Dragonskycloud by Lilith
Date: 14 Nov 2019, 4.59pm
Lilith to J
EL asked me to have dinner with him this evening at the St. Regis…
Jaysus, this guy…my meetings with industry people have been in places like Toast Box or some other cafe. His venue of choice:
https://www.yantingrestaurant.com/
No pressure…
I’m just gonna find out what he wants from me…
Date: 14 Nov 2019, 6.05pm
J to Lilith
on the bright side, at least the possibility of a good dinner … !
Date: 23 Jan 2020, 10.15pm
Lilith to J
EL told me he woke up this morning with a racing heart. Told me he wrote a letter to me intending to send it, concerning why he couldn’t see me today: the doctor had advised him to go to the hospital if his heart rate goes above normal.
But he didn’t send it. Told himself he has gotten better as the day progressed, and chose to take some medication and rest instead.
He made it to dinner with me today, but ate very little. But I was fed… Then he told me to, “Lose some weight. Because it won’t be your writing that people will remember you by.” Haha!
He said, “You must think about what you want to do with yourself. It’s the new year. I want to see you somewhere else by the end of this year… I don’t ask to have dinner with just anyone… You’re an interesting person, intelligent, and pretty to look at to boot. You have a very good set of traits that you should make full use of while you can. Don’t waste them. I want to see you make money. I don’t want to see you be kept.”
He says I won’t make any money writing, and certainly not locally.
He thinks the likes of certain esteemed local authors would be useless to me, because, “They’ll just tell you how tough it is.”
“EW is a fraud.” He bluntly put it.
His show of love…by choosing to go against his doctor’s advice to go to the hospital, to have dinner with me instead…
Then telling me that EB was warned by The Department for having lunch with me at work, and then saying that I shouldn’t think of him as getting into trouble for me, as I would then ‘worship’ him, haha! (And by extension, that I shouldn’t think of EL, or anyone else who does anything for me, as sacrificing anything for me either.)
EB has not told me about his being warned by The Department for dining with me at work…
All these gestures…that I recognise as gestures of love…grandfatherly love (which is conditional upon those traits that they see in me—which I am fine with)…
They show me what love for me does…
And they show it to no one else.
This is healing, J. They show me what I ought to expect for myself.
***
Love is a tribute to two old men in the wake of Arguments and Ravings of a Madwoman, published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse and One Imperative.
***
Lilith is a monolingual Peranakan Singaporean, from a maternal ethnic Chinese lineage that spoke Malay and Hokkien, not Mandarin. She comes forged from Hellfire, has been described as some kind of journalist and, in the words of Bob Dylan (cranked up by Rage Against the Machine), does not want to work on Maggie’s farm no more.