Assignment 2:2 — Outside the Home

Outside the home, Lijun walked underneath the black canvas of a late winter evening. Above, the full moon shone. He was always entranced by the full moon. It was always so complete, so whole. So beautiful. His family had the congenital myth that if you bundled your one strongest desire, your one innermost wish, put it into a firework and shot it at the doll-faced saucer in the sky, it would come true. They didn’t believe in silly stories anymore, but Lijun’s blood came from an earlier time. He had already decided he would make a wish tonight and for what? He’d find that out eventually.

The clanging of the dinner bell summoned him and as he set his small box of toy-firecrackers to the side and dumped his day’s profits into a small jar, he shook his sandals off and stepped inside. So accustomed to the shelter his straw hat provided him while he sold his wares, he forgot to untie the chin strap, keeping the duoli upon his head. Everyone had already piled in between each other around the round table that had been filled with grilled fish, fried tofu, and pickled vegetables. A wholesome meal to share.

“Hurry up,” one of his aunts said, “it’s not polite to keep people waiting.”

Picking up his chopsticks and a bowl of rice, Lijun struggled to squeeze in between two bulky arms, extending his chopsticks towards the side dishes through the flurry of carried food. His douli slipped askew on his head as he was bumped by another thick arm, and his chopsticks barely remained parallel in his trembling hand. It was only now that he realized that his knees had been marked red. Everyone else had been sitting on thin cushions. His eyes loomed over towards the grilled fish. Only one slab of white meat clung to its thin bones and as he reached for it, his chopsticks were slapped out of his hand.

“Oi, whaddya think yer doin’? Damn, ya really don’t get it do ya? Last piece always goes to father. Why doesn’t that get through your thick head? Maybe it’s ‘cause ya wear that hat so much ya do stupid things like this,” one of his relatives said.

“But, I just want…”

“Did I say y’could speak, idiot? Don’t talk back!”

Someone grabbed his hat and flung it towards the entrance of their home. The sound of his chin strap’s fabric being torn out of place like the cries of an abandoned animal pierced Lijun’s ears. Dropping his bowl of rice, he ran towards his hat. Without stopping, he picked his mangled hat up, put it on his head, sandaled his feet and met the night again.

He reached an old plum blossom tree nearby, its trunk burly and its branches, although in tangled chaos, were serenely grouped. Quickly, his hands scraped out the mound of dirt at its base, unearthing a modest missile, painted with a turtle, a dragon god and a boy on its sides. He climbed to the top, legs straddling tight around a bare branch, lit a match from his pockets and set flame to the wick.

The tears streaming down his face felt hotter than the flickering wick flailing by his hands. Closing his stinging eyes once before opening them again, he muttered some words, and threw. The rocket spiraled a few times, soaring through the sky in celebratory arches, going further and further away until it was a small black dot eclipsed by the moon. It burst into whites and coral reds illuminating Lijun’s quivering lips before casting him in darkness in the ensuing silence. He stayed there that night. The round moon offered him a company his home never could.

—-

As a note, I wrote this short drabble to take place in some sort of unspecified Asian setting, the period being completely ambiguous if not entirely fictional. There’s a mixture of a various of East Asian cultures here, but with many images drawn from Chinese backgrounds.

I tried to compose this story with several antitheses of the idea of ‘home’ like the hostile family that refuses to provide for Lijun. Elements of what constitute ‘home’ for me are strewn across the piece too. The strong presence of nature recalls my own setting of agrarian Abbotsford, the communal dinner table conveys the importance of eating with the family and sharing ‘banchan’ (side-dishes) in my Korean household, and the thread of filial piety stem from my personal experiences and intersections with Korean culture.

Furthermore, I wanted to string the motif of the moon through the passages until the very end, comparing the full moon to the round dinner table before returning to the sphere once more. In regards to the second hyperlink, that tale has been one that has stuck with me since a young age. Though didactic, meaning to warn children against disobedience, I find myself touched by the tragedy of losing home and of the inability to say goodbye to one’s family. The places we live in aren’t simply constructed by the landscape or its buildings, but the people we share them with and the disconnect Taro experiences with the stranger at the end of the tale emphasize such a truth.

Works Cited:

Moss, Laura. “What’s the Big Deal about Eating Alone?” Mother Nature Network. N.p., 05 June 2014. Web. 06 Feb. 2016. <http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/whats-the-big-deal-about-eating-alone>.

Ozaki, Yei Theodora. “The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad.”Japanese Fairy Tales. Lit2Go Edition. 1908. Web. <http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/72/japanese-fairy-tales/4881/the-story-of-urashima-taro-the-fisher-lad/>. February 07, 2016.

Ronderick. A view of the moon through the branches. Digital image. Halfway to NoWhere: Ranting and Complaints of Life in Taiwan. N.p., 12 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://ronderick.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/sakura-trees-in-wu-lin-farm/>.