Some nonsense about home

I’m jet lagged and sick and home, so it’s time to throw some thoughts and feelings into a blender and See What Happens.

This is the second time I’ve been home since moving to China. The first time was this summer, and I had been away for ten months. When I got back into town, I felt like I had arrived in a post-Rapture world (or post-Thanos Snap for those not raised around Evangelical Christians). My hometown is a considered a “large town,” according to Wikipedia’s settlement hierarchy, that is, a settlement with 10,000-100,000 people. Quite the range. My hometown of Twin Falls, Idaho, currently has around 50,000 people. We have all the American amenities: a couple Starbucks, Target, Walmart, Costco, Barnes and Noble. While I’ve been away, the town has acquired an Olive Garden and a Hobby Lobby. I’ve not been to either. It also has a hard-working city government that is dedicated to revitalizing the old Downtown area, some fantastic independent restaurants, cafes, and shops, and a slowly diversifying population. If I had a family with kids, I’d probably still live here. The cost of living is relatively low, there are jobs, pretty good schools all things considered (I’m a teacher and have worked here, so I know). But I don’t have a kids, so living here doesn’t work for me. I miss my family, for sure — my mama, siblings, niece and nephew, aunts, uncles, cousin, and my last living grandparent. My best friend in the world lives here. But for all its small town American charms — and while it has plenty that needs to change because America is a hot mess — it is not a place I see myself coming back to stay, not for a long time.

If you get a chance, take a look at my town on Google Earth. Zoom out, and you’ll see that it sits in the middle of the Snake River Plain, hundreds of square miles of open sage desert: beautiful, desolate, exposed, laid bare beneath the dome of the sky. True wilderness, of the kind oft-lauded by Romantic poets but not truly experienced by them, because it is anything but Romantic to find yourself out in the middle of a broken lava field. Or maybe it is the epitome of Romantic (and please forgive me, because it’s been like eight years since I studied these dudes in grad school).

I love this place with my whole heart, but I can hardly stand to be here.

Where I live now, Shenzhen in South Eastern China, across the border from Hong Kong, it isn’t home, either. I don’t love it, although there is much I do enjoy there. Shenzhen is the tenth largest city proper (according to Wikipedia) in the world. The neighborhood in which I live, Shekou, has about the same population as the entire state of Idaho. Still, I feel alone there much of the time. The language barrier has a lot to do with this loneliness, although I’m just stupidly shy, and while I have made some incredible, lifelong friends, I still feel tenuously moored in China at best. And I expected that when I accepted the job in Shenzhen, but experiencing it has been ... something. I am not sure how much of it is due to cultural differences and how much of it is just Me, though. Maybe 50/50? I went to Target last night, and I didn’t have my headphones, and I felt so exposed. In Shenzhen, I have my headphones in almost any time I’m out of my apartment and not teaching. At first, it helped filter out the sensory overload from the city. It gave me a little anchor as I listened to familiar music, listened to English, but now I’m pretty much exclusively listening to KPop and CPop, and I don’t speak either Korean or Mandarin, so it’s definitely me creating a little bubble for myself, even if it’s just in my head.

I’ve been “home” for a few days now. I felt something like euphoria when I went to the grocery store — I didn’t even have to think about how to navigate this space. I felt the same way when I visited the grocery store on my uncle’s military base in Japan, this time last year, the first time I had been in anything remotely American in five months. But I also felt a little exposed as I’d forgotten my headphones. It was the first time I’d been out in public in months and months and didn’t have that little bubble.

I don’t have any idea where I’m going with this nonsense. I’m circling in on something but also it feels a little like I’m trying to force a revelation. Like you know those stupid Magic Eye pictures? It took me so long to figure out how to see those damn pictures. I need to relax my brain a bit and eventually I’ll see what I need to see. But HOME. What a thing.

Shout at me about books: some of my favorite stories from 2019

What, more thoughts? Madness! I’m still all up in my feelings, and instead of trying to process them like an adult, I’m rolling around in them and feeding them tv dramas and fan fiction and all manner of fuel. Okay, my therapist would say I’m being judgey. And also most of my lit professors. Art is a perfectly valid and safe and wonderful way to process feelings. I’m not feeling great about how I’m handling myself, and I’m trying to put up some shields, and is it working? Am I sane yet? Am I normal yet? (These are NOT the right questions, Debra. They aren’t helpful questions at all.) ANYWAY, the point of this explosion of feelings is to share some of the amazing art I’ve experienced this year.

Let’s start with the Chinese drama Guardian. If you’re reading this post, on this platform, you probably already know about it, because the main reason I got on Dreamwidth was to meet new fandom friends. Turns out I’m still in the extremely shy lurker phase of things, but I’m waving my little hand around, so HI! So I watched Guardian in April this year. I’d seen things on Tumblr, but I finally started watching it because I was flipping through the offerings on my TV (a millionth reminder that I currently live in China) and saw it and thought, “Eh? Why not?” It was not dubbed or anything, but I am a literate human, so I figured I would be able to follow along well enough. And I mostly could! Story tropes are story tropes. I missed a lot of nuance the first time around (I rewatched the whole thing with English subtitles on YouTube and then Amazon Prime this summer and OH THE FEELINGS), but it was enough to get its hooks in me. Look, this show? It’s not...good. It reminds me a lot of Torchwood with slightly less good production values. BUT (and those of you who know, you know) BAI YU AND ZHU YILONG!!! Like first of all, how unfairly beautiful these men are. How can they even exist on this mortal plane? The sheer amount of gazing! Pining! Longing! I can’t even be coherent. Also, I watched this show at a time when some SHIT was going on in my life that I did not want to deal with, so it was the valve that helped me bleed off some of the emotional pressure and as such, it will hold a special spot in my fannish heart forever.

Which brings me to some of the incredible fan fiction I read this year. I’m typing this on my iPad, so I’m not going to be able to make links, but these are all on AO3 if you care to peruse. This is a very short list of the fics that punched me in the face — the highest praise I can give. It’s not in any particular order. I’m just looking at my history. They also include non Guardian fics, because I’ve been poking around in a few Thai and Taiwanese dramas as well. Plus, I read a Harry Potter/Good Omens crossover fic last night that was awesome. So I’ll start with that one: Harry Omens by BanrionCeallach — Crowley and Aziraphale adopt 11 year old Harry, and it is THE BEST.

Okay, the other fics (and again, this is by no means exhaustive): Bells by syriala (The Untamed), Da Capo by glymr (Guardian), The Crimson Lotus by bonibaru (Guardian), Reweave Our Lives and Stars Worth Saving by starandrea (Guardian, probably my favorite thing I’ve read all year), Behind the Scenes by HyacinthsSoul (2 Moons the Series), Goblin Fruit by frith-in-thorns (Guardian), Didn’t Know I Would Feel It by Xparrot (Guardian), How to Escape Your Problems and Live Your Life in Denial — The Jiang Cheng Edison by Bgtea (The Untamed), Risk and Reward by sakana17 (Guardian), The Divine Art of the Househusband series by skuldchan (HIStory 3: Trapped — another absolute favorite), A Constellation of Two by naye (Guardian), The Unofficial Newsletter of Dragon City University (BioEng Dept) series by frith_in_thorns (Guardian - I adore this series so much!), and so so so much more.

Looking at books, I’m still reading comics almost exclusively, but I also read some great YA fiction. Feel free to HMU if you want to shout about any of these books: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo; A Thousand Beginnings and Endings (short story collection); Misfit City by Kirsten Smith; Mary Oliver’s poetry; What Did You Eat Yesterday by Fumi Yoshinaga; American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures (essay collection); The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang (I didn’t love this book, but I would love to talk to someone about it); Goldie Vance by Hope Larson.

I’d like to give another shoutout to fan fiction. I think this is the first year that I’ve read more fics than traditionally published media, and I am so grateful. Not only does it let me swim around in worlds that I love, it also was a my main creative outlet this year. I made a little progress on original fiction, but fics have been a lifeline for me, more this year than I have needed in a while. I am eternally grateful for it.