so, national day is just around the corner. i am back in beijing and impressed by how thoroughly the city has been blanketed in flags. especially the hutongs – a gorgeous crimson carefully planned display of spontaneous nationalistic sentiment has flags blowing in the wind every few feet. i leave it up to you decide whether flags are the answer or whether china is. (telling you the question would really make it easy.)
i will not be here for national day, so will be missing an even more grand fluttering of flags, the tumble of tanks, and the smart step of PLA soldiers in swank new uniforms. my absence will be in keeping with a theme of heavy travel of late which has me currently hiding out in my flat rather than seeking treatment for a terrible sore throat due to fear of quarantine. i fear that once i walk into a clinic with a fever and confess to having been abroad, i will promptly be thrown into beijing’s swine flu quarantine. this is my idea of purgatory. perhaps even more so than weekend shopping trips to ikea (which is right up there on my list of personal purgatories). not that i believe in any of that, but if i did, i imagine there would be room for both. dante had many layers to his inferno, didn’t he? ikea-shopping on the weekend and swine flu quarantine would both be in mine. not so gruesome as someone eternally gnawing on your head, but nightmarish in their own way.
this illness aside, it’s been quite nice coming back to beijing this time around. it is starting to feel more like home (again) now. it was especially nice to realize that there were people i was looking forward to seeing, treats i was looking forward to eating, neighbours’ cats i was looking forward to spying on. my flat here also really feels like my space – a room of my own. (with a room to spare for visitors!) the (oh so conventional) anxieties that consumed me a month ago have dissipated and left me humbly wandering in the calm blue acceptance of who and where i am at the moment. (at least for a few minutes each day anyway.)
in all seriousness, i am trying more than ever to simply be present. more than ever to appreciate: the blue skies when we are graced with them, my work even as i endlessly contemplate creative tributaries, friendship in all its forms and complexity, compassion, and love. that could be my thought of the day if i were a little inspirational calendar. slightly more than a week after my birthday, i remembered to open the card my parents had given me. in it, they enclosed a description of my chinese zodiac sign, the horse. ahem: a person born in this year is said to be cheerful, popular, and quick-witted. he has raw sex appeal rather than straight good looks. earthy and warmly appealing, he is very perceptive and talkative. his changeable nature may lead him to be hot-tempered, rash, and headstrong at times. the unpredictable horse will fall in love easily and fall out of love just as easily. in most cases the horse will leave home early. if not, his independent spirit will goad him to start working or to take up some career at an early age. an adventurer at heart, still he is noted for his keen mind and ability to manage money. self-reliant, vivacious, energetic, impetuous, and even brash, the horse is a showy dresser, partial to bright colours and striking designs to the point of being gaudy on occasion. the horse loves exercise both physical and mental. you can spot him by his rapid but graceful body movements, his animated reflexes and fast way of speaking. he responds quickly and can make snap decisions. his mind works at remarkable speed and whatever he may lack in stability and perseverance, he will certainly make up for by being open-minded and flexible. basically, he is a nonconformist.
naturally, this says everything and nothing all at once. (it is meant to describe everyone from anwar sadat to barbara streisand, neil armstrong to me.) but of course i see glimpses of myself here and there, and something about the last line i found comforting. while i would hardly call myself a nonconformist, i have tended not to follow conventional paths, and find myself contemplating even less conventional ones of late. somehow being labeled a nonconformist by whatever milk carton my parents clipped this from was soothing. it made my quiet urges to manage a political theatre, or write / dance / create, or run off to somewhere sacred and sit in silence and my flashes of resisting convention, never wanting to settle or stay still, or refusing limits seem downright day-to-day. the label was liberating. for a nonconformist, i'm doing really well.
part of doing well for me is falling in love easily, every single day. a dear friend of mind started a blog recently (lovethreethings.blogspot.com – it’s fantastic!) after she heard a poet talk about how, in order to write poetry, you must be open to falling in love at least three times a day. i love that idea. so did my friend, so she now blogs about what she falls in love with. i have taken to sometimes writing them in my notebook. i used to have an ideas notebook that i carried around, but found myself judging whether ideas were worthy of being recorded or worrying about writing things other than ideas in the ideas notebook. so now i just have a notebook. anything can go in. not much has come out so far. but here are two lists of three things i loved:
- raindrops on gloriously twisted old trees; my unique parents; coffee & pastries in a stolen moment alone thinking
- the lilt of the nordic english accent (a snowy sing-song!); the furious reckless beauty of a typhoon; an embrace so deep it is quiet
i forget to do it every day, but it is a nice practice. in this and previous notebooks i also like to collect shards of thoughts, images, ideas. perhaps to be used one day. perhaps not. i think i just appreciate the act of recording. these are things i have read, or thought, or seen, or felt, and didn’t want to let go of right away. a sampling:
- trust that runs as deep as joy
- longevity depends not so much on the firmness of your undertakings as on the permanent reexamination of your own certitudes
- one country can fall in love with another, get involved with it, grow tired of it and break its heart
- there is nothing picturesque in treachery or distrust
- politics like saggy breasts
- suffering is another bad habit
- sometimes don’t you just wish you could eat jazz? subsist on air & notes alone
- a man is as good as his fantasies
- about someone one understands, one doesn’t have to make lists of words
- intellectual pleasure in paradox / enjoyment of incongruity
- terror of being trapped and tamed by domesticity
- she made up stories about life & told them to herself & she didn’t know what was true & what wasn’t
so i'm not sure why i would share such a private thing here. perhaps it’s a personal test of sorts. to see whether i am really writing this for myself and whether it really matters if anyone is reading. the answer, i imagine, is blowing in the wind.
Showing posts with label lists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lists. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
on suppression and short shorts
so, clearly my post-a-day plan crumbled. i could blame the firewall or my frequent travels to second tier cities to ganbei (do shots of) mediocre hongjiu (red wine) with local partners. i could bemoan my frustrating lack of email access on a few critical occasions (june 4 / 20th anniversary of the tiananmen massacre) just after writing amazing, insightful collections of thoughts that i am unable to share. i could claim that i have been too caught up in life - pushing forward the frontiers of the rule of law (update: still no independent judiciary in china), keeping track of little trouble (takes more time than you'd think), and searching for new and interesting ways to consume red bean (latest obsession: red bean and yogurt popsicles). instead, i will not attempt to make excuses. in fact, these months of silence are liberating in a sense. i can now safely assuming that anyone who was attempting to read my musings has given up so i can write with the comfort of anonymity, knowing that i am just writing for myself. which is what i sat down to do today.
i determined that it's time for reflection in light of my recent birthday and all that has been happening in this land of late. birthdays always make me thoughtful. so does the imprisonment of human rights lawyers. and pollution. and bad haircuts. i am wearing my “inspi(red)” t-shirt at the moment, perhaps to make up for the uninspiring weather. it's as though a pall has descended on or been draped over the city for the last few weeks. the sky and air are grey, and it is oppressively hot. it’s perhaps appropriate; were i to pick a word to describe the essence of beijing this august it would be ‘suppression’. maybe that’s the name of paint colour of the beijing sky were it to be tinned: ‘suppression: beijing grey’ – looks great in bathrooms!
the suppression has been disheartening and weighing heavily on me (not unlike the polluted haze that you cannot escape breathing). i sometimes wish that i could not let it get to me, that i could not get tangled up in it emotionally. but i have come to accept that, even as i am every seeking to quiet my mind and cultivate the inner tranquility which transcends outer experience, feeling deeply is simply part of who i am. i feel the suppression of which i speak – the assault on gong meng / the open constitution initiative, a Chinese legal NGO doing public interest advocacy entirely within the bounds of the law, and the detaining of xu zhiyong, its founder, and zhuang lu, its sweet young financial manger; the announcement by the MOJ that all law firms will have a party liaison to monitor their work; the reminder from above that the role of lawyers is to serve the party leadership; and the continued and increasingly widespread control of the internet – in the same way that i feel this oppressive, pollute heat. it is all around and only seems to be getting worse. more disturbing shades of grey, hotter, and more quietly tolerated as simply the way things are.
sadly, it seems that the prevailing idea in the international rule of law community over the last few months – that this is just a sensitive time – may be misguided, a collective willing illusion perhaps. this suppression, and the party’s seeing lawyers as a threat to their power, seems here to stay. not something that is likely to abate after national day and the 60th anniversary festivities have concluded. i’m afraid this particular shade of control won’t wash away after a rainstorm like the polluted air. and i fear for what this means, not only for china, but the world. china’s power and size cannot be underestimated. astute point that, i know, but i think it needs to be said over and over again. especially when so many – individuals, artists, economies, nations, corporations, NGOs, journalists – are willing to self-censor and resist speaking truth to power in order to gain access to china. but is market access / relationship building / the capacity to do programming in the people’s republic worth it? it’s something i struggle with.
one positive aspect of this increasingly grey backdrop to my life is that it compliments my miserable new hair colour. long story short: (1 attempt to get subtle highlights before my sisters wedding + 1 inexperienced stylist who had never touched blonde hair before = madonna meets jessica rabbit strawberry bottle blonde nightmare) x (1 senior stylist who insisted he could “fix it” + 4 more hours of torture involving various shades of purple) = a head full of deep purple / brown hair best described as “ripe plum”. with time, that shade has faded to a reddish brown (goes great with suppression!). and most of my hair has now been chopped off. (as the (new) stylist who cut it said, my hair was “huai le” or broken, so had to go.) not exactly the look i was going for as i properly enter and embrace my 30s, but a good lesson in what really matters in life (spirit, love) and what doesn’t (hair, superficial form).
a word on being “in my 30s”. i am now 31. on my birthday, i sat down to compose a list for myself of 31 thoughts on being 31. (i have recently also accepted that i love lists. unfortunately only lists of impractical things – dreams, ideas, places to visit, interesting meditations or quotes, interesting words, plays i will produce one day in my political theatre, names for my future children, names for my current imaginary pets, images i want to use in somewhere in a piece of writing some day, pros and cons. lists of practical things – groceries, errands, things i need for the flat, things to pick up when i am back in north america to bring back – have no interest to me and i can never, or at least rarely bring myself to make them. instead, i make grocery lists in my head and invariably cannot find them when i am at the market. standing lost amid the spices, however, i could easily rummage around in my bag and pull out a list of 30 things to do in my 30s i made on my last birthday that is still in my diary. this is a deeply flawed system.) when i decided to list 31 thoughts on being 31, i didn’t get very far. it felt too monumental a task. i was turning all metaphysical, hippie-zen-slumber-party-theology on myself and thinking of thoughts like “there is only love” and somehow i couldn’t have that as thought number 2. thought number 1 was easy: “it might be time to stop wearing short shorts”. to avoid swimming through pools of my own existential and spiritual angst, questioning, joy, and overthinking, i decided to stop the list there. so my deep thought on turning 31 is that it might be time to stop wearing short-shorts. operative word in that sentence being “might”.
in all seriousness, i am trying not to take this birthday – and the attendant social pressures that seem to come with it – too seriously. but it has not always been easy. especially with all my brooding on and breathing in various shades of grey lately, i have found myself questioning what i am doing and where i am going – in so many senses – in a more urgent way than i did a few short weeks ago when i was a sweet, young, wisp of a girl. there’s something more substantial about being 31. time to be wholly yourself, unapologetically, and give deeply, love unconditionally, and not compromise. though i suppose we ought to do that at any age. always.
i determined that it's time for reflection in light of my recent birthday and all that has been happening in this land of late. birthdays always make me thoughtful. so does the imprisonment of human rights lawyers. and pollution. and bad haircuts. i am wearing my “inspi(red)” t-shirt at the moment, perhaps to make up for the uninspiring weather. it's as though a pall has descended on or been draped over the city for the last few weeks. the sky and air are grey, and it is oppressively hot. it’s perhaps appropriate; were i to pick a word to describe the essence of beijing this august it would be ‘suppression’. maybe that’s the name of paint colour of the beijing sky were it to be tinned: ‘suppression: beijing grey’ – looks great in bathrooms!
the suppression has been disheartening and weighing heavily on me (not unlike the polluted haze that you cannot escape breathing). i sometimes wish that i could not let it get to me, that i could not get tangled up in it emotionally. but i have come to accept that, even as i am every seeking to quiet my mind and cultivate the inner tranquility which transcends outer experience, feeling deeply is simply part of who i am. i feel the suppression of which i speak – the assault on gong meng / the open constitution initiative, a Chinese legal NGO doing public interest advocacy entirely within the bounds of the law, and the detaining of xu zhiyong, its founder, and zhuang lu, its sweet young financial manger; the announcement by the MOJ that all law firms will have a party liaison to monitor their work; the reminder from above that the role of lawyers is to serve the party leadership; and the continued and increasingly widespread control of the internet – in the same way that i feel this oppressive, pollute heat. it is all around and only seems to be getting worse. more disturbing shades of grey, hotter, and more quietly tolerated as simply the way things are.
sadly, it seems that the prevailing idea in the international rule of law community over the last few months – that this is just a sensitive time – may be misguided, a collective willing illusion perhaps. this suppression, and the party’s seeing lawyers as a threat to their power, seems here to stay. not something that is likely to abate after national day and the 60th anniversary festivities have concluded. i’m afraid this particular shade of control won’t wash away after a rainstorm like the polluted air. and i fear for what this means, not only for china, but the world. china’s power and size cannot be underestimated. astute point that, i know, but i think it needs to be said over and over again. especially when so many – individuals, artists, economies, nations, corporations, NGOs, journalists – are willing to self-censor and resist speaking truth to power in order to gain access to china. but is market access / relationship building / the capacity to do programming in the people’s republic worth it? it’s something i struggle with.
one positive aspect of this increasingly grey backdrop to my life is that it compliments my miserable new hair colour. long story short: (1 attempt to get subtle highlights before my sisters wedding + 1 inexperienced stylist who had never touched blonde hair before = madonna meets jessica rabbit strawberry bottle blonde nightmare) x (1 senior stylist who insisted he could “fix it” + 4 more hours of torture involving various shades of purple) = a head full of deep purple / brown hair best described as “ripe plum”. with time, that shade has faded to a reddish brown (goes great with suppression!). and most of my hair has now been chopped off. (as the (new) stylist who cut it said, my hair was “huai le” or broken, so had to go.) not exactly the look i was going for as i properly enter and embrace my 30s, but a good lesson in what really matters in life (spirit, love) and what doesn’t (hair, superficial form).
a word on being “in my 30s”. i am now 31. on my birthday, i sat down to compose a list for myself of 31 thoughts on being 31. (i have recently also accepted that i love lists. unfortunately only lists of impractical things – dreams, ideas, places to visit, interesting meditations or quotes, interesting words, plays i will produce one day in my political theatre, names for my future children, names for my current imaginary pets, images i want to use in somewhere in a piece of writing some day, pros and cons. lists of practical things – groceries, errands, things i need for the flat, things to pick up when i am back in north america to bring back – have no interest to me and i can never, or at least rarely bring myself to make them. instead, i make grocery lists in my head and invariably cannot find them when i am at the market. standing lost amid the spices, however, i could easily rummage around in my bag and pull out a list of 30 things to do in my 30s i made on my last birthday that is still in my diary. this is a deeply flawed system.) when i decided to list 31 thoughts on being 31, i didn’t get very far. it felt too monumental a task. i was turning all metaphysical, hippie-zen-slumber-party-theology on myself and thinking of thoughts like “there is only love” and somehow i couldn’t have that as thought number 2. thought number 1 was easy: “it might be time to stop wearing short shorts”. to avoid swimming through pools of my own existential and spiritual angst, questioning, joy, and overthinking, i decided to stop the list there. so my deep thought on turning 31 is that it might be time to stop wearing short-shorts. operative word in that sentence being “might”.
in all seriousness, i am trying not to take this birthday – and the attendant social pressures that seem to come with it – too seriously. but it has not always been easy. especially with all my brooding on and breathing in various shades of grey lately, i have found myself questioning what i am doing and where i am going – in so many senses – in a more urgent way than i did a few short weeks ago when i was a sweet, young, wisp of a girl. there’s something more substantial about being 31. time to be wholly yourself, unapologetically, and give deeply, love unconditionally, and not compromise. though i suppose we ought to do that at any age. always.
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