Marilyn Chin / Features / Untitled Books

"Two weeks ago, I fell off my wedgy shoes and sprained my ankle. $3,000 for an ex-ray and a long bandage! Hell, no, I can’t pay!"

Marilyn Chin

A night in the life of poet and novelist Marylin Chin; cheap prosecco, breakdancing and nocturnal Chinese brush painting.

Auntie Wu sent me a traditional Chinese ink brush painting kit for my birthday. I received it two weeks late. The postage bears a rosy-cheeked image of Sun Yat Sen on it. Another image is an equally rosy round-faced Mao facing East. I can see my auntie, 88 years strong, trudging up the monsoon-drenched streets of Wanchai to her favorite antique art store, cursing the wind.

I open the brown paper wrapping to open a second layer of red joss-paper wrapping to open a third layer of Hello Kitty wrapping: and a pink note card tumbles out. On which I can see my Auntie's grassy hand in a few lines of beautifully penned blessings in Chinese . . . and these rough words in English:

girl poet must learn brush painting

8.07pm

I open the kit and there in front of me, gleaming with wondrous possibilities, are the four treasures: ink stone, ink stick, brushes (five of varying sizes) and two reams of rice paper.

I remember thirty years ago, I got a C- in a class called 'Chinese Calligraphy and Ink drawing 101'.

My teacher, Professor Cheng, said: "Alas, Mei Ling, you don't have the disposition for Chinese brush painting, my dear. You don't understand the concept of wu wei and contemplation. Your posture is poor, your hand position is wretched and your strokes are spastic!"

After hearing this, I left the class and never returned.

I take off my day clothes, strip down to my underpants and put on my oversized Chargers night shirt. I sit prostrate and bow to the Goddess of Mercy and vow to finish the task, to learn the strokes, their order, with patience, with redemption.

8.18pm

First I take the ink stick, pour some tap water onto the ink stone and start to grind the ink. I grind and grind, in a slow clockwise rhythm, and the ink thickens, black, black and gooey, then I pour more water and apply more ink stick and more grinding, I grind and grind . . . and let the alchemy of water, ink and stone work magic . . . and let the solution set.

Meanwhile I open up a new bottle of cheap Prosecco left over from my birthday party. Then, I lay out four hundred sheets of rice paper, all over my living room, kitchen and bedroom floor. All white, unblemished faces staring blankly toward heaven, ready to be soiled. Then I choose a big, horse hair brush and seep it with water and ink.

My ipod is happily waiting in its pink docking station with an all night play list, beginning with some old-school soul, R &B, the Supremes, the Miracles, the Spinners and the Temptations - making me rock my hips left and right as I begin painting simple elemental strokes of bamboo branches. I kneel down to paint, then stand up, kneel down, stand up, dance, strut, shake my bootie, kneel down again . . . I succumb to the invigorating ritual of supplication - kowtow to the ancient art, forehead touching earth - and stand up to greet the sky.

Then, an atomic cd mix I bought from my drag queen bff from "Lipstick" disco. Madonna/Bee Gees/Donna Summer/some Asian/German Techno/ ear-blasting rap.

I continue with hundreds of strokes. I hold my brush vertical, perfectly perpendicular to paper. I use my whole arm, not just my wrist. Then, I angle the brush, and pull the ink across the paper. Over and over, each stroke is unique and different, yet each stroke speaks for the collective, branch to branch.

Bamboo symbolizes strength and resiliency. It can bend in the fierce winds and return upright after battering storms. It must be painted with strong strokes, without hesitation,

Branch to branch to branch.

9.51pm

Perfect for the occasion, I play the Beatles song 'Today's your birthday'. Full blast, I repeat the song three times. It goes on and on, pounding, and I dance: gyrating pony, mash potato, twisting, shimmying, moonwalk, break-dance . . . to loosen myself up, body and soul.

I continue painting, the bamboo branch now transforming itself into an English letter: the primordial 'i', the first slow, wet stroke pushing down the brush, I dot the i, small letter, seemingly quiet and not egomaniacal. I first bow to the modesty, humility and dignity of my ancestors. Then, I let the onanistic , American riot girrrrrl vision take over! I write i, i i i i with fast stroke wet brush, gleaming and dripping with force.

Dotting each 'i' with a twist and lifting in the last dotting stroke . . . I do this over and over, one hundred times. I celebrate myself! I sing myself! Girl-poet inserting my presence, my oracular, first person identity rant, into the muse of night.

11.16pm

The music is too loud, too bass-driven! Too mind-blowing. So I take a break, slow it down. Softer Jazz:

Miles' 'Sketches of Spain'; Coltrane's 'Beautiful things'. Very sweet, light. I begin to understand how to negotiate freedom and control.

I begin painting disjointed old branches, I make them knobbed and crooked and ancient and flowing from east to west - capturing the surprising and lyrical turns of phrase,

Nodes and hinges plum blossoms, only hints of tiny grey shadows half of a peach/with dark kernel

Some dry brushing gestures of sprigs heaves of spring bracts laden with unnamed orbs of berries

I squeeze out a few tubes of western water-color, soft reds and blue-greens and yellows, the Confucian colors, bleed together with various tonal shadings of black and grey,

mimicking the fluidity and the riffs, the abstract riffs upon riffs.

Then, a willow branch, with long long yellow grey flowing hair, flows beyond page,

beyond frame, mocking eternity.

4:34am Retrieve reality messages

Beep: a collection agency calls regarding hospital bill #433. Two weeks ago, I fell off my wedgy shoes and sprained my ankle. $3,000 for an ex-ray and a long bandage! Hell, no, I can't pay! Not yet. Beep. X-Boyfriend calling from Orange County, I bet he wants money, too. He says I owe him three hundred for a phone-call to Beijing. No way, loser! Beep! An X-student named Terrence Smith, remember, Terrence, the one with the long Rasta-beaded, nappy dreaded blond hair? The one who slithers late to class riding a skateboard? He needs a recommendation for massage therapy school. No way, he had bad hair and was a bad poet. Beep. Do I want to write a brief tribute for our dearly departed Lucille Clifton? Sad, sad, yes, of course! Do I want to write a yet another tribute for my old teacher Ai? Yes, sad, sad, of course! Why are the poets dying? The fine poets are dying, the fine fine poets are dying, dying. Beep. Grandma Wong says she is coming over tomorrow to make dumplings for the new year. She says, better clean kitchen, foolish girl, everybody's coming for dumplings!

4.46am

I uncork a second bottle of Prosecco and pull out the last of my birthday cake, a chocolate eight-layer Black Forest devil, from the freezer. Donny bought it from Goldilock's, a south county bakery of Filipino decadence. The cake's a lumbering, over-the-top, tooth-aching hell-mound.

My hands are sticky with ink, but no matter, I take two fistfuls of cake and stuff them into my mouth. My face smeared with chocolate, my veins pumped with sugar! Now I am really grooving:

Dry pink brush against gray wash: Orchid orchid orchid

5.07am

The hour of the rat: I run out of ink. So, I put the black ink stick into my mouth, and I chomp down: it is chalky and bitter and makes me gag. I gulp down more prosecco and as the ink mixes with the bubby, it turns into a black paste in my mouth. And I look like a vixen ghoul in a black and white horror film, spitting black blood. The black blood leaks from the corners of my mouth, staining my teeth.

But I keep chomping and dancing, I take off my T-shirt . . . And I am dancing naked to Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, and I spit black ink from my mouth onto my breasts and belly and I rubbed the black ooze all over my skin. My stomach churns and rebels and I spit up black ink all over the floor.

I dip my brush into my black sputum to create my first Chinese word: heart. Auntie, can you see my aorta ? And the valves and the ventricles? Auntie, can you see how my heart is pumping, just for you?

6.17am

The hour of the cockroach - I fall asleep, flat on my back on the cold hardwood, but am jarred awake by hard metal guitar!

Hendrix, Zeppelin put me in a darker mood: War, Vietnam, death-copters, grenades, body-bags, dying poets, soul- anguish!

Hendrix playing 'Star-Spangled Banner' with all irony and might! So I oblige and paint Zen zeros, zeros. Zeros that turn into skulls skulls skulls.

How did this happen? Why did darkness descend so violently? How was history changed in one stroke?

Professor Cheng says: "The strokes are irrevocable. Once the ink is laid, there is no revising it. This is not western oil painting, Mei Ling, there's no gesso-ing over your errors."

Auntie says, "Good thoughts, Good intentions, Good actions. Mei Ling, it is never too late to change the world."

6.52am

On this occasion of the 50^th anniversary of my birth, two weeks late, I must reverse darkness back into light:

Skulls skull skull turn into frond frond frond turn into peach peach peach peach.

I have finished painting four hundred pages and I consider them to be worthy. I shall let them dry, then collect them and send them to my dear old Professor Cheng, who has now resettled to Taiwan, in the township of the Marble Gorges.

Finally, I must punctuate this all-night Chinese ink painting extravaganza with a commemorative haiku:

Turning skulls into peaches

This late American birthday

With love

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Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen is published by Hamish Hamilton.

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Tuesday, 30 March, 2010