Saturday, 01 February 2003 | Revisit

It's strange seeing a room that was once yours decorated by other people, their furniture pushed up against walls in ways you hadn't considered. Since my last place was essentially a giant open space (without much wall-space to dictate the arrangement), there are even more options for variation, ways to make it unlike mine. It's also strange how you can feel possessive about a place even though it no longer belongs to you, and even though your replacements have been there much longer than you ever were. Not that I regret leaving.

There was a party at my old place last night, an event that made it hard to pull myself from my bed this morning in time to see the parades in Chinatown. Parades plural, because there were several pockets of lions and drummers, all moving in different directions in the midst of the crowd. The lions were powered by people—one person in the front, his body sticking up through the lion's fat neck, and another underneath a train of cloth, pretending to be the lion's ass. They moved quickly and jerked in practiced rhythm, back and forth, up and down, making it easy to forget that the lion was, by itself, an inanimate mask. Behind every lion was a loyal percussion army, slowly walking in line behind their respective lion while marrying cymbals and beating giant drums with short, thick sticks.

Sometimes Chinese kids carrying long wooden poles would press back the people as to make room for the lion entourage, and sometimes it just plowed through the center without any help, with a pack of people trailing behind it. Lots of Chinese people, of course, though not exclusively, and lots of beautiful ornate satin, poking out from beneath long, thick coats. Lots of firecrackers, kids throwing powder in the street to produce a satisfying bang, stomping on it forcefully when it needed encouragement. Lots of paper lamps, red and gold, and fish carved out of colorful stone. Lots of cameras, and lots of spiky, gelled hair.

At one point I just stood in the middle of a crowded intersection underneath a paper accordion dragon and let the chaos pass by me as if I were a drain. It seemed to be the best way to see everything, to stand still, rather than move with it and become part of the organism.