Re: Cracking open

hello, crack me wide open, world — a personal intro, an invitation to know me; beginning my writing-sharing journey

Jan 30, 2025

The 2020s turned 5 this year. 5 is a strong number. 5 or 五 (‘wu’) in Mandarin, is considered a lucky number, associated with the five elements (water, fire, earth, wood, metal) and linked to balance and harmony. Yet in a duality as Taiwanese as I, the number 5 can also be seen as a symbol of lack or absence; a homophone for 無 (‘wu’) which means ‘none’ or ‘nothing’.

“無聊” (‘wu liao’), I would say as a little kid on visits to my extended family in Taiwan. I’m bored. Not understanding the gift it was to be there, automatically accessing bits of a culture and language that would later be gatekept by the mixed blood rushing to my cheeks. Only in water, swimming like the orca I must have been in a past life, did I find myself a little less bored.

游泳 (‘you yong’) means swimming;
a near homophone for 有 (‘you’) which means ‘have’.
another ‘you’ in 朋友 (‘peng you’) means friend.

In kindergarten class I counted by 5’s because counting by 1 was “too slow”.

Last year I burned in the fire of my enthusiastic boredom. Even though the fire burned me to the ground, I think I fell a little more in love with its flames. Is that so turned around? What is fire but destruction and creation in one? 無 and 五.

2020s, you’ve been 5 for less than a month and already your fire has destroyed an entire place dear to me. The kindling of impatient shareholders met their match in the insatiable ambition of billionaires, and earth needs us to resist as much as we need it. What can water do when gas giants are pouring oil on the flames of our youth? Equally important: what goodness will we create in its wake?*

cracking like a mirror on the wall
who in crisis shatters into a billion tiny crystals
of starry glass, dust, and all
to evaporate
and become the condensation of
reflections of a home
whose gentle tears of rain will quench
the volcanic ash of our bones

The first half of the 2020s shrank my world until it could fit inside the tiniest, hollowest shell. Slowly I chip away at it through stretches and resistance training on a thick mat on my hardwood floor. Playing with metal, sharp and smooth. Drinking hot tea in the cold. Gifting attention to every sensation of my body. Breathing, fast and slow. Training myself to resist the gravity of bored ambition. It comes and it goes like lines of a fault. Zones of weakness where movement and inactivity trade off as tectonic forces dance and play underneath the earth’s crust. The activity comes and goes, but the lines where they do so are permanent.

last year I was a dragon egg
I grew in a dark warmth inside my cracking shell
working hard to build enough strength
to push fiercely and slowly emerge out
of the space between cracks

While I get to know the parts within me — want, overwhelm, vision, the gentle one, the researcher, the artist; all gathered round — my therapist will sometimes inquire about their age and ask me every variation of this question. How old do you think this part is? How old does it think it is? How long has it been around? How long has it occupied this space in your body? How long has it been doing its job?

The question keeps coming and I still never know the answer. Like a wooden brain teaser puzzle I haven’t cracked yet. How am I supposed to account for the age of generations before me? Maybe the 2020s feel the same way when I say that they’re 5 today.

oh, how I feel myself healing
looking up at the sky
so abundant, so light
where the stars and the sun shine equally bright

until — my feet
hit
pavement.
with its pained cracks in the sidewalk
like intergenerational stained glass
but through a few cracks grow
a single, curious blade of grass
could a flower grow there? a garden perhaps?

My college roommate and I once reflected on our souls and how long they had been human. She was an old soul, reincarnated in human form for centuries upon centuries. She thought I was a young soul and we agreed that this might be my first human life but I had lived for generations as an oceanic dolphin and maybe a few ice ages ago as a tree. There is a familiarity to coming back to post-glacial life, gradually migrating from some ice-free refugia toward green grounds with the cracking and melting of earth’s icy surface all around. After lifetimes of migration, no wonder the Pacific Northwest feels like home to me with its orcas and evergreens. I haven’t lived as Chinook salmon but I feel their sensitivity to the nightmare of earth’s warming waters and polluted ecosystems. I feel how our 73 orcas dream of a world with plenty of Chinook salmon to eat.

Inner work is like dreaming in waking life. A dream a day keeps the nightmare at bay. I wonder what a 5-year-old 2020s sees in its nightmares and its dreams.

cracking like the shells of eggs
in a pressure cooker
who yearn to break open and release
their rich and raw inner worlds;
a tender, humble contribution
to some effervescent creation of
the magnificent unknown

The 2020s turned 5 and sometimes I feel like I’m 5 again, watching the fish swimming in the koi pond in my parents’ backyard. Slipping barefoot on wet rocks along the pond’s edge, wondering if I can make the jump to the next lily pad. Half a decade feels like it slipped through my finger tips and yet my body can remember every last rock scramble and stumbling block. While my brain thinks I’m starting over, my body knows better.

hello, crack me wide open, world
break my inner bones until the cracks and aches
become tectonic
giving way for glorious mountains to rise
from my quakes

From the deepest cracks in my heart, thank you for taking the time to read today. If you’re open I’d love to hear what you felt reading this, and hope to see you again next month.

Until then, I’ll be reflecting on January’s space between cracks in metal jewelry, tea eggs (茶葉蛋 / ‘cha ye dan’) and outdoor adventures with a hot cup of tea.