Bird with no legs

I think I have to hold off on Mike.

A lot's been going on and I'm not ready to put it down yet.

The other night I made a fortune teller out of one of the pieces of paper we had set aside for making origami cranes last Wednesday.  I quickly thought of some questions and challenges we could easily do together.  In a flash this one came to me: "Have the person to your right name your baby and tell us about his/her life."  That proved problematic, though I really enjoyed what Mike said about my hypothetical son George.

I suppose I thought it would be a sweet and fun exercise that revealed what people thought about one another.  What they'd be like as parents.  What they deserve and can handle and what other people wish for them.  Later on in the night I named a baby for James, but that's another story.  Another time.

After George, Rebecca Jr., and Mike's firstborn Victor were welcomed into the world, Andrei asked us to name a baby for him. He was near tears.  I really just recited the plot from One Tree Hill, and I'm sure he knew it.  As soon as the story was done I went upstairs, and Andrei proceeded to emotionally spill about his last girlfriend.  The idea that he'd be married and have a daughter who kept secrets from him and fell in love with the "wrong" guy stirred something up in him, I guess.

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When I first met Andrei at orientation he had a pretty thick Russian accent.  

This is something I forgot about completely until he reminded me of it about 

a month into us living in Minneapolis.  

"No you didn't," I remember saying in disbelief.  

"I always do that when I meet a new group of people," he said. "It's a test."

How does anyone know whether they've passed?  I wonder.

I think in Chicago I thought Andrei was odd, and I mostly felt annoyed by him.  

The other JVs seemed to understand that he was someone hard to be around.  

There was a general feeling of weariness whenever people spoke about him.

Somehow in the first few weeks I changed my mind.  Poof.  

Andrei became interesting and wow, how fun is this craziness?

I said something to James then that he never quite lets me forget.  

I won't say exactly what it is now since I don't think I believe it any longer, 

but the general sentiment was that I hate to be bored. 

At that time I created a narrative that painted Andrei as anything but boring.  

He told us that a couple of years ago his biological mother had been in a car accident and died a few days later. I immediately got this image of Yuddy from Days of Being Wild walking away from his birth mother's estate in the Phillipines.  Rejected.  Fiercely burning through the palm trees and stubbornly headed toward his early end.

Great story.  

But that story is only a distraction from the truth.  

Wong Kar-Wai gives Yuddy two love interests (if you don't count his mother[s both adopted and biological], which you should): the slight and sincere Su Li-zhen, and the loud and irreverent Leung Fung-ying.  They're both beautiful.

Two mothers.

Two lovers.

My sister.

My daughter.

My sister.

Yuddy talks about a bird that exists somewhere between reality and imagination.  A bird with no legs that sleeps in the wind and only lands once at the end of its brief and fast-moving life.  

If Yuddy didn't die young, he would eventually end up an aging, bitter, repulsive drunk who gambles and no longer incites lust in the women who sleep with him. We would eventually see all his sad insecurities become his daily skin.  He would become too difficult to look at.  Soon he would bore us.

Still.  He is self-aware enough to self-destruct.  He knows he can't go on forever.  He chooses the girl who can drown out the deafening silence.  He chooses a best friend who won't get in the way of his mistakes.

Where Yuddy is unwilling to accept a loss, Andrei is unwilling to forget it.

Yuddy doesn't want pity, doesn't want anyone to think of him as lacking.  Andrei cannot be satiated with endless amounts of people feeling sorry for the difficult things that happened in his life.  

The idea that he was a darkhorse wandering without a resting place made Andrei palatable to me.  It created someone I could like, respect, or at the very least be curious about.  The person he actually is is harder to live with.  His hurt and the damage it's done is obvious, heavy, and exhausting.

Late in the film Yuddy concludes that the bird with no legs didn't land at the end of its life, it was never alive to begin with.  He realizes life is hard for him because he lacks the ability to be alive.  He cannot grasp what it is to live.  

Before we left for Cleveland, Andrei and I had a talk in his room about the nature of our interactions. I asked why I trigger him the most.  What about me over anyone else in the house provokes such anger in him?

He said, "You have potential." Then he told me he only gets angry when he sees potential in someone.  He also shared that he was actively manipulating things in order to "edit" out certain aspects he decided were undesirable about me.  He was hoping he could change me to the point that I would become worthy of seeking a deeper relationship with.  He also said it was a big deal that he was telling me this.  That someone who wants to manipulate someone else doesn't usually show his cards.  

I wish I had anger for him now.  I don't have much of anything.

I want Andrei to be able to live.  I want him to see he can be happy without bringing others into misery.  Is there some socially-constructed ideal pushing me to want these things?  Is it true wisdom to cut your losses and move on?

Probably.
Maybe there's something I can't see yet.