Man cannot cast off this mask; it is a projection of his own flesh and spirit. He can no longer remove from his own face this mask which has already grown like skin and flesh so he is always startled as if disbelieving this is himself, but it is in fact himself. He cannot remove this mask, and this is agony. But having manifested itself as his mask, it cannot be obliterated, because the mask is a replica of himself. It has no will of its own, or one could say it has a will but no means of expression and so prefers not to have a will. Therefore it has left man with an eternal face with which he can examine himself in amazement.

—Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

I turn 30 in eight months, and I still don’t know if I’m the person who smiles, or the person who hides behind the smile.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask

I took these of Navid and Jess a little while back.

More recently, Navid called to let me know the childbirth went well, and now he has another adorable little half-Persian girl.

Rose is old enough to walk on her own now and give me kisses before she leaves.

I’m free again after my training, and Dave takes me to his favourite restaurant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girlfriend. It’s a small, family-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appropriately accented waitress.

Over dinner, we compare our regional differences. I ask them what it means when someone says “A quarter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quarter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (sometimes, depending on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house¹. I ask them if they have bubble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restaurant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves poutine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, contrasted from their “huh” used at the end of a sentence to emphasize a point.

Dave and I drive to downtown Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave organizes the Collective, a group of creative people with a certain energy, and a void in their lives when it comes to someone with whom to discuss their endeavors on a practical, nonthreatening, philanthropic level.

I repeat a person’s name after being introduced to them, a trick I learned from the client specialist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each other, and Dave explains, along with a story:

When my sister and I were kids, we imagined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we needed an older sister and a younger brother to round out the sibling experience. As the oldest brother, I needed to know what having an older sister was like. And we also chose personalities to go with them. I think the older sister was a heavyset, strong girl with a determined, mothering tendency toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hockey or lacrosse when she went to college had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger brother would be a slender, artistic type that was a stylish and careful dresser; “metrosexual” was the term we’d have used, my sister commented recently, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yesterday, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s wondering if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of brilliant conversation and exchange of energy, we go our separate ways. These are my people, and I feel the need to start something similar in Ottawa.

I take a picture of us because I leave tomorrow, shortly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but certainly wishing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was another kindred soul in the world.

1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange. [↑]

I pack light. A single lens, and only carry-on baggage.

This plane takes me to a more central airport. Every seat has a USB plug, a power outlet, and a video screen that lets you choose what you want to watch. I make a note to fly Air Canada from now on.

In stark contrast, my connecting flight has two propellers.

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“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song during a recent transition, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — contentment, sadness, lonliness, morning, mourning, and moulting.

In a way, I’m forcing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my therapist recommended, it explains “Change requires willingness to experience pain”, and I’m going through this exactly. I’m constantly stepping out of my comfort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trepidation than excitement. It’d be so much easier to fall into old mental habits, as unhealthy as they are.

On mornings like this, I sit in my living room with the curtains open. It makes me self-conscious to be sitting there with houses across the street getting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that someone else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibrancy, and people just like me.

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Before getting on his train, Jason asked me if I was a hug-person. It was the right question, because I’m most assuredly a hug-person, and we embraced before he stepped out onto the platform.

We grew up at the same time in the same neighbourhood — a small suburb somewhere in the middle of the 500km that separates us — but never had a chance to meet until he gave a presentation in town for the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector. Until now, we only communicated through blog comments and e-mail exchanges.

When I first met him, it struck me how much tall he was, and how much deeper his voice was than I expected.

Jason is like me in so many ways, something I find extremely rare. We share a strong self-awareness and a penchant for self-improvement, as well as the same views on love and tastes in women. Perhaps it could be said that Jason is an extroverted version of me. We could discuss things we normally reserve for our close friends, and continue as if we had already known each other’s stories for years. He’s a true kindred spirit, and many times I felt like believing in him meant I believed in myself as well.

Brunch was filled with such stimulation that I forgot to take a picture, so I settled for this one when I went to see him off at the train station. I’m so glad I was able to capture his perpetual smile, that same smile I see in his pictures when he traveling the world, in Budapest, Ghana, New Orleans, and other places with names too foreign for me to remember.

My Tai Chi teacher recently added the Yang style broadsword to the curriculum. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ecstatic, as I’ve waited quite a while to learn a weapon form. There’s something romantic and exotic about wielding one of the four great Chinese weapons. I find it delightfully ironic that it’s a gweilo who’s catalyzed such an interest in my own culture. Take THAT, my racist and sexist Chinese ancestors.

As for the ukulele, one day I found out how inexpensive they can be and bought one right away. It’s a Mahalo Les Paul style ukulele (right down to the square tuning pegs) with an extended neck for higher register notes. In many ways, the ukulele is the perfect instrument for me right now; cheap, easy enough that I can teach myself¹, and not too hard on the fingers².

It feels fucking fantastic to be playing music in some form again. I did years of piano and flute lessons in elementary school to high school, and took a very long hiatus from then till now. And that was mostly in band, when I couldn’t choose the music I wanted to play. Now I can play the songs I like, and the advantage is that I’ve probably heard them a few hundred times so I already know them inside-out.

With my years of music lessons and performances from my youth, it’s not like I’m learning music from scratch, I’m simply figuring out how to apply what I already know about tone, posture, tuning, volume, fingering³, timing, and intonation, to another instrument. Admittedly, it’s been very slow going, and it’s like I’m learning a new language as I train my fingers to achieve a dexterity that was never there before.

The interesting thing is that my last few years practicing Tai Chi has helped me learn the ukulele. In my Tai Chi class, I’ve gained the patience and perseverance required to practice the same moves over and over again until they become a natural part of my muscle memory. In the beginning, it was a lot of concentration spent just trying to remember what to do next in the form, but now that I don’t need to think about them when I practice, my concentration goes into fine-tuning the little details. The same principles can be applied to the ukulele (or any instrument, for that matter), and I’m trying to get to the point where I don’t need to think about what my fingers should be doing, and just concentrate on playing with the right kind of expressiveness.

Which is why I have a broadsword and a ukulele resting on the wall next to my desk. Any time I need a break, I pick up one of them and practice for a few minutes.

1. Because I really don’t have time for another time-consuming hobby [↑]
2. The strings are nylon, instead of the metal of guitars, so the callouses aren’t as bad. The health of my hands is also an important thing to me. [↑]
3. Though the fingering for a stringed instrument is really different from piano and flute. [↑]

When I look at this picture, I see the flaws. The stretch marks on my back, and especially prominent on the side of my ass. Those strange red blemishes on my shoulder that I don’t remember having. The lack of junk in the trunk so common in Asian people. I didn’t even know I had a mole down there.

I used to have body-image issues. Always thinking I was too skinny, and too ugly.

Then someone made me feel differently. She treated every part of my body with as much attention and love as I treated hers. She was the first person to ever make me believe that I was attractive too. Some days, I felt as handsome as she was pretty.

I turn 30 in nine months, and now that she’s gone, I wonder if anyone will ever see me that way again.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask

We cover a lot of ground on the drive, stuff I wouldn’t admit to just anyone. It’s good to have a set amount of time for some one on one. We see each other at parties, but it’s never time by ourselves.

We get there a few hours early because it isn’t so much about the game as hanging out with the two friends I don’t see enough. There’s a cooler full of snow and beer, and the food is coming in protein; pigs-in-blankets, ground beef nachos, chicken fingers, crab dip, meat balls.

For a night, I’m with guys who punch arms, exchange verbal jabs, and laugh at blue collar jokes. Two little girls run around, and no one ever lets that change them. Now they’re fathers, but they’ll always be real men.

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I’m currently on autopilot. Doing without thinking, and just being.

It’s a strange feeling because I’ve been trying to get to this level where I’m no longer conscious of trying to be at this level¹. It’s a recursive nightmare. But now that I’ve been here for a few days, I’m not sure if I like it. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m not used to it, because I feel like I’m missing something, or because I feel way too overstimulated.

I tried to schedule a day of rest, aka me time, aka hermitizing in my house, in between every event, but that didn’t work out. I won’t have a single day to myself until the 3rd of January. I was hoping for a holiday where I could sit and do nothing for two days in a row, just so it’d be like a long weekend at least. I’ve been trying to celebrate because I finished my contracts early, but I suppose these last few days have been enough of a treat, even if it’s left me without any time to withdraw and reflect.

One day I woke up at Darren’s house, went downstairs, turned on the TV, and Serendipity had just started. I remember watching this generic holiday drivel set in a New York Christmas at Vicky’s house back when I was in university. It was definitely Christmas back then cause I was back home in Toronto, before my parents divorced, and we went to house parties as a family. It was it’s own little serendipitous sign, reminding me the holidays were here, and I should take it all in for a second.

1. Croupier, starring Clive Owen, is completely based on this idea. Go see it. [↑]

Day one

At security, I’m selected randomly for a screening. The guard asks my age. “Twenty…”, I begin, trying to remember if I’m 27, 28, or 29. “Twenty. Okay.”, he says, cutting me off. Somehow, he believes I look nearly a decade younger than I am. For two days, I’m packed light, with no checked baggage. In my rush, I forget to get some American money. This worries me.

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It’s SO great to work with a couple who appreciates art…enough to be willing to get naked for it.

A little while ago, I stopped shaving. I had the flu for about five days, and already had a five-day shadow developed when that began. Then with a lack of social engagements, I decided to let it keep growing, lest I lose such a generous head start that only began because I was too lazy when I was sick.

I took this picture, and it was more than three weeks without touching a razor at that point.

Aaron always keeps a neatly trimmed beard, so I asked him how he takes care of it; which direction to shave, what length to start trimming, etc. It was strange to be seeking shaving advice from someone at this point in my life. Most of the hair is around the mouth and on chin, with only an embarrassing half-dozen wires sprouting randomly from my cheeks, so it required a touch of maintenance.

For a long time, I didn’t know what to think of it, whether I liked it or not. Aaron said to me, “Sometimes, you don’t need to know”, and I went with that for a while. Maybe time would give me an answer.

Soon after, I started shaving again. It wasn’t getting any thicker, and I didn’t think I could pull it off.

I turn 30 in 11 months, and I still can’t grow a beard.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask