our paths crossing
and now the two of us are crossing paths - as strangers, acquaintances, friends, lovers - whatever we are to each other, independent of name or form - and who knows, when our paths might cross again? life is mysterious like that.
This project is a visual exploration of a relationship between two people, crossing paths. Relationships are nebulous things that we put into categories and linear frameworks — with beginnings, middles, and ends — along with expectations and attachments that come with the label of friend, partner, acquaintance, stranger, family.
But what if, instead of seeing relationships as categorized conditions, we simply saw them as two points in movement, colliding and dancing with each other? Could this be a more freeing way to see love, and life? This is the question I’m exploring.
this is parting with my parents each year at the shanghai airport, parting with him three years ago, parting with a stranger I sat next to on the airplane, who told me his story about being a professional baseball coach, and leaving a woman that he loved.
or maybe this one is parting with my parents at the shanghai airport, parting but not really parting, parting but still staying close - this is the kind of parting I want with anyone that I truly love.
How to read the series
Each piece is a story that describes a relationship between two people — any two people — at any given point in time.
The scale of time it captures is flexible. Each piece can represent one day, or one decade. You can zoom in or zoom out.
Each piece is modular. Two pieces can connect to form a longer story, a longer period of time.
At any given point, you can’t know exactly where you are in the relationship. You can’t tell a story about the future (or even about the present), only about the past.
Each piece can describe your relationship to infinite number of people, in infinite number of ways. When you see the image, you are the storyteller.
in this moment in time, we are crossing paths. a small intersection, but you can’t know what will happen after.
sometimes i think this represents some essence of my ideal relationship - together not together - intertwined but with a certain distance, freedom to be individuals, and freedom to be together.
The inspiration
I was inspired to make this series after sitting with a new friend in Bryant Park one day, in August, having a very exciting conversation about the nature of time. Time is fluid, the future is always now, and there is no time, he said. I am already at home. We are already meeting each other in the future.
I remember him looking at me and drawing with two fingers on the black metal table - me and him, crossing paths at this moment, this single point in time. I had only met him once before, at a tango marathon in France. He was saying how easily I could’ve said no to having coffee with him, but I said yes, and now here we are.
what if our paths are intertwined? how many times do we meet a person, only to meet them again and again, in different contexts, before we realize the significance (or insignificance) of each meeting?
maybe we are soulmates, and we don’t know it. maybe our destinies are relative and no matter where we go, we will stay connected to the same center, the same axis.
The fluidity of time & relationships
In the same conversation, this friend told me that he doesn’t say long, drawn-out goodbyes. You know the feeling of being on a train pulling away, he said, and seeing your loved one become smaller and smaller, in the distance? Your last memory of them is of this very long goodbye. It’s too much suffering. Why do we put ourselves through this emotional drama?
What is the alternative, then, I asked. To just disappear?
It’s not disappearing, he said. It’s see you later. A quick hug and kiss on the cheek. As in, I will see you again, I don’t know when, but when I do, it will be like no time has passed.
I can’t tell you what a deep impact that conversation had on me - and is still having on me. I was used to narratives of linearity and loss. Intimacy always threatened by the fear of losing, of leaving — one’s homeland, one’s loved ones. I was raised to see the future as something I had to steel myself for, and undoubtedly, it would be a future laced with loss — because that’s how life is.
What would it feel like to adopt this fluid notion of relationships, and of time? To accept however it is that our paths are crossing, in whatever shape or nature or form, and not try to predict whether it is the beginning, middle, or end. It is now. It is always now. To live fully in the present with our relationships, to see each present moment as all there is, and at the same time, part of a greater, unknowable whole. There is only possibility and wonder, only mystery and grace.