She wakes up, jet-lagged, on a military-issue couch in an otherwise empty American base housing in Germany in 2004. She is alone, except for the television, which talks to her in case she is there to listen. It has one channel: Armed Forces Network News.

The television is staticky; they yawn in sync. There is no place for sleepiness at the Olympics.

Her mind awakens, fascinated by intentional purpose. Each athlete is trying so very hard to represent their country, their family. Every single activity becomes grace, wisdom, chance, love, pain, loss. There is always someone to root for. Someone wins and someone loses. There are rules to each event. There is order. Control. Precision. It is summer here in the northern hemisphere, and the pools in Greece shimmer like gold. 

She watches Michael Phelps perform in the sport that will go on to found his international fame as the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time. But for now, he is just one long, overstretched white man, diving into the blues over and over again, never drowning.

Her life is ordered, controlled. At one level by her father, then her mother who tells her to be a good girl so she doesn’t embarrass her father, then by kids at school who want her to be bad so that she’s interesting, then the American government that tells her family where to move and when. Her father will be ordered to go There, wherever There is, to fight, to die. It will be an unpopular war.

Days pass. She unpacks boxes she has packed and unpacked dozens of times. The only time that things make sense are when the Olympics are on. When they take the couch away, she sits on the floor in front of the television.

The Closing Ceremony comes too quickly.

Hundreds of traditional dancers enter the stage and create a larger-than-life swirl of stalks of wheat, combining together to create a resplendent visage, a shell twist in the cosmos of beautiful joyous people moving their bodies to create a new body, a school of fish, of people. The camera cuts to close-ups and these people are so, so happy. This will be one of the best moments of their lives. They will tell their children, their children’s children. Even when VHS tapes and DVDs don’t exist and whatever comes next like holograms or brain downloads or telekinetic imagery, for the rest of time, they will still find ways to replay this recording.

Amanda Tien

Amanda Tien is a writer, visual artist, and marketing strategist. Her fiction, essays, and/or poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal, Poets.org, Public Books, Call Me [Brackets], Columbia College Today, and Unwinnable Monthly. She is currently working on two novels: one about the American Army brat experience, and the other is a modern day treasure hunt that begins in a West Village thrift store. Since 2022, she has been an Editor for The Punished Backlog, a video game blog, and previously served for two years as the Managing Editor of Aster(ix), a transnational feminist literary journal. She holds a MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA from Columbia University. Learn more and get in touch at www.amandatien.com

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