DESIGN ALANA BAER TEXT CHONG JING GAN
STEPPING OUT OF THE COLD HARDNESS OF WINTER MORNING AND INTO THE ASIAN SUPERMARKET FEELS LIKE WALKING INTO A FRAGMENT OF HOME, NESTLED IN THE MIDDLE OF PROVIDENCE.
The wet-market stench of scales and slime seep from the puddles of water by the fish tanks.
The dizzying rows of bottled juice, milk, and tea, and condiments—
oceans to the faraway, sweltering humidity of the Southeast Asian tropics.
In my room, bare and bereft of pieces from Singapore, I mutter each item under my breath, as if I am chanting an incantation for home:
The tinny Mandarin heartbreak ballads chime in the background.
each one triggers a glowing surge of synaptic connection in my mind, tugging on threads reaching across
Weeks later, I unearth the receipt from that visit, buried deeply into the folds of my wallet.
for good fortune, this is what you need. 1 Enoki Mushroom--$0.98,
1 Kim Chee Pickled Vegetable--$4.49,
and little fragmented memories of taste are rising up from the depths of my tongue, tingling islands of sensation on its surface, a fractured map of a region, dots of a constellation. If only I could draw them together, draw the image forth, into focus, in hopes that it would coalesce into home.
each one leads to a place that isn’t quite home. In Singapore all I eat are pieces of other places. Now, regurgitating my food into invoices, I search for something in the lines, —but there is nothing but pieces.
1 Chinkiang Vinegar--$1.49,;
But it is collapsing; the tastes are falling apart, sliding off my tongue through nervous passageways that diverge rather than converge—
Perhaps the way home is always a misdirection, a line that curves, rather than one that is straight. Maybe that’s why the incantation also includes lines that are steeped in misspelled magicks:
1 Asian Frozen--$3.99, 1 Chili Power--$2.49. These are strange things, nonsensical things, but that is also what home is:
not familiar, but always foreign, distant, and far, waiting at the edges of your vision, beyond the corners of the page.
The name of the supermarket, in Chinese, spelled 好运来 more accurately translates to Good Fortune Comes. It is spoken like a wish or prayer for goodwill and blessed tidings—which perhaps, strangely, is also what Providence is. As I recite it, it begins to shift—from a spell for good luck, to a recipe for transmutation. As these banal, familiar items leave my tongue, their shape morphs into something strange. I realise that perhaps home was never that easy to know, but that it is all the more precious for that. So, I take this receipt and I chew it, tear it to pieces, mix it, reconstitute and reassemble it in my mouth, hoping that eventually somthing will emerge between my lips, between the lines, birthed in voice.
CHONG JING GAN B’23 TOneeds MAKEtoANOTHER TRIPtrip TO THE SUPERMARKET CHONG JINGNEEDS GAN B’23 make another to the supermarket.
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LITERARY
