Why I chose to write about this
For this book in English class, we talked about the ‘dispassionate rendering of emotionally fraught events,’ a term our class came up with. Does movement and large scale movement we are talking about here, the ease of slipping through doors to countries that represent different worlds, and enjoyment of understanding and combatting the dangers that exist in these different nations, and defense of such with one’s own nationality, does that mean a certain chipping away of attachment to one’s own family and home? These feelings are really treasured family values that seem to be so wholesome in way, and guarantee good character. However, the taste of adventure, which attributed to the female migrant Nadia, is really have no physical constraints, if it needs to be satisfied by some far-fetched experience or idea, it doesn’t matter what the location it needs to be satisfied, unfortunately: if technology could allow, it should give the wonders of living within the cultures that birthed the nation and inspire incredibly unique flavors in and according to the person who seeks it.
The ending of the book is really sad; it truly made me very sad to read that it was this worry that ended all their impulses for adventure and learning for the world, and how this much longer this dejection would carry on to discourage any active findings as the grow even older, together or not, it seems unclear at the end of the book because their relationship was adulterated by a minor falling out. Nadia and Saeed, the heroes of the book, decided that they would not be together to the end, nor continue their adventures together, which to me, suggests a certain surrender to being old and the stability through love and vision, rather than comfort and tradition. Unfortunately, wanting danger to affect their lives in a gloriously positive way was what the traditional, religious Saeed interpreted from their actions at the start of the book and what set them on their global journey through magical doors. To believe that aging is irreversible and that it will die down the earlier passions of life, is truly the saddest course of life that occurs with one’s choice, a choice to not believe in oneself, not that growing older and maturing is a must that shows the character within one’s tradition – if any culture mandates that, it really falsely expressed its wishes towards its people, and is rather controlled by an antagonist, like the nativists with guns shooting away refugees who need a new home desperately, those people in control should be identified as corrupting the characters of those who obediently follow and reserve to what is no longer cultural, but rather a set of rules added with colors and symbols. This surrender to the natural course of rules and nature, to aging for example, it incompatible with the belief itself in the magic doors, who suddenly appeared with a nameless inventor, and enabled the magic of everything that was to come into their lives, as long as the characters of Exit West cared to use it. Belief means, when it is strongest, either using the magic, or willing the vision of use into existence, through means of science, innovation, or just imagination by itself, even if it is allowed to only exist on paper as a result of this clear, beautiful image suddenly conceived. When the feelings of despair have been disrupted by people outside the page, who have been informed to solutions that really required direction and research, and it couldn’t be underestimated the powers of imagination and ever-valuing passion that has inspired people that didn’t know where to exit, and where, becomes a matter of choosing the right people, not the right place. Exit to who, this title seems invalid always because it means leaving the starting place and trying to replace someone else, become them, and better, when that person had a lot of meaningless filth and ambition inside them. Those that drive away others, can’t be understood well, unfortunately; either they are afraid of others, or they want to take simple advantage of others and leave. Within the family, like the character Alice, it is absolutely reprehensible and even evil, automatically, to want and act towards others like such in her own family. Unfortunately, the weakness of the other characters within her family, results in a dependence and latching on to strangers for help and like family when no desire to understand each other has been reached. Alice, who thought her name was childish in itself and a cover-up for the deeds of horror which had unjustly been carried to her privilege due to the special weapons and incomprehensible advantages those were at her disposal, had full confidence to wade through danger and push others into it. However, when cover-up, and these identities are totally and fallibly assumed to be the superiority when because other people have it to, they think it comes from a place of superiority to own it and cleverly trick others in a life changing way – to think of these kinds of methods necessitates a very selfish heart from the thought of conception to carrying it out on innocent, unknowing people. Those people in the end turn out to be related by blood or not, and the punishment accordingly seems to depend on this kind of relationship and how close the victim was to Alice, which seems kind of arbitrary and unfair the severity of punishment based on which way her plan came to go, closer or farther within the family tree. She challenged, from her own will, a new kind of leverage relationship with her Chinese family, violating the ideals of filial piety that frequent the everyday conversations of traditional Chinese families.
To these kinds of traitors, and to the overly traditional, the families don’t understand the betrayal that has occurred, because just look at it, the family didn’t even know each other well enough to defend each other and with the weapon of family loyalty that is often relied on. In the case of Alice, when asked ‘Exit where’, it seems to be from the other characters’ perspectives the answer seems to be, “Exit out”, of the family, of the country at hand, and China really, but because they don’t understand politics or really punishment, the word is always invalid towards a surprise that transcends existing legal precautions, it is just plain fear and enormous misunderstanding, shock, and again circling back to fear just like such a huge clump of horror and fear has been released out into the world, its path to touching to just-hearing of it citizens in other parts of the world and explosions elsewhere in the world, it is unknown the location, how it moves around the globe, and its final destination for some reason chosen to be the last known of it. Would someone ever say, “Exit in”? No, I think it is a strange thing to consider and just chances the thought of being the opposite of the word “Out,” but just think of it, it must occur to the culprit and the shameless last to actually admit to Exit, and this word already entails, the word away, because that means that the person has to be exiled and publicly shamed for some reason. Exiting in happens last, because it is the final realization of Alice that she can not do as she please and strategically violate the rules of her secret that put her into the internationally acclaimed trouble she had got into, no, it’s rather that she must change herself and let herself be pained for all that she’s done.
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Part 1: Lockdown feelings
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In a Shanghai dormitory, a college student squatted next to her bed, looking down in her half-empty Thermoflask. Students on her floor were only allowed to fill their bottles once a day and use their communal toilets and showers on strict rotations. No wifi, she saw on her phone, and sighed, turning her phone on and off. She couldn’t believe how bored she was, and it must be her fault. Unfortunately, she couldn’t bring many books, activities, or any movies here. She wondered what could be worse than boredom, and the eternal punishment of restriction that North Koreans felt without knowing the true feeling of being in freedom where people only thought of their lives with utter sympathy, and in some worse moments, comparison.
She had some cards in the room, but realized the pointlessness of the game when there was absolutely nothing to do with these beautiful cards by herself, with no other player. Strong hatred and frustration even were impossible under such desolate conditions: loud arguing of the neighbors was her strong preference, and she wondered if “can” was an appropriate word for the empty misery she felt right now, because anything done by her would be a counter against air. Since when were hallucinations real, as she saw the brown bag next to her desk replaced by a vision of her childhood dog, and words printed on paper or on the computer screen replaced by words she wanted to see.
What can visual hallucinations, that accompanied with a spike in fear, do real damage to a person, but the utter boredom she felt was actually an all time low in her life, worse than some sad events even, and couldn’t be compared to the unknown lives of others in different parts of the world. However, after the stress made her eyes flash with simple images from her mind, she determined to herself that she was in a totally different mental state, except that she felt the same level of sadness and a patience that was completely stretched out over months. Suddenly she felt a thrill sort of ‘fear’, and thought of dangers that could occur in other parts, living the rescue missions of those fleeing violence. That would be refugees, who somehow embarked on the raw craft of rafting across entire seas to reach other places. She wondered if they felt worse than her subtle mental state dragging in the mud, because the more hallucinations she had, the weaker she could see around herself, the more blurred over the days seemed. Passing days seemed closer to an escape that would never happen. However, she felt danger.
Where the fear of danger came from, the college girl thought. She wanted it, she had determined to herself. Imagining danger, that was horribly wrong, when bringing in danger to where she was would only be taken seriously by a crazy mentally stable person and cause some minor chaos where she was. Did wanting danger to be real and thinking it by choice all day, create friction with the sane and therefore, happy, because happiness didn’t need to be the form of joy, and contentedness with the real stability and satisfactory life? No, because no one would want to continue in the state and lockdown world, because the room was all she could see, and ask for it to continue for two more days, when it could choose to last for one more. Danger always came with a possibility of fight, or escape route. When there was nothing, and visible that could be relieved, what was there to do? Nothing, except imagine. That fearful, then aggressive feeling came and dissipated with want of reason or action. It was from home, and no such thing as homesickness had taken hold of the girl at that time to make her prefer the unbearably dry sensations of quarantined Shanghai.
A delivery arrived at the door, and it was a MP3 player. The previous user had clearly left behind quite the taste for me, I found, as there were two long playlists of emo/grunge music. Imagine surviving on this I thought, and immediately knew that this was the music of someone in America. I knew all the words, but couldn’t understand any of the lyrics which seemed to create some very scary scenes. I hid the mp3 in the pillow case to let it play and hear the song muffled, because every line had bad words and substance abuse. Music transports you to different places, is what you hear. But, what was the music transporting to me except for intense feelings and rushes forward in the intensifying music? Now, it was announced, we had a new job to do. Printing out some sheets for the report to the monitors. Over her desk were spread over with homework sheets and half-written essays, but school had been to a stop. It felt like there needed to be a change that would happen after the pandemic restrictions were relieved because she didn’t even want things to go back to normal. The way she felt now, the change had to happen during indefinite boredom, not after.
The greatest risk that she took during lockdown, as it was officially called, was to make a secret print. With the temporary wifi that was on, she searched up the first famous painting that she could think of, and chose a random version of Monet’s iconic painting of water lilies under the bridge. Ugly white walls were the confines of her location, and she decided to hang up many of the papers of Monet's paintings and piece them together randomly with tape. What creative beginning, she thought. She asked for the paints from the art room of her college nearby and was overjoyed when they were shipped to her room. She painted over Monet’s masterpiece, copying some of the strokes together and inventing seams between the square papers’ segments of his paintings. Inspectors had to come over every week, and one of the men angrily lifted up the hanging paintings and found that the sea color and flower colors had leaked between the taped together papers and onto the wall. Whatever, she said. Make sure to wipe over the walls when you’re done, they said. When is it done, she thought.
Then, a horrible accident happened, she heard a shot and a scream from next door. It was undeniable, but why? The girl saw an unconscious, bleeding in the stomach, body dragged away. Couldn’t see the clothes the person wore, just a pale face covered by hair. Could she even see what was next door? The physical barrier was a horrible dare now, to cross over it now was worthwhile despite the punishment afterwards the lockdown which couldn’t even be seen. It was like painted all over with caution tape, and the same material but tape for a murder scene, and unrealistic rules that kept her obedient in her white room. How much of a restriction was a cover up for the insecurities of the government? Such an abstract question, that needed a thoughtful, subtle answer about safety and comfort – all the unease and restlessness she felt now was emotional weariness and impatience with no outlet.
How much of the reality could change because of the pandemic spreading slower and slower by some chance scenario, or that some of the rules written on paper were superficially meant? The pandemic was a scam she thought, with hatred only and no way to accuse. Should she practice away her brain rot, to deter negative vague ideas from entering away? There must be someone’s leaders and so many people who failed the restriction rules, more guilty so because they wanted to rebel against the government at large with teenage spirit only, they just didn’t like any orders from the government. ForcedThought, it should be called in George Orwell’s 1984, because the Chinese government would surveillance everywhere and travel into the conscious thoughts of young people, who would only post their riotous thoughts in words when it had reached this strength and this clarity, the naivety really was the only guilt attained by the unknowing young men and women. They had every right to not be patriotic, sing a song when no pride should be mandatory and unable to produce an internal script, hope for well being.
The space between papers was all painted over, on the wall, and that was all she could see. One day, her patience had run out. She ripped away the tapings between the papers. The papers all fell to the floor as one piece. Her boredom distracted her from the greatest surprise in her life: the existence of the magical doors. She went through the bathroom door to wash her face, but there was no through to this door, it was a room from a different world, seamed to the edges of the door frame. The moment right after this happened, the moment selected by this curious omniscient author, why interest had failed her constantly before the transition to a new world.
Why she didn’t know the person who created this door for her, was irrelevant, the magic she asked was between the carpenter who installed the door frame. Had the door been stuck in with spikes and dragon tooth, that would have made the artistic carpenter much more magical than he is now, and the door was the instant before magic shifted her to a different part of the world. If you ask the unthinking, transported girl what she thinks magic could be created to, and be the magic of the untouched past, she would say magical spells. But it is only distance, time and speed that can truly be conquered with unfathomable genius of invention and mastery of electricity, the energy generated from the natural elements. She loved the movies of magical elements, special human beings like fairies and sages coursing the elements with the art of hands and meditation. The Chinese people didn’t mind the appearance similarity between tai chi, women dancing in the lunar new year square, and if you think about it, there are no Chinese fairies, but wizards folded at the legs discipled by Confucius.
Philosophy is inanimate without adventure and freedom, really. But why would no Americans practice it, when free space was their entire will? To America she thought. Visa needed? No. Magic door, he understood, and wafted her with enough human control to the cozy house of Huntsville, Alabama, where the air was clearer, warmer, and just simply clean so much change to the Chinese girl from polluted Shanghai. Suburbs, yes. It was the same journey of Chinese immigrants, those young married couples who flew to Alabama for college in Auburn, without the logistics. Without another person in mind, and grades to care about, it seemed. It seemed that she would never care about the grades of schooling in carefree America, but adventure seemed like it needed dirt, destruction, and glamorous filth. This is because she tried to feel big, when it couldn’t fit her in China.
Without the leash of another Chinese normie, she thought, she needed freedom and order all in one. That couldn’t be possible with Chinese restrictions, really. Because order was the way of her mind, and freedom happened in secret, and enjoyment needed to be synthesized into life with extreme thrill even without the eyes of the stingy native of China. She thought freedom would unfurl in her natural senses because of desire and caring the success of others was so far behind and the chain metals of Shanghai structure really. Beauty there, she could just recall with the pictures, and she had been once to all the natural and construction beauty of the Country. Freedom had to be the country itself, no pride and permanence of features was to be gained from luscious, bustling China. Beauty, and the beast, she thought for some reason when she thought of the Great Gatsby; that was what was so American about the movie, dresses in palaces because why would kind childhood-bullied princess souls be elevated to a palace when that was the royalty of Europe, only?
People seemed to accommodate dresses and femininity with modern, flamboyance with no heart flaws, really. She thought this and perhaps that one day people felt their recklessness could never be attributed to dirty things that they did, open filth had no window to the immoral because it was the primary mode, physical, and no deep feelings, of hurt, pain, or destroying other people when they existed in a sunny plane. Beauty, no, she was excited that her mean and strict face, the focus which had expression in sharp goals, and people never dared to think in wordless fashion – should that be recognized. She thought core to her was focused thought, focus, and hard far reaching goals.
Did vicious goals she had and tendencies to determine others and put enemies in disunion forever really get associated with the cleanness of focused thought, which was not the archetype of unfeeling philosopher mastermind at play because there needed to be harmful, scary flaws shown before thoughts become bad. Many people in China were so dumb, she thought. That’s why she felt so much overwhelming pressure there, she thought. Logic was not deficit there, it was simply wrong. See the Chinese philosophers there which could wear the Daoist character of a Chinese one-syllable, that they say it means beauty, love, and safety, all in one; that’s how names are pieced together and constructed, while being forever nonsense, in China really. Inspired, that’s how Americans feel about it. The Chinese soul was not descendants of Confucius and Xunzi and there in the drawings the ancients were not adorned with jewels in the castle, but everyone was followers of philosophist teachers, and the best disciples were elite society in the Forbidden City. That’s how ambiguity became eternal and the pacifist, peaceful way of Chinese people, so the stereotype the girl understood said.
Praise myself, now, she thought, so she could create a distinct image of herself, how she was different from the type of China. She just thought, powerful, really. But that’s not herself, that’s what everyone wants to have, whether it started superficially and they want to incorporate self-confidence, or that she hates about others who don’t deserve it and wants to exchange places with them. No, she said, but she really had an exchange that wasn’t known to other people. To exchange identities, whose was to go to waste? The one who didn’t know about the exchange.
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Part 2: Not who you think
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In the quiet suburbs of Huntsville, Alabama, a boy shifted nervously in his bed the night before his first day for eighth-grade. He hoped that from the very beginning of this year he would redeem his dreary-middle school experience, with flawless grades, exciting hobbies, and most of all, a best friend for life. He closed his eyes, wishing sleep would come sooner, but couldn’t, jittery with puerile concerns about school and friends that were all he knew. Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman stepped through a bedroom door fresh from overseas. Hunched from exhaustion, she made her way through the long halls of the new mansion to the lavish dinner her parents were preparing. Solemn words were exchanged between them and she went to bed with anxious resolution. Play the role, she repeated in her mind. Don’t worry about fitting in, it will only expose myself more. No one knows me here, everything is new, the school, its people, and our relationship.
The morning of the first day of school, the boy could hardly concentrate during classes. He embraced new classmates, showered his teachers with compliments and other flattery which had no avail whatsoever, it was just American positivity, and getting into the tennis team was his greatest feeling of powering through. To make the varsity team when he was worried about getting into the junior varsity team was the greatest surprise of his life. His personality or upbringing – if I told you he was Chinese, that would be offensive, because the Chinese students in that area didn’t really do sports, they were academics only. If I told you that it was personality only, the jock trope doesn’t make sense rather that he just got the idea of tennis stardom. He had learned only for one year, and when progress could amaze, it was on him. He even got interviewed to set up, if he were to continue this rate, video about tennis prodigy. This was ridiculous: the ease of publicity just reached him about a talent he didn’t know was unlocked.
On the other side, the woman stepped out of the shower, looking tight and knowing as if she already had a white robe wrapped around. Youth was not a privilege for this woman. There was someone who looked through the bathroom camera, a forbidden idea, with intensity. Like a microscope, she smiled at the study: the covering of the body was like plastic, folds with elastic bands over. Hatred, not in it for the Chinese college student, she felt now, to observe detail, to be excited by such a sad insecurity of women tired and ignorant. She needed to know naked behavior, for some reason, with no meaning that led to reason. That was the way of Iris’ journey to destruction, to destroy could only be seen with opportunity. No intelligence in opportunist people, as Chinese people, the traditional ones, thought. That’s horrible, when people fail because opportunity was not stepped into.
Even an escalator metaphor here would be offensive to those victims, because too many escalators would occur because genius is in leveraging life and instances much before moments of shock and effect. Iris thought about something she did, that no one knew about. None actually. She thought about with the same clarity as the memory she just experienced, what she wanted to do. She had all these fantasies about hurting imaginary enemies, but she knew she had one in the motherly woman. Exit West, she thought, that was only for her, because she was the one in need, while the motherly woman was a vile human being, and the horrors of her maneuvers and magic of tools against identity, linear growth, were absolutely violated by her, that distracted from her nature. Iris thought so abstractly about this woman’s hatefulness, why she deserved hate. Iris was one of those people who knew she could get away with anything. She had said before, and she wondered how this would deceive about the how shameless and concretely what this woman had evaded, the middle aged woman could hear voices maliciously entered into her brain with the help of unknown devices, and think they were real voices, but voices of her disgusting mother and ask ‘Mother’ if her brother was up there, and no, she imagined using her own voice which was not the intruding one, she didn’t hear anything from her poor brother because he did not make it to the metaphorical ‘heaven’. Voices up above she would call them, and ask if it was happy there, not because she thought it was heaven, really, an external world she had been shut off from because people could not know her in her alternate identity.
Why Iris hated her, there was a story that should not be confused with the phenomenal circumstances that are about to happen. Hatred felt sharply only when the physical details were tasted, to know a person was to know all the details, but these she felt, arguing against the details that were the celebration of Americans, not to hate against Birthday Parties and cakes, but liking polka dot backpacks was not anything anyone would trade for happily. They called it a trait, but strictly, not deeply that everyone should look more at their own intelligence more because when they spoke it indicated no imagination and understanding more than their concurrent words, she was sure. This was the Americans who loved polka dots and stripes as shirts and shorts, not that ugliness can be the taste of a personality and share the image of our soul, this was totally wrong, first.
It was second, and last, to her hatred of this country, which had no culture except ugly clothes, ugly skin, in her opinion, which shouldn’t be summed up in one word and attributed to culture. In her opinion, Iris thought this woman was ugly as a pig. She hated her smooth skin, she hated her like a domesticated animal, not a wild one. Painting a pig was ridiculous in the way it gave you a repellent feeling. Cringe they called it. Not to extrapolate to painting the woman’s skin, but she really hated clothes without color, or dark colors, and with her sundresses with flowers on it, it was hard to challenge her minor adventures with motherhood. Hanging out with the mothers, yes. Did she get remembered for a period of time only for that, not only for the mothers, but her wise social skills? Yes, however, if people knew the truth of how she shifted identities they would be petrified, and she would go down in infamy. This was the kind of infamy, the kind was unknown, and the infamy, not fighting a slow defeat over confusion, was the beginning of a new era in women’s aging. Fingers are long always, was Iris’s closing thought, but bulging veins are the hallmark of post-menopause, and they can’t realize botox in the region. That’s thought towards appearance only, but a really tight face and old hands, how could that be?
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Now, new perspective, non-Iris, and omniscient 3rd person POV from the motherly woman:
Alice trudged about slowly, self-conscious about her looks and flailing socially with her outdated imitations of girlish immaturity. It didn’t bother Alice too much, as getting close to the boy worried her the most. Impatient to meet the boy immediately because of their kinship, she rushed to sign up for tennis activities. Seeing him in person there was different. The pictures had done nothing to prepare her, as the male image of her was scaling across the tennis courts. It felt so intrusive yet so necessary to interact, and naturally she was drawn to his, in her opinion, incomparable poise, his deep laugh and vague eyes pretty like hers. Eyes, they never age. Eyes, forget the eyelids, that’s just race, they are beautiful in every human being at every age.
The soul is the window to the eyes, Alice wanted to say to the boy, but she didn’t want to establish that eventuality in that relationship, or any eventuality because age should die away. She watched with her characteristic judgy expression by the fence and quickly hopped away, unsure of how this parental observation was coming across. From the get-go, she made up antics on the court, making her laugh, and singled the boy out, teasing him the fiercest. It was truly female to be a tomboy in pretty tennis skirts. The boy laughed along at first, charmed by her favoritism, but felt uneasy in once he started catching her in more mature moments. There was something artificial about her extreme acts, a serious contrivance in it which didn’t make sense as people their age all liked being crazy. It just wasn’t possible that any seriousness would be taken in this to become popular with this, accepted, when she could just hang out in the library, really.
Impressive, the energy she had, but can anyone tell a serious person from when they are kids, the directness and no-nonsense of their movements only. A mother’s movements is a mother’s movements, a soldier a soldier’s, and a wrestler a wrestler’s. No one thought to think like that however, and it would have been to no avail, as is the case with secrets that can’t be found, because, and this is the logic, there is no existing route to find it out. Iris knew this, and did her knowing, when she watched from the top of the science building balcony. She had taken the awkwardness into her own hands, and no one was to know about this contrivance, that she had immediately worked towards seeing this moment. She needed to see what it looked like, it needed to be seen to secure the feeling or else it couldn’t be predicted. The scene of unknowing and the forbidden irony in the drama was unfolding and the circumstances of this scene.
The special attention was funny to the boy as it was to the other players, but he felt it more concerningly as an interest by default, and kind of restrained too. Iris challenged herself to put the weird feeling she had into words. The boy dancing around after points, worried about playing horrible after making Varsity, when the girl was also doing funny nonsense, deliberately, and against her feeling of comfortable happiness, especially because she thought the discomfort of the attention, and maturity of her age, rebelling against her forced act. Iris tried to feel the irony of the scene more deeply, and descriptively. First of all, she felt the gender conflict, of girls wanting to impress boys by proving their naughtiness, it was simply, but a carefree instinct that the boys didn’t think were that deep, but the girls envied. Why, it seemed like the girls always cared about what people thought about them, met expectations, listened to their parents always with great fear to the contrary, and hated when they had to graduate, because somehow, this parting was really sad. If they were sad about others, and not even others’ misfortunes but rather an otherwise happy event, what they called a photo-frame "milestone", was this weakness? Could they be this weak? She challenged herself to feel how it sounds, because prior to the mental question, she knew that it was very weird and embarrassing if shared. How could they stand the surprise of what was to come, Iris wondered. This was the reasoning she had, but it was a mental challenge because she could not dare to imagine in accuracy how this would look like, and how the reveal would be ripped up in front of anyone, in such a tame society.
What happened: The school year passed calmly, nothing more than homework, grades, and tennis matches on the boy’s mind. When tennis season ended and with it the weirdo, funny girl’s antics and stories, he found himself weirdly restless near her. It lacked the sweetness of a crush and had more curiosity than outright fear. With the advice of her parents, Alice treated him more seriously, and unconsciously, controllingly. She was performing for him almost, making sure to hint at and tailor to his likes and dislikes, as he was, or at least she thought, a very unique boy. However, the boy shied away, queasy about the way she knew him in a way others didn’t and acted like she owned him. She knew things about him only he cared about personally, and despite her sudden withdrawals from him at times, he sensed a more secretive basis to her attention, not just him overthinking their miraculous rapport. When he learned that she had been discussing him and his little quirks for hours on end in classes behind his back, he ignored her once and for all, feeling betrayed his habits and most embarrassing moments only his parents knew were circulating in the school now, a few suggestive words eavesdropped from classmates’ conversations triggering him. He had teachers and counselors stop him from talking, but that only offended the woman. Returning the aggression, she dismissed her previous praise and analysis of him as arousal from their in-class flirtations and gradually fabricated a relationship between them. Frustrated at his ignorance and coldness, she thought about a more full-on observance of the boy and buying access to another door to get surveillance tools back in China…
Coincidentally, the boy stayed up one night to overhear her parents saying something about him not knowing anything. He forgot about this quickly but had indeed felt his parents were in on a secret with the girl and her parents; their interactions were normal and polite and that never changed, but they seemed connected in a way that dated way back. Why, he thought. Seriously why, and he heard the repeated words of son as in, he hoped, when it was really the custom of Chinese parents to talk about their children in serious measure only, because their lives were dynamic, competing, and had fun in common activities in a very incubated fashion. Forgive me they said in Chinese, and little spits of laughter could be heard at virtually every sentence; hateful was the mathematical way to go about it. It seemed strange for the first time that Chinese parents always laugh, and somehow they are more tradition, but the politeness of Americans is never challenged, and finds its way only in confrontation, where they still risk their intentions closure with the limited structure, and in Iris’ opinion, limited expressions, of the Chinese language. No, she was joking that the limited expression is Chinese. But Iris in this moment wanted to blame it on the language that was humans’ invention, something firm in utterance of every word that forbade the single idea of the truth from spitting out in sound, understandable form, in another communication not valid in languages, why couldn’t it. Maybe she was just pushing the inevitable in her imagination, to happen, now, but what she was thinking, that the parents were shy in a way because of what she knew in her mind, seemed wrong. There must be more to it, and depending on how bad, or there may be some crazy unknown life story to them, they had the strength to keep the secret to themselves, smile, and have this kind of conversation.
The boy had to play tennis with the girl. That was how it was. Iris could see from the perspective of the reader, not that she wrote this down, but that the boy played tennis with the girl. This was a weekly thing, and it was to go on for a year, which the super passionate parents wanted both of them to get into college tennis. Alice was so good at tennis, she could be semi-professional. She was too good for her age honestly; it seemed that she had trained for years. What was the boy Liam’s next thought, maybe she was a genius in academics too, he thought, and he thought genius slowly, because he didn’t like this girl, who had some really bad female tendencies, he thought, to be smarter than him. The way she acted shifty and uncomfortable around other boys, was because Liam thought that she was too comparison to her. What was it that he felt was wrong about this, he tried to feel why. The first instinct was that she felt like caring too much, and the active thought was that she was new. Alice was like a new person that had never been here, yet the way of the Chinese parents was that they always knew about her. She did try to make herself extraordinary within Chinese culture; she was an academic champion, and so good at the violin she could grow up to be a soloist.
The only thing he felt unknowing about, is that he didn’t know anything about the violin. That was the worst ignorance he felt, and could feel, to this point in his life, ironically. Frontal vision he had in his life, at that point, too. Was there anything that he could seriously regret in life? Iris wondered if he could think like that, and the answer was, no. It was anti-truth, really, it was impossible to predict the secret, and the secret was not interpersonal for the special bearer of truth. Iris then thought, yeah, the boy Liam could think with passion, what was it that made people do evil, since that was the only thing to be regretted, in the modern day and age? How could there be something this wrong with them, to risk, it seemed outside privileges and self-worth, for the temporary, and even be scorned for the rest of his life. To say that this was a child’s thought, Iris could support the idea that he himself would think this is just maybe first of all closed off towards the dark sides of life, which the super unfortunate and poor are born into. Immediately, someone like that would justify themselves that evil people can’t exist, they come from a place of need and uncontrollable desperation. That made it so that the normal, success-valuing people in his community were immune to horrific acts. Feel lucky, would he tell himself that, if Iris could plant that in his mind? No, absolutely not, this was not the truth, but that was just Iris’ knowing perspective, and did she have an idea of the frequency of a dark perspective?
She just knew the structures, and entire magics that could be hidden from view, show up casually as part of a huge phenomenon, like government-mission level but only the extent of that, because government-missions were the thing of movies, strictly. Government secret intentions, it’s hard to refute the government’s transparency if the idea when there was election and at the same time the absence of the thought of maybe it was allied with dark underground organizations. How could either become stronger in any case – it was harder to understand and something invalid about symbiosis, it’s what the boy called ‘politics’. Iris felt a need, an unjustified, half-hearted need to explain the evil when the symbiosis wasn’t complete, and even though it was caused by the thought of horrible self-serving and no development towards the other side it had latched on to. Leech, was it, Iris had already thought this was a very bad way to think about any frustration and injustice, however personal. She heard that word from the school; they were saying very bad words worse than profanity, and how could it be about, really. She had a feeling it was about Alice, but could she say anything to ask, no, and that was just impossible with the mind-blowing knowledge she had. It was the works of a strong imagination, strong is the only appropriate word to describe it, that had functions of attachment that she didn’t even know, unconsciously creating a story that when becomes to serve understanding, mostly in a relieving way, like confirming that such the case is, and that it could form a whole story with long duration in an instant really. She also thought
Meanwhile, to spite the boy, Alice needed to provoke him. She started dating his worst enemy. Jealousy and indignance bottled up, especially with her and others’ assumptions of such and the ridiculous fact that he wanted to date her, he felt really threatened by that. Iris thought maybe he should strengthen that tension, that discomfort she saw from his face when they were dating, and knowing he didn’t know but the knowledge of that wouldn’t cause horror, the secret knowledge referred to over and over again, of course, but what was to happen if he already felt so nervous around her when she was just a girl. You had to have conscious knowledge of her, really, to feel anything wrong, and feeling when you couldn’t possibly know: that, Iris, wanted to say, was that this was a sign of some kind of magic in intuition. She didn’t believe in magic, she wanted to say, just the horrors that exist in plain daylight, and couldn’t be known to viewers.
It relaxed when the summer fun started. What relaxed, he himself, and there was nothing to question about it, except for the observer Iris. Soon, obsessive thoughts about her returned to the boy as teachers and coaches started making insinuations reminding him of her, like things she liked to say. One day, when her tennis coach encouraged her to read Tale of Two Cities, she read the first few pages and realized the unknown-family reunion, and remembering that one time he heard his very old-looking parents urging her to see “his son” to make himself happy who she was, his mother. He felt so sorry for his parents at that moment, it wasn’t kind of sorry that was normal and felt not really badly by everyone, it was sympathy that hurt himself. Could nature be called horror, if their tired faces could make them look tired and cruel, and people would hate them for that? It’s possible, really, the greatest evil is taking appearance for nature, really. Being this age itself, it’s just hard to think why they had to take their kids, and were occupied, exhausted to the extreme, actually, because of their decision to birth their kids. Why was the competition so intense during that time, that your parents had to put all effort into helping you, pushing you, during a determining time which would be passed soon.
A glimpse of her name in the text messages with his coach confirmed this intended message. The conscious reason, that made sense given the still world at large, was that his parents felt that he needed friends, and this girl was perfect. Would he express anything negative, or negative that he felt, no. Actually, he felt that this was wrong, and tried to redirect his feelings of wrong, which became just that he felt very bad and was holding on to it, overthinking about it, in a futile way. The obvious question is, what’s wrong with her dating when it was with the only guy his parents knew. What was that trying to show him, and if it was who, would, containing that thought, interests colliding, because the parents had even said that they hated this guy before. Iris tried to understand this thought by looking from the cameras of the house that had been installed for Alice, Liam’s parents, and accessible to Alice and more. The cameras really were evil, because they were existing in the room, invisible, and the first technology unknown that could cause this evil of not knowing, and not knowing the eyes itself existed. The trauma of it, really, if some contradiction were to arise, couldn’t be traced back to the hidden camera for any conspiracy of fate really. To know the cameras were there, is to know everything.
At first he felt extremely only about this realization, partly helpless about this set up and elated too that this person he had cared about and obsessed over so much was undeniably one of the most important people in his life. Importantly, maybe she was part of a family of unknown fame, it felt, because she seemed to know secret things about him and take it into herself more strongly, as if she had watched more of his private life, even though it was completely irrelevant. He liked his private self though; it was different and special, because of its natural way, and he had really opinionated thoughts actually. Liam believed that if he could really prize himself, it would be that he would get more achievements onto himself. The importance, not value, of it, would be by his parents, really, it was their information. If his teacher told him to get a big prize, which happened, and he thought it felt different. He got attached to wherever the ‘praise’ came from, and really just expectation, and caring in a way, which was the libido of people caring about him from his shown, existing worth. The way Liam was, feeling that way got automatically converted because of self-pity, the harsh way Iris called it, to insecurity. The only problem Liam had, according to his personality, was that he was insecure, and he couldn’t express himself. The way Iris felt about ingenuine, really petty people, many were Chinese, but other races too, was weird: were they always annoying, and did they care that people just knew them as annoying because they were straightforwardly asking for small things, and never felt concerned that this was too small to worry others.
On TV, there was a woman, young married woman age, Liam felt, that looked like Alice. He thought that all Chinese people looked the same, with varying degrees of quality, based on their success. No intelligence, or sharpness, he tried to say, because the more confident Chinese people were, the more ‘white’ they looked, Liam had the feeling. Unless there was plastic surgery, he led on to, which he really hated, it was impossible to think how outer changing but inside plastic would feel inside a human body. If they got older and the skin was replaced, how would they feel about the wrapped over compartments swishing about in the human body? To touch the face now involved a new layer of thought that the plastic was being touched. This was the most disgusting thing ever to Liam. Botox made sense to him, however. Replenishing was good, it felt good, and just a sting to the touch. A one time touch, like a sedated magic wand that needed contact with its victim. Sedatives on the tip, really, that didn’t reach to the other side; however, the wand wasn’t alive and activated because it knew the hand that held it, or was part of the human arm in a way – that sounded like racquets.
All magic had animation, and the real display of it was, the technology of it, CGI. If you think about how the web works, there’s no better understanding of the physical working of it that can be associated with natural elements such as electricity. Liam was one of those guys who attached sentimental feelings towards the cool gadgets in his room. His imagination of the what if, really, was that if someone would come into his room, an image sensationally as he felt when he was writing the script for an English play for his honors class, what they thought about him when he was a cool science guy. Feeling it more strongly, he felt the sudden compulsion to eradicate all the feminine aspects of his room, all the pinks and reds, change the color of his backpack from grey to black, and add some more formal scientific elements to it. What could that be, what could represent the image of science, have the aesthetic of the boy’s age, and be really nerdy, in a specific kind of way? This was really collage-like, like putting a basketball on the shelf with a piece of artwork you made on the shelf below. Liam decided to put a piece of telescope on the shelf that served the artistic representation of outer space, while some geodes were on the bottom, which was also both beautiful and geological.
He didn’t feel anything cringe about the hollow favorites in science he told to his teachers, every year round when introductions came around. He felt that those mattered, while he didn’t even try, but every year it was kind of different, these pillars of his interests in the school, and it was supposed to make his teachers, ‘happy.’ Liam felt a shoulder on him, and a girl’s face looking over him. Did this make him imaginative, paranoid, or any relieving adjective that gave him an extreme in that moment to be a special one, and lead to some self-realization about what he felt about the girl, Alice? No. But he felt the girl’s face look over him, no name attached, just her secretly scornful face in the area next to his face. This was the mirage effect of his brain, that the mental image was transferred to reality with time and relative position, like a movie image that tried to penetrate the air in one of those 3D, or it was technically called 4D movie theatres. Transforming the will of his doubts about this girl, as he called it to his lazy friends, and they didn’t even care to respond properly, was what the sudden spike in fear of that girl felt. She couldn’t do anything about Alice at that moment. Liam could feel the pressure on him increase, but it was far more jarring and uncomfortable than what he had ever felt in his life. ‘
Did he think about specific sensations in his body that were related to the cause of the heart, that in its strength surprised him? Did he ever have the experience, or the thought, to differentiate between the words sharp, and dull? These words had zero effect on Liam if they were those of deities from above, and ironically, he really respected the worship of Alice’s Christian family, in a wholesome way, not relieving because the feelings didn’t add together like chemistry. Deities, magic, and heart, that was the way wrote in the English class, but he felt targeted all of a sudden that Alice was showing scorn for him. He didn’t know why. The treason of the relationship was that the words Alice texted to him, when he got texted, it sounded just like the words of his parents, and Alice really liked to make fun of her own parents, say their words to Liam, the purpose of which couldn’t be redirected in any purposeful way, like for example, that she was trying to make fun of how she sounded, the grainy quality of maturity, while smooth and songful in the deep quality that seemed like this voice was ageless, and the sound what never change throughout the ages. Did that make her more likeable, no, a pleasant forgiveness was expressed by it, expressed because of it, that went both ways. That the sound of someone’s voice, which is really heard all the time, can make such a suggestion is absolutely absurd, that no one wondered if they underestimated the effect of it. There were blatantly ugly voices, and blatant, not blatantly, beautiful voices, at the same time. Blatant was the purity of some voices, while others were adulterated, and if beauty was thought in this way, then was there any plastic surgery for the voice? Alice knew, yes, but sharing with others this fact was impossible, when they were not even doubtful, dependent on the existence of such, or thought of such technologies for any transmission of human features, really.
The voice came from the mouth, the smell came from the nose, and vision came from the eyes, but what if this was disrupted. First, an intermediary could easily be put in between the vision and the eyes, to disrupt the signal in the brain, which no one could debate about, really, and create an altered image, the change could even be uniform and intuitive, possibly funny, really, like an Instagram filter (the ones with dog faces and noses that Liam had never seen before recently). World truth, it should be a phrase, but what did the world know differently, that existed secretly where it existed and known by only few there, for example, while others thought it was scientifically impossible. Did people really think of such things arising from scenarios? No, Iris could only think it, and it was miraculous, from suspicious activities that already had form in its special usage, and courage for only existing for a special group of people usually defined in a way, whether it was amazingly beneficial or harmful in a previously unknown fashion. How could the latter manifest in a horrible way? I don’t know, actually, Iris said aloud. For her, it was defiance of the existing phenomenon, and she knew her right to know, her identity that was secret here, but that was because of her ability to this knowledge.
Iris was, in fact, mostly Chinese, but 20% Irish. Why she wanted to be traced back to the Irish roots so badly to discover more about her race, she thought, when it was questionable to her all the time, why Irish is like the most boring version of white, in America though. Elsewhere, it was just different. But if she chanced to be French, it was more than the Eiffel tower, the beauty of France. Iris felt it was just an infinitely more cultured, rich country, and was that fair to either true natives to France or Italy for example, to say that their race had been a gift, a gift of closer knowledge to the wonders of their country? Race, she felt, because of the false emotional attachment, the obsession that could create the same excited revelation as national pride, the vulgar version of which was patriotism. To be the prince of one’s own house, was really the idea of Chinese families in China, which was why, some felt, that a family, recognized as a unit, can be understood as an artificial construct really, unless their last names, which could range to 3 or 5 names in a single family tree, were really Chinese characters of true fidelity, but with values. Did they know their own values really well to care to differ in any extraordinary way? No, they thought this was forced passion. However, it was easy to control the category of the Chinese elements, elements as in found in nature and harmony, not as an effect, but expressed in limitation, and external symbols such as the red square hung up on Chinese doors, inside or outside (called fai chun).
Fu, was the character written on it. The word seemed to just be a commonplace, because it could not be turned into any thing of the future with small efforts starting it, leading far away intensifying into the future. There were no secrets, and if there were any shocking secrets about the parents, and about their lives, it was kept sealed forever to their children. However, why is it that their journey to a different country was understated in emotional value? It felt the shock of being somewhere new and the lack of wonder why this country was so different from others. It felt that they had a plan with more force to be in this new country, and without this secret ingredient, they would not move at all. Was the magic in the pull and liking towards coming to the land of Freedom? These were just names and stereotypes with no avail. However, if some secret ingredient were to be hiding maliciously behind the front of parenthood and responsibility, that would draw them to the United States? To what extent could these intentions, and would it even be work, and hidden in their computer-based jobs? How could they hide this from their kids, and were the kids, and even having kids, part of the project of this ‘workplace’ age? It’s only terrifying to think, and the only clues were that the parents clearly knew, like closely, parents from other locations, for sure, all across the country, that seemed to be somehow, because they were from the same or related colleges. For some reason, it felt like some parents hated each other so strongly, while other parents, once even from a different country, Australia, came together, and liked each other so badly. How did these relationships either have love or hate in them, the social kind obviously and sometimes extreme emotional inclination could be seen on their face. When conflicts arose, even violent ones, which was the most exciting part of lives, it seemed to be left on the kids somehow, that it was because of their extracurriculars. Was there a concrete beast of an existence behind this agitated parent, tiger approach to success? Questioned harshly, were these kids even chosen by their parents, to be, you know, the factory model of accomplished young people, and the casualness of parents would be to add, “of the new generation”, and no. Simply no, because kids were entirely new people, and parents should not choose to have children unless out of pure kindness and passion for their own relationship, to make a small and complete family of 3 or 4 for themselves was the most exciting part of their lives, and this joy was permanent. Love for family meant the absence of hatred, of the opposite sort of passion, that had a blade and cut into the skin and flesh with this kind of naked hatred for someone else. Liam thought this as a feeling of complacency and security: his family had no hate, just frustration for success.
At school, what did Liam’s interest look like? Alice was sitting with the other Chinese people, the successful ones, while everyone else was a loner in their private high school. He was fine, and he felt just fine, Liam told himself. Alice sat at the lunch table munching celery, the assumed taste of celery juice affirming her youth and paleness, health and fine looks she had. She stretched out her arms and pulled her jacket up so it hung over both of her shoulders more, and it was for the first time, Liam noticed the color. Today, it was just like the hanging of her skin, just as Liam dared to get closer to her face, for some curiosity he couldn’t see would manifest as such, he found the undeniable wrinkles of unbelievably hard work and weariness that had to accompany the accomplishments that she had already attained in her life. Alice would never cheat for these things; she had priceless will, and her natural talent and well-off family guaranteed that this would never be allowed to happen, some kind of phony listing of her many achievements. Such a list was written nowhere, including her clean Linkedin file, which paid respects to the future job she was working for already in the final years of high school. However, her mastery in adult pursuits was already achieved, just the official and professional element of it. Her writing had known many books, which Liam wanted to know, how did she have time to read these numerous, uncountable books that informed her so perfectly: this must mean that knowledge from reading and personal learning would qualify anyone the best for life and the unpredictable situations it would put people in, at any age. The hunch for books reading and studying for oneself, when others didn’t know what to learn about, must be a part of Alice’s phenomenal intelligence.
Alice had to have phenomenal intelligence, whatever it was called: intuition, IQ, or astounding intellect. There had to be a sign, that she was really interested in him, because it felt like Liam was being watched by her constantly, out of her necessity, but she didn’t have any positive interest of him or the reason seemed not to be obviously because of admiration of anything about him, because he was just ordinary, and his parents said so. He almost wanted to do something bad so that he wasn’t ordinary perfect anymore, but that was out of the question. He remembered his parents immediately and thought of the short term arc of extreme anger, punishment, cleaning up his mini mess, then forgetting about it for the rest of eternity. Then it was time for summary time, because it was in terms of his feelings, which outlasted the tired and wondering, wanting Alice’s attention, a want of her response. He said ‘Hi’ a couple of times during lunch break, but she just smiled, and that meant everything to Liam.
The school year passed calmly, nothing more than homework, grades, and tennis matches on the boy’s mind. When tennis season ended and with it the weirdo, funny girl’s antics and stories, he found himself weirdly restless near her. It lacked the sweetness of a crush and had more curiosity than outright fear. With the advice of her parents, the woman treated him more seriously, and unconsciously, controllingly. She was performing for him almost, making sure to hint at and tailor to his likes and dislikes, as he was, or at least she thought, a very unique boy. However, the boy shied away, queasy about the way she knew him in a way others didn’t and acted like she owned him. She knew things about him only he cared about personally, and despite her sudden withdrawals from him at times, he sensed a more secretive basis to her attention, not just him overthinking their miraculous rapport. When he learned that she had been discussing him and his little quirks for hours on end in classes behind his back, he ignored her once and for all, feeling betrayed his habits and most embarrassing moments only his parents knew were circulating in the school now, a few suggestive words eavesdropped from classmates’ conversations triggering him. He had teachers and counselors stop him from talking, but that only offended the woman. Returning the aggression, she dismissed her previous praise and analysis of him as arousal from their in-class flirtations and gradually fabricated a relationship between them. Frustrated at his ignorance and coldness, she thought about a more full-on observance of the boy and buying access to another door to get surveillance tools back in China…
Coincidentally, the boy stayed up one night to overhear her parents saying something about him not knowing anything. He forgot about this quickly but had indeed felt his parents were in on a secret with the woman and her parents; their interactions were normal and polite and that never changed, but they seemed connected in a way that dated way back. Meanwhile, to spite the boy, she started provoking him and dating his worst enemy. Jealousy and indignance bottled up, especially with her and others’ assumptions of such and the ridiculous fact that he wanted to date her, but relaxed when the summer fun started. Soon, obsessive thoughts about her returned to the boy as teachers and coaches started making insinuations reminding him of her, like things she liked to say. One day, when her tennis coach encouraged her to read Tale of Two Cities, she read the first few pages and realized the unknown-family reunion, and remembering that one time he heard his very old-looking parents urging her to see “his son” to make himself happy who she was, his mother. A glimpse of her name in the text messages with his coach confirmed this intended message. At first he felt extremely only about this realization, partly helpless about this set up and elated too that this person he had cared about and obsessed over so much was undeniably one of the most important people in his life. Soon though, he became detached from everyday life as he felt completely an upheaval and replacement of identity, and the rest of it occurred to him that everything he had been used to, including his parents, had been a lie.
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Part 3: The bathroom of incubation, and shower horrors
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What was adding new skin, really, it was growth. What was taking away skin, it was making our covering thinner. The bathroom of incubation was called, only one such bathroom existed in the country so far. It was Alice’s bathroom, the mother’s bathroom, and in there, she transformed to the invisible eyes of tiled walls under the mirrors. She took off her clothes, and there, her skin sagged. But it was not the quality of sagging skin to be expected, it was white, it was taught, and the folds were that of stiff cloth. Why it sagged, because there was air underneath that floated it up and stretched out the areas of air’s incubation. It was like flawless upholstery of a piece of furniture, but with the versatility of fitting over a totally organic matter, flesh.
The covering over Alice, it was like new plastic had been invented to stretch perfectly over any form, feel comfortable to the real sensations of underneath skin. No, this was not an extra layer, beware, it was real skin, learned to be replenished. By the means of which chemicals and which syringe, couldn’t be traced down by any superiority of surveillance or technology – what was this new skin an artifact that must be detected by the metal of the instrument which made it clear and young again? Artifacts were for old bones, really, and the strength of Alice’s bones, although not visible to others, was clearly more powerful and solid in its movements and speed of joints. Was the material of the bones hardened – was that a primary concern, or were the interlocking parts of the body’s frame readjusted like some wonder of architecture? Blood, was there anything different between young blood and old blood, a young person’s type of blood, and an older’s? Was the blood the same material as it was when you were a baby inside a mother’s stomach born and exposed to the air of the new world?
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