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.

radio nowhere

this is a not very good pic of lei feng loving the floor. it is also not recent. i share it because (a) i am trying to become more blog-savvy and include pictures (next stop, wonderland (well, that or learning how to post links or at least link to previous posts)) and (b) because he has been on my mind of late. lucky little kitty is immigrating to america next week. (although he doesn't know it yet.) soon this sweet beast will feel the winds of freedom blow in his fur as he roams with the deer and the antelope in northern virginia. more plainly, i am taking him with me when i go on my next work trip and leaving him with my parents until such time as i am in a living situation which will allow me to take him in again. i had a day of feeling unusually accomplished this week when i picked up both his registration papers from the animal hospital and my canadian passport from the embassy. i just felt that we were both much so more accounted for (and accountable? authentic?). documentation does that. perhaps that's why we bother to document, although i am now not thinking of documentation of the official, state-sanctioned sort, but the kind that actually imbues our lives with meaning. this kind varies tremendously, but i think we all have some impulse to document, or shore up, what matters. and what matters seems always to be the details. moments, idiosyncrasies, characteristics, quirks. so we squirrel the details away somewhere - in writing, in photographs, in song, in stories we dance over and over in our minds or share with each other - to sustain us.

i suddenly find myself less occupied at work for a few days which has been at once a relief and also unsettling. i realized that i was allowing industry to sustain me more than is appropriate or prudent. mine was a busy march, yes. and i find meaning in what i do. but still. it is a cheap trick to rely on work for sustenance and i know it. at least i have realized my folly and am correcting it. moving on.

i have also realized that there is absolutely nothing useful or interesting on chinese radio. well, at least not the radio stations that beijing cabbies listen to. i confess that i have not sought out inspiration from chinese radio on my own so the sampling underlying this offensive conclusion is flawed. and yet, i find it fascinating. well, maybe that's too much. i find it mildly amusing and slighting intriguing. the intrigue (and the amusement) come from how much air can be occupied with nothing at all. it takes real talent to expend a lot of time and energy and verbiage to say nothing consequential and radio broadcasters in china excel. i am always impressed by the sheer amount of time people can speak and the number of the words they can utter without actually saying anything substantive. sometimes i even wish i had that skill, especially when giving speeches in chinese. it would be nice to be able to draw them out. maybe its more adverbs. maybe it just takes practice. (i am, in fact, practicing at the moment with this post. my apologies. please consider this merely a cultural expedition that you get to come along with minimal effort!) then again, perhaps i am too harsh a critic. maybe radio all around the world is filled with empty static. we so often must face how imprecise language is, how inadequate to its occasions.

speaking of occasions, there are a number on the horizon. lei feng and i will go bopping through the wild blue and end up in DC, where we'll connect with family and friends and colleagues. give toasts and talks (me) and try a new litter box (him). by the time i return may will be nearly upon us and i am hoping that life will feel more rooted. that i will feel more rhythm.

warming both hands by the fire of life

i find myself recalling this image on this very grey beijing day. not a flame (or a glimmer of sunlight) in sight. it is one of those days when the pollution is so think you could stick a spoon in it and i imagine it would stay suspended in the sky. ick. in this unwarm environment, i am feeling warmth in life. although the line comes from a poem about death. (landor's "on his seventy-fifth birthday": nature i loved, and next to nature, art; i warmed both hands before the fire of life, it sinks, and i am ready to depart.)

that's all any of us can ever do, really. warm our hands by the fire of life and marvel at it. getting burned is unavoidable. but better than being cold.

i am glad to be in this space again, despite my promised six months of silence. even at the time, i admitted the six months was arbitrary. a friend visiting in january and listening to all of my elaborate constructs sagely observed that you can't place a timeline on your emotional life. i told him i love plans. and i needed an infrastructure of some sort at that point. i needed momentum, marking points, something. i acknowledge now, though, that my need was misplaced. really i just needed (and need) to marvel at the fire of it all. warm my hands.

living lei feng

i have adopted a cat. somehow after a few hours in the bitter cold at a shelter past the sixth ring road (which may as well be another province) with a light coating of snow on the ground, i left with a tabby-coloured, long-haired boy whose name at the shelter was jingzhang or policeman. i am now finding that this is a rather surprising turn of events, even though i have been talking about adopting a cat for a matter of months and launched a 'hapless furball campaign'* a few weeks ago. talking is a rather different prospect than having a terrified beast staring down at you from atop the refrigerator. during the unbelievably long taxi ride back from the shelter, i considered new names for my policeman. and i am thinking of calling him lei feng.

lei feng was a soldier in the people's liberation army who was lionized after his death during the 'learn from comrade lei feng' campaign initiated by mao zedong in 1963. lei was characterized as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to the communist party, chairman mao, and the people of china. lei became a symbol of national propaganda and an enduring cultural icon symbolizing selflessness, modesty, and dedication. after mao's death, people began to question lei's life - the feats attributed to him and in particular his purported diary (200,000 words of flowery language primarily praising mao and the party) - were scrutinized. it has been suggested that the diary was a fabrication. indeed, much of lei feng's life may have been fabricated to fit the needs of mao's campaign. during 1964, the campaign shifted from encouraging the youth to learn from comrade lei feng and do good deeds to a cult of mao. for example, lei's diary apparently exhorted young people to "submit unquestioningly to the control of the great leader". chinese leaders since mao have continued to lean on lei feng as a symbol of altruism. zhou enlai, deng xiaoping, and jiang zemin have all written about lei feng. these days the term huo lei feng - living lei feng - describes someone who is seen as selfless or goes out of her or his way to help others. here is a description of lei feng from an editorial published in the people's daily in 1993:

When Lei Feng died in the line of duty, he was only 22, but his short life gives concentrated expression to the noble ideals of a new people, nurtured with the communist spirit, and also to the noble moral integrity and values of the Chinese people in the new period. These are firm faith in communist ideals, political warmheartedness for the party and the socialist cause, the revolutionary will to work arduously for self-improvement, the moral quality and self-cultivation of showing fraternal unity and taking pleasure in assisting others, the heroic spirit of being ready to take up cudgels for a just cause without caring for one's safety, the attitude of seeking advancement and studying hard, and the genuine spirit of matching words with deeds and enthusiastically carrying out one's duties.

i am thinking of calling my policeman kitty lei feng because i realize that i expect equally herculean tasks from him - not to shed too much, to coordinate nicely with my furniture and my art, and, most challenging, to heal my broken heart. poor beast. i am a little concerned that given his performance so far, he is going to be yet another male who disappoints me. although perhaps the policeman's lesson for me is to adjust my great expectations and do my own lei feng living.

though perhaps adopting him was mild altruism. he was, after all, rescued from the shelter. i almost adopted a sweet little girl kitty with one eye and two teeth, but recalled the last time i was looking to adopt a cat and my friends gave me grief for always been drawn to the neediest cases (three-leggeds, one-eyeds, etc). my impulse is always to reach for the creatures most in need of love. lei feng has four legs and two eyes, but so far i have not been able to give him much love. i could have adopted, from a friend-of-a-friend, two sweet little fluffy white kittens named bunny and honey. the six-year-old girl in me leaped with joy at the prospect! and would have promptly renamed them rainbowheartdiamondstarcrystallove (which incidentally was also the name i suggested to my parents for my youngest sister) and snugglemuffin. but i thought the sweet fluffy kittens would have no trouble finding a home. a scruffy three-year-old with skin disease or missing body parts is another story. however, now that my charity case is not accepting my love, i am reconsidering this strategy.

so anyway after a seemingly natural light dusting of snow, it is now coming down heavily and the courtyard outside seems to be getting lost. strange how the overwhelming whiteness can overwhelm the senses if you allow it. i may attempt to wander the muted streets later, leaving fraidy-cat lei feng at home, to appreciate the clean snow and muse about what else this new year might bring.


* 'hapless furball campaign' was the nickname i gave to my plan to adopt some unsuspecting furball to smother with love to ease the pain when things started to get tough with little trouble. unfortunately the campaign soon became overwhelming - i had maybe eight cats being offered to be from strangers and it was too much. (perhaps i have commitment issues of my own.) so i abandoned the campaign and fled to california for christmas. the adult human version of hiding wide-eyed on top of the refrigerator.

still point

i have been feeling lately as though i am at an invisible precipice of some kind. not in the sense of being in peril, but in the sense that i suspect my life will look dramatically different in the not so distant future in ways that i cannot at this time foresee or fathom. i sometimes see myself wandering amid the clouds at some very high cliff somewhere. a sense of being at this overhang has been especially prevalent in dreams of late, but this feeling also comes over me as i'm walking down the street or waiting in line at the airport. i don't know what the change will be, and whether it will be positive or negative or some combination thereof. (though of course it is always a combination thereof and being a wide-eyed optimist at heart, i can only think things will only get better. they always do.)

i only recently acknowledged this feeling over being on the verge of something, although i suppose i have been writing quite a bit about wanting to move ahead and look back at my present self with a contented, compassionate smile or to receive a letter from my future self. i even tried to write that letter. [bad blogger confession: i haven't expended the time or energy to determine how to link back to other posts / thoughts, otherwise i would do so now. mea culpa.] incidentally, the desire to fast forward has nothing to do with the brave new world of us-china relations on human rights obama and hu have just ushered in that i wrote about earlier. and it is not an expression of discontent in the present.

to the contrary, i am feeling very calm with where i am at the moment. in spite of some of the large question marks in my life at the moment. [although perhaps there is only one, rather pressing, most important question mark.] i am contented with observing and watching how things unfold, loving and giving as best i can. (it's the only way to live!) and i am not afraid of these impending changes i am imagining once i leap off my invisible precipice and into the clouds. i am quite sure that the clouds will catch me. or rather that i will catch myself. or have no need to be caught.

most of us spend a great deal of our time stressing out about changes. (i have been guilty of this myself. probably for many lifetimes.) the curious aspect of that is that change is our only constant. impermanence our only permanence. accepting that, and letting go. not grasping is the deepest lesson i have learned. and one that i often need to re-teach myself. it is so easy to get caught up in grasping! and once you are caught up in it, it is nearly impossible to realize that your hold on something is much more tenuous when you are grasping it. as you as you loosen your fingers, it can slip away. whereas if you don't grasp, but keep an open palm, you can securely hold something resting on the palm of your hand.

my ba recently sent me a 'glimpse of the day' that recalls this concept:

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life itself reveals again and again the opposite: that letting go is the path to real freedom.

Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes, we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others.

That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.

****

ok, so that thought takes it a step further than i did here. but i'm not enlightened yet. i suppose i will just have to be patient and see where this imaginary leap will lead me. (or whether in fact it is all my own melodrama and there are no great changes on the horizon.) i do like the idea of realizing our fundamental goodness as our life's teaching. no matter what happens, i hope that i will progress further along that path. for not, i am going to stay calm while i am at this still point.

a world changed

i awoke to find a world changed. there is a deep blanket of unblemished snow stretching forward from my doorstep and tightly containing the world. quite lovely really. and almost appropriate. there was terrible, ominous thunder and lightning last night around midnight. at the time i was in the midst of a difficult conversation with little trouble and it was a curious accompaniment. the strain of distance was crashing all around us with the thunder, and we agreed to take some space and time to think and feel through things. but i awoke this morning and while staring at the snow*, realized that i do not know how to actualize this. how to find the necessary space and navigate this unfamiliar terrain. the white world reflected back at me didn't have any answers. and i'm not sure that i do yet either. i am sure, however, that difficult though this may be, we will both grow. and love.

of course it is all more subtle than that. and the snow is a simple concept to capture the strangeness that seems to be holding me this morning. mercifully we are moving offices this morning, so i was going to be working from home anyway. so i have the space at least to consider the subtler aspects of this not-a-separation and take stock of my heart. and i can stay in my pyjamas, drink too much coffee, enjoy the brightness of the morning light thanks to the snow, and listen to jazz.

making coffee was the one constant this morning. there is such solace in rituals. i think i love the ritual of making coffee - with my tidy french press, the crack of the tin, scoop of the grounds, the rush of the water, the waiting, the sweet nuttiness of catching the last drop of soy milk with my finger as i pour it, the swirl of it - perhaps more than drinking the coffee. each of those moments mattered this morning. each moment was a soft nudge towards the center of myself. i need to fully fall into that center and stay there for a spell. (for always?)

i am of course frightened (though i cringe even to give voice to that word because i usually feel as though i am afraid of nothing (toss of my cape bravely over my shoulder!!)) of being in this city alone. that is, without an emotional mooring of my heartstrings to someone who though distant, is close in spirit** and who is the shore to my oceanic passions and also my ocean. but perhaps this is what brought me to beijing in the first place. to fall into myself completely finally. confront that and other fears, learn to love my quirks and foibles, and relinquish the nonsensical and punishing quest for perfection that i seem to have been on for too many years now. and at many points along the way (just last tuesday, and yesterday, for example), i like to tell myself that i'm there. i will remind myself to 'be really whole and the world will come to you.' but you can't tell yourself to be really whole. you simply have to be it.

last night during the dramatic crashing and thrashing of the skies and then again this morning as i was gazing out at the beautiful, harsh, astringent white world unfurling from my doorstep, i was reminded of a mary oliver poem. (i again almost rushed outside it to embrace the coldness and feel deeply alive, but reason beat passion again so i stayed in the warmth.) ahem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

this is perhaps a bit much for the present situation, and might sound melancholy, but i see it now as a reminder that all i can do is be my best self, fall into the center, be really whole. i think what i appreciate most about the idea of 'the journey' at this point in my life is accepting that we need one. and that it never ends. trust, wholeness, self-knowledge, acceptance, clarity, love - they do not come easily. they need to be earned. but the effort - that work - even the brokenhearted sobbing in the corner*** bits, are necessary and enabling. it is in those vulnerable moments when we come closest to ourselves. to the divine. to faith. and which allow our hearts to open further. so this too shall pass - the snow, the ache, the caffeine buzz. but i will not rush through. i know that great beauty and joy are waiting. (they always are.)


* why am i relating my emotional landscape to the weather so much these days?!? is it just more of my overly emotive nature / efforts to see connections everywhere? query.

** channeling goethe: "the world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."

*** i prefer crying in corners when i can. not sure why.