by the time i finished it, i stayed right where i first opened this book, as the sound of gong, built in bronze age, reverberating through history and penetrated my body till it shattered me into pieces. that was the true calling of life, which left me speechless since i don’t even know where to begin.
we were all born in the pistil of lotus flowers, minuet but heavy. then things can happen, desired or undesired——the unnameable war, a colony of butterflies moving from one insignificant place on earth to another, the foams on your love ones mouths resulting from overdosing heroin, and a lake in the middle of northeast america, practically nowhere, a lake filled up by tears and sweat, saturated by the opaque turquoise green, the color of eternal summer. summer is usually when love begins, in cliche romance.
i keep thinking about trevor and jack, funny how the protagonists name was mentioned once and once only—— it was when they were biking, carelessly and madly in love. it was the moment that jack had his agency, of been seen. not just by trevor but passion itself, america itself. the distinct new england vernacular and visual depiction of the rural america was haunting me. i once, have met a lovely american boy whose family is 20 mins away from philadelphia. he went to school in boston then moved to new york to pursue a career in writing. he had thick glasses and clurly brunette hair. he was a lover for tacobell and diet coke, a man who falls asleep with his legs crossed. we were in love, briefly, until he told me he loves me. what a tender human being, he was bathed underneath the skin and blood named american masculinity that he even had trouble saying the word love. we had a painstaking love. we did baby. it was my yellowness stubborn yet pixelated, refused to be absorbed by your whiteness. just like how jack was resilient against trevor’s madness. how he had all the fun and trauma for his lifetime and decided to leave everything behind just to realize that what he was longing for all this time was what he kept running from.
is it really unfair to find laughter in the word slaughter? id like to think so. i hate when i see the comment section attributing this book as the product of identity politics. it’s the story of love and grief, till both are intensified that it dissolved into a monolithic one, eventually diffused in the air——mixture of agent orange and freshly ground rice. we are the offsprings of it all, the war, the addiction, the cancer, the nail salon, the john deere tractor and the Hampton river, where in the story it keeps running and meets the mekong river.
oh, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous. why briefly? and why gorgeous? why can’t the beauty last? i was mesmerized constantly when reading, even frustrated. i didn’t come up with an answer until i flipped through the very last page. to be gorgeous is to be present, potentially to be seen, but never to be forgotten. i’ve managed to walk out of the labyrinth created by ocean vuong where he left me delirious and fulfilled. all the prose and poetry was initially undergirded by compassion, blurred into mundanity. this book is the definition of life itself, dazzling and exuberant, anguishing and delicate. what a masterpiece.
in this life i dare myself to tell the story of my life in america to my mother, who just texted me. she said she can’t stop crying after watching the american film adaptation of madam bovary on a outdated chinese cable tv which she refused to throw away.