I feel or the kind of person he really is?

Why can't everyone just get along?

Bad Asian Girl

Dear Bad Asian Girl,

Everyone cannot just get along because everyone disapproves of everyone else. Which wouldn't matter except we seem to think that a) it matters what the fuck they think about us and b) we must do something about it. The truth is, it doesn't matter and there's nothing we could do about it if it did.

So for your own good, rather than try to get your parents to accept this man, try instead to get yourself to accept your parents. Accept their disapproval. Accept their inability to change. Accept their stolid fealty to ancestral whatever. That doesn't mean obey them. It just means accept their disapproval of your disobedience.

The only way to live serenely is to accept it all, accept the dagger eyes, the haughty deafness, the back turned, the silent treatment, the withholding. Live with it. It doesn't mean they don't love you. It just means that they think you should marry an Asian surgical resident. Don't fall for it. Because if you marry an Asian surgical resident, it won't stop there. Then you'll have to have three children, one a future surgeon, one a future lawyer, and one a future bond trader. And even if you finish medical school as they want you to, now that you have the three little future BMW-driving conservative professionals, you won't be spending enough time with your children because of the selfish pursuit of your career, which only makes your husband look bad every time you get promoted and your parents look bad every time they have to take care of your kids because you were called away to save the life of some poor Caucasian sucker who was probably unhealthy from not eating enough duck with his family at a big round table.

Their disapproval probably feels like a withholding of love, but it's really the opposite; in a twisted way their withholding of love is their love itself. It's just not a love of your ego. It's a love of you their daughter, the projected avatar of themselves that in their eyes has no ego because it's just a projection of them. Hey, you're Asian: You ought to understand this better than me.

Your parents are being incredibly selfish, of course, and cruel, because all you want is their blessing. But that's the way parents are, and they're much better at this game than you are. As long as you continue to try to get your parents' blessing, you're playing right into their hands. So have fun with your boyfriend and tell him that what your parents think of him doesn't matter. And get back to your studying, because if you're not going to marry the Asian surgical resident, somebody is going to have to make the money.