Smoking

Obviously, I don't smoke. 

I'm pretty much French, 

Qui 

(in the sense of women's liberty in mind and body), 

but haven't gone so far as to be a real smoker.

2007, when I was first in France, 

smoking indoors was freshly banned earlier that year. 

Or else I might be nurtured into a smoker by friends...

Raj used to hate it when I occasionally smoked; 

he would snatch off my cigarette in front of people 

and throw away the packages in my closet.

I had a perfectly healthy body to be impregnated 

and gave birth to two perfectly healthy babies. 

Absolutely no difficulty in getting pregnant

 (both on the first month of try), 

and 100% free from any pregnancy or birth complications.

Almost went into depression after the second one was born, 

Raj was away traveling 200 days out of 365. 

Those few times smoking in my car while driving alone aimlessly, 

I will never forget the feeling of de-stress and relief.

I don't know why sometimes smoking with friends when outing feels nice. 

Liberating? 

Do whatever harmful stuff you want to your body? 

Because smoking causes cancer and birth defects? 

And we are not only birthing machines?

Sometimes people just do things that feel good momentarily. 

And yes, it does feel good. 

The sense of bonding, the sense of sisterhood, the sense of gangster shit. 

It does feel good. 

So ya, guess from now one more "must-have" will be added to our girls' night out.

Plus, Leena was a biiiiiiig smoker when she was young and wild. 

Finally, she is gradually returning to her original unobtainable form. 

We don't live for any of them,

 we live for ourselves. 

Whoever gives a side eye, 

they can pretty much, 

kindly, 

go fuck themselves. 

Ethics

I know people might think women like me, who claim to be "breaking all rules", "deconstructing the foundation of existing social structures", etc, must be inclined to do "wrong" things. Well, that depends on how you define "wrong and right".  

The ongoing story of two band members who I even once thought, "Wow, how I 'envy' them 'falling in love' like that", was not going to end well from the beginning. 

Because it is not ethical, there were innocent wife and daughters involved. 

Yes, ethics is essential for women/people like me who are trying to challenge social norms.

From when I first entered the dating scene in Xiamen U before 20, I had never played games with boys, never wasted any men's time, emotion, or money, and never hurt even one girl/woman. Despite how my parents used to try pressuring me into submission - "Make them wait, make several good ones wait while you pick the most promising one!" Considering the massive number of proposals that have come to my hands each day for all these years, I am damn proud of myself who failed this game miserably according to social norms. That's why all those men remain respectful to me, even after two decades. 

Actually, since 2nd or 3rd grade, I was surrounded by boys' love and affection. Never toyed with any one of them, not even one. I have stayed sincere and respectful to all since I was a child. I just kept saying very sincere "sorry"s. I made sure it was loud and clear, "I'm sorry, I don't like you. You are a nice boy, thank you for liking me, but please don't send me flowers or letters or follow me anymore." Most of the time, I have girls who help me pass the messages. 

I have stayed 100% true to myself as well. If I liked someone, I would let them know. They would know. I do my part, direct and straightforward, leaving them to choose and do their part.      

Is it a hard thing to do? Some people just couldn't follow through?

For me, you would need to kill me to make me hurt another woman.

I Would Never! 

I tell myself all the time -- "Never Ever Hurt Another Woman!" It's so ingrained in my brain that it has become a natural reflex.

Of course, I have been presented with profound opportunities that could hurt some wives and daughters at home. I can six-sense it from two miles away and have already decided how to escape two days prior! That mental preparation always made escape 10x easier, and I would never be caught in the moment. Hey, I had rehearsed it!

You think it's that easy? Trapping the 20-something me? I would never hurt another woman! Don't even think! Aren't we all victims of this patriarchal world?

Now, the 40-something me? Ha! I choose the time, location, people, and encounters based on my own standards, and I proactively plan everything that will happen. Stronger than ever, I hold the ethics that I would never hurt another woman, and I would never hurt any man either, young or old. Finally, I am at the age that I can choose not only to feel like a victim but also to be a protector. I guess I have been a protector all along, even as a victim. 

It's unnecessary for all stories to "end well", but if you are assertive about your ethics, you can always answer to yourself. If there are hard feelings, heartbreaks, or disappointments, you can get through it much more manageable. 

There is so much to do in this wide, wild world; there are so many beautiful, ethical people out there waiting to share a mutually respectful time with you. 

You gotta choose well and make each step clean. Don't lay the stones for regret. 

Citizenship

Finally I got it, 16 years after we decided to settle and 17 years after I first stepped foot on this "promised" land. 

It could be decades of waiting and decades of lingering, I don't care. But it was one year too late. One year too late. 

My popo couldn't wait for me to return. 

Now I don't remember how much I cried last year, for months. 

Time does heal. Especially for me. 

I just wipe it out, throw it away. Cause it is too hard to carry along the pain and guilt. 

I made a choice. I chose my kids, I was unwilling to risk returning to China and walking into the claws of the authoritarian regime. 

It was my own pain and my own guilt. 

All I wished for was my popo's complete understanding and forgiveness before she passed. 

I turned into a sorceress, channeling my ability to connect across space. And I believed that my popo heard it. 

At least, so I believed. 

I have established a life here, in this comparably "free and promised" land, so my children and their children do not need to go through what I went through.

Does time truly heal, though? Did I truly put all of it behind me?

Every time, we have to lock up the Momo who feels too much. Too much affection, too strong connection, too intense pain. All those beautiful stories and fateful heartbreaks.

Some of them Momos have been in the dungeon for years, we don't wish to check them up, only prepare to put them back immediately if they ever attempt to escape. 

That's the only way we function, as one singular entity. 

So tell us, if time does heal?

Now I've got it, I wish to enter the territories I was forbidden or had massive trouble entering before: Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Europe, UK, and many more.  

Monogamy

"The history of monogamy is rooted in the major human shift from hunter-gatherer societies to the agricultural revolution around 10,000 years ago. With settled farming, male labor became essential, and land inheritance gained importance, leading to the rise of patriarchy. As communities grew more established, the focus on inheritance and property rights created a need to control lineage to ensure resources stayed within a family. This marked a shift from more communal, flexible relationships—where paternity was less relevant, as children were raised collectively—to stricter, monogamous unions where men’s lineage and control over women’s sexuality became central. 

As societies grew larger and more hierarchical, lineage became critical for stable governance, with power transferring from ruler to offspring. Too many heirs often led to conflict, so a controlled family structure became essential. With the expansion of empires like Rome, and later through European colonization, the importance of regulating family structures only intensified. Religion then reinforced these ideas, framing monogamy as the “moral” standard and embedding it deeply into social expectations. Today, nearly every culture has adopted monogamy as the norm, often forgetting its origins in controlling resources and power rather than any inherent truth about relationships."

My perfect kind of nightlife

Sometimes Raj complains that I go out too often with girl friends and leave him behind.

How do I explain to him that having girl friends who are at the same level of openness and wildness as oneself is as lucky as having a good life partner(s)? 

And to that luckiness, I am so grateful for my blessings because I got 1, 2, 3, 4 (Leena, Sandra, Sony, Kanika) Four freaking wild women with me. And that too, is only my "vanilla" friends...

For the past almost 16 years of my life in America, my trips with only female friends/family ranked as among the best trips or experiences ever. 

Three is the magic number. Three beautiful women. Wherever we go, we get special treatment. Well, two beautiful women as well, to be honest. Haven't done a four-woman trip yet. I believe if I go by myself anywhere, it will be the same, maybe even crazier... 

(Guess women who dare to enjoy and experience life as it is are too rare.)

For example, last night, we were asked to step aside while standing in line and were invited to the "Guest List" to enter the club for free. They also gave us a table because it was available. We got hit at each and every bar/club we went to, one place multiple times, and also when we were smoking outside.

No need to mention when traveling in a different country, it is especially convenient, fun, and exotic... 

Meanwhile, Raj only gets this kind of fun when he is with me...

Of course, I will never give up fun with my girl friends. I love it so much getting drunk and high with them. We took 5 + 5mg and at least 5 rounds of shots last night. We were happy high, dancing to music old and new.

I looooove the dance floor with ma girls, because they are open, wild, understanding and kind, they desire to be free and they are free. Hence, I can be carefree and don't need to worry about whether they feel comfortable. I get to be myself.

I love being with women who enjoy life. 

My Best Best feeling is when I am high in my head and free in my body and in my spirit, surrounded by people who are as happy and free as me. We just drink, dance, smoke, dance, and drink/smoke some more. And take some photos and videos in between. :-P

"Beyond Good and Evil"

Supposing that Truth is a woman - what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women -- that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?

Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien - IF, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground - nay more, that it is at its last gasp.

But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerillism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject - and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted very personal, very human -- all too-human fact.

The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial" pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. 

It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind - for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. 

Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatism error -- namely, Plato's invention of pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. 

But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE - the fundamental condition - of life, to speak of Spirit and the God as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack the finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupted of youths, and deserved his hemlock?" 

But the struggle against Plato, or -- to speak plainer, and for the "people" -- the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPEL"), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals. 

As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment -- which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper reading, might, in fact, bring it about so that the spirit would not so easily find itself in "distress"! 

(The Germans invented gunpowder -- all credit to them! But they again made things square -- they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free spirits -- we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT...

Sils Maris Upper Engadine,

June, 1885

Time

 

assuming we are the lucky ones,

no war, no disease, no end of world

what we're supposed to do then, 

with the gift that fell into our hands?

if we do not sit under playground hackberries

listen to mockingbirds trade and mate 

count perfect dots on emperors' wings

if we do not hike to sunset cliffs

let Pacific wind blow sorrow out of hair

dazzle at mama otters' gentle hands

if we do not lay alone under webs of blue stars

immerse in solitude with no rhythm or beats

amuse upon who we are and where we go

if we do not stumble off into thorny pits

bloody, torn, and broken

climb out, rest, and heal

if we do not spend whole morning in fear

shut eyes, open wings, and fall 

get up, open wings again, and fall again

what we're supposed to do then, 

with this gift dropped into our hands?