I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [23]
May all beings be safe from danger.
May all beings be safe from danger.
A gold ribbon arises and flies and winds
around the woman on the ground floor and around
the man in the loft, and shines through walls
and curls and twirls around every neighbor
and neighbor’s neighbor and the big pig
and her baby pigs and the dogs and snakes and geese
waddling the earth and geese flying in air, and
spans oceans all the while looping
dolphins and whales and sharks and small fish
and the flying fish spangling and leaping like the ribbon
itself lacing and embracing each and every
living thing all the way to the other
hemisphere to hug my own true love
and our own dear child and all people
our own people and returning to include me.
Aloha kākou. May there be love
among us, love including me.
Oh, I am loved. I am loved.
With such good feelings, the pilgrim recovered
from illness-at-the-world and illness-at-China.
The pig chasers, the would-be thieves, the dog and
snake butchers, the witchy innkeeper
took their places as ordinary people, as ordinary
as himself. Wittman got up, well, and traveled on.
Now, I, Maxine, could let Wittman die,
let him die in the China of his dreams,
and proceed on this journey alone. He’s lived
a full life, life enough, China
enough. Loved wife and child; they
loved him back. Planted rice. Read
some good books. Felt happiness, felt
gratitude. Enough. But I don’t like
traveling by myself. I ought to learn to go
places on my own, good for my character,
to be self-reliant. (A translation of my name,
Ting Ting, Self-Reliance. I should
live up to my name, Self-Reliant Hong.)
Why I need a companion, Monkey, along:
He’s unafraid and unembarrassed to butt
and nose into other people’s business.
He likes chatting with them and partying with them.
(I would rather hide, and spy, and overhear,
find out who people are when I’m not there.
Responsibly, sociably among them, I’m wont
to correct them, teach them, tell them Be happier.)
And he’s able to enter the many places
in this world that a man is allowed and a lady
is not. And Wittman, a fiction, is free to befriend
anyone, and tell about them; he has no relatives
to be held hostage. I don’t want to leave him dying,
sick and poor, destitute of health and money.
No airline ticket home. Passport
and identity stolen. The life of lowest poverty
is a meditation practice, a discipline, another
tale. Let me take him to one more
village, give him the commune of our bohemian
dreams.
ART VILLAGE
Ming Ming. Bright Bright.
Double bright. He arrives at Ming Ming
in a rainstorm. Wind is driving the bamboo
and ginger and cane flat. No moment
between lightning and thunder. A logo
flashes. Ming Ming. A word we know,
sun and moon together, bright. 2
suns. 2 moons. Bright Bright.
Following the way the sign points, the wet
traveller runs to a village mired in mud,
into a courtyard that’s a sty of mud. Ming Ming
seems to be a ghost town, yet
another ghost town whose denizens left
for a global city somewhere. He bursts in
to find an art studio, and artists painting
indoors during rain. They shout and laugh
like Welcome! Look at what the mew dragged in!
Like Get the man dry clothes and hot tea!
The nude model throws on her robe, and dashes
away to do their bidding. The men set
down brushes and palettes. Take 5.
They pull up stools and crates around the stove.
Wittman takes off his clothes, soaked
to the skin, and dons the robe the model brings
along with tea and wood and coal. “Thank you.
Thank you,” the guest says in English,
his natural language, the best for giving
heartfelt thanks. “You well come,”
says a goateed artist. No, not
goatee. Let’s give him a soul patch.
“Well, well,” says a fellow with a ponytail.
“Koo. Koo. Koo.” Cool. Cool.
“How are you?” “I am fine.
Thank you.” “You well come.”
“I come from Heilongjian. And you?”
Black Dragon River. The artists, communal
around the fire, brothers, smoking Peace
brand cigarettes and being served tea
and pastries, delight in