so, it has simply been ages. a thousand pardons. but i have been too busy being completely and utterly surprised by joy to create the space to blog. query as to whether although i was ostensibly using this space to write about china, i was actually using it to heal and breathe and learn to love. even if i've never managed to say anything clever about china, i have learned to love. and to be loved in return. i couldn't be happier. the 'white dress or what?' comes from among the more amusing poems i've read of late, which is shared below. although there will be another white* dress of consequence in my future. also in my future, and more immediate - shanghai! i marvel at how life unfolds. and how blessed i am. i feel so grateful and lucky and then some. joyce said god is a shout in the street. that makes sense insofar as that shout is an expression of pure love. that is what my shouts are these days. i am not sure whether i will continue writing in this space once in shanghai. perhaps this space has served its purpose. perhaps i will find another agenda. for now, here's to joy and to laughter and happily ever after.....
and now for something less precious, an amusing poem. ahem:
Emily Dickinson's To-Do List by Andrea Carlisle
Monday
Figure out what to wear--white dress?
Put hair in bun
Bake gingerbread for Sue
Peer out window at passersby
Write poem
Hide poem
Tuesday
White dress? Off-white dress?
Feed cats
Chat with Lavinia
Work in garden
Letter to T.W.H.
Wednesday
White dress or what?
Eavesdrop on visitors from behind door
Write poem
Hide poem
Thursday
Try on new white dress
Gardening--watch out for narrow fellows in grass!
Gingerbread, cakes, treats
Poems: Write and hide them
Friday
Embroider sash for white dress
Write poetry
Water flowers on windowsill
Hide everything
*although i'm little tempted to go with gold! too much? too much. maybe off white? ivory? cream? white dress or what?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
timshel
apologies in advance. i am still not able to collect my thoughts sufficiently to pontificate on the subjects i noted in my last post as urgently needing to discuss. so much for placeholders. seems silly to reach back two weeks in time to talk about any of those significant occurrences and the implications thereof. also there has been so much delightful forward movement in my life of late that i don't want to disrupt it by reaching back*. i am in northern california at the moment. and, as usual, am struck by the land. hence the reference to steinbeck in the subject. my understanding of the hebrew word timshel comes from steinbeck's east of eden. the pertinent passage, in part, is as follows:
"[T]his was the gold from our mining: 'Thou mayest.' The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin (and you can call sin ignorance). The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.'"
there is so much in that one little world - individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. and then some. free will and the capacity to forge our own moral destinies. hope. redemption. opportunity. yearning.
the novel is also a lovesong for this land. the descriptions of the salinas valley are so rich and vibrant you cannot help but appreciate the rugged beauty in this part of the world. steinbeck apparently wrote the novel for his two sons, so that they could know the land as he knew it, when he knew it - early 20th century. he also apparently considered it his greatest work. he said of east of eden, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years." he further claimed: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." anyway, it's a great work. so i often recall it when i come to northern california, and then recall timshel. here endth my sixth grade book report for this blog.
i have been embracing the beauty of timshel of late. perhaps even more than usual. i have also been surprised by joy. more on all of that later, or not. i am feeling less inclined to share things in this space at the moment and simply appreciate them in private. once the whirlwinds of these weeks calm down and something remarkable occurs (or does not), perhaps i'll be inspired to resume. i mayest, after all. or i mayest not. xx
*and yet as i write that, i think of the closing lines of the great gatsby - "and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". not that it is related. although i think somewhere deep down we all believe in the green light.
"[T]his was the gold from our mining: 'Thou mayest.' The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin (and you can call sin ignorance). The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.'"
there is so much in that one little world - individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. and then some. free will and the capacity to forge our own moral destinies. hope. redemption. opportunity. yearning.
the novel is also a lovesong for this land. the descriptions of the salinas valley are so rich and vibrant you cannot help but appreciate the rugged beauty in this part of the world. steinbeck apparently wrote the novel for his two sons, so that they could know the land as he knew it, when he knew it - early 20th century. he also apparently considered it his greatest work. he said of east of eden, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years." he further claimed: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." anyway, it's a great work. so i often recall it when i come to northern california, and then recall timshel. here endth my sixth grade book report for this blog.
i have been embracing the beauty of timshel of late. perhaps even more than usual. i have also been surprised by joy. more on all of that later, or not. i am feeling less inclined to share things in this space at the moment and simply appreciate them in private. once the whirlwinds of these weeks calm down and something remarkable occurs (or does not), perhaps i'll be inspired to resume. i mayest, after all. or i mayest not. xx
*and yet as i write that, i think of the closing lines of the great gatsby - "and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". not that it is related. although i think somewhere deep down we all believe in the green light.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
life rocks
so i am woefully behind in writing in this space and saying anything of consequence* or saying anything at all.... and so much has transpired! in china. in the world. in me. and there has been much to say. and yet i have found not a moment amid the whirlwinds to process and share. i felt especially sheepish when a sweet friend said she was looking forward to reading my blog and seeing my thoughts about liu xiaobo's nobel peace prize (i leapt with joy!). i had to say that i was so busy appreciating the unbearable lightness of being that i had remained silent on what was perhaps one of the most important and poignant occurrences of late related this rambling given my ostensible purpose of reflecting on human rights in china, among other things. this friend, being a wise and generous soul, said that i she thought liu would understand and appreciate my soaking up whimsy rather than writing. perhaps all the more so because i don't imagine there's much whimsy in prison. i say that not to be funny or silly, just true. of course, i am now running late and ought to be out the door, so am considering this post a placeholder to remind myself of what i actually ought to write about in the not so distant future.
- liu xiaobo wins the nobel peace prize and everything (nothing) changes
- xi jinping will likely be the next president; 18th party congress is going to be sweet
- is there really a hu / wen divide or is it all hooola?
- i'm transitioning to a new job which is terribly exciting!
- i'm also moving flats. i ought to have done so long ago, but now it's happening and ushering in all sorts of exciting other unexpected momentum. such is the way of things.
- last night i caught up with the president of the national committee on us-china relations and then went with him to the first part of a program on us-china relations. i did the mingling bit and then realised i just couldn't handle the rest (which was a v last minute invite anyway and involved watching an hour long video of him interviewing the us ambassador last week which is also available on their website), so thanked him and said i was leaving before the program started. he said, 'it's a walk out?' i said, 'yes, it's a walk out'. i went for blind massage and then a lovely late dinner with friends instead. which felt like following the path with heart for that wednesday night.
- the title of this post describes how i've felt all day. i became a godmother this morning!!! (which naturally involved weeping with joy and wonder and delight.) and found a new flat! when i was walking to meet the real estate agent to finalise things, janis joplin came on my ipod. and i thought it was about right. life rocks. completely rocks.
and now, i am running out the door feeling blessed and joyful. and a little bit 'don't cry for me gongjian hutong [current flat]' in light of the move, so am wearing fishnets and red suede pumps. life rocks.
*query as to whether i ever do.
- liu xiaobo wins the nobel peace prize and everything (nothing) changes
- xi jinping will likely be the next president; 18th party congress is going to be sweet
- is there really a hu / wen divide or is it all hooola?
- i'm transitioning to a new job which is terribly exciting!
- i'm also moving flats. i ought to have done so long ago, but now it's happening and ushering in all sorts of exciting other unexpected momentum. such is the way of things.
- last night i caught up with the president of the national committee on us-china relations and then went with him to the first part of a program on us-china relations. i did the mingling bit and then realised i just couldn't handle the rest (which was a v last minute invite anyway and involved watching an hour long video of him interviewing the us ambassador last week which is also available on their website), so thanked him and said i was leaving before the program started. he said, 'it's a walk out?' i said, 'yes, it's a walk out'. i went for blind massage and then a lovely late dinner with friends instead. which felt like following the path with heart for that wednesday night.
- the title of this post describes how i've felt all day. i became a godmother this morning!!! (which naturally involved weeping with joy and wonder and delight.) and found a new flat! when i was walking to meet the real estate agent to finalise things, janis joplin came on my ipod. and i thought it was about right. life rocks. completely rocks.
and now, i am running out the door feeling blessed and joyful. and a little bit 'don't cry for me gongjian hutong [current flat]' in light of the move, so am wearing fishnets and red suede pumps. life rocks.
*query as to whether i ever do.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
give in to love or live in fear
so naturally the subject of this post is a line from 'rent', although it is actually a poem that is inspiring me to write at the moment. i subscribe to the writer's almanac and so receive an email with a poem each day*. for some reason today's poem struck me such that i felt i needed to stop what i was doing and consider it**. i think i was struck by it because i found myself sharing one of my inspirational 'rent' mantras with a friend yesterday - forget regrets or life is yours to miss. it's a good mantra because is propelling and good for perspective. i'd like to think that it points to living boldly, taking risks, making the most of each moment and opportunity, focusing on joy, and not taking things too seriously. it is an especially useful mantra for those of us prone to over-thinking. (to borrow from emerson: finish each day and be done with it. you have done what you could. some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. tomorrow is a new day. you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.) pleasantly, i realise as i write this that i am reasonably good at actualising this mantra. (see my saturday afternoon-to-evening activities, which i will briefly describe below, as evidence.) actualisation aside, today's poem struck me because it articulates a a real and legitimate actual regret. ahem -
The Man in the Yard
by Howard Nelson
My father told me once
that when he was about twenty
he had a new girlfriend, and once
they stopped by the house on the way
to somewhere, just a quick stop
to pick something up,
and my grandfather, who wasn't well—
it turned out he had TB and would die
at fifty-two—was sitting in a chair
in the small back yard, my father
knew he was out there, and it crossed
his mind that he should take his girlfriend
out back to meet him, but he
didn't, whether for embarrassment
at the sick, fading man
or just because he was in a hurry
to be off on his date, he didn't
say, but he told the little,
uneventful story anyway, and said
that he had always regretted
not doing that simple, courteous
thing, the sick man sitting in
the sun in the back yard would
have enjoyed meeting her, but
instead he sat out there alone
as they came and left, young
lovers going on a date. He
always regretted it, he said.
i almost burst into tears when i finished reading this. not, however, because i found it sad. i don't think it's actually about regret so much as it is a subtle expression of the rent lyrics mantra above. forget regrets or life is yours to miss is really telling us to live in a way that we don't have regrets. to always make the bold, frightening, loving choices even when they are daunting or more painful or inconvenient. more succinctly: give in to love or live in fear. yes, that's another line from the same song but it is also perhaps the best mantra of all. if the poet's father were to have chosen to give into love - that tug he felt to bring this (seemingly insignificant) girlfriend to meet his sick father - rather than his fear of the awkwardness of that moment, he wouldn't be sharing this small regret with his son all these years later. it is sometimes shocking to me how we can still shy away from living as boldly as we possibly can and making the most of every moment even when the universe again and again reminds us how ephemeral our lives are, how fleeting our chances to love and be kind. and yet we squander them. we look away and leave things unsaid and suppress our laughter all too often. (oooh, i am totally talking myself into stopping work for the afternoon and going for a long, rambling walk in the neighbourhood and bringing a delicious and special bottle of wine to dinner with friends tonight!) my brother-in-law used to say that love is the absence of fear. for the longest time i didn't understand that. but now it is too clear. not unlike the imperative of this poem. in addition to almost bursting into tears, i had a tremendous impulse to simply run in the sunshine or kiss someone handsome and strong or dance for simply hours****.
thankfully, there is still time to do all of those things yet today! i actually did all of those things, minus the kissing, on saturday. saturday was an absolutely beautiful day here in beijing - sunny, blue skies, perfect early autumn weather - and a friend was having a housewarming lunch in his new hutong home. it was a superb day for bbqing in the courtyard with a small collection of souls*****. we enjoyed a delicious lunch and then lingered on. some of us half-napped, mostly chatted lying on my friend's new bed (a 'heavenlyTM' bed from the westin hotel - kind of like cloud but better). some dealt with household improvements. some chatted outside. my ipod, our musical inspiration for the day, behaved amazingly and shuffled together a perfect soundtrack*******. as afternoon began to turn to evening, we all contemplated whether we ought to part ways and head off into our various evening plans. we did seriously contemplate that. maybe for four minutes. and then we opened a bottle of red wine. and cancelled our other plans. the afternoon turned into evening turned into night. we drank wine. we ordered dinner. we wore funny hats. (i spent a few hours in a very classy top hat. another friend had a rather fetching gold turban. and there was a safari hat involved too.) we climbed the tree in the courtyard. others came. and left. (once again, we scared all the straight men away.) we sang. (at least two of the straight men might have been scared away by my singing toto's 'africa' to a teaspoon at the table along with another girlfriend. when i was sober. (on fellow asked how much we'd been drinking and i said that i'd only had two glasses of wine over the course of many hours (which was true at that point), but was somewhat inherently silly and just having fun. i offered him my teaspoon microphone to join in for a bit, but he wasn't into it. i shrugged. his loss.)) we danced. we began dancing around the courtyard and then moved into the living room. i may or may not have been inspired to do the splits multiple times. a friend may or may not have pulled a groin muscle attempting to do the splits. we also may or may not have done the running man. and the roger rabbit. the neighbours called the police. (they were concerned my friend was starting a club in his new home. we assured them he was not.) others did shots of baijiu. (shots of baijiu for me are always regrets that i cannot forget.) in the end, four of us ended up climbing into my friend's (heavenlyTM) bed and giggling like schoolgirls for hours. and staying the night. i was perhaps not the most popular person at the slumber party because once i got tired i kept encouraging slumber, saying 'too much chatting, not enough sleeping!' it was a very impromptu, amusing, hilarious saturday. we certainly warmed the house. and, i suppose, we gave into love, not fear. though i suspect that some of my comrades regretted the shots of baijiu on sunday morning.
*confession - much as i enjoy seeing this mail surface in my inbox each day, i do not always read the poems. i sometimes only skim. or don't read them at all. shhhh.
**a second confession - i am working from home on transition memos and other materials related to my impending career move and its a national (hotly love the motherland!) holiday this entire week and the weather is gorgeous and i am finding it exceedingly difficult to focus***. even if today's poem were about a rodent or farm implements or slugs i probably would have found it necessary to stop and consider it. and so.
***let's be honest, productivity is overrated.
****as per my confessions above, these impulses may or may not also be related to having been sitting and writing memos for too long. actually, they also may or may not be regular impulses unrelated to this poem or prose of any kind.
*****amusing true story: i arrived at said collection of souls saying that (inspired by my recent experience in clean living in koh samui) i wasn't drinking any alcohol or eating any sugar. but then a sommelier friend opened a bottle of wine from one of my favourite vineyards in napa and a sweet girlfriend arrived with homemade toffee cake generously topped with chocolate and nuts. one and half hours after my statement, i was enjoying a delicious glass of wine and eating too much toffee cake in the sunshine. my friends said they were very impressed with my will power for lasting over an hour. i didn't regret my choices. some mantras are more meaningful than others.
******my ipod on shuffle can be very unpredictable. unsurprisingly, we are almost always teetering on the edge of musical theatre or hiphop. but it performed admirably on saturday. especially during the dance party, but also in the quieter moments.
The Man in the Yard
by Howard Nelson
My father told me once
that when he was about twenty
he had a new girlfriend, and once
they stopped by the house on the way
to somewhere, just a quick stop
to pick something up,
and my grandfather, who wasn't well—
it turned out he had TB and would die
at fifty-two—was sitting in a chair
in the small back yard, my father
knew he was out there, and it crossed
his mind that he should take his girlfriend
out back to meet him, but he
didn't, whether for embarrassment
at the sick, fading man
or just because he was in a hurry
to be off on his date, he didn't
say, but he told the little,
uneventful story anyway, and said
that he had always regretted
not doing that simple, courteous
thing, the sick man sitting in
the sun in the back yard would
have enjoyed meeting her, but
instead he sat out there alone
as they came and left, young
lovers going on a date. He
always regretted it, he said.
i almost burst into tears when i finished reading this. not, however, because i found it sad. i don't think it's actually about regret so much as it is a subtle expression of the rent lyrics mantra above. forget regrets or life is yours to miss is really telling us to live in a way that we don't have regrets. to always make the bold, frightening, loving choices even when they are daunting or more painful or inconvenient. more succinctly: give in to love or live in fear. yes, that's another line from the same song but it is also perhaps the best mantra of all. if the poet's father were to have chosen to give into love - that tug he felt to bring this (seemingly insignificant) girlfriend to meet his sick father - rather than his fear of the awkwardness of that moment, he wouldn't be sharing this small regret with his son all these years later. it is sometimes shocking to me how we can still shy away from living as boldly as we possibly can and making the most of every moment even when the universe again and again reminds us how ephemeral our lives are, how fleeting our chances to love and be kind. and yet we squander them. we look away and leave things unsaid and suppress our laughter all too often. (oooh, i am totally talking myself into stopping work for the afternoon and going for a long, rambling walk in the neighbourhood and bringing a delicious and special bottle of wine to dinner with friends tonight!) my brother-in-law used to say that love is the absence of fear. for the longest time i didn't understand that. but now it is too clear. not unlike the imperative of this poem. in addition to almost bursting into tears, i had a tremendous impulse to simply run in the sunshine or kiss someone handsome and strong or dance for simply hours****.
thankfully, there is still time to do all of those things yet today! i actually did all of those things, minus the kissing, on saturday. saturday was an absolutely beautiful day here in beijing - sunny, blue skies, perfect early autumn weather - and a friend was having a housewarming lunch in his new hutong home. it was a superb day for bbqing in the courtyard with a small collection of souls*****. we enjoyed a delicious lunch and then lingered on. some of us half-napped, mostly chatted lying on my friend's new bed (a 'heavenlyTM' bed from the westin hotel - kind of like cloud but better). some dealt with household improvements. some chatted outside. my ipod, our musical inspiration for the day, behaved amazingly and shuffled together a perfect soundtrack*******. as afternoon began to turn to evening, we all contemplated whether we ought to part ways and head off into our various evening plans. we did seriously contemplate that. maybe for four minutes. and then we opened a bottle of red wine. and cancelled our other plans. the afternoon turned into evening turned into night. we drank wine. we ordered dinner. we wore funny hats. (i spent a few hours in a very classy top hat. another friend had a rather fetching gold turban. and there was a safari hat involved too.) we climbed the tree in the courtyard. others came. and left. (once again, we scared all the straight men away.) we sang. (at least two of the straight men might have been scared away by my singing toto's 'africa' to a teaspoon at the table along with another girlfriend. when i was sober. (on fellow asked how much we'd been drinking and i said that i'd only had two glasses of wine over the course of many hours (which was true at that point), but was somewhat inherently silly and just having fun. i offered him my teaspoon microphone to join in for a bit, but he wasn't into it. i shrugged. his loss.)) we danced. we began dancing around the courtyard and then moved into the living room. i may or may not have been inspired to do the splits multiple times. a friend may or may not have pulled a groin muscle attempting to do the splits. we also may or may not have done the running man. and the roger rabbit. the neighbours called the police. (they were concerned my friend was starting a club in his new home. we assured them he was not.) others did shots of baijiu. (shots of baijiu for me are always regrets that i cannot forget.) in the end, four of us ended up climbing into my friend's (heavenlyTM) bed and giggling like schoolgirls for hours. and staying the night. i was perhaps not the most popular person at the slumber party because once i got tired i kept encouraging slumber, saying 'too much chatting, not enough sleeping!' it was a very impromptu, amusing, hilarious saturday. we certainly warmed the house. and, i suppose, we gave into love, not fear. though i suspect that some of my comrades regretted the shots of baijiu on sunday morning.
*confession - much as i enjoy seeing this mail surface in my inbox each day, i do not always read the poems. i sometimes only skim. or don't read them at all. shhhh.
**a second confession - i am working from home on transition memos and other materials related to my impending career move and its a national (hotly love the motherland!) holiday this entire week and the weather is gorgeous and i am finding it exceedingly difficult to focus***. even if today's poem were about a rodent or farm implements or slugs i probably would have found it necessary to stop and consider it. and so.
***let's be honest, productivity is overrated.
****as per my confessions above, these impulses may or may not also be related to having been sitting and writing memos for too long. actually, they also may or may not be regular impulses unrelated to this poem or prose of any kind.
*****amusing true story: i arrived at said collection of souls saying that (inspired by my recent experience in clean living in koh samui) i wasn't drinking any alcohol or eating any sugar. but then a sommelier friend opened a bottle of wine from one of my favourite vineyards in napa and a sweet girlfriend arrived with homemade toffee cake generously topped with chocolate and nuts. one and half hours after my statement, i was enjoying a delicious glass of wine and eating too much toffee cake in the sunshine. my friends said they were very impressed with my will power for lasting over an hour. i didn't regret my choices. some mantras are more meaningful than others.
******my ipod on shuffle can be very unpredictable. unsurprisingly, we are almost always teetering on the edge of musical theatre or hiphop. but it performed admirably on saturday. especially during the dance party, but also in the quieter moments.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
hotly love the motherland (death or glory)
it's that time of year again. time to drag out our commifabulous red star twinkling best and live it up! for me, that involves red hot pants. for beijing, that involves flags all over the place and large red banners reminding us to hotly love the motherland. (incidentally, for it me it also involves some flash dance moves and for china it also involves some very fast and fancy footwork to erase potentially provocative materials on the internet before anyone can read them. along those lines, if someone can somehow access this blog post, copy and paste, and send it to me in an email, i'd be much obliged - http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4e00bcd90100lxhm.html.)
ahh, 'tis the night before national day and all through the sky, the streaks of pinkish smog make us all sigh. for some reason observing the pinkish smoggy sunset out my office window has me thinking about how swiftly time flies. perhaps because, although i will be working during this holiday (dancing a sure-to-be impressively complicated tornado ballet involving transition memos and closure and other such stuff as dreams are made of), our office will be closed and by the time my chinese colleagues return on october 11, it will be my last week here. which is rather astounding. tempus fugit. i am also recalling national day last year - and all the red glory* around the 60th anniversary of the PRC while i personally fled to HK to avoid said glory. hard to believe that was a year ago. then again, also not. i've done a lot of dancing since then. in so many senses. and my curious mixed metaphor about tornado ballets and transition memos aside, i'll certainly be doing a lot of rocking out in my office over the next week while the rest of my comrades in this city are hotly loving the motherland. it's hard, i've never left a job when i'm still generally happy with it (or where i am so close with my colleagues as i am here) but simply had a worthier challenge come along. but that's life. and time. it whirls forward and you need to keep on running - or dancing - along as furiously and fabulously as you can.
other than pondering the passage of time, i have another question on my mind this evening. to wit: does a one become a revolutionary out of the belief that one is entitled to joy rather than submission? sometimes i think that is what starts the process of becoming a revolutionary. maybe it's always what starts it. and no, i don't have anything more profound to say about this question now. perhaps you do. please share. once upon a lifetime i might have chided myself about this or considered trying to make a more tidy point here before moving on. but i came across this line from antoine blodin recently and am taking it to heart tonight - "the only duty of the writer is not to have one". also, wasn't it joan didion who said she writes to find out what she thinks? i can relate to that.
and so. on this fine mid-autumn eve, i think that i am glad to still be in china. with all of its complexities, challenges, and imperfections. with all of its death and and all of its glory. i appreciate it all the more in this evening moment feeling as though i am watching time fly swiftly by outside my window, inspiring me to live all the more fully and make the most of everything**. death or glory. (or dancing.)
*writing that made me want to listen to the clash song 'death or glory'. so i just put it on and am now rocking out to it as i watch the sunset and write the rest of this post. i suggest you do the same and listen to it as you continue reading. maybe i should also add it into the subject. why not?
**speaking of making the most of everything, we had a meeting at a german NGO this afternoon where they served serious german cakes (black forest, cheesecake, apfel strudel, etc) & fresh coffee on real plates with proper silverware. so civilised! love those deutschers. talk about a charm offensive. anyone would forgive two world wars in exchange for regularly being served delicious baked goods and fresh coffee during meetings. very, very clever. also makes me think of death or cake rather than death or glory. or more precisely, the great eddie izzard skit from dressed to kill - "thank you for flying church of england, cake or death?"
ahh, 'tis the night before national day and all through the sky, the streaks of pinkish smog make us all sigh. for some reason observing the pinkish smoggy sunset out my office window has me thinking about how swiftly time flies. perhaps because, although i will be working during this holiday (dancing a sure-to-be impressively complicated tornado ballet involving transition memos and closure and other such stuff as dreams are made of), our office will be closed and by the time my chinese colleagues return on october 11, it will be my last week here. which is rather astounding. tempus fugit. i am also recalling national day last year - and all the red glory* around the 60th anniversary of the PRC while i personally fled to HK to avoid said glory. hard to believe that was a year ago. then again, also not. i've done a lot of dancing since then. in so many senses. and my curious mixed metaphor about tornado ballets and transition memos aside, i'll certainly be doing a lot of rocking out in my office over the next week while the rest of my comrades in this city are hotly loving the motherland. it's hard, i've never left a job when i'm still generally happy with it (or where i am so close with my colleagues as i am here) but simply had a worthier challenge come along. but that's life. and time. it whirls forward and you need to keep on running - or dancing - along as furiously and fabulously as you can.
other than pondering the passage of time, i have another question on my mind this evening. to wit: does a one become a revolutionary out of the belief that one is entitled to joy rather than submission? sometimes i think that is what starts the process of becoming a revolutionary. maybe it's always what starts it. and no, i don't have anything more profound to say about this question now. perhaps you do. please share. once upon a lifetime i might have chided myself about this or considered trying to make a more tidy point here before moving on. but i came across this line from antoine blodin recently and am taking it to heart tonight - "the only duty of the writer is not to have one". also, wasn't it joan didion who said she writes to find out what she thinks? i can relate to that.
and so. on this fine mid-autumn eve, i think that i am glad to still be in china. with all of its complexities, challenges, and imperfections. with all of its death and and all of its glory. i appreciate it all the more in this evening moment feeling as though i am watching time fly swiftly by outside my window, inspiring me to live all the more fully and make the most of everything**. death or glory. (or dancing.)
*writing that made me want to listen to the clash song 'death or glory'. so i just put it on and am now rocking out to it as i watch the sunset and write the rest of this post. i suggest you do the same and listen to it as you continue reading. maybe i should also add it into the subject. why not?
**speaking of making the most of everything, we had a meeting at a german NGO this afternoon where they served serious german cakes (black forest, cheesecake, apfel strudel, etc) & fresh coffee on real plates with proper silverware. so civilised! love those deutschers. talk about a charm offensive. anyone would forgive two world wars in exchange for regularly being served delicious baked goods and fresh coffee during meetings. very, very clever. also makes me think of death or cake rather than death or glory. or more precisely, the great eddie izzard skit from dressed to kill - "thank you for flying church of england, cake or death?"
Monday, September 27, 2010
midnight mooncake meltdown
ok so enough kumbayaing. it's midnight. i'm in the business class (royal silk! (sounds better than it is)) lounge in the bangkok airport. and i am meeting my nemesis. well, not meeting so much as we are in fact well-acquainted. but confronting is more like it. (appropriately, and i kid you not, a cheesy piano version of 'don't cry for me argentina' is playing.) this nemesis is in fact a small pastry*, so really no match for me at all. and yet. and yet, my cackles are up. aside from all of the joy of spaciousness and space and sea and sky and sunshine and such, a very exciting added joy of this particular escape was avoiding the mid-autumn festival in china (zhongqiujie). i have nothing against celebrating mid-autumn, the new harvest, the new moon, the old moon, any moon at all really. my gripe against this particular holiday is entirely related to its signature food - the mooncake (yuebing). (collective sigh of relief. anyone out there who has ever endured one knows what i'm talking about but is afraid to verbalise. it's ok, exhale and continue.) the truth is, the chinese culture has created many amazing things (in fact, perhaps all amazing things). it is an ancient and great culture with an ostensibly equally ancient and great culinary history. that said, you'd think that someone somewhere along the last five thousand years of great creative civilization would have stood up and said, 'these yuebing bite, and i don't mean in a good way, so let's do something about it'. mooncakes are simply bad. terrible, even. and the traditional kinds only seem to get worse. it's a texture thing (we used to joke in my family that they were really best used as hockey pucks). it's a flavour thing (they even make my beloved red bean bad). it's just a mooncake thing. (also, let's be honest, nothing with an egg yolk inside should be preserved for an extended period of time. at least i don't think so.) i have never met a mooncake i can say i truly liked. except for non-mooncake mooncakes. because apparently the chinese civilization was content with the status quo and re-gifting the same seven boxes of nasty egg-yolk-centered, hockey puck pastries for centuries, it took in the intervention of hagen daaz and other foreign devils to lead a small mooncake revolution**. to wit: ice cream mooncakes, chocolate mooncakes, this year i've even heard of cupcake mooncakes. anyway, i avoid mooncakes with a passion (that cannot be chased indoors for anything! (geesh, i am so dramatic sometimes when i'm over-thinking***)). thus, i was especially pleased to avoid this year's mid-autumn festivities altogether and escape to thailand. i avoided feigning delight at receiving another box of (re-gifted) mooncakes; i avoided re-gifting them myself; i avoided having to pretend to eat a piece of one in the presence of others (although thankfully that rarely happens, i think we all collectively avoid eating them in public, it allows the same seven boxes to be re-gifted indefinitely)); i avoided all of it. or so i thought. until i arrived in the royal silk lounge, sat comfortably in my generic boring airport lounge chair, and found myself staring down an abandoned mooncake on the table next to me. now, mooncakes were not a part of our complimentary buffet this evening so how this fiend found his way before me, i know not. but we are currently in a bit of a showdown here in the silk lounge. mr. mooncake vs. meiling and all that is good and sacred (ok, so maybe i'm dramatic even when i'm not over-thinking). i suspect that i will win this particular battle for two reasons. 1 - i am a person, he is a pastry. 2 - he will very soon be tidied up by the silk lounge staff and swept swiftly into oblivion. i, meanwhile, will board my flight and arrive bleary-eyed back in beijing in all its mid-autumn glory. kumbaya.
*line from a book i just read that i appreciated - a first impression of paris: scowling grey universe relieved by pastry. nothing like clinging to a tarte tatin or a croissant for katharsis, weather-related or otherwise.
**curious, at dinner with a commercially-minded entrepreneur friend in bangkok this evening, he noted how all of the great chinese entrepreneurs of the last decade basically just took a foreign business concept, copied it, translated it into chinese and made bazillions. query whether there is some common thread here related to the inability to innovate the mooncake without outside intervention.
***a new guy friend who visited this blog recently said he found it a bit much. i asked which part was more upsetting, the over-thinking or the over-sharing. he blinked very rapidly a few times and changed the subject. i smiled at life.
*line from a book i just read that i appreciated - a first impression of paris: scowling grey universe relieved by pastry. nothing like clinging to a tarte tatin or a croissant for katharsis, weather-related or otherwise.
**curious, at dinner with a commercially-minded entrepreneur friend in bangkok this evening, he noted how all of the great chinese entrepreneurs of the last decade basically just took a foreign business concept, copied it, translated it into chinese and made bazillions. query whether there is some common thread here related to the inability to innovate the mooncake without outside intervention.
***a new guy friend who visited this blog recently said he found it a bit much. i asked which part was more upsetting, the over-thinking or the over-sharing. he blinked very rapidly a few times and changed the subject. i smiled at life.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
passion that can't be chased indoors for anything
it is my last day in paradise. cloudy for the first time, but just as well*. i don't mind the slightly overcast skies as my spirits are soaring, my thoughts lofty, and i still have passion that can't be chased indoors for anything. this, however, is not news. what is news is the sense of calm and stillness these last few days have allowed. and the seismic shift in my life that is about to take place. although perhaps that's a bit dramatic. it's just a shift in career, after all. the fundamentals shall stay the same. (they always do.) it's curious though, how much of who we are seems to hang suspended on what we do. at least in some cultures. however, who we are and how we exist in the world may in fact have very little to do with our occupations. and yet ideally we should find careers that nourish in many senses - literally (food on the table), personally (engaging and feeding the mind), spiritually (cultivating compassion and inspiration to better oneself), and communally / worldly (contributing in some small way to bettering us all). i know that sounds terribly cliched, but i am a world-impover after all. yet when i write this, i don't mean to suggest that we all need to be saving baby turtles or knitting sweaters for war orphans. i think you can just was easily find that nourishment - in all of those senses - on almost any path. (almost being the operative word in that sentence.) i read a quote about this once. ahem:
What the world needs more than anything is bodhisattvas, active servants of peace, “clothed,” as Longchenpa said, “in the armor of perseverance,” dedicated to their bodhisattva vision and to the spreading of wisdom into all reaches of our experience. We need bodhisattva lawyers, bodhisattva artists and politicians, bodhisattva doctors and economists, bodhisattva teachers and scientists, bodhisattva technicians and engineers, bodhisattvas everywhere, working consciously as channels of compassion and wisdom at every level and in every situation of society; working to transform their minds and actions and those of others, working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support of the buddhas and enlightened beings for the preservation of our world and for a more merciful future.
hear hear. i'm all for a more merciful future. particularly after these most merciful few days. on my first day, as i enjoyed an cool tall glass of red zinger (beet, carrot, cucumber and ginger*** juice), a charming member of the staff came over to introduce himself. attractive, of medium build, and wearing distinctive glasses, he greeted me in thai and then switched to english, introducing himself as 'wut'. we chatted a bit. he then asked if he could tell me something. i said, what? and wut said, 'remember that you are here to be on holiday and you need to relax and be happy'. what? wut? wooot! in that moment i decided i loved this wut. and what. the what of pure fascination with life as it is, however it is. it has been a blissful few days of yoga, mango & sticky rice, rambutans, reading, swimming, running, writing, reflecting, & enjoying my own company. i declined to meet up with my friend's friends in the end. although i felt a bit sheepish about doing so. (it felt so selfish to guard my desire to be alone.) all the more so when on my second night here wut was already encouraging me to join the communal dinner table. this is a table full of other travelers (single or otherwise) keen to share their meal and be social. not even two days in and already there was pressure to be social! wut suggested i might enjoy meeting new friends. i politely declined. (what?) i was really more than content on my own. i spend my whole life at the communal table. half the time i am constructing the communal table myself, or at least laying out the place settings. i came all the way here to escape the communal table, much as i enjoy it in my real life. thankfully wut didn't press it further, although he still made a point of checking in on me every day.
other than wut's whats (and hows and whys and wheres), the main assessing of my days here has involved alignment. i had a 90 minute private yoga session each day with a charming flemish woman who had a very precisely kind way of describing the world, the body, and how the two converse and are one. we worked in very small, subtle ways and i appreciated our time together on a wooden floor overlooking the ocean. i hope i can hold onto just some small part of the new openness we've nurtured into my mid-back. i think when i start this new job i think i need to insist on bringing a medicine ball or some sort of spine-friendly chair to sit upon even if it looks silly. it's time.
and of course amid all of this beauty and grace and sunshine and inspiration, i found myself overflowing with passion(s). love and a desire to give and give again. in many ways. thus the subject of this post. even if i will be chased indoors (and in fact chased into autumn as summer has fled beijing) tomorrow and need to leave this paradise behind, i can take my irrepressible passion with me. who could ask for anything more? what?
*just as well because i allowed myself to be in the direct sun for a very brief amount of time yesterday. maybe an hour and a half. with 85++ sunscreen on. (i know, i don't know if it makes any difference either, but it sounds impressive and i reckon i need all the protection i can get. some say that nothing over 15 makes a difference. probably true. but i try to involve 8s in my life as much as possible, so there is also that.) reapplication was also involved. and yet. and yet i still managed to get burned on my chest. you can very clearly see where the sunscreen wasn't sufficiently rubbed in. sigh. i know we all lack some vital nutrient since we don't get enough exposure to sunlight in our modern lifestyles, but i had a soup that involved pureed carrots and coconut oil yesterday at lunch and i'd like to think that made up for it since i clearly cannot handle sunbathing anymore. (it is vitamin d that we lack, yes? and that is also in carrots, no? yes, no, maybe so?) aside from the splotchy burn, and even though my head was almost always covered with my hat, the pregnancy on my face** also came back. which means enough sun for meiling this trip. and to think i just to be able to lie in the sun for long, languorous stretches of time! ahh the folly of youth and young skin. (although i always burned then too. i just didn't mind as much.)
**the pregnancy on my face is a skin condition, otherwise known as melasma, that was diagnosed on valentines day in 2008, almost exactly six months before my 30th birthday. i recall these details because this was my first trip to a dermatologist and in my naiveté i confused going to see this medical professional with going to the spa. after a straight male friend commented on the 'dark splotch' on my cheek, i decided it was worth exploring what the increasing discolouration i'd noticed might be. i made an appointment for valentine's day thinking this would be a nice treat for me. it was not so much a treat. i arrived, ready to be pampered. (yes, i know magical thinking.) instead, after examining my skin, the doctor announced, 'you have the mask of pregnancy'. she asked if i was pregnant. i said no. she asked how old i was. i said 29 and a half. she asked if i had been on birth control pills for a long time. i said i had. she said that explained it. the splotches, she said, were a skin condition that effects white and south asian women and appear during pregnancy or after having been on hormonally-based birth control for a long time without becoming pregnant. it gets worse in the sun. she said given my age and my having been on birth control for several years, this was quite normal and there was nothing to do except go off the pill and avoid the sun. she also said i could expect to have it return when and if i ever become pregnant. to be sure i understood, i clarified that this was basically my body's way of crying out for a baby, by putting its demand all over my face. she said, more or less. i said, 'happy valentine's day to me!' she offered me prescription skin-whiteners, but that felt a bit extreme. i told her i'd stop taking the pill immediately and otherwise drown my sorrows over my splotchy skin and childlessness in excessive sunscreen application. i have since worn sunscreen (in my moisturizer) on a daily basis. i have done such a thorough job of drowning these particular sorrows that i think the damn things have learned to swim! that is, they swim swiftly back to the surface of my skin at even the slightest exposure to sunlight. but no matter. melasma is hardly of serious consequence and i find my slight mustache more amusing than anything else.
***curiously i have been craving ginger incessantly since i've been here. ginger juices, fresh ginger tea, ginger at almost every meal. unsure what this means. if anything. (note to self - there is not meaning in everything. perhaps craving ginger signifies nothing more than enjoying that particular spice.)
What the world needs more than anything is bodhisattvas, active servants of peace, “clothed,” as Longchenpa said, “in the armor of perseverance,” dedicated to their bodhisattva vision and to the spreading of wisdom into all reaches of our experience. We need bodhisattva lawyers, bodhisattva artists and politicians, bodhisattva doctors and economists, bodhisattva teachers and scientists, bodhisattva technicians and engineers, bodhisattvas everywhere, working consciously as channels of compassion and wisdom at every level and in every situation of society; working to transform their minds and actions and those of others, working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support of the buddhas and enlightened beings for the preservation of our world and for a more merciful future.
hear hear. i'm all for a more merciful future. particularly after these most merciful few days. on my first day, as i enjoyed an cool tall glass of red zinger (beet, carrot, cucumber and ginger*** juice), a charming member of the staff came over to introduce himself. attractive, of medium build, and wearing distinctive glasses, he greeted me in thai and then switched to english, introducing himself as 'wut'. we chatted a bit. he then asked if he could tell me something. i said, what? and wut said, 'remember that you are here to be on holiday and you need to relax and be happy'. what? wut? wooot! in that moment i decided i loved this wut. and what. the what of pure fascination with life as it is, however it is. it has been a blissful few days of yoga, mango & sticky rice, rambutans, reading, swimming, running, writing, reflecting, & enjoying my own company. i declined to meet up with my friend's friends in the end. although i felt a bit sheepish about doing so. (it felt so selfish to guard my desire to be alone.) all the more so when on my second night here wut was already encouraging me to join the communal dinner table. this is a table full of other travelers (single or otherwise) keen to share their meal and be social. not even two days in and already there was pressure to be social! wut suggested i might enjoy meeting new friends. i politely declined. (what?) i was really more than content on my own. i spend my whole life at the communal table. half the time i am constructing the communal table myself, or at least laying out the place settings. i came all the way here to escape the communal table, much as i enjoy it in my real life. thankfully wut didn't press it further, although he still made a point of checking in on me every day.
other than wut's whats (and hows and whys and wheres), the main assessing of my days here has involved alignment. i had a 90 minute private yoga session each day with a charming flemish woman who had a very precisely kind way of describing the world, the body, and how the two converse and are one. we worked in very small, subtle ways and i appreciated our time together on a wooden floor overlooking the ocean. i hope i can hold onto just some small part of the new openness we've nurtured into my mid-back. i think when i start this new job i think i need to insist on bringing a medicine ball or some sort of spine-friendly chair to sit upon even if it looks silly. it's time.
and of course amid all of this beauty and grace and sunshine and inspiration, i found myself overflowing with passion(s). love and a desire to give and give again. in many ways. thus the subject of this post. even if i will be chased indoors (and in fact chased into autumn as summer has fled beijing) tomorrow and need to leave this paradise behind, i can take my irrepressible passion with me. who could ask for anything more? what?
*just as well because i allowed myself to be in the direct sun for a very brief amount of time yesterday. maybe an hour and a half. with 85++ sunscreen on. (i know, i don't know if it makes any difference either, but it sounds impressive and i reckon i need all the protection i can get. some say that nothing over 15 makes a difference. probably true. but i try to involve 8s in my life as much as possible, so there is also that.) reapplication was also involved. and yet. and yet i still managed to get burned on my chest. you can very clearly see where the sunscreen wasn't sufficiently rubbed in. sigh. i know we all lack some vital nutrient since we don't get enough exposure to sunlight in our modern lifestyles, but i had a soup that involved pureed carrots and coconut oil yesterday at lunch and i'd like to think that made up for it since i clearly cannot handle sunbathing anymore. (it is vitamin d that we lack, yes? and that is also in carrots, no? yes, no, maybe so?) aside from the splotchy burn, and even though my head was almost always covered with my hat, the pregnancy on my face** also came back. which means enough sun for meiling this trip. and to think i just to be able to lie in the sun for long, languorous stretches of time! ahh the folly of youth and young skin. (although i always burned then too. i just didn't mind as much.)
**the pregnancy on my face is a skin condition, otherwise known as melasma, that was diagnosed on valentines day in 2008, almost exactly six months before my 30th birthday. i recall these details because this was my first trip to a dermatologist and in my naiveté i confused going to see this medical professional with going to the spa. after a straight male friend commented on the 'dark splotch' on my cheek, i decided it was worth exploring what the increasing discolouration i'd noticed might be. i made an appointment for valentine's day thinking this would be a nice treat for me. it was not so much a treat. i arrived, ready to be pampered. (yes, i know magical thinking.) instead, after examining my skin, the doctor announced, 'you have the mask of pregnancy'. she asked if i was pregnant. i said no. she asked how old i was. i said 29 and a half. she asked if i had been on birth control pills for a long time. i said i had. she said that explained it. the splotches, she said, were a skin condition that effects white and south asian women and appear during pregnancy or after having been on hormonally-based birth control for a long time without becoming pregnant. it gets worse in the sun. she said given my age and my having been on birth control for several years, this was quite normal and there was nothing to do except go off the pill and avoid the sun. she also said i could expect to have it return when and if i ever become pregnant. to be sure i understood, i clarified that this was basically my body's way of crying out for a baby, by putting its demand all over my face. she said, more or less. i said, 'happy valentine's day to me!' she offered me prescription skin-whiteners, but that felt a bit extreme. i told her i'd stop taking the pill immediately and otherwise drown my sorrows over my splotchy skin and childlessness in excessive sunscreen application. i have since worn sunscreen (in my moisturizer) on a daily basis. i have done such a thorough job of drowning these particular sorrows that i think the damn things have learned to swim! that is, they swim swiftly back to the surface of my skin at even the slightest exposure to sunlight. but no matter. melasma is hardly of serious consequence and i find my slight mustache more amusing than anything else.
***curiously i have been craving ginger incessantly since i've been here. ginger juices, fresh ginger tea, ginger at almost every meal. unsure what this means. if anything. (note to self - there is not meaning in everything. perhaps craving ginger signifies nothing more than enjoying that particular spice.)
Monday, September 20, 2010
love after love
i am watching the sunset in bangkok. the orange pink of the sky over the river is rather embracing somehow. nice to feel embraced this evening, even if i am enjoying this particular sunset solo. and am in fact about to embark upon a solo holiday in koh samui. and am especially looking forward to it. i caught up with an old friend last night over a delightful dinner and he mentioned wanting to put me in touch with friends of his in koh samui. i found myself hesitating and feeling rather protective of my as yet unentered private space. even before i've arrived. but i consented to at least getting their contact information. i may end up finding myself bored with so much time on my own and may welcome a meal with others. SJ, this spectacular sunset just became even more breathtaking. i feel even more deeply embraced. i've endured the few days of this work conference, which were hardly embracing, so it's about time*. this conference was focused on regional efforts at improving environmental adjudication so was basically a collection of asian judges + me. there was one chinese judge participating, a woman i'd previously met through some of our programs. she doesn't really speak english, which resulted in my serving as an interpreter for a substantial portion of the past three days. it was tiring. i sometimes question the value of these regional forums as much time seems to be swallowed by descriptions of the circumstances in each country leaving little time to more deeply delve into issues of common concern or challenges or learning points. but so goes the world. i endured. and will soon be moving on. in more ways than one. i gave notice today. and accepted a new job. i ought to be sipping a cocktail called 'momentum' now. doing so at our housewarming party in may was perhaps premature. or not. that was perhaps the beginning of the arc of this particular rainbow.
and perhaps saying i've endured is a bit too much. there have been some lovely moments of late. watching a blue boat sail past and seeing a sundrenched old man enjoying a beer as he floated by. seeing a fish flip up and wave hello with a fin. eating amazing curry and mango sticky rice. laughing with an environmental judge from australia about moments of cultural relativism. and laughing even harder with my high school friend about our teenage antics. and angst. and merriment. and more. my how we've grown. and my how i have. of course in catching up on the last ten years i talked about heartache and trauma, disappointment and pain. but there was also so much joy and beauty and light and love. so much love. there always is. just below every surface, like the sweet fish who surprise splashed me hello. i found myself describing my enduring faith. especially my faith in love. even if for now i am only embraced by sunsets. every time that my heart is shattered, i respond by finding a way to continue to believe and be open-hearted. continue to love and give. and that is perhaps all one can ask of life. the opportunity to love, even after love. cher once sagely asked 'do you believe in love after love'?** i can unequivocally answer yes! onwards.
*it's also about time for a real embrace, but there's little to nothing i can do about that. and so.
**ok, so i know the line actually is 'do you believe in life after love', but i'm taking artistic license here. and besides, doesn't life = love?
and perhaps saying i've endured is a bit too much. there have been some lovely moments of late. watching a blue boat sail past and seeing a sundrenched old man enjoying a beer as he floated by. seeing a fish flip up and wave hello with a fin. eating amazing curry and mango sticky rice. laughing with an environmental judge from australia about moments of cultural relativism. and laughing even harder with my high school friend about our teenage antics. and angst. and merriment. and more. my how we've grown. and my how i have. of course in catching up on the last ten years i talked about heartache and trauma, disappointment and pain. but there was also so much joy and beauty and light and love. so much love. there always is. just below every surface, like the sweet fish who surprise splashed me hello. i found myself describing my enduring faith. especially my faith in love. even if for now i am only embraced by sunsets. every time that my heart is shattered, i respond by finding a way to continue to believe and be open-hearted. continue to love and give. and that is perhaps all one can ask of life. the opportunity to love, even after love. cher once sagely asked 'do you believe in love after love'?** i can unequivocally answer yes! onwards.
*it's also about time for a real embrace, but there's little to nothing i can do about that. and so.
**ok, so i know the line actually is 'do you believe in life after love', but i'm taking artistic license here. and besides, doesn't life = love?
Thursday, September 16, 2010
doing it beautifully
so our stretch of sweet, serene blue sky days and sparkly summer evenings under the stars in the courtyard have come to a close. here in the northern capital we are once again firmly embraced by filth. in the form of pollution, naturally (or rather unnaturally), and also just general dirt and squalor. now i too have been known to swoon over the quiet joys of hutong living, but sometimes i fail to see the romance. this morning was one of those times. as i walked down the alley to the bus stop, i found myself doing the using winding dance avoiding filth in various forms and thinking whether hutong life is less about poetry and more about poo. literally. all over the place. and piles of dirt. and having to see underwear in public a lot. although that may just be a china thing. airing your laundry - even your intimates - in public spaces is quite acceptable. it's unfortunate that all of these knickers kicking it about town seem to be unsightly. almost without fail they are old, enormous, yellowing, and one wear shy of unravelling. you beijingren out there know exactly what i'm talking about. why? i ask you, why? then again, maybe in my fretting about underwear aesthetics, i am missing some profounder truth hidden in all the (over)exposed panties*. isn't god a shout in the street? shouldn't we be able to find enlightenment in the everyday? maybe the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. and maybe the answer is enormous underwear. (of course, i might need to work out the question first.)
anyway, after enduring aesthetic, aural and olfactory assualts in the alley, i boarded a bus that had clearly pulled up to our humble stop straight out of an orson scott card novel**. our driver may or may not have been engaged in some sort of intergalactic space battle in a dimension the rest of us could not access or see. seriously. i think i have bruises from being tossed about so much. there were at least two moments when i felt quite certain i was on the verge of death or serious bodily injury. in those moments i both cursed myself for wearing gorgeous patent leather stilettos this morning and congratulated myself for going down in style. i found myself thinking of hedda gabler's immortal line, 'do it beautifully', urging a man to commit suicide in style. and so.
and so i've decided that doing it beautifully is a healthy approach to all things. even if the origin of this particular mantra is perhaps less than healthy. i strolled down the alley in my stilettos humming along to the jazz*** on my ipod, sidestepping the sh*t and gracefully avoiding pantie attacks, beautifully. and today i shall beautifully attempt not to be disheartened about the ever-shrinking space for human rights advocacy in this (filthy) country. and i shall also beautifully contemplate a possible career shift that would allow me to continue to work on the issues i care about, but from an altered (and perhaps safer more generative) angle.
actually, maybe that's the answer.
(who needs the question?)
do it beautifully.
*and i am ostensibly into finding beauty in unexpected places!
**i am generally not much of a science fiction fan, but absolutely love ender's game, and then next 2-3 books in the series. i think it falls off after that. if you haven't read it, get thee to a bookstore or library or website (so many options in the modern world! (too many?))! oh and again, not trying to be bossy. just spreading sunshine. very necessary on this grey day.
***sometimes i love jazz so much i wish i could eat it.
anyway, after enduring aesthetic, aural and olfactory assualts in the alley, i boarded a bus that had clearly pulled up to our humble stop straight out of an orson scott card novel**. our driver may or may not have been engaged in some sort of intergalactic space battle in a dimension the rest of us could not access or see. seriously. i think i have bruises from being tossed about so much. there were at least two moments when i felt quite certain i was on the verge of death or serious bodily injury. in those moments i both cursed myself for wearing gorgeous patent leather stilettos this morning and congratulated myself for going down in style. i found myself thinking of hedda gabler's immortal line, 'do it beautifully', urging a man to commit suicide in style. and so.
and so i've decided that doing it beautifully is a healthy approach to all things. even if the origin of this particular mantra is perhaps less than healthy. i strolled down the alley in my stilettos humming along to the jazz*** on my ipod, sidestepping the sh*t and gracefully avoiding pantie attacks, beautifully. and today i shall beautifully attempt not to be disheartened about the ever-shrinking space for human rights advocacy in this (filthy) country. and i shall also beautifully contemplate a possible career shift that would allow me to continue to work on the issues i care about, but from an altered (and perhaps safer more generative) angle.
actually, maybe that's the answer.
(who needs the question?)
do it beautifully.
*and i am ostensibly into finding beauty in unexpected places!
**i am generally not much of a science fiction fan, but absolutely love ender's game, and then next 2-3 books in the series. i think it falls off after that. if you haven't read it, get thee to a bookstore or library or website (so many options in the modern world! (too many?))! oh and again, not trying to be bossy. just spreading sunshine. very necessary on this grey day.
***sometimes i love jazz so much i wish i could eat it.
Monday, September 6, 2010
whimsy and worry
so wednesday afternoon i composed a perfectly witty and pithy post with this title, cleverly lyrical gangsta about how i am all whimsy, no worry only to have the post be irretrievably swept away by cyberspace. i blame the great firewall and some sharky vpn activity. this loss proves that god has a sense of humour.* because of course once it was disappeared, i worried about having lost my wondrous musings on whimsy. i consider all of it a lesson in impermanence. my version of a sand mandala. the title survived the ritualistic destruction, so i too have retained it. but i shall not attempt to recreate that perfect post in its entirety. instead, i'll briefly summarise and move on, since that is what life has done in the meanwhile. moved on, that is. it always does.
the title that the small hands of cyberspace saved refers to my decision of late to choose whimsy over worry. and to encourage others to do the same. not that it is my purpose to impose my will on others.** but really i think we could all do with more whimsy in our lives. and less worry.
i was having dinner with a friend earlier this week and while i was relating a recent whimsical experience, he asked me if i could turn off the novel. he said that listening to me tell stories was like being inside a novel. he suggested that i was so busy creating, characterising, or painting my life that i wasn't simply living it. i was very briefly taken aback. i paused and considered whether he had a point, whether i somehow follow more entertaining or colourful paths purely for the sake of personal narrative or, as he may have been implying, to create wondrous stories but remain hidden behind them and not actually let anyone get close to me. i decided he was mistaken. i believe that i in fact live very authentically. i told him as much and explained that it's just the honest truth that my life that my seemingly stranger-than-fiction tornado ballet life stories are what transpire when i simply live my life. it's just part of being sparkleicious.**** i also opined that creating stories and ordering our experiences is simply how we relate. only connect!***** we then connected by imagining what would happen next in our lives if they were novels. being september, i confessed that my next chapter would have to involve falling in love because september is the perfect season to fall in love.****** of course now that i've said that and written it here, it will certainly not happen. but that's also fine because my life is not a novel, i don't live it as such and i'm not worried about falling in love at the moment. which is a relief.
after our dinner deliberations, i discovered that a thoughtful mime had said as much in a conversation with my fabulous friend that she shared on her fabulous blog: http://citizenkerry.tumblr.com/post/1080790472/my-new-friend-pearl-the-mime. pearl the mime opined: “We’re all editors, and we’re all choosing the styles and the stories that represent us." the styles and stories i'm choosing now are pure whimsy.
what does that mean in practice? it means lots of laughter and forgetting. it means noticing texture. touch. challenging myself. it means soaking up the end of summer, appreciating each precious drop of sunlight and blue sky (which is seriously precious in these parts), and dancing when no one's watching. or even when they are. it means never giving up. it means glorious late summer dinner parties with delightful friends. and last thursday i hosted perhaps my most ambitious dinner party ever. (confession: pure whimsy aside, there is always some worry involved when i take on my elaborate dinner menu agendas. thankfully it usually all comes together in the end. and this night in particular it did.*******) as evening gave way to night, the dinner devolved into drunken parlour games in the courtyard that lasted into the wee hours. a great deal of whimsy! so much, in fact, that i was still feeling it the next morning. or maybe that was the whisky.
actually, rather than the perfect season to fall in love, this particular september seems to be the perfect season for thursday to be the new friday. a pink is the new black kind of thing. (or is black the new black this year?) i seem to be up or out late every thursday of late. last night was no exception. but - wait for it - i'm not worrying about it. and i know that i'll swing back into balance by the end of the month since it will find me at a yoga / spa escape in koh samui! this story is a lesson in the whimsy-worry balance (and will also conclude with some lessons on actual balance as part of a five day personal yoga synergy program - so excited). i need to be in bangkok for work next week and the mid-autumn festival immediately follows my work trip, so i decided to extend my time in thailand and go somewhere over the holiday. i have been craving some stillness (the tornado ballet gets tiring sometimes, even with my excessive sparkle) and so explored yoga escapes. i wrestled with whether i could or should afford to go with this dream program at a highly recommended but not cheap gorgeous resort built on buddhist caves. (confession: i also had some moments of worrying about going on holiday alone and considering finding a friend or lover (?) to come along. but i decided to embrace myself.) i also decided to embrace the dream program at the gorgeous resort. and then. and then last night i got an email from the director of my NGO saying he wanted to speak with me via phone. he called this morning to tell me i was being awarded a one time (modest) merit bonus in appreciation for all my work over the last year. i was very surprised and humbled and grateful. all the more so when i learned the details. it is the exact amount to cover my holiday. literally the exact amount. and it will be deposited into my bank account on the day i fly to thailand. which is truly and simply amazing grace. maybe i'm wrong to have whimsy as my mantra of the moment. (i'm pretty sure i'm right to try not to worry.) maybe i should be moved and amazed by grace. then again, maybe i already was and always am. and maybe, just maybe, that is also part of whimsy. whheeeeeeeee!
*does she ever! she is also everywhere. like the heroes in the seaweed.
**i doubt many of you have dashed off to listen to j.c. and bill moyers chat myths and meaning. i make these suggestions not to impose myself upon you, but merely as a means of sharing. only connect!***
***challenge: how many times have i used that expression in this blog? too many, to be sure. and i'm not even much of a howard's end fan, really. and yet. here is the relevant passage:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
and now it is too clear why i quote it so often, why that expression has become a touchstone for me.... imagine if we could collect all of the expressions and the images that serve as our touchstones. and not just when writing in public spaces, or writing at all. but those that we reach for inside ourselves in quiet moments. or that we look for next to the moon through the trees when we're lying in bed mulling over our days and our tomorrows. oh, to gather that ephemera in one place. it would surely arrange into an astounding bouquet! i would love to sculpt it somehow. and place it in a public space where many hands could smooth it over and over until it was gone.... on a less abstact note, i have decided to cease worrying about footnoting footnotes.
****a nickname. also, a true story: in a recent meeting about a potential new job in discussing what i would bring to the position, i included "spakle" (which i defined as an ability to stand out in a crowd and network to make people connect and bring out their best on behalf of a worthy cause). the woman i was speaking with almost leapt out of her seat. she cried, "you have so much sparkle!" i smiled demurely (in pearls) and agreed. i thought to myself, "you have no idea, lady. i sparkle when i'm not even trying. and sometimes, it's too bright even for me."
*****i had to throw that in for people who don't actually read the footnotes. zigazig ha. (yes, i just quoted the spice girls.)
******an idea absorbed from the fantasticks. a very pure musical. please refer to the lyrics of "try to remember" for more details.
*******menu included a watermelon gazpacho, a spinach-garbanzo bean-cucumber-cherry tomato-feta quinoa salad w/ smoked paprika dressing, an avacado-cherry tomato-red onion-cilantro greens salad w/ a secret balsamic dressing, marinated baked salmon topped with roasted red and yellow peppers and thyme. a friend contributed roasted figs wrapped in proscuitto to the appetizer course. and i made my magic amaretto-spiked chocolate mousse for dessert. it was strong work for dinner for twelve on a thursday. oh and, of course, there was lots of delicious cheese accessible at all times.
the title that the small hands of cyberspace saved refers to my decision of late to choose whimsy over worry. and to encourage others to do the same. not that it is my purpose to impose my will on others.** but really i think we could all do with more whimsy in our lives. and less worry.
i was having dinner with a friend earlier this week and while i was relating a recent whimsical experience, he asked me if i could turn off the novel. he said that listening to me tell stories was like being inside a novel. he suggested that i was so busy creating, characterising, or painting my life that i wasn't simply living it. i was very briefly taken aback. i paused and considered whether he had a point, whether i somehow follow more entertaining or colourful paths purely for the sake of personal narrative or, as he may have been implying, to create wondrous stories but remain hidden behind them and not actually let anyone get close to me. i decided he was mistaken. i believe that i in fact live very authentically. i told him as much and explained that it's just the honest truth that my life that my seemingly stranger-than-fiction tornado ballet life stories are what transpire when i simply live my life. it's just part of being sparkleicious.**** i also opined that creating stories and ordering our experiences is simply how we relate. only connect!***** we then connected by imagining what would happen next in our lives if they were novels. being september, i confessed that my next chapter would have to involve falling in love because september is the perfect season to fall in love.****** of course now that i've said that and written it here, it will certainly not happen. but that's also fine because my life is not a novel, i don't live it as such and i'm not worried about falling in love at the moment. which is a relief.
after our dinner deliberations, i discovered that a thoughtful mime had said as much in a conversation with my fabulous friend that she shared on her fabulous blog: http://citizenkerry.tumblr.com/post/1080790472/my-new-friend-pearl-the-mime. pearl the mime opined: “We’re all editors, and we’re all choosing the styles and the stories that represent us." the styles and stories i'm choosing now are pure whimsy.
what does that mean in practice? it means lots of laughter and forgetting. it means noticing texture. touch. challenging myself. it means soaking up the end of summer, appreciating each precious drop of sunlight and blue sky (which is seriously precious in these parts), and dancing when no one's watching. or even when they are. it means never giving up. it means glorious late summer dinner parties with delightful friends. and last thursday i hosted perhaps my most ambitious dinner party ever. (confession: pure whimsy aside, there is always some worry involved when i take on my elaborate dinner menu agendas. thankfully it usually all comes together in the end. and this night in particular it did.*******) as evening gave way to night, the dinner devolved into drunken parlour games in the courtyard that lasted into the wee hours. a great deal of whimsy! so much, in fact, that i was still feeling it the next morning. or maybe that was the whisky.
actually, rather than the perfect season to fall in love, this particular september seems to be the perfect season for thursday to be the new friday. a pink is the new black kind of thing. (or is black the new black this year?) i seem to be up or out late every thursday of late. last night was no exception. but - wait for it - i'm not worrying about it. and i know that i'll swing back into balance by the end of the month since it will find me at a yoga / spa escape in koh samui! this story is a lesson in the whimsy-worry balance (and will also conclude with some lessons on actual balance as part of a five day personal yoga synergy program - so excited). i need to be in bangkok for work next week and the mid-autumn festival immediately follows my work trip, so i decided to extend my time in thailand and go somewhere over the holiday. i have been craving some stillness (the tornado ballet gets tiring sometimes, even with my excessive sparkle) and so explored yoga escapes. i wrestled with whether i could or should afford to go with this dream program at a highly recommended but not cheap gorgeous resort built on buddhist caves. (confession: i also had some moments of worrying about going on holiday alone and considering finding a friend or lover (?) to come along. but i decided to embrace myself.) i also decided to embrace the dream program at the gorgeous resort. and then. and then last night i got an email from the director of my NGO saying he wanted to speak with me via phone. he called this morning to tell me i was being awarded a one time (modest) merit bonus in appreciation for all my work over the last year. i was very surprised and humbled and grateful. all the more so when i learned the details. it is the exact amount to cover my holiday. literally the exact amount. and it will be deposited into my bank account on the day i fly to thailand. which is truly and simply amazing grace. maybe i'm wrong to have whimsy as my mantra of the moment. (i'm pretty sure i'm right to try not to worry.) maybe i should be moved and amazed by grace. then again, maybe i already was and always am. and maybe, just maybe, that is also part of whimsy. whheeeeeeeee!
*does she ever! she is also everywhere. like the heroes in the seaweed.
**i doubt many of you have dashed off to listen to j.c. and bill moyers chat myths and meaning. i make these suggestions not to impose myself upon you, but merely as a means of sharing. only connect!***
***challenge: how many times have i used that expression in this blog? too many, to be sure. and i'm not even much of a howard's end fan, really. and yet. here is the relevant passage:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
and now it is too clear why i quote it so often, why that expression has become a touchstone for me.... imagine if we could collect all of the expressions and the images that serve as our touchstones. and not just when writing in public spaces, or writing at all. but those that we reach for inside ourselves in quiet moments. or that we look for next to the moon through the trees when we're lying in bed mulling over our days and our tomorrows. oh, to gather that ephemera in one place. it would surely arrange into an astounding bouquet! i would love to sculpt it somehow. and place it in a public space where many hands could smooth it over and over until it was gone.... on a less abstact note, i have decided to cease worrying about footnoting footnotes.
****a nickname. also, a true story: in a recent meeting about a potential new job in discussing what i would bring to the position, i included "spakle" (which i defined as an ability to stand out in a crowd and network to make people connect and bring out their best on behalf of a worthy cause). the woman i was speaking with almost leapt out of her seat. she cried, "you have so much sparkle!" i smiled demurely (in pearls) and agreed. i thought to myself, "you have no idea, lady. i sparkle when i'm not even trying. and sometimes, it's too bright even for me."
*****i had to throw that in for people who don't actually read the footnotes. zigazig ha. (yes, i just quoted the spice girls.)
******an idea absorbed from the fantasticks. a very pure musical. please refer to the lyrics of "try to remember" for more details.
*******menu included a watermelon gazpacho, a spinach-garbanzo bean-cucumber-cherry tomato-feta quinoa salad w/ smoked paprika dressing, an avacado-cherry tomato-red onion-cilantro greens salad w/ a secret balsamic dressing, marinated baked salmon topped with roasted red and yellow peppers and thyme. a friend contributed roasted figs wrapped in proscuitto to the appetizer course. and i made my magic amaretto-spiked chocolate mousse for dessert. it was strong work for dinner for twelve on a thursday. oh and, of course, there was lots of delicious cheese accessible at all times.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
beauty in unexpected places
so my usual searching for beauty in unexpected places is more meaningful than my stories shall be this evening. a thousand pardons. translation: this will be a silly post. possibly even nonsensical. but so life has seemed of late, and so it is only appropriate.
why nonsensical? let's just say that the narrative arc of my saturday night opened and closed on stationary, unseaworthy boats. yes, two distinct and distinctive boats that were bearing me nowhere fast.* saturday was another glorious bright, bright sunshiney day in beijing. (i seriously think i'm getting a little drunk from soaking up all this sunshine. loving it.) i spent a good portion of the day wandering around enjoying it. and also shopping for the perfect commifabulous old bicycle with a friend. we did a lot of looking, discussing, and even some riding, but neither of us ended up with wheels. oh well. it was a pleasant enough day. the evening began with sweet sunset drinks at a bar called the stone boat in ritan park. the bar is - wait for it - a stone boat sitting in one of the park's man-made lakes. not exactly into the wild, but about as close to nature as we can get in beijing. and it's a charming, mellow place. a beautiful way to begin the evening. the night unfolded from there. it ended at the (re)opening party for a bar / club inside a stationary boat in the liangmahe canal. there had been a boat bar there for sometime called - wait for it - the boat. but it didn't do particularly well and so was closed, renovated and reopened as - again, wait for it - showboat.
showboat was quite a show. the interior was all white leather (great plan) and glass and an attempt to be sleek and classy that only succeeded in looking a bit trite. two levels on the inside, with a balcony overlooking a dancefloor.** the party was apparently exclusive / required invitations, but we sailed in somehow. once inside, it was clear that certain partygoers were being paid to be aboard. beijing simply doesn't have that many beautiful people. nor does it have many models dressed as sailors or in stylish nautical attire. the female models all seemed to be russian. the male models were more diverse and were hot, hot, hot. and yet. i fear they were also flaming, flaming, flaming. one outrageously gorgeous man in a blue-and-white striped naughty nautical top and fitted white trousers would periodically wink at me when he passed while sauntering about the ship looking beautiful. one of my guy friends noticed this and asked why i wasn't winking in return or otherwise responding. i politely explained that, given how his outfit coordinated with the attire of the other too-hot-to-handle men in the room, i suspected that he was being paid to saunter by and wink at me. i also couldn't help but notice that he was rather more friendly with one of the sailors on the dancefloor. still, having a hot man wink at me was rather an improvement over other recent nights out in the northern capital, even if he was gay and winking at me was in his job description. the winking was not, however, the highlight of the evening. that was most definitely when a girlfriend and i stumbled into the private ktv room in the upstairs bow of the ship. it was also all white-leather tackiness. so inviting! two chinese women walked in while we were selecting a song and sat down. we went with britney's 'toxic'. probably an appropriate choice given all the fumes from the fresh paint we were inhaling. we performed with aplomb. but it wasn't pretty. so consumed were we in the song that we failed to notice the steadily-growing crowd that was swelling into the room behind us. that is, until i turned to my left and realised that we had an audience of twenty. i caught my friend's eye mid-note. she whispered, "three,two,one and we bolt?" i nodded. i sang, "i'm addicted to you"; she sang, "don't you know that you're toxic?, three, two, one". and we whirled around, dropped the mics on the table, and fled.
when we rejoined our friends, it seemed that escape was on everyone's minds. slowly the beautiful partygoers were noticing that showboat was more show than boat and it was decidedly leaning or tilting to one side. this does not inspire confidence. especially when people are vigorously dancing. there were serious-ish conversations about whether we might be sinking. one friend shared the escape route he had already mapped out for when the great ship went down. it was a pretty detailed plan, actually. he's an over-thinker so this isn't surprising. he was worried about his obituary describing his death by drowning on a tacky club boat in the liangmahe canal*** in beijing. i asked that him to promise that he would take me with him when he escaped and then abruptly ended the conversation, explaining that i had just recovered from being afraid of dying in a fire and couldn't mix water or drowning into my trauma cocktail. instead, we had another actual cocktail and clung to the railing to stay straight as the showboat tilted even further.
the showboat scene behind me, i learned about an even more entertaining activity involving beijing's beautiful people over sunday afternoon tea with some friends. in this case, however, the beautiful people must pay to participate rather than be paid to look pretty. ladies and gentlemen, in less than two weeks, the miss laowai china competition will be held in beijing. i'm not even making this up, ahem: http://www.misslaowaichina.org/. SJ. i learned about this show via a (gay) guy friend who suggested that i enter as a way to put myself out there and meet eligible bachelors in beijing. this was before, mind, we visited the website or really knew anything about it. he had only heard that it existed. when we discovered that it is being held in the same theatre where i graduated from high school, he and our other friend really implored me to enter because i would have a leg up on the competition, being familiar with the stage already. i said that although i found the pageant's mission statement suitably inspiring, goal-oriented young woman interested in Things Chinese that i am, i didn't think i could go about flaunting my kindred spirit in public, much less on stage. here's the relevant portion of the statement (although there's more where this comes from):
Miss Laowai China Pageant is a cultural exchange platform organized at this magnitude to encompass the interest of both Chinese and Foreigners in China. While it calls for participation of female foreigners in China, its main aim is to promote friendship and understanding of the way of life in China through the eyes of foreign beauty and revealed in talent about Things Chinese. This platform allows the women to show how savoir-faire they are in China life. In their daily life they are goal-oriented and aware of the importance of Chinese culture on the global scale. Therefore, delegates who become part of the Miss Laowai China Organization will display the characteristics and aspirations from their everyday lives. Miss Laowai China is therefore a conduit through which they will compete with hope of advancing their careers, personal and humanitarian goals, and also release their kindred spirit to improve the lives of others.
as sunday afternoon turned into evening and we continued to smile at life over coffees and ice creams, i couldn't help but marvel about all the unexpected beauty this city has to offer. even if it's a little toxic. ahh, beauty with chinese characteristics.
*i wonder if there is an allegory somewhere in spending my night on useless vessels. maybe. for some reason, i am recalling a conversation i had while back visiting friends in nyc recently. one of my girlfriends made a comment about our lives being like "sex & the city". i replied that the t.v. show version of my dating life would be more along the lines of "magical thinking alone in my room". maybe i recall the comment now when thinking about the boats because of the common lack of movement. although i am somewhat encouraged at the thought that the t.v. show title is not "magical thinking alone going nowhere fast on a useless vessel". although i suppose it might as well be. at least i wasn't alone on saturday. and had a great time.
**apparently there was also a roofdeck. and there was fried chicken there. i discovered neither. had i found either fresh air or food i may have lasted longer than i did. at around 2:30 a.m. my interest in snacks overtook my interest in half-dancing to house music and misplacing my decidedly mediocre drinks, so i called it a night.
***the liangmahe canal is filthy and an insult to bodies of water everywhere. so polluted i think even describing it as green or brown is an insult to colours, i don't think a living creature has been found in it for decades. well, aside from the old men who still insist in swimming there. but that's another matter entirely. seriously, it's disgusting.
why nonsensical? let's just say that the narrative arc of my saturday night opened and closed on stationary, unseaworthy boats. yes, two distinct and distinctive boats that were bearing me nowhere fast.* saturday was another glorious bright, bright sunshiney day in beijing. (i seriously think i'm getting a little drunk from soaking up all this sunshine. loving it.) i spent a good portion of the day wandering around enjoying it. and also shopping for the perfect commifabulous old bicycle with a friend. we did a lot of looking, discussing, and even some riding, but neither of us ended up with wheels. oh well. it was a pleasant enough day. the evening began with sweet sunset drinks at a bar called the stone boat in ritan park. the bar is - wait for it - a stone boat sitting in one of the park's man-made lakes. not exactly into the wild, but about as close to nature as we can get in beijing. and it's a charming, mellow place. a beautiful way to begin the evening. the night unfolded from there. it ended at the (re)opening party for a bar / club inside a stationary boat in the liangmahe canal. there had been a boat bar there for sometime called - wait for it - the boat. but it didn't do particularly well and so was closed, renovated and reopened as - again, wait for it - showboat.
showboat was quite a show. the interior was all white leather (great plan) and glass and an attempt to be sleek and classy that only succeeded in looking a bit trite. two levels on the inside, with a balcony overlooking a dancefloor.** the party was apparently exclusive / required invitations, but we sailed in somehow. once inside, it was clear that certain partygoers were being paid to be aboard. beijing simply doesn't have that many beautiful people. nor does it have many models dressed as sailors or in stylish nautical attire. the female models all seemed to be russian. the male models were more diverse and were hot, hot, hot. and yet. i fear they were also flaming, flaming, flaming. one outrageously gorgeous man in a blue-and-white striped naughty nautical top and fitted white trousers would periodically wink at me when he passed while sauntering about the ship looking beautiful. one of my guy friends noticed this and asked why i wasn't winking in return or otherwise responding. i politely explained that, given how his outfit coordinated with the attire of the other too-hot-to-handle men in the room, i suspected that he was being paid to saunter by and wink at me. i also couldn't help but notice that he was rather more friendly with one of the sailors on the dancefloor. still, having a hot man wink at me was rather an improvement over other recent nights out in the northern capital, even if he was gay and winking at me was in his job description. the winking was not, however, the highlight of the evening. that was most definitely when a girlfriend and i stumbled into the private ktv room in the upstairs bow of the ship. it was also all white-leather tackiness. so inviting! two chinese women walked in while we were selecting a song and sat down. we went with britney's 'toxic'. probably an appropriate choice given all the fumes from the fresh paint we were inhaling. we performed with aplomb. but it wasn't pretty. so consumed were we in the song that we failed to notice the steadily-growing crowd that was swelling into the room behind us. that is, until i turned to my left and realised that we had an audience of twenty. i caught my friend's eye mid-note. she whispered, "three,two,one and we bolt?" i nodded. i sang, "i'm addicted to you"; she sang, "don't you know that you're toxic?, three, two, one". and we whirled around, dropped the mics on the table, and fled.
when we rejoined our friends, it seemed that escape was on everyone's minds. slowly the beautiful partygoers were noticing that showboat was more show than boat and it was decidedly leaning or tilting to one side. this does not inspire confidence. especially when people are vigorously dancing. there were serious-ish conversations about whether we might be sinking. one friend shared the escape route he had already mapped out for when the great ship went down. it was a pretty detailed plan, actually. he's an over-thinker so this isn't surprising. he was worried about his obituary describing his death by drowning on a tacky club boat in the liangmahe canal*** in beijing. i asked that him to promise that he would take me with him when he escaped and then abruptly ended the conversation, explaining that i had just recovered from being afraid of dying in a fire and couldn't mix water or drowning into my trauma cocktail. instead, we had another actual cocktail and clung to the railing to stay straight as the showboat tilted even further.
the showboat scene behind me, i learned about an even more entertaining activity involving beijing's beautiful people over sunday afternoon tea with some friends. in this case, however, the beautiful people must pay to participate rather than be paid to look pretty. ladies and gentlemen, in less than two weeks, the miss laowai china competition will be held in beijing. i'm not even making this up, ahem: http://www.misslaowaichina.org/. SJ. i learned about this show via a (gay) guy friend who suggested that i enter as a way to put myself out there and meet eligible bachelors in beijing. this was before, mind, we visited the website or really knew anything about it. he had only heard that it existed. when we discovered that it is being held in the same theatre where i graduated from high school, he and our other friend really implored me to enter because i would have a leg up on the competition, being familiar with the stage already. i said that although i found the pageant's mission statement suitably inspiring, goal-oriented young woman interested in Things Chinese that i am, i didn't think i could go about flaunting my kindred spirit in public, much less on stage. here's the relevant portion of the statement (although there's more where this comes from):
Miss Laowai China Pageant is a cultural exchange platform organized at this magnitude to encompass the interest of both Chinese and Foreigners in China. While it calls for participation of female foreigners in China, its main aim is to promote friendship and understanding of the way of life in China through the eyes of foreign beauty and revealed in talent about Things Chinese. This platform allows the women to show how savoir-faire they are in China life. In their daily life they are goal-oriented and aware of the importance of Chinese culture on the global scale. Therefore, delegates who become part of the Miss Laowai China Organization will display the characteristics and aspirations from their everyday lives. Miss Laowai China is therefore a conduit through which they will compete with hope of advancing their careers, personal and humanitarian goals, and also release their kindred spirit to improve the lives of others.
as sunday afternoon turned into evening and we continued to smile at life over coffees and ice creams, i couldn't help but marvel about all the unexpected beauty this city has to offer. even if it's a little toxic. ahh, beauty with chinese characteristics.
*i wonder if there is an allegory somewhere in spending my night on useless vessels. maybe. for some reason, i am recalling a conversation i had while back visiting friends in nyc recently. one of my girlfriends made a comment about our lives being like "sex & the city". i replied that the t.v. show version of my dating life would be more along the lines of "magical thinking alone in my room". maybe i recall the comment now when thinking about the boats because of the common lack of movement. although i am somewhat encouraged at the thought that the t.v. show title is not "magical thinking alone going nowhere fast on a useless vessel". although i suppose it might as well be. at least i wasn't alone on saturday. and had a great time.
**apparently there was also a roofdeck. and there was fried chicken there. i discovered neither. had i found either fresh air or food i may have lasted longer than i did. at around 2:30 a.m. my interest in snacks overtook my interest in half-dancing to house music and misplacing my decidedly mediocre drinks, so i called it a night.
***the liangmahe canal is filthy and an insult to bodies of water everywhere. so polluted i think even describing it as green or brown is an insult to colours, i don't think a living creature has been found in it for decades. well, aside from the old men who still insist in swimming there. but that's another matter entirely. seriously, it's disgusting.
Friday, August 27, 2010
sky where we live
i had a moment earlier this afternoon of nearly weeping with joy for no reason except feeling overwhelmed by the beauty and wonder of life. i was walking in the sunshine, noticing the patterns of tree branches against the midday sky, smiling at how life unfolds, and i was suddenly just filled with grace. i very nearly burst into tears from the beauty of everything. it was a moment of something like rapture, touched with gratitude. this moment was all the more moving because yesterday i was simply weeping. my gratitude was directed towards knowing that i will be fine. better than that. i recall hafiz: "this sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love." yesterday i almost lost my wings.
well, maybe 'i almost lost my wings' is a bit dramatic. i don't think i can ever really lose my wings. i did unravel though. which was rather alarming. for some reason, i had my worst post-fire dreams ever on wednesday night. they did not involve actual flames, but rather my visiting a series of former homes - from both my childhood and adult life. the interiors had all been completely changed, often in fantastical ways (think precarious floating platforms creating a very high staircase attached to nothing in the middle of a large, cavernous room with a stage and sound equipment and secret garden below), and were thus unfamiliar. the occupants in the homes were quite strange and sometimes hostile. and in each place i was being put in challenging situations or had some impossible task to complete. in the midst of these challenges, i would somehow unintentionally cause a commotion by, for example, accidentally dropping very large, heavy objects from very high (while ascending aforementioned fantastical floating staircase), and very nearly injuring people below, especially close friends and family members. it was awful. and i felt helpless. (and, curiously, hungover. not sure what that was about.) so there you have it, friends, straight up fire trauma. just when i thought i was through the worst of it, this is what my subconscious shows me.
when i woke up, i felt haunted. i somehow couldn't escape the images of the dreams, and i still felt as unsafe and terrified and helpless as i did on those precarious stairs-that-weren't-really-stars or when i was trying to see what was once one of my childhood bedrooms through the curious reconstruction obscuring what i knew. and i couldn't seem to climb out of it or access any of the aspects of myself or shores i can usually wash onto when in such depths. the infrastructure of the me-within-me seemed as out of sorts as the interiors of my former homes. i was ceaselessly on the verge of tears and unable to focus. i tried to work, but was just unraveling. after i actually did burst into tears, my work wife* suggested that i take the afternoon off. truth was, i don't think i had much of a choice. you can't really come undone and continue to share an office. this was all quite unsettling. but rather than try to contain it, i decided to let myself fall apart a little. something i haven't really done since the fire. i've been so focused on being strong and keeping it together, that i've generally had zero tolerance for my hurt and trauma from all of this. this uncompromising position has been disappointing and problematic. primarily because i have been surprisingly hard on myself. especially by judging my response(s) to this. my mind will tell me that i've been through worse trauma and so beat up on my hummingbird heart for beating so fast over this. it's also been problematic because i think it has prevented me from letting go. so much easier to simply observe and acknowledge these emotions and then release them! rather than intellectualise and judge them and in so doing deny their existence or suppress them. and then they surface in the middle of the night to terrify you and make your morning bus ride to work feel like something out of dante's inferno. the former strategy is ever so much more effective. much better to greet or even embrace the emotions. hello, fear of hurting someone you love. kiss-kiss, helplessness. ahh, loneliness, let me give you a hug. then i can send you all on down the river and pull myself ashore and get on with living. so that's what i did yesterday afternoon.
rather than lose my wings or drown in something-like-sorrow [feel free to insert your own image], i decided to let myself fall apart in order to get it together. a beloved sister-friend suggested this to me. she calls it getting out of your own way. and really that's what it was. i came home, crawled into bed, listened to sad songs and just sobbed and let it all wash over me.** and then i stopped. went for a walk in the sunshine. smiled at life. got ready and hosted a lovely party for about 40 friends in our hutong that night. it was a glorious evening and a very successful gathering. but i don't think i could have carried it off without getting out of my own way that afternoon.
truth is, i ought to have known i was in trouble when i was roasting red peppers before 8:00 am that morning. for some reason, when i am really emotionally distraught and feeling bereft, i always want to cook. when i was deep in the pain of breaking up with little trouble last year, i obsessively baked. yesterday morning i ended up creating what i called 'dump truck roasted red pepper dip' because i just kind of made it up as i went along. it ended up being edible in the end, yummy even, but there were some close calls along the way. (i mean, at one point i microwaved a very small bit of fancy mozzarella to throw in. seriously. SJ, sometimes my catharsis is strange.) when i was up to my elbows in red pepper skins, i should have known i was in too deep. but i pushed on through my regularly scheduled day as best i could. and then did what was needed to recentre and resurface. and i've accepted that this is all progress. it is necessarily a gyre. and so we beat on.
i am now sitting in the courtyard, which has thankfully been tidied and no longer covered in wine bottles, glasses, pizza crusts, dump truck dip, cigarette butts and all the other messy glory of last night's leftovers. the opera singers are practicing in the park next door. and a neighbour is practicing the erhu.*** the skies are blue and streaked with clouds and evening will soon begin to gather herself together to get glam for her hot date with night. i will do the same. and nothing or no one, not even myself, can stand in my way anymore. next stop, wonderland.
*my partner in crime at work. she doesn't like it when i call her my boss. she's country director. i'm deputy country director. she's a wonderful colleague and friend. and we manage a small family. i once called her my work wife, and it just sort of stuck.
**for some reason, the song 'chasing cars' by snow patrol always, always makes me cry. absolutely no idea why.
***ok, so i'm painting a romantic picture, but really i hate the erhu. or strongly dislike anyway. not sure i hate anything. and this neighbour plays poorly. so it's actually really annoying. if he doesn't stop soon, i'll need to go inside or put on some jazz to combat the noise pollution. it's a jazzy kind of evening.
well, maybe 'i almost lost my wings' is a bit dramatic. i don't think i can ever really lose my wings. i did unravel though. which was rather alarming. for some reason, i had my worst post-fire dreams ever on wednesday night. they did not involve actual flames, but rather my visiting a series of former homes - from both my childhood and adult life. the interiors had all been completely changed, often in fantastical ways (think precarious floating platforms creating a very high staircase attached to nothing in the middle of a large, cavernous room with a stage and sound equipment and secret garden below), and were thus unfamiliar. the occupants in the homes were quite strange and sometimes hostile. and in each place i was being put in challenging situations or had some impossible task to complete. in the midst of these challenges, i would somehow unintentionally cause a commotion by, for example, accidentally dropping very large, heavy objects from very high (while ascending aforementioned fantastical floating staircase), and very nearly injuring people below, especially close friends and family members. it was awful. and i felt helpless. (and, curiously, hungover. not sure what that was about.) so there you have it, friends, straight up fire trauma. just when i thought i was through the worst of it, this is what my subconscious shows me.
when i woke up, i felt haunted. i somehow couldn't escape the images of the dreams, and i still felt as unsafe and terrified and helpless as i did on those precarious stairs-that-weren't-really-stars or when i was trying to see what was once one of my childhood bedrooms through the curious reconstruction obscuring what i knew. and i couldn't seem to climb out of it or access any of the aspects of myself or shores i can usually wash onto when in such depths. the infrastructure of the me-within-me seemed as out of sorts as the interiors of my former homes. i was ceaselessly on the verge of tears and unable to focus. i tried to work, but was just unraveling. after i actually did burst into tears, my work wife* suggested that i take the afternoon off. truth was, i don't think i had much of a choice. you can't really come undone and continue to share an office. this was all quite unsettling. but rather than try to contain it, i decided to let myself fall apart a little. something i haven't really done since the fire. i've been so focused on being strong and keeping it together, that i've generally had zero tolerance for my hurt and trauma from all of this. this uncompromising position has been disappointing and problematic. primarily because i have been surprisingly hard on myself. especially by judging my response(s) to this. my mind will tell me that i've been through worse trauma and so beat up on my hummingbird heart for beating so fast over this. it's also been problematic because i think it has prevented me from letting go. so much easier to simply observe and acknowledge these emotions and then release them! rather than intellectualise and judge them and in so doing deny their existence or suppress them. and then they surface in the middle of the night to terrify you and make your morning bus ride to work feel like something out of dante's inferno. the former strategy is ever so much more effective. much better to greet or even embrace the emotions. hello, fear of hurting someone you love. kiss-kiss, helplessness. ahh, loneliness, let me give you a hug. then i can send you all on down the river and pull myself ashore and get on with living. so that's what i did yesterday afternoon.
rather than lose my wings or drown in something-like-sorrow [feel free to insert your own image], i decided to let myself fall apart in order to get it together. a beloved sister-friend suggested this to me. she calls it getting out of your own way. and really that's what it was. i came home, crawled into bed, listened to sad songs and just sobbed and let it all wash over me.** and then i stopped. went for a walk in the sunshine. smiled at life. got ready and hosted a lovely party for about 40 friends in our hutong that night. it was a glorious evening and a very successful gathering. but i don't think i could have carried it off without getting out of my own way that afternoon.
truth is, i ought to have known i was in trouble when i was roasting red peppers before 8:00 am that morning. for some reason, when i am really emotionally distraught and feeling bereft, i always want to cook. when i was deep in the pain of breaking up with little trouble last year, i obsessively baked. yesterday morning i ended up creating what i called 'dump truck roasted red pepper dip' because i just kind of made it up as i went along. it ended up being edible in the end, yummy even, but there were some close calls along the way. (i mean, at one point i microwaved a very small bit of fancy mozzarella to throw in. seriously. SJ, sometimes my catharsis is strange.) when i was up to my elbows in red pepper skins, i should have known i was in too deep. but i pushed on through my regularly scheduled day as best i could. and then did what was needed to recentre and resurface. and i've accepted that this is all progress. it is necessarily a gyre. and so we beat on.
i am now sitting in the courtyard, which has thankfully been tidied and no longer covered in wine bottles, glasses, pizza crusts, dump truck dip, cigarette butts and all the other messy glory of last night's leftovers. the opera singers are practicing in the park next door. and a neighbour is practicing the erhu.*** the skies are blue and streaked with clouds and evening will soon begin to gather herself together to get glam for her hot date with night. i will do the same. and nothing or no one, not even myself, can stand in my way anymore. next stop, wonderland.
*my partner in crime at work. she doesn't like it when i call her my boss. she's country director. i'm deputy country director. she's a wonderful colleague and friend. and we manage a small family. i once called her my work wife, and it just sort of stuck.
**for some reason, the song 'chasing cars' by snow patrol always, always makes me cry. absolutely no idea why.
***ok, so i'm painting a romantic picture, but really i hate the erhu. or strongly dislike anyway. not sure i hate anything. and this neighbour plays poorly. so it's actually really annoying. if he doesn't stop soon, i'll need to go inside or put on some jazz to combat the noise pollution. it's a jazzy kind of evening.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
i believe in the question
this subject is profound, but also nonsensical. reminiscent, perhaps, of the play of the universe.* which is of course part of what makes life sacred.** the statement came from bill moyers, describing his religion / relationship to faith. i am in the final segment of the joseph campbell and bill moyers conversations on the power of myth. again, download and listen to it.**** it's fantastic. anyway, that line really spoke to me - i believe in the question! not only because i also believe in the question - i do - but also because i seem to often find myself talking about the importance of asking the right questions rather than having the right answers.
a little while later in that same conversation, joseph campbell tells a story that relates to the asking of questions. he is introduced to a catholic priest who is also a professor in a swimming pool. [please note i resisted all temptation to somehow turn this into a dirty priest joke. also, please note that this is simply the actual beginning of the story.] later on dry land, the priest asks j.c. whether he is also a priest. j.c. replies that he is not. he then asks whether he is a roman catholic. j.c. replies that he was. the priest then asks if he believes in a personal god. j.c. replies that he does not. the priest then asks whether he believes in the possibility of a personal god. j.c. replies with a question. saying, if i could answer that question, father, what would be the point of faith? the priest exits stage left. as j.c. (we're tight now, so it's ok to call him that. you can too.) considered this conversation, he noted that even in his very asking of the question about whether he believed in a personal god, the priest allows for the possibility that other kinds of gods / the sacred might exist. and so is it really the answer that provides us with solace, comfort, purpose? or the question. ahh, the power of the question.
but not all powerful and important questions are profound. take this one, for example, from xinhua. republished on the global times***** website. ladies and gentleman, drumroll please ... wait for it ... ahem - 'chinese vs foreign stars: who has most beautiful legs?' http://life.globaltimes.cn/entertainment/2010-08/562923.html. i stumbled across this gem quite by accident. but i couldn't help but laugh (1) because it's so ridiculous, (2) because xinhua is trying to be taken seriously in the media world, and (3) especially in light of (2) this was particularly amusing to me after just two weeks ago when an online xinhua story 'if hot stars were blackened' asked the all important question of what hot white stars would look like in blackface and posted pictures to show us all. a post from the china rises blog about this - http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/china/2010/08/a-letter-to-xinhua-.html (and the link to a snapshot of the removed page - http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/files/xinhua-copy-1.jpg). someone must have told xinhua that the blackface bit was offensive and not a fast ticket to being taken seriously, new offices in times square aside. thus far, the best legs piece is still there to stay, so please enjoy. and remember, it's not credible answers that count, but believing in the question.
*i once named a cat the sanskrit word which means 'the play of the universe' - leela. she was a lovely, sweet little kitty, but it was a bit too heavy a name for her. a lot to carry, really, if you're a small creature mainly concerned with maximizing opportunities for heavy petting and eating cheese. as that statement makes plain, leela and i were soul mates. she very tragically died an early and dramatic death, although her it wasn't the weight of her name that crushed her but a terrible and swiftly-moving blood disease. i was devastated. i had her cremated and buried her ashes in the garden at my parents' place. not far from clocean, actually. (still no linking, see post dated august 13, 2010 'on naming and spending' for an explanation of clocean, the modern art statute in the backyard.) i like to think of clocean watching over leela's spirit. then again leela - in the broader sense - is watching over us all. and smiling.
**an aside / a clarification: i am not a christian. at least not in any formal sense, although i think jesus had some good things to say and christianity has some nice (universal!) truths to consider. i say this because i recently received an email from someone who had read a recent post of mine in which he noted that he was not christian, but an atheist, so although he couldn't agree with my theology, he did subscribe to the wine-in-a-box school of spiritual growth. i wrote back explaining that i am not a christian and wondering what it was that i wrote that gave him that impression. i also noted that i was glad that at least we share the nirvana-lite-via-wine-in-a-box approach to life. otherwise the conversation may have needed to end there. speaking of conversations, i honestly don't really believe that people can be atheists. it is just entirely beyond the realm of something i can relate to or understand. this actually used to trouble little trouble a bit. he's allegedly an atheist (don't tell his family!). but i could never really accept or believe that. maybe what i can't believe is that people don't have a sense of the divine within them, that they can't feel the universal - god which we feebly call that for which there are no words - or experience themselves suspended as part of the whole. the whole being love, beauty, truth, everything. and also nothing. even if they only experience suggestions of these things in small, discreet moments. small, discreet corners of moments even. are there really people who have never experienced god? [i am using 'god' for the sake of convenience here. terrible, i know, because the word 'god' in this context is loaded and all wrong for what i'm talking about of course. but, SJ, this is a footnote and i need to wrap and tie soon and return to the primary narrative of this post which was meant to move me away from my hippy-dippy spirituality of late and return to simply smiling at life. or more precisely, life in china.] maybe there are such people. but i doubt it. in any case, i think i need to be more open-minded in this regard. telling atheists, 'i just don't believe you' isn't very kind. maybe i need to think of it in the same way i have come to accept that people can eat bananas in the afternoon or evening hours. to me, bananas are a breakfast fruit. this is part of my religious doctrine and i take it seriously. (i know it's a little weird, btw.) i just can't stomach the idea of (or literally stomach) bananas beyond breakfast. and i am always a little taken aback when i see people eating them in the late afternoon or evening.*** i honestly don't believe that deep down they also don't subscribe to my belief system and are feeling a little bit breakfast / cuckoo for cocoapuffs when eating them during the day. i know i am wrong about this. i really do. and so maybe i can see atheists in the same way i see afternoon banana-eaters. i will remain baffled, but can accept that somehow it works for them. very spiritually evolved of me.
***argh, footnoting a footnote again. poor form. but self-love. over it. this banana scripture of my mine is not without its challenges, especially when it comes to desserts and to plantains. on the former: i generally avoid banana-based desserts. when coerced into trying a bite of one, i am without fail disappointed. (and feeling a bit 7:30 am about it all.) when people are crazy enough to put banana in pavlova, i eat around it. on the latter: i sometimes try to see plantains and their ilk (plantain chips, e.g.) as non-bananas and therefore beyond breakfast. this rarely but occasionally works with very savoury-flavoured plantains. especially after a margarita or eight. i have sometimes found them to be very fine cross-over brunch fare. however, i also generally avoid them. [query: is this yet another reason i have absolutely zero interest in latin lovers and yet another sign that i was not meant to marry a latin man?] anyway, now that we've taken this nice little meander into meiling's neuroses, let's escape. look up.
****in another blogpost a friend fwded to me today, the writer extols her readers to take ambien and masturbate. i wonder if i would reach a wider audience if i encouraged people to do that. instead, i extol you all to listen to (or read) six hours of scintillating ruminations on faith, meaning, myth, ritual, heroes, goddesses, and love. it's worth it though. and afterwards you can masturbate and take ambien.
*****the global times is a sorry excuse of an english-language newspaper here in the motherland ostensibly to provide an independent voice on current affairs. it does not.
a little while later in that same conversation, joseph campbell tells a story that relates to the asking of questions. he is introduced to a catholic priest who is also a professor in a swimming pool. [please note i resisted all temptation to somehow turn this into a dirty priest joke. also, please note that this is simply the actual beginning of the story.] later on dry land, the priest asks j.c. whether he is also a priest. j.c. replies that he is not. he then asks whether he is a roman catholic. j.c. replies that he was. the priest then asks if he believes in a personal god. j.c. replies that he does not. the priest then asks whether he believes in the possibility of a personal god. j.c. replies with a question. saying, if i could answer that question, father, what would be the point of faith? the priest exits stage left. as j.c. (we're tight now, so it's ok to call him that. you can too.) considered this conversation, he noted that even in his very asking of the question about whether he believed in a personal god, the priest allows for the possibility that other kinds of gods / the sacred might exist. and so is it really the answer that provides us with solace, comfort, purpose? or the question. ahh, the power of the question.
but not all powerful and important questions are profound. take this one, for example, from xinhua. republished on the global times***** website. ladies and gentleman, drumroll please ... wait for it ... ahem - 'chinese vs foreign stars: who has most beautiful legs?' http://life.globaltimes.cn/entertainment/2010-08/562923.html. i stumbled across this gem quite by accident. but i couldn't help but laugh (1) because it's so ridiculous, (2) because xinhua is trying to be taken seriously in the media world, and (3) especially in light of (2) this was particularly amusing to me after just two weeks ago when an online xinhua story 'if hot stars were blackened' asked the all important question of what hot white stars would look like in blackface and posted pictures to show us all. a post from the china rises blog about this - http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/china/2010/08/a-letter-to-xinhua-.html (and the link to a snapshot of the removed page - http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/files/xinhua-copy-1.jpg). someone must have told xinhua that the blackface bit was offensive and not a fast ticket to being taken seriously, new offices in times square aside. thus far, the best legs piece is still there to stay, so please enjoy. and remember, it's not credible answers that count, but believing in the question.
*i once named a cat the sanskrit word which means 'the play of the universe' - leela. she was a lovely, sweet little kitty, but it was a bit too heavy a name for her. a lot to carry, really, if you're a small creature mainly concerned with maximizing opportunities for heavy petting and eating cheese. as that statement makes plain, leela and i were soul mates. she very tragically died an early and dramatic death, although her it wasn't the weight of her name that crushed her but a terrible and swiftly-moving blood disease. i was devastated. i had her cremated and buried her ashes in the garden at my parents' place. not far from clocean, actually. (still no linking, see post dated august 13, 2010 'on naming and spending' for an explanation of clocean, the modern art statute in the backyard.) i like to think of clocean watching over leela's spirit. then again leela - in the broader sense - is watching over us all. and smiling.
**an aside / a clarification: i am not a christian. at least not in any formal sense, although i think jesus had some good things to say and christianity has some nice (universal!) truths to consider. i say this because i recently received an email from someone who had read a recent post of mine in which he noted that he was not christian, but an atheist, so although he couldn't agree with my theology, he did subscribe to the wine-in-a-box school of spiritual growth. i wrote back explaining that i am not a christian and wondering what it was that i wrote that gave him that impression. i also noted that i was glad that at least we share the nirvana-lite-via-wine-in-a-box approach to life. otherwise the conversation may have needed to end there. speaking of conversations, i honestly don't really believe that people can be atheists. it is just entirely beyond the realm of something i can relate to or understand. this actually used to trouble little trouble a bit. he's allegedly an atheist (don't tell his family!). but i could never really accept or believe that. maybe what i can't believe is that people don't have a sense of the divine within them, that they can't feel the universal - god which we feebly call that for which there are no words - or experience themselves suspended as part of the whole. the whole being love, beauty, truth, everything. and also nothing. even if they only experience suggestions of these things in small, discreet moments. small, discreet corners of moments even. are there really people who have never experienced god? [i am using 'god' for the sake of convenience here. terrible, i know, because the word 'god' in this context is loaded and all wrong for what i'm talking about of course. but, SJ, this is a footnote and i need to wrap and tie soon and return to the primary narrative of this post which was meant to move me away from my hippy-dippy spirituality of late and return to simply smiling at life. or more precisely, life in china.] maybe there are such people. but i doubt it. in any case, i think i need to be more open-minded in this regard. telling atheists, 'i just don't believe you' isn't very kind. maybe i need to think of it in the same way i have come to accept that people can eat bananas in the afternoon or evening hours. to me, bananas are a breakfast fruit. this is part of my religious doctrine and i take it seriously. (i know it's a little weird, btw.) i just can't stomach the idea of (or literally stomach) bananas beyond breakfast. and i am always a little taken aback when i see people eating them in the late afternoon or evening.*** i honestly don't believe that deep down they also don't subscribe to my belief system and are feeling a little bit breakfast / cuckoo for cocoapuffs when eating them during the day. i know i am wrong about this. i really do. and so maybe i can see atheists in the same way i see afternoon banana-eaters. i will remain baffled, but can accept that somehow it works for them. very spiritually evolved of me.
***argh, footnoting a footnote again. poor form. but self-love. over it. this banana scripture of my mine is not without its challenges, especially when it comes to desserts and to plantains. on the former: i generally avoid banana-based desserts. when coerced into trying a bite of one, i am without fail disappointed. (and feeling a bit 7:30 am about it all.) when people are crazy enough to put banana in pavlova, i eat around it. on the latter: i sometimes try to see plantains and their ilk (plantain chips, e.g.) as non-bananas and therefore beyond breakfast. this rarely but occasionally works with very savoury-flavoured plantains. especially after a margarita or eight. i have sometimes found them to be very fine cross-over brunch fare. however, i also generally avoid them. [query: is this yet another reason i have absolutely zero interest in latin lovers and yet another sign that i was not meant to marry a latin man?] anyway, now that we've taken this nice little meander into meiling's neuroses, let's escape. look up.
****in another blogpost a friend fwded to me today, the writer extols her readers to take ambien and masturbate. i wonder if i would reach a wider audience if i encouraged people to do that. instead, i extol you all to listen to (or read) six hours of scintillating ruminations on faith, meaning, myth, ritual, heroes, goddesses, and love. it's worth it though. and afterwards you can masturbate and take ambien.
*****the global times is a sorry excuse of an english-language newspaper here in the motherland ostensibly to provide an independent voice on current affairs. it does not.
Monday, August 23, 2010
life is a poem
so it's monday evening. i am rocking out alone in the office. love doing that. (it's the simple pleasures that you the appreciate most, really.) the sky is a surprising blue streaked with princess pink. beautiful. and the world feels calm. or still. suspended. i love that aspect of dusk. just dark enough to stir up a bit of statis. which, if we were considering theories of aesthetics, aquinas would tell is is true beauty.
this weekend was truly beautiful. both in terms of weather - overwhelming pounding rain on saturday followed by glorious embracing sunshine on sunday - and in terms of perspective / experience. i've of course been loving listening to joseph campbell* and bill moyers. i have been accused of being too into poetry. it may be a fair accusation. but i loved hearing joseph campbell talk about the place of poerty - writing, artistic expression, creation - in relation to myth. and myth in relation to life. how we hold on to stories, narrative, images to order ourselves in the world. he spoke of life as a poem. saying that to see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you. his point was that you are then seeing yourself and living your life in relation to a broader narrative or in association with images. and thus your every action has meaning beyond the gesture and is taking place in relation to or recollection of something more. although he said it much more eloquently than that. i'll try to find the exact language somewhere and share it. it made my heart sing.
in less profound news, i was so excited about the sunshine on sunday that i spent hours wandering around outside, walking through our suddenly beautiful city. unforuntately i was wearing a sundress and sandals - very cute but not very athletic - and ended up with blisters on the bottoms of my feet. seriously. i didn't even know this was possible. i am now basically only comfortably barefoot on tiptoe. which is, sadly, not an appropriate way to meet a visiting environmental judge from new zealand (which i did this morning) or other people in a professional context. i decided that since i was going to be in pain no matter what i put on my feet, i may as well wear fabulous shoes. so i went with plum-red pumps with black heels. not my best decision. but not my worst either. they have been kicked under my desk all day. i wonder if there is any mythological meaning in that. unlikely.
in some promising news, i am over my need to be held. and am trying to be better about getting out of my own way when i need to. whether it was the japanese punk rock concert, the rain, the sunshine, the contemplation of myth, prayers, or some combination thereof, i am back to being happy holding myself. phew. that process was a poem in and of itself.
*he really summerd it all up when he said 'follow your bliss', didn't he? i don't know how or why the rest of us bother to say anything since that thought is already out there for inspiration. actually, that's a ridiculous sentiment. there is so much more to say, feel, and create. even if its all been done before. the myriad unique ways we can experience that which is universal (everything) and try to express or give voice to it (anything) is incredibly meaningful.
this weekend was truly beautiful. both in terms of weather - overwhelming pounding rain on saturday followed by glorious embracing sunshine on sunday - and in terms of perspective / experience. i've of course been loving listening to joseph campbell* and bill moyers. i have been accused of being too into poetry. it may be a fair accusation. but i loved hearing joseph campbell talk about the place of poerty - writing, artistic expression, creation - in relation to myth. and myth in relation to life. how we hold on to stories, narrative, images to order ourselves in the world. he spoke of life as a poem. saying that to see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you. his point was that you are then seeing yourself and living your life in relation to a broader narrative or in association with images. and thus your every action has meaning beyond the gesture and is taking place in relation to or recollection of something more. although he said it much more eloquently than that. i'll try to find the exact language somewhere and share it. it made my heart sing.
in less profound news, i was so excited about the sunshine on sunday that i spent hours wandering around outside, walking through our suddenly beautiful city. unforuntately i was wearing a sundress and sandals - very cute but not very athletic - and ended up with blisters on the bottoms of my feet. seriously. i didn't even know this was possible. i am now basically only comfortably barefoot on tiptoe. which is, sadly, not an appropriate way to meet a visiting environmental judge from new zealand (which i did this morning) or other people in a professional context. i decided that since i was going to be in pain no matter what i put on my feet, i may as well wear fabulous shoes. so i went with plum-red pumps with black heels. not my best decision. but not my worst either. they have been kicked under my desk all day. i wonder if there is any mythological meaning in that. unlikely.
in some promising news, i am over my need to be held. and am trying to be better about getting out of my own way when i need to. whether it was the japanese punk rock concert, the rain, the sunshine, the contemplation of myth, prayers, or some combination thereof, i am back to being happy holding myself. phew. that process was a poem in and of itself.
*he really summerd it all up when he said 'follow your bliss', didn't he? i don't know how or why the rest of us bother to say anything since that thought is already out there for inspiration. actually, that's a ridiculous sentiment. there is so much more to say, feel, and create. even if its all been done before. the myriad unique ways we can experience that which is universal (everything) and try to express or give voice to it (anything) is incredibly meaningful.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
raining the rigours of love
i am watching rain pouring down and appreciating it's triumphant patter on the slate stones in the courtyard, contemplating faith. and therefore love. just read an article that reminded me of a 'symposium' we held once in college. ahh to be young and pseudo-intellectual and into philosophy and religion! our symposiums involved selecting a topic for serious discussion, meeting in the rodin sculpture garden on campus - in front of 'the gates of hell' sculpture - at midnight and engaging in socratic debate for hours while consuming copious amounts of decidedly mediocre red wine. (i believe the quality of the debate deteriorated (or improved depending on your perspective on such things) in direct correlation to the quantity of wine consumed. and if we were drinking wine in a box, all bets were off on whether the conversation was intelligible, let alone intelligent.) there were sometimes readings involved to prep for symposiums - such as the grand inquisitor section of the brothers karamazov.* there was one night we met to discuss the question: can you believe in love if you don't believe in god or some transcendent power? it was along those lines anyway. this is the article i was just reading while listening to the rain: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/. worth a read. here is possibly my favourite line: We might say love is that disciplined act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self of externality so something new and inward can come into being.
i have been thinking about faith lately. i suppose i always am. it is so important to me. to who and why i am. but (i'd like to think) not in a showy or ostentatious way. it's more quiet, internal than that. more sacred if you will.
i've also been considering the importance of ritual and community of late. again, not new contemplations for me. but i suppose a necessary part of the meditation on love that i've now determined is my reason for returning to china. appropriate for examining context. on the recommendation of a friend - who took serious issue with my assessment of the priv-lit / eat pray love piece, btw** - i just downloaded joseph campbell's hero with a thousand faces or the power of myth, a transcript of his conversations with bill moyers of PBS. [i heart bill moyers.] according to my friend, campbell talks about how one of the reasons that we face existential crises these days is because we've lost the accumulated wisdom of tradition and the mystery of rituals and myths. we've got no greater context to situate ourselves in - not necessarily spiritual context mind you, but human context. oh joseph campbell and bill moyers chatting, i haven't even begun and i suspect that i could drink a case of you and sill be on my feet!
i am going to go for a long, rambling walk in the rain and rock out to a discussion of rituals, tradition, myth, context. all of which points to faith and love and the glory of raindrops and eternity. more to come on all of this. in other news, the all-female japanese punk band we saw last night - shonen knife - was incredibly awesome. may have to to first rock out to one of their songs to get the walk started with suitable rigour for thinking about the rigours of love.
*yes,this is what i did instead of going to frat parties in college. i am not kidding when i say i was a big dork. i still basically am. although now i prefer 'sexy nerd'. i don't think the 'sexy' bit had developed yet when i was an undergraduate. i wore bright colours and sparkles on a daily basis and had short, spiky electric blonde hair. please see the misfits from the cartoon 'gem & the holograms' (truly outrageous!) if you want an idea of my fashion sense. i also spent hours at a time by myself sitting under trees and reading hiedegger. yikes. sometimes i wonder how i managed to have any friends in college - and such wonderful amazing ones no less. i truly am blessed. and thankfully, somewhere along the way, some of these wonderful friends gently suggested that i lose the glitter. and that even rainbow brite embraced grey sometimes.
**he noted that men have always been encouraged to go off on spiritual quests or other adventures to find themselves, why not women? he has a point. and i agree. i think what i actually am concerned with is the commercialisation of that process and the mass-marketing of the need to find oneself and attendant industries that encourage women (read-society's real consumers) to spend money they don't have in the names of attaining some sort of inner peace that, in all honest truth, is already there within them. and they can access that spaciousness or calm or sacredness or whatever you want to call it, without the help of a life coast or a yoga retreat or such. it's just there waiting. in all of us. and there endth my sermon for saturday morning in the rain. om shanti.
i have been thinking about faith lately. i suppose i always am. it is so important to me. to who and why i am. but (i'd like to think) not in a showy or ostentatious way. it's more quiet, internal than that. more sacred if you will.
i've also been considering the importance of ritual and community of late. again, not new contemplations for me. but i suppose a necessary part of the meditation on love that i've now determined is my reason for returning to china. appropriate for examining context. on the recommendation of a friend - who took serious issue with my assessment of the priv-lit / eat pray love piece, btw** - i just downloaded joseph campbell's hero with a thousand faces or the power of myth, a transcript of his conversations with bill moyers of PBS. [i heart bill moyers.] according to my friend, campbell talks about how one of the reasons that we face existential crises these days is because we've lost the accumulated wisdom of tradition and the mystery of rituals and myths. we've got no greater context to situate ourselves in - not necessarily spiritual context mind you, but human context. oh joseph campbell and bill moyers chatting, i haven't even begun and i suspect that i could drink a case of you and sill be on my feet!
i am going to go for a long, rambling walk in the rain and rock out to a discussion of rituals, tradition, myth, context. all of which points to faith and love and the glory of raindrops and eternity. more to come on all of this. in other news, the all-female japanese punk band we saw last night - shonen knife - was incredibly awesome. may have to to first rock out to one of their songs to get the walk started with suitable rigour for thinking about the rigours of love.
*yes,this is what i did instead of going to frat parties in college. i am not kidding when i say i was a big dork. i still basically am. although now i prefer 'sexy nerd'. i don't think the 'sexy' bit had developed yet when i was an undergraduate. i wore bright colours and sparkles on a daily basis and had short, spiky electric blonde hair. please see the misfits from the cartoon 'gem & the holograms' (truly outrageous!) if you want an idea of my fashion sense. i also spent hours at a time by myself sitting under trees and reading hiedegger. yikes. sometimes i wonder how i managed to have any friends in college - and such wonderful amazing ones no less. i truly am blessed. and thankfully, somewhere along the way, some of these wonderful friends gently suggested that i lose the glitter. and that even rainbow brite embraced grey sometimes.
**he noted that men have always been encouraged to go off on spiritual quests or other adventures to find themselves, why not women? he has a point. and i agree. i think what i actually am concerned with is the commercialisation of that process and the mass-marketing of the need to find oneself and attendant industries that encourage women (read-society's real consumers) to spend money they don't have in the names of attaining some sort of inner peace that, in all honest truth, is already there within them. and they can access that spaciousness or calm or sacredness or whatever you want to call it, without the help of a life coast or a yoga retreat or such. it's just there waiting. in all of us. and there endth my sermon for saturday morning in the rain. om shanti.
Friday, August 20, 2010
staring down the smoke
i had a second session with dr. trauma today. totally my hot date of the week. cue tina turner: what's hot got to do, got to do with it? very little, actually. in fact, nothing. even though i was wearing red seude pumps. very hot. but of little consequence. oh and i know the lyrics really ask what love's got to do with it, but i think that love has everything to do with it. usually does. in fact, always.
i had an interesting conversation with a girlfriend last night. she asked when i had 'peaked' in my life - when i was happiest, at my best, yada, yada. i told her i couldn't accept the premise of the question and ended up answering 'now'. i really fundamentally believe that true, enduring happiness transcends outer experience and that we can only live in the present. i also feel that, even in all its messy intensity, life just keeps getting better. or at least i see it that way. that is in fact what has been most traumatic about this whole processing the fire trauma process - feeling as though i am fragile enough to be seriously shaken by external circumstances. then again, maybe i should allow that i can be strong without being superhuman. i am not perfect. anyway, this friend was able to identify when in her life she had 'peaked'. i told her i was peaking in that very moment eating hummus. then i peaked again later that night having a one song dance party by myself at home.
one song dance parties, btw, should be more widely promoted. i bet if they were incorporated more into everyday home life and office culture, we would all be much happier. when we were living in beijing, my family seemed to have an unspoken understanding that anytime van morrison's 'brown-eyed girl' came on somewhere in the flat - whether the living room or our bedroom - everyone would drop whatever they were doing, dance it out, and then resume their activities when the song was through. it was great fun. i once tried to introduce the idea to my office here, but it was not embraced with enthusiasm. in fact, there may have been a lot of confused staring involved.
speaking of staring, one of the interesting aspects of dr. trauma's approach is that he is quite focused on what i've been experiencing physically and having me do physical exercises - breathing, staring, directing my attention to bodily sensations, etc. this of course makes sense because much as we sometimes go about our lives as if we are all brains, we are bodies (and hearts and spirits)(and a lot of water). our bodies know how to heal us. we don't stress about it when we get bruised or cut, because we trust our bodies to take care of those wounds. even the scar from the burn on my thigh is slowly fading. and yet we isolate our brains so often and only stay tangled up in thoughts and plots and grief that would perhaps fade away softly like smoke if we just stopped to breathe and focus on creating space. i consistently marvel at the sense of spaciousness one can create or find simply within. similarly, i know that i already have all i need to heal from these flames - literal or otherwise - and have always had it. i said as much to dr. trauma today, but he didn't seem offended. i may go see him another time or two and engage in more guided staring, breathing, and talking through things. or i may just have a few more one song dance parties. or maybe the japanese female punk band i'm seeing this evening will sufficiently rock my world so that there's no longer any lingering smoke.
i had an interesting conversation with a girlfriend last night. she asked when i had 'peaked' in my life - when i was happiest, at my best, yada, yada. i told her i couldn't accept the premise of the question and ended up answering 'now'. i really fundamentally believe that true, enduring happiness transcends outer experience and that we can only live in the present. i also feel that, even in all its messy intensity, life just keeps getting better. or at least i see it that way. that is in fact what has been most traumatic about this whole processing the fire trauma process - feeling as though i am fragile enough to be seriously shaken by external circumstances. then again, maybe i should allow that i can be strong without being superhuman. i am not perfect. anyway, this friend was able to identify when in her life she had 'peaked'. i told her i was peaking in that very moment eating hummus. then i peaked again later that night having a one song dance party by myself at home.
one song dance parties, btw, should be more widely promoted. i bet if they were incorporated more into everyday home life and office culture, we would all be much happier. when we were living in beijing, my family seemed to have an unspoken understanding that anytime van morrison's 'brown-eyed girl' came on somewhere in the flat - whether the living room or our bedroom - everyone would drop whatever they were doing, dance it out, and then resume their activities when the song was through. it was great fun. i once tried to introduce the idea to my office here, but it was not embraced with enthusiasm. in fact, there may have been a lot of confused staring involved.
speaking of staring, one of the interesting aspects of dr. trauma's approach is that he is quite focused on what i've been experiencing physically and having me do physical exercises - breathing, staring, directing my attention to bodily sensations, etc. this of course makes sense because much as we sometimes go about our lives as if we are all brains, we are bodies (and hearts and spirits)(and a lot of water). our bodies know how to heal us. we don't stress about it when we get bruised or cut, because we trust our bodies to take care of those wounds. even the scar from the burn on my thigh is slowly fading. and yet we isolate our brains so often and only stay tangled up in thoughts and plots and grief that would perhaps fade away softly like smoke if we just stopped to breathe and focus on creating space. i consistently marvel at the sense of spaciousness one can create or find simply within. similarly, i know that i already have all i need to heal from these flames - literal or otherwise - and have always had it. i said as much to dr. trauma today, but he didn't seem offended. i may go see him another time or two and engage in more guided staring, breathing, and talking through things. or i may just have a few more one song dance parties. or maybe the japanese female punk band i'm seeing this evening will sufficiently rock my world so that there's no longer any lingering smoke.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
trauma, catharthsis & rocking the casbah
so, i am slowly accepting that i have some residual trauma from the fire. in case you missed it when i buried it deep in the middle of a post that said basically nothing at all, there was a fire. i did not cause it. and i did not die in it. that is a very, very lucky good thing. it was close. or could have been. curious fact: i got a massive burn on my thigh just before leaving for the trip during which the fire happened. foreshadowing? or meaningless search for meaning? is the search for meaning in such things inherently meaningless? maybe it is necessary. maybe it provides some moorings amid life's storms, gives that sense of the ineffable its moonlit appeal, or simply helps us process. i have had a hard time processing this, to be honest. and i know that not everything has meaning. sometimes things just burn. but to help with my processing, i thought i would be brave and take stock. of what was actually destroyed in the fire. and what was not. the stuff (which matters little) and the spirit (which matters much). ahem.
what was destroyed
- my laptop
it was full of mediocre poetry. much of it related to my ex-fiance. in case you've missed it earlier (still don't know how to link; SJ someone teach me please), i write mediocre poetry. it's a special talent to always write mediocre poetry - not awful, not excellent, or even good, maybe occasionally bad, but generally mediocre.*
- fancy expensive purple sunglasses
from my ex-fiance. i initially took them when i was trying to gather my things, thinking they just had soot on them. but instead pieces of exploded laptop were embedded into the lenses. it actually felt freeing to throw them away somehow. (incidentally, i may have always looked a little ridiculous in them.)
- a fabulous purple floppy sunhat
a gift from little trouble. maybe this whole fire was about burning the ghosts of love gone bad / boyfriends past. the hat never travelled well anyway. (incidentally, i looked fabulous in it.)
- a lovely yellow linen sundress
too covered in soot to be salvaged. either that or the dry-cleaner stole it and kept it for himself. i'd rather still be able to feel the sunlight than have a sundress, though. so not much of a loss. reminds me of a brian andreas quote - "she left pieces of herself everywhere she went, " it's easier to feel the sunlight without them, " she said.
- a bunch of books i had just bought
i didn't replace them. i bought new books instead. maybe i wasn't meant to read them. or maybe it's time to get a kindle.
- papers for renewing my NY state bar registration
perhaps a sign. i wasn't certain whether i would renew anyway since i'm not much of a lawyer, didn't go to law school to be one really, and can't imagine ever practicing again. true story: when i had my first session with my legal writing tutor during my first year of law school she said, "your writing is like flower [complete with hand gesture vaguely suggestive of a blossoming peony]. legal writing does not involve flower [repeat hand gesture]. it is linear [gesturing emphasizing this by creating the rungs of a ladder in the air]. and it is logical." i knew then that it would be a long year. although i really loved law school. and eventually learned how to write like a lawyer. sort of.
- my little black journal / book i carry for writing thoughts down
but i couldn't bear to part with it so i still have it. although most of the pages of journaling are illegible (again, a sign?), many of the pages where i collected images or ideas or words that i stumble across and find inspiring are fine. i bought a new little black book. although i haven't started using it yet. i wanted to transfer some if the lines from the old one. but maybe i'll just start anew and list some of them here instead. and call that catharsis. ok, please see below.
- some other random things
- my friend's ex-husband's furniture
- self-consciousness
- fear (some)
what was not destroyed
- me
or anyone else. thank god. and no one was hurt.
- nothing that actually matters
the rest is just stuff.
- fear (some)
- anxiety
in fact i think the fire has triggered all sorts of anxiety i never knew i had.
- friendship
- trust
- cufflinks
they had been sent to be given as a gift for a friend's wedding. the other gifts were also not destroyed. (a good omen?)
- love
- laughter
after the fire i had a very strong desire to simply be held. still do, in fact. although i am reminding myself that it is enough to hold myself. or must be enough. this is perhaps an understandable feeling. i also saw a trauma specialist shrinker today, who said much of the stress that has surfaced and lingered and feels like fallout from the fire is quite common. even though i said 'trauma' felt self-indulgent and too big to describe this. he said we can use another word. i'm not sure if i need a trauma specialist or to simply be held by a beautiful man. but i'd like to stop dreaming about flames, so will see what the former can do for me in the absence of the latter. curiously, after returning from my session with mr. trauma, i stumbled across this in a newspaper article:
“The human condition is that traumatic events occur,” said David B. Adams, a psychologist in private practice in Atlanta. “The reality is that we are equipped to deal with them. The challenge that lies before us is quite often more important than the disappointment that surrounds us.”
life is trauma. and we endure. and love it anyway. now for the catharsis of reading through my collected fragments and sharing a few! then i'll listen to the clash's 'rock the casbah' as i walk to dinner. and thus the subject of this post has meaning.
fragments
poetry is the means of saving power from itself
to lose balance sometimes is part of living a balanced life
youth is a blind incongruous beast
espresso as thick as the devil's sweat
out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. i will meet you there. (rumi!)
sometimes taking care of yourself means letting yourself be misunderstood
and of course, like all novelists, she had unrealistic expectations
barely bearable raw immediacy
how imprecise the language is, how inadequate to its occasions
cowardly tender nostalgia, trying to get back to a gentler truth
a fierce and lawless quiver of freedom, of loneliness too harsh and perfect for me now to bear
the reddening skies, the entering silences
our lives are not exercises from school that have no relevance; they have the ultimate relevance. our lives can damage other people; our lives can heal other people; our lives can nourish other people and our lives can transform other people. our lives become the stars that others steer by, and if we live them well, the world will change. live well. it matters.
*i shall share one poem that was blown up with the computer but remains in gmail. i like this one b/c it's a nod to ntozake shange, written decemberish, 2004 i think. in other news, please note that i got through this post with only one footnote. impressive. ok, now the poem -
almost
someone almost got away with my stuff.
not my endless butterfly stories,
or an impromptu dance i gave up in the street,
but someone almost walked off with all of my stuff –
taking so much more that what can be given away –
without even caring enough to let me know that
he was still keep shards of me in his pockets,
selfishly hoarding my stuff in his soul,
trying to keep my essence under embargo.
but i will not stand to let someone, anyone,
hold onto my stuff – what use
could it be to him anyhow?
i'm the only one who can fill myself completely;
the only one who can suit my sparkle.
so i demand my stuff back – i crave my tenderness,
my strong vulnerability, my floating rib,
and my finger with the donkey-bite scar;
i cry for my full ferocity and my firelight eyes,
my dance and my calloused feet and my quick laugh
in my mouth – honey and vanilla and apricot.
it was a man who took it, a someone with a swagger-ego so big
it interfered in everyone’s shadows, a lover i gave too much to,
bright eyes i gave everything to, but he couldn’t hold me,
and almost walked off with my stuff –
almost got away with me in a plastic bag under his arm,
dangling on a string of personal carelessness,
getting splattered by mud and city rain and selfishness,
not taking care to keep me dry,
and still asking for more of me.
but i need my stuff back – all of it. all of me.
i have stood outside myself too long
watching this kleptomaniac and
i am roaring and sounding the alarms.
stealing my stuff, doesn’t make it yours –
it makes it stolen.
so go get your own things, and be done with mine.
you had your chance, when i gave myself to you –
my whimsical kisses, my nice-ass-for-a-white-girl and
my beloved little tummy, my magnanimous touch,
my bright colours, my unruly sweaters and my unkempt passion,
the sweetness of my breath, my ocean observation,
and then some – and you threw the treasure that is me
in a tattered plastic bag to tout about town.
but the jig is up and your chance is through.
so give me back my things – my essence, my sparkle,
my dreams, hopes, desires, love, fear – my self.
leave this package for me,
so i can rise to my own destiny,
so the me-within-me can soar.
holding onto my stuff won’t get you anywhere,
its of no value to you –
because i’m the only one who can handle it.
what was destroyed
- my laptop
it was full of mediocre poetry. much of it related to my ex-fiance. in case you've missed it earlier (still don't know how to link; SJ someone teach me please), i write mediocre poetry. it's a special talent to always write mediocre poetry - not awful, not excellent, or even good, maybe occasionally bad, but generally mediocre.*
- fancy expensive purple sunglasses
from my ex-fiance. i initially took them when i was trying to gather my things, thinking they just had soot on them. but instead pieces of exploded laptop were embedded into the lenses. it actually felt freeing to throw them away somehow. (incidentally, i may have always looked a little ridiculous in them.)
- a fabulous purple floppy sunhat
a gift from little trouble. maybe this whole fire was about burning the ghosts of love gone bad / boyfriends past. the hat never travelled well anyway. (incidentally, i looked fabulous in it.)
- a lovely yellow linen sundress
too covered in soot to be salvaged. either that or the dry-cleaner stole it and kept it for himself. i'd rather still be able to feel the sunlight than have a sundress, though. so not much of a loss. reminds me of a brian andreas quote - "she left pieces of herself everywhere she went, " it's easier to feel the sunlight without them, " she said.
- a bunch of books i had just bought
i didn't replace them. i bought new books instead. maybe i wasn't meant to read them. or maybe it's time to get a kindle.
- papers for renewing my NY state bar registration
perhaps a sign. i wasn't certain whether i would renew anyway since i'm not much of a lawyer, didn't go to law school to be one really, and can't imagine ever practicing again. true story: when i had my first session with my legal writing tutor during my first year of law school she said, "your writing is like flower [complete with hand gesture vaguely suggestive of a blossoming peony]. legal writing does not involve flower [repeat hand gesture]. it is linear [gesturing emphasizing this by creating the rungs of a ladder in the air]. and it is logical." i knew then that it would be a long year. although i really loved law school. and eventually learned how to write like a lawyer. sort of.
- my little black journal / book i carry for writing thoughts down
but i couldn't bear to part with it so i still have it. although most of the pages of journaling are illegible (again, a sign?), many of the pages where i collected images or ideas or words that i stumble across and find inspiring are fine. i bought a new little black book. although i haven't started using it yet. i wanted to transfer some if the lines from the old one. but maybe i'll just start anew and list some of them here instead. and call that catharsis. ok, please see below.
- some other random things
- my friend's ex-husband's furniture
- self-consciousness
- fear (some)
what was not destroyed
- me
or anyone else. thank god. and no one was hurt.
- nothing that actually matters
the rest is just stuff.
- fear (some)
- anxiety
in fact i think the fire has triggered all sorts of anxiety i never knew i had.
- friendship
- trust
- cufflinks
they had been sent to be given as a gift for a friend's wedding. the other gifts were also not destroyed. (a good omen?)
- love
- laughter
after the fire i had a very strong desire to simply be held. still do, in fact. although i am reminding myself that it is enough to hold myself. or must be enough. this is perhaps an understandable feeling. i also saw a trauma specialist shrinker today, who said much of the stress that has surfaced and lingered and feels like fallout from the fire is quite common. even though i said 'trauma' felt self-indulgent and too big to describe this. he said we can use another word. i'm not sure if i need a trauma specialist or to simply be held by a beautiful man. but i'd like to stop dreaming about flames, so will see what the former can do for me in the absence of the latter. curiously, after returning from my session with mr. trauma, i stumbled across this in a newspaper article:
“The human condition is that traumatic events occur,” said David B. Adams, a psychologist in private practice in Atlanta. “The reality is that we are equipped to deal with them. The challenge that lies before us is quite often more important than the disappointment that surrounds us.”
life is trauma. and we endure. and love it anyway. now for the catharsis of reading through my collected fragments and sharing a few! then i'll listen to the clash's 'rock the casbah' as i walk to dinner. and thus the subject of this post has meaning.
fragments
poetry is the means of saving power from itself
to lose balance sometimes is part of living a balanced life
youth is a blind incongruous beast
espresso as thick as the devil's sweat
out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. i will meet you there. (rumi!)
sometimes taking care of yourself means letting yourself be misunderstood
and of course, like all novelists, she had unrealistic expectations
barely bearable raw immediacy
how imprecise the language is, how inadequate to its occasions
cowardly tender nostalgia, trying to get back to a gentler truth
a fierce and lawless quiver of freedom, of loneliness too harsh and perfect for me now to bear
the reddening skies, the entering silences
our lives are not exercises from school that have no relevance; they have the ultimate relevance. our lives can damage other people; our lives can heal other people; our lives can nourish other people and our lives can transform other people. our lives become the stars that others steer by, and if we live them well, the world will change. live well. it matters.
*i shall share one poem that was blown up with the computer but remains in gmail. i like this one b/c it's a nod to ntozake shange, written decemberish, 2004 i think. in other news, please note that i got through this post with only one footnote. impressive. ok, now the poem -
almost
someone almost got away with my stuff.
not my endless butterfly stories,
or an impromptu dance i gave up in the street,
but someone almost walked off with all of my stuff –
taking so much more that what can be given away –
without even caring enough to let me know that
he was still keep shards of me in his pockets,
selfishly hoarding my stuff in his soul,
trying to keep my essence under embargo.
but i will not stand to let someone, anyone,
hold onto my stuff – what use
could it be to him anyhow?
i'm the only one who can fill myself completely;
the only one who can suit my sparkle.
so i demand my stuff back – i crave my tenderness,
my strong vulnerability, my floating rib,
and my finger with the donkey-bite scar;
i cry for my full ferocity and my firelight eyes,
my dance and my calloused feet and my quick laugh
in my mouth – honey and vanilla and apricot.
it was a man who took it, a someone with a swagger-ego so big
it interfered in everyone’s shadows, a lover i gave too much to,
bright eyes i gave everything to, but he couldn’t hold me,
and almost walked off with my stuff –
almost got away with me in a plastic bag under his arm,
dangling on a string of personal carelessness,
getting splattered by mud and city rain and selfishness,
not taking care to keep me dry,
and still asking for more of me.
but i need my stuff back – all of it. all of me.
i have stood outside myself too long
watching this kleptomaniac and
i am roaring and sounding the alarms.
stealing my stuff, doesn’t make it yours –
it makes it stolen.
so go get your own things, and be done with mine.
you had your chance, when i gave myself to you –
my whimsical kisses, my nice-ass-for-a-white-girl and
my beloved little tummy, my magnanimous touch,
my bright colours, my unruly sweaters and my unkempt passion,
the sweetness of my breath, my ocean observation,
and then some – and you threw the treasure that is me
in a tattered plastic bag to tout about town.
but the jig is up and your chance is through.
so give me back my things – my essence, my sparkle,
my dreams, hopes, desires, love, fear – my self.
leave this package for me,
so i can rise to my own destiny,
so the me-within-me can soar.
holding onto my stuff won’t get you anywhere,
its of no value to you –
because i’m the only one who can handle it.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
shaking the moonlight out of my hair
good morning. once again, the courtyard is mayhem. which i am observing calmly and suppressing my inner cleaner*. the skies are blue and we even saw stars last night! it was a glorious evening. i am going to first reflect upon the lessons learned last night and then put on the dance playlist i made for the party and rock out as i clean up. i love gratuitous rocking out in unexpected contexts. which brings me to a lesson - 1: when i am walking around town rocking out with my ipod, wearing sunglasses and my pink 'princess' baseball cap, i am not invisible. sometimes i labour under this illusion and sing out loud or kind of dance along. people stare. it's weird, i know. but no weirder than the 70-year-old man i saw walking down wudaoying hutong yesterday wearing black pantyhouse under plaid boxer shorts, a white tank and green trainers, holding a canary. so i think it's ok. but really i should lose the 'princess' cap. it's a bit much. ok so other lessons:
2 - i should not wear dresses that are so short i can't raise my arms if i intend to dance. i actually learned this lesson after our last party. so i wisely chose not to wear my leo-fabulous shockingly short dress that i got for this birthday. (i literally can't sit down in it. but it's really hot. as i was getting ready last night i sagely decided that dancing aside, as hostess, i may be required to bend over or reach up at various points throughout the evening. so i went with another dress. this is the kind of deep intellectual thinking that all of my impressive degrees have enabled.)
3 - in a similar vein, i am slowly accepting that i may not be able to continue to wear shockingly short ensembs all that much longer. i thought about retiring my short shorts at 31 (i have quite a collection), but couldn't quite do it. this year the thought didn't even cross my mind. i intend to keep on rocking them (and, incidentally, rocking out in public behind the relative privacy of my sunglasses) as long as i can. it'll come to an end eventually. really it's just me v. gravity at this point. but i'm pretty stubborn and intend to give gravity a good run. i'm not giving up without a fight. actually, my fondness for hot pants was incorporated into a birthday roast two dear girlfriends wrote for my 30th bday. i will share it with you here. effing funny.
A Toast to Miss Mattie J Inspired by her own Facebook Updates
How do you begin to tell the story of a dear friend,
Who amuses not just you but herself to no end?
She lives a life of glamourous insanity,
While doing her best to help out humanity
Our dear friend Mattie is smart as a whip,
While ever the icon of her own brand of hip
Neither bustier nor hot pant will be left aside,
Should MJ have the chance to wear them with pride!
And with glee we have enjoyed many nights in the city,
Busting out the glam, it still makes me giddy
For sharing the sense that moderation is overrated,
Brought on many nights when we left the boys quite frustrated
On that score of late she has had us puzzling,
Over who exactly she's recently been nuzzling
We try to decode her various Facebook updates,
And we're watchful that she not involve herself with any ingrates
She said at one point that she blames the CIA
For what, we're not sure but here's to hoping they don't keep her at bay
She is so pretty and dangerous, you see
That it's perfectly reasonable they'd want to give her the third degree
She claimed at one point that she should really know better,
But living like that would be so boring, so fettered
Mattie, it is we who promise never to forsake the colours that you bring,
For you are ever a beacon of light and joy for us, with a dash of bling
And now as you enter your 30th year,
How lucky are we that the occasion has brought us near
Life without you would be terribly dull,
It's an existence I'd, frankly, rather not mull
I look forward to all of our birthdays to come,
And all of the living yet to be done
So on the occasion of Miss Mattie's glorious birthday,
Let us raise our glasses and shout out, hooray!
*************
Mattie updates lifted directly off Facebook for the purposes of this poem:
Mattie amuses herself no end.
Mattie is living a life of glamourous insanity.
Mattie blames the CIA.
Mattie is so pretty and dangerous.
Mattie will not forsake the colours that you bring.
Mattie really should know better.
Mattie thinks moderation is overrated.
ok so i was going to post that to poke fun at myself, but have ended up just missing my friends. who know and love me well. and vice versa. so maybe i'll skip all of the silly lessons i was going to list here. about booty-shaking** and then some, and get straight to the point. i feel so blessed this birthday. this life, really. for my amazing and beautiful family and friends. and that's all that matters. and for having come through fires, literal and otherwise, this year. i've survived. and thrived. which i could not have done without said amazing and beautiful family and friends. and for which i am so humbled and grateful. i also feel especially blessed this birthday because of some recent news. i sent a message to my pregnant sister on wednesday saying i wanted a niece for my birthday (i have two gorgeous wonderful nephews!), and she found out on friday she's having a girl. and now i'm literally weeping with joy just thinking about that. (ok and a little bit of sadness that i'm so far away. what am i doing here?!?) so that means it's time to close the computer, cry in a corner for a bit, than rock out as hard as i can while i clean up all the empty champagne bottles.
*who am i kidding? i am not really concerned with cleanliness, only aesthetics. i am very meticulous, for example, about the angles of my (gold) decorative throw pillows on my bed. and the placement of art and books and such. but i find no joy in scrubbing. none at all. my mother is a cleaner. one of my sisters may be as well. [query: is this an impulse that just comes with having children? will i give birth and then suddenly be that woman who jumps at the chance to chase dust kitties from the corners when there is a lull in conversation? even as i write it, i suspect not.] my mum can't sit still if there is anything unscrubbed within her line of sight. this is so much the case that all of my sisters and i have confessed that even in our adult lives we've been lazy about cleaning our flats and just waited for her to visit to tidy up. we justified this because even if we did clean in anticipation of her visit, she would walk in and immediately seize the windex anyway. in fact, it is entirely possible that the only times my bathroom was cleaned during my three years of law school were when my mum came over. (lest you think that i am jut as filthy filthy freaknasty gross as all the hiphop i've been listening to lately, i ought to clarify that i lived a 30 minute drive from my parents during law school, so visits were regular.) but there was another point to this footnote. oh yes, i do not have an inner cleaner, but once upon a lifetime i aspired to have one. thankfully, i am now old enough to simply be comfortably with who and why i am and no longer have ridiculous aspirations like that. i also have become neater as i age. when i was a teenager i was basically a slob. i distinctly remember sitting at our living room table in beijing, filling out an informational form for university designed to help with roommate placement and there was a question about cleanliness that asked you to select from a number of options to describe yourself. i read the options aloud to my family and opined that i tick "mostly neat with the occasional mess". they would have none of it. in fact my littlest sister may have spit up milk laughing at that suggestion. they insisted i tick the box that basically said "i am a completely hopeless mess and i can't recall the last time i saw the floor next to my bed because i live in a vacuum of misunderstood creative clutter that whirls about me at all times". ok so i added the creative clutter bit. clearly i'm still defensive. i think the choice actually said "very messy". it was the right choice. i'm not sure my freshman year roommate and i ever cleaned our floor. ever. and i think many small life forms perished in our fridge during the year. but we had a good time.
**once again i didn't dance with any straight men. or at least no eligible ones. oh well.
2 - i should not wear dresses that are so short i can't raise my arms if i intend to dance. i actually learned this lesson after our last party. so i wisely chose not to wear my leo-fabulous shockingly short dress that i got for this birthday. (i literally can't sit down in it. but it's really hot. as i was getting ready last night i sagely decided that dancing aside, as hostess, i may be required to bend over or reach up at various points throughout the evening. so i went with another dress. this is the kind of deep intellectual thinking that all of my impressive degrees have enabled.)
3 - in a similar vein, i am slowly accepting that i may not be able to continue to wear shockingly short ensembs all that much longer. i thought about retiring my short shorts at 31 (i have quite a collection), but couldn't quite do it. this year the thought didn't even cross my mind. i intend to keep on rocking them (and, incidentally, rocking out in public behind the relative privacy of my sunglasses) as long as i can. it'll come to an end eventually. really it's just me v. gravity at this point. but i'm pretty stubborn and intend to give gravity a good run. i'm not giving up without a fight. actually, my fondness for hot pants was incorporated into a birthday roast two dear girlfriends wrote for my 30th bday. i will share it with you here. effing funny.
A Toast to Miss Mattie J Inspired by her own Facebook Updates
How do you begin to tell the story of a dear friend,
Who amuses not just you but herself to no end?
She lives a life of glamourous insanity,
While doing her best to help out humanity
Our dear friend Mattie is smart as a whip,
While ever the icon of her own brand of hip
Neither bustier nor hot pant will be left aside,
Should MJ have the chance to wear them with pride!
And with glee we have enjoyed many nights in the city,
Busting out the glam, it still makes me giddy
For sharing the sense that moderation is overrated,
Brought on many nights when we left the boys quite frustrated
On that score of late she has had us puzzling,
Over who exactly she's recently been nuzzling
We try to decode her various Facebook updates,
And we're watchful that she not involve herself with any ingrates
She said at one point that she blames the CIA
For what, we're not sure but here's to hoping they don't keep her at bay
She is so pretty and dangerous, you see
That it's perfectly reasonable they'd want to give her the third degree
She claimed at one point that she should really know better,
But living like that would be so boring, so fettered
Mattie, it is we who promise never to forsake the colours that you bring,
For you are ever a beacon of light and joy for us, with a dash of bling
And now as you enter your 30th year,
How lucky are we that the occasion has brought us near
Life without you would be terribly dull,
It's an existence I'd, frankly, rather not mull
I look forward to all of our birthdays to come,
And all of the living yet to be done
So on the occasion of Miss Mattie's glorious birthday,
Let us raise our glasses and shout out, hooray!
*************
Mattie updates lifted directly off Facebook for the purposes of this poem:
Mattie amuses herself no end.
Mattie is living a life of glamourous insanity.
Mattie blames the CIA.
Mattie is so pretty and dangerous.
Mattie will not forsake the colours that you bring.
Mattie really should know better.
Mattie thinks moderation is overrated.
ok so i was going to post that to poke fun at myself, but have ended up just missing my friends. who know and love me well. and vice versa. so maybe i'll skip all of the silly lessons i was going to list here. about booty-shaking** and then some, and get straight to the point. i feel so blessed this birthday. this life, really. for my amazing and beautiful family and friends. and that's all that matters. and for having come through fires, literal and otherwise, this year. i've survived. and thrived. which i could not have done without said amazing and beautiful family and friends. and for which i am so humbled and grateful. i also feel especially blessed this birthday because of some recent news. i sent a message to my pregnant sister on wednesday saying i wanted a niece for my birthday (i have two gorgeous wonderful nephews!), and she found out on friday she's having a girl. and now i'm literally weeping with joy just thinking about that. (ok and a little bit of sadness that i'm so far away. what am i doing here?!?) so that means it's time to close the computer, cry in a corner for a bit, than rock out as hard as i can while i clean up all the empty champagne bottles.
*who am i kidding? i am not really concerned with cleanliness, only aesthetics. i am very meticulous, for example, about the angles of my (gold) decorative throw pillows on my bed. and the placement of art and books and such. but i find no joy in scrubbing. none at all. my mother is a cleaner. one of my sisters may be as well. [query: is this an impulse that just comes with having children? will i give birth and then suddenly be that woman who jumps at the chance to chase dust kitties from the corners when there is a lull in conversation? even as i write it, i suspect not.] my mum can't sit still if there is anything unscrubbed within her line of sight. this is so much the case that all of my sisters and i have confessed that even in our adult lives we've been lazy about cleaning our flats and just waited for her to visit to tidy up. we justified this because even if we did clean in anticipation of her visit, she would walk in and immediately seize the windex anyway. in fact, it is entirely possible that the only times my bathroom was cleaned during my three years of law school were when my mum came over. (lest you think that i am jut as filthy filthy freaknasty gross as all the hiphop i've been listening to lately, i ought to clarify that i lived a 30 minute drive from my parents during law school, so visits were regular.) but there was another point to this footnote. oh yes, i do not have an inner cleaner, but once upon a lifetime i aspired to have one. thankfully, i am now old enough to simply be comfortably with who and why i am and no longer have ridiculous aspirations like that. i also have become neater as i age. when i was a teenager i was basically a slob. i distinctly remember sitting at our living room table in beijing, filling out an informational form for university designed to help with roommate placement and there was a question about cleanliness that asked you to select from a number of options to describe yourself. i read the options aloud to my family and opined that i tick "mostly neat with the occasional mess". they would have none of it. in fact my littlest sister may have spit up milk laughing at that suggestion. they insisted i tick the box that basically said "i am a completely hopeless mess and i can't recall the last time i saw the floor next to my bed because i live in a vacuum of misunderstood creative clutter that whirls about me at all times". ok so i added the creative clutter bit. clearly i'm still defensive. i think the choice actually said "very messy". it was the right choice. i'm not sure my freshman year roommate and i ever cleaned our floor. ever. and i think many small life forms perished in our fridge during the year. but we had a good time.
**once again i didn't dance with any straight men. or at least no eligible ones. oh well.
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