crawling hands and knees towards bethlehem

they say california is for dreamers

There’s a crossroads in Los Angeles, just south of the airport, on Sepulveda and Walnut Avenue. It’s a little forlorn and wholly uninteresting, steeped in that sense of trademark American nothingness: a couple of office buildings, trucks rumbling by the main road, and a chain coffee shop posted up on one corner. It’s the kind of place that only serves to bring something somewhere else, no matter if it’s factory goods to a store or employees to an office or tourists to Hollywood. A vessel for you to pass by while on your way to your destination Where Things Happen. These quarters of El Segundo tend to be like that.

I can almost picture myself five years ago, standing on that crossroads, my headphones in, waiting for either a carpool or the 232 bus. Five years ago, I was doing an internship part-time in one of the nondescript buildings, assisting in Hollywood the rest of the week, and working remotely at night. I did a coffee chat every morning before work, lived in a sub-basement, and lived off of office snacks. It was all so exciting. To be fair, once you catch a glimpse of the silhouette belonging to a life you want to live, anything is. It really felt like I was standing on the precipice of my destination. Where Things Happen. So I did everything in my power to chase it. And because I was kind of broke, I spent a lot of time waiting on that corner, coloring in the details of what that shining life looked like, before the bus could finally come.

Last month, I returned to El Segundo by accident. My father was visiting the U.S. for the first time in nearly five years; I hadn’t seen him since 2019, and had never met my two youngest siblings, who were born shortly before the start of the pandemic. These are the weird things that happen when you live so far from your family. So after the U.S.–China border reopened, he announced that we would gather for a big reunion in California, with the mission to spot a dolphin and playact familial intimacy and generally marvel at the Pacific Ocean from the other side of it.

Without a doubt, I get my imagination from my father. He’s a man that lives in his own delusion, whether it manifests in the big things (a litter of failed relationships, aspirations to become bona fide TikTok famous, a neverending stream of business ideas) or the little ones (imagining exits on the freeway, reliably forgetting what he needed at the store, his penchant for pop-country stars who sing about getting out and going somewhere — Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift). He dreams big and has no qualms about going for it, no matter the repercussions.

Perhaps my father’s greatest illusion is America, which he describes in these vague, sweeping statements as we drive on the interstates. America is the land of politeness, and America is the land of take-no-prisoners, fuck-you ambition. America is safety and America is danger. America is poor and America is wealthy. America is Michael Jordan wearing his six rings and Michael Jordan starring in Space Jam. America is grass that is perpetually greener. America is the land where he will grow old, and finally, finally, get his Eras tour tickets.

We, like many eldest daughters and Asian diaspora daughters and daughters who perhaps have too many opinions, have a decidedly languishing relationship. And we, like many daughters and fathers of this genre, have mutely brushed over that reality until the distance of living quite literally on opposite sides of the world swallowed us whole. Arguments became spats became occasional, perfunctory exchanges on the phone, until I opened my phone one night and saw he texted me photos from his most recent wedding. I was not invited.

So being enfolded into my father’s world once more was a shock. As we traipsed the coast of California, moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Irvine and back, I had the vague sense he was trying to sell us all on his vision of American life. Making up for lost time in the suspension of this dust bowl now. He’d make a strange assortment of dishes for dinner, spaghetti and omelettes and hot dogs, and sweep his arms out in a grand motion. “This is what it would be like,” he would say. “You would visit me for Christmas and I would cook you dinner.” Or, inexplicably, as we drove around a town he’d never visited before, “the school district here is great.”

They say California is for dreamers.

I was hoping that being around my father, in all his West Coast utopia glory, meant some of his imaginative faculty would rub off on me. My auntie taught me about geju, the sense one has to look at the forest, not the trees. It’s not just ambition or delusion in either singular sense, but the ability to construct a web of goals that move towards an overarching purpose. It’s a phrase I turned over in my head a lot. From May until August, I had lived sort of in a haze, picking apart my life like a scab while disintegrating into the fibers of my couch. I watched spring wane into summer from my bedroom window, unsure of what I was supposed to do now, where I was supposed to be. I can’t say I wasn’t productive (although the lack of instant gratification in seeing your work, stamped with your byline, go out into the world every day, was a real learning curve to adjust to). But the ultimate reality was that with eight gluttonous hours now free to scroll down the alternate realities offered on Instagram (why am I not engaged, or teaching, or in Italy, or getting my lashes done), I worked on very little. I thought a lot about writing, regularly and obsessively — the theory of it, my goals within it, that I should do it, why can’t I do it, does anyone care about it, is that all that I’ve written, did Zadie Smith ever write garbage like this — before ultimately turning on the television to watch a show I’ve already seen and scrolling down my smaller screen until I successfully smoothed over any opportunity for critical thought and passed the fuck out.

It’s hard to know if my father’s imagination is geju or just a string of dreams. It’s hard to know whether the fabric of the country he loves ever had geju or if it was always simply that, fabrication. I know I spent two weeks under the California sun, looking at dolphins and the Pacific Ocean and smiling at dinner, and tried to punctuate the haze with some kind of feeling.

Towards the end of our trip, we drove to return our rental car to an alleyway in El Segundo. The air was sticky in August heat and my little brother was looking forlorn out of the car window, missing the rhythm of China, confused by the silence and stretches of nothing that my father so adored. Taylor Swift played from the radio, singing about what a cruel summer it had been.

We pulled onto the corner of Sepulveda and Walnut. I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of it, my little corner that is not mine and belongs to no one, still and untouched. Then, in the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the window, silhouetted against the sun, headphones in. Waiting for a bus that’s running late.

“This is a place where anything happens,” I heard my father saying. “The problem is the people that don’t have geju.”

The light turned green and we drove past it, towards our destination. I felt my heart breaking open.

“Others say he did not suffer at all. Perhaps he did not, for time past is not believed to have any bearing upon time present or future, out in the golden land where every day the world is born anew.” — Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.