I rarely think of Amelie these days, but it was the type of film that made me want to be a filmmaker, in the same sense that Beloved makes me want to be a writer, or Fire and Rain is an internal revamping of my imagined musical career. Beautiful art, we all know, is much more becoming than beautiful people. It beats so hard. It hails small slices of heaven that are, surely, steeped in our earth; the flippant kind of fallen angels that breath, talented, torrid tinkerbells that bite back or roar.
He tells me I will not be Amelie, today. That I will not insight eventuality, that I will not shatter, then melt. He tells me to cry or scream, to un-level my baths, to preempt overflowing. In my rationality, in my fixation on the flowered clock, I nod. I know. But knowledge is only power if it too is harnessed and hell-bent on expression; knowledge can simmer on the back burner for too long. There is so much I have known, long enough to turn back time and again, but also easy enough to forget, to recall only in small, sleepy ways, to tempt with touch or tongue but never embrace, other than oddly, awkwardly and after far too many suns have set.
It does not seem so bad being her, anyway. Or like her, rather. Amongst waves of Parisian disappointment but not daring death. It does not seem so bad to be so many things any more--tired, torn, cold, wild and/or true.
It seems that what is right (if there is such thing, if it is somewhat more solid than that fairy I feel back at) is somehow simple. Not easy but clear. Not quaint at all. And when I leave, less anxious, yet awfully absorbed in myself, melting seems mild: unless pointed at by witches, unless clicking our heels actually brings us home.
It is beautiful today. Or was, in that Oxford way that every sunshine passes too quickly, that we crave that golden drug to seep our skin so much longer, after so much winter has passed. It is quite pleasant now and the peaks or peeks of sunshine dribble out of the sky, the picture windows surrounding me somehow, suddenly appropriate. And home, it seems, lives in so many sides of me here, both simple to sidle up to, or suddenly suffocate with new surroundings.
The Asian Supermarket. Oh that is home. It is funny that I have never cooked Asian food, really (tonight is a small debut), but I have been inside so many Asian restaurants and basked in the glory of so many Asian meals, that each shelf, each bright item makes me sigh. First, the ginger candy, the rice paper covering, the charged childhood madness where Katie and I would cover out hands, our mouths in the sugared-spicy delight. Where I would request perfumes and her lychee fruits, reminiscent of who were to become. The mochi melting into puddles of pink and green; frozen shrimp with beaty eyes; tempura crumbs kicking at the dusty walls. The height of Kikoman soy. The joy of bubble tea. The kiss of passionfruit juice, juggled in a can. And then, at the bottom of a black plastic frame, the sugarcane.
Julie asked me when I arrived here, why I had sugarcane in my bag (it is a bit rare, I must admit). I began but never finished my real explanation, or the perhaps childish expectation, that I could access some other kind of memory. That memory that wakes up when I smell cigarettes at daybreak or hear the unfortunate voice of Bob Dylan on the radio. That memory that is so much more body than mind.
And so, at the supermarket, I am not Amelie. The tears fall swiftly, expectedly and without panic, I feel too tired to fight them back. Just the touch of the root on my fingers brings up my roots and our walks amongst budding produce, summer's flowers of food. And then we are sitting, side-by-side in our maroon minivan, the sugarcane roots across my lap, one so suckled in my mouth that my dad laughs and can't stop laughing. I know I am small, because his hand is huge in contrast to my knee, because my fashion show is one of pigtails and a heat-responsive shirt, which changes colors when I touch it and now has drips of spit-designed pink across the chest. My own widdled wings, my own small handprints in desperate grasps with the green giants that I suck dry.
And he is right today. I am not melting. I am sad, surely, but still smiling, laughing even at the adult I am becoming, or really at how little I have changed; at the fact that he called me solid, and the fact that I am surrounded by sesame seeds and bak choy, by so much spice and nuts, and then to my left, a new beginning, a barrel full of baked beans.
