Draft 4.

I love sitting in my publisher's office.

Sitting on that wooden chair so low to the floor that your bum sinks backwards, in the midst of books, fresh from the print and worn from time, watching a man busying himself, making phonecalls, checking emails, running around- just, doing what he loves to do, waiting for him with your drafts, anxiously… it’s one of the most unnerving and nicest feelings in the world.

Books all around you. Books that birthed from ideas, desires, Real souls; Books that sit on shelves, pregnant with knowledge and expression; Squares of paper, humble, waiting to be fondled with, delved into. Books waiting to be opened.

To be in the midst of books in the making, is a grand feeling. It overpowers you. Awe.

"Give me some time, I'll be ready soon," he says, in the midst of a million other things to see to. I say, "Take your time," and I smile.

He makes a phonecall, returns a couple of emails, runs over to the computer across the room and finally sweeps over to the table where I’m at, before being called back to his desk by another urgent call.

I love to sit in his office.

And when he is finally ready, ready to look at my work, an intellectual battle breaks out, and I love it. We tug and pull over which pages to edit, which not to, what to excise and what to preserve. We debate about which pages are “necessary”, and which aren’t. He makes a proposal, and I vehemently object to it. He backs down, as I stand my ground, before he comes forward again with a sound argument.

My art and my Being is on the line. His comments make or break me. Here is man I respect making a critical assessment of my art. I love it.

My eyebrows are frowning, our still bodies belie the storm of thoughts within us. Our meetings are full of charged moments We argue, debate, tug and tussle, and yet do all this beautifully, peaceably- we both know, we aren’t doing this for ourselves. We both want the story to help raise awareness about depression and eating disorders, things which people don't want to talk about. We both want to convey a story and a message in the best possible way. We just want what’s best, what’s true to the art, and to God.

Just as we are talking about the project, I receive a phonecall.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I just need two minutes of your time to listen, to just listen to me. Can you please help me?” a familiar voice almost breaks into tears.

She tells me what just happened, that she cannot cope with the recovery process from anorexia, that she is losing herself. Her voice is urgent and frantic. In her panic, obsession and state of frenzy, she tells me the pain of consuming the equivalent of what a grown-man eats in an entire day in one sitting at 2am in the morning. It is called a serious binge episode, an event triggered by stress, and things deeper. People often undermine these things and laugh it off, but the psychological impact was devastating.

The pain was beyond her. So I listened, and I tried to comfort her, give her practical guidelines on what to do from I had read from books before. I never experienced what she did, but I learnt much from being in the support group and read about it.

There we were discussing whether or not we should use the book to raise awareness about eating disorders specifically or about depression, and a call comes in from her. It stunned us both for a moment. She never called before.

“Why?” I said. “Why.”

“There’s no such thing as a coincidence, Wai Jia. God’s using you.”

Before she called, I watched my publisher take his precious time to look through my paintings, threw my hands on the air and blurted out, “What’s the point of all this?”

There I was, taking up his time to look through my amateurish work. It’s foolish isn’t it, to think I could change anything, make any difference through this, put all my trust in a rainbow I saw that day right after I completed the first draft of A Taste of Rainbow. I must be so silly, to be wasting his time with my little projects, projects that have no promise of what success means to the wolrd. Just doing what I do simply because of this nebulous thing called a calling. How very childish.

What’s the point of all this?

He had been flipping the pages furiously, back and forth, and scribbling down notes on the pages. Suddenly, the paper frenzy stopped, and he looked up briefly at me and said, “ The point is,” he paused. “Did God tell you to do this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So your question is irrelevant!”

He laughed out loud. The paper storm continued, and he laughed heartily as he scanned through the paintings, jotting down notes at the margins.

“That means God’ll take care of the rest, Wai Jia. That’s what it means.”

I looked at this bespectacled man flipping through the pages. Sitting at his office waiting for his reviews and thoughts, luxuriating in a library of books he published, fresh from the printing press and worn-old, and listening to him, watching his meticulous work, his mind-ticking away within, and suddenly, Time stopped. Sitting there, I was... just remembering the warmth of his hug that day when I went to his church for a fundraising event for the orphanage in Nepal through Kitesong, remembering how he looked like he was going to cry because of the compassion and generosity we witnessed, remembering how it was his wife and he who gave me enouragement during those dark times of depression, how he had more faith in Kitesong than I ever did, and seeing how he still has more faith in me than myself. Still.

I’ll never ask that question again.