little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

word association

Yesterday I spent Christmas with my mother and my sister. Nothing Christmas-like - Christmas is just a holiday for the kids, before we got older and jaded and stopped believing in things like Santa or Jesus; just a simple dinner of braised pork and bean sprouts, with the television on in the background. The Christmas edition of the news at that, which means they have to show something positive on TV in ten minute blocks before they gently remind you in the remaining fifty minutes they have that everything is fucked up in the world.

We’re watching a news segment on the death of James Brown, and she turns to me. “I DIDN’T KNOW THE KING OF ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE IS BLACK!!” Two exclamation points, even. She was that shocked.

My sister has phases: her depressive phase, her psychotic destructive phase, her manic phase. When she’s in her manic phase, it’s like a game of word association: idea A leads to thought pattern B, which naturally goes to ideas C and D. She naturally brings up idea D, and I try to rationalize to myself that ideas B and C exist; it convinces me that there is a method to her madness instead of her “just being crazy.”

“Why is he the ‘king of atmospheric pressure,’ jie?” I gently ask her.

“Because he is. HE JUST IS.” She starts getting aggressive, and sensing that, I drop the subject and we watch television again.

Now there’s a segment on a domestic dispute in Pleasanton, where a husband killed his wife on Christmas Eve. “Ernie,” she asks. “What race is… is Marlon, the magical magician?”

And just like that, my mind starts playing word associations. I briefly imagine “Marlon, the magical magician” as Morgan Freeman in a tuxedo, pulling a rabbit out of a hat. No, she can’t be talking about that. Marlon… Marlon… magician… wizard…

“You mean… Merlin the Wizard?” I don’t dare wonder how she came up with that after watching a homicide report on the news.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” I sigh. “Merlin the Wizard is whoever you want it to be.”

“Well, I think he’s Russian.”

Twenty minutes later, I say goodbye to whats left of my family at Christmas and hop in my car. I chain-smoke half my pack of cigarettes.

And here I was picturing Marlon Brando as a magician. That would be a sight to see.

This reminds me of the PostModernism Generator:

http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/

i hope you never stop this blog. i’ve vested so much time over the years reading it that i need to know what happens next.

I am surprised my family hasn’t led me to chain-smoke. In my tender teenage years, my mom, offered, in what I think she thought was a gesture of generosity, to let me get a nose job when I turned 18.

What’s wrong with my damn nose?

Oh there’s lots more insanity, but let’s hear more about yours.

a russin wizzard WOULD be kinda cool.

I would chain-smoke too if I were you.

(((this is for you)))

Nah, that must be Rasputin

The trouble is, once you start wanting to explain how this troubles you, people start laughing at the image of you, keeping an illusion of a serious conversation amid surreal family members.

Every time I have to spend more than two days with my family, I get that too… So I usually just text people describing what’s going on, so they can laugh out loud without me trying to re-explain, and then receive a sympathetic sms back o_Ô

The last two sentences really touched me since it seems to parallel my ‘family’ and the relationship I have with them. Except I’m on the outside, not trying to look in, but trying to burn the fucking house down instead. Yeah, Christmas…

you’re good person, ernie. really.

now, with that said - what’s your address to send you a box of ciggies?