i am watching rain pouring down and appreciating it's triumphant patter on the slate stones in the courtyard, contemplating faith. and therefore love. just read an article that reminded me of a 'symposium' we held once in college. ahh to be young and pseudo-intellectual and into philosophy and religion! our symposiums involved selecting a topic for serious discussion, meeting in the rodin sculpture garden on campus - in front of 'the gates of hell' sculpture - at midnight and engaging in socratic debate for hours while consuming copious amounts of decidedly mediocre red wine. (i believe the quality of the debate deteriorated (or improved depending on your perspective on such things) in direct correlation to the quantity of wine consumed. and if we were drinking wine in a box, all bets were off on whether the conversation was intelligible, let alone intelligent.) there were sometimes readings involved to prep for symposiums - such as the grand inquisitor section of the brothers karamazov.* there was one night we met to discuss the question: can you believe in love if you don't believe in god or some transcendent power? it was along those lines anyway. this is the article i was just reading while listening to the rain: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/. worth a read. here is possibly my favourite line: We might say love is that disciplined act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self of externality so something new and inward can come into being.
i have been thinking about faith lately. i suppose i always am. it is so important to me. to who and why i am. but (i'd like to think) not in a showy or ostentatious way. it's more quiet, internal than that. more sacred if you will.
i've also been considering the importance of ritual and community of late. again, not new contemplations for me. but i suppose a necessary part of the meditation on love that i've now determined is my reason for returning to china. appropriate for examining context. on the recommendation of a friend - who took serious issue with my assessment of the priv-lit / eat pray love piece, btw** - i just downloaded joseph campbell's hero with a thousand faces or the power of myth, a transcript of his conversations with bill moyers of PBS. [i heart bill moyers.] according to my friend, campbell talks about how one of the reasons that we face existential crises these days is because we've lost the accumulated wisdom of tradition and the mystery of rituals and myths. we've got no greater context to situate ourselves in - not necessarily spiritual context mind you, but human context. oh joseph campbell and bill moyers chatting, i haven't even begun and i suspect that i could drink a case of you and sill be on my feet!
i am going to go for a long, rambling walk in the rain and rock out to a discussion of rituals, tradition, myth, context. all of which points to faith and love and the glory of raindrops and eternity. more to come on all of this. in other news, the all-female japanese punk band we saw last night - shonen knife - was incredibly awesome. may have to to first rock out to one of their songs to get the walk started with suitable rigour for thinking about the rigours of love.
*yes,this is what i did instead of going to frat parties in college. i am not kidding when i say i was a big dork. i still basically am. although now i prefer 'sexy nerd'. i don't think the 'sexy' bit had developed yet when i was an undergraduate. i wore bright colours and sparkles on a daily basis and had short, spiky electric blonde hair. please see the misfits from the cartoon 'gem & the holograms' (truly outrageous!) if you want an idea of my fashion sense. i also spent hours at a time by myself sitting under trees and reading hiedegger. yikes. sometimes i wonder how i managed to have any friends in college - and such wonderful amazing ones no less. i truly am blessed. and thankfully, somewhere along the way, some of these wonderful friends gently suggested that i lose the glitter. and that even rainbow brite embraced grey sometimes.
**he noted that men have always been encouraged to go off on spiritual quests or other adventures to find themselves, why not women? he has a point. and i agree. i think what i actually am concerned with is the commercialisation of that process and the mass-marketing of the need to find oneself and attendant industries that encourage women (read-society's real consumers) to spend money they don't have in the names of attaining some sort of inner peace that, in all honest truth, is already there within them. and they can access that spaciousness or calm or sacredness or whatever you want to call it, without the help of a life coast or a yoga retreat or such. it's just there waiting. in all of us. and there endth my sermon for saturday morning in the rain. om shanti.
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
'big hair, bai jiu, and environmental justice' or 'kafka by the (wuhan) shore'
i am in wuhan and bored to tears. the grey sky is ceaselessly spitting rain in sympathy. to be entirely honest, i probably set myself up to be disappointed on this trip. i had low expectations for this training program (for judges on adjudicating environmental cases) before i left. (and they have been fulfilled and subsequently lowered since being here.) i don't really heart second tier chinese cities. or at least not this one. and the weather is always, always terrible when i am in wuhan - grey, polluted, thick air, either unbearably hot or unseasonably cold, often raining - although the locals insist that it is otherwise sunny and gorgeous. (i think they are delusional or lying.) and our local partners here love to party. at times, this has been incredibly amusing. mostly, it means avoiding doing shots of bai jiu with red-faced, slurring judges who are quick to tell me how beautiful i am and how biaozhun (standard) my chinese pronunciation is while i politely fill my shot glass with water.
last night was one of the 'mostly' nights. i did shots of tang while the judges went to town on the grain alcohol and became incoherent. there was one boisterous judge from wuxi who was leading the group over the edge from tipsy to obliterated. as he and his comrades slipped one by one over that proverbial edge, i marveled at his white faux alligator shoes. and his amazing bouffant. although i suspect that is not the right word for it. i had an illuminating moment of realizing that i ought to start posting photos to this blog simply because i knew then that i would be entirely unable to find words adequate to describe this hairdo. the photos will be my april resolution (why not?). for now, suffice it to say that this judge has a massive tuft of hair carefully tamed upwards from his forehead adding an approximately four inches to his rather small (but very well-maintained!) frame. my moment of wishing to photograph his hair came while feigning interest in his lecture about the importance of exercise and about what amazing shape he was in and about how he is the best badminton player perhaps ever in the history of history. (he can play badminton for four hours straight without stopping (not even for one second!).) there was a young chinese-american man there representing a beijing-based US environmental NGO and this judge took it upon himself to also draw the entire table's attention to this fellow's body. he explained that he was in reasonably good shape, saying that even he, wonder of nature that he is, was not willing to take his jacket off so that his shoulders and pecs could be compared to the young man's. (he was quick to point out, however, that he was probably still stronger. the chinese-american smartly agreed with the judge.) but, the judge then moved down, pointing out to the table that our young friend had started going soft around the middle - too much beer in beijing, not enough discipline. he then implored the young man, repeatedly, for the sake of sino-US relations, to start going to spinning classes. he said in a month, his tummy would be gone. (and the state of sino-US relations would be improved?!? that part i didn't quite follow. that and why this judge was into spinning. but maybe that's because i was drinking tang instead of bai jiu.)
this morning i witnessed a mid-numbing moni fating (mock court roleplay) performed by graduate students posing as judges and peasant-plaintiffs in an environmental pollution case. it was as cliched and mediocre and insulting as you can imagine. i drank excessive cups of terrible instant 2+1 nescafe coffee just to entertain myself. (and, to be honest, i love overcaffeinating. although i don't think there is much caffeine in this fake coffee. mostly just toxins and sugar.) the collected observers then boldly launched into an improptu discussion of 'environmental public interest litigation' - a widly popular, but little understood, idea in china. at some point one of the judges asked me to explain the li an - or case acceptance - process in american courts. i had to explain that we don't have such a process. i clarified that a plaintiff files a case and the court accepts it and then during what we call motion practice the defendant challenges the case and it is at that stage that cases are often dismissed for a variety of reasons. there is no initial assessment conducted by the court or the judges to determine whether or not to let the case in the door in the first place. (the li an process is largely political in china.) i walked right up to the edge of using the phrase 'independent judiciary' but wisely and quickly backed away from that cliff, rather unlike my bai jiu drinking colleagues last night. whether it was the hangovers or the complete lack of structure to or purpose for this program, we ran out of things to say to one another shortly thereafter and are now on an extended lunch hour.
i suppose i sound sarcastic in this post. perhaps i am. usually i feel honoured to do rule of law work in china. sometimes, when the skies above and the drunken judges below are spitting in your face and the discussions of skills in adjudicating environmental cases include such basic niceties as 'give the parties water when they come to your office', it feels absurd. in such moments, i like to imagine what end of a kafka novel i am about to wake up in and where the story will go from here. at least i can look out of my grimy hotel room window at the grimy shore of the south lake below take solace in the ceaseless grey.
last night was one of the 'mostly' nights. i did shots of tang while the judges went to town on the grain alcohol and became incoherent. there was one boisterous judge from wuxi who was leading the group over the edge from tipsy to obliterated. as he and his comrades slipped one by one over that proverbial edge, i marveled at his white faux alligator shoes. and his amazing bouffant. although i suspect that is not the right word for it. i had an illuminating moment of realizing that i ought to start posting photos to this blog simply because i knew then that i would be entirely unable to find words adequate to describe this hairdo. the photos will be my april resolution (why not?). for now, suffice it to say that this judge has a massive tuft of hair carefully tamed upwards from his forehead adding an approximately four inches to his rather small (but very well-maintained!) frame. my moment of wishing to photograph his hair came while feigning interest in his lecture about the importance of exercise and about what amazing shape he was in and about how he is the best badminton player perhaps ever in the history of history. (he can play badminton for four hours straight without stopping (not even for one second!).) there was a young chinese-american man there representing a beijing-based US environmental NGO and this judge took it upon himself to also draw the entire table's attention to this fellow's body. he explained that he was in reasonably good shape, saying that even he, wonder of nature that he is, was not willing to take his jacket off so that his shoulders and pecs could be compared to the young man's. (he was quick to point out, however, that he was probably still stronger. the chinese-american smartly agreed with the judge.) but, the judge then moved down, pointing out to the table that our young friend had started going soft around the middle - too much beer in beijing, not enough discipline. he then implored the young man, repeatedly, for the sake of sino-US relations, to start going to spinning classes. he said in a month, his tummy would be gone. (and the state of sino-US relations would be improved?!? that part i didn't quite follow. that and why this judge was into spinning. but maybe that's because i was drinking tang instead of bai jiu.)
this morning i witnessed a mid-numbing moni fating (mock court roleplay) performed by graduate students posing as judges and peasant-plaintiffs in an environmental pollution case. it was as cliched and mediocre and insulting as you can imagine. i drank excessive cups of terrible instant 2+1 nescafe coffee just to entertain myself. (and, to be honest, i love overcaffeinating. although i don't think there is much caffeine in this fake coffee. mostly just toxins and sugar.) the collected observers then boldly launched into an improptu discussion of 'environmental public interest litigation' - a widly popular, but little understood, idea in china. at some point one of the judges asked me to explain the li an - or case acceptance - process in american courts. i had to explain that we don't have such a process. i clarified that a plaintiff files a case and the court accepts it and then during what we call motion practice the defendant challenges the case and it is at that stage that cases are often dismissed for a variety of reasons. there is no initial assessment conducted by the court or the judges to determine whether or not to let the case in the door in the first place. (the li an process is largely political in china.) i walked right up to the edge of using the phrase 'independent judiciary' but wisely and quickly backed away from that cliff, rather unlike my bai jiu drinking colleagues last night. whether it was the hangovers or the complete lack of structure to or purpose for this program, we ran out of things to say to one another shortly thereafter and are now on an extended lunch hour.
i suppose i sound sarcastic in this post. perhaps i am. usually i feel honoured to do rule of law work in china. sometimes, when the skies above and the drunken judges below are spitting in your face and the discussions of skills in adjudicating environmental cases include such basic niceties as 'give the parties water when they come to your office', it feels absurd. in such moments, i like to imagine what end of a kafka novel i am about to wake up in and where the story will go from here. at least i can look out of my grimy hotel room window at the grimy shore of the south lake below take solace in the ceaseless grey.
Friday, September 18, 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
