Just the appetizer. Last night, I tossed and turned. I tossed and turned like a salad. In fact, I was a crouton, crunchy and fibrous. I felt everything and at the same time, I couldn't feel at all, because I was a crouton.

Dancing queen: A few times now, I've caught myself not breathing. There is a difference between the pause of the intake and release of breath; this was that line straddled. I hovered over it mostly during sleep, when something shakes me out of my reverie and I realize that I hadn't breathed for five or seven seconds.

I claim to know nothing about the intricacies of breathing. I know of its rudimentary mechanics: the air goes in through your nostrils and out through your mouth. Sometimes the air goes inside your mouth and out your mouth, or inside your nose and out your nose. Does it make a difference? My father said it's better to breathe the regular way, that is, in through the nose, out through the mouth. But it seems almost mechanic and forced to breathe this way. Sometimes, the air comes in through the nose and stays there and then it filters out through the pores of my skin. A kind of general osmosis that I like to believe happens, but what really happens is that I don't exhale and it builds up in me, this air. My shoulders hunch over and my chest moves up and down to no discernible rhyhthm.

Is breathing a waltz? One-two-three, one-two-three. Or is it a cha-cha? One-two, one-two-three. I listen to its beat at night, or whenever I am aware of myself, in the way one can be aware of oneself, which is in anxiety (or if not, ultimately leading to it). The sheer physicality of this is frightening. You breathe in. You pause. You breathe out. You pause. You breathe in, another pause, and finally, you release the air in a resounding whoosh, the grand and final dip of your partner, maybe the flare and kick of her skirt like a cherry-red haze around her legs.

Yes, you're still alive. But how much longer can you keep dancing?

Why everything that matters is stuffed into a portfolio and in the back of my closet. My art was displayed for all the world to see. All the world was my lola, two thousand miles from her husband and the quiet ranch-style home on a street whose name means "rich" in Tagalog. She was sitting on the carpet like it was Christmas and I was handing out the presents, or it was Halloween and I was giving her candy. At any rate, I felt pleased that she was obviously excited to see my work.

"Oh," she said multiple times. Not the "oh" of detachment or the "oh" of shrugs (the worst kind), but a true "oh," the kind of "oh" you'd love to see on the face of someone you love (but maybe not your grandma, but something similar, at any rate).

"Oh," she said. "You should keep better care of these."

She said "these" in a nice way.

"And you should sign and date them," she said. "It's not enough that you make them. Someday, you're going to look at these, and you're going to want to remember the day you made them."

My father, her son, was in the kitchen. "It's time to eat," he called out. But she sat still and didn't move.

"This corn," she said, pointing to an acryclic paint rendering of Indian corn, which I remember back to senior year of high school, and how much I hated Indian corn afterwards. Imagine having to stare intimately at corn, to be scrutinizing its lines and shape, and trying to mimic its texture onto canvas. Yes, it makes you bitter just thinking about the thousand possible ways you could capture that shine on that one kernel. And there were, believe me, many kernels.

"This corn is a representation of a crossed pollination generation," my lola said. Actually, I don't remember what she said. She said something that meant something, which I'm sure was something beautiful, but I'm not well-versed in Botany. I can only speak Art.

"It's time to eat," my father said again.

"OK," my lola said.

It was just then, I realized, I do not like my father as much as I should anymore.