Creative Writing
(Short takes on the personal, excluding writing about political and social issues)
1. Green Reservoir
2. Smiling
Environment
Green Reservoir
The color of the lake struck me. Not the color of moss or algae, but the green of Jell-o, of olive hair detergent and food coloring.
The islands were unchanged. I could see the same trees rooted in their jagged rocks. Dirt paths winding up the island hills, ferns reaching out from their sides. At a rasher age I would scale the islands with shorts on, and the ferns would leave my legs itching for hours. Sparrow eggs, fallen from their nests, would lay scattered around the bushes, some with yolk pouring out their cracked shells and seeping into the dirt.
A wood canoe was secured to the foot of the dam, bobbing to the push of the lake’s waves. It was the same canoe my grandfather and I rowed around the lake every year before, sometimes visiting the islands to collect eggs, sometimes checking the net traps for trout.
Yet they no longer contributed to an image of tranquility. It was as if the lake had expelled everything from its embrace, its common aesthetic. Everything seemed foreign to it, like flowers in a plastic jar.
A minute ago, while climbing to the top of the dam, I was expecting to see the same transparent lake I had seen every summer. Things always seemed to change very slowly in my father’s hometown. I had forgotten that time passed as quickly anywhere in the world.
My grandfather had not given me any word of advance before I went to the dam. As one of the dam monitors working here every day, he would have known about it. Yet he was a man who spoke only when words were needed, even to his children and grandchildren. Hence I knew about the green only when I saw it.
I recall feeling immediate anger. Who had ruined this paradise, and for what reason? Was it for profit, or the economy, or out of pure carelessness? Knowing nothing of economics and environmental science, I could barely form my own hypothesis.
At that moment I had wanted to find my grandfather and ask what had caused this contamination. But at the same time, a mechanism in my mind began taking its course.
It was a mechanism that guarded the comfort of my mind like a cobra guarding its nest. It allowed me to avoid anything unpleasant, anything that would gnaw at me from the inside. Instead of admitting that something cruel had taken place, something I had no power to change, it seemed easier to turn away from the issue and spin stories into the truth.
I employed the same tactic I used on politics, on social issues, and on family relationships. I shrunk away from the whole matter, retreating into a world separate to reality where all problems are either irrelevant or nonexistent.
Perhaps this was normal. Perhaps the pollution was worth it, and some economic value was gained. It was probably no different than the two looming factory chimneys across my apartment window in Shanghai, another sign of “economic progress”. In that occasion, all I needed to do was swap rooms with my brother whose room faced another direction, and the chimneys bothered me no more.
And thus I severed the lake from my childhood. It became a plain green reservoir which I would never visit again, either in person or in memory.
Behavior
Smiling
Among all my smiles, some joyful, some mere tokens of friendliness, there are two I clearly remember.
One afternoon as a fourth grader, twenty minutes past dismissal, I strolled down an empty school corridor. Sunlight yawning through the windows, there was still time to pass until someone would come to pick me up. Lazy sun, lazy sneakers.
A blonde-haired boy trod in my direction. Looking roughly two years younger than me, he followed behind me repeating the word “idiot”. Bewildered, I continued walking for a while, until the blonde pounced on me and started punching.
I had many options. Find someone. Grab his wrist, push him away, mash him against the hallway walls, perform some sort of defense. I chose none. I quietly absorbed the sting of his fists, and I smiled.
When I ask my younger self why he smiles, he says he is unsure of what else he should do. If he reports to a faculty member, peers might laugh at him for being unable to fight a kid younger than him. If he fights back he might injure the boy, and he isn’t confident in jurisdiction resulting in his favor. And so he chooses to smile; a minimal gesture of defense, a feeble claim that he is unscathed by the knuckles that sink into his abdomen. Underneath the smile hides an uncertainty, a fear that taking action will lead to something worse than what he currently experiences.
The blonde eventually left. I brushed the dust off my shirt, secured the trousers he had pulled down in his assault.
Two years later, in the same hallway, a line of sixth graders listened at the murmur of a trumpet in the far distance.
​
Looking outside the hall window, a girl named Elsa raised her right arm solemnly, her thumb touching the tip of her nose, the other fingers spread apart.
Tintin, another boy in our grade, noticed her. “What the fuck is that?”
“It’s a salute. It’s how we salute to the flag at public school.” Elsa replies.
“It’s ridiculous. You look like a rooster.” he said, mimicking the saluting gesture. A few boys chuckle.
“I won’t let you say that!” cried Elsa.
“What are you going to do about it? Huh, pig?”
Elsa’s face reddened, she took half a step forward and looked around for support. My lips formed an uneasy curve. This time, my smile was a hideous contract between me and Tintin—well said, amazing joke. In exchange for my signal of approval I requested to not be seen as someone like Elsa. The same smile shoved Elsa away, isolated her, fueled her sense of helplessness.
Some nights I lie in bed recalling the smile, and the guilt sinks my fingernails into my bedsheets. It is an unsettling reminder of my choice of inaction.
Smiles shape easily. Just a twitch of muscle, a curve of mouth, and relationships appear secured, problems appear fixed. Yet I can’t help but remember them as a mask I used to hide cowardice. Afraid that action might lead to inconvenience, I swallowed stinging pain, sympathy, indignance. I gave consent to abuse. I staged a grin, cheap compensation for the lack of a fight.
Smiling, I leaned into silence, attempting to nudge past harm. Waiting for the beast to tire, the storm to pass, foolishly hoping that the smile will carry me safely through turbulence.