In the spring the upcoming milestone dawns on me, and I pause to consider this site, twenty years old as of June. Out the window the flower sale for the new year is in full swing. The concrete soccer courts of Victoria Park are covered with tents, with stalls, with bins and pots of flowers. They are covered with people, a throng in from all over the territory, from the mainland, hunting flowers and snacks. It’s a busy time, here on the first day of a week-long holiday, at the end of a year.
It’s warm for a February in Hong Kong, up to twenty five Celsius, almost calling for shorts. Across the harbor the buildings of Tsim Sha Tsui glint in the late afternoon sun, and the mountains beyond are varying shades of gray in the haze. The air is not clear, but also not bad given the temperature. In a few days visibility should be better, all the factories to the north shut down and the wind blowing. Across the way a helper cleans a mop on the rooftop. Laundry is hanging on a half dozen roofs in front of me, the signs of a Saturday in the neighborhood. On the top of a water pipe several stories above, a solitary cockatoo squawks occasionally. It’s almost six, and I’m sure the rest of the local flock will arrive soon. Two more flap in as I write, joining their ambassador on the building’s roof. These birds are another great part of this neighborhood, the flock that lives mostly in the park and the hills behind Tai Hang.
For most of the last seven years Tai Hang has been home. It’s a small neighborhood, smaller than our last San Francisco one, the inner Mission near 16th. In some ways they’re not dissimilar, both flat spaces in hilly country. They too share quite a bit with the Inner Sunset, where we initially landed on moving to San Francisco. That first neighborhood was comforting because of the park and the trees, because of the other immigrants, the long-ago-arrived-now-locals who had brought noodles and bagels. I remember walking in the morning to Uncle Benny’s Donuts and settling in to write with a coffee and a bagel sandwich in the beginning of our time in San Francisco, before jobs and frisbee.
I remember too our humid neighborhood in Houston, that small second floor apartment above the car park. I remember biking and skateboarding to Rice, getting a coffee and sitting down at a table outdoors to write. I remember the peace of free wifi and secluded public space that’s one of the best gifts of American universities. I used to frequent a half dozen small spots, outdoor tables and benches, near flower trees and classrooms, dining areas, and the student center.
Writing later, from the third floor of the IFC looking out over Hong Kong’s harbor, from a spot I frequent after dropping 5’s at the ferry to school, the memories make me glad. What a gift it has been to have spent so many mornings over the past two decades relatively free, relatively at peace, and writing. I remember writing in an apartment in Shanghai when starting this site, before taking my first office job, before moving my writing time to Cotton’s in the evenings.
For all the hours that have been spent in transit, for all the hours spent at work on one small company or another, there have been hundreds spent with a notebook or a keyboard. Some of that output has produced this site. Quite a bit of it has been torn out of books and posted off to friends on various continents. Still more remains in the notebooks on our shelves here in Hong Kong, or in Tokyo. It remains in notebooks in my parent’s house, or in my in-law’s. In an odd way notebooks are the thing I accumulate most, behind only other people’s writing. And bicycles. The collected paper, scuffed and ink covered, is an accumulation of time spent thinking, of time to myself. It both proves it’s own value and enables the more social and extroverted parts of my life. Two decades after I began this site, all these bits and pieces remain a good record of life, and I appreciate each email they and this site have brought me in return, each friend I’ve been able to share something with because it was written down.
Someone recently said that they write to remind people they’re alive, that they write not to be forgotten. The idea made me laugh, because I so clearly write not to forget.
Here’s to another twenty of doing the same.
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