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.

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.

silence

so i am compelled to silence for a few days. doctor's orders. i have laryngitis. and some sort of viral infection in my throat. and maybe strep. i have three separate medications one of which needs to be breathed in via a nebulizer twice a day. and i am not meant to speak at all. apparently there is some risk of doing permanent damage to my vocal cords. so, silence. it’s actually an interesting prospect – a marked breath from my usual highly articulated, overly verbose life. i see this as an opportunity for stillness and introspection.*

although perhaps i ought to also see this as implying i’d best reconsider my policy of simply ignoring it when i am sick.** (i have had a cold or something like it for basically two weeks. but i, as per usual, just kept on keeping on until i couldn’t speak – literally.) then again, the laryngitis may have nothing to do with said policy. i somehow never seem to manage to just catch a common cold, but always end up with some highly bizarre illness or injury. i was always the kid in p.e. class who would somehow manage to get hit on the head with a basketball. (this was not an uncommon occurrence.) i have also managed to get sick after being stabbed with the fin of a dead catfish while walking on the beach in bali and digging at something shiny in the sand with my foot. (dead catfish’s fins are full of toxins and best avoided, just fyi.) in college i endured a puncture wound on a big toe inflicted by deadly stilettos at a tito puente concert. (i was so lost in the music i didn’t even notice until i realized i was living bloody footprints. (and we couldn’t afford to drink so i was literally drunk on jazz. i love that feeling!) while shopping at a luxury food market in DC in preparation for a 30th birthday celebration weekend some friends were throwing me at a wonderful farm in maryland, i managed to somehow get a thick, rusty nail embedded into my heel.*** i have also managed to tear a cornea after a bug fly into my eye and needed to have my upper jaw worked back into place after a fall. i suppose, in comparison, laryngitis is nothing to be coughed at (pun intended).

i do think that i am partially to blame for this current ailment. i didn’t slow down while sick (see, supra, my policy of ignoring illness) and had a very fun weekend. though not as fun as everyone assumes – when my voice started becoming hoarse on saturday, multiple people asked me whether i was out until 6 am singing karaoke on friday. i was not. i went to a very mellow dinner and then hung out a friend’s courtyard. i did, however, hold a fish (gently). so maybe that had something to do with it. i was out rather late on saturday – by then i had mistaken the hoarseness for a chance to sound like a husky, silky jazz singer for a day. but it was still all fairly tame. writing this recalls my perhaps most bizarre injury back from my days of riding my wild horses in shanghai.

i remember when found myself sitting in a doctor’s office in shanghai with what can only be called a nightlife injury. “the red line moving up your leg is not a good sign,” the shanghainese doctor said, frowning. “it is either a simple spread of the infection in your foot or blood poisoning. this is not something to mess around with.” i nodded gravely; nothing about his manner was messing around. he explained that if it were blood poisoning, I would be dead by the time that charming little red line reached my heart. the doctor called for the nurse and informed me i needed to be put on intravenous antibiotics immediately. yowsa, I thought to myself, drugs straight into my bloodstream all as the result of a blister on my toe and too much dancing.

then i looked down at my infected foot. the offending toe was now the size of my fist, my foot was size of a medium-sized eggplant, and there was that unmistakable red line creeping up my shin. this was all the fault of a pair of new shoes and a night out at a new hip-hop club. a blister on my toe opened as the night wore on and got infected somewhere amid the sounds of booming jay z, whispering japanese hipsters, chain-smoking euros, and screaming young shanghainese. i hadn’t noticed the slow swelling until the champagne cocktails wore off, and I awoke to discover my foot had ballooned overnight and my walking was compromised.

i wasn’t sure how to explain my champagne-soaked shanghai days to the doctor, so didn’t really have a good answer for him when he asked why i’d waited so long to come in. “ummm, i thought it might just go away?,” i feebly offered. he remained silent. i think he expected me to continue. but what could i say except i’d been in bed all day after a big night out? wasn’t that enough? was it possible, i wondered to myself, that not everyone in this city was still living as though the swinging jazz age never ended?

the nurse came with the i.v. they put the needle in my arm and left me to contemplate the ceiling as the antibiotics seeped into my blood. when i was ready to be unhooked, the doctor explained that i would have to come back every six to eight hours for more antibiotics. taking out the needle and re-inserting it each time would be cumbersome, the doctor said. tnstead, he calmly informed me, they were just going to leave the needle in my vein and wrap my arm in a bandage while i was away from the clinic. he must have seen the horror in my eyes, because he noted that this would save them having to re-find the vein each time and would make my visits faster. even so, i was aghast. the doctor smiled and said he’d see me later.

having a needle in your arm at the crook of your elbow for any significant amount of time is an incredibly strange, softly agonizing sensation. i could feel the needle in my vein with the slightest movement, and had irrational, paranoid visions of a sudden move jerking the needle out of my vein or causing major injury to myself as i rolled over in my sleep. i thought the bandaging made me look tough and people were suitably shocked and horrified when i explained that i had needle semi-permanently in my vein. on the bright side, i completely forgot about my foot because i was so distracted by the needle in my arm. on the less bright side, i had a needle in my arm.

i somehow found myself thinking about that experience in shanghai this afternoon while inhaling medicine through the nebulizer and waving at our ayi. ahh, a few days of silence and introspection. here i come!

*this is not the same as over-thinking, i swear.

**i realize this policy has also at times applied to injuries. about a year ago at this time, on a blue sky morning, i decided to go for a run. i had barely made it out of my door before i managed to trip over a well-hidden sprinkler head and bruise and batter myself. the bump on my knee rapidly swelled to the size and shape of a baseball and my elbows were bleeding rather profusely. but i brushed myself off, hobbled home, had a shower, and went about the day. my boyfriend at the time, little trouble, suggested that i should probably go to hospital. but i said no. my elbow continued bleeding and when there were droplets of blood near the printer, my office manager politely gave me a plaster. that night i had a conference call which ended around 10:00 pm. as i got off the phone, little trouble wanted to have a look at my elbow. as soon as he peeled back the plaster, i knew i was in trouble. he said we needed to go to the emergency room right away, that it was still bleeding, there was a deep gash, and i clearly needed stitches. even then i tried to argue, saying that i had a doctor's appointment the following morning (which i did) and i could just deal with it then. eventually he won (although not after i called both my sister (an ER doctor) and my ba (my father) to get their opinions, which i think infuriated little trouble). i did need stitches, but my knee was ok (although i wasn't able to run for many months). some might find it strange to be in the ER at 11:00 pm for an injury that occurred at 7:30 am, but it seemed very natural to me.

***in a very calm manner i informed my friends of the situation and there were some moments of panic. then i instructed one friend to go inside and search for a first aid kit, another to look for ice, and a third to pull the nail out because i didn’t think i could do that. everyone executed brilliantly. we considered whether to go to the emergency room, but decided against it. i wanted to get started on the drive to the farm, didn’t want to ruin the weekend, and was hungry (and a rusty nail was not going to stand between me and a good meal). we also reasoned that it was a friday evening in SE washington and if we did show up in the emergency room, we would clearly be lower in priority than the gang shootings surely trickling in at that point. and we had so much fresh produce! we laughed at the idea of turning up in the waiting room with our fresh seafood and gourmet cheeses – humboldt fog, anyone? i hobbled around for the weekend and went in for a tetanus shot on monday morning after realizing that i was not, as i had assumed, up on my tetanus vaccinations. the doctor who looked at my foot said that i was incredibly lucky because the nail had penetrated quite deeply and i was dangerously close to having done real damage. she asked why i hadn’t gone for treatment right away. i squirmed a little when i said i prioritized delicious cheese and the sunset over the potomac.

you have to love before you can be relentless

that statement was on a list a friend sent me of jonathan frazen's 10 rules for writing. it was number 10. although i am not clear on whether that makes it the most important or the least. i am going to assume most. i have been thinking about its implications over the last few days. which somehow feels appropriate as i am in the midst of a week-long judicial training and training of trainers (TOT) for chinese judges on how to handle domestic violence cases. before i am misunderstood, let me explain that it feels appropriate because of the passion that people bring to the anti-violence movement, not because i think the statement can be contorted to somehow be equated with violence. working with this small cadre of chinese women and men committed to eradicating violence, or at least decreasing it, or increasing the protections for survivors is inspiring. they are relentless. and, i suppose, so am i.

it has been an intense few days. we held the TOT prior to the training this time (our programs are usually structured in the reverse). and the TOT group is working with our foreign expert trainers to facilitate during the actual training. they lead a series of 'practical courtroom exercises' - model court role plays - on their own this afternoon and it was fantastic to see them apply the facilitation skills they had learned. it also made us all realize that we have our work cut out for us. and china is at such an interesting point in developing the capacity of the courts to protect the rights of domestic violence survivors (or victims as they are still called here). the role play exercises were designed to assess the level of awareness about domestic violence the judges participating in the training have going in, and their role plays and discussions revealed many profound misunderstandings. then again, how much can any of us ever really understand this problem? tomorrow we will spend a day focused on the dynamics of domestic violence. tonight at dinner we had a lengthy discussion about how, in the US, the 'cycle of violence' model (escalation / tension build - violent episode - honeymoon phase) has been largely discredited and replaced with the power and control wheel (more complicated and nuanced). it's an important conversation, but it all feels antiseptic sometimes to try to squeeze this impossible, complex, dark thing to fit some sort of a circle. a shape of any sort.

i have also realized that i have a hard time turning off when i am immersed in a work program. i took a break on saturday night and went to the irish ball (for st patrick's day). overall, it was a grand time. i got glammed up & danced the night away, something i haven't done for ages. and i managed to sleep in until 2:00 pm on sunday, something i don't think i've ever done before. (when i finally got up, i was so proud of myself for sleeping for 10 hours! and i felt great.) but when i first arrived & we were sitting down to dinner (i was at a table with a group of friends), i found myself laughing with incredulity. or maybe it was exhaustion. but i found it astonishing to even be there, with my outrageous shoes and glamazon dress and big hair, after the three overwhelming days at the TOT. a friend was trying to mix up the men and women at the table and possibly set me up with someone (we were both canadian, that was the alleged connection), so i was seated next to a man i hadn't met before. as i was laughing at life and the places and spaces one can occupy between dawn and dusk, i apologized in advance. i said i was utterly exhausted and couldn't promise i'd be much of a conversationalist that evening. and then i ended up launching into talking about (what else?) domestic violence. and the role of the judiciary in combating it. and our training. not sure he was very impressed, but he made a good partner in the line dancing at least.

so what does all of this have to do with love and being relentless? not really sure. (did i mention yet that i am tired? (but content.)) or maybe i'm all too sure. maybe i liked frazen's number 10 because i can relate to it in ways too numerous to articulate here and now. reminds me also of the line at the end of tennyson's poem 'ulysses' - to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

i have loved. and i am relentless.

the full catastrophe

in zorba the greek * nikos kazantzakis gives us the wonderful image of life as “the full catastrophe”. although i think in that moment, he was speaking more marriage, kids, a house, i think it's more universal than that. even without those particular tornadoes, the winds of life will rock us no matter where we are. we all have our full catastrophes. zorba's way is to dance in the gale of the full catastrophe.... to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. in doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly. of course, zorba himself must have been quite a catastrophe for his wife and kids and the others in his path. a loving and outrageous and wonderful one, but a catastrophe nonetheless. what i appreciate about that phrase is that it captures the human spirit's capacity to smile into the winds that blow us about, to come to terms with life's howling difficulties and find within them space for growth and grace. and i love the imperative to dance through the full catastrophe.(note to self: another mantra! use it.)

it has been a full catastrophe of a weekend so far and it's not even saturday night yet. people will be coming over in a few hours to eat cheese and drink wine and smile at life. i've just made hummus. and the early pattern of the tree branches against the early evening sky out my window is like dripping laughter. spent both last night and this morning in the company of wonderful women friends. well, and an italian football team and a room full of outrageous, whimsical hats (not at the same time). but those are stories for another time. in other miraculous news, my partners learned how to use emoticons. and a newly engaged friend is happily glowing in the joy and challenges of it all. so many gorgeous winds blowing!

in this quiet eye of the storm, i find myself wanting to stay very still and listen to my thoughts. almost like listening to my breath in meditation.** it has been an overwhelming week. with the winds of life's wonder and terror whirling about. as ever.

one of the more unfortunate winds that has been forcefully blowing through beijing these days is the continued suppression of public interest lawyers. i had lunch on friday with some of the leaders of china's women's rights movements and the founders of a women's legal aid organisation. i am humbled by how much they have accomplished. their uncompromising commitment to justice, their tenacity, their thoughtful approach to their work, and their playful spirits. their centre was at beijing university (beida) since it was established fourteen years ago. but earlier this week, the university told them they could only stay at beida if they stopped doing cases. they could continue to do research, but, as the centre's founder pointed out, their entire purpose was bringing cases. you can hardly champion women's legal rights much outside the courtroom. and, as i said to her, what they presented you was not an option. they had no choice but to go. this was devastating news to me. it was clearly the government directing beida to silence them. the organisation had no choice but to disassociate from beida and is now considering other options for registration. being associated with a university gives legal public interest organisations such as this one the political cover necessary to enable them to work. by being cast out, it's a clear signal from the government that it does not welcome their cases. and there are myriad obstacles to registering as an NGO in china. luckily, they have a law firm as part of their centre with independent registration so they can continue to work on their cases even as they try to resolve how to move ahead. their cases are vital to trying to push the legal charade of china's legal system towards justice, legitimacy and rule of law.

they recently tried to get involved in a horrific case here in beijing. a 20-year-old rural woman from anhui province came to beijing as a petitioner under china's system allowing individuals to petition the government for wrongs and express grievances. sadly, many of beijing's petitioners end up being detained and imprisoned in "black jails" where they are often abused, tortured, and intimidated into silence before they are trucked back home. (the chinese government official denies that they exist, but they are well-documented. a recent human rights watch report on china's abusive black jails: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/11/12/alleyway-hell-0.) another tactic (and the experience of a woman represented by the centre in a separate case) is for the authorities to declare petitioners mentally ill, imprison them in psychiatric hospitals institutions and heavily medicate them. (see a friend's excellent report on this here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/share.html?s=news01s3066qb75.)

this particular young woman's fate was even worse. she was raped by the guards in the black jail. others were in the room at the time (there are a large number of petitioner-prisoners per room and genders are mixed), but they were too afraid of being beaten to do anything to stop it or even scream. someone in the prison reported the story via sms and soon the black jail and soon the place was swarmed by NGO representatives and reporters. the guards tried to clean up the blood and destroy the evidence and sealed the room. the young woman was returned to her village in anhui and told not to petition again. she has decided to bring a lawsuit against her attacker(s). the women i was lunching with had tried to become involved in her case, but she was only permitted to have a government-appointed attorney. they were furious because that attorney said nothing at all during the initial court proceeding they had just attended. and they also learned that the local government was offering large sums of money to the young woman's uneducated parents to buy her silence. the case will go forward, but it already such a perversion of justice.***

but, as we considered the current situation for public interest lawyering over lunch, we concluded that there is no justice in china. it was a heavy meal, and not just because of all the delicious dofu. i was really just so distraught to hear about this group's being booted from beida. i tried to provide some lightness by joking "who needs public justice when there's such good food in china?" only my work wife laughed. sarcasm in general and my jokes in particular don't translate particularly well. i am aware of this, but resist ceasing my amusing commentary in chinese. even if it is only amusing to me. it's all part of the full catastrophe.

this feels a very heavy place to conclude. but our capacity for both for goodness and disgrace, compassion and despair are all whirling in the gales of the full catastrophe. and to dance through it is to know them all.

*this was also the name of my first cat - zorba the greek. although i apparently couldn't quite pronounce "greek" so ended up calling him "zorba the geek". in the end, he was "zorbie". he was a great companion and an old soul. i am sure we will meet again in other lifetimes.

**confession: i am not skilled at meditation. in fact, i can't really do it. so i feel a bit guilty about even writing that sentence lest it give a false impression. but i aspire to meditate. or do so in the abstract. but actually sitting myself down and doing it is really beyond my abilities at this point.

***although today's news reminds us that the chinese haven't entirely cornered the market on the perversion of justice. apparently doing cartwheels is evidence of murder in italy these days: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/world/europe/05italy.html?ref=global-home; http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/amanda-knox-revisited/?scp=2&sq=amanda%20knox&st=cse. and principles of open government and accountability are quietly being strangled the states: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05sat2.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

firefighting

after spending a good portion of this morning putting out yet another potential fire sparked in relation to our most problematic funder, i stop a moment to ponder. why oh why is USAID such a disaster? it's really quite embarassing. and it needn't be this way. the international development agencies of other nations are culturally aware, coherently structured, staffed with competent and intellectually curious people, respected and held in high esteem. i have even contemplated - in moments in a dark room wondering what i will really ultimately do with my sparkly self during this lifetime - joining the canadian foreign service just so i could work for CIDA (canadian international development agency). [ahh the joys of being a dual national! i can always distance myself from the tornado ballet that is USAID by gracefully deploying the canadian card. hard to do that, though, when you work for an NGO with "american" in its name and when some of your projects are funded by USAID....]

incidentally, the major drawback to the canadian foreign service plan (aside from the obvious questionable career path issues and probably having to be initiated into the service with a class of fresh-faced 20-year-olds and the potential harm to my self esteem from being around so much supple young skin) is that i don't speak french. although you get an entire year in which to become profficient in the national language you don't speak, and i suppose there are worse ways to spend a year than studying french in ottawa. if you are asking why i would go to ottawa to learn french, that is an excellent question! i think better places for me to learn french would include: paris, the french riveria, on a french vineyard where my jobs included learning french, flirting, and sampling champagne, or beirut. confessoin: i have had a passionate secret crush on beirut for years even though i've never been there. it has long been on the list of cities i would like to have as a partial home despite my having never set foot on lebanese soil. beirut just seems to me so hopelessly romantic, gorgeous and complex, swirling at the center of so much: an elaborate, ancient past, a breathless, dazzling future, an alluring present, beauty, pain, terror, wonder, art, ecstasy, despair, freedom. i don't know why i ascribe so much to a city i've never met. it's a lot of pressure. but i have faith beirut will not disappoint. (although i suppose recent experience suggests that i should not have faith that i will not be disappointed. hmmm. too bad, i'm a believer.) in fact, a few years ago when i was (once again) in a dark room* wondering what i will really ultimately do with my sparkly self during this lifetime, i decided that my ideal situation would be one in which i could divide my time between cities i love and use all of my languages. i decided on beijing and beirut and new york. for alliteration's sake, i briefly considered boston. but i don't love boston. i also thought i could add berlin if i needed a european base. so many b's! so much that is aesthetically and aurally pleasing about that! and such a nice arc around our spinning orb. then i realized it was ridiculous to think of cities to live in based on their first letter. and even more ridiculous to spend time thinking about how to maintain homes in so many cities without a real purpose. i was at that time unemployed are really spending a lot of time in that dark room wondering. i still think it sounds like a great plan to divide your time among beijing, beirut, and new york. i simply need to sort out a way to actualize it.

but that is for some future me. (maybe the one who would come back and take the present me out for a sisterly glass of wine and tell me to calm down and keep on dancing! we would laugh, eat cumin-roasted almonds [this is a very vivid detail in this particular fantasy, so do indulge], toss our better-than-we-really have hair about, and smile at life.) for now, i am simply trying to actualize rule of law promotion for an international NGO despite all of the obstacles presented by USAID. as noted above, CIDA is so respected i spent a year in ottowa in my mind learning french for them. (in actuality it was about 7 minutes. this was unfortunate, because i like to do things in 8s, but i think i only thought about it for 7 minutes.) DFID is dignified and their staff always cordial and smart and at the top of their field - a healthy foxtrot. the other SIDA is equally impressive - a brisk nordic breeze of efficiency. and then there's the tornado ballet, dear old USAID.

an example of what it's like to work with them. we are transparent with our local partners about the fact that we receive US government funding. we are able to explain that although we receive government money, we are independent and not beholden to or representatives of the US government in any way. then the regional USAID "folks" as they would call themselves show up. (aside: i really can't stand it when people use the word "folks" in a professional setting. it's a very american thing and i know its meant to intimate of intimacy or cowpies or some combination thereof, but it makes me cringe.) while in china, in front of our local partners they continually call us their "agents". this is (1) not true, (2) insulting, and (3) deeply problematic because of the message it sends to the chinese. to wit - that depsite our protestations to the contrary, we are in fact agents of the US government. needless to say, there were a lot of fires to put out after that visit. to be fair, the USAID "folks" declined to call us their "agents" on their next trip. but still. we can do better, "folks".

we were fighting fires of a similar nature this morning. and i just had to stop and question why. why? there is no need. not all international development agencies are so inept. sigh. nothing to be done except keep on dancing.

*a clarification - the dark room is metaphorical. i don't really sit in a dark room and think about these things. more like i collect myself into a dark corner of my mind to contemplate as i am aimlessly walking around on a sunday afternoon.

season for spices and suppression

the sky out my window today is a sickly grey. the buildings are also grey. decidedly uninspiring. but i have ceased to look to the weather for inspiration.

'tis the season to be thankful. plus, i am being grateful each day (now that's inspiring). today i am thankful for freedom of speech. the lastest supression 'round these parts was the three year sentence handed down to a citizen who was crticial of the shoddy school construction (due to local corruption) in sichuan province that caused the deaths of thousands of children's during the earthquake last year. (the government refuses to release the exact figure for the number of children killed.) huang qi, who assisted parents who lost children in the quake press the local government, was convicted of the illegal possession of state secrets and sentenced to three years. his trial was closed and supporters were barred from entering the courtroom. more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/world/asia/24quake.html?scp=2&sq=huang%20qi&st=cse

i wonder what the state secrets he possessed were? the truth? or at least a desire to unearth it amid the rubble? people say that the first casualty of any conflict is truth. and, in some sense, the chinese model for developing the current corporate authoritarian state has been creating a sense of constant conflict and completely controlling information. (mr. huang forgot that only the party has the truth here. he will now have a few years to "improve his thinking" while in prison.) the conflicts have shifted over the years - from rightists, capitalist roaders, intellectuals and landlords to foreigners, independent media, the dalai lama and "mastermind" rebiya kadeer. but the essential formula hasn't been altered all that much. of course, why mix up what has been so successful?

speaking of mixing up, i am somehow going to three thanksgiving dinners in four days this weekend. and will be attempting to make pumpkin pie. (my obssessive baking has been tempered by other interests of late.) which has me thinking about spices. i love having them about in the kitchen. even the ones i barely use or buy randomly on a whim. there's a great security in spices. what exactly i'm not sure. variety? freedom of flavour? the safety that when all else has been destroyed you can subsist on oregano and cumin? just looking at the spice rack puts me in a good mood. re-arranging it is downright therapuetic. so i look forward to seasoning the pie on saturday. and maybe making some bread as well. (confession: the other reason for the baking lull is my inability to light my oven without calling the compound mr. fixit (or, as we say, the "master craftsman") to assist. it's really rather embarassing and he thinks i am hopeless. although there really appears to be something wrong with the oven. this is the same fellow who, when i've had to call about computer issues, bruskly enters my flat, gives me the once over and asks, "did you turn it on"? he really thinks i'm not the brightest crayon in the box. but no matter.)

if not the brightest, i am feeling bright despite these grey skies. and, although not graceful, i will bravely return to ballet class this evening. (unless a roasted sweet potato detains me..... tis the season after all.)

spaciousness

the more space you cultivate in your life for beauty and joy, the more they will rush in and fill that space, overwhlem it. same is true for adventure. i have been thinking lately about making space for what matters and cultivating a sense of spaciousness within myself. (ok, confession - i am almost always thinking about this.) this weekend was expansive. both experientially and lingamentally. ;). i discovered my new favourite place in beijing. and i took a ballet class.

i almost backed out of ballet at the last minute again, but decided to bravely choose the path which would push me in new directions, loosen up some space in my mind, heart, and hips. i would like to say that beauty and joy rushed in and i was a vision in the studio. but i would be lying. pain and cramping rushed in and i was all awkward jerky movements across the floor. but no matter. i wasn't concerned with what was reflected in the mirror. my purpose was more than the mirror, or rather had nothing to do with it. my sore muscles are today still reminding me to leap. and laugh about it, no matter what happens. i am going back to class again on wednesday.*

when i went to class on saturday, i was already creatively inspired after a great friday night at beijing's best live music venue (my new favourite place). dedicated to supporting all kinds of music as long as it's independent, this platform for creativity welcomes local and international bands, screens films, throws parties, and i hope one day will let be do some political theatre.** we were there to see a brooklyn-based indie rock band, au revoir simone. (i hope that's the correct way to describe them.) they were fantastic and the energy in the crowd was warm and vivacious and daring on a cold winter night. the characters collected in that spot were interesting, and i couldn't help but wonder how we had all drifted into this darkened space in the center of this sleeping dragon of a city. the second act involved a tiny, tiny italian man with very large hair jumping up and down and incomprehensibly scream-singing as his balding friend in a blazer moved around a giant, silver inflatable rocket-penis twice his size with his name (silvio) emblazoned down the shaft in blue letters. it takes all kinds. and somehow there is space for all of us.

in thinking about both inner and outer spaciousness, i have also been thinking about the times of the day in which to cultivate them. i did yoga this morning. i of course spent some moments hesitating about whether to do it or not. i have not fully actualized my discipline as freedom concept. (or is it discipline as a means to a greater sense of spaciousness, which is in and of itself freeing?) while in that statis, i noticed the calmness of the early morning. and that light. i love the early morning light. and the quiet. the possibility. i'm grateful for those early morning moments, even when i forget to appreciate them and am caught up arguing with myself about whether or not to practice yoga. i've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who i'm supposed to be, so it's easier to remember who i am. there is such spaciousness there.

in less uplifting news, there was a(nother) horrific mining accident in china this weekend. i've been reading lately about the government's suppression of the modern labour movement in china (ironic for the state that was meant to establish a workers' paradise). that movement was lead by coal miners. and they were crushed, just as brutally as they regularly are in the mines because both (corrupt) state-owned and (corrupt) privately-owned mining companies find it more lucrative to pay a pittance to dead miners' families than to invest in and implement safety standards and adequate equipment. it infuriates me and just makes certain spaces in my heart ache. i have been feeling that way a great deal lately. i cannot help but notice, and want to call attention to, the dark side of china's dazzling economic rise. i want to make more space for it in the common china discourse somehow.


*the most profound learning point of the first class was re-discovering that there are certain bum muscles you only use in ballet. that and the truth of the statement 'if you don't move it, you lose it'.

**in another exciting development this weekend i have finally settled on my next writing project! and (unsurprisingly) it hit me with the subtlety of a hurricane. very excited about seeing where this will lead.

creative day(s) in the northern capital

last night i went to the american ballet theatre's china premiere. it was simply exquisite. to be in the presence of such creativity, experiencing moments both tender and whimsical, was bliss. and the dancers were incredible - so precise, so moving. it was all just very finely wrought. i was filled with unbounded joy just to be living those moments and seeing such beauty. i am about to go back for a second night tonight! although the programs are different - last night was contemporary ballet, tonight is don quixote. still, i am thankful for dance. for all it has been in my life and continues to be.

watching last night's pieces and reflecting on them afterwards, i found myself struck by our endless flow of creativity and spirit. that we can ceaselessly gyre forward in our means of expression and art. and again i found myself i want to find myself closer to that widening gyre (in a positive sense). closer to creativity somehow. which of course requires discipline. something else that the dancers reminded me of. i have at times run my fingers through the idea of discipline as freedom. recently a lovely friend recalled for me a passage from 'a wrinkle in time', a favourite book of mine as a sweet young thing:

Mrs. Whatsit compares life to a sonnet:

"It is a very strict form of poetry is it not?

"There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?

"And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?"

Calvin: "You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?"

"Yes. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you."

such a charming way of circling around and into the discipline / freedom flow! i suspect that tonight's performance will be similarly inspiring.

in other news, i thought it quite noteworthy that obama's speech in japan was basically about china. it's a good thing the united states does not intend to "contain china"; the chinese keep the american economy float insofar as i understand these things and i doubt america could contain china even if it wanted to. a very clever strategy to mask your reliance / strategic weakness as magnanimity. once again, rhetoric to the rescue!

i also couldn't help but marvel at the strategic carpet the chinese threw down this morning, equating the situation with tibet with the american civil war and noting that obama, as a black president and an admirer of lincoln, should really understand their need to maintain control over tibet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/world/asia/14beijing.html?scp=1&sq=china%20tibet%20civil%20war&st=cse

really, it's just too good. it seems that creativity abounds in the northern capital these days! not just on the stage at the national centre for performing arts.

dancing on the inside

in the weeks leading up to thanksgiving, i have decided to be grateful each day. akin to my borrowed love,love,love agenda (being open to falling in love with three things in life each day)*, i am aiming to start each day giving thanks for something. maybe these two projects are cousins who like to walk hand in hand and swing on the playground together. they are certainly related.

one thing i was not thankful for this morning, however, was the snow. yes, it is snowing again in beijing. this is the third big snowstorm since halloween! i just cannot believe that this is natural and am convince that the furious ballet of snowflakes i'm seeing out my window is courtesy of the weather modification office. i couldn't find any people's daily articles affirming that the last 'gift' of a storm was the result of modification. but there was thunder so loud i thought we were being bombed the night it began, which makes one wonder. aside from the eerily disturbing and strangely sinister idea that the government is tampering with the weather on a weekly basis, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare. this city is just not equipped to handle this much snow.

a recent article in the SCMP on the nightmarish conditions at the beijing airport during the first storm demonstrates this well. mind you, as per usual, you need to go outside of china to get the real story. local coverage commended the airport staff for handling the situation so smoothly. the article:

man-made chaos, but no man-made solution
*****************************************************

Source: South China Morning Post (11/9/09):
Wang Xiangwei

On the morning of November 1, when my parents set off for Beijing Capital
International Airport for a flight of less than three hours to Guangzhou,
little did they know they were about to face more than 30 hours of hell.

Both in their late 60s, they were stranded in the cold airport waiting area,
then boarded the aircraft, then were kicked off the jet back into the cold
waiting area. When they finally took off, it was the afternoon of the next
day, last Monday.

Like tens of thousands of passengers that day, they became hapless victims
of the massive man-made chaos triggered by a huge man-made snowstorm.
Ironically, highly respected Conde Nast Traveller magazine had just named
Beijing's one of the best 15 airports in the world for its layout and flight
information, among other things.

My parents' horrible experience says a lot about the mainland's
crisis-management mechanism, lack of co-ordination among government
departments and utter failure to put into practice the government's much
trumpeted motto of "putting the people first". The cash-rich mainland may
have the best facilities, including gleaming modern airports and new jumbo
jets, but its soft power, as projected in services, is still way off.

When my parents arrived at the airport more than an hour before the 11am
scheduled take-off of Air China flight 1315, the snow was already heavy. But
the airline's ground staff mentioned nothing about a potential delay and
checked them in.

Lacking the wisdom of frequent fliers, they then began a long wait in a cold
waiting area. They were given no food or drink, contrary to state media
reports of such a service provided to delayed passengers. And they were
stonewalled when seeking flight information.

At around 5pm, they were told their flight had been cancelled, and they were
bumped to another flight. Then they were taken by bus to a Boeing 747 along
with more than 300 other passengers. From 6pm to 2am, they sat in the plane
before being told the flight had been cancelled and they had to leave.
Confused, hungry and angry, my parents, along with other passengers, engaged
in intensive arguments with the airline ground staff, who refused to say
when the next flight would be available and would not take them to a hotel.

At 5am, the airline staff relented and put them on a bus to a hotel nearby.
Then my parents were told to get ready to meet a bus going back to the
airport at 8am, but the bus did not turn up until three hours later. They
finally managed to get a China Southern flight to Guangzhou at around 4.40pm
last Monday after more than 30 hours.

To their great dismay, one Beijing newspaper they read on the flight was
full of articles praising the airlines and airport staff for initiating
emergency systems and going out of their way to help stranded passengers. A
weather forecaster at the Air Traffic Management Bureau was quoted as saying
such an early snowfall had not been seen for 22 years, and it was totally
unexpected.

But it was not. According to the state media reports, the snowfall - which
dropped more than 16 million tonnes of snow on Beijing, delayed air travel
and left city residents shivering - was man-made. From 8pm on October 31 to
2am on November 1, the Beijing Weather Modification Office blasted 186
sticks of silver iodide into the clouds to induce snow to help ease the
drought in the city.

But the officials apparently failed to notify other departments, including
aviation authorities. A China Daily commentary fumed that "this arbitrary
government decision disregarded the interests of the people".

The Beijing weather office was not the only one. The airport and airlines
may have launched their own emergency management systems, but there appeared
to be little interdepartmental communication. The result was total chaos,
with little information available from anyone.

The bad service made the situation even worse. For instance, Air China
offers a toll-free hotline, which was understandably jammed that day, but in
this age of the internet, its website provided no updates on the status of
flights, leaving anxious passengers and relatives in the dark.

As well, even after the flights resumed on the afternoon of November 1,
airport controllers cleared the backlog of flights not according to the
length of their delays, but by the ranks of officials on board, according to
insiders.

A week has passed, and nobody has come forward to take responsibility or
apologise for the made-made chaos, let alone learn any lesson. Future chaos
can be reduced if Beijing learns from other countries by setting up an
interdepartmental task force to handle airport delays resulting from unusual
weather.

As the Beijing weather officials yesterday forecast more rain and snow on
the way today, and over the next few days, passengers need to brace
themselves.

**************

a friend who was travelling through beijing en route to wuhan that day spent 10.5 hours on a plane without food as they beijing airport staff struggled with the de-icing equipment and refused to feed the captive passengers. i am so thankful i arrived at the airport that afternoon, took one look, and left. perhaps my most brilliant decision this month.

whether any of these decisions to blanket beijing in snow are brilliant, alleged drought or not, remains to be seen. apparently the weather modification office finally admitted that today's snow is their doing, but had previously stated that tuesday's was 'natural': http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26335967-23109,00.html. i suppose that depends on what your definition of 'natural' is.

in this moment, i am thankful for warmth. i no longer have any urges to rush out and dance in this. instead i will be dancing on the inside (as always).

* borrowed from a lovely friend started a blog in the spirit of a poet she heard at a conference this spring. the poet said that in order to write poetry you must be open to falling in love at least three times a day. i love that concept! and my wonderful friend with her thoughtful blog: lovethreethings.blogspot.com.

on conquering fears, connection, and happiness

there is a school of thought that suggests you should do one thing that scares you each day. i do not subscribe to said school. then again, i do not easily frighten. (or so i tell myself.) i do believe that you should continuously challenge yourself and expand your horizons. which is why i almost ended up in a leotard on a freezing wednesday night in an adult ballet class. oh, i was so prepared. this was a personal challenge i can been considering for some time. i had brought ballet shoes back from my last visit home. i had purchased the leotard last weekend. i had called the studio. i had made evening plans at 9:00 to enable me twirl away the time from 7:00 - 8:30. but there are challenges, and there is happiness. as i was leaving the office, struck by the bite of the cold air, thoughtful, i realized that the idea of changing into a leotard and attempting to dance tonight was not appealing. and that i was hungry. and that the classes would still be offered in the springtime. and that even though i hope that i will be able to find joy in dancing again, i didn't need to find it this week. so i went and ate a roasted sweet potato the size of my face instead. and was very happy with that choice. (eating a warm sweet potato while there is snow on the ground is somehow extra delicious!)

the women's lunch event i spoke at today was quite interesting insofar as it highlighted the importance of connection (and interconnectedness) and mentoring. the connection bit basically came from a fascinating chinese lawyer who had spent many years in the corporate law world, including 11 as the general counsel and then also a VP at a major US corporation in china. she left essentially to find meaning and now spends her time focusing on nature, tibet, the interconnectedness of people, and environmental issues. (if that sounds a little vague, it was.) she uses the connections from her past life to help her in these new endeavours at times and apparently still practices law occasionally. oh and she is also an artist. she just seemed much calmer than everyone else in the room. (and perhaps was subconsciously my inspiration for choosing happiness in the form of sweet potato sustenance this evening.) the mentoring discussion grew out of exchanges about making it professionally as women lawyers. (or just making it professionally at all.) i've long seen the value in mentoring, even if i don't always fully actualize it.

as evidenced by tonights decision not to dance, actualizing the visions of sugarplum faeries we have for ourselves is easier said than done.

falling asleep to the sound of rain

there is something uniquely soothing about falling asleep to the sound of steady, deep, tropical rain. it's calming, reassuring, insistent. (and we can weave our unspoken wishes of what the rain insists into our dreams.) it was streaming dreamy rain for the last two nights in chiang mai. i was there for a conference of sorts – the mekong legal advocacy institute – a week-long gathering of environmental lawyers and activists from the mekong region to exchange ideas, share stories and consider strategies for environmental justice along the mekong and in our countries. participants came from thailand, cambodia, laos, vietnam, china, burma, and the Philippines, with a few aussies, americans and brits thrown in. the foreigners were mostly expats who had already waded into the river of expat life working on these issues and their presence was simply part of being swept along with that particular current. i suppose that is true for me as well.

but the carefully ordered chaos of life in beijing bears little resemblance to the teeming merry trot of life in southeast asia, or at least in chiang mai. i realized as i arrived, happily bouncing along the roads of sunny chiang mai chatting to my driver and watching the motorbikes whiz about in the warm mud, that i had not been to the region for many years. i had forgotten the warmth, the complexity, the grace. so it was nice to spend a few days succumbing to the embrace of this region’s beauty while immersed deep in its tragedy.

although our little collection of committed individuals was hopeful, i would describe the environmental degradation in the region (and indeed the world) as nothing less than a tragedy. i’m still green in the environmental game. i arrived on this chequerboard by way of human rights. concerning myself with how humans mistreat each other, i was less focused on how we are trashing the planet. and i wasn’t particularly focused on the connection, except in scattered, illuminated moments (a class here, some volunteer work there, an article or three along the way).

the participants in our program included a filipino judge / lawyer who has become a warrior for the environment. tony oposa thinks of god as his client and reminded us that even when were are fighting for environmental justice, advocating for the rights of poor communities to healthy and safe drinking water, we must not forget nature, remembering we must also speak for the fishes. tony has a contagious energy and raw, unruly passion for his work and for living each moment. but living it simply. he is a man who can speak of how none of us really need much, and admonish us all to live simple lives, and in the next breath insist that we all sing karaoke with him that night, and convince me to dance the chacha with him. his message of simplicity, and similar sentiments from others, were important connecting points for all of us. all of the nations represented are caught up in fantastic and constricting forces of consumerism and nationalism. so it was inspiring to collectively acknowledge those binds and loosen them, if only for a few days.

my first night did indeed involve dancing the chacha with the world’s most charming filipino environmental crusader as the rest of the group looked on. we also learned a cambodian line dance whose name one-two-three-kicked itself right out of my head. we were taught by a charming and precocious young cambodian lawyer named piseth who looks about 16, is ready to risk his life for land rights in his country. we were an interesting collection of dancers – a lawyer and member of parliament the burmese government-in-exile was deliberate in each step, a brooding journalist from laos with tattooed hands and striking glasses sat back and watched with his arms crossed, a gorgeous vietnamese environmentalist currently working on a phd in paris who danced with abandon, just as she peppered each speaker with spicy questions during our meetings, an australian attorney working to promote public interest law in phnom penh good-naturedly tripped all over himself. that first night there was no rain, but no matter. its song would have been drowned by the karaoke machine.

my last night was spent drinking the local leo beer with a crew of these new comrades. i attended the conference to give a presentation on china’s environmental courts, mainly because a colleague didn’t want to travel. i couldn’t help but think, as i laughed over our leos, how fortunate i am to being doing this work. i only wish i could do more. that we all could do more. there is a follow up meeting in january to continue to build regional momentum. it would make more sense for my colleague – who is a chinese attorney and actually from the region – to attend, but i selfishly would love to reconnect with this group. we will see.

there is a lot of time for rainfall between now and then. for now, i am off to hong kong to spend some time with little trouble and live in the moment.

backdating 1 - comments fom changsha

so once upon a lifetime when i briefly attempted to be a corporate attorney in a big, bad firm i worked on a case related to the backdating of stock options. i therefore know what i am about to do is dubious. nonetheless, i want to include my first two beijing briefings on this blog. so please excuse the backdating.

from april 23:

it's 11:31 on a wednesday night & i've just returned from an evening at a changsha hotspot called song-song. i ended up there after having dinner w/ a woman we work with from the hunan provincial all china women's federation (fu lian), peng di, at a bustling local restaurant inside a rebuilt old palace. changsha is most famous for 1 - being mao's hometown & 2 - burning itself down. during the japanese invasion of china, in an effort to prevent the japanese from getting anything from changsha / making any profit from the city, the city leadership decided to burn everything before the japanese arrived. so 3,000 years of history went up in smoke. and the japanese never made it to changsha. [remember this story if you ever feel as though you've made a really big mistake.] so anyway, we ate in a reconstructed version of one of the ancient palaces. we then met up with some representatives from the national fu lian and some local police from the sex crimes unit to drink whiskey-mixed-with-iced-tea, eat fruit, play dice, listen to hiphop and enjoy a variety of performances (i found the covers of 'hotel californ' and 'country road' charming, the canto-pop sufficiently cheesy, and i was thankfully leaving as the 'naughty nurse and doctor' dance performance act was beginning). this was the end of a long day.

i'm in changsha to connect with a few members of the chinese anti-domestic violence movement / partners of ours, to observe a judicial training sponsored by the australian human rights commission, and to see some of the work being done locally in relation to DV / protection orders (this is probably the most progressive province in the country on DV issues). [another changsha story i can't resist sharing: when chairman mao was making a trip back to changsha during the cultural revolution, the local officials had to chose a place for him to be photographed at the train station when he arrived. this was deeply problematic. if he was to the west, that was problematic because it showed support for capitalism. if he was to the north, that was problematic because relations w/ the soviet union were bad. if he was to the south, that was problematic, that was bad because relations w/ vietnam were bad. if he was to the east, that was problematic because it showed respect for beijing over the countryside. there was no politically tolerable place for the chairman to stand. so he didn't move in any direction once he got off the train for the picture & was photographed in front of stalls selling chilies in the main hall.] it's been good to be here - our women's rights work, which is currently focused on combating domestic violence, is now one of the areas i'm responsible for. we had a really successful training program for chinese police in february, and are in the process of developing a training program for judges. being at a local court today was incredibly moving as i was able to see the impact of our february training program. there is a bit of a revolution brewing in china vis-a-vis the public security response to DV and it is humbling, overwhelming, inspiring to play some small part in supporting that..... (i could go on in more detail about this, but will spare you in the interest of space. glad to share more if you're interested!)

aside from women's rights, we also work on environmental rights, criminal justice, promoting public interest lawyering, civil society capacity building, social policy advocacy, and have a few other projects here & there. (i was meant to be returning to beijing to attend a meeting we're co-sponsoring on representing child victims of domestic violence / sex crimes, but the local partners have decided to discuss a recent, horrific case from southern china where a group of government officials are charged w/ sexually abusing little girls and it would stifle the conversation if a foreigner were there. this happens not infrequently (i can't attend our programs because i look foreign). i sometimes find it frustrating, but i also understand.) so anyway, that's what's occupying my time in beijing. the work is challenging, my colleagues are fantastic. i feel this type of work is the reason i went to law school and i am so happy to be back in beijing. (my inner scripts are more wholly my own there than anywhere else, really. even after all the changes in the city.) it's also nice to be speaking chinese again. though i learned the hard way that i am not quite up to giving articulate speeches on the fly. or at least not at 9:00 am on saturday mornings when the 2 minute welcoming remarks from the chinese partner become an eloquent speech about the importance of volunteerism & NGOs festooned with stories about his daughter's positive experiences volunteering during the olympics. yes, i was tempted to try to make a joke and talk about my daughter's positive experiences volunteering during the olympics, but i sensed the assembled govt officials and NGO leaders weren't the right crowd for that sort of humour. instead i expressed what an honour it was for us to support this work and our thanks and said i couldn't possibly have anything more to say on substance because director huang had already said it all.... from now on when i have to speak formally, i prepare in advance. it's also been nice having shaphan in beijing. things with us are wonderful. i feel very lucky to have ended up once again in the northern capital.

for now, back to changsha. after leaving the court teary and thoughtful about how a group of thoughtful, committed individuals really can make a difference, we travelled across town to a community services center. the woman leading our tour of the center was more hip than i could ever hope to be - short, crimped hair, skin-tight black plaid trousers tucked into high-heeled, tall black leather boots with leather blows and sequins on the sides, a pale pink, slightly wrinkled (untucked) blouse. the outfit was completed by the headset she was wearing to guide us. it was all fairly straightforward until we arrived on the floor that was meant to provide services for pregnant women and educate them about being healthy during pregnancy. my buoyant mood was abruptly shattered by the site of a large, clear jar with a fetus inside floating in formaldehyde (or some sort of preservative). i thought i was going to be sick. until i saw the larger jar with a larger fetus - 32 weeks i found out. it was just so awful and confusing ("they came from the hospital" whatever that means and were there for "education purposes" whatever they could be). i left that room quickly. we saw the arts center and then there was a presentation about their anti-DV work which included a performance of the small play they'd developed as an educational tool. and the day moved on....

the jarring moment i describe is something that is simply part of life here. one minute you're walking to work enjoying the morning sunshine and some (relatively) clean air, happily eating a redbean bread, smiling at dogs and babies and loving china, and the next moment you're stepping in a filthy puddle of restaurant slop that splashes all over you and cursing china. one minute you're moved by the immense will of one local court to effectively combat violence against women in the community, the next you're somehow staring at a decaying fetus in a jar. one minute you're trying to avoid the pig's blood dish at dinner, the next you're being encouraged to climb on the stage and dance to jay-z in between acts at a chinese club.

those moments are always little opportunities for reflection, growth, discovery, inspiration. or laughter. or tears. or both. oh the unbearable lightness of it all. ; ). ok, with that it's clear that it is too late for me to try to say anything further.