Megan Rich > Quotes

“A funny thing about living abroad is that what might separate us expats back home brought us closer together in China. We'd listen to their complaints about the food, their legs swelling up with the MSG, and instead of rolling our eyes as we might've thought we would at Americans complaining abroad, we listened and offered advice on where to find more palatable, familiar food. For their part, they seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that we were living together unwed, and when they'd pass by our room, door open, there was no strong feeling of judgment.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“The afternoon sunk into the tall grass growing on the roadside. The distant dome turned from coral to burnt umber, a final flash of amber as the stars unveiled themselves above. In the last light of dusk, we facemmo la scarpetta every last dish – leaving behind olive pits, an oily carcass, several rings of spilled red sulfates – and stretched our arms across the table to hold hands. As darkness fell over the valley, we walked hand in hand down that hill, our shoes rubbing the soft asphalt of what could only be the silvery full moon reflected, and watched as the dome, lit up now in its tawny wonder, lowered down behind the horizon.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“As we lifted off, China growing ever more distant from the window-seat, the endless ocean opening up before us, I was torn between the excitement of something new and leaving that which I'd grown to love. In that moment, I understood we may never come back; that we were floating there suspended between two worlds, above the world. There was no logic in where we would go from here, nor any limitation. We had each other, and we knew now of what adaptation we were capable. Their faces flashed through my mind, and I wondered if we'd ever find a country like that again, or if we'd ever be as open with new friends, knowing now what it was like to leave them. Like a first love lost. I hoped we'd have the courage to love Germany so that the day we'd leave our hearts would also break. For what is life except that kind of attachment? And isn't it true that one can live in a place all their life, surrounded by comfort and familiarity, and never feel this longing? As the last view of China slipped off the horizon, I promised myself that I would always dare to love, squeezing Patrick's hand, and seeing that in our love for each other, we'd always have the strength to let go.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“It came as a surprise to us, as I suspect it does to many, that marriage changed us. We’d felt as though we’d always had those rings, wrapped about our fingers, like the scraggly garlands of those first, revelatory conversations. But those real rings, wooden as they were, began to set their roots, and that settling, the calming feeling of having been planted into the same plot to flourish, was a relief from that once-nagging question of loneliness. No matter what happened now, even if we’d found ourselves lonelier than we’d ever been, we’d know that that plot of land was our own to cultivate. Each moment was now a dual-moment, each of our lives a dual-life. The open road, that atlas, the open-faced moon and that wine were the first conscious recognitions of our floating life. One that perhaps we’d have created on our own, but now no longer had to.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“We arrived in Ulm just after the honeymoon, the moving there only prolonging it. Having slept that glorious jet-lag sleep right into evening on our first day, we took a walk through the streets of our new city, laughing aloud at our good fortune. How could we be living here?”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“The faces of the people were wrinkled with change. Sudden change to which the skin can't possibly conform, faster than the aging of man, faster, even, than their wildest dreams. It stretched their skin thin, as did their bulging bellies, their newfound love of doughnuts, hamburgers, milk and cheese. What was once a once-a-year privilege could now be bought in twelve shops on the same street.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“In his lifetime, that small fishing village had turned into the seventh largest port in the world, an eight-million-strong city; women had gotten the right to divorce, of which his wife took full advantage; and his son's living standard was so much higher than his, his so much higher than his own parents, that he couldn't understand the boy's constant desire for more, more, more. Despite a total lack of education from the state, Lao Song, unlike some of his classmates, was not entirely stunted; instead, he sought out the rebellious track of “growing his own mind,” as he called it, teaching himself whatever he could through rudimentary means. Despite being in China's “Lost Generation,” Song had somehow found himself.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“Besides all of this, Patrick and I living together for the first time meant it was the beginning of a life together, that nitty-gritty one where we fight over the way he leaves the spatula on a still-hot burner, or how she always “organizes” his things in illogical piles when they were already in order according to his systems. No matter where in the world, no matter how exotic the locale, they’ll still fight over that spatula and those piles. And they’ll still notice how other couples, no matter their language, will glare at one another on the sunniest of days, skulking by the ocean that they'd just enjoyed hand-in-hand.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“Though we could always explain that our life was not as glamorous as it might seem in the telling, we did come to realize that we'd made some radical decisions. We also came to realize, however, that the life that was laid before us in that not-so-distant past – becoming an industrial engineer, for example, working fifty hours a week for a car company's profit, getting an abysmal two weeks of vacation a year, never really feeling like your work had any meaning – was its own radical path. In Europe, life was different. Ambition was secondary to leisure; long, conversation-filled meals, the norm. The parks were full of people strolling, not running; cafes with people talking, not doing work on their own solitary computers.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“I once had a drinking contest with an artist on his yacht... It amused him as I took shot after shot, and I realized that this was the reason he'd invited us, his amusement. Looking back, I thought he didn't expect we'd have anything to say, that my questions about the artist's purpose, his existential quest for self in a communally-brutalized past, were not as amusing as they were thought-provoking, but I'll never know. As I swayed like a sailor in drunken bitterness, I felt something had been sacrificed to his art. He'd gone so far out on that boat there was no way for him to come back. I felt he no longer existed and was just the faded intention of color on canvas. His humanity had surely been washed away with the paint thinner.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“They then interviewed us, asking about our love of Qingdao, how we met, why we came. Having learned quickly what they wanted to hear, we answered with the obligatory enthusiasm. Patrick, in especially fine form, waxed the kind of cheesy poetic that put yen-signs in the eyes of the producers. On a seaside boardwalk, for example, they asked him a simple question about the appeal of Qingdao to which he replied with a philosophical metaphor on what he lovingly dubbed, “The Qingdao Mist,” a euphemism for the constant polluted haze that enveloped the city. He compared it to the dreamlike state of early love, when all landscapes are a pleasant blur of fuzzy details. I, trying not to laugh, vented my amusement in a wide, photographic smile.”
― Megan Rich

“After scouring the local newspaper with Oliver, a worried colleague, Patrick noticed an ad for a one-bedroom in Maehringen, a small village outside town. Oliver, flipping to the next page, dismissed it immediately, claiming it the most inconvenient village by foot or bike. But that night, newspaper in hand, Patrick said he’d found just the kind of the place we’d love.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“My favorite times were spent in his backyard where he and his roommates had “let nature take its course,” the weeds towering above our heads. We placed two chairs in the middle of that jungle and discussed what we didn’t know we were discussing: What brings a writer and an engineer together? How can we reconcile our diverse interests into a pointed goal, a single aphorism on life? More simply stated: Why are we falling in love?”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“Patrick would flip The Beatles on mornings after a fight, when we’d bake bread, kneading our troubles into something we could eat. We’d take turns in two-part harmony, working the gluten out, 'fussing and fighting', and as the smell of it baking filled the apartment with the homeliness of 'Penny Lane', we’d be 'ob-la-di-ing' over the sink, one washing, the other drying, hitting hips in three-four time. When we'd slice it open, knife a bit of butter in and take a bite of what had become of the last night’s troubles, it was clear 'we’d still need each other, we’d still feed each other, when we’re sixty-four'.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“The deeper I went into the valley, the greater the rewards. First, it was a clump of birches, the bottoms wrapped in thick fog, the uppermost branches clear now, nesting birds waking with bright-eyed songs. Next, I passed under the pines, browned needles underfoot, and was transported to the quiet moments of rapture under such branches throughout my life. The last, and worth all other gifts combined, was that moment when the valley inhaled, taking with it the fog. In its place, so close to where I was standing, there they were, the year's first flowers, the pure white snowdrops springing from the dark-green foliage under the elms. It was as if the clouds were swept in an instant from the sky leaving only the quiet delicacy of the stars.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“And then there was his love affair with my best friend, perhaps the only woman he’d ever seen drink several glasses of bai-jiu and smoke a half-pack of cigarettes in a single seating. Each dish that night had a special presentation, a colorful ring of carrots about the twice-fried eggplant, a garland of thinly-sliced chilies haloing the garlicky green beans, a well-placed broccoli head in the fish’s open mouth. She smiled at him when he gave her one of his cigarettes, coyly lighting it with a subtle turn of the wrist, and after she took her first long drag, he motioned us up. Never to be repeated, he brought us back his narrow kitchen, a blackened wok bubbling over a powerful blue fire. Deftly splashing it with alcohol, he flipped the contents into the air and watched the flame dance across her eyes.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life

“Artists have a habit of becoming what they practice on the canvas. Who knows when it began? When he discovered that the sky, filtered through a ghostly veil, would prove so profoundly right? I admit I feel the power of his paintings, can clearly see how they symbolize just what he claims, but why is it that an artist is expected to match their expression, as if the painting itself is just a distillation of the man? That man across the ramshackle table, warnings from his friends to stop drinking, pools of sauces in white plates we'd cleared in hopes we could lift another glass, felt as far away as any ocean horizon, seemed void of what I'd hoped to find in him. I saw what I presumed art can do to a broken person, what it can do, perhaps, to a broken generation: The painting itself can fortify the isolation that painting brings, the muted colors on canvas leading the artist to believe that he, too, is only worthy if muted. I felt so sure I was right about him, but hoped I wasn't. I drank to it, a sickly prayer.”
― Megan Rich, Six Years of A Floating Life