Hi, I am Clarice.
I have been passionate about artistic expression since childhood. At age five, I wrote my first story in Chinese, and decided that I would become a writer when I grew up.
However, before that could happen, life brought me far, far away from literature and poetry. I was dragged to some Business School against my will, and later on, in order to not do things I don’t like to do again, I moved to the United States, alone.
Freedom came with responsibility, and as a privileged girl, I never knew making a living was so difficult. And for some years, I was too exhausted running around to make a living, and literature and poetry felt a life ago.
Meanwhile, unexpectedly, I experienced both the joy and the pain of becoming bilingual.
For the most part, it was successful—fortunately I was still very young and adapted well to a second language. I was soon able to appreciate the beauty of English literature and poetry. I made many friends, fell in love, and am now married to someone who does not speak Chinese at all. I even became a psychotherapist, a profession all about expression through words.
Sadly, I also found that, however precisely I am able to express myself, and understand others in English (actually I now feel more comfortable speaking English than Mandarin), I cannot write as eloquently as in my native tongue.
I don’t beat myself up for that — even Vladimir Nabokov, the great Russian-American novelist, admits that although he mastered two languages, he still felt more capable writing in Russian. But it definitely makes me sad, and forced me to seek some new ways of expressing myself.
That’s how I became connected to art. Soon enough I discovered that, when I can hear only my heartbeat and my brush on canvas, I start to express myself in a way that I believe spoken language can never reach.