Water Bottle Excavation

‘Yǐn shuǐ sī yuán’–today’s nugget from my gratitude jar. The Chinese proverb echoes in my mind as I head out to work and press play on Revisionist History Season 3 Episode 6. Sweaty hands are eager to be freed from the nitrile blue gloves on this steamy, summer night. I carefully scan the corners with my phone flashlight at the Francis running track (which I named after my mindguru, John H. Francis, who stopped using vehicles after the 1971 San Francisco Bay Oil Spill).

Number 73 catches my small, monolid eyes. Her gorgeous body proportion, small face, and hourglass figure don’t surprise me; what intrigues me is that the 73rd water bottle I picked up is over three-fourths full. Clad in only her ubiquitous, wrinkled label, I can see the crevice of her bosom. This means that 73 is now considered an ‘untouchable.’ The Poland Spring label cannot protect her, and she will meet her end after this encounter. It is my self-appointed job to clean up the trash around Francis.

As I wrap my fingers around her waist, I can see a connection between our current states. Although her home is Maine and mine is Massachusetts, plastic affects us the same way. Plastic, our toxic mask, protects us from society’s harsh remarks, high standards of appearance, and outside contaminants. With time, this artificial layer permeates our skin and spreads inside, chewing up a part of our identity—about 90,000 microplastic particles of it. These plastic walls force us to fit into a conventional mold that does not fit our size, which is a symptom I call being air-tight.

Number 73 looks like her cap could burst open. It’s as if she’s waiting to let go of all the contaminants left by her unfaithful consumer. Air-tight and letting go—two states I was constantly recycling. For years on end, I tried to ‘let go’ of parts of me, whether they were my obsession with Skippy Peanut Butter, my helpless perfectionism, or my self-consciousness about my appearance. I couldn’t climb over this wall of things I was hanging on to. Was my cap about to burst? How would I let go of all these “contaminants” within me?

I took advice from Li Ao, a 9th century philosopher and one of China’s first diarists from the Tang Dynasty. He taught me to let my thoughts go into a diarium (Latin word for ‘diary’). To observe myself rather than to criticize. So, in my bright orange moleskin diarium, I went on a brain dump. The experience was cathartic in the way cleaning out my heaps-of-clothes-on-the-floor room in 6th grade was. I dumped out my contemplation of whether to eat the burnt corners of my cereal flakes, my fascination with the hypocritical duality in Emperor Gaozu’s character, my low self-esteem after gaining 27 pounds from hypotension, and my subsequent discontinuation of cross country. These were not simply a compilation of the superficial; these were raw, unfiltered meditations. I wrote in English, Hangul, and Zhongwen interchangeably to fully express my thoughts.

During these now regular excavations, I unfold the mess I experience throughout my day, sorting it out piece by piece. This practice has helped me change my toxic habits and think with an environmentally conscious lens. Like my mom and grandma who don’t let food go to waste, I leave no rice in my bowl. And maybe, like Francis, I can contribute my newfound clarity to impact society.

With my sea-glass water bottle in hand, I step onto a different track, one that will lead me into the world of Asian Studies & Languages and Environmental Studies. I am now free enough to reflect on something I cherish–meditations on the nature of recycling. As I release Number 73 from her plastic mold, today’s proverb translates inside my mind: “when you drink the water, remember the spring.”