Musings on life and how I choose to interpret it…

Is your mouth really the portal into your mind? Or have you cursed its easy impulses?

The way your jaws clench and your tongue beats against the roof of the mouth.

Has there ever been any thing that escaped the crushing swipe of your sniveling lips?

The smack of your neurons as they light your mind in ways that sometimes seem beyond your control.

Are they in spite of you or are they intrinsic?

The orifice … the holy, the sticky, the life and pus.

Flow out your mouth, don’t tempt them with spit.

For what is the heft of consequence, but your earth-shattering indifference?

And what curls up, do they wish of malice or embarassment?

They speak of a loneliness that stretches through abandoned warehouses and decaying apartments.

They sing of songs that rocks have forgotten, of mountains young and trees nubile.

When reflections scatter, and ripples disappear…

In its place remains the very essence,

Of what you are not what you thought of.

And what you won’t be when you get there.

So just be.

If you’ve been living under a rock these past few weeks, or were a rock all along, then maybe you’d need to be told that there’s a mini furor going on down south. The U.S are currently in the midst of elections mania: two parties deciding who would be nominated for the winner-takes-all come November. Words like caucuses, primaries, campaign stops and polls (especially polls) are suddenly dominating the media again, on a nation-wide scale. There’s still nearly a year to go before it’s actually time to sit down to business, but if you’re a politics voyeur like I am — quite recently interested, truth be told — then you would be hard-pressed not to get a whiff of the craziness that has suddenly erupted in all the press, media, bars and blogs. Every American knows about the craziness, but perhaps only one candidate can have a legitimate claim, and an aptly titled popular movement, of having galvanized the voting mass: Barack Obama.

The title: Obama-mania.

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[I realize that this is a touch late now that I think about it, but it begs to be written. It’s a culmination of having been privy to these perpetually baffling social ordinances of our little (quite sizable, actually) Tibetan community in Toronto. I don’t harbour any illusions of this being a particularly regional attribute, nor am I convinced that it is only symptomatic of Tibetan gatherings. What I know of, and muse upon, are only those that I have personally experienced and laughed about later. If it comes across as condescending, judgmental or negative, please grant me the luxury of doubt for the sake of humour. Tibetan parties are very, truly, fun. Come around one if you hear one's in your neighbourhood.

There’s a texture here that’s a shade unique, and personal to me, in some instances, but the overall picture remains constant: drunken people and bad music converging into a night of loose hips and looser wallets.]

If you’ve ever been to any Tibetan parties in Toronto, the first thing that strikes you, after you’ve cleared the entrance, before the crowd gets bigger, or even before the famous Mang-tso hits the floor, is the piquant reservation about the place. Regardless of any kind of venue, location or the organizers, it’s there; like a thick, all-encompassing drape, full of crossed arms and judgmental eyes. Any unsuspecting person who joins the party suddenly becomes self-aware of their arrival, as if they’ve just stumbled into the wrong wedding reception where the bride had just turned heel and abdicated the congregation: all eyes on the intrusive stranger, a little confused and quite annoyed. After a quick second’s existential quandary you naturally assume the “position” as well: blending into the low-lit periphery and corners of the main dance floor, surveying the characters and biding your time. You may take note of this lull in activities to grab yourself a drink, look around for familiar faces and just generally act inconspicuous. Nobody likes a showoff, and certainly not before the real party has begun.

The men are usually garbed in two distinct styles: semi-formal or street. There are variations and combinations for each of them; for example, a dude wearing a semi-formal pair of trousers can have a totally snazzy shirt on top with a pair of tattered sneakers below, or a guy wearing a baseball hat will have a suit jacket more suited for a courtroom appearance. There’s also a third, surging but less prominent style, which is that of a rocker/skater look: drainpipe trousers (sometimes torn at the knees) with converse shoes and a trucker hat. In all of the cases, you can, sort of, assess the employment aspirations and educational background of a person from his looks, and in some cases, determine if he’s single or at the party with a significant other.

There are exceptions of course, and I do not intend to portray such an obviously diverse field of Tibetan men into convenient pockets for dissemination. Fear not, bhumo-tso: your choices are many and varied. It must be said, though, that I feel a pang of disbelief every time a guy decked in a horribly mismatched and double-oversized assortment of bottoms and basketball jerseys, complete with a heavy compliment of silver chains, wrist bands and shiny earrings, manages to capture the fancy of a curious set of eyes. He must be really funny, I think. That or she has an unnatural capacity for street-tough posturing.

My only, genuine, regret is the absence of men in cowboy dresses. The guys, usually middle-aged or older, who were completely oblivious to the raised eyebrows at them and who actually felt bolstered by their outfit. They would have stamped their presence about them with an air of swagger and nonchalance that only a true pioneer from the prairies could muster. They enlivened an atmosphere like no other. They used to; not so much anymore. I have a sinking feeling that they’ve converted to the street look to compensate for the changing times around them. Shame.

The women are naturally, and by far, more interesting to look at. I can attest from experience that for the ladies, the dance begins far before the actual party has actually begun. They commit to a ritual that is time-honoured and bereft of any discrepancy in cultural differences: the arduous task of choosing from the wardrobe closet; the preening, huffed about way that they tend to their faces, the incessant calls to friends (men do that too) and the porous anticipation and excitement at the thought of strutting their heels and whisking the scent of their perfumes around them. Among many others.

When they get to the party itself though, there’s a sudden swerve in their earlier disposition. Inside the venue – with the colourful lights dancing around them, and the music banging off all sides – excitement gives way to ennui, anticipation to annoyance: eyes ready to roll at the slightest perceived threat or interest. With men, it transforms into similarly bored entropy, but with a touch of irritable possessiveness. In both cases, the air of reservation reigns supreme, and the look in both men and women is that of waiting for something to finish; like sleepy villagers in early morning standing in line to have their buckets filled up from the local pump.

The dresses that our women-kin (in the broader, Tibetan sense) wear are multi-faceted, and a lot more attuned to different styles rather than age, or employment/educational standing. The colours usually feature a dark shade in some form, and conservatism is the norm, rather than the exception. Then again, that can be attributed to the Tibetan society as a majority, as an outlook; and not just to the choice attires in parties for women. The jeans are tight, sometimes low-hip, and the tops accessorized by a dazzling array of jeweled necklaces, pendants, braces and shawls. The dresses, I have noted, are black most of the times. Full-length leather boots are parlayed for their aggressive, bold tendencies; and when the women sashay about the dance floor, watch out for the air of entitlement. It is a poor, intrepid but insipid soul who dares approach a girl without the choice permission of her eyes. I haven’t heard of any accounts of guys being kicked upside their behinds with those intimidating sets of boots, but I imagine that it must be most humbling.

Women are also the ones most likely to wear an actual chupa to a dance party. It is a sad and sobering commentary about our society that no one really thinks twice about ladies in traditional Tibetan garbs; but for men it would be a most unsavoury prospect – we who are horrified at being labeled as uncouth or worse: boring.

It should be noted though that the chupa is a lot more form-pleasing and attractive on a woman. For guys, even the most sharp and athletic looking stud becomes reduced to an ungainly bundle of layers – the slim look fat, the short become shorter. Only the most dignified, noble warrior from faraway times would manage to look proud in a setting such as this, and even he would’ve felt ridiculous every time he entered the men’s washroom just to pee.

And it should also be noted that it is usually the older women who can be seen in chupas time and again. They are derisively labeled as aunties, a term coined by the Tibetan community (here? further?) for women hovering around the middle-ages (or maybe even lower – it’s all relative). The men folks of similar ages are called uncles. Those are terms that I absolutely loathe; not only because they reek of crude and unfair classifications, but also because they’re so unimaginative. I’m sure we can find better replacements for Tibetan cougars and sugar daddies. Uncles and aunties just have this queasy, shuddering feeling of naïveté about them; the kind that recalls faint traces of inbreeding and unwanted relatives.

Back to the party: the lights are in a furor, people more or less milling about; but it still hasn’t hit its crescendo yet. The floor still remains, yawning and strangely intimidating. Sometimes it is so bad that you can almost imagine tumbleweeds blowing across it. But then, at the centre of the floor, a phantom appears: twisting and contorting its joints in an irreverent and almost awe-inspiring lack of finesse. Its phantasmagorical movements have a rhythm all its own, removed from the music and the place around it. There it goes: shadowboxing, grabbing its crotch, thumping its chest with one arm across it, shadow-roundhouse-kicking; all in a non sequitor, voluminous disregard for form, beauty or reason. It dances because, it just has to. Who is this enigma? Who is this figure that openly revolts against early-hours convention? Who is it that so openly mocks us, calling us out for our inaction and apathy?

His name is Mang-tso, or T.O.B, as he likes to refer himself, usually in third person; T.O.B being short for “Tibetan Original Blood.” I’m guessing his self-anointed title asserts his undisputed claim to legitimate Tibetan-ness, which sets an awkward standard for mixed Tibetans. T.H.B? T.Q.B? None of them have the ring of T.O.B, as he himself would prove beyond doubt by spitting such ill, memorable, street-certified rhymes as:

We T.O.B, we are cute
We have a dimple.
Look at you, you have a pimple.

Or,

Ra tat a tat a, ra tat a tat ah.
T.O.B Mang-tso need a glass of watah.

And he would offer these sorts of gibberish provisos unasked to anyone, irrespective of time, location, or relevancy. The Tibetan community of Toronto has a lot of personalities, but if there is one character that stands above all, one that breaks through the current of time, change and scrutiny, it is Mang-tso.

Even his name Mang-tso is just a nickname, bestowed by the Tibetans of Toronto for his ubiquity. Mang-tso is the Tibetan word for democracy, and even though he has yet to display any redeemable social skills, everyone knows about him. Every visitor in Parkdale gets to know about him soon enough.

There are countless numbers of stories around him, woven into the fabric of the community, as old as the late 90s settlers and as real as snow. Some are amusing, some tragic, and some just profusely stupid. But let’s not get waylaid by the stories. If there’s one constant theme to Tibetan parties in Toronto, as straight as the divide between men and women, and stronger than even the sepulchral dance floor of the early hours of the party, it is that of Mang-tso breaking the floor.

Let’s also not miss the fact that this guy will come to any party, all the time – bar none. I can’t ever recall one single party where I haven’t seen him gyrating his spines and spitting his rhymes at puzzled strangers. He comes usually attired in a loose shamble of oversized clothes, a baseball hat or a bandana wrapped around his head. Sometimes he has another piece of bandana around his mouth, to conceal his face (I think) which is a purpose defeated since almost no one fails to recognize him. He walks with a purposeful gait, with undulating shoulders and his head hung low, glancing at people sideways (sizing them up?) and mostly harmless. That’s his reputation in the community: eccentric and sometimes annoying, but mostly harmless.

And so goes this party maven; this dance-floor breaker. He isn’t a break dancer by any stretch of imagination, but he does carry himself like he just completed a ridiculous spin on his head. The way he strides towards the bar, exhausted and content, barely masking his effulgence. He seldom sits, choosing instead to lean on walls or tables. He almost always comes earliest, and alone. If there’s one thing the Tibetan organizations in Toronto can be thankful to Mang-tso about, it is his unfailing resolve to support all the various fundraiser parties in the community. He drinks too, but not to the point of incapacity. Most of the times, I should think. How else would he able to afford his extravagant dalliances otherwise?

There’s one more piece in this growing mantle of oddities: he rarely removes his over-sized, down parka. The place can be crowded, musky and dripping with sweat, yet he always has his huge jacket on.

And it’s always just Mang-tso being Mang-tso. Mostly harmless. People these days don’t even nudge each other when they see him getting tribal in the empty dance floor; not unless it’s someone new to town and not fully acquainted with Mr. T.O.B. Who knows, they wink mischievously, he might even serenade you tonight.

The real party, or more elaborately put, the time when the people start peeling off the walls and chairs, and hesitatingly – or enthusiastically, depending on the alcohol intake and popularity of the tune that just beckoned them to dance – enter the dance floor, varies a little from each party but usually starts picking its tempo up after 11 p.m. That is a fact. At every Tibetan celebration night, the mood of the event makes a marked upswing after a rush of bodies suddenly start pouring in from outside, usually two to three hours before closing time. Most people, for whatever reasons, are perfectly fine with their rationale of paying full price for only half of the event. Maybe their choice lies not in the quantity of the time spent, but the quality of it.

So, it’s not really because of Mang-tso breaking the floor and the dam of clogged feet along with it. It’s because Tibetans, at least the young, hip and socially wary, choose to come at a predetermined time of being fashionably late. Not that anyone would notice by this time of the night.

The role of DJing for all of the major Tibetan parties in Toronto is usually serviced by not more than four revolving lists of party anthems enthusiasts. They seem to be quite a populist bunch as well, from the nearly indistinguishable traits and preferences in their music played at every party. Some are a little quirkier than others; but overall, most patrons wouldn’t be able to discern one playlist arranger from the other without the advertised names. They just like the tunes, or they don’t (understandably). Barring any miraculous feat of total crowd captivity, the unfortunate DJ has to put up with muffled post-event assessments from unsatisfied disco aficionados more often than not. “DJ gaa-mas” is a popular sentiment at the conclusion of every dance.

So many possible improvements, so many people to please. The only consolation for a disc spinner is the free admission and the free drinks that he gets for his troubles. And yes, it’s always, unfortunately, a he. Always.

If you were perched from high atop a vantage point, or if you were obscenely tall, and staring down at the people on the dance floor, the moment the area starts to become more crowded, a curious and almost organic arrangement of shapes will take place. After a moment’s hesitation and confusion, a clear pattern emerges: crop circles. They form and break up sporadically, but the overall shapes persist. Partygoers encircling one another, staring at each other and not staring, shuffling their legs and bobbing their heads, almost reluctantly, while possibly imagining all sorts of lurid images in their heads about some other dance patron from a foreign circle.

There are smiles aplenty, of course, and sometimes people do genuinely want to dance. By themselves or in pairs. Usually couples and some eccentric folks (Mang-tso included, although not, hopefully, to his extreme). But I can say for certain that ninety percent of the people there are there to check the others out. It’s the same as any other dance party, and Tibetans are no exception to this.

I know I’ve done this countless number of times. Sometimes you would feel like you’re trapped in a circle, sucked in by its gaping vortex, and you would peer away from the hollowness, towards another circle; as if on the other side, things were much better, much livelier and a whole lot prettier. But you know it’s just misguided, infantile thoughts. That it’s the same story everywhere and nowhere is it more evident than in the circle in which you hopelessly pine for a smaller circle, ideally reduced to just two persons: you and that someone else.

Sometimes you do find that other person, locked in another circle and maybe hoping for the same thing as well. You lock eyes, then quickly look away, blushing and feeling slightly guilty for not feeling content about the group you’re already in with.

But then sometimes you do want to approach that another person, but then are not too sure if that one is attached to anyone else. Does it come tethered? Is it attracted to anyone else? Should I deploy emissaries to reconnoiter and determine the best possible route?

So many questions, so little time.

By the time the party winds down, long after the bar has closed, and the patrons begin to retrieve their coats and friends, you’re hit with the sinking feeling that you might just have wasted another thirty-odd dollars and four hours in a totally fruitless endeavour. Or maybe you don’t feel that way. Maybe you reason that, hey, it’s for the sake of our community. If CTAO/TWAO/SFT/TYC throws a party and needs my support, who am I deny them that?

It’s a roll of dice, usually, and a particular combination of drunkenness, music, atmosphere and attitude. Some of the times you feel great about having been there, most of the times you’re indifferent – meh. And then sometimes, like at the last New Year’s Eve party, when you’re not particularly drunk and the music isn’t particularly happening and you don’t really have the budget to buy the tickets in the first place and yet you manage to buy drinks for four people, somewhere deep inside your gut there’s an incessant clawing that reminds you the next day about how much you totally wasted your time and your money. You can’t help it. Yes, there was a large crowd, and yes, there were some people glad to see you there, and yes, yes you know CTAO absolutely deserved your money. It all leads to a big conclusion of “oh well.”

At the end of every party, there’s always a chance of some sad pugilists waiting to engage in some fisticuffs with some person that either inadvertently brushed against them or looked at them the wrong way. They usually huddle around the gates in groups, buoyed by the self-serving assurance of posse-wisdom and the detached cowardice of gang rushing. Most of these scourges are either recent high school dropouts, or perennial factory dwellers, but always young and stupid. The kinds that see fit to take their frustrations out on strangers or rivals at a time when merriment and congeniality are the flavours of the night. They don’t (can’t) see far, these poor insolents, far beyond the throbbing rage of their alcohol-induced anger, and frustration-fuelled animosities. Their insecurity is veiled by an overpowering sense of machismo, and an excruciating loss of humour and perspective. The angers don’t flare up as much as it used to previously, but it’s still there sometimes, quietly simmering under the hood of a reject, burning with the anger of youth and senselessness.

They don’t usually go beyond name-callings and shovings. It eventually gets broken up. Anger lies simmering and unfulfilled. For now.

At least Mang-tso just spits terrible rhymes. He was mostly harmless.

[Writer's Note: I haven't decided yet if this is just a piece in itself, or a harbinger of bigger worlds to come. I would hope I can get a better sense of that from the feedback it receives. It's quite lengthy, for a chapter, so I'll be especially grateful to any patient soul who can trudge (or glide!) through the meandering paragraphs and offer words about its readability and improvements that it will inevitably deserve.]

He comes in quite late these days. There’s the shuffling of keys, the occasional, quiet cursing, and the eventual sigh at the prolonged tediousness of the exercise. Finally. The heavy door opens begrudgingly as a hand appears from the widening crack and gropes instinctively about the wall. The lights are dim, some bulbs have even shorted out. The enveloping fluorescence reveals a crowded, haggard sprawl of notes, empty cups and saucers; clothes strewn on the floor, and a thin coat of dust that gets reshuffled every time he enters and leaves. The chair beside his desk has seen the best of its days, and the impatient touch of duct tape around its joints at the seat and a foot are starting to unravel. He’s been meaning to chuck that ancient, unsteady chair for a while now; but every time he sits on it, the contours of the rexine depress comfortably around his bottom, and the particular bent of the chair when he leans back suspends him at just the right angle between thought and determination, reverie and depression, sleep and anxiety, slip and oblivion.

He removes his shoes beside the door, puts the socks inside them, undresses to his underwear, and relieves himself in the tight space of his corner bathroom. He flushes every other instance. Tonight he doesn’t. The slack, moist towel should have been put in the washer a long time ago, but it persists in its state: removing and collecting a day’s worth of sweat, stain and burgeoning unaccomplishments.

He doesn’t talk to himself as much as he used to. There was a time when he was more open; when he had the bright, expectant eyes of anyone who is young and idealistic with nary a brooding cloud over his head. His eyes are still bright and sharp, but they are now edged with a restlessness of a mind trapped inside a body going nowhere. The forlorn hunch in his wide shoulders betray a swell of self-loathing meet machismo. His hair is unkempt, unwashed for an unacceptably long interval, and there are bright specks of dandruff on his dark shirt.

He sits on that rickety chair, pulls himself closer to his desk and rests his face on his hands. This is one of his nightly routines. Sometimes he paces briefly across the room before falling on to his bed on his back and falling further into sleep. Then there are those days when he staggers into the room, with a shit-eating grin on his face, finds his way into the bathroom, relieves himself and then some. But tonight he just sits beside his desk. His coffee mug is empty — has been for a few days. His change jar is down to its last remaining nickels and cents, and that also explains why the clothes have that musky smell of neglect and unhygienic disposition. It’s not that he doesn’t care; the guy just can’t afford it.

The notes and books on his desk and on the shelf on the corner across from it reveal a once curious lark slowly groped by the withering roots of cynicism. There’s a thick coffee table book filled with images taken by the Hubble Space telescope. Another one about prehistoric marine creatures. There’s one about the ice age given to him by his uncle when he was a wee little tyke, which he meant to finish but ultimately found too boring — fossils on rocks are one thing, things about rocks another. There are a few books about Russian and Middle-Eastern history, some eastern philosophy fluff, a Tibetan book on dying, and a plethora of collections on the state of world affairs. There are novels as well, a whole shelf full of them.

The haphazard assortment of notes on his table cover a wide range of topics written between instances of fitful enthusiasm and indignant spiels — the case of a washed up, insecure intellect [i]aspirateur[/i] dried up on ambition and drunk on high-minded, onerous discursion. There are a plenty of short stories: none of them completed, some barely past the first paragraph — the rising, caffeine-fueled rhetoric more often than not limp away by due course of substance-abuse towards a grinding loss of words. He prefers to type his words out most of the times. He almost always has his laptop with him when he leaves. Tonight it sits in the middle of the desk: closed shut, powered on but sleeping. He opens the computer, moves his finger on the touch pad and the CPU whirs itself to operational mode. He stands up to retrieve the trousers he undressed from today. The wrinkled, beige coloured khaki pants are frayed at the bottom and grimed by the low, tired shuffle of a man going through the motions of a day without realizing how the ritual began in the first place. He fishes around in the pockets until he finds a card, a business card, and sits back beside the desk. The card lies on the corner of the desk, burning dimly under the tiredly scrutinizing stare of his. The computer is now fully awake and prompts his login password. The welcome music resonates just barely above silence from the tiny speakers of the laptop, but even that is enough to irritate him as he quickly presses the “mute” button.

Here is the devolution of a person to the whims of the internet: the usual haunts at Youtube, Facebook, newsmagazines and sports websites that take anywhere from between five minutes to the early morning of next day. His email inbox is somberly empty, devoid of any meaningful correspondence for the past week or so. Like a surly subway operator caught in a sonorous funk on a particularly slow weekday afternoon, he listlessly jumps from one blog post to another, occasionally offering his unattached commentary on things that interest him: mid-east politics, NBA games, movie reviews, poker strategies, science journals… among many others. There are those nights when he places the kleenex box on the side and prepares to placate his whimpering horndog. Towards the end, when the persistent ache on his back reminds him (implores him) to get some sleep, he pushes himself away from the desk, cancels all the windows and turns the light and his zeitgeist device off. He hasn’t written any words to add to his young, faltering oeuvre.

His weighted face now tilts around as he snaps his neck and cracks his joints on his shoulders and fingers. He lies on his bed, rigid for a brief moment before finally exhaling and settling: the steady accumulation of swirling debris and unchecked floodwater temporarily relieved by the onset of a tried and true loss of oversight. The kind that nips at a greedy contractor’s heels, one who chooses to look beyond the compromised structural integrity of a building’s frame after every shot of an expensive rum procured from his tacit maneuvering. Until he feels the undulating motions at the very top, whipped around by an autumn breeze and timorous recourses. This too will pass, he thinks unconvincingly.

Our man sleeps facing towards the cluttered desk, the head of which lies on the right side of the desk, about a foot apart. Except he’s not sleeping. Not yet. Usually it takes between five or eight minutes for him to loll off, to momentarily escape the glacial slide of his non-progression, and to wake up to another day of abject contrivances and wasted hours. But it has already been more than ten minutes now, and he lies uncomfortably still as a corpse on his side staring with mute insistence at the business card on the corner of the desk towards him. He turns away finally, fitfully, but he still cannot manage to doze off. Or even close his eyes for that matter. He grabs the blanket towards his chest forcefully, realizes so, and relaxes his grip a little. The ticking of the wall clock across the room from him now becomes the focus of his irritation. He hoists himself up and rests his back on the headboard, bringing his knees towards him. He surveys the visible floor around him, dimly lit by the streetlights from outside. Like an inattentive farmer surveying his farm and silently chastising himself for the pitiful yield before him, he sighs and makes a half-hearted resolve to clean up his room. Some next time.

It is nearly 11 p.m. now, and even though he’s stayed awake far later, tonight he — for some unfathomable reason — wants to sleep a little earlier than usual. He doesn’t need to wake up early the next morning, but he wants to. Inexplicable. But even he has come to terms with the unpredictable swings: the peaks and valleys of his needs and resolutions.

The card still remains, persists, on the periphery of his thoughts and visions.

He snatches the card instantly, surprising himself a little with his brash vigour. It is a quaint piece printed in a floral, handwritten script with a delicate dab of olive ink on a paper colour resembling a Nepali rice paper. Printed on the upper-left corner is one “organic tea connoisseur” with the name of “Lan Huong” in bold above it. On the bottom portion she’d listed the address and phone and the email of her place of work, an up-and-coming spot called “T & Leaves”, which is centered and printed most prominently of all. On the back of the card is a phone number written specifically by her, for him. He fiddles with it for a while before getting out of the bed and grabbing his wireless phone. He’s back on his bed now, and he stares alternately between the digits on the back of the card and the dial pad before him.

It was at a farmer’s market where he’d come upon her table. The soft sounds of people milling around the park where it was held began to pick its volume a little as the day was closing to an end, and some of the farmers and merchants had started to pack up. Lan Huong had her table at a spot underneath the generous shade of an old oak tree beside the entrance of the market. He had noticed her before, on a couple of occasions, and this was the first time he’d seen her behind a table of her own. The table — a long, rectangular folding type — consisted of bowls with tea bags and packets of sugar, a pile of paper cups, an electronic thermos with hot water, different types of milk, and some stacks of brochures and business cards. He was on his way out and as he glanced at Huong’s table, she smiled back at him.

He’d sauntered over towards her, said hello and remained mesmerized for the rest of the conversation at the way her dark, breezy, medium shag hairdo danced above her shoulders as she displayed an impressive array of vigorous nods and laughters with head thrown back; the upper body angled ever which way to enunciate a certain point. She was wearing a white, cotton dress top, with a puffed set of short sleeves and a knot at the back. Her neck was bare. The low hip, denim trousers looked genuinely worn at the knees, and it was complemented well with a pair of brown leather sandals. Her face was noticeably angular: thin at the chin with high cheekbones and a dot of a mole just under the lip on the right side. She had a smiling set of eyes, brown and bright. Somehow they got talking for far longer than he’d anticipated, and, by virtue of his curiosity which was fortunately dry at the well and wanting of all things concerned with organic, caffeine and South East Asia; they’d managed to have an invigorating conversation. He’d never been to Asia, but knew enough of it to ask meaningful questions and thoughtful rejoinders.

From their brief talk, he’d gathered that she had come over to Vancouver, Canada when she was three years old. Her parents were from the coastal town of Danang, Vietnam, and she had been entrusted under the care of her maternal aunt for fifteen years. Then she studied at the University of Toronto, botched a degree in International Studies in her second year, became disillusioned with the whole “education establishment”, traveled further east to Nova Scotia where she picked grapes at a winery for two summers and then found herself back in Toronto, where she was most recently hooked up as a tea barista for this store that she was tabling for on this day. She’d been to Vietnam and the region of S.E.A a couple of times between her trips around Canada. It was there that she was hooked on to tea, among other things, and the various intricacies, forms and the rituals around it. It was there where she met Karen Doolittle, fellow tea connoisseur and mint-fresh owner of “T & Leaves”, and it was here where she was working on her third day of employment.

He listened attentively, all the while faintly sensing a growing surge of perturbation in his chest and lower. He helped her pack up, during when Karen pulled up with her minivan and they loaded the stock together. He said goodbye to both of them, and had just turned his back to leave when Lan called to say thanks and handed him her card. He said he didn’t need one, because he was being his oblivious, aloof self; but she’d insisted. It was during his walk home when it hit him that she might possibly fancy him. Rubbish, he thought, and dismissed the possibility away like a gnat hovering around his reading space. By the time he’d gotten to his apartment, he convinced himself that he needed to sleep early, get a good night’s rest, and wake at a proper hour for once.

And now he remains on his bed, unable to sleep, and unable to make his mind up about the phone number before him. I should sleep on it, he sympathizes to himself, and shakes his head in an all-knowing, been-there-done-that, once-bitten-twice-shy lament that he thinks only people like him are capable of understanding.

The card stays on his right hand, the phone on the other. He becomes aware that his heartbeats are now positively throbbing underneath his chest, as if caught up in the excitement of the rising crescendo, the moment of truth: crunch time.

“Hello?” She sounds puzzled, wondering who could possibly call her up at this hour of the night.

He hesitates for a moment, suddenly aware that it hasn’t even been a day and he’s already calling her up. At this hour of the night.

“Hey, it’s Zuhair,” he says in a relaxed way, feigned and with effort, of course. “We met at the market earlier today.”

“Ohh, hi Zuhair! How are you?” she says. He imagines her on the other end full of brightly lit eyes and expressive lips. Possibly holding a cup of hot and steeped green tea. Was there a trace of hesitance in her greeting? He can’t tell.

They exchange pleasantries and then it hits Zuhair, he of the bold hell-may-come, caution-to-the-wind explorer, that he doesn’t really have a point to this call. Realization sinks in like to a Looney Tunes character staring haplessly at the TV screen after having walked off a cliff and suspended in mid-air.

“I was…just wondering,” he probes nervously, “if we could meet up sometime. It was great talking to you about all that history and traditions behind tea… drinking. And I’d love to hear more about ‘Nam and everything.”

Mostly, he just wants to stare at her again. To be beside that lithe, coy figure and the nice smell of her being. He realizes that she was talking on the other end.

“Sorry?” he cuts her mid-sentence.

“Yeah, yeah. No, I was saying I’d love to hear more about what you’re writing too. Absolutely. When d’ya wanna meet up?”

He didn’t expect this to be so linear in progression. He had dreaded all kinds of dead-ends, confusion, awkward farewells and frustrations, but this was something else.

They decide on a time and place around Lan’s off-day. He jokes that he was off almost everyday, because he was a struggling writer (like he fancies himself) and a creative writing student, ha ha, and also inquires if they would be drinking tea at some cafe. Lan laughs heartily. Such a jokester, this guy Zuhair.

He is now on his back with a pillow under his head. He stares at the ceiling, content and mildly excited. The excitement ebbs gradually, like that of a little child slowly dozing off from her sugar high, and gives way to a content exhaustion in its wake. He can still faintly recollect the whiff of her hair. He imagines how her handset must smell like. He imagines her bedroom now, neatly arranged with the scent of an exotic incense or cluttered with all kinds of environmental paraphernalia. He imagines her some more. He’s starting to drift off now, our hero Zuhair Khan, tired and excited as he is. His eyelids blink non-reflexively, and soon slide into a permanent close. He’s sailed away now, for the time being; far from the smelly, gut wrenching details of life that need to be attended to. Far and away from the ominous storm that looms ahead, full of spite and menace. Our clueless, aspiring intellect has a change in season to look ahead to, and rest billows inside his body in a blissfully unassuming grace. Routine gives in to sleep. Finally.