Remember who you are

My grandfather is close to 90 years old. I don’t know how old he is, exactly, because I don’t know when his birthday is. Neither does he.

I don’t know his story, except for the fuzzy details:

• His name is Junjie Zhang.

“So, where are you from?”

November 18, 2017

Yesterday, we walked into a wine store in Grand Central Market to pick up a bottle for our friend’s birthday party.

I passed the bottle to the cashier at the register — a woman with lightly browned skin and long…

Do you hate conflict, too?

When I’m about to disagree with someone, or when someone disagrees with me, I panic.

I don’t quite know what to call it. Nervousness? Anxiety? Fear? Dread? All I know is that I feel it in my body. Something catches in my chest, and I feel cold in my arms…

Do you feel this, too?

Your eyelid twitches, and then it stops. A spot on your thigh pulses — one, maybe two beats, and then it’s over and gone for a year. You’re itchy for no apparent reason, and then it goes away until the next itch without a reason.

I thought I found the secret of the universe.

And then I lost it.

I have felt many things this past year. One thing was, thankfully, intense bliss and joy. I like to joke that it was “back when I was enlightened for a month or two.” I loved everyone, felt…

Close your eyes. What do you see?

When I was a little girl, I played “make believe” with stuffed animals. There was an entire Animal Kingdom, with Queen Bernice the Bunny as the reigning sovereign over all the townsanimals. A group of rogue adventurers — a fox called Foxy, a turtle called Tortle, and a…

My grandfather proposed a theory to me the other day.

To live, you must move.

Here’s a rough translation:

活动 (huo dong). It’s the Chinese word for “movement”.

This is the ending of a work-in-progress

I’ve been working on a memoir on food, body, love, sex, relationships, and life. It…

What do words mean?

A good friend of mine once asked me why I studied English Literature at Princeton, and why anyone studied English at all. We speak it — what more is there to say about it?

I replied, vaguely and ponderingly at the time, that the study of English can be useful in its…