Rose (10 minutes)

Rose, Rose, thou art dead. I see your petals falling, each after each. There’s enough water in the vase, but it’s not where you belong. This transparent vase is not where you belong; you belong to a certain romantic garden in the suburb of Paris. I remember this passage by a Taiwanese writer, in which she throws an analogy between being a foreigner and a transplanted flower. It survives, but only merely. Being a stranger in a strange land is never easy. Where is this romantic garden you really belong to? I can imagine Augustine from La Maison du chat-qui-pelote bending down, plucking one of your sisters with her tempestuous smile. I saw her illustration in the Balzac house. She looks so content with herself, smiling in a way so femme fatale. That’s the kind of smile you see from a woman in love, or a woman courted by numerous gentlemen. Little does she know things would turn out all differently (but not surprisingly). Rose, or I should call you, Augustine? How are you holding up in this transparent vase filled with water with a couple of your equally unfortunate sisters? 

Loretta (15 minutes)

Loretta oh Loretta, I am not sure about how to spell your name. You may be a beautiful delicate girl, or a handsome young man. At first I misheard your name as Lolita, and I thought you are the reincarnation of this victim of pedophile. Oh Loretta, I know nothing about you. They say you are the protagonist of this famous song, but I am not sure I’ve even heard of this song before. Loretta oh Loretta, how should I imagine your face? Do you have blond curly hair, or black straight hair like me? Loretta, I don’t know about your story and I will write you one. When you were six you used to chase the butterflies on the backyard. You always find the Germans interesting: how can they name such a sweet beautiful creature with a name with so nasty a pronunciation like Schmetterling? But you are not chasing the butterflies because of their colorful wings. You are colorblind and you never tell blue from red or purple. Loretta oh Loretta I decided you are a girl. You used to chase the butterflies barefoot, and that was how you got your boy feet—size 28—said your late granny. Loretta oh Loretta you never care for others. You show all your emotions in your face and you don’t care if it’s inappropriate. You pout when you are upset and you give people a dirty look when they deliberately get in your way. Loretta oh Loretta, your mum has always told you to play coy. She says a beautiful girl like you should behave like a lady and should never laugh out loud like that girl from a blue-collar family. You always disagree. You have way more fun catching butterflies together with this girl than talking about tea and knitting with other snobbish girls. They detest caterpillars but they don’t know butterflies start from being a hideous repulsive caterpillar. When they laugh they always cover their mouth, as if it were to make them more elegant. You always told this other girl they do this because they have ugly teeth. Loretta oh Loretta you remember one time you came over to this girl’s house and you two played in a box together. She drew wavy lines on your rosy cheek with a dulled pencil. It didn't hurt but rather itched. When you came home your mum told you to look into the mirror and asked you how you think about this. As a matter of fact you didn’t find it terribly ugly but they wouldn't allow you to play with this girl again. Loretta oh Loretta, they say they have given you enough freedom and since you don’t know how to make the best of it you don’t deserve this privilege anymore. Loretta oh Loretta you never forget. You never forget the sad look of her eyes when you told her you were never to be friends with her again. Loretta oh Loretta you heard years after that this girl got pregnant when she was fifteen. You are still single and you wonder if she’s happy. Loretta oh Loretta, please do tell me, are you happy?

Dead Women (8 minutes, written on the balcony of Pi Cafe)

I really should stop this Ophelia frenzy and start writing about something else but this theme simply keeps coming to my mind. Maybe I should write about death itself. Death. I am thinking about this poem by Emily Dickenson. It goes roughly like this “Because I cannot stop for death, it kindly stopped for me.” I wonder how she was feeling when she wrote down that passage. Was she expecting death in peace? Another dead woman comes to my mind. Sylvia Plath. I cannot stop thinking about her “Lady Lazarus.” A woman with 9 lives, like a cat, how remarkable! But I am sure she’d rather stay dead than going on this unbearable Wiederkehr of resurrection. Oh was her Daddy a Nazi? But a vampire figure most definitely. Vampire. The undead. Nazism is not dead yet, it resurrects itself with neo-Nazism. And this father-daughter complex is also undead. I have a similar complex with my dad too. I always think I am letting him down. And it’s my original sin that I was born a girl. I am the unwanted daughter. My mum already gave birth to my older sister so why was I not born a boy? If I were then everyone in the Chang family would be happy. The balcony wind is freezing my fingers but I have to keep on writing. The time is up. Thanks for the timely beep of the stopwatch saving me from this agony. Isn’t writing supposed to be enjoyable? But people say the truly good works are completed in agony. Wait, why am I still writing?

My Wife (10 minutes)

Imagine a world where all men died. Women have taken over the globe. I happened to be born to this “New Paradise,” claimed the politicians. Don’t ask me how the same-sex reproduction is even possible. My mum told me I just jumped out of her tummy one particular day when she had too much Thai food.

I read from the encyclopedia that the world used to be dominated by heterosexual hegemony, heterosexual monogamy as a matter of fact. But now that dangerous liaisons won’t lead to newborn babies monogamy is no longer on the go. From the definition of the old Oxford Dictionary we are all libertines. Marriage is no longer a part of the institution. People just stay with whomever they like and once they grow tired, voila, goodbye.

I am one of the peculiar being in this society for I cannot help but imagine myself in this good old world where marriage still exists or even functions. I would like to find my Mr Right, like in those old school chick-flicks. But judging from the lack of male in our planet I will have to make do with a Miss Right. So it happens a girl is interested in me, and I am thinking what if I just seize this chance and make her my wife, and re-enact the old good system of marriage.

This girl must be really in love with me for she doesn’t find my idea completely insane. She says she would do everything to keep me happy, and she is willing to become my wife if that shall be the case. But we have a rough start, where can we get married? We need a church, but in this era people have all lost their religions and we are short of priests—the oldest one died a decade ago. The churches have been renovated to museums, funny though, we actually have to pay for entrance. I don’t think that many people are tempted to visit this relic of the past century. And they are not that uncommon anyways. In Berlin there are already more than a hundred church museums.

So we can’t find a legitimate church, nor can we find a living priest. We just cannot get married. I suggest my girlfriend that we just get married spiritually. We tell everyone we are wife and wife, and we don’t give it a damn if they laugh at us. My wife says why not. She will do whatever she can to keep me happy.