I meant to write an update long ago, when my book was released and I had my launch party at How Bazar. And yet, somehow, in the intervening time, I’ve become a bit of a nervous wreck. I seem to have traded physical health for mental health. I need to find a better balance. One highlight of these months, though, has been reconnecting with old friends and students.

The time to write this letter was happily provided by Hurricane Helene, which has canceled my appointment with our local public radio station, WUFT-PBS.  I was originally scheduled to be on air intermittently for three hours to offer my book of drawings of Alachua County as a pledge drive reward. The campus has been closed, however, in advance of our dear friend Helene. I do not know yet if I will be rescheduled to be on air.

Health

Since I last emailed in May, my physical ailments have been almost negligible. I caught some kind of nagging flu/sinus infection that laid me low for some time, but even this was something I feel quite grateful for. Proof that I can be sick again and recover from it. Up until this point, every sniffle, every chill, and every minor fever set my mind racing back to the hospital, wondering if this was the next sickness that would land me in isolation again with no white blood cells and a complete aplastic crisis. It hasn’t happened yet. Becoming ill with the flu and recovering has emboldened me now. I feel more confident in crowds; I feel vaguely hopeful that perhaps there isn’t an impending next strike of my mystery condition set to finish me off for good. None of this makes any rational sense, of course. One cannot predict death or injury even at the best of times. I am reminded of my climbing friends who passed at the prime of their life, and a couchsurfer who I hosted and connected with in Bangkok who passed shortly after returning to her promising life back in Oakland, and my three friends in university, and my father. My family theorizes that we three brothers have lived so quickly and greedily because of our acquaintance with death and illness. To pack as much in while we are young and healthy. Now, somehow, it feels different.

Last month, I experienced a kerfuffle whereby my hematology checkup was postponed until February (from two weeks in the future in August) and then reverted back to near the original time due to strident self-advocacy. The visit itself was a meaningful one. We spoke at length about the confusing nature of my disease, trying to solve the presently unsolvable together, and I am grateful to my doctor for this. We wonder if my intermittent episodes of severe aplastic anemia are signs of a failing marrow that do not evince themselves so obviously or acutely in others as they have exposure to fewer pathogens in their lifetime. We theorized that perhaps my hospitalizations and neutropenias predict a lasting severe aplastic anemia in the future, or perhaps serve as a precursor to full-blown leukemia of some sort. None of this was spoken about in any way that made me trepidatious in any way. To the contrary, I felt strengthened by the modicum of understanding afforded to me by our conversation. With possible prognoses, I can be ready. And so my time with the Aplastic Anemia support group, with the Young Adult cancer groups and LGL-L group feel all the more valuable, as I hear experiences that could one day be my own.

Aside from this, my sinuses have inexplicably been nearly unbearable of late. Frustratingly, my appointment (made in July) with ENT is not until the very end of February. Echoes of my seven year saga to see a neuromuscular specialist at the University of Florida. But these are relatively minor complaints. My stress levels and mental health are a bigger issue.

GGIC, IRC, FFI – acronyms for everyone!

The main source of this is known to me. Since June, my life has changed almost completely. From leisurely activities assisting the Greater Gainesville International Center (GGIC) as a volunteer, traveling around the county to draw, and seeking medical care in intermittent bursts, nearly all of my time is filled, minute to rushed minute, with work and volunteering. Of these, my time with GGIC has given me both the most stress and the most joy.

In early July, GGIC received its first group of refugees, a family of four from Afghanistan. As the head of the organization, Lauren Poe, wasn’t here the week that they arrived, I took it upon myself to take over in his absence. Over the next two weeks, I worked entirely as a volunteer to help resettle this family and a family which arrived from Guatemala just over a week later. Picking them up from the airport when they arrived, processing their many documents, taking them to health appointments, enrolling the kids in school and the adults in ESOL classes, helping them find housing and employment, showing them the public transit system, helping them apply for public services, planning their finances and taxes with them, showing them their neighborhoods and services… Lots of other, less-tangible things as well, like the human/emotional support element — little trips to local restaurants from their cultures (or adjacent), natural parks, and museums. And possibly the most important of all, simply listening to their confusions, their fears, and their questions, even when I have no answers.

I became a part-time, hourly employee in August. Last week, I spent some time reflecting with QQ about how I’m being paid the least I’ve ever been paid, yet I feel that the nature of my work is more vital and stressful than ever. I do not mean to say that my work as a teacher was less important—simply that most of my mistakes as a teacher are eminently recoverable on the part of my students. In contrast, every action with the refugees reverberates into immediate and lasting effects on the lives of these families.

Much of my stress comes from the financial tenuousness of GGIC. Our refugee resettlement work has been almost entirely reliant on grants from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), but this money comes slowly through the bureaucracy. An initial burst of financial support from our local community dried quickly, and I am constantly cognizant of the amount of money in our bank account in a way that I’ve luckily never had to be about my own. In addition to the four families we are currently resettling (two from Venezuela after those from Afghanistan and Guatemala), I’ve been helping a small family from Ukraine sponsored by the inimitable Satchel of Satchel’s Pizza.

It is extremely rewarding work, and somehow well suited to my abilities and interests. My fastidious (some might say persnickity) organization habits—with my obsessive use of naming conventions, folder hierarchies, email labeling, and redundant backup copies—makes navigating the often Kafka-esque systems of public services much more manageable. My latent skills with multiple languages are finally bearing fruit — over the last two days I’ve had hour-long conversations in all of my best languages. Even my extremely limited knowledge of Arabic and Turkish help me understand key phrases and words from our Afghani family before they are translated by the professional interpreter. I feel extreme gratitude at being entrusted to this deep service. I am reminded of an adage related to me in Edirne—”he who asks for help is giving the greatest gift of all, the opportunity for the other to provide help.”.

This week I also became employed part-time with Friendship Force International (FFI). For my couchsurfing friends, the concept will be familiar —a community of citizens all around the world, eager to host foreigners and share cultures. (Actually, next week QQ and I will be hosting an Open World delegate from Kazakhstan, so I can finally repay the amazing hospitality I received in Almaty by Anzhelika and Yerbol.) With FFI, I will be helping to search for and apply to specific grants in the service of citizen diplomacy, bringing together clubs from disparate countries, and connecting students through art. I’ll also be using my languages in work with the Russia/East Asia region.

Un-conflating terms

I deleted much of the previous section because I felt it was getting rather too long. I wanted to leave some room for a section on a disturbing conflation that I’ve noticed recently — the conflation of the word “refugee” with various other words, such as “migrant”, “illegal”, “asylee”, “asylum seeker” and even “criminal”. This piece from Migration Policy clearly defines the various terms better (about 2/3 of the way down the article), but in brief

• a refugee is someone who has sought refuge in a foreign country and been granted that refuge before arriving
• an asylum seeker is someone already in a foreign country seeking protection after having arrived in that foreign country
• an asylee is a person granted asylum (protection)
• a migrant is someone who moves from one place to another
• an illegal alien/immigrant is someone moving from one place to another illegally
• a criminal is a person who has committed a crime

Many times the words are used interchangeably when they are in fact distinct, for instance in NPR’s coverage of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. In the entire year of 2022, only 25,500 refugees were admitted to the USA, as compared to the 101,000 migrants bussed out of Texas in that time. 

Statistics reveal what an absolutely miniscule portion of refugees are admitted to the United States. Especially as compared to Türkiye, which hosts the most refugees by absolute population — 3.5 million making up 4.4% of its total population. Or Jordan and Lebanon, both with ~25% of their populations being refugees. Only 0.1% of the US population is refugees, or ~360,000 people. These graphs are even more revelatory.

The Business of Art

And now let us turn to another great source of learning for me over the past months: business. I’ve registered myself as an independent business, Travelling Canary Press, for the many artistic endeavours which I am finally attempting to monetize. After my indiegogo campaign was funded to 166%, I printed 250 paperback copies and 60 hardcovers of my book of drawings. I delivered all of the hardcovers and about 80 of the paperbacks, leaving me with 170 copies. These copies have since populated stores all around Alachua County. 34 copies sold from these stores, with 57 still awaiting new owners. I’ve also been doing many events, selling 38 books and 30 prints. Through it all, I’ve drawn and observed and taken notes — it seems to be that everyone, from guilds and collectives of artists to markets to the stores themselves, is trying really hard to make things work, but that they rarely earn enough for the time and material put in. While this may be obvious to many of you, my friends, it has been quite the revelation for me. At any rate, I have only 32 copies left from my initial run of 250 (with six events still scheduled, as well as the hopefully only postponed public radio pledge drive), and I’m wondering if it merits a second printing.

It’s fascinating to me how divorced the business of art is from art itself. How much time it takes to do the accounting, set up the points-of-sale, travel to and from the locations and set up and tear down. During the Auk Market Book Faire [sic], I overheard other authors saying “If you want a surefire way to read less, write a book. If you want to write less, sell your book.” I hope I’m at the end of these cycles so that I can read avidly again for a time, then once again relinquish this habit to write the next books — one on seeking healthcare in many countries (with more writing), and the others with drawings from around the world and drawings of Islamic architecture.

This business of art contrasts sharply with my book and album launch party at How Bazar, which I left with the glow of love and gratitude. Maybe it was because it was my first solo show since my hospitalizations. Maybe because I had tempered my expectations of turnout and my own performance. Probably both, but mostly, I think this show was so special because of the people who came. My wife. My friends. My mom and her boyfriend. Family friends. My students. My colleagues. Special people who make Gainesville my home and suffuse the audience with deep meaning in a way I could not find in my shows in Taiwan or Thailand. These are the people I grew up with, who grew up with me, with whom I’ve shared years and years. The venue was literally standing room only. I counted forty seven people at intermission.

Some of the highlights:

• Singing 当你老了, the song my mother requested me to learn for her
• Singing Forever and a Day, a song I wrote about growing up in Gainesville while many of those same people I grew up with sat before me, listening, reading the lyrics, and referencing the drawings of those places from my book
• Sharing little stories of the songs and where I learned them with a truly invested audience
• Chatting with students for the first time in a long while, with one even having driven from Tampa
• Sharing my children’s music from Angibles with those same angibles on stage
• Displaying my artwork selected to hang at Falafel King, with one drawing and one photo from the nineteen countries of the Muslim world I have visited
• Watching my students reconnect with each other and with those of other generations—looking out into the crowd and seeing people in their late teens through their early eighties

I wish I’d been able to write more immediately after the show. To better capture the depth of gratitude I felt then. Suffice it to say that I feel so lucky to have survived (when sometimes in the past year I felt it would have been more convenient not to have), to have my wonderful community, and the great joy of being able to share my music and art and for people to enjoy these things. I do not know if I will have another show of this quality again, but chasing the feeling of this one will likely sustain me for many concerts to come.

Travelling in(to) the future

I last flew on April 8, 2023, when my doctors in Oman deemed me healthy enough to return to the USA. I miss travel dearly, but my current endeavours keep me rather firmly tied to Gainesville. QQ and I hope to make it to Expo Osaka 2025, where I would once again draw every pavilion as I did in Dubai. Before then, I have another bone marrow biopsy, a colonoscopy/endoscopy, and a checkup at the National Institutes of Health. Hopefully my mystery illness remains mysteriously absent, but at any rate, there’s a lot of meaning to make at home.

Recommendations

• Book: The Turtle of Oman and The Turtle of Michigan
• Film: Won’t You Be My Neighbor
• Artbook/graphic novel: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
• Restaurant: Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodles 十秒到雲南過橋米線
• Travel destination: Malta
• Musician: Bai-Terek
• Independent musician: Anna Maria Hefele
• Local musician: Michael Claytor
• Artist: Jin Ｑi 今奇
• Local artist: Fahndi (her drawing below)