LIFE IN AMERICA.
The joy of leaving HK to the US was shadowed with each mile of the plane‘s journey. Fear and the sense of aloneness set in, and was in the form of chest pain. I had never known of such feelings before. The intensity of the pain caused a severe confusion in my mind. I began to wonder if I had made a wrong decision to leave home. The Seattle airport was the first place I landed in the States. Instead of excitement, I was met by the most intense fear of being alone. After making a phone call home at the airport to let my parents know that I arrived safely, I left my papers and money at the phone booth. It was not long before I realized the stupid mistake. I ran, what seemed to be a long way back. I don’t remember at what point I started to break down and cry, but I did. Fortunately, my purse was untouched in the booth waiting for me to retrieve it. I learned my first big lesson, that I myself was not to be trusted. Finding my papers and money did bring me back a brief moment of joy, and perhaps a taste of my immaturity.
My next stop was Minneapolis. I was met by a friend of one of my brother’s friend’s from HK. He took me back to his apartment in Dinky Town, where I spent the first ten loneliest days of my life. It was my first encounter of a strange intense emotional pain. All I seemed to able to do was cry and write letters to my parents and my girl back home. The only moment I did not feel chest pain was when I was on the phone with them. The pain was so hard to bear and to stop, that I wanted to go back home and forget this whole business of studying abroad. But those back home convinced me to give it a longer try. I immersed myself in writing two to three letters a day to Karen to cure my pain. I have forgotten what I did the rest of the time. Perhaps I was busy running to places to avoid being “alone”, which was hard to do considering Mpls was not Hong Kong where people were everywhere at all times.
When school started, I was even more confused about the purpose of it all. The little English I knew, proved to not work well in lectures. Those damn ghosts all spoke too fast. Fortunately classes were not all that difficult. I could easily catch up reading the text book. Actually some of the classes were easier than the ones I took in high school, except the Fortran Programming. This course showed me that the “education” I got in HK was nothing but memorization of facts and numbers. I felt as if it was the first time I learned to use the faculty of my brain. I ended up with a B. I now think it was not so bad, all things considered. Moving into the dorm and meeting people did help me feel not as isolated. I began to get excited about being on US soil and got to like the people I met. I was shocked to hear voices of girls and guys taking showers together in my all male dorm. I ran out of the bathroom despite my curiosity.
I spent my time writing letters instead of studying, until one day I received a letter from Karen saying I should stop sending her all those “tedious” letters. My world collapsed. From then on, when I was alone, there was no place I could sit or stand without getting into an emotional panic. I had to go where people gathered in order to feel comfortable enough to go on. I was feeling anger and hurt all the time. The Minnesota winter helped to ice up my temper, but a bomb was building inside of me. Another few months had gone by. It was spring. I was slowly recovering from feeling pain all the time, however there was a very angry man inside myself. I did not trust anyone. Looking back, I might have been unconsciously seeking victims to revenge for my sorrow.
Meanwhile I began to find the classes I was taking meaningless. My original plan to get a well paid job after college became silly. To advance my college credit standing, I tested out of many of the basic math and science classes. There was so much boiling inside myself. I was going through lots of changes in everyway. I turned colder and colder towards the regular academic subjects, and started taking design courses from Home Ed. One day I walked into a corner pharmacy and bought some acrylic paints. I went home and painted a blue nude woman blowing in the wind.
Ray gave his students freedom to explore their own ideas and wonderment. He actually demanded it. His style of teaching fit me very well. Perhaps it was what I always wanted. He asked me to take his painting class again at a higher level, and I began to assist him in teaching the next quarter. From then on I was hooked on painting.
I meet a couple of regular students of his who I philosophized with. One of whom is Paul. I began taking courses that had to do with what I wanted to be as a person, rather than what job I needed to get when I got out of college. One of the things I always wanted to know more about, was how my brain worked. I tried to take some neurology courses, but could only take those from the psy. Department, because I was not a medical student. Those courses turned out to be the most boring and obsolete things I had ever done. I also applied and was accepted in the architecture school, but the instruction was too regimental, so I soon dropped out.
The art faculty was composed of some nationally renowned individuals, George Morrison and Warren Mackenzie. I did not take classes from them, nor did I care about the fame of anyone. I took a drawing class from Lynn Grey. Once he cut out a reproduction of a medieval painting into square sections, and instructed each student to reproduce one section into a large square and then put them all back together. There was a square of dark abstraction in the middle, and that was my result. I stopped showing up and eventually dropped the class after he insisted that I needed to put the eyes and noses on the nude’s face in the drawings. But before I dropped the course, I made nude drawings from the rear, to avoid the face, to hand in for assignments.
After I stopped showing up, he asked my friend J. Bigelow, whether she knew where I was. She told him that I dropped his class because I had an “independent spirit“. She got a C for the class, which she had to fight against with the school administration because she was in pre-med. She certainly did not deserve the C because she was good and did all her required assignments. Later, when I ran into him in the hallway, Lynn told me he would have given me an A for the class. I still knew I made the right decision to drop his course.
By now I had moved out of the dorm for a long time, living in a rooming house run by a reclusive old lady, who her tenants hardly saw. She spied on, and left notes on those who broke her house rules. Especially those who had girl visitors, like me. She rented rooms only to boys and ran her house like a nun. There I met Brad who was a Psy major. We became good friends. His father was a psy. Prof. in Madison, Wisconsin, and they lived on a farm. Brad introduced me to country living, riding horses, shooting guns and hunting. Prof. was appalled when I went back to his farm house one morning with a blue jay and a robin I shot. I showed Brad how to kill and cook a snapping turtle. Even he liked it. There was also a shotgun misfire when it was in my hand. I could have killed myself. I felt moving air on my face when the gun went off. That is why today I make sure I am a good safe hunter. Brad also taught me how to drive a car. He did a much better job teaching in this, although I did do a donut on I-95 and almost killed both of us. That was all my fault. Brad showed me how to drive up and down country hills to get 0-G. That year I got our first Xmas tree for free. That was also my fault.
I became my old self again, though I felt extremely lonesome at times, especially on weekends and holidays, but I actually had fun. The rooming house was located along the river. My favorite thing to do was to sit on the beach of the Mississippi River. I set up a place where I started a fire and cooked dinner. I called that spot China-town. I went there quite often. I tried camping there overnight in a late Minnesota fall. It only lasted a few hours, but I almost caught a duck by hand for dinner.
I bought a beat-up VW Bug with the infamous hole on the driver’s seat floor. I had a lot of fun with that car driving my dates through deep snow and flash floods, until one day my car seat caught on fire. I had to junk it.
The more I turned inside myself to become self reliant, the less I wanted to trust others for help. I got the first job in my life so I could feel more independent. I primarily wanted to become financially independent from my folks, who were against the academic path I was taking. My job was a cook on a mid-night shift. I lied in the interview that I had been a cook before, so the manager took me into the kitchen and told me to start making pizza. Feeling caught off guard, I said that a different restaurant I worked for before, complained that I was too generous with the ingredients. If he would show me the first one so I knew what amount to use. That was how I learned to make pizza and got my first job. It was a tough two weeks because of sleep deprivation. I bought a bike with my first paycheck. That same night, I had the bike locked up right where I could watch it from the kitchen. I was shocked to see the bike gone a half hour later. I was so upset that I quite the job that night. A few days later I got a day time job with the campus cops as a money carrier; picking up money from different locations and delivering it to the bank. I got to ride and to walk among armed cops. The cops were very nice to me and thought I was Bruce Lee’s cousin. Many people thought so anyway. I always thought that even though I would run from fights, I must look as if I could kill.
Due to the fact that I was paying foreign student tuition, which was extremely high, I was once again encountering food deprivation similar to my childhood. Hunger hit me all the time, because I did not have enough money to buy food. I needed more hours of work. I found another job in the bookstore as a stock clerk, which was 20hrs/wk, plus better pay. I moved heavy books around and the work was as boring as could be. I needed the money so I worked there for quite a while. I broke my wrist once while letting a heavily loaded book cart pin me against the wall. Campus cops Ray and his partner came and took me to the hospital. I went back to work the next day with a cast, because workman’s compensation did not give full pay. I also felt getting pay while not working was not right. I did feel sorry for myself and cried a little. Between school work, which averaged 20 credits and two jobs, I slept very little those days
Although I started to see other women, I was no way near wanting to get attached. Sex brought me back the intense hurt and a new feeling of guilt. Unconsciously, it was quite automatic for me to start rejecting women once I got close to them, because the fear in me grew so large that I had to run away. Sexual intimacy with a girl meant the end of the relationship. For the next decade, I had many relationships with women, so long as it didn’t get too intimate. Many times I tried to conquer my fear of intimacy by forcing myself to stick with the relationship. I ended up feeling so miserable when I was with the person. I became so critical of the person that everything she did was no good. The prettiest face would turn grossly unattractive to me. I hated myself for not being nice to the woman I was with. Unfortunately, and ironically, it was through these dates that I regained some of my own sense of self worth, to the extend that I became too cocky at times. I found myself not being able to say no to dates. On my 23rd birthday, I saw two women on the same day. Once I had three relationships going on for two weeks, which I found exhausting and had to quit one. I did find having two relationships at a time less threatening. It might be because I couldn’t be too attached to either one of them. Never-the-less when the relationship lasted too long, a month or two, the same fear intensified.
I began to hate myself for the fear that I had, because I ended up having to call off the friendship, which caused pain to others. The only relationships I could handle were superficial ones. I also realized this fear in me was beyond my conscious control. It was as if another person was living inside me making decisions on his own. I certainly did not like him. I began to communicate with him through self analysis. When I was in deep pain, which was quite often, I talked and yelled at him, like those crazies, or those talking on cell phones these days. I was determined that one day I could conquer this unwelcome part of me. I started to work very hard at it because I did not like to be not in charge of myself. Part of my tool was writing, which released my anger. I wrote pages of self analysis. The other part was to throw out every moral value I could think of to acquire new ones. Other than the many new academic subjects, my preoccupation for my existence was to deal with my emotional confusion. My drawing of nudes at this time was massive, harsh and anguished. I was definitely in no mood to care about her anatomy, nor to count the number of the nipples. Those art theories began to bore me to death. It was not even fit for children. I had a lot of other things in life to worry about other than those superfirous rules. They had nothing to do with art, my art. Those BFA requirements were becoming a pain in the ass, and I was not going to take it. I painted a couple of portraits. I felt more like a butcher than a painter.
In this phase of my life, I began to re-question or question everything and everyway to find my own way. Love and meaning of living were so often the contents. My painting began to become my tool for my endeavor. Attending school was becoming a lot more meaningful because I chose courses that had a direct relationship to my living and my liking. I started taking modern dance composition and ballet classes. I sought out all the folk and social dancing in town to attend. Folk dancing on campus was popular. There were dance gatherings almost everyday, but I could only get to those where I didn’t have to drive. The one I was attracted to the most was Hebrew dancing at the Hillel House on Sat. nights. I made many friends there. I even performed in the Jewish dance troop for a while. It was very fun to dance Jewish as a Chinese. I liked it a lot. Many thought I was professional. I went to disco and dance parties anytime I could or had the money, which didn’t take a lot because I didn’t drink. In addition I was taking modern dance classes in private dance studios in Mpls. During the Campus Dance Marathons, I danced for days by myself without making them a dime, because I didn’t bother asking anyone to sponsor my dancing. I guess I never believed in asking for money in most ways.
I was doing paintings with first my body movement, then my mind. The paintings were becoming large and loose. The literal contents began to move out of my canvas space. I was trying to incorporate my whole life all together in painting in an abstract manner. My physical body also was transforming. I now was quite aware of my body image, which enabled me to understand myself psychologically and changed the way I painted. When I painted, I was basically dancing with a brush or two. What marked on canvas was analyzed and altered for the next move, until I was totally happy with the work. The way I felt “happy” with the work, was based on a kind of harmonious feeling at the time. Till today, 30 years later, I still finish paintings a similar way.
It was because of the years of mindset which was brought about by HK schooling. I had a hard time believing that I was still getting an “education” in school, because most of the courses I took were never looked at as “academic”, therefore as “education“, by the folks in HK. Up to recently, I still had dreams that I had never finished my college, and therefore I had to go back to HK to get my diploma.
VW gained my confidence as my automaker because of the first car I bought. I later bought a VW412, but that was a lemon. I kept spending my hard earned money on repairs. No mechanic I’d met could figure out its problem. I did drive the car West, which was a very important trip for my growth, before I junked the 412. In Colorado I was having car trouble. I found a garage owned by a family who spoke with a European accent. The man fixed my car and didn’t charge me any money. His wife gave me a bottle of tea and cookies for the ride. That was a sweet memory. I saw America in a whole different way.
I had the appearance of a hippie, a tough one. I always had a knife on my belt when I traveled to places that I felt unsafe, but it did not keep me away from inner city neighborhoods to country bars. It seemed I was always welcome. I really fell in love with the United States and its land. It was a place for me, a man who needed freedom to explore both physically and meaningfully.
With my driver’s license, I got an even better paying job. I was so glad to quit my job at the bookstore to work in the library system as a mail clerk. I drove a van to carry mail and a big truck for books. My supervisor was sharp but reasonable with his many student workers, as long as they got the work done. Our boss was a sweet old veteran who did not do anything at work, except he roamed around to chat. I had a very nice job because my responsibility included sitting around to wait for work to come. I got to drive around often alone to all different places to pick up donated books. My boss was so reasonable with the time allowance for the trips. He must have know it would have take him a lot longer. Through this job I got to eat in every cafeteria on campus. The medical school had the best food, especially their pumpkin pound cake.
With my mind set on art, I began to find my talents useful. I started teaching. I taught many things in many places. Besides helping Prof. Hendler by teaching a few of his classes for credits and no pay, I was paid to teach dance, Aerobics, and my very own creative movement/exercise at the student union, and Chinese painting and calligraphy in community centers. Some school teachers who took my workshops introduced me to their principles. They wrote grants for me to teach my, better than fortune cookies, Chinese cultural programs in schools. From then on, I turned into being a rare expert in town. The program I was most happy with, was at Marcy Holmes school, in which I conducted a three month long workshop for 300 or so grade school kids. I taught them the significance of the symbolic Chinese dragon. Through this I basically introduced to them the backbone of Chinese people and their arts. Together everyone, teachers and students and me, had a hand in making a nine persons/stations dragon mask and costumes. At the end of the three months, the school had an open house of a fully staged dragon dance ceremony, with a Chinese emperor dotting the dragon eyes, and flying Chinese kites.
I felt really good about that whole program, except in the middle of it, a girl student was murdered by her father the day after she did an assignment of a painting about a life she dreamt of. This was what I told the students how Chinese painters made their work. I was heart broken, and took a couple of hours walk in the snow to cool off. The next day we debriefed through painting.
Even with all this work, I still couldn’t make enough money to keep up with expenses. I started to take courses offered by the Department of Continuing Education because I could pay instate tuition, and I had more time to work during the day time. I rented a basement in a small house for thirty dollars a month. I ripped out the wet carpet and painted the whole basement, floor and walls. The care taker was a V-shaped big fellow. He was a real handy man. One weekend, he and a guy down the block bought a well beat-up boat. They fixed it up, non-stop for three nights and two days, on speed. They sold the boat on Monday. My other roommates were a young pair who played music and baked very good wholesome bread.
It was a particularly nice autumn. I went camping by myself a lot and grilled my miniature steak. I couldn’t afford a big one. I could go camping because I had not junked my 412 yet. I was enjoying having my own “apartment” until the temperature dropped below zero. I did not have any heat. At first, I thought it was like camping and I could handle it. But Minnesota winter proved me wrong. It was too cold to fall asleep. So one day a new fishing friend, Dominic Li, came to visit and invited me to share his two bedroom apartment with three others. They were cooks in a downtown Chinese restaurant. Dominic was a business administration student from HK.
The apartment was a big filthy mess, much worse than my basement before I cleaned it. The floor was sticky. These cooks cooked all the time but never cleaned. But it was super warmed by central heating. The building complex was designed by Raff Rapson and located on the Westbank. It was sort of an icon of the time. I shared a bedroom with Dominic. He and I cleaned up the room nicely.
Better times had come. From then on I started doing much better financially, because I was to graduate, and I got a job as a Teaching Assistant. Together with the job in the library, I started to catch up because the teaching position made me qualified for paying in-state tuition in the Graduate School. The teaching assistantship was offered by the art department. The job was to teach two levels of drawing courses to architecture students. It was a cheap way of offering those classes. The university hired teaching assistants who would do everything like a professor. I was supposed to have a professor as a supervisor, but I never knew who that was. Anyway, it was the greatest thing for me. I didn’t mind it a bit because I was only gaining in everyway. I loved to teach, even if it was just for an ego trip, especially the students were about the same age as I. I felt I was an earlier achiever and I was proud of myself for a change. But I felt embarrassed when I ran into my students while I was doing my other job delivering mail in the Library.
It was after three and a half years that I built up more than enough credits to graduate. At that very time, I was seriously confused about my future. I put my art study on hold and got accepted by the Graduate School of Architecture, largely thanks to proof. Hendler‘s recommendation letter, which said, “architecture‘s gain is visual art‘s loss“. I wanted to give it a real try. But after a few months, I realized art was it. So I went back to the MFA program.
In addition to the drawing classes I was teaching, I got another teaching position in the General College. It was a real faculty position. I was very happy with the job. They recognized that my cultural background was unique to their department. They actually allowed a jr. faculty like me to design my own courses to teach. I named the courses Bridges of Cultures, in which I incorporated art from many different cultures. I tried to teach students to understand the parallels of different people, and to apply their understanding in their own artwork. The three years I was there, I learned a lot from teaching students of all different backgrounds. I always stressed to my students, to reach inside themselves to seek the truth, and that their own heritage was a significant portion of their makeup. I once had an Indian chief in my class, his name was Dwain. At first he was not very sure about the assignments of my class. I had the students do projects that reflected their own cultural heritage. He ended up making a peace pipe, and had me educated. In a situation like that, I felt fortunate and at the same time felt ignorant.
I was a happy man. I rented a real efficiency apartment, small but it was my own, clean and warm. A space I hung the paintings I made. I also started making furniture for myself. The apartment was located at the corner of Hennepin and Nicolis, not the best neighborhood. The building care taker always challenged me to a Kung fu duo because he also thought I was Bruce Lee‘s cousin. I had a good view of the street corner where I saw a Klansman for the first time. I also had a private studio provided by the art department. I spent most of my time there.
Now I had three jobs. I made enough money to be able to eat well. I had a kitchen. I was able to do some fancy cooking to impress my dates. I was dating less women because I was into more sincere relationships.
Now the purpose of painting was clear. I decided painting was how I discovered myself. In order to do that, I wanted to first off understand my roots. I thought I would do Chinese paintings. Representations had never interested me. I was not going to do landscapes nor flowers. I was considering the tradition of calligraphy but I was not interested in writing, nor had I anything to say. I went for abstract calligraphy through which I concentrated on the essence of the personal handwriting. It was along the line of painting with my body movement. These paintings blew half of the art department away. Hendler, Cowette were my advisors whom were in full support of what I did. But a few other faculty members were so against my work that they were plotting to destroy my MFA pursuit. I understood that my painting did not follow any “Western” art theory and technique. It had to be difficult for them to fit my work into their scheme of things. According to the rumor, their plan was to do their denouncing during my Thesis show. It happened that Elaine Dekooning was invited by my enemies to visit the art department at the time of my show. She went to my show with her convention and spoke highly of my work, which had saved my neck from those guys.
While all this was brewing, I was enjoying my life of teaching, painting, dancing and socializing with all kinds of people. Once I dated an older lady and took her to a concert. But a strange feeling of embarrassment suddenly appeared in me. I learnt that I was not immune to the public eye. Anyway life was grand. I was having a ball and started drinking beer and wine. Paul and John started me in a French Bar which was supposedly an artist hangout. It was so expensive I never could get drunk.
It was summer, I went to a Jewish folk dance camp in Hendersonville, North Carolina with my dance troop. It was a week long camp with lots of people coming from all over The States. Some also came from Isreal. Day and night we danced and partied, but slept little. It was a great get away from everyday living. One evening I met a woman from Florida. Her name was Shira. Instantly we were very attracted to each other. She was drawn to me because I “ dance like fire”. To me, besides her beauty, the essence of her being was magnetic. We started a long distant relationship that lasted for many eventful years.
Shira was a movement therapist and was married for about a year. Her husband Gary started having psychological withdrawal soon after their marriage, and was acting like the marriage was a mistake. He quit his work and was confused. She also was pretty confused at the time we met. Shira and I started communicating with each other as friends, but soon we were in love.
Shira’s father was a rabbi. He headed the biggest congregation in Miami, so our relationship was a tough one. I was spending most my income on phone bills, and trips to Florida between school breaks. I spent one summer in Florida trying out living together. It was not easy because Rabbi was against our mixed relationship and would not give ground, even though the rest of her family seemed not to have as firm of a stand. Never the less, Shira and I were not giving up on something that seemed so promising. It was more than two years since I had totally committed to painting calligraphically. I worked day and night. I developed a powerful body of work that existed nowhere else in the world but my studio. It bridged the esthetic worlds of East and West. I had no doubt at the same time, it was not painting that everyone could relate to. As a matter of fact, it threatened anyone who had a rigid mind. My work challenged and even defiled many of the existing art “principles” which, like many man made principles, were to be disposed of by creative individuals. As I mentioned earlier, out of the many faculty members within the Art department, two were ganging together to try to make my life difficult. These two were traditionally minded types, with big egos. But I had plenty of support from the other side, so their plan could never be carried out.
In 1982, my MFA program was coming to a close. I was required to take another art history seminar. I waited until the last minute because I considered the way art history was taught by most to be utterly a total waste of time. I decided to take Chinese Art History. Professor Poor, who was a Caucasian, jumped for joy that a Chinese MFA candidate actually existed, and was taking his class. Unfortunately, my assessment of him was not favorable. His understanding of Chinese art, and therefore art, was superficial. He thought painters in traditional China were merely a chain of mindless people, copying their masters from generation to generation. He had not heard, or perhaps chose to forget, what Shi Tao said about “ yee quar gee far“ (the way of the whole painting). Neither did he know about what Chi Bye Shai said, that “chi war jai shee” (those who copy, mines are dead). He and I clashed. I literally ended up telling him to shut up when I presented my last paper to the class. That was the only B I got for my MFA.
After finishing up my MFA, I went to a Chicago conference held by the College Art Association, that altered the course of my life. My long distance relationship with Shira motivated me to seek a job down south. I was told that going to this conference was a must, but for me, it was the most humiliating meat market I had ever entered. After seeing all the elbow rubbing and ass kissing from hotel lobby to private rooms, I refused to go back the next day, and forfeited my chance of getting a teaching position. Instead I went roaming at a Chicago gallery district. There I learnt lesson number two. I was essentially told that the world was not ready for me yet, by Richard Gray. He said my body of work showed sensibility, commitment, and maturity, but I would not be able to find an audience at that time and in this country. I agreed and took that as a complement.
I recognized the reality of what I was facing. When it came down to it, it was a matter of, as the old man said, “to be or not…”. Realizing that I could do anything I wanted, because of my gifted ability in almost every field, from then on I decided not to prostitute myself at all. My painting has raised above man’s earthly value. It has become sacred in its own way. I knew and decided then, what I produced and continued to produce, would not be affected by the facts of life. I wanted to isolate my painting from earthly matters, to achieve a pure reality that had to do with my own struggle to seek the truth of this human act called painting. This somewhat resembled the idea of old-time Chinese sages, who considered that ties to facts of life were “dirty”.
It was 1983 and I decided to finish up my post-master study in teaching methodology and quit teaching. I bought a big old car, threw out most of my student art projects, and rolled up all my canvases and drove down to Miami. It had been for awhile that I wanted to paint all on my own, and did not want any approval. I thought this move, essentially, was giving me a fresh start.
In the Miami Harold job section, there was not a single job I was fit to apply for. I called around to different gyms to teach aerobics. Shira had a nice house in Miami. I moved in with her. I set up an area as the studio, but could not paint freely because I was afraid to mess up her neat house. We were both scared, but I was determined to overcome my fear of intimacy this time. We also tried very hard to overcome the difficulties our interracial relationship presented in the face of the tight Jewish community in Miami. I took a Jewish conversion course, but found it too contradictory to my mind. After a few meetings, I dropped out. Shira was having cold feet shortly after I moved in, to the point she did not even dare to tell her folks that I was in her house. I had to hide when they visited. After a few months of not seeing progress, I finally gave up on the relationship and closed myself up emotionally. I moved out of her house and rented a cottage in Coconut Grove, supporting myself by teaching aerobics for a gym in North Miami Beach. I also picked up extra cash doing carpentry. I was quite depressed, so I drove down to the Keys to go fishing almost every other day.
Very soon I was a popular aerobics teacher. I was getting good pay for teaching aerobics and dance. I taught children creative movement, and had them performed in public events.
I became some what of a star teacher. I even performed in fashion shows and etc. A well known aerobics studio contacted me, and promised me a big contract to run the show. I went to see what it was about. It was a very impressive place, but it was with a culture of wealthy decadence and drugs. It was a place making an aerobic scene, rather than for exercise. I declined the offer. They had a Korean accountant call me many times, trying to convince me, because, as he said, “they think we speak the same language.” Instead I negotiated a good contract with the gym where I was already working. I made enough for expenses, but worked part-time. Once again, I had time for painting. I painted in my tinny apartment. My work was as inferior as I felt. I was not confident in making my art. I even painted some sad faces. I also wrote plenty. My writing was very therapeutic. Here is one of the things I wrote.
lndulgence
leads me to forget all trouble
allows the evening breeze to
brush my skin
play my hair
tease my feeling.
lets the sounds of falling leaves
call my soul to stillness
dance my body to surrounding trees, while
the setting sun is casting darkness upon my land.
Darkness
finds her way to my vision
brings with her harsh night winds, which
cut my skin
pull my hair
freeze my feeling.
buries my indulgence in chill and anger.
stillness of my soul is ruptured
my body is consumed by pain, while
I realize
I am all alone.
Chat Ko 1982
My life was going through quite a change from my academic life. I was beginning to do okay. But I knew I was not going to stay in Miami for long. In the 1980s, there was not much serious going on in art there. I taught kid art classes in the Lowe Art Museum for quite a long time, until I told the museum director to “stick it up his ass” for not letting the kids, who were waiting to be picked up, be sheltered in the museum lobby from the rain. I taught in the Metropolitan Museum, but they were not very organized. I taught one art appreciation class at the university of Miami. I also gave lectures here and there. I often found my audiences having more interest in me than in what I lectured. Miami, for me, was a cultural desert. I wanted to move once I saved up a little money. Shira came one day and wanted to start over again, but I was too far gone into protecting myself. I simply could not do it again. She was very hurt.
Meanwhile, a client of the gym, Esther and I became good friends. We were giving each other what we lacked. We tried to support each other to move on in life. For my birthday, she and her kids got me a dog, which was with me for the next many years of gypsy living. It was a miniature Schnauzer, quiet, independent and affectionate. Her family owned a 60’ Choir Lee yacht with a full-time crew. This was how I was exposed to the elite culture of yachting. They spent more money in a weekend, than I earned in half a year. Esther’s father was along for those boating trips. He was a very kind person. Esther’s husband was extremely wealthy and powerful, but he did not spend much time with his family. He liked to get stoned once he got home from work. I was also friends with her children. I was sort of a big brother to her youngest son, until they were getting a divorce.
With my kind of luck, there was another aerobic client Cathy O’Brien, I was attracted to. She was my age, with long blonde hair, blue eyes and a beautiful figure. She had a congenital problem with her teeth. She had small teeth. Finally when I asked her out, she had just finalized her divorce, and was going to move back to Tampa, where she was from. She was an education administrator. We had some of the finest times together. She and I made heads turn when we walked the beaches. She tried to talk me into moving to Tampa, and suggested that I could be her house husband, paint and take care of the kids. I did not trust the potential of the relationship, and I had already made up my mind about going to New York.
It was the end of summer before I saved up a thousand dollars. I tuned up my car and rented a trailer. I was ready to drive north to New York City. The day before the trip, I made a wrong turn into the entrance of a parking lot, and ended up with four flat tires. My neighbor Micky Carroll, who was a singer, drove me to get new tires which cost a third of my fund. He also had helped me before by hiring me to fix his house. He and his wife were very nice folks. He gave me a rocking chair for a departure gift, which I still have today. I accepted a few hundred bucks from Esther because I feared that I would not have enough to make the journey. When I made my way out of Fl., I was so glad to go that I lost my fear of what I would be facing in New York. All I knew was, that I did not have more than enough money, and had to get a job right when I got there. I do not remember the rest of the trip other than I decided to drive to Hampton instead of NYC, because I thought it was easier to find a place to stay.
I arrived at the only motel in Bridge Hampton late at night. The room cost $90 for the night. The next morning I went to the local diner, and consequently found a room in a farm house. Christine, who owned the house, also hired me to build her a deck, so it worked out very well. I was relieved because I was already making money, and I saw work was not hard to find. Christine let me use her studio and I was painting whenever I could. I had a home for my dog Einstein, but he ran away the first day to a famous retired actress’ home. He knew how to make good connections. People in Hampton were very nice, and soon I had an art show and was going to teach some kids art classes for the Guilt. A couple of days later, I ran into Bill Dekooning. He was very pale and was followed around by his assistant. We talked a little and the same day I saw his studio. I thought I was in the right place.
Days later I was working for a house building contractor. I was not a very skillful carpenter at the time. He wanted to pay me less after a few weeks, so I quit. Meanwhile, every weekend I went to Manhattan to see what it was like. At first I was staying with a girl I met at the gym in Fl. Later, Christine introduced me to Irvin who was an illustrator in NYC. He had a loft in Soho. He let me sleep there for a few bucks. It was great. He was a very interesting single Jewish guy, cynical, skeptical, but he had a big heart. He and Christine had a lot of work for me to do between each of their apartments. On top of it, one job led to the next. I moved to the city staying in Irvin’s place. He did not want me to use his Kitchen to cook, so I ate in Chinatown all the time for cheap but good food. I soon found out there was no end to the amount of carpentry work to do, but I did not have time nor a place I could paint. Irvin was very fond of Einstein. He took care of him whenever I was not around.
Manhattan had some of the biggest Jewish dance gatherings. Soon I found myself dancing again. It had to be the way I danced. I soon had many friends including David, but the city remained the loneliest place in the world.
Meanwhile, Esther and her husband were fighting over a huge amount of money in their nasty divorce in court. Her husband hired private detectives to located me in order to deliver a summons. David, who was a lawyer, offered to take my case out of friendship. I am forever in debt to him for his graciousness. We were in court for three days. It was a real eye opener. I don’t think they got much out of me. But I didn’t help Esther’s case much either.
Once again, I put myself in the circle of the available single women, whose ties were similar to that of Shira. I dated a few. To my dismay, not all of the NYC Jewish parents were not as conservative as those in Miami, just some of them. This time I was a lot smarter and did not let my heart become too vulnerable in it. There were a lot of single women who were desperate for a man. I dated Anita who was a young, achieved investment banker. She had a house-share in the Fire Islands. She invited me to spend a weekend with her, and that I could stay the rest of the week because no one else was using the house. So I did. On Monday I met Maria on the beach while she was taking a leak. She said she was alone in Fire Island for the day. She was very attractive and full of excitement. She came from a very poor background in Long Island. It was quite refreshing to have met someone else who was just as poor as me. I must have thought I had nothing to lose anymore at that point. In two weeks, we had gotten married. Also, I might wanted to prove that I could make a committment. How stupid!
For the first few weeks of married life, Irvin and I cleared out an upstairs loft for us to stay, until we found an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. At that time, David and I spend three days for my deposition. It was a pretty rough start for newly weds. But so it went.
One day, I decided to be a cabinet maker. I walked into a cabinet shop in Soho, and the owner was glad to see me. He had all the clients he could want, but he did not have a real cabinet maker. By then my skill was pretty good. With that, I had a steady place to work and got good pay. Later my boss’s “friend” offered me better pay. He stole me from him.
For whatever the trigger was, Maria transformed from a sweet girl to a physically violent psycho, frequently. It was like in Hollywood. She would hit me violently. On one occasion she put a knife to my neck. It happened out of the blue, it happened when she was drunk, it also happened when she came to me with a pair of woman’s underwear, that she claimed were not hers, but I had never seen. On and on. Making things worse, the boy, an iron worker whom she left to marry me, fell 10 stories at work. He was alive but she felt that he needed her to fight for his life. She felt extremely guilty. Our life together was a misery. I was certainly taking a lot of abuse, but I saw no reason to hit her back.
A few months later she was emotionally hit again by a pregnancy which turned out to be ectopic. It seemed everything was against us. In retrospect it was probably good for us that the pregnancy was not to be. We were not a match to deserve a home, nor to be parents. . The only good thing going for me was that I had a place to start painting again after a long time of not being able to. It was somewhat surprising that the work I tackled carried more maturity and commitment. It was a group of paintings that looked like nobody else’s on earth. It carried an essence of my heritage and what was grinding me. It was free and at the same time cultured and not superficial. The hard living that beheld me those years proved to be a good thing after all, at least for my work.
After many months, I realized that Maria herself was aware of her own pathetic behavior. So it was not a hard task for us both to agree on a divorce. The hard thing for me was to repair the emotional damage from all the craziness. Once again I was sad and angry. I was wondering what made me chose the way I lived. At this time, I got a message that Laura Hoyt was looking me up. Laura was a long time friend from Minnesota. Due to my unstable life since I left Minnesota, I did not keep in touch with her. She was doing her pediatric MD internship in the Bronx, and decided to get a hold of me, which she did. It was a much needed friendship. I was desperate for someone who knew a little of my past, to share with.
I called the phone number she left. It was Anne who answered the phone. Her voice itself was so comforting. I instantly felt better and hopeful. Anne was so excited that I called. I felt that she had known me for a long time. She explained that Laura had talked to her a good deal about me, but Laura was not there to answer me. Later when I went to meet Laura in her apartment, I met Anne. Anne and Laura shared the same apartment. Anne was going in and out of the apartment that day, busy doing her laundry. She was very attractive, warm and caring, and a little out of shape. Like Laura, she was starting her internship in Pediatrics. Poor Laura, I was in such a bad space and I was so moody that she was taking a lot of my indirect anger, directly. It happened that she was putting posters on the wall, and I keep letting her know what I thought of it. Fortunately, she and I indeed had a real friendship that could survive through that.
My parents came to visit. I told them they could stay only for two weeks. They had to have felt sorry for the way I lived. What parents would not worry about a son who had conducted such a crazy lifestyle. I was living alone and still working as a cabinet maker in New Jersey, painting any moment I could. I chose to not seek any art shows, nor did I go to any art happenings. My painting hit one of the most important breakthroughs. I commanded the technique which was born out of its very content. These paintings were existentialistic. The paint spoke for itself. The work was getting less and less “colorful”. Black, gray and white were the major colors I ended up with in the work. To me, a flashy color made lots of noise, but didn’t really say much.
Dancing was my favorite social life. There I continued to meet women, mostly Jewish. This time I met Elizabeth. She was in her early 20s, just graduated from Smith. Her father was a lawyer. His wealth could support her living in a fancy co-op in midtown Manhattan, and for her to pursue a career as a dancer. I was not quite sure of her chances. She was very pretty but I did not think she was talented in dancing. With all these dancers in Manhattan, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Her parents treated her like a little girl who should never grown up. They had her life planned out. Of course they did not like the fact she was seeing me. Her mother invited me to lunch in the restaurant in Central Park on a work day. When I ordered a drink, they carded me. There it proved, that I drove there without a driver’s license, and that did not improve my image to her mother. But by then I was an expert in dealing with woman whose parents were freaking out.
Laura and Anne met up with me as much as we could. We were developing into a groupie friendship. For fun, I went auditioning to dance in the New York Renaissance Festival and got in. I was busy rehearsing with a bunch of dancers. They were very friendly but odd. Also I taught aerobic classes at two different health clubs, one in the Upper West Side and the other in Hoboken. I realized that drugs and exercise were one for many in cities.
I also met Elsbeth who was from Switzerland. We had no romance but she was a very giving person. We became good friends. Later I gave up my apartment in New Jersey and became one of her roommates in her Chelsea apartment. It was fun living with her because she always had parties. I also hung up my paintings all over her place.
Those days I once again regained my artist identity because I was painting a lot and had two solo shows.The one I liked was at the Peridance Center.
I also started going to some of the art happenings in NYC. The one I liked was the Artists Talk on Art. I met some artists there but I never felt like hanging out with them because I’d rather go dancing. I was invited to be one of the panelists on the topic of Art and Ethics. It felt good to be there because I showed slides of the paintings I described above, and I got to verbally attack someone else’s “art” on the panel, which I used to do quite a bit in Minnesota when I was a charter member of the Artist Club. After the panel discussion, Anne was waiting for me to get out of the restroom. An older man told her that I was worth the wait, and that really boosted my ego. But, I also might have made some enemies by what I said. Now I realize those guys I attacked in the panel was pretty important Manhattan people including the founder of the Alternative Museum, Oh well.This organization was attended by mostly whites. One evening the topic was on Art and Black Americans. I was the fairest one there. I raised a couple of challenges, including an insinuation that they were throwing sour grapes, which brought out some boos, but the evening went pretty well.
Even though I was able to paint more, I was working as a wood worker most of the day light hours. Somehow I was getting quite depressed and feeling pretty down about everything. One evening when I was driving, my thought was to drive into a tree until I finally got a hold of myself. I was scared and I called Laura, who was not home. I ended up crying to Anne.
Laura and I had been friends for a long while. Since I was not serious about someone in particular, she and I were trying to date. For some reason I could not feel romantic with her, so we decided to remain friends. However my feeling for Anne was undeniable. But ever since we met, we each were preoccupied one way or the other. So when I knew that I was going to give up on Elizabeth, I at once told Anne that when I was done taking care of my business, I was going for her. I really meant to tell her to be available when I was getting ready to be really serious. But she went and dated somebody else.
It was the winter of 88, Anne and I went out dancing without Laura. When I told Laura afterwards, she was so upset and demanded that I should stop seeing Anne.
By Xmas, Anne got cold feet and disappeared to her home in Indiana without letting me know. I was desperate, but I got through the holidays okay because there were parties everyday in Elsbeth’s. I confronted Anne with an ultimatum when she returned. She turned around and we restarted dating and we were getting serious. I met her parents when they were visiting. They were a little reserved but extremely gentle. I was not sure what they thought of me. But I did show them my best behavior. Soon I moved in with Anne.
Anne and Einstien in our first home
Moving in with Anne marked the most significant change in my painting, one that lasted till today. This new evolution was like Stems Cells, so vital that its potential has been infinite. The gestures of painting began to take on a different look. They were grabbing pronounced forms, in addition to space. These forms were soft and mellow, wet and juicy. It was getting obvious that something major was developing inside my soul. I finished a few paintings soon afterwards. These works certainly were phallic. One of which I titled “My Ancestor’s Shrine”
. For that matter, I didn’t have to guess too hard to know what I was up to. A lesser matter, I intentionally pushed myself to use many colors in addition to black and white. I did not want to get lazy with my decision making, as to accept what worked in the past. But the paintings were again finished monochromatically like before, except this time it was blue. I now was having my own blue-period. Strangely though, these new forms refused to close themselves to space.
Anne encouraged me to quit my woodworking to pursue my art career, and I did. So it was a sunny dry spring morning, I got up and walked to a diner to have breakfast and went to pick up my last paycheck. The feeling was like I was getting out of jail. I was the happiest one on the subway train. As if I was finally putting down the heavy bag I was carrying since the day I left Hong Kong. I almost forgot that I was capable of relaxing and letting go. We bought a bamboo plant and I started to hang up my paintings all over to claim the space. Our apartment felt like home. It was tranquil. I was on an emotional vacation long overdue. I had placed my trust in Anne and I knew I could. I was not even scared until we went to Hong Kong together, and on the plane she told me she was ready to get married. Apparently, prior to that moment, I had asked her whether we should soon get married, but I do not remember that. I also forget how long it took me to say yes to marriage on the plane, but I did.