the answer is blowing in the wind

so, national day is just around the corner. i am back in beijing and impressed by how thoroughly the city has been blanketed in flags. especially the hutongs – a gorgeous crimson carefully planned display of spontaneous nationalistic sentiment has flags blowing in the wind every few feet. i leave it up to you decide whether flags are the answer or whether china is. (telling you the question would really make it easy.)

i will not be here for national day, so will be missing an even more grand fluttering of flags, the tumble of tanks, and the smart step of PLA soldiers in swank new uniforms. my absence will be in keeping with a theme of heavy travel of late which has me currently hiding out in my flat rather than seeking treatment for a terrible sore throat due to fear of quarantine. i fear that once i walk into a clinic with a fever and confess to having been abroad, i will promptly be thrown into beijing’s swine flu quarantine. this is my idea of purgatory. perhaps even more so than weekend shopping trips to ikea (which is right up there on my list of personal purgatories). not that i believe in any of that, but if i did, i imagine there would be room for both. dante had many layers to his inferno, didn’t he? ikea-shopping on the weekend and swine flu quarantine would both be in mine. not so gruesome as someone eternally gnawing on your head, but nightmarish in their own way.

this illness aside, it’s been quite nice coming back to beijing this time around. it is starting to feel more like home (again) now. it was especially nice to realize that there were people i was looking forward to seeing, treats i was looking forward to eating, neighbours’ cats i was looking forward to spying on. my flat here also really feels like my space – a room of my own. (with a room to spare for visitors!) the (oh so conventional) anxieties that consumed me a month ago have dissipated and left me humbly wandering in the calm blue acceptance of who and where i am at the moment. (at least for a few minutes each day anyway.)

in all seriousness, i am trying more than ever to simply be present. more than ever to appreciate: the blue skies when we are graced with them, my work even as i endlessly contemplate creative tributaries, friendship in all its forms and complexity, compassion, and love. that could be my thought of the day if i were a little inspirational calendar. slightly more than a week after my birthday, i remembered to open the card my parents had given me. in it, they enclosed a description of my chinese zodiac sign, the horse. ahem: a person born in this year is said to be cheerful, popular, and quick-witted. he has raw sex appeal rather than straight good looks. earthy and warmly appealing, he is very perceptive and talkative. his changeable nature may lead him to be hot-tempered, rash, and headstrong at times. the unpredictable horse will fall in love easily and fall out of love just as easily. in most cases the horse will leave home early. if not, his independent spirit will goad him to start working or to take up some career at an early age. an adventurer at heart, still he is noted for his keen mind and ability to manage money. self-reliant, vivacious, energetic, impetuous, and even brash, the horse is a showy dresser, partial to bright colours and striking designs to the point of being gaudy on occasion. the horse loves exercise both physical and mental. you can spot him by his rapid but graceful body movements, his animated reflexes and fast way of speaking. he responds quickly and can make snap decisions. his mind works at remarkable speed and whatever he may lack in stability and perseverance, he will certainly make up for by being open-minded and flexible. basically, he is a nonconformist.

naturally, this says everything and nothing all at once. (it is meant to describe everyone from anwar sadat to barbara streisand, neil armstrong to me.) but of course i see glimpses of myself here and there, and something about the last line i found comforting. while i would hardly call myself a nonconformist, i have tended not to follow conventional paths, and find myself contemplating even less conventional ones of late. somehow being labeled a nonconformist by whatever milk carton my parents clipped this from was soothing. it made my quiet urges to manage a political theatre, or write / dance / create, or run off to somewhere sacred and sit in silence and my flashes of resisting convention, never wanting to settle or stay still, or refusing limits seem downright day-to-day. the label was liberating. for a nonconformist, i'm doing really well.

part of doing well for me is falling in love easily, every single day. a dear friend of mind started a blog recently (lovethreethings.blogspot.com – it’s fantastic!) after she heard a poet talk about how, in order to write poetry, you must be open to falling in love at least three times a day. i love that idea. so did my friend, so she now blogs about what she falls in love with. i have taken to sometimes writing them in my notebook. i used to have an ideas notebook that i carried around, but found myself judging whether ideas were worthy of being recorded or worrying about writing things other than ideas in the ideas notebook. so now i just have a notebook. anything can go in. not much has come out so far. but here are two lists of three things i loved:

- raindrops on gloriously twisted old trees; my unique parents; coffee & pastries in a stolen moment alone thinking
- the lilt of the nordic english accent (a snowy sing-song!); the furious reckless beauty of a typhoon; an embrace so deep it is quiet

i forget to do it every day, but it is a nice practice. in this and previous notebooks i also like to collect shards of thoughts, images, ideas. perhaps to be used one day. perhaps not. i think i just appreciate the act of recording. these are things i have read, or thought, or seen, or felt, and didn’t want to let go of right away. a sampling:

- trust that runs as deep as joy
- longevity depends not so much on the firmness of your undertakings as on the permanent reexamination of your own certitudes
- one country can fall in love with another, get involved with it, grow tired of it and break its heart
- there is nothing picturesque in treachery or distrust
- politics like saggy breasts
- suffering is another bad habit
- sometimes don’t you just wish you could eat jazz? subsist on air & notes alone
- a man is as good as his fantasies
- about someone one understands, one doesn’t have to make lists of words
- intellectual pleasure in paradox / enjoyment of incongruity
- terror of being trapped and tamed by domesticity
- she made up stories about life & told them to herself & she didn’t know what was true & what wasn’t

so i'm not sure why i would share such a private thing here. perhaps it’s a personal test of sorts. to see whether i am really writing this for myself and whether it really matters if anyone is reading. the answer, i imagine, is blowing in the wind.