| Spawn~* Milk tea. The school didn't allow milk tea to be sold, then it did; I know that because the Chinese Culture Club sold it for awhile. I don't t hink it's sold anymore because people shot the pearls out over balconies and made a mess. And stepping in that, well, wouldn't be fun. My mom told me that I shouldn't drink milk tea because it has a lot of sugar. That's why I haven't gotten that in about 2 years, but I've gotten the milk tea with the coconut flavor to it. Wonder if that counts? Probably...hehe...ok, no more of that. But I remember when Austin and Kent and I used to always get pearl milk tea. Austin said that was his favorite. Pearl milk tea and violin solos. Psycho. Who loves to do violin solos? Come to think of it, I haven't practiced violin. But I wonder if Austin has time to practice either with APUSH and Orensky while dreaming about Grace and fantasizing over Christina Aguilera. haha... yes, that's what pearl milk tea is, a flurry - a flurry of creamy brown-white nothingness. We know that there are little savory pearls inside - unless the vendor's cheating you out of your measily 25 NT - but you can't always see them. We swirl our straws, attempting to suck one out - but we can't see them from the side. It's there, it's there we assure ourselves, and if you look hard enough, eventually we will find them, and they come out. Our lives aren't a flurry anymore and we know what we want. A rush of heavenly sweetness washes over our senses and receptive tastebuds. We are found...But what happens when the milk tea is gone - the pearls reaped, the sweetness yesterday's news? We want to plunk our 25 NT down again and experience it again. It's too bad, they say, we aren't selling it anymore. Look what you did. "The refrigerator isn't big enough", my mother always used to say - that is, until we got a new one. But it's still full. She knows she can't complain anymore, because the new one we got is already millimeters away from its confining compounds and if it got any taller it'd look just plain ridiculous. My father would always joke that there'd never be enough space no matter how big the refrigerator, and then happily skip out to eat at some restaurant. But ah, is our refrigerator empty! If its contents were ever to please anyone, it would be a rabbit, or one of those creatures that enjoy leafy veggies and carrots and potatoes and organic beancurd. It's not that I am against vegetables, but occasionally one would like to have a tasteful snack that isn't saturated with glucose molecules sated together in alpha-beta helixes and pulsating with specially imported New Zealand freshness. But it's all for the best, for the saving of not-so-sacred cows in India and Dollys with pre-mature arthritis. They say that you are what you eat. So what am I? A walking, talking veggie radiating verdant boughs? Ooh...sunlight, yes, I am a "multitask photosynthesis generator". No, I'm not that healthy; I can not stand to be entirely vegetarian. In actual, it is my mom that puts what is in the refrigerator; does that make me what I am? I don't want to be a vegetable, someone taut and stretched out on a limp bed sheet. I don't want to be a puppet, a living doll. "Move aside!" I say, "you are too much", soving away the crowded contents. But the moment I pause, beset with swet, I see that they're all still there, relentless and unmoved. "Resistance is futile!" it barks at me, hurling a chilling gust of air blasting into my face; and I lay fallen, crushed by the full weight of that towering block of industrial steel. "Spring is the mischief in me," so Robert Frost states when he hears his neighbor speak of the long-timed old phrase ' Good fences make good neighbors'. And I'd like to think about whether they really do, but I live in Taiwan...a paradise of high rise buildings and stacked up apartments. There aren't any fences between us that are created voluntarily to strengthen our claim of personal space and privacy...just cold steel doors locked and bolted; snap-turn, snap-turn, snap-turn, snap-turn...four of them that keep you out and me in. Who is the more free? And yet we aren't really separated. Karaoke sounds of distant lovers wailing secret woes waft stealthily through the not-so-concrete blocks and intrude upon our dreams of what while I sleep. The phone rings and I dash across the room, thundering footsteps into the ceiling of our prissy 8th floor neighbors who swear our family must have a six-year old child. And up they come, bludgeons ready in hand, why aren't you quiet? Have some respect for your neighbors! Good insulation makes good neighbors. Or maybe just neighbors that keep out of each other's lives, neighbors that don't give a damn when you fail a math test or lose a wife or just want to turn the music up real loud and drown yourself in all that walloping agony. Neighbors that give a cold smile when you rush off to school in the morning, toting last minute breakfast and permanent black circles that frame your blurry eyes. I don't know...what's the fun in that? Share people, share! I follow the sound of the phone, and "thud". |