The covid-19 has taken away the ability to smell and taste from many. As it has their connection to life. As many wait for the familiar aromas and flavours to come back, my mind is whisked by a forgotten tale. It slips into my consciousness like a card slipped into an envelope. It happened the […]
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Filling “Jen, where are you?” She pushes her voice through the phone, trying to wrap it around me. I feel bad for making her worry. “I don’t know, Toni. I don’t…hang on.” I turn to the nearest nurse, praying she speaks enough English to understand me and hoping my adrenaline-soaked voice won’t make my words […]
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I am at home everywhere and nowhere. I always have my feet in more than one door. I’m always arriving and always leaving. I love the arriving, but I’m not meant to stay, and so I leave. The leaving is hard depending on where I’m leaving from. Right now, my body is in Santa Fe, […]
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Before I moved to the U.S in 2002, I received a call from Korean Air. Yup, I was applying for a job as a flight attendant, once upon a summer back in 1997. At the time I was still living in Indonesia. When the phone rang, I was quite worried, traumatized by my failed attempt […]
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He paddles the canals of Suzhou at night, carving silent parabolas through the reflected moon, steadily exploring the margins of his adopted city, searching for the dragon. The nighttime canal explorations began soon after Melanie died. At first, he walked the streets in the heavy evening air, trying to find a way to take a […]
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At age 23, I drowned at the bottom of a teacup. Dissatisfied with the strange lack of emotion I experienced in most of my relationships, I had decided to move to South Korea. I crossed two oceans in a series of metal containers, a journey that collectively took 40 hours and 20 minutes, and found […]
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Old Yang I didn’t want to hire Old Yang. That was my husband’s doing. His secretary had set up the meeting but I told John that her recommendation meant nothing; Old Yang was probably a cousin or neighbor or maybe they were from the same ancestral village. John insisted. At the meeting Old Yang was […]
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The Korean clown performed a little ritual before beginning his act. It was not entirely clear at first that he was the performer. Four musicians took their positions with their backs to us, facing an open field in front of the river. Three men wearing traditional celestial blue gowns and black Korean gats—a high cylinder on top […]
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