4
Green Dragon Presents the Seed
Every warrior dreams of immortality. Or a glorious death. The first time I hoped my end would come fast, I was barely ten. Was? No, I am ten.
The opening sting strikes, furious and deep, through my temple and into my soul, and I know what is coming. The stabbing, the venom. Piercing through the side of my skull, pouring the poison inside, waiting for my brain to swell so big it will explode. I’d rather die. My parents passed young. Perhaps now it’s my turn.
Fuck glory.
The stinger headaches, they never fail. Once started, they go on for hours. Stabbing, squeezing, stabbing, squeezing, stabbing, squeezing, until no wish remains. Sometimes they leave me on the edge of death, perhaps waiting to see if I have the courage to take the last step myself. End it all. But I’m too weak. I can’t do it. Never can.
There’s no dignity in my fight. No honor in losing, for such defeat serves no purpose. No possible win either, since the enemy is my own body attacking itself. For all I know, these demons in my head will either come again, many times per day, or watch me go through life terrified of their return. Like today, whenever today is in this stream of vivid memories of mine. A stream. Now I am ten, then I’m twenty-four. I open my eyes, see a cage and a big man. A Tigress in a cage. I like being here. I think. He kicks me in the head, and I chose not to defend. Please come, bullet foot, wreck this raging skull of mine. But before I get hit, the light drifts me away once more. To a dark place with only a few faint spots of amber lights going up and down. I hear bangs, like gongs, but different. Loud. Echoing to the heavens and hell. They are about to get in. But who?
Stab, squeeze, stab. I pray. My body shakes, skin drips both hot and cold. “Help!” I yell. The pain answers with another squeeze. An agonizing one. Between the ear and the eye, five nails dig into my flesh. I squint my face as hard as I can. Would rip the skin and everything behind it if I could. Stabs. Many. Stronger. Faster. Hurting so much they can be heard: Tween! Tween! Tween!
The floor where I sit feels like concrete. Where is it? Where am I this time? I just can’t remember. Not yet, Tigress, but you will. Whose voice is this? It sounds like me. Another me? How? There is a rail. A metal rail, I can see now. It spirals, drawing the directions of the stairs stretching up and down. Beyond it, there is ample space for me to jump. Will this be the time I do it? Is this a message? From the immortals?
Squeeze. A flicker again. My body feels different, the light and the smells are very distinct. Some kind of incense that tries to be Chinese without ever getting close. Her voice is soothing, however. The woman with hippie clothes and a big gray afro, I know her. She’s kind. Her hand lays a cold wet cloth on my forehead and tells me to lie back. I know that will make it worse. Rocking my body helps. I try, and the pain rescinds for an instant. That place, my home, from a life I barely recognize. When I had just arrived in America. The stream keeps flowing. It reminds me of the story of Zhuang Zhou, who once dreamt he was butterfly then woke up wondering if his real self was the butterfly dreaming he was a man or the man who dreamt of being the most beautiful of all creatures. They say this story is about life before and after death. The sting comes back, and the torment washes over them all. Dreams. Ages. Lives. Butterflies.4 I lose track of everything. Don’t know if I am the little girl hallucinating being in a cage or the grown-up woman in a nightmare at the fire exit of a building. I don’t care. Unless death comes, to all my moments and all my times, reality means nothing. The nausea comes and my guts explode through my mouth. I hear a splatter on the floor. The hippie holds my hair back. “That’s it, sweetie,” she says. She shows me a tiny needle and I nod, just to make her stop asking questions.
Squeeze. Light. She’s gone. Wudang is back. This time, smoking. As if it has been hit by an atomic bomb. A stench of ashes everywhere. Engrossing. I yell, no one listens. My head grows from within, tries to thrust my eye out of its hole. I press it back with my palm, my fist, my knee, anything I can find, any position I can arrange because it hurts so much, but nothing eases the agony. Another stab. “You were born with too much yang,” Shifu’s voice bursts from the skies. Knowing this never softened the pain.
I beg the immortals for an end. Stab, stab, stab. Carry me, Mother! I have no kids, no family to leave in grief. My death, it has no teeth. Please, let the curse take me this time! Shifu, give me the fate of my ancestors. Stab, stab, stab.
The light carries me back to our house—to when I was young, and life was simpler. Everything I have inside still erupts through my mouth, then I moan the cry of a dying moose, and of a birthing woman too. I kneel and curl on a cold floor covered by a thin layer of the dirt the wind brought inside.
Stab, stab, stab. Had Shifu left any swords around, I would have sliced my face, dropped the aching parts on the floor, and run to the mountains. Had he left a spear or a dart, they would be through my eye now, to the back of the skull. The image, the peace. The dirt. A thick, rancid mud now. Plus pieces of undigested food for distraction. Mushrooms, cabbage, a few slippery segments of noodles. My body twists over it and all I can think is how soothing that feels. My fingers play with the foul paste, the remaining bits of my last meal. Underneath, the floor whispers a thought. “Come.” I bang the side of my head against it. Bang! Bang! Bang!
Too soft.
The foot of a table. A hard-edged stool. I hit them all. The pain dulls for an instant, but never enough. Irony: my fists have beaten so many people. But one cannot punch herself to sleep.
Breathe, Yinyin, breathe.
Squeeze, stab. Fuck.
From the hills beyond the door, a cold wind bursts in, bringing the whisks, then the snout, then the eyes of a giant, magnificent dragon. “Please,” I beg, “allow me to die this time.” The dragon then nods with the nobility of the eternal beings, and points to the bottom of the room, where the painting of the man who created Tai Chi smiles at me. I beg him for an end too, but he does nothing. Just holds his hand like Daoists do and emanates graphic rays of qi toward the rest of the wall. The wall? Yes, the wall! Thank you, Immortal Dragon. Thank you, Grandmaster Sanfeng! I bow to them both, find the strongest edge and, before the next stab starts, I run. Jump. Hit my head as hard as I can.
Shifu could be funny sometimes, or utterly mean. With come-and-go pupils, as he used to say, he could let a few things pass. For the disciples on the other hand, the ones who have sworn obedience to his teachings, there was nothing to which he would turn a blind eye. His word was final. His opinion, the law. Any disobedience was faced with pain and humiliation. Or expulsion—from the school and his life, probably from Wudang, forever. But when a disciple needed him (and I was the closest, for he raised me himself from birth), he would hold back the sun’s setting to help.
From the bed I see him in the kitchen, opening a clean cloth Master Gu, the alchemist, had sold him earlier. It carries a few mushrooms, a flower with a well-hung stem, and a piece of honeycomb he says was to keep the medicine in my stomach. Honeycombs?! Against stings? I had no power to resist. His eyes bounce between the rock where he grinds the ingredients and me. One, the other, one, the other. Then he pours the honey and hands me a small bowl.
The smell alone makes me want to puke. The taste, despite the sweetness and irony, makes it even worse. But I hold it in. Not sure I have anything else to let go, anyway. I swallow the paste in disgust and wait. Soon, the colors start to change. Of everything, even Shifu. The world moves in patterns, so slow and funny. Yes, slow, funny, bright. The colors shine like the wings of the most wonderful butterfly. In a deep buffalo voice, Shifu tells me I need to strip up. I thought he wanted me to undress. I try to take my top off, and he holds me.
“No, stand up!” Hahaha! I think he finds it funny too. Master turns pink when he’s laughing. A pink old man with a flute. Outside, our tea leaves fly in the same direction that the spirits rise from the waters of Wudang. Leaf by leaf, scale by scale, the fog gains a green armor, and with the newborn bodies, they sing and dance. Baby dragons. So cute! They swirl in happiness and disappear into the clouds and toward the east. I want to cry. Shifu asks, still in his buffalo voice, if it’s hurting still. What is he talking about? Oh, the pain, the demon bees inside my head. “It’s not, Shifu, it no longer hurts.” Wait. I can feel it stinging in the back of my eyes. Vaguely throbbing. Lightly squeezing. I think my agony is blue. Used to be yellow, like ginkgo trees in the fall—if ginkgo trees tried to kill you. Now it’s blue and distant. Like the sky. Between me and him, the Dao. I can see it emanating from my pores, light of every color one can dream. I wish Shifu could see it. But he is too busy making buffalo sounds. Because it’s beautiful, and so, so funny!
4. Daoism is full of allegories, and this is one of the unescapable ones. Full of meaning and nuance. Layers upon layers. For a deeper read, try the chapter “The Dream of the Butterfly” in Hans-Georg Moeller’s book Daoism Explained.