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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

on naming and spending

as a friend commented to me yesterday, 'it is hard to compete with fishjuice vodka'. and she doesn't know the half of it. but indeed it is, so it is not with out some sense of trepidation that attempt to scrape together some thoughts today. i feel compelled to do so, however, in case saturday's party is as insane as the last one* and i end up writing about splitting my trousers on the dancefloor** and you all think that all i am good for is drinking champagne and being silly***. i will therefore today attempt to talk about serious things. to wit: naming (and the narratives entangled therein (oh narrative arc! my favourite subject)) and consumption (which, actually, also related to the narratives we create and seek for ourselves and how we ascribe meaning to them through language (a.k.a. naming)).

first, consumption.

i have actually been thinking about this a bit lately. partially because i (finally) paid off my private student loans from law school. and, although i still have some public loans blowing in the wind somewhere, i am able to to ponder financial potentials that were heretofore impossible for me. it has also been interesting to just examine how i managed to finally pay them off (and how people respond when i tell them) - not buying any new clothes for a year and moving into a considerably cheaper flat that i share - and where i am choosing to spend money now that i have more disposable income - on other people and experiences. (well, and i immediately purchased a small heap of shoes. but i really needed some new shoes after that year! and i am imperfect. (i maintain that blue patent leather stilettos were also required.)) so i am thinking about this now becuase i my own rather subtle musings more became more pronounced after i read the following article: http://bitchmagazine.org/article/eat-pray-spend. the authors critique the self-help / priv-lit genre and the consumer culture it promotes among women as anti-feminist****. really worth a read. although this about sums it up:

Priv-lit perpetuates several negative assumptions about women and their relationship to money and responsibility. The first is that women can or should be willing to spend extravagantly, leave our families, or abandon our jobs in order to fit ill-defined notions of what it is to be “whole.” Another is the infantilizing notion that we need guides—often strangers who don’t know the specifics of our financial, spiritual, or emotional histories—to tell us the best way forward. The most problematic assumption, and the one that ties it most closely to current, mainstream forms of misogyny, is that women are inherently and deeply flawed, in need of consistent improvement throughout their lives, and those who don’t invest in addressing those flaws are ultimately doomed to making themselves, if not others, miserable.

very astute point(s). and yet. and yet so many of the intelligent, together women i know really loved eat pray love. although many felt guilty about it. [side query: how much of that speaks to elizabeth gilbert's strength as a writer and how much of it speaks to how compelling we find her narrative?] i remember when, once upon a lifetime when i worked in a big bad law firm in the big bad apple that was affectionately nicknamed 'the sweatshop' or 'the death star', the subject of eat pray love came up in a conversation i was having with one of my partner mentors. this particular partner mentor is truly amazing - smart and compassionate and accomplished, she ended up at the firm because it was the only job she could get in nyc in 1971 that would permit her to work a four-day week so that she could spend fridays caring for her two young daughters and supporting her rabbi-husband has he prepared for services and observe shabbat in the calm way she desired. she adhered to that schedule (not without challenges along the way) the entire time her children were growing up and made partner after many years with the firm. she and her husband also started a wonderful NGO working to empower farmers and communities in afghanistan, a country they travelled in and fell in love with in the late 60s / early 70s. [http://www.gpfa.org/] this woman seemed to have it all, respected in the world of international arbitration and in her community, she had a happy marriage, great kids, a thriving career, a successful NGO. she was an inspiration.

although i worked quite closely with this partner***** on a number of cases and other projects, the occasion of our conversation that day was my inviting her to be a guest speaker at my book club when we were going to be discussing a book about afghanistan. rory stewart's the places in between, his account of walking across afghanistan in january, 2002. (incidentally, gender figured prominently in our conversation because of course a woman could never have written this book and of course rory is not at all conscious of this. then again, how many of us are truly conscious of our own privileges until something overwhelming and blinding forces us to see? and even then, our consciousness is typically fleeting.) the partner agreed, but she asked what other books we'd read. eat pray love was a last minute substitute because none of us could bear to get through the 600 pages of run-on sentences that comprised the book we had selected for that month. but i mentioned it when running through what we'd covered thus far that year. she wrinkled her nose when i mentioned eat pray love, commenting, "i read the first three pages but i couldn't bear to go any further. it was all so self-indulgent and ridiculous." she had and has a point. you don't achieve what this woman had achieved, both professionally, personally, and dare i say spiritually, by abandoning responsibilities and running off to eat gelato or pet cows every time god speaks to you while you're crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. [confession: god has never spoken to me while i'm crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. her loss, really. i am really funny when i'm crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night.] of course after the partner said that, i felt a pang of guilt for having finished the book. in one day even (shhhh!). and tumbled over myself trying to explain that it had been a last minute substitute and really the book club ladies were way more evolved than elizabeth gilbert, really. of course, when she came to book club the discussion about the places in between, we all really just wanted to know how she had done it, how she had managed to have it all. she answered simply, explaining that you can't have it all at once and must do things one at a time.

and now i am suitably tangled up in side stories and must unravel these threads in a tidy manner and draw a conclusion - we ought to be critical of how we're encouraged to consume (conscious of the cultural and gendered assumptions informing that encouragement) and consider the implications of our choices. the article is quick to point out that elizabeth gilbert's journey is not realistic to replicate or aspire to (people, after all that crying on the bathroom floor and walking out on her husband, she got to eat a lot of pasta, achieve some-sort-of-blue-light-enlightenment, marry a hot brazilian, live happily every after, and make millions). but maybe the reason the self-help priv-lit genre is so appealling even as we are conscious of how belittling and destructive it is (cf. the footnote somewhere down there about needing to orchestrate our own rescues) and also aware of the unhealthy wanton consumerism it promotes is its compelling cinderella suspension of disbelief aspect. i mean, who doesn't want to run away to eat gelato and pet cows, only to end up with an amazing latin lover and julia roberts playing you in a movie? that's some sweet glass slipper. although thankfully i am personally entirely over latin lovers in a serious way, so i that precise glass slipper wouldn't suit. in any case, enough on this. enjoy the article.

second, nomenclature.

this is the actual english name of a new restaurant the just opened near my office: "mr. pigger restaurant". awesome. i laughed out loud with joy and wonder when i saw it. the chinese name is yi kou zhu - a mouthful of pig. hmmm, i wonder if they serve pork.... i stumbled upon this delightful new addition to the neighbourhood two days after a rather interesting discussion about the importance of names. this is a subject i have personally considered at great length given that i have a boy's name and spent a good portion of my young life complaining about this to my parents. well, until my mother calmly informed me when i was about ten that they almost gave me the middle name of “baldface.” seriously. baldface was the name of the mountain that i was conceived on and they thought it would be a nice remembrance. i think it would have been nicer for them than for me – a blissful bit of hippie nostalgia since my mother’s pregnancy meant they had to move out of the tent in the woods and it was time for my ba to enter the corporate world. in any case, that made my boy's name feel like a blessing. i also had new appreciate for "jane" (my middle name). it's a hard-knock life.

the conversation i was having the other day was more focused on amusing english names in china, or chinese names for english products. i recalled how, living in shanghai in 2001-2002, i experienced a sudden burst of joy when i discovered the slim, serious man behind the counter serving my latte at the starbucks near my flat in the french concession was named “cocaine.” i really loved cocaine the starbucks barrista. he was my unabashed favourite. i also loved getting coffee from cocaine. it gave me a greater kick than the caffeine. and it was about as close to the real stuff as i’d ever get, so it felt risqué somehow – like i was drinking cocacola back when the “coca” meant something. (speaking of cocacola, the chinese name for coke is possibly the best branding ever. a transliteration - kekoukele – that roughly translates to “makes mouths happy.” brilliant.) before i left shanghai, i asked cocaine why he had chosen that name. he shrugged and said, "everybody likes it." i nodded and thanked him for my coffee. i started to tell him i would miss him, but then i realised that was a bit much and better contained. i could save my pain at this parting for when i was crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night waiting for god to speak to me. other than cocaine, my favourite friend from afar in shanghai was a sweet young man named "clocean". when pressed about his choice, he explained he couldn't decide between "cloud" and "ocean". i loved this so much, and so did my crazywonderful family, that we now have a sculpture in the backyard named clocean. seriously. the spare house key is in his ear.

so, t.s. elliott tells us that the naming of cats is a difficult matter. as is the naming of daughters, starbucks barristas, and pork restaurants. but a recent email prompted me to consider the significance of naming charities. i received an invitation to a fundraising dinner for an organisation called "compassion for migrant children". i was simply struck by what a brilliant name that is. who doesn't want to have compassion for migrant children? or at least support those who do? i mean, not even 'empathy for migrant children' comes close. it's really the compassion that strikes you right in the chest and makes you want to cough up all of your renminbi to eat chilli bean noodles with bbq pork & apple salad. [curious, there is a lot of pork in this post.] yes, they included the menu in the invite. an unfortunate choice really. detracts slightly from the power of being smacked in the chest with compassion for migrant children because you immediately start considering entrees. but oh well. after receiving this email, i started contemplating how compassion could be worked into the names of all sorts of charities. and, naturally, considering inappropriate alternatives. 'mild frustration with migrant children' or 'contempt for disadvantaged communities' or 'apathy over minority rights' or 'mild concern for the poor'. really without compassion, why bother at all? also, the fact that i am sharing these thoughts with you may be the reason that god doesn't speak to me when i am crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night******.

so i hope this all suitably thoughtful and amusing such that i can return to writing about dancing come sunday morning. of course, if i find a glass slipper between now and then you'll hear about that too.



*please see the post dated may 9, 2010 'smells like teen spirit'. (i still have not worked out how to link, sorry.) it is my fervent hope that no one humps the couches this time. at least not before midnight.

**something i have done on more than one occasion. SJ.

***incidentally, this might be all that i am good for. ok now we're at three footnotes in one sentence. once again perhaps i need to reconsider structure.

****i appreciate that in the 'about us' section, the creators of bitch magazine quote rebeca west: "People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

*****i know, too many stars! but one of my nicknames is sparkleicious. but i am getting ahead of myself, we are still on the subject of consumption, not names. and we're in a footnote. the point of which was to note that it was actually thanks to this partner's intervention that i was able to find a place in the firm's international arbitration / litigation group at our firm. i reached out to her after being fairly horribly sexually harassed by the project finance partner whose group i was originally meant to join. i was still young enough and inexperienced in the sometimes subtle misogyny that pervades corporate life and how it is managed, so this was a bit daunting. perhaps particularly because i didn't want to make real accusations, i simply wanted to escape. [sigh. i could write a book about all the inappropriate things men in the legal profession have said to me or suggested.] in any case, she painly and quietly orchestrated my rescue. well, really i orchestrated my own rescue. (you always do. it's the only way.) she implemented it. without a fuss. for which i was forever thankful.

******another confession: i don't cry on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. i prefer crying in corners. please see the post dated november 10, 2009 'a world changed'. (again, i still haven't worked out how to link.) although yikes, if you can actually be bothered to go read that post you may be struck, as i just was, about the gyring nature of my thoughts in this space. (and yes, the gyre reference was a shout out to yeats. what can i say? i'm into shout-outs these days.) i was beginning to think about having come to china to fall wholly and completely into myself even then (and even amid great and sudden heartbreak (thus the discussion of crying in corners)). and was quoting goethe then too. am i consistent or merely all too predictable? unclear.

dance dance dance

so, forget all my philosophical birthday ramblings from yesterday. i really came to china to dance. at least that is what i apparently believed last night. when i may as well have been in monaco for the evening. (and rather impressively managed to make it back in time to talk about human trafficking this morning! (there is some kind of off-colour humour in there somewhere, but i can't quite discern it.)) why was i ostensibly in monaco? because the evening involved cake, champagne, diamonds, and dancing. and also shots of fishy stuff mixed with vodka. sounds disgusting, i know, but it was actually delicious. and possibly my undoing.

actually, my undoing may have begun earlier in the day when, aside from the poetic interlude when i posted about having returned to china for love*, i spent a good portion of the day listening to absolutely filthy horrible awesome fun hiphop and rap. really, it's against all of my principles and if i listen to the lyrics some essential part of my sweet blossom of a soul quivers in terror and shame. the misogyny and the objectification and the straight up dirty sex talk, it's utterly offensive and inexcusable. and yet. sometimes i simply love the beats. so i don't listen to the lyrics. yesterday i chair-danced my way through the work day. (my work wife was out of town so i had the office to myself, allowing sufficient privacy for rocking out.) the theme song of this birthday may be kid cudi's 'make her say'** (his response to lady gaga's poker face. she is even sampled in. and sings. well. who knew?). it is filthy, filthy, freaknasty gross if you listen to what he says. but is awesome. if you haven't heard it, please go listen now.

anyway, the reason all the hiphop may have been my undoing is because, aside from the fishjuice vodka shots (which really were a good idea, i promise) there was a rather dodgy interlude in the evening when i was dressed down and publicly insulted by a jazz singer who was allegedly singing happy birthday to me. not only did he instead sing a song which may or may not have been a love song for sarah palin (it was entitled 'drill baby drill' and i believe those were the only lyrics), but he actually insulted me. more than once. and made me stand by myself in the middle of the club. with crazy lights on me. while he sang the sarah palin song. i'm not even making this up. how could i? i'm creative, but this was beyond my wildest imagination. anyway, when i was asked to give a birthday speech at my birthday dinner, the best i could come up with (after the fishjuice vodka, mind) was: "i will pay cashmoney to anyone who can get the soulful sweet-eyed jazz singer we're about go see to play a cover of 50 cent's 'in da club' in my honour". i consider this speech a marginal improvement over the one i gave at my massive amazing 30th birthday blowout. to wit: "30 is the new 17!" actually, i had first said some very nice meaningful things thanking my wonderful gorgeous fabulous friends and family for all of their love and all the joy they bring to my life and telling everyone how blessed i feel to have them in my life. i still do. feel blessed, that is. even after being abused by a 22-year-old, barefoot, sweaty jazz singer. and drinking fishjuice vodka. but i'll get to that in a moment. i think this jazz singer was upset because maybe one of my friend's actually asked him to play 50 cent. or ani difranco. or both. so he got upset and said he wasn't a jukebox. or something like that. then he made me come to the front and centre of the club and stand below him while he strummed my pain with his fingers and destroyed the alaskan wilderness with his words, all the while glaring at me. (i glared back and calmly sipped my champagne with quiet aggression.) kind of unbelievable.

the only place to go from there was monaco. or, more precisely, the opposite of monaco. xiu. a club at the grand hyatt with a very mediocre band****** that covers all sorts of dance music (including but not limited to hiphop) and a mediocre DJ. but the best to be found in beijing. in any case, what we were really going for was champagne and dancing. we drank a lot of the former and did a lot of the latter. and the band sang a raucous, funkdefied version of happy birthday to me while i rocked out dancing on stage. i was then the star of the club for the night. all in all it was actually nothing like my nights in monaco, when once upon a lifetime i had such things, save for the bottle of moet we opened after midnight. in any case, we had a grand time.

two points to ponder:

1 - the diamonds came into the picture via a very surprising, sweet, generous gift from my crazysexycool beautiful beijing girlfriends. they got me a gorgeous diamond necklace. this was of course so kind and wonderful and overwhelming. but it made me realise that all of the diamonds i presently have come from my grandmother or girlfriends. and for some reason recalled for me the bachelorette-that-wasn't-a-bachelorette that some of my girlfriends threw for me for my 30th birthday. i wonder if slowly all of my girlfriends all over the world are, like my mother, giving up hope that i'll ever get married. so they are stepping up and giving me all the of the trapsings that typically surround that process - diamonds, a hen party, etc. hmmm.

2 - all of the men i danced with last night were gay. in fact a friend of one of my (gay male) friends who was there who i didn't know and came up to dance with me prefaced his approach with "it's ok, i'm gay". this makes me wonder if i really do intimidate every man in beijing. (as was suggested over lunch by a (gay) guy friend the other day.) hmmm. to be fair, there was one single man who was meant to join the party last night. but he got held up with work. or so he said. maybe he was scared.... tehe. that was fun to write. in any case, even if i am intimidating, there is nothing to be done. i can only be me. [speaking of which, take a moment to appreciate the shout out to murakami in the subject of this post.]

and now the moment you've all been waiting for. i shall explain the fishjuice vodka! we had dinner at a lovely new restaurant in beijing. a cevichera (sp?) called terra which focuses on (big surpise) ceviche and peruvian food. all delicious and they couldn't have been better to me on my birthday! the owner, who is also a friend, suggested that she give us vodka shots flavoured with various ceviche juices and fish to accompany the meal. (the flavours included tomato, i think cilantro, and some sort of ayayayayay spicy pepper (loved that one).) we all raised one eyebrow at first and weren't convinced, but decided to be brave. [goethe: whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!] and it was surprisingly delicious. and left me surprisingly and deliciously wasteycakes.

and that is the story of my birthday. go shorty.

31 was kind of a tough year. but i have great expectations for 32. so 32'd better bring it. because i won't stop believing. or dreaming boldly. so i'm ready for the ensuing genious, power, and magic. i'm also always ready to dance.



*a curious, perhaps dubious, proposition i am still contemplating. comments encouraged.

**i was introduced to it by a more culturally in touch friend while back in the us. i also (finally!) have a new ipod and have been downloading all kinds of new music. my previous ipod was held hostage by the ghosts of boyfriends past, so this is really exciting. i also am intending to shake what my momma gave me all over again on saturday. throwing myself a birthday bubbly and cupcakes in the courtyard party (at my place). in a truly astonishing tist of fate, a friend who has an amazing cupcakery here in beijing (check on it: http://www.lollipopbakery.cn/) has come out with a new red bean cupcake just in time for my birthday. SJ,*** this is glorious news. red bean is among that which is sacred to me. and eating red bean is as about as much pleasure as i get these days. in fact, i spoiled myself on birthday eve**** by having a dinner than consisted amost entirely of red bean. bliss.

***SJ = sweet jesus. also, i am not sure it is appropriate to footnote a footnote in a blog post. perhaps i need to reconsider how i structure these profound pieces. then again maybe i'll just continue to do as i please. (go shorty, it's your birthday.)

****day / evening before your birthday. also worth celebrating. as is, i suppose, the day after. i am going to a friend's new pizza place this eve (check baby, check baby, 1, 2: www.gunghopizza.com) where i am promised amazing pies and a delicious new zealand sauvignon blanc. yum. i am also loving all these shout-outs, mjj! (yes, i am talking to myself. if this disturbs you, please see yesterday's self-indulgent yet eloquent post about self-love. rinse. repeat.)

*****lost track of the number of stars here. this post is out of control! ahhh. point about the band - no one should try to cover jay-z's 'empire state of mind'. no one. even the truly amazing unbelievable best band i've ever heard that performed at my dear friend's wedding the other weekend couldn't quite pull it off. so the xiu set was doomed. but they tried. style points for effort anyway.

32 flavours and then some

so it's my birthday. so we're gonna party like it's my birthday [on saturday], sip bacardi [bubbly] like it's my birthday.... right now i'm over-caffeinating like it's my birthday! tonight's festivities involve a mellow supper and then some live music with friends. the singer tonight is a soulful young jazz musician named natti vogel. all 22-year-old sweetness and big eyes. this birthday recalls for me the ani difranco lines 'i am a poster girl with no poster, i am 32 flavours and then some' - thus the subject of this post. because really i am 32 flavours and then some. or at least have felt that way of late.

my relationship with birthdays has varied through the years. from the sublime to the surreal to the sad. this is not surprising given my propensity for over-thinking. i recall excitedly writing about the 'epiphany' i had on my eighteenth birthday. it involved some combination of the following: beauty = love; yearning is our most propelling emotion; never give up. i believe i spent my nineteenth birthday mostly in tears and hiding in the bathroom. i was stressed out that i was growing old so quickly and still had accomplished so little. (thankfully now i am old enough to no longer hold fast to the idea that i shall accomplish anything.) birthdays for me often become a time for self-reflection. every so often i can omit that portion of the program and simply have fun. this, however, is rare. i perhaps did this best on my 30th birthday which was an amazingly special, fun, loving, outrageous, raucous affair (affairs, really, there were a series of celebrations) during which i simply had a wonderful time and glowed and didn't worry about the fact that i was unemployed, or living with stinky boys as roommates who stole my towels, or unmarried, or not able to do a headstand in yoga without being filled with stomach-clenching fear about breaking my neck. no, i just drank champagne, ate cake, enjoyed being with, embracing and being embraced by my family and friends, and danced until dawn. it was spectacular. there were even pink m&ms with my face on them involved at some point. and a bottle of madeira from 1837 opened in my honour on a beautiful farm. my twenty-fifth birthday was the first (but sadly not the last) time i decided to extricate myself from the emotional turmoil of a relationship that was my five years with my ex-fiance. it was awful. 31 was another low point. i didn't feel i deserved a celebration after all the feting of 30 and it also marked the beginning of the troubles with and eventual denouement with little trouble, who didn't come to beijing for it.

and now i am 32. to borrow from mary oliver* - and still in love with life and still full of beans. this year, and in particular the few months leading up to this birthday, has involved a lot of reflection. but not at all in a fraught sense. rather it's been a rather positive appreciation of where and who i am. where i have been and where i am going. what matters and why. thankfully, i have been pleased with both the results and the processes of these ponderings.

what i've realised through that (over)thinking is that i came to china for love. not love in any conventional sense. i did not move here for an individual person (though some implied that i did). i did not move here because i love china (though others have interpreted that way). and i did not know that i was moving to china for love when i made the choice to come back to beijing. of course, there is at present no happily ever after to my story. not in any conventional sense. yet.

when i moved back to beijing, i was madly in love with a boy who here who was madly in love with me. but i didn’t move here for little trouble. i had started the process of looking to come and continue my conversation with the northern capital before we even met, and he has since moved on physically. and i have emotionally. i hope he has too. beijing is the city i spent my most formative years in, where i have lived the longest, and whose streets on which my inner scripts are most wholly my own. and yet, i do not love china.

i sometimes almost feel guilty saying that. i marvel at those who fall in love with china and, in particular moments, have wished that i were one of them. but i’m not. i never chose this place. my father moved our family here seventeen years ago. although saying that is not entirely accurate, because i did choose to come back. so i chose it this time. which wasn’t, i now realize, about choosing china at all, but about choosing love. myself. loving myself.

(i know, i know, this all sounds so trite and cliched and the intro to some hopelessly sappy adventure travel spiritual feminist memoir. which maybe it is. wait, if it is, maybe i should roll with it. hmmmm. ok, a birthday indulgence into a self-indulgent memoir-esque self-love journey introduction. just play along with me.**)

my family moved to beijing in 1993, part of the first wave of expatriates to flood into china after the post-tiananmen exodus in 1989. i sometimes feel as though China and i have grown up together. of course the chinese civilization is ancient, but the people’s republic is not. when we arrived, i was young, an unruly and raucous teenager, and so was modern china. we were gangly in the 1990s – all flailing long limbs, clumsy in statures we had not quite grown into and reeling from experiences we were entirely unprepared for. the world was watching china, as she soared and as she stumbled. i watched her too. mostly, she was my playground and my playmate. at once holding me captive and becoming my catharsis.

in the early 1990s, china was piecing itself together after a period of seeming calm after decades of upheaval under Mao and during the Cultural Revolution was destroyed by the party’s crushing its own people during the tiananmen massacre. i could relate. not long before my family moved to beijing, the innocence of my fourteen years was undone one swift and terrible experience of sexual aggression. china’s wounds, and my own, were deep and raw, yet unspoken. china and i both resigned ourselves to silence about our assaults. as if by not speaking, we could erase them. but something shattered inside me that night, so i arrived in china somewhat broken and trying to avoid the shards. teenage china was in the same place.

china’s party line of silence has arguably been more effective in erasing the past, but there are some shards that cannot be so easily swept away. my own silence only led me to turn on myself, becoming ceaselessly self-critical. i looked outside myself for love, relying on a string of men as sustenance. china has perhaps similarly avoided reckoning with unpleasant aspects of its past, focusing instead on astounding economic growth and increasing global influence. of course, i loved myself in moments. and i loved china in moments, especially in the early morning. but neither was sustained or sustainable.

rather than heal my wounds, i achieved my own version of unprecedented economic growth. also like the people’s republic, i operated on five-year plans: a year at the training school for the chinese foreign service, four years studying international relations at a prestigious US university; a year back in china, a year in the middle east improving my Arabic, three years of law school. there was even that a five-year relationship which had me engaged just before my twenty-eighth birthday. i was always moving, and almost always attaining some sense of self from a lover. if only looking at the statistics, however, it was impressive. below the surface i was not yet whole or whole enough, more precisely, not wholly myself. i sometimes wonder if the same is true of china beneath the numbers.

i broke of the engagement. and ran out of five-year plans. so i fled across the world to be embraced by china (again). i took the first steps toward returning when i was at a breaking point – both professionally and personally. my arrival last year, ushered down a gleaming six-lane highway into a boisterous beijing bursting with post-olympian pride, couldn’t have been more different than my family’s, which involved bumping along a dirt road and being stuck behind a donkey cart. of course i arrived only to get lost in love (again). although my most authentic intimate relationship to date, perhaps encouraged by being in china, our love unraveled and I was shattered.

and so i began the process of reconstructing myself (again). in so doing i’ve accepted that i don’t love China and wondered why i am here. i have no plans, five-year or otherwise, and no love. but rather than look outside myself for love (whether in a man or in china), i’ve chosen to look within. and been awed. and while i never thought of my coming back to china as healing – the pollution literally makes me sick – i believe that’s what brought me back to beijing. there were certain conversations with myself that were begun in this city when i was that broken young girl, and i believe that they (perhaps inevitably) need to be concluded here. being immersed in those conversations over the last while, i have been endlessly surprised by beauty and joy. and feel incredibly blessed, full of lightness and love. and, who knows, as my conversing with myself and with beijing continues, maybe i’ll even come across a conventional happily ever after along the way....

for now, i am grateful, present, in love with life, and full of beans. here's to 32.


*Self Portrait by Mary Oliver

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.


**the best thing you've ever done for me, is to help me take my life less seriously; it's only life after all.