The Glint of the Luopan

Chapter 8

Lijie Fang's Diary

New York

22.11.2018

Your mom and I started to meet at the pagoda regularly. We thought that the number of floors – seven – could bring us luck. We believed in many superstitious things at that time, the way you do when you're young and exploring and don't have a fixed belief system yet. We took all the electives that interested us – Remote Viewing, Animal Communication, Extraterrestrial Research.

We'd go up to the seventh floor, lighting incense or burning some joss sticks. I'd let your mom throw the joss sticks on the ground and then try to interpret them according to the I Ging as some kind of joke. Sometimes, she'd bring that vial filled with that strange energy and try to create little shapes out of it with the power of her mind. Sometimes we laughed our heads off, sometimes we just stared in awe.

One time, your mum brought something else along. A little golden disk engraved with numerous characters and symbols from the I Ging. She said that one of her teachers had left it behind and that she couldn't help but take it with her as it reflected the sunlight. It reminded me of old CDs my grandma had hung in the trees in her little garden to scare greedy birds away.

Your mom then went down to the little pond, me and the disk in tow. She said that she wanted to show me something. She put the disk in the grass close to the bank of the pond and told me to look carefully. All of a sudden, the needle started to flicker frantically as if something nearby were influencing it. A few signs and symbols lit up, seemingly at random.

But your mother was looking somewhere else. "Do you see that, above the pond?"

At first, I thought that my eyesight had gotten worse. Maybe it was the late afternoon heat shimmering above the water's surface. The pond seemed to be mirrored, but along a 90-degree axis. At a right angle above the surface of the water, something hovered in the air that looked like an oval gate. A portal. Cautiously, I stepped closer to the shore. Inside the portal, I thought I saw something that looked like shimmering, translucent waves. As if the pond had produced a halo of itself.

☯︎☯︎☯︎

As soon as I went outside, I felt like I was lost to the world. I looked at the homeless people that seamed the streets and found myself feeling almost envious of them. At least they had an identity, a name that was theirs, something they could be called at any time to be taken in to a warmer place. If I were to end up on the streets, there was no name to pull me out of the cold.

When we had moved to the U.S. during my childhood, I hadn't felt like I was losing my identity – that much I could remember. I felt like I melted in perfectly, even with my Chinese name. Though we didn't join any Chinese emigrant community, there was a place and a story for everyone in New York. Now, all that remained of me was a husk, the spirit of the phoenix sucked out of me. The U.S. government had probably substituted the 'phoenix' with a less fortunate sign, maybe '封', which meant 'to close'. I was a closed case.

Dad had given me my name to honor the communist national hero, Lei Feng, who served as a selfless soldier in the People's Liberation Army. Despite the Communist party trying to demystify Daoism, Dad had always remained a firm supporter of state politics. I still found it hard to believe that he would betray the Chinese state by secretly working as a spy for the Americans.

☯︎☯︎☯︎

Suresh came by later that week for my next LSD session. Surprisingly, I had mostly recovered from the shock that I was supposed to be dead. When I looked inside myself, there was only the slightest trace of fear regarding the future and the people out there who could potentially have it in for me. I was still thinking about them, but they were not connected to my emotional center. It was as though someone had unplugged me and my thoughts and feelings lay in the comfort of the dark.