附注 NOTATION:
2024-09-22，18:54 UTC-04：
收件人報告：「收到LAW先生送的包裹了：）因為我們見面的時候已經過了晚上12點了，沒有一起拍照，但那晚我有拍到緩件」；緩件號HQL-631派送完成
RECEIVER REPORT：I’ve received the package from Mr. LAW ：） We didn’t get a photo together since it was past midnight by the time we met up, but I did take a photo of it the night i got it; dispatch HQL-631 completed
2024-08-28，08:50 UTC-04：
慢遞員Y-醬更新：「你好！昨天我跟LAW先生見面遞送好緩件啦！LAW先生好心地來到曼哈頓中城，就在我工作的附近，我們喝了一杯咖啡，聊得很愉快。謝謝LAW，我很喜歡這次與您的短暫相遇！希望大家一切順利<3」
COURIER Y-chan UPDATE：Hello! Yesterday I was able to meet Mr. LAW to hand out the package! Mr. LAW kindly came into midtown Manhattan near my work and we had a nice chat over coffee. Thanks Mr. LAW, I loved this brief encounter with you! I hope all is well with everyone <3
2024-08-20，14:29 UTC-04：
收件人加入「半自主」的出版經濟圈，將展銷場慢遞網絡與她自己的紐約-多倫多速遞朋友LAW先生連結起來，而LAW立即聯絡慢遞員Y-醬：「你好，我在長島市居住和工作，但我有車，可以根據需要前往其他區域。Y-醬，如果你能告訴我何時何地對您比較方便，我會盡力配合。你這個星期有時間讓我去拿J的包裹嗎？」
RECEIVER joins the circular 'semi-autonomous' publishing economy by linking LIGHT LOGISTICS up with her own New York-Toronto courier friend, Mr. LAW, who promptly contacts COURIER Y-chan: Hi there, I live and work in Long Island City, but I have a car and can travel to other boroughs as needed. Y-chan, if you'd kindly give me an idea when and where might be more convenient for you, I'll try my best to accommodate. Are you available sometime this week for me to pick up J's package?
I just got the book and the Toronto package! （<-- pls send me info about that one when you can：））This morning we met up at KAT's fave place in Chinatown for yummy rice rolls and congee. A super humid day in nyc!
So excited to read the book after hearing about it from KAT, too — but I'll enjoy admiring your packaging for another day before opening it haha. KAT, thank you again for bringing it to me, and for the lovely breakfast :) I loved chatting with you!
HQL-628收件人Y-醬變成HQL-631布魯克林轉運站的慢遞員，等待轉運
COURIER KAT 3rd DISPATCH：
Y and I met in Chinatown and had a late breakfast together — we talked organizing & art & making things. I handed off the packages and am so excited for her to read The Last Emporium, which I started on my flight from Tokyo to NYC.
RECEIVER Y-chan of dispatch HQL-628 becomes Brooklyn relay centre courier for HQL-631, awaiting relay
Earlier today, I went to Wo Hop Shek cemetery to look for my po po’s grave. I’d been anxious about this all summer, inventing creative excuses that mostly centered on my bad Cantonese (how will I tell the taxi where to go? How will I ask for help locating the grave?) and the limited amount of information my Yi Ma could provide about her mother: the year she died, and her name. The last time my Yi Ma saw the grave was in 1969, before she left Hong Kong for the States. The only thing I knew growing up about my Po Po was that she died when my mom was only four, from uterine cancer. My Yi Ma told me a story about how every time she and my mother and their brothers visited the cemetery, my mother would become sick. As they climbed the giant hills of the cemetery, she would “get rid of everything in her body,” my Yi Ma put it, meaning she vomited. This was one of the few things I’d heard about my mother’s childhood; she died when I was a teenager. This story always confused me, until I found myself walking the grounds of one of the Wo Hop Shek Columbariums, sweating and feeling panicky and looking for anybody to ask for help. These were not hills; this was an actual mountain they had to summit. The metaphor was not lost on me.
A man named Ricky in one of the offices helped me; this caption is getting long, so I’ll just skip ahead to the part where, sweating into the paper he printed off for me of my (maybe) Po Po’s grave, I hailed yet another taxi per his instructions to take me up the winding hills of the cemetery into some of the oldest sections.
An hour later, weaving in and out of the rows of gravestones on the hillsides, I had found my Po Po.
(Calling my Yi Ma afterward to tell her about this — me talking with my limited Cantonese and her with her limited English — felt like this summer was exactly as it should have been. Any guilt I had for not “writing enough” or “learning enough Cantonese” or “watching too much Sex in the City” (???What??? I don’t know either) had evaporated.)
2024-08-04，22:04：
慢遞員KAT第一次更新：「我今天匆忙打包並試圖匯集起在香港的這兩個月的生活。提醒著在一季中有多少可以發生，儘管難以察覺。我當貓保姆的主人比預期的提早一天返回；試著離開回到美國前在大埔完成這差事並有很多令人發狂的清潔工作。看著我將遞送的書和一本我在夏天買來讀合在一起真的很美好，那是我從展銷場買的（和CHARIS一樣，我也打算在飛機上讀《離開的舉動》），以及粵語書。我學一段時間粵語了，來讓我感到跟家人多些的聯繫，可多數時候，我自己——我只能試圖從語法上分析，確實，語言意味著我。這或保留，或吞嚥，或自在我們的來源。一個朋友提醒我，語言總是綑綁於地方，是我們檔案的建築術。我喜歡這樣。」
COURIER KAT 1st DISPATCH： I’m in a rush today packing and trying to gather up the life I’ve made here in Hong Kong these past two months. It’s a reminder of how much life can happen in a season, even if imperceptible. The person I’m cat sitting for is returning a day earlier than I expected; lots of frantic cleaning and trying to finish errands in Tai Po before I fly back to the states. It’s sweet to see the books I’ll be delivering mingling with the ones I brought to read this summer, the ones I bought from Display Distribute (like CHARIS, I also plan to read Acts of Departure on my flights) as well as the Cantonese textbooks. I’ve been teaching myself Cantonese so that I can feel more connected to my family, but also mostly, myself—I’ve been trying to parse what, exactly, language means to me. What it holds or swallows or frees us from. A friend reminds me that language is always tied to place, and that it is the architecture for our Archive. I love that.
2024-08-03，around 16:30：
慢遞員KAT和緩件號HQL-610至 613的慢遞員CHARIS一樣，是由JC向『展銷場』人肉慢遞網絡推薦的；在與大埔的一隻可愛的貓咪共住兩個月後，她順道土瓜灣轉運站取HQL-628和HQL-631，然後下周返回在華盛頓特區的家，其間會去紐約探望朋友幾天
Courier KAT has, like courier CHARIS of dispatches HQL-610 to 613, been recommended to the LIGHT LOGISTICS network by JC; toward the tail end of a 2-month sojourn with a cuddly cat in Tai Po, she drops by the Tokwawan Relay Centre to pick up dispatches HQL-628 and HQL-631 before heading back home next week to Washington, DC with a few days' to visit friends in New York in between
