[travelogue] austin.

austin was a city in which to catch a breath between two long legs of driving — from new orleans to austin (511 miles) and austin to el paso (577 miles). i spent two nights and one day there, spent my day eating and catching up on some writing and getting some rest in-between meals, and it was nice not to have to hit the road right away — i just wish i’d been able to stay and linger in another city, say charleston or new orleans, instead.

(sorry, austin.)

austin was more suburban than i thought it’d be; it didn’t really feel like a city to me, even when i was downtown. i mean, granted, i didn’t venture very far, but here are two facts about me:  i like old cities*, and i’m not very fond of cities that require cars.

it was a good stay, though, and i was glad for it. i ate great food, got to chat with some people, browsed books, bought books, did some writing, got some rest, took things easy, and grabbed a really fabulous cup of coffee on my way out of town. i was able to pull my head and heart together a little, which counts for a lot really, and i do want to go back one day, explore the city more, and eat some barbecue.

* heh, austin’s probably an old city. it just doesn’t feel that way.

you’d think i’d get to texas and run to the first bbq place, but i left austin without having had texas bbq once. i had a pretty mediocre dinner my first night in austin — the queso at torchy’s is fabulous, but i wasn’t that keen on the tacos. then again, when it comes to tacos, it’s street tacos or fish tacos for me — but, you know, even then, the tacos at torchy’s were grotesquely large, so much so that the fried chicken was too dry, the pork too … i don’t even remember what i didn’t like about the pork, simply that i couldn’t finish eating it.

it’s almost like the goal at torchy’s is to load up as many things as possible in the biggest ways, so there’s no balance. there’s no subtlety. i wish i’d liked it more.

a mediocre dinner was apparently the last straw after a long day of driving, of going from a place as flavorful and beautiful as new orleans and arriving in suburban austin in the evening (again, i hate arriving in new places after dark; it sucks for me; and it isn’t fair to the city as far as first impressions go). i took to google after a crying spell in my hotel, looked up restaurants because i wanted something nice, not too expensive, and, above all, interesting because the pretentious way of putting this might be to say that i wanted to eat at a restaurant where the chef was doing interesting things.

(i also honestly just was not feeling like a whole lot of meat.)

i decided on odd duck and sat myself at the bar my second night in austin, had a strong drink, and ordered more food than i probably should have. it was fabulous, though, and exactly what i was looking for — and here is where you might expect an actual review on the food, but here is where your expectation will not be met. i had a great night, though, and would recommend odd duck if you’re in austin.

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i get asked, often enough that i think it’s funny, if i’ve just taken a photo of my empty plate. the answer is yes, and the thing is that i find the mess we leave behind just as beautiful as plated food. i like detritus; i like the indications that someone was here, someone ate this, someone left this mess; and, sometimes, i find it even more visually interesting than the visuals of the food that arrived because a cleared plate is the result of someone taking and consuming and, hopefully, appreciating something the chef has created.

i also get asked why i take photos of all my food, and my answer to that is that i do it to remember.

when i think of food, when i think of what i ate, i think of places. i think of people and gatherings and events; i am able to recall memories. when i think about maguro-dons, i think of ishigaki, of a small, quiet restaurant on a small, quiet street on this tiny island with the bluest waters, and i think of spending the afternoon cycling around taketomi, sweating so much i dehydrated, wading in the warm, clear ocean and feeling my heart expand from the beauty of it all.

when i think about dahk-do-ri-tang, i think about a tiny, grungy place in hong-dae, watching a friend sweat buckets while eating, soju poured liberally. when i think about hotel room service, i think about my best friend, about dancing along to suju trot’s rokuggo until a bug flew into our room and stung her on the eyelid, so she had to sit on the counter and hold ice to her face.

and, when i think about momofuku, hainanese chicken rice, bagels, pizza loves emily, pizza in general, grilled squid over arugula, when i think about blue bottle and gourmet ice cream and pie, i will always, always think of home.

[travelogue] new orleans.

driving across the country in roughly a week means that i don’t get a whole lot of time in cities. i usually arrive in the early evening, after it’s already dark (which is something i hate), and i’m pretty spent from driving, so there isn’t all that much exploring i get to do.

i saw roughly half-a-mile of new orleans — and all of it in the very touristy part of the french quarter because i wanted beignets, and apparently that was priority number one. it’s an interesting city — beautiful, as these old cities go — and my two main thoughts my time there were: my parents would hate it here, and, god damn, i wish i were here with a partner.

i don’t know what it was specifically about new orleans that brought that wish to the forefront, though it’s a thought that’s been on my mind this whole drive because a cross-country road trip was something i wanted to do with a partner. a cross-country road trip wasn’t supposed to be me on my own, hauling my life in a minivan, traveling from the city that will always be home back to the place i’d fled as soon as i could. this trip was supposed to be something else altogether — i’d laughed about it once with my best friend, how, if i were in a relationship, once things started getting really serious, i’d go on an extended cross-country road trip with my partner as a test. twenty-four hours a day, x-number of days in close quarters — i felt like, if we could survive that, we could survive a lot.

instead, i’m on the road alone, just me and my solitude.

i’m no stranger to traveling alone; in 2012, i set off for five weeks in east asia by myself, three weeks backpacking through japan, ten days hanging out in seoul. when i was planning the trip, i didn’t think about solitude, about how difficult it might be to be by myself in a foreign country — and, to take it further, to be by myself in a foreign country whose language i didn’t speak. japan is not the most english-friendly country, though it is accessible and very easy to travel, despite not knowing japanese. i knew this about the country, the lack of english, but i never stopped to think of what it might feel like not to be able to communicate at all.

it meant no small talk, no brief interactions with strangers, no casual chatting. sure, i’d meet some people in the common areas of hostels, but i don’t have that knack of just striking up conversations with people. i didn’t think about the silence of traveling alone, of being inside my head with my own thoughts for so long, because, having traveled around the states alone plenty, i didn’t stop to think about how much of a difference daily casual interactions with strangers make. being able to say hi, hello, how are you, i’m good, the weather’s shit today, isn’t it — it’s not deep human connection, but it’s still something. and i’m glad to have at least that while on the road this time, that i can chat with the bartender/waiter during dinner, have a brief conversation with the barista while getting coffee, ask people, what should i see, where should i go?

i’m not making deep lifelong relationships here, but they’re still something. being able to communicate is still something.

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these days, driving seven, eight hours a day, i fill the space with music. i think it’s a damn good thing that i have a hyperactive imagination because i don’t get bored. i take photos of the sky because the sky is stunning, changes by region. i record voice memos on my iphone for essays i’m working on, essays i want to pitch. i try to think about my book, but i’m still too broken, too much in pieces to think about fiction right now.

i don’t think about what’s going to happen once i get to california. i don’t think about having to grapple with my grief and trying to piece my life back together. i don’t think about what scares me about going back to a space that is so treacherous for me.

and i hope — i try to hope — that things will be okay, even if i still don’t actually believe that.

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i’m a huge supporter of traveling alone; i think everyone should do it at least once because you learn a lot about yourself. i think i’ve hit my limits on traveling alone, though.

driving in and out of new orleans on the 10 W has thus far been my favorite part of this drive. i love crossing water, and, y’know, louisiana (or that area of louisiana) is pretty stunning country.

[travelogue] charleston.

the truth is that this cross-country trip is one i don’t necessarily want to remember — and yet i can’t help my desire to document and share it in the way that i want to document and share everything beautiful. maybe that’s the thing about the world, that my heart might be breaking into the tiniest little pieces, that things might be going to shit all over the place, but the world is still largely a place of beauty and wonder — and, even amidst the heartbreak, amidst the depression, it still manages to take my breath away.

charleston — or, at least, the tiny bit of charleston i got to see in the less-than-twenty-four-hours i was there — is a beautiful city. yes, it has a sordid history, and its way of trying to edit it leaves me scratching my head, but the city is beautiful, the people friendly, the food outstanding.

(holy shit, the food is incredible.)

i have a weird emotional connection to charleston. it’s a city i want to like, to love even, and it’s been on my list of cities to visit for some time now, so, when i thought about the possibility of driving across the country, i knew i’d be making a stop here. that’s part of why i don’t necessarily want to remember this trip, though — because everything about it feels wrong; none of this was supposed to happen this way.

here’s the thing, though: sometimes, i think life is all about navigating disappointments. sometimes, i think it’s the cynic in me who says that, that i don’t actually believe that at my core, that i believe life is more hopeful than that, but the last two years of my life have been about trying to bear the weight of disappointments and, ultimately, not surviving it.

and i wonder whether it’s worth sharing any of this, but i do carry this conviction to be transparent, to share not only the lovely, shiny things in life but also to be able to acknowledge the crap, to say that, no, nothing is going well in my life, i am struggling with so much darkness, but here is something good — here is something that made me smile. i dislike how we curate our lives to make it seem as though we have picture-perfect lives; i’m not interested in those veneers; and i’m not interested in presenting only the good, whether it’s here in this space, on instagram, or in my fiction.

because the truth is that we all hurt. we all go through moments in our lives that are filled with nothing but pain. we all suffer heartbreak. we all feel like we’ll go mad from it.

and, yet, the other truth is that the world continues to be a beautiful place. sometimes, that beauty is comforting; sometimes, it’s the most cruel thing; but it’s there to be seen, to be witnessed, to be remembered. and, maybe, right now, i don’t want to remember this road trip much at all because, maybe, it’d be better to forget the heartache, the pain, the grief. maybe, it’ll be possible to leave all this brokenness behind because, maybe, one day, i will be well, and i won’t want to remember any of the hurt.

and, yet, it would be impossible to keep the beautiful parts of this trip while discarding the darker parts because the darkness brought me here, and it made me see the beauty that gave me the hope and lightness i needed to get through the day. like i said before, nothing exists in clean consistency, and things exist, take place, in relation to each other. i cannot keep one and forget the other.

so, when i think back on charleston, i will think back to this first visit, these not-even-twenty-four hours i spent in this city. i will think about the sadness of my circumstances, the disappointment that this was not how i wanted to meet this city for the first time. at the same time, i will think about eating that fabulous meal at FIG, about listening to people talk about weird baby names while eating a satisfying breakfast biscuit sandwich. i will think about eating okonomiyaki at a restaurant in a converted gas station and thinking back to the last time i ate okonomiyaki in hiroshima in 2012, and i will think about that barista at a fancy coffee shop who said, “hi, my name is [___]; nice to meet you.”

i will think about the houses, all those columns and porches, and i will think of the warmth even in december. i will think about how i thought that, no, charleston is not a city that makes me think it could be home, not in the way boston does or sapporo does, but it is a beautiful city, yes, one with complicated history that maybe needs deeper reckoning, and it is one i would like to explore further in the future because it is a city that let me believe, at least for that day, that i will have a future.

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there were a lot of things i wanted to say about charleston, about the carolinas, about the south in general and place and the question of how we are to exist in places that are hostile to us. i wanted to talk about how the billboards change once you pass into north carolina, all the bible verses and proselytizing followed by advertisements for gentlemen’s clubs and adamandeve.com and fireworks — the south really loves its fireworks. i wanted to talk about how there are yellow diamond signs announcing CHURCH, followed by a church, how there are so many churches in south carolina, so many that i wonder how any of them is sustainable because there doesn’t seem to be population enough to congregate and support them. i wanted to talk about the oddness of being a [queer] woman of color in such predominantly white spaces, about the oddness of seeing people of color mostly behind the counters, providing services, while everyone else was largely white.

there was a lot about the carolinas, about the south in general, that made me uncomfortable.

maybe we’ll get into that in the future.

we’re halfway into january, and i haven’t read a single book yet this month, this year. to be honest, i haven’t been thinking that much about books, and, while i’m hauling a van full of books (and a dutch oven) (and a rice cooker and guitar) across the country, i’ve only got two in my tote: nayoung aimee kwon’s intimate empire and rachel khong’s forthcoming goodbye, vitamin.

considering that i’ve been driving 6-7 hours a day, i unsurprisingly haven’t had much time to read. this is the thing with me and books, though — that, even if i never pull the book out of my bag during the day, it still comforts me to know that it’s there, even if it’s adding weight to my tote bag. i like knowing that i could reach into my bag at any time and have a book on hand, and, even in this time of darkness, even as depression takes away my ability to focus on words, i like knowing that it’s there, that books will be there, that literature will keep going on.

i like knowing that, even while i’m struggling just to believe that i will be able to continue creating things of beauty and wonder, there are people out there — writers, chefs, musicians, artists of all kind — creating and putting beauty and wonder and light into the world every day.

[travelogue] chasing meals.

i think about food pretty much all the time.

while i’m eating a meal, i think about what i want to eat for my next meal. as i’m trying to fall asleep, i think about what i want to eat tomorrow, what i want to cook, what i’m craving and why i’m so fucking hungry and how i can’t fall asleep because of it. i follow a fair number of food people on instagram, so i spend a fair amount of time every day looking at food and being cranky that i can’t eat any of it. i read about food constantly, whether on food blogs or in food magazines or as food memoirs or cookbooks — so, basically, i’ve got food on my mind pretty much all the time.

(maybe the one oddity is that i don’t watch tv about food, but that’s also one of the few things consistent about me: i don’t watch much tv in general.)

i know there are people for whom food is a nuisance, something that must be consumed merely for sustenance and nothing else, but i am (clearly) not one of those. food, for me, especially these days, has come to be a sort of hope, this one thing that i can anticipate and look forward to and enjoy on a regular, daily basis, even while everything seems to be going to shit around me. these days, i feel like i’m existing on a precipice, trying so hard not to lose myself entirely to darkness, to nothingness and hopelessness, and i swear this is a battle i’m constantly losing.

and, so, i eat. i cook. i think about food.

this past weekend, i moved out of my apartment in new york city, and, with the help of my family, i packed and loaded as much of my stuff as possible into a mini-van and discarded the rest. i’m currently in the process of driving across the country, back to california, and am currently typing this in a hotel room in charleston, even though i should be sleeping to continue on the next leg to atlanta tomorrow.

i can’t sleep, though, so here we are.

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the first leg of my trip took me from nyc to dc, where i went straight to momofuku ccdc because, as it goes, i set my navigation to guide me to restaurants.

last night, i laughed this off as a continuation of my ongoing inexplicable fascination with all things momofuku. today, though, when i think about it, i think it must have been the obvious thing that i would run immediately to something familiar. i mean, to an extent, i know momofuku. i know what the food will taste like. i know what the restaurant will look like. i know the logo, the ssam sauce, milk bar.

it reminds me of home, and, when i was in dc, when i was sitting at the bar in ccdc, slurping noodles and drinking a vodka cocktail, i could forget that i’d just lost my home and that i can’t go back, not yet, not for some time.

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when i first had momofuku a few years ago, i didn’t think that much of it. i remember loving the noodles but finding the broth too salty, too spare, and i kind of simply checked it off my list of places to eat and moved on.

recently, though …

momofuku makes my favorite ramen noodles (i believe they’re made in-house), and i can’t get over them. they’re the perfect texture and thickness, just slippery enough and easy to slurp (because noodles must be slurped), and i like that they’re not generic or given less care than the broth or pork. i think noodles are kind of like rice — they’re often seen and dismissed as a basic part of a dish, but, if you have bad rice, bad noodles, the entire thing is wasted.

(FIG [below] gets at this, too. i asked the waiter what he thought of their pork dish, which comes over rice, and he said that they consider the rice just as important as the pork. that kind of care and attention comes through on the plate.)

the more i eat momofuku ramen, the more i like how balanced it is; it’s a bowl that just comes together very well; and ithits all the right notes of comfort and satisfaction and quality. it definitely served as comfort last night, and it’s a bowl i will miss intensely when i’m away from nyc. they did just open a restaurant in vegas, though …

my navigation today brought me to FIG, where i spent way more on dinner than i should have. my budgeting philosophy is simple, though:  eat one great meal a day, and eat crap/starve for the rest, because i’d rather have one great meal than three mediocre/crappy ones.

because here’s the thing: there are a lot of really shitty things about suicidal depression, but, for me, one of the worst things that happens is that it takes away focus, and, when it takes away focus, it takes away books. depression often makes it really difficult for me to read, to sit down and focus on a book, to derive joy from that. i don’t know why that is, but it is.

food, then, fills in for everything.

part of it is likely to do with the fact that i have to eat, whether i want to or not, whether i have an appetite or not. i get hungry, and i feel worse because i’m hungry, so i have no choice but to rouse myself out of my mentally catatonic state and do something about my body’s basic needs. this isn’t to say that depression hasn’t taken food away from me at times, too — there were weeks last year when i got by on rice and hot dogs and fried eggs and ketchup because i didn’t have an appetite and that’s all i could get myself to cook and eat.

after a while, though, my mouth starts to revolt, and it starts craving things. it starts wanting noodles and kimchi and pork. it starts wanting to chew something with more heft, to taste something with more depth and flavor, to eat something that’s actually food and not questionably-processed foodstuffs. it wants green things, bright things, interesting things. it wants to feel alive.

and, so, i let food get me through the day. i think about food a lot. i think about what i want to eat, what i want to cook, and what i need to do to make this meal happen.

i let food give me purpose, and, in that way, i let food create a sort of hope for me.

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and, so, i picked my cities by food.

at the moment, i’m still kind of numb to everything, including my depression, including my grief. the road has that kind of effect, but i’m starting to feel that numbness fade away, too, and, as i get further and further away from home and everything that i love, it’s all going to come fully crashing down on me. i’m going to have to figure out how to process my grief, how to grieve, how to start piecing myself back together. i’m going to have to work on learning to manage my depression in more sustainable ways. i’m going to have to muster up the energy to fight for my life and get back home and not die in california.

until then, though, for this week at least, to hold myself together for this 3,300-mile drive, i’ll go on chasing meals.

boston!

why do humans have this desire for possession, and why do we grow savage when we cannot satisfy it? (bae suah, a greater music, 60)

i find that there are two kinds of cities:  the ones i explore and the ones i settle into.

the latter is the rarer city, the kind of city that embraces me and makes me think, “hey, this feels familiar. i think i could see myself here; i think i could feel whole here.” it’s the kind of city i’m not frantic to see, the kind of city that discourages lists of things to do and foods to eat and neighborhoods to visit. it’s the kind of city that encourages slowing down, sitting in a cafe with a book and pastry and cup of coffee, absorbing moods instead of simply passing them by or walking them off. it’s the kind of city that says, “you have time. you’ll be here again, so slow down.”

it’s the kind of city that feels like it could be home, at least for a little bit because nyc will always be home. so far, i’ve only come across two cities like this:  sapporo and boston.

ultimately, “learning a foreign language” is too simplistic an expression for a process which is more like crossing a border; similarly, an individual’s development as a human being is only possible through language, not because language is our only means of communication, but because it is the only tool precisely calibrated for the application of critical thought. but to me, these thoughts of m’s were nothing but phantoms. a mother tongue isn’t a border that can just be crossed, not even with the strongest will in the world. even after fully mastering a foreign language (if such a thing is ever possible), your mother tongue still acts as a prison for your consciousness — this wasn’t a view that m ever expressed in so many words, but i knew that it was true. the fact that my mother tongue was different from m’s caused me unbearable grief. (61)

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i took one book with me to boston because i didn’t want to carry more than one because i was traveling with friends and didn’t anticipate much down-time to read. on our second (and last) day, though, we split ways, and i found myself back in beacon hill, at tatte with a pear tart and a latte, exhausted and starving from walking and not really wanting to do much more city-seeing and/or touristing.

i spent the afternoon reading and finished this slim korean novel, a greater music by bae suah. two weeks ago, i went to hear deborah smith, the translator, speak at AAWW (that write-up is coming soon), and she’d briefly discussed a greater music and the language within — the narrator is a korean writer who returns to berlin to house-sit for her on-again/off-again boyfriend, and there’s a sense of the novel being in this in-between place language-wise because the narrator is in a foreign country, learning a foreign language, and feeling the frustrations of that linguistic barrier.

it’s been a few years since she’s been in berlin, and much of the novel is spent in remembering, in thinking back to her previous stay in berlin as a student. much of those thoughts, in turn, circulate around her former lover, m, whom the narrator hasn’t seen since she was last in berlin, though we meet m more as a ghostly figure who’s both central and peripheral to the narrator’s thoughts.

m views the world through theory. she’s clearly intellectual, and she thinks a lot, but there’s a sense through the novel that she’s removed from the world, not only intellectually or emotionally but physically, too, because of her health. this isn’t to make it sound like m’s reclusive or closed off to the world because she works, interacts with people, and so on; it’s more to say that i recognize her way of thinking, of thinking so deeply about things that everything is broken down into theories and nothing is simple or grounded.

the narrator is rather aligned with m’s ways of seeing the world, which leads to the thinking presented in the quote above. and it’s not that i have a problem with theory or that i don’t appreciate these deeper, more abstract ways of thinking about things, but here was (and is) my constant gripe with theory — that it often gets twisted up in itself and exists on its own self-elevated planes and eludes intersection with reality.

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if m’s soul was with me then why did erich need to be a problem, if mere flesh, limited and inconsistent, really did amount to nothing, then why did i have to suffer on account of their one-night stand, why couldn’t i break free of this permanently unsatisfied desire for possession, when i was only too aware of how utterly base it was? i couldn’t come up with a single word of consolation or justification for myself. when its corollary is a hunger to monopolize m’s gestures, her shadow, her voice, love soon becomes a hell. (97)

you’d think that, given that this was the first time i was in boston, i’d be eager to try all these different restaurants and cafes.

instead, i went to flour for breakfast every single morning (read: three mornings) — and, then, i went back for cake and cocoa on saturday afternoon. i went to tatte twice, once for lunch, a second time for a pear tart and an iced latte. if i’d gone to the salty pig on saturday night as i’d hoped to, i likely would have gone back on sunday night, it was that good.

i am a creature of habit, and that’s also the thing about cities you settle into. there’s no frenzy to try everything, no need to cram everything in, no guilt at going back to somewhere you like and maybe ordering the same thing (i did that) or trying something new (i did that, too). also, there is nothing like a bowl of noodles and a plate of dumplings late at night.