i had a moment last night walking through the hutongs at twilight (listening to 'rent') when i was struck with a realization about my month of momentum's having come to a screeching halt while i was sick. with absolute clarity i realized that i had been viewing things entirely incorrectly. i had been so distraught and discontent about finding myself suspended in silence for a week that i almost failed to notice the inner calm i discovered there. i failed to appreciate that the real momentum i needed this month was internal.* as soon as the idea crossed my mind (while i joyfully i sang out loud along with the rent soundtrack - give in to love, or live in fear!), i stopped for a moment to just let it sink in. (and to avoid being hit by a bicycle-cart transporting dangerously-stacked wood.) my focus on external measures of momentum or progress was misplaced. the real momentum i needed (and was finding!) was internal. it was about taking time to notice the twilight, among other things. so i smiled up at the sky and continued on my way to meet girlfriends for dinner.
as we sat on a rooftop, laughing, and the twilight faded into blue, this realization drifted slowly through me. it settled on an ocean floor somewhere inside me. and i felt very content with that. i have recently been thinking about the connections between our intellectual, spiritual, and physical selves. i believe these connections are stronger and more subtle that we can possibly understand. i saw my chinese doctor on sunday evening. she's an acupuncturist extraordinaire. i had sent her an sms in desperation on friday when i still wasn't feeling better, even if i had a bit of a voice. although i was feeling fine and mostly recovered by sunday afternoon when i arrived at her office, i thought i would go ahead with the appointment anyway. i explained that i had spent a week unable to speak, constantly exhausted, having curious headaches, and generally unwell. she sized up the situation and decided she need to rub my neck and back with a magic stone and then let out bad blood from behind my knees. (obviously.) between the gua sha (scraping) and the blood-letting, i look as though i've been tortured on my back and neck and the backs of my knees. but as usual after seeing her, i feel amazing. both physically - such spaciousness! - but also emotionally. somehow all of the adjustments order things more profound than my vertabrae, the cupping reaches things deeper than my skin. of course i am not such a believer that i skipped the antibiotics and the nebulizer, but nonetheless, i always marvel at the levels (and layers) of healing involved in shen daifu's treatments.
i have decided that i ought to continue to focus on inner momentum. and worry much less about the rest. i have an abiding faith which is enough for now (and always). and now is all there is anyway - no day but today! speaking of which, it has been absolutely gorgeous weather for two days straight which simply makes me want to leave the office, sit on a rooftop somewhere and be fabulous! i'm not entirely sure what that involves, but i'm pretty sure it has something to do with champagne cocktails and outrageous shoes.** preferably while listening to jazz. or wild birds that sounds like keith jarrett on the piano. but i will not leave the office, and will continue to push forward the rule of law. and perhaps go shoe-shopping online. (maybe some external momentum on my feet will assist with the internal progress!)
*perhaps it always is.
**i recognise that this may sound like a wish to become a taitai. especially because whenever i scratch the surface of this particular illusion just a little bit, confusion ensues. really, there is only so much sipping of champagne cocktails and wearing big shoes one can do in a given day. so how to occupy the remaining time? i expect that there would be a lot of effort put into preparing for the moment when the sipping of cocktails commences. (being fabulous requires looking fabulous and that takes work.) this is when i realize that being a taitai might be rather tedious. even if time at the gym, spa, beauty salon, lunch, and shops (in preparation for the rooftop champers moment) occupies several hours, i know i would crave substance.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
speaking softly of soft power
so, i can speak. big sigh of relief. there may or may not have been a few moments during which my imagination danced delicately into fantastical thinking and i panicked about never recovering my voice. i am not at full capacity and don't quite yet sound fully myself, but i am getting close. and i am finally starting to feel a bit better as well. this week has been so bizarre. there was all the sound and fury (and justice imploding all over the place) related to work. and all the deep silence (and over-thinking) around me at home. and now it is friday evening, and i cancelled plans after realizing i'm not quite healed. participating in a work program last night wore me out and going to the office for part of the day utterly exhausted me. i am being responsible and resting tonight.*
the work program last night was really wonderful and inspiring. and made me feel fortunate to be here working on rule of law issues all over again. also, i think i really need to stick around at least until the eighteenth national congress (fall, 2012), just to see what happens. well, provided the pollution doesn't wreak further havoc on my vocal cords first. two interesting discussions from last night:
1 - in communist regimes such as present PRC, former USSR, you never really know what any of the political elites think or what they will do until they are actually at the very top and in power. no one predicted khrushchev (from stalin's close advisor / staunch supporter to de-stalinization?) or gorbachev (who was prepared for perestroika?) at all. no one saw it coming. but how could they? they only way to rise in these parties is to hide all your cards until you've already cashed in and are running the whole casino. the speaker was drawing parallels with the chinese leadership.
2 - china wants soft power. so eventually it will have to embrace the non-commercial aspects of rule of law, including respect for civil liberties, due process, a functioning judiciary, and tolerable criminal justice system. i thought this was interesting given my recent thinking about thin v. thick rule of law. and i also just thought it was interesting. i hadn't seen things from that perspective before. (sometimes when you are too close to things it has hard to see them with any perspective at all.) but it makes some sense to me. china wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, it wants to be respected, it wants soft power. and the chinese leadership knows that requires serious reforms related to openness and rights. (russia, ps, has totally given up on this insofar as i can tell. i just read yet another article about journalists and human rights activists been killed and abused and beaten for speaking truth to power. so tragic.)
i am going to consider this soft power angle more, because i believe there is something to it. (especially if whomever takes over in 2012 has a personal belief in or vision for political opening and human rights!) but rather than take up space with my pontificating here, i am going to consider the importance of soft power from a soft lavender bath and then bed.
*also, i have a 9 am cooking class and am determined to be bright-eyed and paying close attention. being ill always makes me fancy myself an amazing chef (it comes with being cooped up and having an overactive imagination).
the work program last night was really wonderful and inspiring. and made me feel fortunate to be here working on rule of law issues all over again. also, i think i really need to stick around at least until the eighteenth national congress (fall, 2012), just to see what happens. well, provided the pollution doesn't wreak further havoc on my vocal cords first. two interesting discussions from last night:
1 - in communist regimes such as present PRC, former USSR, you never really know what any of the political elites think or what they will do until they are actually at the very top and in power. no one predicted khrushchev (from stalin's close advisor / staunch supporter to de-stalinization?) or gorbachev (who was prepared for perestroika?) at all. no one saw it coming. but how could they? they only way to rise in these parties is to hide all your cards until you've already cashed in and are running the whole casino. the speaker was drawing parallels with the chinese leadership.
2 - china wants soft power. so eventually it will have to embrace the non-commercial aspects of rule of law, including respect for civil liberties, due process, a functioning judiciary, and tolerable criminal justice system. i thought this was interesting given my recent thinking about thin v. thick rule of law. and i also just thought it was interesting. i hadn't seen things from that perspective before. (sometimes when you are too close to things it has hard to see them with any perspective at all.) but it makes some sense to me. china wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, it wants to be respected, it wants soft power. and the chinese leadership knows that requires serious reforms related to openness and rights. (russia, ps, has totally given up on this insofar as i can tell. i just read yet another article about journalists and human rights activists been killed and abused and beaten for speaking truth to power. so tragic.)
i am going to consider this soft power angle more, because i believe there is something to it. (especially if whomever takes over in 2012 has a personal belief in or vision for political opening and human rights!) but rather than take up space with my pontificating here, i am going to consider the importance of soft power from a soft lavender bath and then bed.
*also, i have a 9 am cooking class and am determined to be bright-eyed and paying close attention. being ill always makes me fancy myself an amazing chef (it comes with being cooped up and having an overactive imagination).
Thursday, May 20, 2010
perseverance furthers
so my recovery has been slower than i had hoped or prepared for. i am still shrouded in silence. and meanwhile, the world is collapsing around my ears and my NGO has been in the SCMP for two days running and any semblance of justice in China is imploding and i can only watch from within this glass cage of quiet. (at least i have a good excuse for not speaking to the press.) and in fairness, the justice imploding line is a bit melodramatic. but one bends towards melodrama when trapped inside one’s head for days on end. or at least i do. also, in a cruel twist of fate, my ipod has actually imploded and seems entirely beyond hope of recovery. so i cannot even listen to music. although even as i write that, I have opened the door to the courtyard and can hear a neighbour playing the flute. which only proves that beauty and melody and goodness infiltrate always.
speaking of infiltration, a dear friend and her visiting mum came over last night and let me feed them. as usual when trapped home by illness, i expand my horizons by cooking. (and they brought baked goods which are always welcome!) it was lovely to have their company, but the whispering left me in pain and frustrated to tears by my lack of improvement. i found myself in tears again this morning when i realized i still couldn’t speak, but then reminded myself to keep things in perspective. a friend with asthma suggested that i imagine i am a french-indochinese lady in an opium den while i am nebulizing to make it more pleasant. i thought it a good suggestion…. so perspective – i am fortunate, this too shall pass, and i can listen to a neighbour play the flute on a sunny day. perseverance furthers. that applies to striving for justice as well. to borrow from tennyson’s ulysses – to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
it’s curious how when all other sounds are muted, the volume of one’s inner chatter can increase. although thankfully my inner life is calmer and more muted than i had imagined. and of course my imagination is more surprising and unruly than ever.
this condition has created an unexpected hiatus in the month of momentum. but perhaps it is actually a positive pause. i was perhaps propelling myself forward too far too fast rather than allowing myself to listen to my inner music and dance ahead at my own pace.
speaking of infiltration, a dear friend and her visiting mum came over last night and let me feed them. as usual when trapped home by illness, i expand my horizons by cooking. (and they brought baked goods which are always welcome!) it was lovely to have their company, but the whispering left me in pain and frustrated to tears by my lack of improvement. i found myself in tears again this morning when i realized i still couldn’t speak, but then reminded myself to keep things in perspective. a friend with asthma suggested that i imagine i am a french-indochinese lady in an opium den while i am nebulizing to make it more pleasant. i thought it a good suggestion…. so perspective – i am fortunate, this too shall pass, and i can listen to a neighbour play the flute on a sunny day. perseverance furthers. that applies to striving for justice as well. to borrow from tennyson’s ulysses – to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
it’s curious how when all other sounds are muted, the volume of one’s inner chatter can increase. although thankfully my inner life is calmer and more muted than i had imagined. and of course my imagination is more surprising and unruly than ever.
this condition has created an unexpected hiatus in the month of momentum. but perhaps it is actually a positive pause. i was perhaps propelling myself forward too far too fast rather than allowing myself to listen to my inner music and dance ahead at my own pace.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
mathematics of freedom
the last time i was silent for three days, it was self-imposed. i was on a silent yoga retreat in northern california several years ago with a beloved sister-friend. she found it hard to be together and not be speaking, saying it felt as though we were in a fight. i didn’t feel the same (i don’t think we could ever have a fight even if we tried) and found myself absorbed in all the emotions the silence dredged up from within me. i wrote an essay about that and submitted it to some yoga magazine. but they weren’t interested. i think they were more interested on inspiration and enlightenment, less concerned with processing unruly emotions amid the redwoods. (shouldn’t there be space for both?) while i’m thinking about silence and processing both, will share that essay below.* thinking of this also has me thinking that i should try to do yoga later today. except that i am not meant to breathe deeply except into the nebulizer or do any real exercise. hmmm. maybe modified asanas.
in the meanwhile, i would be remiss if i did not note that the us-china human rights dialogues resumed last week in washington. from what i’ve heard so far, and i’ll learn more this weekend, it sounds as though it was a positive opening. this was the first dialogue since 2008, and the one before that was in 2002. and apparently a broad range of topics were discussed and the exchanges were frank. both sides committed to another round in beijing in 2011. the rule of law figured prominently. sandra day o’connor hosted the chinese delegation at the supreme court and apparently spoke very movingly about the important role that lawyers play in American society, and in the criminal justice system, the importance the US attaches to the independence of the judiciary, the independence of lawyers, the importance of pro bono representation. comments from those who were there suggested that the chinese guests undoubtedly got a sense that these values are pretty deeply imbued in our society. (on a complete side note related to the supreme court, i am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of there being three female justices!) all in all, i am hopeful that the resumption of this dialogue and the commitment to regularize it will have positive outcomes for the rule of law and then some.
in a book i was reading recently about the rule of law, there was a great discussion about “thin” v. “thick” understandings of the rule of law. “thin” being an understanding such that the laws – irrespective of their content – are adhered to or enforced. this focuses on rule of law simply as what is dictated by political authority or issued by the state. Under this minimalist approach, the third reich could be considered as having respected the rule of law because in terms of system and statute, the state functioned by the letter of the law. yet that “law” included provisions for genocide, which somehow doesn’t sit well when we think about “rule of law”. indeed, it is hard to view a state which savagely represses or persecutes sections of its people as observing the rule of law, even if the transport of the persecuted minority to the concentration camp or the compulsory exposure of female children on the mountainside is the subject of detailed laws duly enacted and scrupulously observed. the rule of law ought to amount to more. the “thick” understanding of the rule of law provides as much, embracing the protection of human rights as within its scope. this is not a universally accepted understanding of the rule of law, but i believe that one day it will be. our contemporary (and continuing) acceptance of the universality of human rights requires no less.
a final thought that caught in my mind of late. from spinoza, unsurprisingly: law is the mathematics of freedom. perhaps, in a sense, so is silence.
*ahem (keep in mind that this was ages ago):
Anger Through Asana
The anger was overwhelming. It raced through my entire body in electric steaks of deep purple and throbbing orange. I was furious. And then furious about being furious. Other people went on silent yoga retreats in order to be overwhelmed by waves of bliss, to be lit from within by an enduring, poignant sense of the ineffable. Instead, I was just wrought with intense anger. I opened an eye to see if anyone else in the meditation hall had noticed that I was trembling with the strain of containing it. I wanted to shout so loud the windows shattered. I wanted to tear my clothes off to release, to let these furies out. I could almost see them, awful, angry witches flying around through my veins, maniacally laughing. I wanted to bleed. Just to get them out of my system. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my fucking breath.
The waves of nausea began. I was so angry I was sick. I seriously thought that I was going to throw up on my yoga mat. I wondered whether I needed to make a run for the bathroom. Damn you, furies! Get out of here. “OM SHANTI!,” I shouted in my mind. I sighed, probably a little too audibly. But I didn’t care. I was drowning in a twister of rage, with angry witches having taken control of my mind and body. I thought this counted as a crisis and could justify a little noise. It was taking all my will and self-restraint not to allow the terrible cries in my soul to escape.
I tried to reason with myself. I told myself I could manage it, that I needn’t let this anger make me sick. I attempted to step back and observe these emotions, without judgment or attachment, to free myself from riding along with the furies (damn their cackling) on their terrible flight through me. But they were moving so fast. I frantically recalled the visualization exercise our yoga teacher had taught us a few days prior. I took a deep breath and began to gather all of that wretched throbbing anger together and just look at it. The furies cried out awfully as they were caught and collected. Their cries became groans as they melded together into an awful, smoldering mass of anger. I could see it before me in my mind. Keeping the anger together took almost as much strength as collecting it. I was surely shaking by now. But I knew what I had to do.
I envisioned myself holding the awful orb. I placed us on the edge of a very high, clear cliff. I walked to the edge with the smoldering, melded furies. I peered down to be sure I couldn’t see the bottom of this canyon. I didn’t want them coming apart, finding their brooms and flying back up into my blood. Satisfied that I was at the end of the world, in one last burst of strength, I pushed the anger off. I dusted off my palms, turned and did not look back. I tried to focus on my breath again, but was having a hard time. At least, I consoled myself, I hadn’t gone all the way to India to get angry. If I wasn’t going to find bliss, may as well not find it in California. At least I’d saved on airfare.
This dramatic internal struggle took place on a silent yoga retreat in Northern California. We were ensconced in a charming Tibetan monastery and retreat center in the redwood forest. It was remote and peaceful. My blackberry was safely hibernating in a cozy, simply furnished blue room. I had not come here to get angry. Although I doubt that I could have articulated why exactly I had come. Perhaps that was the problem. I had come on a whim. Without clear purpose, the furies had swooped in and caught me unawares. Vultures, really. But that’s what you get for not dealing.
What I had never dealt was with how angry I was at my unfaithful ex-fiancé. This was quite plain to me while I carefully stood up as the meditation session came to a close. I crouched first, leaning forward off my meditation cushion, and looked at the neat purple texture on my yoga mat. I picked at a place where there was a small tear. Yes, I thought to myself, this is what you get for not dealing. I gingerly stood up, staying silent and avoiding eye contact as per the rules of this retreat, and made my way to breakfast.
As I ate, I wondered where all of this was coming from. I was not an angry person by nature, and I did my bit of continuously trying to cultivate compassion. Even amid all of the addictive cycles of passion, betrayal, pain and his “Hail Mary” grand gestures, I never really got angry at my fiancé. I sobbed so hard I came apart and spent the night a dark blue puddle of despair on the floor, but then I was feeling sorry for myself. I screamed so inconsolably I lost my voice for days, but then I was frustrated. I punched the air. I punched the wall. I punched myself. Once, I punched him. But then I was so lost inside my hurt I was blindly throwing punches to find it outside myself. I considered cutting myself, but then I was trying to find somewhere to direct the pain. I considered throwing myself in front of a public bus, but then I was blaming myself. I lost my breath, lost my way, lost weight, lost myself. But I never really got angry.
Perhaps I had never allowed myself to get angry. The anger had been there, though. Focusing on my breath allowed me find it. An invisible undercurrent of rage had been swelling inside me for years. It took the discipline of silence and asana to compel me to turn inward and see it. And be swallowed by it. This was not what I had come here for. Once I considered it, I could see that I had come to this retreat to take a break from being held hostage by this relationship. To escape the intricate and dark cage I had helped to create, and commune with the bigger picture, even if only for a long weekend. Yes, I was still with him. I had given the ring back. He had recently moved out. But yet somehow, I was still with him.
I called him “Bright Eyes.” He called me “Brighter.” He was charming, and charmed. His was an incongruous personal history. The kind of story that leaves you immediately impressed and allows you to believe in America. He was attractive and self-confident, a natural networker and social host. He liked to party. The first time I kissed him and looked into his bright brown eyes, I knew I was in trouble.
But I never thought that I would stay in trouble so long. Something fell off the shelf inside me early into our relationship and it threw me off balance for five years. I did not truly sense this imbalance until I started practicing yoga consistently, a process which began with my agreeing to go on this silent yoga retreat with a friend. Sure I had dabbled in yoga before, but never in a serious or sustained way. I was not practicing at all when she asked, but I agreed without giving it much thought.
A few weeks before the retreat, I injured my foot while running. It was a very frustrating injury. I was constantly in pain, meekly limping around and miserable. I certainly couldn’t run and so I decided I ought to try a yoga class to make sure that I could still go on the retreat. I went to a yoga studio near my apartment that I’d walked by numerous times and had always meant to try. But it took a torn muscle in my left foot to actually get me off the street and into class.
As I slowly limped down the sidewalk en route to the studio on a cold, grey, wet February day, I cursed my luck. “God,” I wailed inside, “I wish I could just cut this foot off!” I made it up the stairs and settled onto my mat in a warm, lofty, embracing wooden space. I lay back on my mat and closed my eyes. It wasn’t until the teacher brought us together with the opening Om that I noticed the woman on the mat in front of mine. She did not have a left foot. In fact, she did not have a leg below her left knee and her prosthetic was neatly stacked against the wall beside her mat. I thought of my careless thought in the street and my heart danced a tornado ballet. I placed my hands in prayer in front of my heart and told God that I was humbled.
I have been practicing yoga at this studio since that humbling moment. I was able to get through class that day, and the next, and go on the retreat. Practicing even helped heal my injured foot. More importantly, practicing yoga began the process that would heal my heart. A process that I did not even know I was looking for until I found myself about to throw up on a yoga mat in a meditation hall in a monastery in the woods.
I first left my ex-fiancé a few years before that moment. I knew then that leaving him was the right thing to do. I had narrowly survived a nervous breakdown; I had thought about throwing myself in front of a bus. I had burned myself up – I was emaciated and exhausted and hollow. This was shortly after he had confirmed his infidelity for the first time. I broke. And I left him. My leaving didn’t last then. And it didn’t last the next six or seven times.
I didn’t seem to have the strength to stay gone. I always promised myself and my friends that this was it – it was over, I was never going back. But I did. Too many times I did. He would return with his charming words laced with heroin. He would return with flowers and poetry, and songs written in Spanish, promises of happily ever after, detailed lists of how he would love me, champagne kisses, jewelry and art. I look into those bright brown eyes and become intoxicated. The initial high was always so good. But the crashes only got worse. I lost a little bit of myself as I shattered each time it all came tumbling, stumbling down.
And then he came back with an engagement ring. When he proposed we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for a few months. I was in a new city, with a new phone number, a new job, a new beginning. It was not three weeks into my renaissance, and he had returned with the ring. We met on the street. Seeing him took the wind out of me. We walked to a park. We sat. He started reading something he’d prepared. He said so much. He presented the ring. He wanted to make it right.
When I saw the diamond flashing in the summer sun, I was torn equally in two. One part of me wanted to turn on my heel, walk away, and never ever look back. Another wanted to fall into his arms forever. Instead, I was stuck. I stood, unable to decide between these two equally strong impulses. It was agonizing. But I somehow couldn’t move.
I said yes a few hours later. And we were high for awhile. But of course the euphoria slowly began to evaporate until I was upset enough to give back the ring. I told him that this was not the kind of engagement I wanted, that this was not how it was supposed to feel. We agreed that we still wanted to be together, to make it work. We agreed that we wouldn’t get engaged again until I could say to my friends “he is so good to me,” and mean it. He wanted to hang the ring somewhere we could see it, to remind us of what we were working towards. But I didn’t want to look at it, so I just told him to keep it.
I had given him the ring back about six months before I nearly threw up in that silent meditation hall. He had just moved in with a friend of his who was a notorious playboy and a wild partier. His own nights had become longer and more intense. He was always out, always wasted, always unreliable. I got a cat to have something to direct all of my love towards. Although my roommate was highly allergic, she later told me she let me get the cat because she sensed how desperately I needed this small creature. I needed to get lost in loving something. It couldn’t be him. And I wasn’t ready for it to be me.
After breakfast that retreat morning, I started to feel agitated again. I decided to take my silent, meditative self for a slow walk in the redwood forest that surrounded the monastery. The woods were majestic and powerful, and I hoped they could help me still my stormy mind. I tried to get lost in the beauty around me. But I was flooded with images of us. I was tossed recklessly about by waves of regret, hope, pain, tenderness, and anger until I was seasick. I finally turned off the path and pushed deeper into the forest, walking faster as I did so, looking within and without for something upon which to shore myself. But the emotions would not cease. Until suddenly I stopped walking, leaned against a tree, and threw up my oatmeal in anger. At least it had not happened in the meditation hall.
I remained angry for a large portion of that retreat. There were more furies I had to deal with. But I eventually threw them all off the end of the world. Sometimes wrestling them off one by one. It was exhausting. So I didn’t have much time for enlightenment. When we started speaking again on the final morning of the retreat, we were all asked to share what we had experienced in the silence. But I kept my anger to myself. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to explain that I was still with him, still in this thing.
I ended it (again) a few months later. And went back (again) a few months after that. I continued my asana practice. Sometimes I got angry. Sometimes I cried in child’s pose, sobbed in shoulder stand. But I faced the emotions like those furies in the forest. Then one day I ended it for good. And I never looked back. I am no longer angry. I am still practicing yoga. I am still awed by the emotions my asana and meditation practice allow me to discover. And I am still humbled by what I am learning.
in the meanwhile, i would be remiss if i did not note that the us-china human rights dialogues resumed last week in washington. from what i’ve heard so far, and i’ll learn more this weekend, it sounds as though it was a positive opening. this was the first dialogue since 2008, and the one before that was in 2002. and apparently a broad range of topics were discussed and the exchanges were frank. both sides committed to another round in beijing in 2011. the rule of law figured prominently. sandra day o’connor hosted the chinese delegation at the supreme court and apparently spoke very movingly about the important role that lawyers play in American society, and in the criminal justice system, the importance the US attaches to the independence of the judiciary, the independence of lawyers, the importance of pro bono representation. comments from those who were there suggested that the chinese guests undoubtedly got a sense that these values are pretty deeply imbued in our society. (on a complete side note related to the supreme court, i am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of there being three female justices!) all in all, i am hopeful that the resumption of this dialogue and the commitment to regularize it will have positive outcomes for the rule of law and then some.
in a book i was reading recently about the rule of law, there was a great discussion about “thin” v. “thick” understandings of the rule of law. “thin” being an understanding such that the laws – irrespective of their content – are adhered to or enforced. this focuses on rule of law simply as what is dictated by political authority or issued by the state. Under this minimalist approach, the third reich could be considered as having respected the rule of law because in terms of system and statute, the state functioned by the letter of the law. yet that “law” included provisions for genocide, which somehow doesn’t sit well when we think about “rule of law”. indeed, it is hard to view a state which savagely represses or persecutes sections of its people as observing the rule of law, even if the transport of the persecuted minority to the concentration camp or the compulsory exposure of female children on the mountainside is the subject of detailed laws duly enacted and scrupulously observed. the rule of law ought to amount to more. the “thick” understanding of the rule of law provides as much, embracing the protection of human rights as within its scope. this is not a universally accepted understanding of the rule of law, but i believe that one day it will be. our contemporary (and continuing) acceptance of the universality of human rights requires no less.
a final thought that caught in my mind of late. from spinoza, unsurprisingly: law is the mathematics of freedom. perhaps, in a sense, so is silence.
*ahem (keep in mind that this was ages ago):
Anger Through Asana
The anger was overwhelming. It raced through my entire body in electric steaks of deep purple and throbbing orange. I was furious. And then furious about being furious. Other people went on silent yoga retreats in order to be overwhelmed by waves of bliss, to be lit from within by an enduring, poignant sense of the ineffable. Instead, I was just wrought with intense anger. I opened an eye to see if anyone else in the meditation hall had noticed that I was trembling with the strain of containing it. I wanted to shout so loud the windows shattered. I wanted to tear my clothes off to release, to let these furies out. I could almost see them, awful, angry witches flying around through my veins, maniacally laughing. I wanted to bleed. Just to get them out of my system. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my fucking breath.
The waves of nausea began. I was so angry I was sick. I seriously thought that I was going to throw up on my yoga mat. I wondered whether I needed to make a run for the bathroom. Damn you, furies! Get out of here. “OM SHANTI!,” I shouted in my mind. I sighed, probably a little too audibly. But I didn’t care. I was drowning in a twister of rage, with angry witches having taken control of my mind and body. I thought this counted as a crisis and could justify a little noise. It was taking all my will and self-restraint not to allow the terrible cries in my soul to escape.
I tried to reason with myself. I told myself I could manage it, that I needn’t let this anger make me sick. I attempted to step back and observe these emotions, without judgment or attachment, to free myself from riding along with the furies (damn their cackling) on their terrible flight through me. But they were moving so fast. I frantically recalled the visualization exercise our yoga teacher had taught us a few days prior. I took a deep breath and began to gather all of that wretched throbbing anger together and just look at it. The furies cried out awfully as they were caught and collected. Their cries became groans as they melded together into an awful, smoldering mass of anger. I could see it before me in my mind. Keeping the anger together took almost as much strength as collecting it. I was surely shaking by now. But I knew what I had to do.
I envisioned myself holding the awful orb. I placed us on the edge of a very high, clear cliff. I walked to the edge with the smoldering, melded furies. I peered down to be sure I couldn’t see the bottom of this canyon. I didn’t want them coming apart, finding their brooms and flying back up into my blood. Satisfied that I was at the end of the world, in one last burst of strength, I pushed the anger off. I dusted off my palms, turned and did not look back. I tried to focus on my breath again, but was having a hard time. At least, I consoled myself, I hadn’t gone all the way to India to get angry. If I wasn’t going to find bliss, may as well not find it in California. At least I’d saved on airfare.
This dramatic internal struggle took place on a silent yoga retreat in Northern California. We were ensconced in a charming Tibetan monastery and retreat center in the redwood forest. It was remote and peaceful. My blackberry was safely hibernating in a cozy, simply furnished blue room. I had not come here to get angry. Although I doubt that I could have articulated why exactly I had come. Perhaps that was the problem. I had come on a whim. Without clear purpose, the furies had swooped in and caught me unawares. Vultures, really. But that’s what you get for not dealing.
What I had never dealt was with how angry I was at my unfaithful ex-fiancé. This was quite plain to me while I carefully stood up as the meditation session came to a close. I crouched first, leaning forward off my meditation cushion, and looked at the neat purple texture on my yoga mat. I picked at a place where there was a small tear. Yes, I thought to myself, this is what you get for not dealing. I gingerly stood up, staying silent and avoiding eye contact as per the rules of this retreat, and made my way to breakfast.
As I ate, I wondered where all of this was coming from. I was not an angry person by nature, and I did my bit of continuously trying to cultivate compassion. Even amid all of the addictive cycles of passion, betrayal, pain and his “Hail Mary” grand gestures, I never really got angry at my fiancé. I sobbed so hard I came apart and spent the night a dark blue puddle of despair on the floor, but then I was feeling sorry for myself. I screamed so inconsolably I lost my voice for days, but then I was frustrated. I punched the air. I punched the wall. I punched myself. Once, I punched him. But then I was so lost inside my hurt I was blindly throwing punches to find it outside myself. I considered cutting myself, but then I was trying to find somewhere to direct the pain. I considered throwing myself in front of a public bus, but then I was blaming myself. I lost my breath, lost my way, lost weight, lost myself. But I never really got angry.
Perhaps I had never allowed myself to get angry. The anger had been there, though. Focusing on my breath allowed me find it. An invisible undercurrent of rage had been swelling inside me for years. It took the discipline of silence and asana to compel me to turn inward and see it. And be swallowed by it. This was not what I had come here for. Once I considered it, I could see that I had come to this retreat to take a break from being held hostage by this relationship. To escape the intricate and dark cage I had helped to create, and commune with the bigger picture, even if only for a long weekend. Yes, I was still with him. I had given the ring back. He had recently moved out. But yet somehow, I was still with him.
I called him “Bright Eyes.” He called me “Brighter.” He was charming, and charmed. His was an incongruous personal history. The kind of story that leaves you immediately impressed and allows you to believe in America. He was attractive and self-confident, a natural networker and social host. He liked to party. The first time I kissed him and looked into his bright brown eyes, I knew I was in trouble.
But I never thought that I would stay in trouble so long. Something fell off the shelf inside me early into our relationship and it threw me off balance for five years. I did not truly sense this imbalance until I started practicing yoga consistently, a process which began with my agreeing to go on this silent yoga retreat with a friend. Sure I had dabbled in yoga before, but never in a serious or sustained way. I was not practicing at all when she asked, but I agreed without giving it much thought.
A few weeks before the retreat, I injured my foot while running. It was a very frustrating injury. I was constantly in pain, meekly limping around and miserable. I certainly couldn’t run and so I decided I ought to try a yoga class to make sure that I could still go on the retreat. I went to a yoga studio near my apartment that I’d walked by numerous times and had always meant to try. But it took a torn muscle in my left foot to actually get me off the street and into class.
As I slowly limped down the sidewalk en route to the studio on a cold, grey, wet February day, I cursed my luck. “God,” I wailed inside, “I wish I could just cut this foot off!” I made it up the stairs and settled onto my mat in a warm, lofty, embracing wooden space. I lay back on my mat and closed my eyes. It wasn’t until the teacher brought us together with the opening Om that I noticed the woman on the mat in front of mine. She did not have a left foot. In fact, she did not have a leg below her left knee and her prosthetic was neatly stacked against the wall beside her mat. I thought of my careless thought in the street and my heart danced a tornado ballet. I placed my hands in prayer in front of my heart and told God that I was humbled.
I have been practicing yoga at this studio since that humbling moment. I was able to get through class that day, and the next, and go on the retreat. Practicing even helped heal my injured foot. More importantly, practicing yoga began the process that would heal my heart. A process that I did not even know I was looking for until I found myself about to throw up on a yoga mat in a meditation hall in a monastery in the woods.
I first left my ex-fiancé a few years before that moment. I knew then that leaving him was the right thing to do. I had narrowly survived a nervous breakdown; I had thought about throwing myself in front of a bus. I had burned myself up – I was emaciated and exhausted and hollow. This was shortly after he had confirmed his infidelity for the first time. I broke. And I left him. My leaving didn’t last then. And it didn’t last the next six or seven times.
I didn’t seem to have the strength to stay gone. I always promised myself and my friends that this was it – it was over, I was never going back. But I did. Too many times I did. He would return with his charming words laced with heroin. He would return with flowers and poetry, and songs written in Spanish, promises of happily ever after, detailed lists of how he would love me, champagne kisses, jewelry and art. I look into those bright brown eyes and become intoxicated. The initial high was always so good. But the crashes only got worse. I lost a little bit of myself as I shattered each time it all came tumbling, stumbling down.
And then he came back with an engagement ring. When he proposed we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for a few months. I was in a new city, with a new phone number, a new job, a new beginning. It was not three weeks into my renaissance, and he had returned with the ring. We met on the street. Seeing him took the wind out of me. We walked to a park. We sat. He started reading something he’d prepared. He said so much. He presented the ring. He wanted to make it right.
When I saw the diamond flashing in the summer sun, I was torn equally in two. One part of me wanted to turn on my heel, walk away, and never ever look back. Another wanted to fall into his arms forever. Instead, I was stuck. I stood, unable to decide between these two equally strong impulses. It was agonizing. But I somehow couldn’t move.
I said yes a few hours later. And we were high for awhile. But of course the euphoria slowly began to evaporate until I was upset enough to give back the ring. I told him that this was not the kind of engagement I wanted, that this was not how it was supposed to feel. We agreed that we still wanted to be together, to make it work. We agreed that we wouldn’t get engaged again until I could say to my friends “he is so good to me,” and mean it. He wanted to hang the ring somewhere we could see it, to remind us of what we were working towards. But I didn’t want to look at it, so I just told him to keep it.
I had given him the ring back about six months before I nearly threw up in that silent meditation hall. He had just moved in with a friend of his who was a notorious playboy and a wild partier. His own nights had become longer and more intense. He was always out, always wasted, always unreliable. I got a cat to have something to direct all of my love towards. Although my roommate was highly allergic, she later told me she let me get the cat because she sensed how desperately I needed this small creature. I needed to get lost in loving something. It couldn’t be him. And I wasn’t ready for it to be me.
After breakfast that retreat morning, I started to feel agitated again. I decided to take my silent, meditative self for a slow walk in the redwood forest that surrounded the monastery. The woods were majestic and powerful, and I hoped they could help me still my stormy mind. I tried to get lost in the beauty around me. But I was flooded with images of us. I was tossed recklessly about by waves of regret, hope, pain, tenderness, and anger until I was seasick. I finally turned off the path and pushed deeper into the forest, walking faster as I did so, looking within and without for something upon which to shore myself. But the emotions would not cease. Until suddenly I stopped walking, leaned against a tree, and threw up my oatmeal in anger. At least it had not happened in the meditation hall.
I remained angry for a large portion of that retreat. There were more furies I had to deal with. But I eventually threw them all off the end of the world. Sometimes wrestling them off one by one. It was exhausting. So I didn’t have much time for enlightenment. When we started speaking again on the final morning of the retreat, we were all asked to share what we had experienced in the silence. But I kept my anger to myself. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to explain that I was still with him, still in this thing.
I ended it (again) a few months later. And went back (again) a few months after that. I continued my asana practice. Sometimes I got angry. Sometimes I cried in child’s pose, sobbed in shoulder stand. But I faced the emotions like those furies in the forest. Then one day I ended it for good. And I never looked back. I am no longer angry. I am still practicing yoga. I am still awed by the emotions my asana and meditation practice allow me to discover. And I am still humbled by what I am learning.
Friday, May 14, 2010
unexpected perspective
i was walking home down the hutong just now when the beer lady biked past, calling out her goods in a singsong rhythm - mai pijiu, eh, mai pijiu, eh, mai pijiu - selling beer, eh, selling beer, eh, selling beer. it was somehow so soothing and simple that it made me stop walking and smile. until that moment, i had been feeling overwhelmingly exhausted. the cheerless grey skies and light drizzle hadn't been helping my mood. illuminating how in an instant all of one's internal clouds can scatter, even if we have scant control over the actual skies (workers in beijing's weather modification office of course excepted from this statement). the beer lady unwittingly re-energized me for the evening.*
yesterday evening i caught up with a dear friend briefly in beijing for work. reminded me again of the enduring value of friendship and the intimacy that can only come with time and consistent compassion. she delivered some difficult news, which contributed to my feeling tired and distraught today. but, as usual, something small and unexpected - the beer lady! - put it all in perspective.
my flatmate asked me this morning to describe myself in one word. i'm not sure why. i answered without taking time to think and my answer was "hopeful". i think that's accurate. and with that, i ought to sashay hopefully off into the some enchanted evening that is tonight.
*although i confess that the massive coffee i was carrying along may have also had something to do with it. in my state of overwhelming exhaustion, i broke my rule about no afternoon coffees. but so goes the world. rules were made to be broken and moderation is overrated and all the rest.
yesterday evening i caught up with a dear friend briefly in beijing for work. reminded me again of the enduring value of friendship and the intimacy that can only come with time and consistent compassion. she delivered some difficult news, which contributed to my feeling tired and distraught today. but, as usual, something small and unexpected - the beer lady! - put it all in perspective.
my flatmate asked me this morning to describe myself in one word. i'm not sure why. i answered without taking time to think and my answer was "hopeful". i think that's accurate. and with that, i ought to sashay hopefully off into the some enchanted evening that is tonight.
*although i confess that the massive coffee i was carrying along may have also had something to do with it. in my state of overwhelming exhaustion, i broke my rule about no afternoon coffees. but so goes the world. rules were made to be broken and moderation is overrated and all the rest.
silence
so i am compelled to silence for a few days. doctor's orders. i have laryngitis. and some sort of viral infection in my throat. and maybe strep. i have three separate medications one of which needs to be breathed in via a nebulizer twice a day. and i am not meant to speak at all. apparently there is some risk of doing permanent damage to my vocal cords. so, silence. it’s actually an interesting prospect – a marked breath from my usual highly articulated, overly verbose life. i see this as an opportunity for stillness and introspection.*
although perhaps i ought to also see this as implying i’d best reconsider my policy of simply ignoring it when i am sick.** (i have had a cold or something like it for basically two weeks. but i, as per usual, just kept on keeping on until i couldn’t speak – literally.) then again, the laryngitis may have nothing to do with said policy. i somehow never seem to manage to just catch a common cold, but always end up with some highly bizarre illness or injury. i was always the kid in p.e. class who would somehow manage to get hit on the head with a basketball. (this was not an uncommon occurrence.) i have also managed to get sick after being stabbed with the fin of a dead catfish while walking on the beach in bali and digging at something shiny in the sand with my foot. (dead catfish’s fins are full of toxins and best avoided, just fyi.) in college i endured a puncture wound on a big toe inflicted by deadly stilettos at a tito puente concert. (i was so lost in the music i didn’t even notice until i realized i was living bloody footprints. (and we couldn’t afford to drink so i was literally drunk on jazz. i love that feeling!) while shopping at a luxury food market in DC in preparation for a 30th birthday celebration weekend some friends were throwing me at a wonderful farm in maryland, i managed to somehow get a thick, rusty nail embedded into my heel.*** i have also managed to tear a cornea after a bug fly into my eye and needed to have my upper jaw worked back into place after a fall. i suppose, in comparison, laryngitis is nothing to be coughed at (pun intended).
i do think that i am partially to blame for this current ailment. i didn’t slow down while sick (see, supra, my policy of ignoring illness) and had a very fun weekend. though not as fun as everyone assumes – when my voice started becoming hoarse on saturday, multiple people asked me whether i was out until 6 am singing karaoke on friday. i was not. i went to a very mellow dinner and then hung out a friend’s courtyard. i did, however, hold a fish (gently). so maybe that had something to do with it. i was out rather late on saturday – by then i had mistaken the hoarseness for a chance to sound like a husky, silky jazz singer for a day. but it was still all fairly tame. writing this recalls my perhaps most bizarre injury back from my days of riding my wild horses in shanghai.
i remember when found myself sitting in a doctor’s office in shanghai with what can only be called a nightlife injury. “the red line moving up your leg is not a good sign,” the shanghainese doctor said, frowning. “it is either a simple spread of the infection in your foot or blood poisoning. this is not something to mess around with.” i nodded gravely; nothing about his manner was messing around. he explained that if it were blood poisoning, I would be dead by the time that charming little red line reached my heart. the doctor called for the nurse and informed me i needed to be put on intravenous antibiotics immediately. yowsa, I thought to myself, drugs straight into my bloodstream all as the result of a blister on my toe and too much dancing.
then i looked down at my infected foot. the offending toe was now the size of my fist, my foot was size of a medium-sized eggplant, and there was that unmistakable red line creeping up my shin. this was all the fault of a pair of new shoes and a night out at a new hip-hop club. a blister on my toe opened as the night wore on and got infected somewhere amid the sounds of booming jay z, whispering japanese hipsters, chain-smoking euros, and screaming young shanghainese. i hadn’t noticed the slow swelling until the champagne cocktails wore off, and I awoke to discover my foot had ballooned overnight and my walking was compromised.
i wasn’t sure how to explain my champagne-soaked shanghai days to the doctor, so didn’t really have a good answer for him when he asked why i’d waited so long to come in. “ummm, i thought it might just go away?,” i feebly offered. he remained silent. i think he expected me to continue. but what could i say except i’d been in bed all day after a big night out? wasn’t that enough? was it possible, i wondered to myself, that not everyone in this city was still living as though the swinging jazz age never ended?
the nurse came with the i.v. they put the needle in my arm and left me to contemplate the ceiling as the antibiotics seeped into my blood. when i was ready to be unhooked, the doctor explained that i would have to come back every six to eight hours for more antibiotics. taking out the needle and re-inserting it each time would be cumbersome, the doctor said. tnstead, he calmly informed me, they were just going to leave the needle in my vein and wrap my arm in a bandage while i was away from the clinic. he must have seen the horror in my eyes, because he noted that this would save them having to re-find the vein each time and would make my visits faster. even so, i was aghast. the doctor smiled and said he’d see me later.
having a needle in your arm at the crook of your elbow for any significant amount of time is an incredibly strange, softly agonizing sensation. i could feel the needle in my vein with the slightest movement, and had irrational, paranoid visions of a sudden move jerking the needle out of my vein or causing major injury to myself as i rolled over in my sleep. i thought the bandaging made me look tough and people were suitably shocked and horrified when i explained that i had needle semi-permanently in my vein. on the bright side, i completely forgot about my foot because i was so distracted by the needle in my arm. on the less bright side, i had a needle in my arm.
i somehow found myself thinking about that experience in shanghai this afternoon while inhaling medicine through the nebulizer and waving at our ayi. ahh, a few days of silence and introspection. here i come!
*this is not the same as over-thinking, i swear.
**i realize this policy has also at times applied to injuries. about a year ago at this time, on a blue sky morning, i decided to go for a run. i had barely made it out of my door before i managed to trip over a well-hidden sprinkler head and bruise and batter myself. the bump on my knee rapidly swelled to the size and shape of a baseball and my elbows were bleeding rather profusely. but i brushed myself off, hobbled home, had a shower, and went about the day. my boyfriend at the time, little trouble, suggested that i should probably go to hospital. but i said no. my elbow continued bleeding and when there were droplets of blood near the printer, my office manager politely gave me a plaster. that night i had a conference call which ended around 10:00 pm. as i got off the phone, little trouble wanted to have a look at my elbow. as soon as he peeled back the plaster, i knew i was in trouble. he said we needed to go to the emergency room right away, that it was still bleeding, there was a deep gash, and i clearly needed stitches. even then i tried to argue, saying that i had a doctor's appointment the following morning (which i did) and i could just deal with it then. eventually he won (although not after i called both my sister (an ER doctor) and my ba (my father) to get their opinions, which i think infuriated little trouble). i did need stitches, but my knee was ok (although i wasn't able to run for many months). some might find it strange to be in the ER at 11:00 pm for an injury that occurred at 7:30 am, but it seemed very natural to me.
***in a very calm manner i informed my friends of the situation and there were some moments of panic. then i instructed one friend to go inside and search for a first aid kit, another to look for ice, and a third to pull the nail out because i didn’t think i could do that. everyone executed brilliantly. we considered whether to go to the emergency room, but decided against it. i wanted to get started on the drive to the farm, didn’t want to ruin the weekend, and was hungry (and a rusty nail was not going to stand between me and a good meal). we also reasoned that it was a friday evening in SE washington and if we did show up in the emergency room, we would clearly be lower in priority than the gang shootings surely trickling in at that point. and we had so much fresh produce! we laughed at the idea of turning up in the waiting room with our fresh seafood and gourmet cheeses – humboldt fog, anyone? i hobbled around for the weekend and went in for a tetanus shot on monday morning after realizing that i was not, as i had assumed, up on my tetanus vaccinations. the doctor who looked at my foot said that i was incredibly lucky because the nail had penetrated quite deeply and i was dangerously close to having done real damage. she asked why i hadn’t gone for treatment right away. i squirmed a little when i said i prioritized delicious cheese and the sunset over the potomac.
although perhaps i ought to also see this as implying i’d best reconsider my policy of simply ignoring it when i am sick.** (i have had a cold or something like it for basically two weeks. but i, as per usual, just kept on keeping on until i couldn’t speak – literally.) then again, the laryngitis may have nothing to do with said policy. i somehow never seem to manage to just catch a common cold, but always end up with some highly bizarre illness or injury. i was always the kid in p.e. class who would somehow manage to get hit on the head with a basketball. (this was not an uncommon occurrence.) i have also managed to get sick after being stabbed with the fin of a dead catfish while walking on the beach in bali and digging at something shiny in the sand with my foot. (dead catfish’s fins are full of toxins and best avoided, just fyi.) in college i endured a puncture wound on a big toe inflicted by deadly stilettos at a tito puente concert. (i was so lost in the music i didn’t even notice until i realized i was living bloody footprints. (and we couldn’t afford to drink so i was literally drunk on jazz. i love that feeling!) while shopping at a luxury food market in DC in preparation for a 30th birthday celebration weekend some friends were throwing me at a wonderful farm in maryland, i managed to somehow get a thick, rusty nail embedded into my heel.*** i have also managed to tear a cornea after a bug fly into my eye and needed to have my upper jaw worked back into place after a fall. i suppose, in comparison, laryngitis is nothing to be coughed at (pun intended).
i do think that i am partially to blame for this current ailment. i didn’t slow down while sick (see, supra, my policy of ignoring illness) and had a very fun weekend. though not as fun as everyone assumes – when my voice started becoming hoarse on saturday, multiple people asked me whether i was out until 6 am singing karaoke on friday. i was not. i went to a very mellow dinner and then hung out a friend’s courtyard. i did, however, hold a fish (gently). so maybe that had something to do with it. i was out rather late on saturday – by then i had mistaken the hoarseness for a chance to sound like a husky, silky jazz singer for a day. but it was still all fairly tame. writing this recalls my perhaps most bizarre injury back from my days of riding my wild horses in shanghai.
i remember when found myself sitting in a doctor’s office in shanghai with what can only be called a nightlife injury. “the red line moving up your leg is not a good sign,” the shanghainese doctor said, frowning. “it is either a simple spread of the infection in your foot or blood poisoning. this is not something to mess around with.” i nodded gravely; nothing about his manner was messing around. he explained that if it were blood poisoning, I would be dead by the time that charming little red line reached my heart. the doctor called for the nurse and informed me i needed to be put on intravenous antibiotics immediately. yowsa, I thought to myself, drugs straight into my bloodstream all as the result of a blister on my toe and too much dancing.
then i looked down at my infected foot. the offending toe was now the size of my fist, my foot was size of a medium-sized eggplant, and there was that unmistakable red line creeping up my shin. this was all the fault of a pair of new shoes and a night out at a new hip-hop club. a blister on my toe opened as the night wore on and got infected somewhere amid the sounds of booming jay z, whispering japanese hipsters, chain-smoking euros, and screaming young shanghainese. i hadn’t noticed the slow swelling until the champagne cocktails wore off, and I awoke to discover my foot had ballooned overnight and my walking was compromised.
i wasn’t sure how to explain my champagne-soaked shanghai days to the doctor, so didn’t really have a good answer for him when he asked why i’d waited so long to come in. “ummm, i thought it might just go away?,” i feebly offered. he remained silent. i think he expected me to continue. but what could i say except i’d been in bed all day after a big night out? wasn’t that enough? was it possible, i wondered to myself, that not everyone in this city was still living as though the swinging jazz age never ended?
the nurse came with the i.v. they put the needle in my arm and left me to contemplate the ceiling as the antibiotics seeped into my blood. when i was ready to be unhooked, the doctor explained that i would have to come back every six to eight hours for more antibiotics. taking out the needle and re-inserting it each time would be cumbersome, the doctor said. tnstead, he calmly informed me, they were just going to leave the needle in my vein and wrap my arm in a bandage while i was away from the clinic. he must have seen the horror in my eyes, because he noted that this would save them having to re-find the vein each time and would make my visits faster. even so, i was aghast. the doctor smiled and said he’d see me later.
having a needle in your arm at the crook of your elbow for any significant amount of time is an incredibly strange, softly agonizing sensation. i could feel the needle in my vein with the slightest movement, and had irrational, paranoid visions of a sudden move jerking the needle out of my vein or causing major injury to myself as i rolled over in my sleep. i thought the bandaging made me look tough and people were suitably shocked and horrified when i explained that i had needle semi-permanently in my vein. on the bright side, i completely forgot about my foot because i was so distracted by the needle in my arm. on the less bright side, i had a needle in my arm.
i somehow found myself thinking about that experience in shanghai this afternoon while inhaling medicine through the nebulizer and waving at our ayi. ahh, a few days of silence and introspection. here i come!
*this is not the same as over-thinking, i swear.
**i realize this policy has also at times applied to injuries. about a year ago at this time, on a blue sky morning, i decided to go for a run. i had barely made it out of my door before i managed to trip over a well-hidden sprinkler head and bruise and batter myself. the bump on my knee rapidly swelled to the size and shape of a baseball and my elbows were bleeding rather profusely. but i brushed myself off, hobbled home, had a shower, and went about the day. my boyfriend at the time, little trouble, suggested that i should probably go to hospital. but i said no. my elbow continued bleeding and when there were droplets of blood near the printer, my office manager politely gave me a plaster. that night i had a conference call which ended around 10:00 pm. as i got off the phone, little trouble wanted to have a look at my elbow. as soon as he peeled back the plaster, i knew i was in trouble. he said we needed to go to the emergency room right away, that it was still bleeding, there was a deep gash, and i clearly needed stitches. even then i tried to argue, saying that i had a doctor's appointment the following morning (which i did) and i could just deal with it then. eventually he won (although not after i called both my sister (an ER doctor) and my ba (my father) to get their opinions, which i think infuriated little trouble). i did need stitches, but my knee was ok (although i wasn't able to run for many months). some might find it strange to be in the ER at 11:00 pm for an injury that occurred at 7:30 am, but it seemed very natural to me.
***in a very calm manner i informed my friends of the situation and there were some moments of panic. then i instructed one friend to go inside and search for a first aid kit, another to look for ice, and a third to pull the nail out because i didn’t think i could do that. everyone executed brilliantly. we considered whether to go to the emergency room, but decided against it. i wanted to get started on the drive to the farm, didn’t want to ruin the weekend, and was hungry (and a rusty nail was not going to stand between me and a good meal). we also reasoned that it was a friday evening in SE washington and if we did show up in the emergency room, we would clearly be lower in priority than the gang shootings surely trickling in at that point. and we had so much fresh produce! we laughed at the idea of turning up in the waiting room with our fresh seafood and gourmet cheeses – humboldt fog, anyone? i hobbled around for the weekend and went in for a tetanus shot on monday morning after realizing that i was not, as i had assumed, up on my tetanus vaccinations. the doctor who looked at my foot said that i was incredibly lucky because the nail had penetrated quite deeply and i was dangerously close to having done real damage. she asked why i hadn’t gone for treatment right away. i squirmed a little when i said i prioritized delicious cheese and the sunset over the potomac.
Monday, May 10, 2010
sweet suppression
so i had to shake the glitter out of my hair swiftly on monday morning (while poor ayi was at home cleaning up the crime scene). on the very day that there was already a roundtable scheduled bringing together china's top public interest lawyers to discuss the seemingly tightening climate, we awoke to news of two more lawyers having had their licenses revoked for political reasons. this is just the latest in a string of instances of the license-renewal procedures being used to apply pressure to or punish lawyers who take on cases that the government deems sensitive or unfavourable. some argue that the intention is to intimidate the legal profession into advocating strictly within party lines (and presumably with the party's voice). in the case of tang jitian and liu wei, their efforts to represent a member of the banned spiritual movement falungong resulted in their being banned for life from practicing law. tang sees their punishment as a warning to other lawyes. ahh, sweet suppression. as described in an AP story:
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice posted separate notices Friday on its website announcing that Liu and Tang had lost their licenses. The notices said the pair had "disobeyed court personnel and disrupted order in the courtroom" during an April 2009 trial at the Luzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province.
The lawyers say they were illegally videotaped during the trial, interrupted repeatedly by the judge and ordered out of the courtroom by unidentified men. Tang and Liu eventually walked out of the courtroom after they objected to being videotaped — which is illegal in Chinese courtrooms — and the court descended into chaos.
in addition to the seeming illegality of the lawyers' treatment at trial, the process by which tang and liu's fates were decided did not comply with the requisite administrative procedures - such as providing the lawyers an opportunity to see the evidence against them (apparently a letter from the luzhou court to the beijing muncipal justice bureau recommending they be punished) - and is deeply disturbing.
as i see more and more of this happening, and am inspired by the courageous lawyers who continue to advocate for real justice nonetheless, i finally appreciate how suprression can slowly make one more radical. the government's attempt to divide the legal profession into "bad" rights-protective rabble-rousers and "good" commercial or uncontroversial public interest lawyers is a blow to the inegrity of the profession as a whole. all attorneys are rights protective. or should be, whether they are protecting corporate interests or freedom of religion. i see how this tactic can compel even a "good" lawyer to do a little "bad" rights work in order to highlight the incoherency and immorality of this divisive approach.
and yet, even amid the sweet suppression there remain moments of authentic sweetness. i realized this at the aforementioned roundtable. i believe it was martin luther king who said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. i have faith that he is right.
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice posted separate notices Friday on its website announcing that Liu and Tang had lost their licenses. The notices said the pair had "disobeyed court personnel and disrupted order in the courtroom" during an April 2009 trial at the Luzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province.
The lawyers say they were illegally videotaped during the trial, interrupted repeatedly by the judge and ordered out of the courtroom by unidentified men. Tang and Liu eventually walked out of the courtroom after they objected to being videotaped — which is illegal in Chinese courtrooms — and the court descended into chaos.
in addition to the seeming illegality of the lawyers' treatment at trial, the process by which tang and liu's fates were decided did not comply with the requisite administrative procedures - such as providing the lawyers an opportunity to see the evidence against them (apparently a letter from the luzhou court to the beijing muncipal justice bureau recommending they be punished) - and is deeply disturbing.
as i see more and more of this happening, and am inspired by the courageous lawyers who continue to advocate for real justice nonetheless, i finally appreciate how suprression can slowly make one more radical. the government's attempt to divide the legal profession into "bad" rights-protective rabble-rousers and "good" commercial or uncontroversial public interest lawyers is a blow to the inegrity of the profession as a whole. all attorneys are rights protective. or should be, whether they are protecting corporate interests or freedom of religion. i see how this tactic can compel even a "good" lawyer to do a little "bad" rights work in order to highlight the incoherency and immorality of this divisive approach.
and yet, even amid the sweet suppression there remain moments of authentic sweetness. i realized this at the aforementioned roundtable. i believe it was martin luther king who said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. i have faith that he is right.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
smells like teen spirit
so it smells like teen spirit in my flat at the moment. or something like it, anyway. so i've escaped to write from the tranquil space of a friend's tidy courtyard. our place looks like a crime scene. we had an outrageous rocker of a housewarming last night and i awoke to see that my gold stilettos were still gorgeously flung under a chair, where they landed after we pushed the couches back to make more room on the impromptu dance floor. i noted the red wine splattered across the floor like blood, the empty bottles and glasses everywhere, flowers strewn about like fallen soldiers, and great wilting hunks of cheese - the silent witnesses to it all. it was a grand soiree.
ostensibly* this is a blog about the rule of law and then some. not parties. although i suppose parties fall comfortably into the "and then some" category. nevertheless, i'll let the details stay with the cheese except to say that our signature cocktail - christened "momentum" - was a strawberry-liquor mash & champers and it was a smashing success. as was the sangria. and the ballroom-dancing to snoop dogg at 3 am. i can't help but delight in the details.**
as per my previous posts, life is delicious details. moments.
and momentum.
more on the rule of law later.
*i have a long relationship with that word. in grade four, i used it in a paper on paul revere (well, insofar as one wrote papers in grade four) and was very pleased with having looked it up. (i even remember the context: "ostensibly to buy supplies".) unfortunately my teacher just accused me of plagiarism. which stung.
**speaking of details, this is the actual exchange of sms messages between a friend who dared to think of not making it & yours truly from 11:00 - 12:30. oh and there was a massive downpour in the middle of the night. ahem:
friend: almost to your place, but pouring rain now... won't add to your wet crowd in the apt - heading to d lounge for a couple drinks if you all adjourn to somewhere else
meiling: you suck. we are waiting for you. hate you forever.
friend: really? i'll come over... but didn't think you really wanted wet additions to the party.
friend: it's a mess outside!
meiling: get it together
friend: ok - will come with four or five people in about half an hour. you'll still be going?
meiling: of course
friend: okay. see you soon!
meiling: whatever. still kind of barf that you didn't come here first.
friend:okay... next time then? or no text / no show? this seems better than both... we were there - at the corner of jingshan dong jie and hou jie and got out of cab to find it.... then rain came
meiling: bite me
friend: on the way now.
meiling: awesome
ostensibly* this is a blog about the rule of law and then some. not parties. although i suppose parties fall comfortably into the "and then some" category. nevertheless, i'll let the details stay with the cheese except to say that our signature cocktail - christened "momentum" - was a strawberry-liquor mash & champers and it was a smashing success. as was the sangria. and the ballroom-dancing to snoop dogg at 3 am. i can't help but delight in the details.**
as per my previous posts, life is delicious details. moments.
and momentum.
more on the rule of law later.
*i have a long relationship with that word. in grade four, i used it in a paper on paul revere (well, insofar as one wrote papers in grade four) and was very pleased with having looked it up. (i even remember the context: "ostensibly to buy supplies".) unfortunately my teacher just accused me of plagiarism. which stung.
**speaking of details, this is the actual exchange of sms messages between a friend who dared to think of not making it & yours truly from 11:00 - 12:30. oh and there was a massive downpour in the middle of the night. ahem:
friend: almost to your place, but pouring rain now... won't add to your wet crowd in the apt - heading to d lounge for a couple drinks if you all adjourn to somewhere else
meiling: you suck. we are waiting for you. hate you forever.
friend: really? i'll come over... but didn't think you really wanted wet additions to the party.
friend: it's a mess outside!
meiling: get it together
friend: ok - will come with four or five people in about half an hour. you'll still be going?
meiling: of course
friend: okay. see you soon!
meiling: whatever. still kind of barf that you didn't come here first.
friend:okay... next time then? or no text / no show? this seems better than both... we were there - at the corner of jingshan dong jie and hou jie and got out of cab to find it.... then rain came
meiling: bite me
friend: on the way now.
meiling: awesome
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
moments and musings
i love china in the early morning. this is not news. but i share it now because i always marvel at the discovery. i did so on a morning run through beihai park the other day. i love moving swiftly through the beijing's morning motions - the stretching and the shouting, the old ladies gossiping, the men dancing with scarves or jumping into lakes, the babies being pushed about, the clothing being changed in public, the steam from the youtiao being fried and the smell of morning bing. as the moments go by in blur, so many captured scenes, so much humanity, i am soothed and delighted by it all. of course, sometimes i get accidentally spit on or run into patches of filthy construction work, which is decidedly less delightful. but it's all part of the blessing of being here. and in the end it is the moments of surprise and delight that i remember, the ones that count.
i am counting my blessings these days. and appreciating the moments as they come. the weather is finally fine and i am spending less time fretting about the state of civil society in china and more time chatting in the sunshine with friends. (or doing both.) my weekend was filled with sunshine, good food, and friends old and new. who could ask for anything more? i have declared may the month of momentum. so i have great expectations for moments to come.
in actual news that is not news, last week the i.o.c. stripped china's women's gynamstics team of its bronze medal from the 2000 sydney olympics because one of the gynasts was underage. this is not surprising.
in actual news, i have decided that the gmail chat status* dots have given new meaning to the green light at the end of daisy's dock. ahem-
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
*part of the month of momentum involves moving my creative outlet beyond my gchat status. while a unique genre, i think i need a more spacious canvas.
i am counting my blessings these days. and appreciating the moments as they come. the weather is finally fine and i am spending less time fretting about the state of civil society in china and more time chatting in the sunshine with friends. (or doing both.) my weekend was filled with sunshine, good food, and friends old and new. who could ask for anything more? i have declared may the month of momentum. so i have great expectations for moments to come.
in actual news that is not news, last week the i.o.c. stripped china's women's gynamstics team of its bronze medal from the 2000 sydney olympics because one of the gynasts was underage. this is not surprising.
in actual news, i have decided that the gmail chat status* dots have given new meaning to the green light at the end of daisy's dock. ahem-
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
*part of the month of momentum involves moving my creative outlet beyond my gchat status. while a unique genre, i think i need a more spacious canvas.
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