300 Words a Day for 30 Days: Part 2

“Are you absolutely sure all this is necessary?” I ask my aunt, Isabel Hsu. I finger the stitches as the mixture of city and clinging-for-dear-life vestiges of farmland skitters by the taxi windows. We dodge cyclists like they were pitfalls in a video game, turtle shells in Mario Kart perhaps, points deducted and life decreased should our vehicles touch. It’s likely the driver does not understand English, but I am not terribly worried about him understanding. My worries are occupied with more important things, like whether I’ll ever get to teach at an international school again, what Mom and Dad would have said if they were still alive, how Uncle Timothy Hsu is going to choreograph the dismantling of my two years in China without breaking or losing any of my possessions - and whether, assuming I never kill myself competently, I can one day wear short sleeves without embarrassment.

Aunt Isabel snorts. “They pumped your stomach, Margaret dear. Now don’t ask silly questions and eat your breakfast.” We left for the airport at five in the morning, and she insisted that I take along this steamed pork bun that now sits in my lap like a quadraplegic bunny. Though I’m not hungry, I unwrap the plastic from it to show good faith.

I don’t mean sending me to a temporary psychiatric ward in the U.S - after a few days’ observation to make sure the worst of my temptation had passed, and for them to put me on enough sedatives and antidepressants to make me numbly melancholy rather than violently despairing. Insurers have to hedge their bets. I mean making my relatives come all this way to tidy up my affairs and babysit me. Just because I tried to die earlier this week doesn’t mean I’m a child.

A New Novel

Last night the idea for my next novel came to me! A realistic one for a change, even. I'm calling it Sweeping the Puddles Away.

Twenty-nine-year-old American Margaret Hsu attempts suicide while living as an expatriate in Beijing. She is discovered, saved, and sent to a temporary psychiatric ward in Virginia, the USA, for two weeks as doctors adjust her medications. Woven in with her experiences and tentative friendships with the other women in the ward are flashbacks to the tangled web of mental illness and life experiences that led to her desire to die. She finds solace in working on a script, just for fun, of a modern version of Hamlet where the protagonist is merely under the delusion that he is Prince of Denmark. She lets her hidden writing talents blossom for the first time, having been discouraged from creative activities growing up. She also begins to rekindle a romance with an ex-boyfriend, who is one of the few people to visit during her stay. By the time she is released to recover with a cousin in Maryland, she has begun, slowly but surely, to heal.

Here is what I wrote this morning, as part of my 300-words-a-day challenge (384 words, actually, yay):

Beijing is not designed for heavy rain; it is flat, without enough places for the water to go, and full of cyclists holding an umbrella with one hand and trying to steer through schizophrenic traffic with the other. This is obvious even in my gated housing development out in Shunyi, the district near the airport, where the international schools tend to cluster. Lake Limonade is designed for expatriates, hence its large staff of guards and cleaners. I see a crowd of young men after every storm, shirtless, hollering in Mandarin unison, pushing their giant brooms towards the nearest drain. They are trying to sweep the puddles away.

I like the rain, in fact, which many people wouldn’t expect if they knew my temperament. Even growing up in the United States I liked the thrumming of it, how it meant P.E. class had to be inside (no running the mile) on schooldays, the smell of the soil after. In Beijing the pollution clears away for a day, maybe even two, and you can see the sky without smog blocking it. I wish it were raining now.

It would seem more theatrical for a gale, a maelstrom, or, hell, even a light drizzle, given what I’ve finally screwed up the courage to do. But no, it’s one of our typical days with the sunlight sifting as best it can through the dioxides and monoxides, everything calm. I am empty and quiet the way one is after thorough vomiting. I take thirty grams of Klonopin, prescribed for my panic attacks at the dosage of a quarter of a gram a day, and wash it down with a bottle of astringent cheap vodka. I slice lengthwise down my forearms with a steak knife for good measure – I wince during the millisecond before I plunge but it barely registers as pain - letting my bleeding limbs flop over the side of the bathtub to simplify cleanup for whoever comes after.

It is through a dreamy haze that I notice my ayi, literally “auntie”, metaphorically “housekeeper”, unlock the door. I forgot she had the keys to all the rooms, and that she has been worried about me lately. Stupid, stupid. She screams and I wave sluggishly. “Mei guanxi, zhende mei guanxi…” Not a big deal, really not a big deal…

My Freelance Work

http://www.elance.com/s/donaya_haymond/

Having published novels is delightful, but isn't paying much yet. While clicking around to see if someone with my skills could earn a little extra money, I found Elance.com, a sort of matchmaking service between people with various skills that can be transmitted through e-mail and the people who need their work.

I've made $330 so far with various editing and writing assignments, with $250 more due me later this week. As they say in diet commercials, results may differ, since my published novels impress people who want to get published themselves. Putting up a profile and doing some bidding on jobs (you get 10 free bid "dollars" a month under the basic plan, which costs no money up front, only a percentage of anything you end up making) can't hurt, though.

Bird by Bird: A Recommendation

Just read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - got it on Kindle and devoured it in between the chunks of other urgent things to do over two days - and I can see why so many people love it. For one thing, I have resolved to follow her challenge of writing 300 words a day for 30 days while I try to figure out what novel I'm doing after Seasons Four Open the Door, as I currently have no idea except for the neat title that's been bouncing around in my head for a couple years now.

Even if it doesn't galvanize you to any sort of action, though, this is a friendly, wry, clever, eminently lovable book about writing and healing the self. The chapter on how being published, though a valuable thing, does not solve all your problems, rung especially true for me. Before I was published all I wanted was to be published. Now I long for a bigger publisher. Then after that I'll probably yearn to go on talk shows. And so on. It never ends.

The book is a real treat. I give it all the stars allowed.

An Old Ghost

At this site: http://www.voicesnet.org/displayonepoem.aspx?poemid=75306

I wrote this poem when I was thirteen years old! For extra credit, to be precise. My homeroom teacher at the International School of Beijing, Mr. Pearson - a native of Wyoming who collected unused airsickness bags from various airlines - offered various slightly off-kilter assignments for those seeking additional points. The prompt was a quote by some astronomer, whose name I have long forgotten, but one I remember was female. She said, "When I look up at the night sky, all I see are whales and fishes." We were invited to make anything of that we wished.

For those uninterested in following the link, here is the text:

SWIM WITH THE STARS

Stars as whales
Stars as fishes
How is this possible?
How can you see it that way?
Look up at the night sky
Sparks swim
In the dark sea primeval
The edge of the Milky Way floats by
Like foam across the waves
A deep sense of longing
With an unknown cause
To fly with the stars
Swim through the abyss
Quiet hushed world
Like being underwater
Peering below
Instead of looking up
Our imagination connects the dots
Giving the patterns stories and lives
Awe like the awe of the sea
The sea and the sky
Both mysterious
Threatening in a way
Yet strangely comforting
We cannot go far to explore their secrets
Only dream and admire
Graze the surface of their world
Twinkling points of light
Clustering and spreading
Shoals and schools of stars
While the galaxies dip and spin
Graceful behemoths of the beyond
Like fish
Like whales

In an ocean as deep as Time

It's not exactly great literature, but it's not bad at all for age 13. In any case, I got a bucketful of points for it, my math teacher printed out a larger copy and stuck it on his wall for the rest of the year, and the school put it in the newsletter. It's weird to see it again, with 889 views, no less. A good weird.