by Tao Lin
Mike seemed happy and tired. Li imagined he’d been grumpier the past few years due to worrying about Alan, who, Li knew from their parents, had seen a speech therapist for a while but now seemed, when not sick, to be garrulous and articulate.
Mike asked Li about 4K. Li told him about the poop notices. Mike asked about the movie of Li’s third novel. Li said the director’s dad had directed Commando. Julie joked Arnold Schwarzenegger should play Li’s dad, and Li felt a little defensive.
Li asked Alan if he liked school. Alan didn’t respond, even after his mom asked him to, but later he began to whisper phrases like “eyebrow butt” and “face butt” to his parents and giggling. He walked to Li, whispered “glasses butt,” and laughed.
Mike grinned and asked Li if he wanted clothes. Whenever Li visited, Mike gave him some clothes, which comprised most of Li’s wardrobe. Li said yes.
Walking to the N train, he ate two date bars and praised them, though he knew the peanuts would probably cause days of pain. He told Mike he’d get clothes next time.
Julie photographed Li with Mike and Alan. Mike smiled at Li and, for the first time in their adult life that Li could remember, moved toward him to hug him.
Year of Mountains
Mediation
When Li arrived in Taiwan on January 17, 2017, for a twelve-week visit, his longest yet, his parents seemed startlingly averse to each other. His presence inflected their bitter rapport into a faintly comical disgruntledness, like on day four, when his mom, napping in the TV room, said, “Can you help me cover my legs?” about a blanket.
“Help me cover,” she repeated sternly.
Li’s dad seemed to silently help.
Li was drawing tiny circles in his room.
“Give me some,” said Li’s mom a minute later.
Li’s dad gave her probably two or three peanuts.
“Why are you so selfish?” said Li’s mom. “So weird.”
“Should have bought more,” said Li’s dad.
“In the whole world, I’ve never met anyone as selfish as you,” said Li’s mom.
“Give Du one,” said Li’s dad.
* * *
—
The next morning, Li’s dad asked Dudu to bring him toilet paper. “Dad is weird—even though I’m here, he asks Du,” said Li’s mom, and asked Li to bring his dad toilet paper. Li told his parents they’d be fucked—bù xíng le—without him and Dudu, through whom they could speak, think, and feel in friendly, loving tones to themselves and each other, and his parents agreed.
Switchbacking up a paved trail on Flamingo Mountain that day, Dudu ran ahead, stopping regularly to watch and wait for the others. “Mountain-climbing dog,” said Li’s dad, listening to music from his phone without earphones. Descending the mountain, Li piqued with interest, hearing his parents bondingly criticize a seventies Chinese singer together.
“You started going with me your first year of college?” said Li’s dad, suddenly contemplative.
“Going with you what,” said Li’s mom.
“Started being with me,” said Li’s dad.
Li’s mom didn’t respond, but they stayed in a good mood, praising Dudu’s exploratory curiosity, protective leadership, and biophilia.
* * *
—
That night, researching for his novel, Li emailed his mom asking if she’d ever seen his dad cry. She said she’d seen it once, before they wed, when he talked about his parents dying when he was a college freshman. “I felt sad seeing him cry so I made a promise in my heart that I would help and take care of him all my life. I have kept my promise so far.”
* * *
—
The next day, Li emailed his mom asking how she met his dad. She said in 1971, after her first year of college, while teaching high school English and caring for her stroke-weakened mom, five of Fat Uncle’s friends, including Li’s dad, had visited. Days later, she’d gotten a letter from Li’s dad, asking if they could write to each other to improve their English.
They married in 1976. Half a year later, Li’s dad left for the United States for his doctorate. Li’s mom joined him a year later. “The first time Dad said he was going, my heart ached,” she said in her email to Li. “I did not want to leave my family. My mother cried. She was worried she might not see me again. At the airport, I gave Mike to Auntie and cried all the way to America.”
In 1979, she returned to Taiwan and brought Mike to the States. Two months later, she got a telegraph from Thin Uncle. Mike started crying before she read it: “Mother passed away peacefully.”
* * *
—
At a waterfall at the bottom of Carp Mountain, Li learned of phytoncides (antimicrobial compounds given off by plants) and anions (molecules with extra electrons) from a dual-language sign calling them “air vitamins crucial to mental and physical health.”
In his room that night, he read that forests, mountains, seashores, and waterfalls had tens of thousands of anions per cubic centimeter, countrysides had a thousand, city parks five hundred, city streets fifty, air-conditioned rooms zero to twenty-five, and that below a thousand impaired cognition and slowed physical recovery.
At dinner the next night, Li told his parents a Japanese study had found that cancer-killing lymphocytes and intracellular anticancer proteins showed increased activity for a week after trips to forests, or “forest-bathing,” as it was called in Japan. The study was more evidence that the broken human–nature symbiosis caused cancer and other diseases.
“Then we should keep climbing mountains,” said Li’s mom.
* * *
—
Li didn’t get visibly upset with a parent until day eleven. They were underground on a train platform in transit to lunch with six relatives. Li’s dad’s younger sister called, unable to find the restaurant. Li’s dad began to blame Li’s mom with an anguished expression, as if something terrible had happened.
On the train, Li criticized his dad for overreacting and habitually blaming others. Li was on LSD. He’d been alternating days of LSD and cannabis. They alighted after two stops to transfer trains.
As they waited on the platform, Li’s dad’s sister called again, and Li’s dad became upset again. Li took his dad’s phone, gave it back, said he was leaving, escalated up and away, turned around, escalated back to his parents, and continued to lecture his dad, who walked away. The jazzy, laid-back remix of the Chopin nocturne played in the station.
On the train, Li began to assign some blame to his mom. She’d pressured his dad too much, hounding him to finish work. Pressure could build. Spite could emerge.
At Ximen Station, they couldn’t find Li’s dad. Li found him and called him “stupid,” feeling strange and mean. He seemed to be trying to give his dad, who compulsively called people, including sometimes Li, stupid, “a taste of his own medicine.”
At the restaurant, Li gave Thin Uncle a bottle of liver capsules, rich in vitamin B12, for his hand tremor, which had returned in the past year, and got up twice to reconciliatorily share food with his dad, who was seated with his younger sister’s family.
Near the end of lunch, Li’s dad briefly massaged a seated Li’s shoulders from behind. “Don’t be so mean to me,” he said. “Okay?”
“You were mean first,” said Li. “To Mom.” While waiting on edits from his editor, he’d been putting his energy into parent mediation, which until that day had felt calm and gameful and productive. The first ten days, he’d increasingly thought he’d just be lighthearted and composed with his parents from then on—a sagacious, Zen presence.
Outside, they seemed happy again, glad to have recovered, but at Cotton Field, an organic grocery store, Li’s mom got overcharged for the third time in a year, and Li’s dad began to berate the employees, seeming troublingly distraught.
On the busy sidewalk outside the
store, Li lectured his dad, who, aware his son was currently shameless and would employ cheap tactics, like increased volume, became quiet and agreeable. “Criticizing employees will obviously only make them make more mistakes—the opposite of what you want,” said Li, and felt self-conscious and unruly but kept talking, finally even quizzing his dad on three reasons why his behavior was unhelpful.
Walking to the train station, Li felt like he’d woken from a fluctuatingly nightmarish dream. Li’s mom, probably wanting to be apart from an unstable Li, said she was going to go get her watch fixed.
On the train, Li apologized to his dad and said he shouldn’t raise his voice, especially in public. His dad agreed and called him out of control. Li agreed and berated himself.
* * *
—
The next day, on the way to a movie, they passed where Li had escalated away from, then back to, his parents. “Remember when I left yesterday?” he said with a grin.
“You would’ve lost if you left, missing lunch,” said Li’s dad.
“No. Lunch was unhealthy. I’d rather eat at home.”
“Leaving is not good,” said Li’s mom. “It’s better to talk.”
“I’ve only yelled at you two once this year. Next year, I’ll yell even less.”
After the movie, they went home and went on a walk.
“In the past, I never wanted to walk,” said Li.
“You used to not want to do anything with us,” said Li’s mom.
“You used to be angry all the time—heh,” said Li’s dad. “What was there to be angry about?”
“I wasn’t angry,” said Li. “I was uncomfortable.”
After dinner, Li’s dad said, “Du! Hair child. It’s time. To lie down and rest.” Dudu followed him to bed, twirling and yapping. She liked when he slept. It was when he was least likely to go anywhere.
Li washed dishes, as he’d begun doing that year. Entering his room, he heard his mom call herself “Mi Mi” to Dudu. “Heh—I’m Mi Mi,” she repeated, seeming manic and zany.
Li felt comically uneased. His parents had been adding spoken, stoned-seeming laughs—“Heh” or “Heheh”—to the beginnings, ends, and middles of their sentences.
In his notes, Li listed some reasons why they were all getting more stoned over years—increased DHA, EPA, AA, and other endocannabinoid precursors; less glyphosate and other enzyme-inhibiting pesticides; more exercise and sleep.
* * *
—
In the morning, Li said he felt unwell due to eating frozen, unripe pineapple before bed, and had vomited in the middle of the night, so wasn’t hiking that day.
“What color was the vomit?” said Li’s mom.
“Black,” said Li, which seemed to scare her. “Not black. Brown.”
“We need to go to the emergency room if there was blood,” said Li’s mom.
“There wasn’t,” said Li. He measured cold coffee, brought it into his room, put it on his desk, and lay on his floor bed. In the past, he’d gotten defensive when his mom told him not to eat pineapple on its own; pineapple had become a sensitive topic.
Li’s mom knocked on Li’s ajar door. “Did your stomach hurt when you vomited?”
“No,” said Li, thinking the question seemed hard to answer.
“If you shit blood, you need to tell us,” said Li’s mom.
Li was silent.
“If there’s blood, we need to go to a hospital now.”
“There wasn’t blood,” said Li.
As his mom left the room, she said, “And you shouldn’t drink coffee now,” which frustrated Li because it seemed like bad advice and because he felt like it meant, “You’re so addicted to coffee that you’re even going to drink it now.”
Li left his room and told his mom he’d get a headache without caffeine. He emailed her an article on caffeine withdrawal, then went to tell her to read it. She was wearing earphones, washing dishes.
“We can’t talk when you wear earphones,” said Li. He returned to his room, chugged coffee, and lay in bed.
He got up and emailed his mom, apologizing for getting defensive about her concern, then went outside and felt better while biking and collecting orange flowers. He’d been gathering plant parts and posting photos of them online.
Biking home, he began to feel nauseated and negative again. His parents had said they bickered “even more” when he wasn’t there, which made him feel pressure to be there more. He felt overwhelmed by vicarious misery sometimes, imagining his parents hardening in his absence into the coral reef of resentment they’d grown over decades.
“You’re feeling a lot better,” said his mom when he got home.
Annoyed by the assertion, Li entered his room and lay frowning in bed. He felt disappointed and frustrated that he’d fallen so hard into hostile despair again—twice in three days, against his dad and now his mom. He felt infected by his parents’ bickering.
“Li,” said Li’s dad, pushing the door open. “Do you want to eat?”
“No. Can you buy mineral water for me?”
“Yes, after dinner,” said Li’s dad.
“Thank you,” said Li.
“If your stomach hurts too much, you should say something.”
“Of course I will,” said Li, who wasn’t bothered by his dad’s concern because, as he’d told his parents, it wasn’t overwhelming, unlike his mom’s sometimes.
Li’s mom entered and asked if she could touch Li’s forehead to check for fever. Li left his room, asked his dad to tell his mom to stop bothering him, went in his room, hit the dresser, closed his door in a last-second-softened slam, lay in bed, felt his heart grimacing, and emailed his mom another apology.
He felt better by that night. Before bed, he printed and read a paper that said buildings, besides lacking anions, which were neutralized by metal ducting, electronic screens, and Wi-Fi, had high levels of cations—molecules that lacked electrons and so absorbed them from people, suppressing immunity and muddling thought.
* * *
—
On a pre-dinner walk, Li said he’d shat blood two nights earlier. His mom calmly listened as he said the unripe pineapple’s enzymes had gotten deep into his gut, causing bleeding sores, and that if they’d gone to a hospital he probably would’ve gotten recovery-impeding procedures and/or drugs.
Li’s mom said she’d shat black for five days while alone in Florida in 2004. Finally, she’d gone to Dr. Chan, who’d sent her to a hospital, where she’d gotten a transfusion of three bags of blood.
They entered a public rose garden. Li and his dad filmed Dudu as she tumbled vigorously through a rosemary bush with her mouth open, stretching and squirming like a giant, short worm, inhaling phytoncides, anions, and microbes.
Li lifted Dudu to a Rosa multiflora—or Japanese rose—flower, which she sniffed. Many plants in parks in Taiwan were labeled with their scientific and common names.
Li’s mom said that except for fighting politicians, physically attacking one another in bleak displays regularly covered by international media, Taiwan was actually pretty good.
“They haven’t fought recently, right?” said Li.
“They still fight,” said Li’s mom.
* * *
—
The next night, Li was in the kitchen making chamomile tea when he heard his dad telling him from the TV room that his mom, who was on a walk, was brainwashed.
Li didn’t respond. He’d recently learned his dad supported a liberal party in Taiwan and a conservative party in the States, and that his mom preferred the opposite in both countries.
In his room, Li emailed his dad, “When you think Mom is brainwashed, remember that I think you’re brainwashed, but I don’t try to make you feel bad about it. Don’t call her brainwashed. Everyone is brainwashed. If you have to talk about it, tal
k to me.”
“Okay,” replied Li’s dad. “Good point. I need to have someone. Maybe you. To talk to when I need to comment on KMT.” His receptivity surprised Li.
* * *
—
On Carp Mountain the next day, Li carried Dudu while ascending steep stairs. Twice, Li’s dad sat, told the others to go without him, and continued climbing after encouragement. They reached a Daoist temple called Whole Epiphany Temple.
Li’s dad asked Li if it was good that monks meditated and chanted all day. Li said monks showed there were other ways to live. Monks didn’t “contribute to society,” said Li’s dad in English. Li said they contributed to their own society.
Li’s dad said with five employees he turned one day into five days, and Li said with recovery he was able to do and think five times more new things a day than before 2014.
He walked away and stood in place, flapping for five minutes. He couldn’t see microfireflies, or they weren’t there. The sky seemed empty, lucid, uncharged.
Maybe the swarming dots of light were an urban phenomenon. One cubic centimeter of urban air contained probably hundreds to millions of molecules of glyphosate, Earth’s most used pesticide, because gasoline, as per the 1990 Clean Air Act, was partly made from glyphosate-filled corn or sugarcane, Li had read. Maybe microfireflies were pesticides, flashing as they got buffeted and interpenetrated by municipal intensities of synthetic electromagnetic radiation—electrosmog—or maybe the overmind was helpfully disassembling toxins into atoms and light.
Li and his mom smiled while observing Li’s dad, who was seated on the temple stairs with Dudu on his lap, talking angrily into his phone with a grievously exasperated, extra-twitchy face, which often appeared during business calls.