Jia Lin’s Weblog

Lament a death

My little brother died yesterday; I cried my eyes out and lost my voice. We were both only child; he is like a brother that I never had, and I�m like the sister he never had, though we have other cousins, but much younger ones. We had the same eyes and mouths, and he was the only playmate I had in my childhood. Strangely, I could not remember and quote any complete exact sentence he ever said, I wish the memory will come back after this sudden shock. He was not a talkative pal anyway, and we don�t talk profoundly. We had been together before we could not talk, so talking is not our way of communication, I guess. I met him mostly on MSN these years. He bought a Lancer last year, and Lancer became his screen name. He used to call himself �autojin� before it was Lancer. Boy, he did love cars, and he had owned several before most of Chinese were able to have one. I don�t know anything about car, so we could not talk about cars. We�ve seldom talked anything serious since long time ago. Our lives were running paralleled after I left home country. Deep in my mind, I knew we would have plenty of time hanging around and talking when I go back home, when we are old. I can�t imagine my older years without him, he is the only one connected my early years, and, I believe, the end of my life. How wrong I am; he left so early. I felt the void of my life; one big piece disappears from the scene of my older years, if I am going to live long.

Jin is the same age as me, and he fell down the hill and broke his skull. I can�t match his dear face to the man who fell down the hill and broke his skull, and when I can, I scream the way I can�t wake up from a nightmare. My little brother Jin, he was the tallest and most good looking man in the family, the kind you felt proud to introduce to your teenage girlfriends at high school�This is the saddest moment in my life so far; I�ve never felt so close to presence of death. I must be lucky: I�ve been living in a fairy tale with no immediate death for more than 30 years. I don�t know how to deal with death. This shock is so overwhelmed, I felt so weak, both in my body and my spirit. But strangely, for the first time I felt less scared about death, since someone I�m so close to is waiting on the other side. He is so young, he just celebrated his 31st birthday last week. His mom, my aunt has lost the will of living on. My mom cried so hard too, and she kept asking me: �what do I do if this happens to you?�

I�m going to buy a Lancer in the future. I don�t know what I can do to keep him as though alive as long as possible in this world. This might do, and I will also put �jin� in my unborn child�s name. I made a little altar for Jin in my living room, with our pictures together, flowers and candles. I pray to God to take care of him. I wrote a little poem, in Chinese style, on the bouquet I sent to his funeral, and I put three exclamation marks after the word �pain� at the end, as though it can express how painful I really felt. But do all of these make any difference? Can it bring him back to life and heal the pain of the family? I did not receive any education on dealing with death, I felt like a helpless child. How to remember, without pain, someone you love very very much? To me, stop thinking is betrayal, but every memory serves such a pain. Bin said instead of crying all day long, writing something about him would be a better way of remembering. And that�s what I did. Then I realize when we cry for the loss of our love ones, to a great extent, we are crying for ourselves. Death has no impact on the one that dies, but on the ones who live on. I would not know it until I sort out my thoughts in writing.

Ms. Lin goes to Washington

Have I said that I got a little too much the sunshine and droning coziness in California, which makes my trip to DC especially exciting? That was the first trip back to the East coast in 15 months, and I embraced autumn leaves, rain and wind like an old friend. Even the air, dry, fresh with scent of pine, smell so different from the West coast. It was my third visit to DC. In the summer of 2000, I came as a total tourist and only spotted wherever crowded with most of people, that means Smithsonian, Whitehouse and Lincoln Memorial and DC is just a tourism city to me. The second time I took a stroll alone from Dupont Circle to Adams Morgan, one afternoon during my stay in Maryland University for a workshop; I had a Thai seafood plate outdoor in Connecticut Ave near the subway. It was a late summer afternoon, the whole street is lined up with small dinning tables shined with white cloth and wine glasses; candle lights flickering in the mellow and warm wind, people drank and laughed in front of assorted restaurants serving exotic culinary. I�m an incurable petty bourgeois and I believe I felt in love with DC at that moment. I learnt later that Adams Morgan is the most bohemian area in DC.

This time I came as a traveling spouse who got a �friend fly free� deal and came with no specific plan. I just wandered around the city, and surprisingly found how much it (the good part of it) resembles Paris: grandiose palaces (or government buildings), Beaux style of residence buildings neatly and harmoniously filling the streets, small plazas with classic sculptures and fountains spotted everywhere, and outdoor coffee houses and restaurants are crowded with yuppies. In a rainy afternoon, friends took me to a Peruvian restaurant for lunch in Farragut, a very urban area packed with office building and department stores. It was so cold and raining so hard that day, but the restaurant was full of warmth and life, and of course, people. I like to see all those professions in white shirt and black coat, some with necktie, some with a cashmere scarf casually around the neck, to a professional student like me, these people look like from another world. It was the second day after the election; many tables were engaged in heated discussion, so was our table of three ladies. American politics in a Peruvian restaurant over an exquisite dish of seafood rice mixed with chili and red wine, very hot.

Georgetown is the chicest college town I�ve ever been. The M street leading to the campus felt like Beverly Hills but with intellectual touch, while the campus felt like an cloister abbey back to 18 century with all the grey gothic buildings. Around the campus are quiet streets where you found rows and rows of upscale town houses with heavy doors, peaked or arched roofs and big grilles. We strolled through the quiet streets after dark, listen to the rustle of the dry fallen leaves we stepped on; the air is cold and fresh and the light from the windows are warm and homey. I heard the � The Exorcist�, one of my favorite horrors was shot here, but that�s not horror how I feel. What was in my mind during that walk is that I would exchange the warm weather in California for a winter in Georgetown.

The last night in DC I took Bin to Adam�s Morgan to revive some Bohemian spirit, but I could not found the street I used to have dinner two years ago. So we sat down in a Spanish restaurant looking down a small plaza in the center of which a postmodern sculpture stood, by �postmodern� I mean I could not tell the shape of the sculpture, especially after dark. The first floor of the restaurant is a crowded bar, while we sipped Sangrias and waiting for our food, the flamingo music from downstairs pumped through the floor, and together with the Sangrias, burning in my vein. I do love DC.

Don�t know much about politics
-in Washington DC

In front of Crossfile studio at George Washington University, there is a donkey dummy painted in motley and an elephant dummy interlaced with hundreds of white lists of political quotes written in black. The most conspicuous one, in the frontal side, is a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule�. The ironical thing with this quote in front of �crossfire�studio is that the show seems trying very hard to push people apart into the insane groups. I know a lot of people, represented by Jon Stewart, resent this show, but I found it a very entertaining for my everyday lunch break (actually, the whole political campaign is more and more like a show business to me). Since I was in DC and had nothing really specific to do, I joined the live audience this afternoon. The show is way too quiet in the studio than on TV, especially today after John Kerry�s concession. Paul Pegala is awfully reserved and sad; Tuck Clarkson is not even as half mean as before; Mcmahon, the guest from Democratic Party kept a pan face and hold his tears, while Fabrizio, the guest from Republic Party tried very hard to hide his smile. Fabrizio revealed that the strategy for Republicans is quite a simple one: targeting those with conservative value but never voted before, and knock their doors one by one and send personalized mail from three years ago. Bush won by 4 million popular votes, and the number of evangelists that came out to vote the first time is the same.
The night before I flew over all those �fly-over states� from LA to DC on Jetblue and scanning through all the TV news channels for updated election results. They say these red states are the real America while people in blue states live in a fantasy. Such a fantasy, however, is quite riveting to me. I came to understand why the president spent so much time in Crawford, Texas rather than in oval office in DC. In a city where 90% of population voted against him, where diversity and foreignness are appreciated, he might hardly find peace in mind. his supporters voted for value rather than economy or war on Iraq. That scares me a lot. It always struck me that republican has such die-hard supporter groups in South and the Midwest, while in DC where they exert their absolute power in, they are so unpopular. It will be very hard for me to believe that the people in city have no value, but urbanites do have broader information access and higher analytical minds, which I think, make the whole propaganda on value and ethics less appealing in cities. Value is the number one concern for republican voters , and they won the nation. However, when a nation concern more ideology and value over economy, education, science and diplomacy, according to the history, it seems to me a start of disaster; it happened not long ago in China when the whole nation is thrown into culture revolution and abandon everything else. I do realize it is not a good analogy, and I assume a disaster can be avoided in the US for the self-adjustment of its democratic structure (then again, how could all the authorities in capital hill are dominated by one party?)
Carl Rove seems an even bigger winner than Bush in this race. He reminds me Professor Henry Higgins in My fair lady. Maybe Rove bet with a pal that he can make any one a beloved president, no matter how unintelligent he is, how he lack of class, how many catastrophic mistakes he made. And Rove won, twice. I don�t know how much Bush enjoyed another four years of �hard work�, but I do believe all the pleasure is Rove�s.