hotly love the motherland (death or glory)

it's that time of year again. time to drag out our commifabulous red star twinkling best and live it up! for me, that involves red hot pants. for beijing, that involves flags all over the place and large red banners reminding us to hotly love the motherland. (incidentally, for it me it also involves some flash dance moves and for china it also involves some very fast and fancy footwork to erase potentially provocative materials on the internet before anyone can read them. along those lines, if someone can somehow access this blog post, copy and paste, and send it to me in an email, i'd be much obliged - http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4e00bcd90100lxhm.html.)

ahh, 'tis the night before national day and all through the sky, the streaks of pinkish smog make us all sigh. for some reason observing the pinkish smoggy sunset out my office window has me thinking about how swiftly time flies. perhaps because, although i will be working during this holiday (dancing a sure-to-be impressively complicated tornado ballet involving transition memos and closure and other such stuff as dreams are made of), our office will be closed and by the time my chinese colleagues return on october 11, it will be my last week here. which is rather astounding. tempus fugit. i am also recalling national day last year - and all the red glory* around the 60th anniversary of the PRC while i personally fled to HK to avoid said glory. hard to believe that was a year ago. then again, also not. i've done a lot of dancing since then. in so many senses. and my curious mixed metaphor about tornado ballets and transition memos aside, i'll certainly be doing a lot of rocking out in my office over the next week while the rest of my comrades in this city are hotly loving the motherland. it's hard, i've never left a job when i'm still generally happy with it (or where i am so close with my colleagues as i am here) but simply had a worthier challenge come along. but that's life. and time. it whirls forward and you need to keep on running - or dancing - along as furiously and fabulously as you can.

other than pondering the passage of time, i have another question on my mind this evening. to wit: does a one become a revolutionary out of the belief that one is entitled to joy rather than submission? sometimes i think that is what starts the process of becoming a revolutionary. maybe it's always what starts it. and no, i don't have anything more profound to say about this question now. perhaps you do. please share. once upon a lifetime i might have chided myself about this or considered trying to make a more tidy point here before moving on. but i came across this line from antoine blodin recently and am taking it to heart tonight - "the only duty of the writer is not to have one". also, wasn't it joan didion who said she writes to find out what she thinks? i can relate to that.

and so. on this fine mid-autumn eve, i think that i am glad to still be in china. with all of its complexities, challenges, and imperfections. with all of its death and and all of its glory. i appreciate it all the more in this evening moment feeling as though i am watching time fly swiftly by outside my window, inspiring me to live all the more fully and make the most of everything**. death or glory. (or dancing.)



*writing that made me want to listen to the clash song 'death or glory'. so i just put it on and am now rocking out to it as i watch the sunset and write the rest of this post. i suggest you do the same and listen to it as you continue reading. maybe i should also add it into the subject. why not?

**speaking of making the most of everything, we had a meeting at a german NGO this afternoon where they served serious german cakes (black forest, cheesecake, apfel strudel, etc) & fresh coffee on real plates with proper silverware. so civilised! love those deutschers. talk about a charm offensive. anyone would forgive two world wars in exchange for regularly being served delicious baked goods and fresh coffee during meetings. very, very clever. also makes me think of death or cake rather than death or glory. or more precisely, the great eddie izzard skit from dressed to kill - "thank you for flying church of england, cake or death?"