chopsticks

|| You picked up the chopsticks and started eating. 

Chopsticks dancing with the rice and vegetables, chop suey in the bowl. The chopsticks start making sounds when you're nearly finished with the rice, ringing and clashing against the porcelain.

Repetitions, meal after meal, I start to become, you start to get wrinkles.

The chopsticks stain of cigarette scents. You never stopped smoking, though you attempted to quit. You stopped finding yourself.

"I am too old to start learning," you say.
I began to look for self. "I want to keep learning," I enchant.

I go to places, from rivers to mountains to oceans, one after another. You see the world through the photographs I sent. Something inside you starts to dismantle.

When I started feeling comfortable outside, you unraveled new parts of self.

I come home. You started using new chopsticks. They look golden, yet you are still using the same old cracked porcelain bowls. You eat with the rim of the bowl to your mouth. The cigarette scents stain the chopsticks and the bowl. The rice bowl is always full to start. The chopsticks dance with the rice quickly. Once the bowl finishes, the chopsticks enter the sink, the dishwasher, ready for another meal, for another dance with the dishes.

I learned about salmon. They start as eggs in the river streams, hatching into alevin with a lunch bag attached. As they grow into fry, they get to swim freely, starting to make their way downstream in the river. They get to new places, meet predators, and hunt food along the way. Finally, they reach the salty ocean. There, they see bigger, crazier predators. There, they mature. They will know when it is time: they make their way back upstream, jumping against the flow, finally to the river they were born, and they lay new eggs. The cycle continues.

I stare at the grilled salmon on the table. I wonder what journeys they have been on, what places they have gone to. I wonder if I have really gone to the ocean yet.

I stare at your cracked bowl. You also got some salmon.

I started using new chopsticks with salmon engraved on them. The new chopsticks dance with the rice, veggies, and salmon. The chopsticks lie in parallel with each other, then bundled by human fingers. They are tools that enable the transactions between food and the human body. They are also part of the cycles of our becoming, meal after meal.

You taught me how to use chopsticks, but I do not remember having meals with you when I was younger.

I continue eating.

Today we eat soup. In the memory soup of nostalgia, I am savoring the nutty aftertaste. I was labeled "malnourished" on the health forms during annual check-ups. People come hold my arms and scream: "Ah, thin like chopsticks!" I always looked down at my arms, stretched them out. Yes, they could be parallel just like the chopsticks. But they can also move around, twist, and become perpendicular. I love it when my arms can move rhythmically.

You have added many vegetables to the soup. I use my new chopsticks to mix the ingredients, season a bit more. Then I taste with my fingers.

The chopsticks slap the table.

"Use the chopsticks!"

Silence follows loudness.

The river is still following. I wonder what songs they sing, which salmon will swim in parallel with me, all the way to the ocean. Once I reach the ocean, I will get new chopsticks to prepare for the way back upstream.

I leave home with my chopsticks.

I brought my chopsticks to work. Keyboard clicking fills the sickly silence. The office rectangular desks are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the doors, boxing in perceptions of time and life. The silence pays for the stability. In the cyclical clicking, the chopsticks add to the monotones during the unpaid lunch breaks. In the silence, the arms also stay still in parallel, like bent wooden chopsticks abandoned after a single use. The words on the screen become predictable. The spreadsheets turn into bills and receipts, then payroll. Payroll after payroll, you let time pass through the tick-tock of keyboards, and you forget to ask questions. The cycle continues.

“I am too old to learn” now rings a new flavor. The system wants you to conform to the mass narratives, so that you can abide. You become chopsticks in the system, transporting food to the predators. 

You look down at your arms. They are now chopsticks made with hemlock wood with salmon engravings. They are in parallel with each other, perpendicular to the lines you fill on the spreadsheets. You no longer feel anything by being a mediator between the spreadsheets and the master databases of billable “hours.” 

You are still using the same old new chopsticks. Your words also become predictable. Meal after meal, you let age wash over you with the stained chopsticks, dancing with time, aching without meaning. 

You are stacked up with other chopsticks, made into a tower. They call it harmonic modern architecture, where chopsticks of different materials, lengths, and textures make a great visual symphony. It is all about the chopsticks, they say. Tucked in between the chopsticks, you try to leave yourself some room to breathe, but the gaps are too narrow. With just slightly more resistance, you could be snapped in half.

You try to extend your length. You snapped.

The river keeps flowing.

You find an abundance of snapped chopsticks on the shore. They are made of different colors. You bundle them and start to make a tower. 

You gaze afar. Up the river, there is a gigantic tower made of chopsticks, standing tall. The tower shines. You swim upstream to reach for it.

Stroke after stroke, full of stiffness. Out of breath, you drown.

The next day, there are a few more snapped chopsticks washed up on the shore.

You stand in parallel with You.

You picked up the chopsticks and started eating. ||