My world in numbers

March 1st check-in, Melinda Lee reporting.

My life in numbers:
6:53 am Preemptive strike – head falls back down to the pillow
7:00 am Alarm rings
7:04 am Raise head again to look at clock
7:09 am Actually get up out of bed
7:48 am On the N train, ready to go
10 oz. Coffee from my little espresso machine in my hand in an old Starbucks cup
3 pcs. GOYA brand Mari biscuits consumed
One Seeing-eye dog accompanying blind passenger
8:14 am Change over to
#4 Express train to
14 th St. Union Square, transfer to
#6 Local train to Canal St. (if this is Tuesday or Thursday, minus an hour and a half to all of this to arrive at Astor Place by the same train by 7 am)

All this scribbled on an emptied Nestle hot cocoa packet in sharp lead pencil after thinking that writing my life down in numbers would be an entertaining exercise, until I realized that anything actually innovative to count would be tedious and may require forethought, such as: number of steps taken from home to work; number of people I made eye contact with on the train; number of people smiled at/from on the train; minutes taken to realize that the morning’s AM New York, albeit free, isn’t worth the retinal effort to read for the quality of its writing content. In order to be significant or insightful, the exercise has to either be sustained, or systematic, or both – or maybe neither. I chuckled to myself trying to devise means and goals in this effort during my commute, so if anything, then, it was worth the reconceptualization of what is otherwise routine.

Seeing the world in numbers is also a new and difficult perspective for me to embrace. I have for many years now aspired to viewing the world qualitatively, aesthetically, poetically, perhaps to the point of the impractical. Seeing in numbers now means seeing people as demographics, as representations, as symbols, as capital, rather than as colors (think “rainbow,” not race), friends, compatriots – but correspondently, also adversaries and competitors.

Yet seeing in numbers is helping me make judicious decisions. Emily’s mother Nancy – whom I chatted with after her ritual morning coffee and cigarette when I went for a blitzkrieg Philly jaunt to hold six-day old Kirsten against my bosom! – clarified for me that what I appear to be doing now is learning how to make decisions for myself. She said that was beautiful; I am surprised at just how simple and how right that is. To not feel compelled, but to have my own agency – this is what I am learning to achieve at this time.

Not that I have much of choice – preparations, considerations, and choices have to be made at this point. Due to my current roommate’s father’s ailing condition, I will have to move somewhere in nine days –

(my life in numbers:
9: days: till circumstance throttles me into nomadism once again)

which opened up for me again the possibility of fleeing somewhere else, or going home – Philly or Singapore, oh all those demons once more of "who am I and where am I supposed to be?". Those of my friends who think I think too much – you’re right! – may find it characteristic that yes, I had to think this one through again, because it is difficult to let go of the idea of opportunity for change or for return because those things, as means as well as ends, are familiar confrontations to me. Change means a chance to start afresh, to do better by yourself. Change was also hardly ever my choice. These are the numbers that I had been counting throughout my education:

Prior to arriving at Swarthmore for college, I had moved house or apartment 10 times; I had moved country four times, continent: two. During the tumultous high school years in international school in Singapore I didn't have a consistent close friend for any more than six months to a year at a time -- I lost six significant friends to school transfer, repatriation, and, in one case, the Asian Economic Crisis of the late 90s which lost her father his business (and thus repatriation ensued). Soon after entering college, my parents became missionaries with an organization, Mercy Ships, that has a primarily humanitarian medical mission upon floating hospitals off the west coast of Africa and the Carribbean. They trained in Texas, then served on the Africa Mercy, then lived "with long-horned cows as neighbours" in Garden Valley, TX, when my father became the Chief Operating Officer at their administrative base. By that time, I had returned simultaneously inspired and confused (and just a wee bit heartbroken -- in the time-relative scale of things, because otherwise it was pretty devastating) from my time in Poland. When my parents had visited me in Poland in 2002, I had gone without seeing them for two years. Our gathering as a family of four in Singapore in December of 2003 was the first time we had been all together in our country of origin in four years.

I only restate these numbers as a way of explaining how it is that I have for many years felt homeless. These are in no way uncommon circumstances, but I think I felt it more difficult because of the ambiguity (still existing) of the nature of our moving -- whether immigration to America was ever in the picture (because culturally, an Americanization was happening regardless), of what relevance our vagrancy had to what was putatively our home -- also a ceaselessly shifting landscape, a little natural-resourceless island with a cosmopolitan, hybridized identity developed to adapt to market necessities in order to survive independently.

But I also restate these numbers as a recitation of the struggle and yet the alibi I gave myself for not disciplining myelf to succeed academically, so that I can move on and become a more positive person. Because these numbers are all of what was lost or what was absent -- they are lamentations, epigraphs -- and do not reflect a personality that counted my blessings. I am a lucky, lucky individual, and I have had a rich life in both provision and depth of experience and relationship.

My life recently in numbers:
106: number of people auditioning for a project this July with Shen Wei (whose work I truly respect and would love to learn from)
21: number of us retained for the second round of selection
11: number of us who went home appreciated, challenged, but still jobless
2: number of auditions in as many weeks I’ve been called back for, but not casted in
1: number of auditions in that same time frame I was casted in, but turned down

Making choices, in my case, and despite both an instinctual and conscious reluctance to be involved in the production I did get cast in, still takes the good amount of time of four days. What is important is that I finally did turn it down, because I was able to articulate to myself, primarily, that the cabaret/burlesque style of the production was not going to be helpful to me in achieving what it is that I am here to achieve. This means I must be able to now articulate what it is that I am here to achieve. Huh.

To hone the style of improvisatory dance that I want to specialize in is to go through a detoxification process of life philosophy and physicality. It means to go deeper into the craft of embodiment and creation. I am actually happy to relinquish an opportunity to perform if it means that I can grow in distributing my expressive energy in a way that is neither destructive nor narcissistic. I want to be at the cutting and the discursive edge of my field, I want to develop to be respected and engaged by other professionals who excel at it – but which “it”? Dance as culture or dance as craft?

Not that I think of them as exclusive, but oftentimes I forget where I come from and that ancestrally there are beats, rhythms, and ways of seeing that are not tied to these lands I now traverse, not tied at all to this snow and cold. It occurred to me at some point in February that I was Asian. This occurred to me as a feature, a heritage, that I am allowed to embrace (see my second blogpost: "is it OK?!?!"). It is, like many of the blessings in my life, something I already have.

(Written March 1st, 2005, edited and posted March 23)