A WhatsApp-text popped up on my phone, and a notification “ding” tone followed. The screen showed Shelly’s message in a blinding glow. An untimely text from her, although I liked her lots – a very outgoing, intelligent colleague. A promising scholar in the making. “I went to your sharing seminar,” her message read. “Your research…
Category: 2 Rules The Magazine
Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You
穿過大半個中國去睡你 其實，睡你和被你睡是差不多的，無非是兩具肉體碰撞的力，無非是這力摧開的花朵無非是這花朵虛擬出的春天讓我們誤以為生命被重新打開大半個中國，什麼都在發生：火山在噴，河流在枯一些不被關心的政治犯和流民一路在槍口的麋鹿和丹頂鶴我是穿過槍林彈雨去睡你我是把無數的黑夜摁進一個黎明去睡你我是無數個我奔跑成一個我去睡你當然我也會被一些蝴蝶帶入歧途把一些讚美當成春天把一個和橫店類似的村莊當成故鄉而它們都是我去睡你必不可少的理由。 -余秀華 Crossing half of China to sleep with you In actual fact, there is no difference between me sleeping with youand you sleeping with me. It’s just the forceof two bodies colliding, just flowers forced open,just the illusion of springmaking us believe that life is re-blossoming.Things are happening across half of China:volcanoes erupting, rivers…
Uniforms
My second grade students were doing an art project one afternoon. The art teacher was circling the room, helping students glue something to something else. And I was at my desk, grading. I could have gone to the teacher workroom to grade. But I like the children to see me working; to lead by example….
Souls Need a Gentle Touch (An Archaic Concept of Me)
Where we left it at end of previous delivery:Our married life had begun. Summer turned into Autumn. I continued with my freelance work at home, Aleena commuted to her office most days, the leaves fell down around our little front garden, and slowly winter returned. Souls Need a Very, Very Gentle Touch Now that we…
Lone-li-ness
寂寞 鄉下小孩子怕寂寞，枕頭邊養一只蟈蟈；長大了在城裡操勞，他買了一個夜明表。 小時候他常常羨豔墓草做蟈蟈的家園；如今他死了三小時，夜明表還不曾休止。 -卞之琳 Lone-li-ness The boy from the countryside dreaded loneliness,So he kept a grasshopper by the pillowcase;He grew up labouring in town,and bought a watch that shines all night long. As a child he’d always envied the grasshopperswho homed in the graveyard grass;Now the old boy is dead for three hours,The second-hand of…
Quiet Quitting and Education: Stay the Course?
If I stop now, I’m a quitter. I started teaching in 2017, right after I graduated college with a degree in something I didn’t know how to apply. I thought moving to a rural area of the country with a handful of other twenty-something-year-olds who all wanted to “make a difference” would be an adventure. …
Reality Check: The Afterlives of Indie Musicians
Zane Stroud and I used to be bandmates; we left the band and started new lives, and Zane is now heading in my direction–to become an academic. Zane and his wife Bessie drove Zoe and me to Clearwater Bay to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. We took this double date quite seriously, because it was our first…
The Wedding (An Archaic Concept of Me, Delivery 9)
We began in Delivery 1 with a vignette. A vignette of lingering kisses, stillness and soft murmurings, bountiful cushions on a big, round mahogany bed, privilege taken for granted, and lithe young minds congratulating each other on their own manifestations of abundance. A vignette delivered to us by a much older version of a young man…
Paterson
Author’s Note: I watched Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson” again for my introduction to literature course, and it kind of set something echoing. A beautiful movie about exactly what I am trying to do: tiny attempts, words, poems. So I wrote this one: Paterson’s morning begins with a bowl of Cheerios and a boxful of Ohio Blue-tip matches….
Homework: A Love Story
As an elementary school teacher, I have never been a fan of homework. During my first year teaching, my Grade-Level Lead Teacher handed me the spelling worksheets and multiple-choice reading activities to send home with the kids each day. I hardly looked at them, and definitely hated grading them. The students with high test scores,…