To Carthage then I came

On my last day before orientation I decided to ride the Xindian line to a terminal station, hunt around the southern edges of the metropolis for those clay oven rolls my tourist map recommended. I got off at Xiaobitan, which had an air of the seashore about it, all those open planes, that pale sand-colored stone. The white courtyard crowning the station dazzled in the heat, in a squint-eyed, Waste Land way. I circled it aimlessly for a few minutes, shielding myself with a parasol’s circumference of shade.

I felt a little weird in the outfit I’d thrown on after a slapdash layer of sunscreen— there’s no full-length mirror in my room. My tunic was a little too long and my shorts a little too short, such that the one obscured the other. On the way over from Taipower, I kept staring at myself in the empty train car’s expansive of mirrored surface, smoothing my hands over the houndstooth tights I’d gotten cheap at the Shida Night Market. In the morning, as I swiped on a layer of powder against the heat and twisted my shower-damp hair into its plait, I’d talked to my roommate over Skype about mirror fasting.

When I’m stateside, I come to a standstill in front of every reflective plane, brushing my bangs up and to the side. That habit hasn’t faded here. But somehow I feel less burdened by my body, by the insidious need for some visual verification of its integrity. I expected to be triggered here, into some dark laughable spiral of neurosis— the way I was needled, shameful and cliché, by the thinness of the girls in Harbin. But instead I walk until my feet hurt, suck down cool, calorie-rich teas without guilt. I forget for long swathes of time the troubling heft of my flesh because I’m busy trying to figure out if I should cross here, whether I should ride to the next station or just keep following the street.

I sneak glances at myself in the silvery sides of elevators, and feel okay. My image blurs when I’m in constant motion. I suspect I can feel my thighs diminishing, though. I still lay a hand against them periodically, to feel the tightening of that plane on the outside of my leg, make sure the hollowing is perceptible. Yeah, I think it’s stupid. I stand by that claim I make sometimes, how I’d gain fifty pounds for fifty additional IQ points. But this is better than going to sleep anxious because there’s no twist of hunger in my belly, then rushing out for dessert to prove I’m beyond it all. There’s nothing heroic about sucking down a milkshake. And maybe I’m not losing weight at all. It’s nice when I can stop thinking about it and just read my map, move towards some destination more concrete than the dim shape of a girl like a switchblade.

I guess this is fair warning. Certain Light demographics to which I belong are vulnerable to a particular brand of malaise when abroad— one that, alas, emblematizes our shiny Cosmogirl zeitgeist. I don’t know what I’m talking about, exactly. Phenotypical Asians with seesaw body image? Fat heritage girls? The culturally credulous? I’m aware that I’ve got enough aesthetic privilege that I should really just shove it; “fat” is, of course, a contextually contingent marker. The point is, I’m fine in Taipei— the usual stupid fleshly fixations run at a level that puts them well within the normal range. And yeah, that’s kind of problematic, my drawing comfort from the fact that every other girl of my demographic totes around the same tired sack of mild self-loathing— a real case of first world problems. There’s nothing particularly pathological about the way my self-scrutiny manifests itself here, not beyond the sicknesses of this cultural moment in time. And I'm no visionary; I can't transcend my time. Hey, it’s not like I’m satisfied with my mental qualities, either.

In the afternoon I walked from the Dingxi station to the Museum of World Religions. Going by foot was easier than figuring out the bus route. After negotiating for a bit over an English-language audio tour, I demurred on paying the price and was instead attached to a docent who led me around with two other ladies. Like at the National Palace Museum, everything is gorgeously designed, with an oppressively meticulous consideration for details. We knelt down in front of scale models showing Chartres Cathedral, the Dome of the Rock, and glasses cases displayed all manner of communion robes and marriage contracts.

Our guide turned towards me periodically, asking if I’d seen this before, or that— a pair of tiger slippers sewn for a newborn, a stack of paper money to be burnt for the dead. It made me think of this one conversation I had with my Chinese-American suitemate, about how when we become householders, all these rituals of continuity will be lost. I’d offered up this farcical image of us looking up Chinese funereal rites on WikiHow, or enlisting in western anthropologists to help us become ourselves. It’s like how I time my tea ceremonies, those bastardized mainland-Taiwanese affairs conducted with mid-grade Iron Goddess of Mercy. I use a cell phone, adding five minutes to each subsequent infusion with the stopwatch app. The syncretism is fun, like mass-market Urban Outfitters irony. But I’m meant to feel kind of sad about it, and I do— pouting reactionary that I am, allergic to the tang of modernity.

The museum curators were definitely drunk on symmetry, a visual manifestation of their careful fairness towards all faiths— a mysticized political correctness that bordered on pantheism. Although our docent did make some comments about Hindus or Indians— the words are the same in Mandarin— that wouldn’t have gone unremarked upon if they were given on the floor of Congress. It was all very Deep River— that Endo Shusaku novel we almost read with Chloe Starr, about Japanese tourists in the land of the holy Ganges. And I guess as a Sanskrit fetishist I’m carting around my own brand of orientalism.

After tomorrow, I'll be glad for a schedule and some academic tasks to accomplish. I'm getting tired of this intellectual atrophy. Blogging helps. Sending dispatches abroad helps. Hell, what is blogging except a correspondence addressed to my future self, who will sit in a New Haven common room reading back over this log? And cringe, probably.