Mary Zhou
8:08am. Sore hips. Old habit where I roll over to kiss him, though it's always just me today. Is it bad if I throw out those three week-old flowers? It's Lunar New Year, so you're not supposed to clean or cut or trash – it destroys your good luck for the year. Suddenly I remember
Overgrown bangs
Bag of kitchen trash by the door
Stuffed recycling bin
Mug with lipsticked rim
Pile of half-dirty pants
Pile of wet porch leaves
They can wait until tomorrow.
I wanted to play luck today – buy fortune cookies from the Ethnic Foods aisle at Giant on 8th, work my way through the box, let a word or number on each tell me where to walk downtown. This felt like the right day to take my superstition to its illogical extreme. But I'm tired. I’ll read from home.
DailyTarotDraw: 4 of Swords. Rest after war. Release from anxiety and suffering. There will soon be a change for the better.
I stick a dried persimmon in my mouth while the dino nuggets air fry (400F, 12 min) and the ginger tea boils.
Fortune runs in the family. My great-grandpa was a fortune teller, though he didn't believe a word of what he said. He blew his inheritance on gambling and opium, while his brother "became" a wealthy landowner.
Enter: the Cultural Revolution. For the crime of being wealthy, said brother and his first wife were whisked away by state police, never to be seen again (his younger second wife "mysteriously" ran off the night before).
Great-grandpa, property-less, flew under the radar. Poor farmers, fresh out of famine, paid him in precious pork and greens and rice hoping to hear something good. When to harvest, what direction to build a home, what day to marry. He ate better than his own grandchildren did. I imagine he would say a random number, collect dinner, then go back to smoking his poppy pipe on a cot. How's that for fake fortune?
I read back my January journal in between nuggets. Second line: My superstitions keep me going. Well. And:
Because wouldn't it be nice, if all this superstitious belief set something in motion, and it wasn't just that life is such a chaotic, unknown place? We invest dates with magic and hope, we look to random cards and stones for our futures, for the truth that that other person won't speak but that we desperately want to hear. We want to know it's going to be okay, and how. I can't even keep all my I-Ching readings straight anymore.
My nose is stuffed, more than the 4am weed smoke from the basement apartment would do to me. Am I sick? Magic 8 Ball: My reply is no. I squeeze my snot into a COVID test to be sure. That I'm not sick, or that the 8 Ball website works? It's negative. Both true.
It's Year of the Wood Dragon now. I think back on Water Rabbit.
Dozen first dates. New IUD. Dated a drummer for a month then politely broke it off. Sweet new friends. Moved Northeast to West, which feels like moving cities. Started walking thousands more steps a day. Bangs came back. Bob came back. Sydney came back. Read dirtier poems to a basement of strangers. Recycled two years of journals. Miami and back again. Tinder and back again. Back again. Two tubes of mascara, long skirts, baby blue tea kettle for my birthday. River walks before Trader Joe's. Kimbap in the bird sanctuary. Discovered more lamb's ears, years later, a whole square park of them. 18 voice memos, mostly angry. Ran to the sea. Atlantic. Pacific. Atlantic. Atlantic. Pacific. Blessedly never read him Nikky Finney's piece. Kept that beloved to myself. Jury duty and no meet cute from that pool of 200 random Philadelphians, though they did dismiss me in time for lunch.
I take a long walk for 2pm gyudon at Terakawa. Bloated, bleeding out for the fifth day now. Wanting love to be handed to me steaming on a lacquer tray, with silver spoon and fork at the ready. On the way back, I notice it’s overcast. Clouds were ruined for me once, for years. They're back to being clouds again.
Co-Star: Today, you want to stay in but you have obligations to attend to.
Chinese horoscope: A punishing or torturous relationship with Tai Sui. Could alleviate the impact by attending happy events and wearing warmer colors instead of all black and white.
Though we’re both exhausted, my friend Sel and I promised weeks ago that we would go to FORTUNE’s Lunar New Year party at Icebox. I put away the pearl earrings, white chiffon blouse, black loafers. Slip on a sheer red turtleneck and brown heeled boots instead. Better luck anyway – white, in Chinese belief, is the color of death. I could write a whole essay about this. I think I will, another time.
I win a roll of Thai hard candies and enter a raffle for a clay fermentation jar. Sel plays a round of Mah Jong and pens a ceasefire letter. We watch people belt Teresa Teng and ABBA, and seriously consider a $2,000 speaker set so we can become professional karaoke DJs. It feels like every queer Asian artist in the city is in this old walk-in seafood freezer. Just us. It's strange and special. I don’t have all the words for it yet, and don’t feel the need to.
I Ching Online: Grace (22) transforming to The Mountain (52).
You can perhaps connect with a few isolated hearts. Relax and enjoy the attention.
Through mindfulness of what is before you is the only tranquility. Be. Here. Now.
I write this for you.
I put on a meditation, and fall asleep.
Mary is a friend and writer. Catch more on IG @maryzzzhou.
