Tehvitan Ibele

Sight

He woke up late one morning into an unfamiliar darkness. The sun had left him the dusk before, but neither he nor she knew it would be for ever. The moon never brought such solace, holding darkly in the black sky, a hollow brightness, one that, now, he searched for frantically. He breathed. Bringing his hands to his eyes, he softly touched his right pupil, making sure they were bare. Moving his hands, he tried to clear the darkness around him, and when it was no use, lay back down to sleep.

That night, he sprouted plants, all along his body, and became a large caterpillar, several thousands of stories tall. A fire approached. As it spread to his roots, he felt the flame's touch, licking his petals, igniting his nerves, calmly burning and consuming. From his ashes, he rose as a bird (za za za), a blue-green sparrow, with feathers the color of ocean waves--its eyes the color of rolling foam. He flew toward the sun, pruning himself with anticipation when he stopped to rest, racing for where the ocean met the sky, where he would meet the sun. His wings caught fire. As his roasted corpse fell into the sea, he became a single seed. For years and years, he lay in wait at the bottom of the ocean, catching the faintest rays of light, building, growing. He was a great tree, living on brine and sunlight, and the day he touched the sun, he died.

He died one foggy summer night, hands grasping molded sheets, for what he saw and felt and heard were only in his dreams. Yet I will ever remember him as that salt-fed ocean tree, for though he lost his vision, he never ceased to see.

The Mountain

There is a great mountain in the land of winds; stoic, foreboding, draped in dancing, billowy clouds and sweet Spring mists. And at its base lies a village. A quiet, uneventful village, in which its persons live equally quiet, uneventful lives, beneath the shadow of a seemingly quiet and uneventful colossus.

Though much of the lower areas of the mountain have been explored by the village's inhabitants, few have dared traverse the upper reaches, and fewer have returned. Yet people still thirst. The only villager alive who still knows what sits atop the towering monolith is the village elder.

To all who ask, the elder repeats:
There, above, is what the greatest warriors fear,
What the wisest men wish for,
And the true meaning of life.

I have scaled this wondrous mountain, through the mist and fog, softly nudging clouds with my deliberate ascent, moving, moving, moving. I have echoed within my mind, the words of the elder, feeding curiosity to my tired, worn body. I have sat atop this great mountain, its vicious summit, and, my friends, I have found absolutely nothing.

"Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining" (Improvisational Speech Contest, revisited)

I have seen many clouds in my day. In San Francisco, the clouds seem to surround you, inextricable from the fog that that settles, blending and mixing, and behind it all comes a faint glow, a warm illumination. In Shanghai, the clouds stand alone, and on rare nights, you can see the hot sun, burning behind, outlining the edges of the few lonely clouds above the busy cityscape. What is true of clouds both real and metaphorical is that there is a sun behind them.

We often view failure as unwanted, undesired, and by all measures necessary, avoided. When I was a junior in high school, I stopped at nothing to achieve all I could, and I collapsed under all I tried to achieve. What we gain, from failure, is not as glamorous as success, but it is needed and necessary. Failure is a sort of currency, afforded by experience, so that in the future, our mind knows where to step, and how to move. Human beings are generally forgetful creatures, though I may speak for only myself.

What one gains through time and effort is the further knowledge that there is a sun, a goal, a possibility hidden behind the billowy folds. With each new cloud, backlit by possibility and destiny, we plow ahead, hoping, knowing, that the future holds new light, and new suns.

At The Train Station

It is most bittersweet to sit next to my cousin with whom I have no complete common language, hours before we depart for Shanghai, unable to tell her (for so many reasons) that she has grown. No matter who she is becoming, or who she thinks she is at/in this turbulent age, I trust she will do great things. There are so many possibilities and pitfalls, I cannot bring myself to say goodbye here. Though I am such a small and distant part of her life, I care about her immensely. And since I am such a part in her life, I cannot tell her that I do. I have recently gleaned in conversation with my other, older cousin that I often give advice. And sometimes it is not welcome. On the whole I have decided what I promised to decide many times before: to speak less. So I sit here, hoping to tell her things she won't understand (for many reasons), knowing that she will grow even more, knowing that I can only sit and, every few years, watch.

On Vacationing in Cheng De

They turned on us those fucking bastard men.
We clamored through those godless painted halls,
Painted red as hot as the streets of Old Beijing
Humoring them with polite and meaningless smiles,
Along those walls that ran and ran for miles—
Much further than that flatfoot smugly Empress
Who eyed us from her dirt, cracked, crumbling wall,
With cheeks that, lightly powdered by crushed pearls,
Wanly burned against that dirt, cracked, crumbling wall.

We even saw their dusty city moan
Against the din of five-cent-memories,
Strewn across the terrain like a tired whore,
Of scorched lands where sterile seeds were sown.

Even when we rode on ancient dragons, plastic,
As our reflections tortured, withered, plastic,
Across the glassy sea-green waves, sat plastic
Arhythm possessing careless rolling bottles,
We laughed along with their terrible misery,
Soothing their insanity,
        Discomfort,
                Eternally self inflicted
                                       pain
Until it became ours to bear as well.

They fucking turned on us those fucking bastards,
Feeding us to merchants worse than beggars,
Squeezing from us life and love and money,
Until we, bleeding from our mouths, sweating from our throats,
Gasped and swallowed those final rays of sun,
Sparing them from the black mouths of this forsaken city,
This poor limbless city, sprawled against the thirsting desert,
Selling its history to feed its history
So they may live and others will look and say:
(They seem less wretched than they have become.)

And this is not a poem. Not for them.

Blossom

The perfect blossom flowers after
Long rains, harsh winds, and countless battles
Rage on and on.

The perfect blossom flowers after
Heart break, soul ache, mind split asunder,
Presumptions, misconceptions, the darkest matters—
Sealed tight within are waves of rolling thunder.

But perfect as this blossom is
Its petals must never open,
For fear that all those lonely hours,
Months and years in short spring showers,
Winters embittered, harsh, and cold,
Summers gilt with precious gold,
Were wasted
    Utterly useless
                 Spent
And all her days left solely to repent.
But when this perfect blossom flowers
Tumultuous, violent, in its newfound powers,
Anything but perfect be,
But true, serene, as the morning sea.