i d l e l o r e

Relativity

2011-12-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

So I'm not sure these are the blogs that make for the most interesting reading. I feel this might only be instructional at a later date, for my own personal consideration. I think those that are more universally interesting are those which aren't so terribly deep and are easily accessible to the everyman perusing the web. Daily doses of introspection are awkward and tedious. But that's ok. I'm not writing this for you, though I welcome any thoughts.

After a series of disappointing relationships, and difficult personal growth, I've developed a sense of cynicism towards the whole enterprise of dating and romance. It's as though I've seen behind the curtain, seen the actors putting on their makeup and costumes, seen the cards up the juggler's sleeves, seen the invisible wires that hold the performers in the air. The repetition, predictability, familiarity of the dance has stripped the lustre from the show, it's lost it's mystery and allure. Except what drive raw hormones provide. But even that admission furthers the disillusionment, the concession that the whole process is just a derivative cycle governed not by some ethereal, indefinable magnetism between to people who could be soul mates, but merely your body telling you to get it on.

Perhaps this disenchantment will fade with the further realisation that, while all this may be true, none of it matters, because it's all we have, and if that's all we have then it matters more than anything and the tawdry, sullied secrets of biology and the familiarity of the charade is nothing to disdain, but rather be enjoyed because it is what it is.

I'm looking for that sweet abandonment that comes with the rapture of being enthralled with someone. Forgetting yourself, putting aside obligations, losing everything but the bliss of the moment. Finding that person who erases your awareness of all else, is that a reasonable hope? Is that even a good thing?

Sometimes you do meet someone though. Sometimes you do, and she changes your mind.

School Days

2011-05-05T15:33:00.001-07:00

So I'm waiting with the kids after school for their parents to pick them up. It's pretty late, and only one little girl is left. I asked her if her parents were usually late. She nodded, very seriously, and said, "Yeah, they have better things to do."

Leave Me

2011-05-04T00:25:00.001-07:00

it isn't as hard

as you think.

one day

all of it

every piece, even the ones

that hurt you

will seem tiny

and then

without even realising it

without even knowing

all the memories

will be part of you

smaller than you

and you will see

that it's not as hard

because you are loved.

Those Three Little Words

2011-04-22T15:31:00.001-07:00

"I don't know."

This is the beginning of all understanding.

New Words!

2011-04-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

So words are exciting. These are some new words I've learnt in the last several books I've read. There are some old words here too, but they're good, and a few I needed reminding of to keep them fresh. Yay for English! Yay for Language! ^.^

Canorous

Euphony

Parochial

Parsimony

Diffident

Palimpsest

Sybaritic

Cortege

Puissant

Garrulous

Propinquity

Intenerant

Limpet

Quiescent

Tumescence

Russet

Insouciance

Dewlap

Torpid

Querulous

Suzerain

Impelled

Ecumenism

Peremptory

Travail

Implacable

Limned

Coterie

Blandishment

Redolent

Patrimony

Simony

Depredations

Glede

Demesne

Glebe

Rushes

Mere

Havered

Canny

Bogs

Brake

Bracken

Fey

Fens

Meads

Argent

Panoply

Abjured

Sciphere

Knowing them is one thing: using them is another. Go vocabulary, go! Nothing inchoate, and no dross! No havering or querelous diffidence! Only an implacable, euphonic panoply of sybaritic language!

EDIT: the books these words are taken from, in order from most recent to oldest

Heretics of Dune

God Emperor of Dune

The Prince

The Hobbit

The Silmarillion

Moby Dick

Law of Inopportune Parenting

2011-04-14T22:26:00.001-07:00

Law of Inopportune Parenting: states that at any age in life, the likelihood of a parent unexpectedly entering the room during a movie is exponentially increased during any romantic encounter.

Was watching Starship Troopers tonight when this occurred to me.

Fluxuations

2011-04-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

I went to a club last night. That's pretty unusual for me, but it was an unusual mood that sent me there.

What I saw was humorous to me then, but the fullness of it is only now sinking in. The pretense of the place was staggering. Women hoarded together, waiting in line to get in, dressed in the most provocative, attention getting costumes they could wear. Colourful, bright, cut high and low in the the right places, revealing and intriguing. Trying to be seen, longing to be seen, needing to be seen and noticed and wanted and lusted after more than anything.

The men wore their own costumes, reserved suits of refinement and control, trim lines and angles that were efficient and subdued. Drawing attention to themselves as centres, magnates, authorities to be pursued, and welcomed if they were pursuing.

Power and sex, sex and power, it is everything. I am astonished now, looking back, at how simple, how numbingly simple the entire equation is, and how predictable it becomes. Night after night, club after club across the country, the world. All the technology and resources of the planet focused to this one tiny point, to bring sexual attraction to its greatest fruition.

Is that wrong? Is that immoral?

Gods, no. And who could possibly say that it was!

But what limited scope, what tired orgies to proceed one after the other, and endless onslaught of lustful desires and fulfilment. I don't see the attraction in such predictable behaviour. Some part of me wishes I did. But to me, it all just looks so small, so silly. Harmless, and silly.

Sunday

2011-04-05T13:19:00.001-07:00

Click for a larger view. The latest comic in a series I'm playing around with.

Of Damsels in Distress

2011-01-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

It's impossible to be dignified when you're at the dentist's. It doesn't matter who you are--the biggest business magnate, the slickest playboy--Wolverine--would be reduced to something sort of pathetic in the comfortably reclining dentist's chair.

There's something about having your mouth stretched wide while someone pokes their fingers around in your teeth, finding problems they have to fix that you have no idea about, using secret words and phrases that mean nothing to you--"Yeah, Jan, we're gonna need a OM on the third CB, above the right irascible filigree we're going to have an A25 jamboree." Phrases you're somewhat sure are just for your benefit, but if you ask, are always followed by a thoroughly confusing explanation, to which you simply nod and hope your ignorance goes unnoticed. It doesn't.

Then they whip out incredible tools--tools that suck and blow in the most shameful way; tools that seem specifically designed to prevent you from swallowing or speaking and forcing little rivulets of drool to run down your chin. All the while, upsettingly attractive assistants wipe you down with practised reassurances. No one is so charming they're immune to that. Seriously, picture anyone--Bar Refaeli, if you will--and now imagine them with a little bit of drool on their chin, gurgling nonsensically? Sexy? Hmm. Combined with a light that approximates the sun, shining diligently into your retinas, providing a steady stream of tears to your merely human eyes.

So that was my day yesterday, waiting in an immaculate dentist's office, full of water fountains and big screen TVs--an humiliating empire which charges you king's ransoms for the privilege of such humiliation; an industry built on the shaming of simple, honest people who just don't understand why brushing and flossing are really never enough.

In other news, I got my phone figured out, and am now in communication with the rest of the world. There's actually a significant 'underground' involved in getting a phone these days, one which I had no idea about. My representative kept assuring me of illicit ways to get me the best deal--ways which he would be fired for were his boss to find out, but were strictly between me and him, "brah".

Are you inconvenienced by being a woman?

2011-01-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

Ladies, you can stop holding your breath. Finally, the solution we've all been waiting for. Boyfriend-emasculating pride included.

http://www.go-girl.com/

Phones Schmones

2011-01-13T21:33:00.000-08:00

So, I've never been a big cell phone guy. I've never had the latest technology, and I'm usually at least one or two generations behind on whatever's current. But that's ok with me, I don't really text, and I don't like talking on the phone, so hey, who needs it. Right?

Well, even if you don't need to call people, occasionally people want to call you, and then when they find out you don't have a phone, suddenly you've terribly inconvenienced them. Now they have to write you an e-mail instead, or wait for you to get home to a landline and give them a call. Apparently it's sacrilege to exist sans-cellularity these days, which makes me the biggest heathen on the planet.

It's particularly a problem when you've got a handful of people you actually do want to talk to, but they all live at least a thousand miles apart from one another--six thousand, in the case of some far-flung individuals. Long distance plans are never the most convenient or affordable, and so you're faced with establishing regular communications via-internet (which no one seems to have time for these days, aside from trite updates on your facebook page) or just losing touch entirely.

I'm typically never on the cutting edge of anything. As a general rule, I despise trends and the latest fashions, hype, hubbub, and any type of hullabaloo, brouhaha, or rigmarole for popular etiquette's sake. I usually pick up on a thing well after it's gone through it's fad phase and has settled into standard societal usage.

This practise has three purposes: one, it's saves considerable money. Trends are, on average, expensive to pursue. If you want that thing that everyone else has, you gon' hafta pay, son. Secondly, by waiting you get the benefit of letting other people test out the newest technologies and make sure they're something enduring. Nothing's worse than investing hundreds of dollars into HD-DVD players and compatible hardware, to discover that's its obsolete and irrelevant before you've had a chance to even use it.

Thirdly, and least practically, it spares my dignity the affront of having to "go along" with everyone else. I'm not above resisting the crowd simply to be stubborn, and it's a position I'll maintain probably until they put me in a coffin. If they're still doing that when I die. They may be shooting people into space by then, creating some sort of eternal, cosmic-graveyard. I'll still probably hold off on the idea for a bit, cause you know, what about meteors? Or micro-singularities? "We're sorry m'am, your late husband is somewhere in the fourth dimension, we believe, his sarcophagus being inevitably plundered by roving bands of non-euclidean space pirates." Solid earth for me, folks.

So yeah. This started as a treatise on how I don't have a cell phone. But I seem to be prone to digression.

Back on track, towards the end of my stay in Canada I finally got a cell phone. It was the bottom of the barrel, basic phone, but I loved it. It had no flip screen or unfolding, magic panels or miraculous touch-screen. Just a slim, tiny, little phone that made hardly an impression in my jeans pocket. Which, is ideal. I hate being reminded I have things in my pockets.

Things were swell! Then I moved. And it didn't work. That was in September. I haven't had a phone since then.

And honestly? Haven't missed it.

Oh sure, other people have wished I had a phone, have berated me for my lack of communicability. But shucks to them! Phones here are ridiculously expensive. $70+ a month seems to be the going standard, if you want anything approaching current.

So I've decided to unlock my old Canadian phone (which barely saw any use, and is only a few months old, though I realise by most standards this makes it ancient). It hasn't proved easy! The unlocking code doesn't work, for some reason, and the service provider says they can't help. The manufacturer is in China, and my experience there has taught me it might as well have been crafted on Mars, for all the help I'm going to get.

So it looks like for now, I'm sending it to the cheapest unlocking specialist I can find. The T-Mobile man helpfully suggested I head on down to Mexico--south of the border, down under, into America's pants--and get it unlocked. I laughed, but he appeared quite serious, so I politely told him I would think about it. (I won't).

Resomolutions

2011-01-12T18:23:00.001-08:00

So, my new years resolution this year?

No more microwaving babies.

Honestly? I think I've got a good shot at making this one stick.

Thanks, Bose

2011-01-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

I just got some new Bose headphones. This is my third pair, the last two haven't held up so well. Two years seems to be the shelf life for these suckers, but that's alright. After about two years, my wallet starts itching for another pair, and then life's grand again.

In any case, they ship them to you at a third of the price of a new pair, as some sort of goodwill programme they extend to their customers. $150 headphones for $60? I'm ok with that. The first pair broke when the ear connectors came apart. This time, my Chinese cat Titus was left alone with them in a room for three minutes, which is apparently plenty of time to chew through the cables. So yeah, that happened, then I managed to find a Chinese repairman who soldered them together with bits of old shoelace and gaffer's tape, which worked fine, until the ear cushions came off about six months later. Which is just about exactly two years since I received them as a replacement pair.

So now I've got this new pair, at a significant discount, and the ear sections rotate flat, and the cable disconnects from the headphone portion to make it easier to store, and ... yes, it's just bliss. They make the five minutes of frantically scrabbling to get through the impenetrable packaging totally worthwhile.

And let me just say that after spending three hours on Dell's ridiculous tech support line--which is staffed by everyone except native English speakers--speaking with Bose's customer support service was a dream. No wait, American operators, and absolutely no hassle.

Bose, you get a gold star. Your hardware quality is perhaps dubious, but the sound is unparalleled and customer service is outstanding.

Now quiet please, I'm listening to musiks.

Success

2011-01-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

So, I'm getting published! I've been published a few times before, but they never paid anything. Granted, this new publisher isn't offering much, but I'm still in the wee stages of getting myself out there and making my name recognisable (have you heard of me? Fantastic.), so there's really quite a lot of work to be done before I can reasonably begin to expect anything sizable. Of course, this piece is what I consider to be my best work to date, which makes it a little frustrating that the pay isn't higher, but I'm willing to concede that you can't have it all in the beginning. Here's an excerpt:

"I don't know," I said, unsure. "I guess…" I trailed off. What was there now? Did I know where I was going when I picked up my pack and left this little village? Thinking, planning, anticipating… it seemed alien. It felt like an intruder in my consciousness, a tugging sensation that pulled me by the hair up and out of the pit I'd been digging, forcing me to admit, to recognise…I didn't want to think about it. I couldn't. I stared at the cracked boards in the disintegrating bar top, traced the aging lines with my eyes. I followed their rifts and canyons and trails and imagined slipping into one of them, finding the darkness inside and filing it up. What is it to be as small as an insect?

"So… you're just going, then?" Tucker asked. I didn't respond, and he nodded slowly after a moment. "I see." He scratched his beard, and then sat pulling on the wiry bristles about his chin for a little while.

Something deep in me had moved. There was a touch of the cosmos that had been awakened, a faint feeling of eternity that stretched vast and limitless before my eyes. A future full of wandering and motion and meaningless movement, directed towards nothing and accomplishing nothing and filling me so full of nothing that I couldn't breathe. Subconsciously I reached into my pocket and took a hit from my inhaler. I held my breath, counting the seconds in my head. Tucker watched me from the corner of his eye, still pulling on his chin. What was this place? this little, green, rotten hole in the black heart of nothingness? In the heart of me?"

I'll post a link to the website when it gets published. Oh yeah, did I mention that? It's an online publication. Apparently that's the way to go these days. In any case, I'm pretty excited, and rather than cash my cheque, I think I'll just save it and keep it for framing someday.

It's sort of inspiring to motivate me towards keeping my novel on the road to completion. I take consolation in that Tolkien finished his book only after a lifetime of compiling notes and doing research. Actually writing his book was a feat of no less than twelve (12) years. While what I'm writing isn't quite on that scale, it's certainly complicated and much more intricate than the average book. No excuses though, I'm getting this baby done.

New goal? Before the summer. Wish me luck.

Writing on the Wall

2011-01-11T23:32:00.000-08:00

Here's a little poem I found in an old scrap book, dated from 2006, back when I was living in England.

"Deep within my hallowed heart

Beneath these quilted sheets

Far from the cold grey windowed pane

Pon which the cold rain beats."

I'm fairly certain it wasn't finished, but that's ok. I still like it.

Aliens and Zombies

2011-01-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

Alien Dream

So there are these aliens taking over the earth. Me and a group of survivors were running from them for a long time, finding lots of dead bodies and destroyed cities, and not being quite sure what happened. I guess we were someplace far up north and came down for a visit, and found the earth destroyed? Several members of my group were lost, but we ended up in a warehouse and found a bunch of these plant-like creatures living there. They kind of looked like giant venus-fly traps, but more pod-like, with teeth in their petals, and lots of dextrous, snaking vines.

So this “queen” thought she had us cornered, and wanted us to give ourselves over willingly, and started explaining their story. Apparently, they came from a distant world, and travelled through space colonising worlds and then “farming” them. They had once been to the moon, which used to be a rich farm for them, but when they returned this time, they found it barren and lifeless. So they came back to earth to find sustenance.

She said that they had created all life on earth, millions of years ago, and had brought people onto the world just to harvest and work for them, so they could be fed when they came back. And so now here they were, to reap their twisted rewards. Well, turns out they don’t like our sun, and I and the other survivors made a dash for it outside (it was evening, the sun was setting), and scrambled over this high wall to safety. But we weren’t really safe, because it was almost dark, and so they were coming after us. I heard the queen say, “No, just wait, we’ll get them.”

So it was myself, another guy, a woman, and two children—a little boy and girl. Apparently people had created barriers and fortifications to keep the aliens away, so there were a lot of high fences and barbed wire. Obviously it didn’t work though, but created some high tension moments when the sun finally set, and we were clamouring over the walls desperately, and the little girl got stuck and we had to rush over and help her just as the vines were about to get her. One scratch or prick from the vines would turn you into this zombie-like thing, and then you’d be the alien’s slave.

So we ran down the hill and got into this car and drove away. Where, I don’t know. The dream sort of separated right there, but then later on I found myself with another group of survivors, holding off a zombie invasion in a little barn in the country. There were only a few of us, and we only had a couple of guns and rifles, and there were some SERIOUS zombies.

These were like, mutant-Hulk zombies, and they were really hungry for our brains. I think they were like offshoots of the aforementioned alien race or something, but they were tearing through all of our defences and barricades. We holed up in the basement at first, and I suggested hiding under the stairs where we could prevent too many of them coming at us at once, just shoot them in the door frame and let the bodies pile up. But this uppity chick said no, and while we were arguing they started breaking through.

So it became every man for himself; I eventually got a hold of a Steyr Aug (which is totally sweet), but only two magazines of ammo. I was taking zombies out, but they were huge and each one needed like fifteen rounds to kill. So finally I climb up on the roof, and it’s storming and the wind is blowing and there’s a turbulent sky above, and the zombies all follow me to the rooftop and I can see them climbing over the top and coming towards me. I’m like, damn, this sucks.

So I shoot as many as I can, and finally, with one round left in the chamber, I shoot myself in the head. Which is a weird thing to dream about, because I experienced “afterlife” after that, which—lemme tell you folks—is just blackness. It was a nice blackness though, peaceful. Then I guess I “came to” later on and the zombies had pretty much taken over the world, but a few humans had learnt how to control them, and then it all gets fuzzy. Anyways. Yeah, so that was my dream last night.

Idle Lore, version two point ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh etc.

2011-01-01T15:06:00.000-08:00

So it's a new year, with a new look. Revamped, redesigned, but still the same inchoate dross as before. Prettier, mayhaps, but no more substantial. I suppose that would be a blessing if it were true for all areas of our lives. Which is a nod to my growing aestheticism, I suppose. Beauty is the highest truth! A form of genius, even, in that it transcends all cultures and people, is able to be appreciated without any spoken word or explanation.

I digress.

I'm branching into new artistic mediums, via coloured, digital paintings and a new short story featuring a heroine as a protagonist. Both of these are firsts for me, and are stimulating in that way which only new borders can be. If only I were paid for such intrepid boldness! Unfortunately, eccentricity isn't the coin of the realm. Coin is the coin of the realm, in fact; which is trickling in through various projects. Excitingly enough however, those projects are all creatively driven, and with any luck I can manage to push the boundaries of these entrepreneurial forays into true productive merit.

Old School

2011-01-01T00:48:00.000-08:00

So, I found this in my "Incomplete" folder. It's something I started as part of a creative writing project back when I was living in England. I never finished it, and I probably never will. I think my motivation was to try to write from the perspective of someone who's usually the antagonist, and make the reader want the "bad guy" to win. I think it would have worked, but I dropped it to start working on my (eventual) novel. Which, I might just throw in right now, has undergone several drastic revisions to date. Anyways.

It's just interesting to see where I was with my writing five years ago. Jesus. Has it been that long? Enjoy! Or not. It's posterity.

Für das Vaterland

CREW 304

January 25, 2006

If God had a mind to give man a preview of what he should expect in the afterlife for punishment of his mortal indulgences, then I have found it—and it is called El Kafla, Tunisia. I have been stationed here for nearly two weeks now, and the endless desert and barren hills of yellow sand are as close to any hell as I can imagine. As though destined for an eternity of penance here, I can not yet look forward to the green pines and coursing valleys and mountains of my Bavaria for several years to come. Man was not made for such places as these—places suitable only for the irritable camels and prophetic vultures by which we are harassed daily. Our heroic defeat at El Alamein—I term it thusly, for though we were outnumbered two to one, and in possession of far inferior equipment than those forces of Montgomery, we managed to inflict massive casualties—we have been forced to retreat to this godforsaken valley. Although we were able to take out over three-fourths of the 9^th Brigade with our artillery crews, we are still outnumbered and in desperate need of supplies.

It is now the sixth of December, and we arrived here late upon the twenty-seventh of November. Our tanks were damaged badly in the retreat, and I fear that, optimistically, we have no more than two-hundred operational tanks; at least one hundred and fifty were lost in the battle at El Alamein, and another fifty or so in the retreat here. Our forces have been reduced from one-hundred ten-thousand to a meagre forty-thousand; we face an enemy with at least one-hundred thirty-thousand men; men who are well equipped, rested, and with high morale. Our supply lines have been cut, and there is little hope for reinforcement from the Fatherland. Our orders are to hold fast to the last man. I cannot agree with this directive; we currently guard a useless valley in the middle of Gafsa and Skhira—what good would come from spilling precious German blood in this trackless land, with only the damnable goat herders and roaming caravans to commemorate our loss? With only eighty Panzer IVs, twenty two Tiger Is, and one hundred of the infernal Italian M13s, we are poorly matched for Montgomery’s arsenal of Sherman’s. Never did I suspect the Wermacht would fall prey to Shermans, but this is the day.

As I write this, my men are outside hastily preparing a rudimentary line of fortification beyond the camp perimeter. We have established our artillery pieces—there being thirty-seven 88 millimetre canons in total—on a cliff above the encampment. These should afford us some little cover against a direct attack. Beyond this, there is little else we can do save wait for a salvation which seems destined not to come. Our supplies will last us, with rationing, for perhaps another two weeks, at which time we will be forced to move. I pray that some decisive action occurs before this time, and will spare me the decision of moving us out again into an exposed position in open terrain. There are no friendly bases for another hundred miles, and we haven’t the petrol to consider engaging such a distance. We would be forced to abandon and destroy our equipment. Lurking beyond the vast, desolate expanse of my tent flap, I know Montgomery is out there waiting for me to make my move. I hear rumblings of engines when the air is still, and catch glimpses of the outlines of tanks on the horizon. Perhaps this is my imagination. Perhaps these are only mirages, brought on by the desperate nature of our situation. I cannot say. I feel certain that, whatever our numbers or equipment, if Montgomery decides to test our resolve, he will find the spirit of every German in this camp ready and eager to prove its fealty to the Fatherland. There is no heart like that of a German, and by God we will not fail.

The Song of Youth

2010-12-22T21:12:00.001-08:00

In branches gold that tranquil blaze, I pass the autumn of my days
And so the days of lustful youth in search of evanescent truth
I found the glory of the hour in the sweetest, greenest bower
That overhung the summer glade, all noisome thoughts in me forbade
In faerie morns of silver dawns that kiss the eyelids of the faun
The hoary wonders of the trees whose breath and voice are but the breeze
That plays through lover's hair as oft as fain would dance with boughs aloft
Who swells the heralds of the sky, those billowing chieftains of the sky
And o'er the hills that crack and groan, the timeless seats of fleeting thrones
The battered ribs of earth's great chest, beneath at last all men must rest
A pagan host thence silent wed to bear up those who on them tread
And yet the years before me roll as softy as the furrowed knoll
Whereon the sweeping grass yet waves amidst the gloaming evening haze
Pan's woody breath about my ears, I wait serene the coming years.

A poem inspired by my friend Ang, and her lovely photograph, seen above, and linked here: http://mstargazer.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d35gqcp

Christmas Thoughts

2010-12-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

So, I'm usually the first person to just delete chain mails without ever giving them a second thought. They're trite, cliched, and oftentimes intellectually offensive. But I happened to get one about a month ago that's really made a difference in how I look at things. This wasn't accomplished simply by the e-mail, but over a year of culminating events and long, hard, incisive examinations into my life and what's been driving me so far.

In the e-mail, which was supposedly written by a 96 year old man, were a list of life lessons that he wanted to impart. Whether or not he was 96 is irrelevant, because a lot of things on the list were worthwhile. But the one that stood out the most, was this: forgive everyone everything.

I think because it was short and succinct, it stuck in my head after I read it. I began to think about it, and the more I thought, the more it seemed like the summation of everything I've learnt this past year, living abroad in two different countries, and fighting significant internal wars with my perception of life and humanity.

Up to this point, I've been a generally happy person, but I've also always felt like I was under assault from a hostile world. That everyone was out to get me, that it was dog eat dog, and to show no quarter because I'd be shown none myself. I'm not sure where this attitude came from. Pent up childhood resentments? Who knows. But it's how I've approached every situation I've come across--whether I was aware of it or subconsciously. People were the enemy.

Yet, certain events this past year made me come to terms with how narrow minded I was living life, how bitter I was towards everyone, how full of resentment and suspicion and mistrust and prejudice. Once I decided to let that go, it was actually remarkably easy, and I'm really stunned at how much of a difference it's made in my life and my happiness. Just... stop fighting, you know? Be at peace. Live and let live. The biggest lesson I've learnt is that everyone just wants to be loved, even if they don't know it. I think all the anger and frustration that everyone feels is just a self defense for fear of not being loved.

What was it Melville said? Ignorance is the mother of fear. And it seems so true.

There are things we can't change, and we have to let those go, or they will consume us.

Pride. That is one of the worst things you can have, I'm learning. I've been pretty full of pride my whole life, about the most ridiculous things. And it keeps you from being close to people, because it keeps you from admitting that you're wrong. Because why? You're afraid of being weak? I'm still pretty proud, but I'm trying to let that go. All of the people I think of who I have strained relationships with, are because both of us are too prideful to admit we were wrong, and just let it go. And is your pride worth that? What does your pride honestly do for you? Anything? Does it even make you feel good?

So yeah. Forgive everyone, everything. Just, let it go. Hakuna matata.

Great Minds

2010-12-15T22:42:00.001-08:00

So I happened to do a search for "idle lore", just out of curiosity, and came up with this gem. It's a poem by one of my favourite authors, and it seems ridiculously cool that he put those two words together as well. I realise that in all of English, and the years it's been in use, the likelihood of that combination is high. But to be used also by a favourite author really strikes me as downright nifty. No one else probably gives a hoot, but it's my blog, so stuff it.

I broke the spell that held me long

by William Cullen Bryant

I broke the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.

I said, the poet's idle lore
Shall waste my prime of years no more,
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with poverty and scorn. I broke the spell -- nor deemed its power
Could fetter me another hour.
Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget
Its causes were around me yet?
For wheresoe'er I looked, the while,
Was Nature's everlasting smile. Still came and lingered on my sight
Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,
And glory of the stars and sun;
And these and poetry are one.
They, ere the world had held me long,
Recalled me to the love of song.

Xibalba

2010-11-30T01:37:00.000-08:00

So again it's been a little while. No apology though, just moving forward.

It's a late night effort to resume work on my blog. Which, as an extension of myself, is something important to pursue. Even if I never read these little rambles again, I think they're a testament to self discipline, and a worthy pursuit. I tend to have a blindness to my own self interests which borders on absolute apathy at times. Concentrated efforts towards writing again, which is probably one of my chief pleasures in life, is an attempt to stem that decay which sets in so quickly if not kept under constant watch.

I tend to be rather lethargic in most affairs of personal maintenance, something which I really don't appreciate in myself. It's so easy to sit back and just pass the time, and then wonder where it went retrospectively. I'd like to be accomplishing things with my life, not simply letting it slide by in comfort and ease from my armchair.

I've recently taken up a position as a free lance writer, working for a company to produce articles promoting their business and discussing various aspects of the trade. It's something I'm enjoying tremendously, and the gratification from writing down my hours and sending them off, then receiving a paycheck for my work, is almost indescribable. This is what I've wanted from the outside--a job where I get paid to write. And it's everything I hoped it would be. Granted, I'm not writing about things I want to at this point, but that will come. This is giving me the opportunity to just get paid and learn a trade, which will hopefully come in handy as I begin to branch out and explore new avenues in the field.

The potential in this area is pretty limitless, and I hope I can motivate myself into making it a lucrative enterprise. I've got the ability and the time, I just need to focus my efforts towards something worthy and make sure I don't fall behind. I'm so lax about my personal habits, I can easily spend days and weeks literally doing nothing at all, just waking up, reading, sitting on the computer, lounging around the house, enjoying the peace and quiet and solitude. But I know that's not going to get me anywhere. That's what I did in China for a year, and it was nice, and I don't regret it, but I do look back and wonder what might have been accomplished if I'd had more willpower to follow through on projects.

So that's what this is. On top of my writing for my work every day, which isn't terribly demanding, I'm going to try to keep this updated fairly regularly. I don't think it's important to say something every day, that gets old fast. But weekly or every few days is a good goal to set, and hopefully it'll help me keep track of my progress and inspire some more ideas.

Personal projects for the time being? I'd like to learn to play the piano, and since I've got one here sitting in the house that never gets used, I figure now's as good a time as any. Also the violin, and if I can get it to run, I'd like to start learning to use Adobe Photoshop and take my drawing skills out of mothballs and back into action. Like Nietzsche said: Art is the proper task of life; and I feel strongly that producing something, creating something with measurable dimensions that comes out of your own mind, by your own hands, is one of the most important, rewarding things you can do with your life. I might be wrong, but if I am, I'll still get something beautiful out of my mistakes.

Dum Spiro Spero

2010-08-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a long season since I've updated. I figure it's about time. I've got an hour to kill, and I figure I'm long overdue for a self-indulgent, cathartic, rambling exposition of my recent goings-on.

So, I'm living in Canada, Toronto specifically, and trying my best to make a go of it. I have plenty of motivation to remain right where I am, in the graceful, blissful persuasion of companionship. I won't be indelicate here, suffice to say I find myself, as many esteemed poets before me, rather at a loss for words.

So I'm looking for a job. It's a catch-22, if there ever was one. I need a job to get a work permit, and I need a work permit to get a job. Neither party is pliant on the matter, and I can't really blame prospective employers for their reticence to engage me in gainful employment when they have an eager population at their fingertips who require no exhaustive paperwork. I've got a few pokers in the fire, fingers in various pies, but rejection is high, and I expect at any moment to find myself suddenly without fires or baked treats.

I hold firm to the belief that my tryst with lady luck hasn't ended without my knowing, and that somehow, somewhere, providence will deposit a golden goose on my doorstep. I'm really not asking much, just the opportunity to have an opportunity. If we might expect anything in this life, I think it is this, or nothing. Especially when we work to make both a reality.

I think I have never tackled so many burdens at one time as this. Moving to a new country, finding a new home, finding a new job, getting a work permit, managing finances on a razor's edge, paying bills, and finally being sued for a minor car accident I was involved in two years ago. I was heavily resistant to these rude interruptions to the tranquility my life has been up to this point. Even resentful. But I've learned quite a few important life lessons in an amazingly short span of time, and despite rather obnoxious odds, I find myself mostly ebullient and optimistic. My family's ancient motto reads, "Dum spiro spero,"-- "While I breathe, I hope." I believe it's attributed to Cicero originally. Despite his ignominious death, I rather find inspiration in these words. It isn't over until it's really over, I suppose the saying goes. And trust me, it ain't over yet.

Crocodile Tears

2010-06-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Listening to: Antaeus, Palm of the Prophet
Reading: H.P. Lovecraft
Watching: Wing Commander

So my time here in China is finally at an end. I'm doing some reflecting, going through old photos, dragging out early assignments that I gave my classes. Since I'm not a teacher--not a real one, anyways--most of the assignments I gave my class were just busy work to keep them distracted from the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. Prestidigitation at its finest.

In any case, I gave them the task of writing a poem early in the year, based on a short poem called "The Crocodile", which reads:

Beware the crafty crocodile
Who beckons you with clever smile
To join him in the River Nile
And swim with him a little while
His smile is not a friendly smile
It springs from his dishonest guile
And treacherous reptilian style
Beware the crafty crocodile.

So now, here are some of the rather interesting results. All grammar and spelling are retained in their original format. I imagine I'm the only one who will ever really read this or appreciate what it means, but if preserving it here is the best I can do, I could certainly do worse for posterity.

"Crocodile's Tears"
Crocodile is an animal that is very dishonest. In fact, it is very bad. For example, if his member dies, he would cry. but he doesn't feel sorrow in his heart. So crocodile's tears are very dishonest."

Another one.

Ugle and cold-blooded. Crocodile is me. I'm not clever, and have an ugle face. I love my baby and my life. Attacking is just for living. United, my friends and I works together. for the right to living. We are real fighters. ~ Tom, Class two

Then they start getting serious.

They often discrib us as crule
But only the God know
We are so innocent
Who could tell me
how can we life if we don't eat meet
We eat just in order to survive
Should it be guilty
They only see we are crule
But who care
the tears in our eyes when
we do it.
~Tina

And this one is actually rather good, I think.

The heven is blue
and the sun shines brightly
Behind a beautiful farm
A lake he's here. blue and clear
She swimming happily and freely in it
Singing the songs of the light that she like
Around her
The fish, varieties of fish and plants
They are dancing together
How wonderful!
~Megan

I'm a crocodile
I'm as old as denosal
But I'm strong than him
I can be alinve in the water and
on the land.
I have an ugle look.
But it's not my falt.
I'm good at catching food.
I have a hard and expensive clothes.
Often there are tears in my eyes.
But it is normal. not my lied.
I'm friendly when I'm full.
So I'm not a bad egg.
~Stacy

Live in River
Swim day and day
Freely and happily
Spring highly as soon as possible.
Meat is my love. So much is not enough.
~Priscilla

This one has some possible existential connotations I'm not sure I understand entirely.

A Place Near By
The crocodile
I was born in a wood house
Near my house lives an old crocodile
Who often open a big mouth
He always likes breathing with opening his big mouth
A few years later, here comes a little mouse
He has a little mouth
At the dawn of some day
We three, at the same time came to the pond
opening our mouths
staring at other twos.
~Amanda

Crocodile Tears
Crocodiles' homes are rivers and lakes
in hot countries
He has tears, two bright lines tears
But don't believe him
Tears are his trick
When you are touched by his tears, you
maybe go close to him
Just at this time, he will bite you
With two bright lines tears flowing.

More Hilarious Hi-jinks in China

2010-06-04T03:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/asia/04china.html

"Mr. Xia’s journalism lecture, accompanied by a PowerPoint demonstration,
included other examples of Xinhua’s handiwork, most notably coverage of
ethnic rioting in the far west of China last summer that left nearly
200 people dead.

According to the transcript, Mr. Xia explained how Xinhua concealed the
true horror of the unrest, during which the victims were mostly Han
Chinese, for fear that it would set off violence beyond Urumqi, the
capital of the Xinjiang region. Uighur rioters burned bus passengers
alive, he told the class, and they raped women and decapitated children."

That's just fantastic. Is this really the country everyone is worried about taking over the world? They nearly kill their own astronaut just sending him to space, then they feed him dog, then nearly kill him bringing him home, then lie about the whole thing. Then hundreds of people are killed because they have such violent ethnic conflicts, but again they lie about it, and they actively suppress external news agencies from reporting on what happens in China.

So basically, we have several clear examples of what's actually going on in this country, but we persist in believing their own biased, doctored news reports and thinking they're some kind of nationalistic juggernaut who's ripe to overthrow America. Get real. This country is falling apart at the seams, their population is a bunch of nebbish, plebeian, uneducated poltroons, hyped up on meaningless, patriotic jingoism and unwilling and unable to acknowledge even the most commonly understood facts about their own government and history. We're talking about a group of people who think Genghis Khan conquered Russia.

People of the West: relax. Entropy is a live thing here in China, and before the century is out, the whole country is going to deflate like a flan in a cupboard.

Poems

2010-06-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

Some interesting poems I've come across of late.

"The Cloud", by Percy Shelley
Excerpt:

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

"Nemesis" by H.P. Lovecraft.
Excerpt:

I have whirled with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

Himalaya (The movie!)

2010-05-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

This is a video I put together for a poem I wrote under my nom de plume. The music is Paha Sapa by Michael Stearns.

Himalaya

2010-05-30T04:40:00.001-07:00

Himalaya

At first night's glimmer above the rock rimmed crown
Of ancient earth's immemorial stern brow
Whispered the golden aeon hazes of the fiery firmament
To the last exhalation of that far flung orb
Emblazoned against the heavens as she adorns
The barren, glowing eminence which juts
Against her twinkling, celestial bosom

The nighted gulf of that chasm shore
Awash with merry starlight
Litten granules, brightest eternity
Falling, fleeting fancies of dreaming Ouranos
That gleaming, glittering, glinting, dome
Flickering, dancing, leaping gleeful through the void
Silent, scintillating cradle of cosmic wonder
Cascading above the jagged black horizon
In time not even stone may count

The breath of earth billows boreal, bleak
Clinging mists of those plumed, pink peaks
Rushing white and wailing through the night
To witness the dismantling of all man owns
Cunning and craven they all come to ruin
Under this immortal majesty
And stars dash, and mountains tumble
For earth who groans and shudders
And titans rise and blink their eyes
And time unbinds her fetters.

Testing the Water

2010-05-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

So this past week has been pretty busy on all fronts. Organising a charity isn't terribly difficult, the hardest part is coordinating other people. I spent the last week of class working with my students on creating posters and signs to promote our collection and the Xuchang Zoo and the tigers. A logo for the organisation, which is being called the China Wildlife Foundation for now, is in the works. We're using the tiger as a mascot, being fairly synonymous with China as an animal, and also one of the biggest motivators for this entire effort, the lions being the second. I'm not terribly bothered about herbivores or ostriches being cooped up, but when an intelligent predator is caged in a tiny cell and fed scraps, my blood gets to boiling.

So after a week of preparation and actually a lot of fun finger painting and galvanising as many students as I could--going from classroom to classroom giving speeches with my students and being a general nuisance I'm sure--we rallied this morning in front of the old cafeteria at 11:45. From the start, conditions weren't ideal. For one, the weather was gray, and drizzling intermittently--an inconvenient break from the warm, sunny days we've had all week. Secondly, I was informed that Friday's are not the best days to do such things, as most of the students finish morning classes and then take off for the weekend.

However, we haphazardly arranged ourselves about the entrance of the cafeteria, eventually forming lines around the two entrances so that anyone who wished to eat lunch or leave the building was forced to pass a gauntlet of charitable minded students. Most people were reticent at first, and I was the only one running around shouting--which probably didn't help our cause. Traditionally in China, when a foreigner runs about shouting things incomprehensibly and rallying people, good fortune doesn't follow. So I regrouped with my students and came up with a rally cry which translated into, "Help the animals, help China!" I learned the first bit, but couldn't manage the whole thing in Chinese, so when I would shout the beginning, my students would finish in chorus. I think this turned out to be rather effective, and people began to smile and nod at us, donating in greater numbers.

A brilliant move by my enterprising students was to position themselves beside the queue at the ATM, and cordially accosting people as they left, wallets bursting with fresh 100s.

After about an hour, the crowd began to thin, and the rain started to intensify. We called it quits for the day, and I'm resolved to renew our efforts this Tuesday at the new cafeteria. Depending on how collections proceed, we may extend our days of collecting to meet our optimistic goal of 8,000RMB. At least one day next week will be devoted to collecting at the local mall, which receives an absurd amount of human traffic. And if a bunch of rosy cheeked, well-wishing, honest Chinese students and one foreigner waving colourful hand painted signs can't convince someone to donate, then one of us really isn't trying hard enough.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

2010-05-15T05:44:00.000-07:00

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that as my year in China finally begins to wind down and come to a close, I actually find something worth doing here.

The story starts about a month ago when I was randomly walking through the city one evening, enjoying all the fine sights this lovely city has to offer, I came across the city park. It wasn’t much to look at, and after a few minutes I started passing signs featuring various exotic animals, lions and bears and gorillas and the like. I figured it was, at best, a metaphor of something else. Never did I dream I’d actually find a little zoo tucked away into the corner of this tiny park.

But a zoo I did find. And what a find it was. “Archaic” was the first word that popped into my mind as I paid the 5 kuai to get in (roughly .80 cents US). The concrete pens were crumbling, the iron bars rusting and decaying, and the squalid animals inhabiting them were holdovers from some sort of unnatural purgatory. Bactrian camels stared listlessly as they chewed their cud; Mongolian wolves lay apathetically in huddles in bare concrete cages about ten by fifteen feet; ostriches fanned themselves as they strutted about their pens, infected eyes weeping in streams.

The coup-de-grace however came at the very back of the zoo. I saw something orange pacing in the distance, and my stomach did a little flip flop as I prayed it wasn’t what I thought it was. It was, and worse. Three Siberian tigers walked back and forth in iron grated fences smaller than the average college student’s dorm room. Their cement cages were filled with their filth, tracked about as they absently stepped in it, tracing their steps in a monotonous, unthinking delirium.

In another moment, a man began to push a cart towards them, and when he reached their cages, threw three dead chickens unceremoniously to them through a little slot at the base of their cells. The tigers suddenly perked up and leapt pathetically upon the tiny morsels, some carrying them off to the rear of their pens, others devouring them right there, hoarding them beneath their massive paws, cracking little bones between their powerful jaws. Their tawny heads were as big as my entire chest, and it was terrible to watch them greedily tug at these scraps. I found it difficult to stifle my feelings of outrage as I followed this beetle of a human around to the different cages, watching him indifferently toss the skinned chickens to these beautiful predators.

But this wasn’t the end. When he’d finished with the tigers, he still had a good heaping pile of chickens remaining. He trundled his little cart around the corner, and suddenly I saw another row of cages. Six golden, African lions paced and roared, rising from their stupor as they saw him approaching. In cells even smaller than the tigers, they snarled and reached through the bars to catch the incoming fowl. Sometimes in their eagerness they would block the little doorway for the food and it would fall through the bars, and they would growl impatiently while the man reached down and threw them back in.

It’s difficult to describe the sort of feelings that these sights evoked to those who don’t consider themselves “animal people”. I’ve grown up around animals of every different sort, from cats and dogs to horses and snakes, and I feel a bond there that I don’t even share with most people. While I can see a starving child in Africa and remain unmoved, a starving dog or cat, hollow eyed and mangy furred, will always tear at my heart. Seeing these glorious animals caged and lying in their own waste, waiting endlessly through their lives for something, anything, to happen to them, and having nothing to look forward to—day in and day out—but three meagre chickens at the end of the day, was beyond heart breaking.

As the days and weeks went by, I kept seeing those golden eyes behind their bars, looking right at me, but seeing nothing anymore. I heard the squawking patrons, oblivious and unaware of the suffering of these noble animals, conscious only of their own fickle amusement, I began to be resolved to the idea that if anything was to be done to help these animals, I would probably have to do it myself.
After I decided that I would get involved, a plan formulated itself rather quickly.

As a teacher, I command the attention of some 180 students a week, and though I don’t necessarily consider myself adept at providing them with an education, I could certainly consider them as a resource to get started on helping the zoo. As with most things in life, money seemed to be the issue here. Quite simply, zoos—and more basically, animal rights—aren’t really a priority in China, and so they are at best an afterthought when the budgets get drawn up. Zoos are all publicly owned in China—that is, they’re owned by the government—and with things like propaganda for the West and saving face during their many civil rights abuses, animals aren’t terribly important.

The zoo in question, the Xuchang Zoo, hasn’t been updated or renovated or even basically maintained in over three decades, and is in terrible need of repair. After talking with my students this week, I enlisted the help of two of my class leaders and went to the zoo to meet with the manager. A dishevelled, wasted shell of a human greeted us and showed us around disinterestedly. He told us that the local elementary and high schools occasionally donated money, but it was never enough. The government gave the zoo enough money to meet the animals most elemental requirements—think of people sleeping on wooden cots, eating gruel once a day. Think of Oliver. He told us that it would cost roughly ￥4,000 every month—about $585.00—to feed the animals properly. That a zoo can’t manage even this small sum is an indicator of the conditions here.

However, even at this early stage, my hopes are very high. There are nearly 10,000 full time students here, and if each one contributes even ￥1.00, that’s quite a significant amount. I’m hoping to establish a trust fund of sorts, which would allow the zoo to receive a stipend each month towards purchasing necessary supplies, and even repairing their dilapidated cages. After our meeting with the zoo manager, we arranged to meet with the manager of the entire park. He was a younger, more professional fellow who told us that after reviewing the state of the zoo, the government had assigned him to assess the situation and come up with a plan to fix the problems. This is basically an easy solution, requiring only money. To secure the animals with their necessary food was $585 a month, a relatively attainable sum. To repair the cages for the entire park—which housed a total of sixteen varieties of animals—would be ￥180,000, or approximately $28,000.

The local campus radio has agreed to allow us a spot on their daily programme, and after making some signs with my students this week and campaigning in front of the cafeterias and local shopping malls, I’m hoping we’ll make a significant dent in at least the amount needed for offering adequate food for a month. My goal is to find a recurring solution that will give them this necessity every month. Temporary solutions aren’t really an option for animals who live up to 20 years or more. The zoo said that if we raised at least a few thousand, they’d bring in the local media—television and newspapers—to cover the donation event, which would help to boost local awareness for the needs of the zoo. I’m also hoping the fact that I’m a foreigner will make this who process significantly peculiar enough that we could attract some extra attention.

After creating a trust fund, I’m hoping to gather local businesses, and even support from concerned parties in America, to help pay for this construction. $28,000 isn’t actually an awfully lot of money when you consider what it would be going towards, and with any luck I can get this project underway in the next few weeks.

China Rain

2010-04-14T04:36:00.001-07:00

China Rain

In China, the rains fall
Down the darkened alleys
Concrete grottoes and hovels
The drops stain the cement
Slowly gather in streams to run
Choked, brown arteries to the streets
Swell sickly in the gutters and vanish

In the dusky, twilit avenues
Vendors gather, those beetling droves
Tanned, gibbous faces, downward turned
Steam motes in the chill air
Clouds swirl, rank and sour, hang above
A boreal, blighted atmosphere

Spring grips the ancient land
As so often she has done
But she slips, falls
Falls into the sooty asphalt
Into the cracking pavement
Into the yawning black gutters
Falls, without making a sound
Beyond the boiling thunderhead
Above the belching, smoking stacks
Through the leaden grey sky
Through the withered grey earth
And the hungry trees gasp
Stiffening, groaning, brittle apparitions
Ghost like in rigor mortis

In China the rains fall,
In the streets the vendors gather
Those shadowy, beetling hordes
One waning face, upward turned
Blinks in the ashen drizzle.

The World is Too Much With Us

2010-04-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

Listening to: Conti Partiro
Reading: The Secret Sharer
Watching: Star Trek TNG

In an age rife with vulgarity and appeals to the lowest denominator separating men—of bawdy humour and raucous, clamorous chaos of the mind; of base indulgences in the most shameless decadence since the gluttonous pigs of the Roman empire—there is something profoundly uplifting in silently observing the tender petals of a flower unfolding in gladness to the spring sun.

In our carefree courtship of hedonistic abandon, the gods of the plains and dappled forest glens no longer call for us; the sweet rustle of Pan’s reeds are lost among the dim steel corridors of our atrophied imaginations, their colours muted and distilled to a dim whisper. Knowledge and experience of the world—these are fine things. But what knowledge is needed to wander pathless woods and feel companionship in that solitude—when do we sit beneath a stirring elm and remain unmoved?

Transience

2010-03-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

Listening to: Look What You've Done, by Jet
Reading: Amy Foster, by Joseph Conrad
Watching: Avatar The Last Airbender

Nothing shows me the passage of time like gauging my life against those of my pets. I've had many pets in my life, mostly cats and a few dogs, and when I think of them now, and look at their pictures, I realise that they're all dead, or very, very old. I've also moved a lot in my life, to several different houses, and so we usually gave our pets to friends or found them good homes when we left. So many of my pets I never saw die, I only remember them as they were when I last saw them. Most of them were very young, or in their prime. And yet now, when I think of them, I know they're dead, and have been for some time.

The cat in the picture is named Abby, and she, along with another cat we bought at the same time, was my first cat. We got her when I was 8--that's sixteen years ago. That's pretty old for a cat. Theodora, the other cat we bought with her, died last year. But Abby disappeared after two years, and we never saw her again. She was a wonderful pet--maybe the best cat I've ever owned. Loyal, faithful, totally devoted, she went with me everywhere. I used to go exploring in the woods behind our house, and Abby would follow me into secret glades and mysterious groves where surely no man had gone before. She was right there with me. But then one fateful summer, she vanished without a trace. I was heartbroken. We combed the streets for days, weeks, asked all of our neighbours, but no one had seen her. And, as happens, we eventually moved on.

Time brought us new pets, new loved ones, and each one had a special place with us. But so often we moved, or for one reason or another had to find them other homes, and so I never saw my pets grow old and die. I suppose this is a blessing, in a way, but it strikes me as rather sad as well. I only knew a part of their life, and didn't get to share everything with them.

In any case, in looking at this picture of Abby, I remember her so well. She was so full of life and spirit, and now she's gone---forever kept in my memories, to be a part of me as long as I can see her little face as she jumped up on my bed in the morning to wake me up. How time flies, it's unreal. And the little animals we share it with, those little furry bodies with their spirits larger than life, who we care about as much as any person in our lives. Sometimes more.

In the thirty or more cats, dogs, horses, snakes, mice, and birds that I've shared my life with, I've buried only two. That's it. One was my first dog, Cromwell, who was hit by a car when I was four. The other was my cat The Kid, who died from an abscess infection on his back, and I personally buried in high school. That's it. The rest, whether alive or dead now, have continued on in my mind, just as they were when last we parted. I suppose that is a happy way to see them, to remember them at their best. But it makes me realise just how many years have passed. When you count time with lives that you've cared about, it seems to go by awfully fast.

I have two kittens now, and I cannot see the day when I look back at them and know they've passed away, and I'm still living. In another sixteen years, I'll be forty. How profoundly temporary we all are.

Good Job, China

2010-03-12T18:26:00.001-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35831930/ns/technology_and_science-science/

BEIJING - Eleven rare Siberian tigers kept in small cages and fed only chicken bones have died of malnutrition at a cash-strapped zoo in China's frigid northeast, state media said Friday. A manager at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in Liaoning province, however, said the animals had died of disease. Siberian tigers are one of the world's rarest species, with just 300 believed remaining in the wild.

Liu Xiaoqiang, vice chief of the Shenyang Wild Animal Protection Station, a local animal protection agency, was quoted by the China Daily as saying 11 of the zoo's tigers died of malnutrition in the last three months after subsisting on a meager diet of chicken bones. Two others were shot dead by police in November after the hungry animals attacked a zookeeper, the report said.

Iron crates
The Liaoshen Evening Post, a local Shenyang newspaper, reported on its Web site that the company that owns the zoo was trying unsuccessfully to auction the zoo property, and many staffers complained they hadn't been paid in 18 months. Wu Xi, one of the managers of the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo Co. Ltd., told The Associated Press that "various kinds of diseases" had killed 11 tigers at the zoo over the past three months.

Wu said the animals were kept in iron crates indoors because it was an unusually cold winter and the zoo had no heating. He refused to specify what diseases the animals had or respond to allegations they starved to death. The China Daily said the zoo was mainly privately owned, though the Shenyang municipal government holds a 15 percent stake.

Xie Yan, China director for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, said many Chinese zoos and wildlife parks have more tigers than they can afford to keep. The animals are expensive to take care of because they require a lot of food and space to roam and ticket sales generally aren't enough to support them.

'Massive blow'

Xie said Chinese zoos began breeding tigers in the 1980s and captive populations increased rapidly in the 1990s. There are now about 6,000 captive tigers of various species in China, she said, but it's not clear how many of those are Siberian tigers. "In the past two or three years, people have started to realize it's become a problem," she said, referring to zoos that have more animals than they can afford to keep.

Xie said the government should do more to regulate zoos and enforce standards for animal care. She also said birth control is needed to keep the captive tiger population at manageable levels. Chris Chaplin, a spokesman for WWF International's Beijing office, said the news was "a massive blow" to conservation efforts. World Wildlife Fund colleagues in Changchun, the capital of Jillin province, which neighbors Liaoning, were investigating the allegations, he said.

_____________________________________

Very nicely done, China. We're all proud of you.

This Is The End

2010-03-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

Listening to: This Is The End – The Doors
Eating : bell peppers
Watching: Platoon

I believe that we never change. Not really, not ever. Because we never get erased. That foundation we begin life with, the part that’s built upon and scratched and tarnished and beat up—that part we live with from birth till death—is always with us. We never get nicked back to square one, ground zero, and start from nothing all over again. And so we never really change. No matter how much we don’t like who we are, even hate who we are—no matter how much we live, breathe, have regrets, have hopes, have joys, triumphs, failures, defeats, conquests—it’s all still building on that primeval layer that we start out with.

And so all of the additions we make are just that—additions. They can’t remove that part which is deep down, that gnaws at us when we go to sleep at night. The part that begs to be recognised, and we fight always to ignore. Savagely, desperately, we fight to ignore. It’s still there, the pregnant shadow in our empty, twilit minds. We can’t tear down the house once it’s built—we can only expand, build on top of it, and after years of mad, frantic scrambling and scurrying, we have a monstrous construction that looms before us, ominous and dreadful to behold. And so we always look forward, always away from that thing inside that makes no sense; which threatens to overwhelm us if we ever turn our wayward gaze to that inner chasm.
And so we don’t change. We go on living, doing whatever it is we do, always hoping to find the keys to another house we can occupy because our own is so filled with refuse we can’t stand the thought of it. Sometimes this isn’t bad; sometimes it drives men on to do great things. Sometimes we never even stop to consider what it is we’re doing, and live pretty peaceful lives as a result.

You forget yourself here. You start to feel like you’re someone else. All the old waypoints and landmarks you had—the old familiar signs—they’re all gone. Suddenly you’re in an empty, unknown land, with unknown men and customs, and abruptly you aren’t as sure of things as you were a few thousand miles ago. Then there’re the months afterwards, with such bizarre and limited human contact that you may as well be alone—among people who behave in such unnatural and grotesque customs that you close your eyes and try to find some kind of foothold in reality before the world falls away beneath you.

I don’t know where it goes from here. Maybe we’re all just scared, tired, wandering fools trying to find a place we feel safe—hoping that no one figures out how weak and vulnerable we really are. Maybe it’s all just a game that we play together, bluffing a full hand of jokers like they’re aces, and grinning like we’ve got it all figured out. Who has the answers? I’ve always felt sure that when I got older, I’d have the answers. That somehow, just growing up would give me that assurance I felt certain existed. But it hasn’t. If anything, it’s just shown me how much there is out there that I don’t know, and how stupid and silly we all are for thinking we’ve got an ounce of control. There was a wealthy family during the American Civil War who sold their home and moved to a new house in Pennsylvania, safely aware from the path of the war. Their new house happened to be in Gettysburg, and one night a week after they moved in, an artillery shell came through the roof and exploded, killing everyone.

A thief without a home, and a dog without a bone.

I’m just out here, doing what I do. I haven’t got any grand scheme or plan. At 9:00AM this morning, I was looking for jobs in Thailand. At noon, I was looking for jobs in British Colombia. At half three I said to hell with the world, I’m just gonna hike to Vietnam and get lost in a jungle somewhere until I go batty and nothing matters anymore. There’re no answers. We just are, and that’s all we are. Stay busy, keep your mind off yourself, because once you turn that devilish eye inward, the abyss will grab you by the collar with both hands and look right back at you. Basic psychology at work here: you need something to do, to keep yourself occupied, or you end up in some god forsaken country writing morbid treatise in the dead of night and thinking that opium doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Of Cats and Dogs

2010-02-24T05:16:00.000-08:00

So, I just took my cat Titus to the vet to have his little plums nipped off. He was getting to the age where it needed to be done, although I’ve been much more concerned than I normally would have been since he lives together with Guanyin, an 8 month old female. I’m not exactly positive on the dates when cats become fecund, but I’ve seen enough national geographic shows to know that when he started aggressively biting her neck and wrapping his arm around her, it was probably time.

So I went in with my buddy Phil, who is the proud owner of a scrappy little English bulldog of questionable parentage. Titus was pretty freaked out, so I got down one of the little cat carriers they had in the store and waited with him while they took Stilgar, Phil’s dog, into the back. I hadn’t honestly expected all that much from the doctor in the way of creature comforts, but to say the least, sitting there in the waiting room and listening to Stilgar in the other room didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. While I waited with Titus, I made a few calls and learned the word for “anaesthetic”. Armed with this, I interrogated the doctor, and phoned a friend who, by way of proxy, assured me that my little man wouldn’t feel a thing. I still wasn’t entirely reassured. But as I held Titus, the doctor came over and gave him a series of three shots after first weighing him. I was feeling better at this point, and a few minutes later, I noticed his claws weren’t quite so embedded in my jumper. A few more minutes and his eyes completely glazed over, and he became limp in my arms. Frankly, I didn’t care if they gave him just a bit too much, I didn’t want him to feel a thing.

They took him in the back and asked me to leave, but I indicated I wanted to stay for the procedure, which they didn’t seem to mind. I watched, half concerned, have fascinated, as they lay him belly up on the table and gently tied each of his legs with a little piece of cloth to the underside of the table. A lot of my distress over the entire situation came from my observation of Chinese treatment of animals. It wasn’t typically the sort of thing that gave you warm tingly feelings, so I wanted to be sure he wasn’t mistreated in this most delicate of operations. I’ve had dozens of animals in my life and seen many of them spayed or neutered, and I don’t ever remember it being a big deal. So I wanted to be sure this was no different.

I didn’t need to worry. Titus might as well have been dead. He was the trippiest little kitty in all of China. His eyes were totally dilated, and he didn’t even blink as the doctor blew into each of them. They shaved him, and lay a little operating cloth over his belly with a hole in the middle. A few interesting and bloodless minutes later, he was done. They untied his legs, gave him another injection, and I got to carry him out. He was just starting to come round, and didn’t seem too pleased about the whole situation. He wasn’t thrilled about the Victorian collar he had to wear either, but I’ve taken it off here at home and he seems fine. He’s still shaky on his legs, but this is being written barely an hour after his conversion. He’s been sick a few times, but I think he’s through the worst of it.

Honestly, I can’t imagine how common this operation is in China. Most people would just as soon eat a dog as care enough to spend 200RMB (roughly $30) to have them spayed or neutered. And as for cats? Forget it. Cats are like the black sheep of pets in China; although at the market, their meat isn’t even worth as much as a sheep. No one likes them or really knows what to do with them, and finding starving, wretched little cats huddling in doorways down alleys and in the city centres isn’t uncommon. It's just another fact of China, and although there's countless miserable little critters out there, I'm grateful that I could make life better for two of them.

You Could Be Happy

2010-02-24T05:09:00.000-08:00

Listening To: You Could Be Happy, by Snow Patrol

Watching: Amelie

I know I intended to write about something, anything, everyday this month, but the truth is, nothing of consequence has really happened. School is still on vacation, and supposedly begins again on March 5th. I had planned on working on my novel as well, but the pressure of trying to get all the planning and organisation done in any kind of structured way proved hopeless. Most days I just spun my wheels, and so I’ve decided to take a more relaxed approach, which seems to be working. The novel isn’t getting done, per se, but I feel better about it and I’m getting some short stories and poetry written on the side.

Life goes on, I suppose one would say. The weather is nice, but it’s rather a melancholy night, and I’m not precisely sure why. I think the lack of company here is beginning to tell. The high point of every day for me is waking up and checking my e-mail to see what everyone back in America is up to. That has sort of suggested an interesting philosophy to my mind. While I completely support the idea of personal sovereignty and absolute independence, reliance on no one, it seems that the things which matter most to me in life are other people. My friends, family, even people I’ve never even met in real life and only know through the bare fragmentation of the internet—they seem to be what makes me happiest. Every day, they’re the reason I get most excited, and it’s almost distressing how closely my mood is tied to our interactions, or even lack thereof.

I’ve always sort of stood apart and tried to avoid dependence upon others. People frequently let you down, and I’ve spent a long time blaming them for that. But, honestly, you just can’t. People are people, they’ll do what they do, and if you insist on holding everyone accountable for every mistake they make—especially where you’re concerned—you aren’t going make a lot of friends, and you’re certainly going to limit your available resources when the time comes to call in some favours. We are social creatures, there’s really no way around that, no matter how you look at it. If you can decide that you’re happy without anyone in your life, then I think you might perhaps exceed the definition of human. I’m not keen on the idea of depending on anyone, but I do appreciate the fact that, for whatever reason, when I’m feeling my best, it’s usually the result of some interaction with someone I care about. And if that means letting yourself depend on someone and be a little vulnerable just so much that you can really care about them—even at the risk of being let down and hurt—then I think it’s probably worth it.

I’m staring down the barrel of another year here in China, probably teaching at the same school, and it’s got me re-evaluating my life priorities. I maintain that doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, is the key to being happy in life. Life plans are great, but you’re bound to change your mind at some point, and raw determination and follow-through isn’t necessarily the answer. It might help keep you on track, but what if at some point, deep down, you realise you don’t really want to be doing that, and now you’re sort of stuck? There’s got to be a variable that changes for each person, but at the same stroke, there must also be a constant. I think that we are pre-programmed to listen to ourselves and our inner monologues, but we’re so inundated daily with the opinions of others and the need to be ‘normal’, that most of the time we learn to ignore those little voices that tell us to do the things that would otherwise come naturally to us.

It seems like a simple thing to say, “Well, just do what you want to do.” But it’s often almost impossible to know with certainty what it is that you want, and what other people want. It takes a lot of practise, or at least it has for me, to learn that distinction, and I’m still struggling with the finer points. Emerson said that we often shoot ourselves in the foot with the idea of “conformity” to our own ideas about ourselves. I mentioned constants earlier, and I think an agreeably universal constant is that of chaos. Or, more simply, change. So it’s reasonable to extend that concept to people. It would be a sad life that never changed, and a sad person who never learned anything at all from his experiences. And those lessons are bound to affect change. So, naturally, we start out believing one thing, and over time we learn that we were either wrong to begin with, or there’s much more or much less to what we thought in the beginning.

That sounds good, but the problem comes when we combine our life lessons with the desire to have a constant identity. We don’t want to seem like a flake, and we want to know where we belong, so we try to figure out what we believe and then punch that into a slot that more or less fits. There! Now we know who we are, and where we fit in, who our peers are. Except, we’re bound to change—and then what? You don’t fit into the same places you used to, and now you’re stuck with the threat of losing your identity, or admitting that you have to change and weren’t right all along. Emerson suggested that most of us, out of fear of losing face or looking foolish, maintain our beliefs out of sheer dogged determination to have a place, to belong, to remain consistent with ourselves.

I’ve certainly been victim to this psychological trap. Once you’ve set yourself up for something, established a protocol as it were, it’s so easy to stop thinking about what you’re doing and just go with the pre-programmed, default response. It takes a lot of guts to admit you were wrong, about something you’ve held to your whole life, and try something new. To start over, to redefine your core beliefs. But people change, and if you have any intention of being happy in life, I think learning to adapt, even to yourself—especially to yourself—is absolutely essential.

Self-reliance: acceptance of others, and self-reliance. If you can manage these things, I think you’re on your way to success, whatever that means to you. I don’t know where my life is going to take me, and I can’t help but feel that maybe, maybe, this year has been something of a waste. I’ve learned a lot about life and myself, and certainly about a group of people I never could have conceived as being possible without actually living here, but those are all intangible gains. Maybe those are the kind that matter most. In any case, the journey isn’t over, and I’ve still got no regrets, so I’d say I’m coming out on top so far.

Spiritual Spearmints

2010-02-11T05:42:00.000-08:00

Alright, there needs to be a discussion. There are issues that need addressing. Redressing. Amendment. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen in any sort of meaningful way, but there are things people need to know. And information isn't like air: it doesn't just hang there, luminous in the aether, waiting to be breathed in and metabolised. News ain’t metaphysical. So I'll be the purveyor.

China, quite simply, baffles the mind. But not in an awe inspiring sort of way. It's like, if you saw someone building a leaning tower of feces. Of scat. You'd walk past and think, "Are they honestly doing that? Is this for real?" What possible combination of mental gymnastics could induce them to indulge in such a plainly horrendous effort? You would ask yourself this, but there'd be no answer. Well, that's the situation here.

The event that inspired me to write this happened earlier tonight as I was coming home from the grocery store. China, anticipating booming growth, has built massive highways in the middle of nowhere. I'm living in the middle of nowhere, and so consequently, every road is at least six lanes wide. And they're usually completely deserted. Walking across the street tonight, I heard a blaring horn. I had checked the street before crossing. It's wise to do this in America, and it's absolutely necessary to do this in China. However, there were no cars present. But, I heard a horn, so I looked. About a hundred yards down the road there was a car. His high beams flashed, and he blared. I looked around. Was he really honking at me?

There was no one else on the street—six barren lanes, and 100 yards between us. I stopped, and waited to see this. He not only continued honking, but moved into the middle of the road. Towards me. He clearly saw me. He wasn’t going to hit me. But, he merged one lane over, and as he approached, he straddled the double yellow lines, driving on both sides of the road. I just watched. He kept honking, and then about twenty yards away, swerved and carried on driving past. I saw a middle aged man driving, his wife leaning over to his side to look out the window, an expression of dire concern on her face.

Now, you might read that and think that perhaps he was just fooling around. Having a laugh. But the Chinese don’t do those sorts of things. All spark of individuality, creativity, life, has been crushed out of them. They are automatons. So this man’s reasons will never be known. No, I’m sure I know them. He was Chinese.

This experience is at the forefront of four months of civil abuses—condemnations of common sense and laws of reasonable human practises which are absolutely astounding. I’ve learned that in China, you don’t ever really come out on top. You never “win”. You just lose by degrees, all the time. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. Eventually though, you come around to the Chinese way of thinking, where losing less starts to feel like a victory. It’s training your mind to think laterally. Impediments are constantly placed before you, and over time you just learn to walk sideways. Like a crab. Like an animal. Going forward stops being an option. I’m sure after a generation or two, the very idea of “forward” would just lose all meaning. Take comfort though: in China, you’ve never lost so much that you can’t lose more.

Even the idea that, “Well, if nothing else, I have my health”, begins to lose meaning. After all, what’s up with that cough you’ve had the last three weeks? It hasn’t gotten worse, I guess that’s true. But it hasn’t gotten better either. And was that blood in your toothpaste this morning? Has more hair been falling out than usual? Do you look thinner? After studying my reflection in the mirror this morning, I know I’m not the same man I was when I got here. By about ten pounds.

But that brings up the issue of food again. It strikes me that, if you were brought up eating garbage and the raw refuse of a more civilised society, how familiar all the food in China would be. Regular trips to the school cafeteria have resulted in multiple bouts of food poisoning, and are simply unsatisfying at the best of times. Which really begs the question, should you eat the food, or just starve? You might be starving, but you’ll take great satisfaction knowing you’re not eating the food. And when you discover the delicious new Chinese flavour lead pipe, I’m sure your very notion of what is palatable will be redefined. Seriously. There’s a spice that they add to the food here which makes your dining experience like masticating a piece of plumbing. After these sorts of experiences, I feel strongly that the Chinese flag should really just be a picture of jackboot on a human face.

I recently went on a trip down to Yunnan to get a little southern flavour. It was a nice diversion, but there were constant reminders that even though the scenery had changed, we were still in China baby. Since the Cultural Revolution, China has tried to pick up the pieces from when they destroyed all their own history. Every vaguely historic or culturally relevant artefact was burned to the ground. Yay, progress! So today, they’re frantically trying to rebuild all those monuments and make them look like they used to. They even advertise that a building which is only about six or seven years old, was really built about a thousand years ago. My friend Phil mentioned this to one of his Chinese co teachers, and she informed him that this was true everywhere in the world. There were no “real” old monuments left, they just didn’t exist anymore. Everyone just built them again. Remember Stone Henge? The Coliseum? The Parthenon? None of those are really old. Those respective countries simply built them a few years ago to look old. Just like China!

We all can learn so much from China.

But if nothing else, there are no beggars in China. I haven’t seen one since I’ve been here. This might sound like a brilliant stroke towards improving humanity. The reality is that there are no beggars because everyone is so poor. So there, again: you don’t really win, you just lose a little more of what you had before. It’s an eccentric spiral that circles a never ending drain.

The Spectre of Expectoration

2010-02-08T21:45:00.001-08:00

So it’s pretty cold today. The weather guide on MSN says it’s abut 36 degrees, with lots of rain and ice. While everything outside is completely soaked in a cold drizzle, there hasn’t been any actual rain yet. It’s reminding me very much of an English winter, and that’s always a good thing.

So, this is my vacation, and that’s the kind of update you get. Weather reports. I’m finding it’s difficult to think of things to write about; there’s no external stimuli, so everything must be produced internally. I read about these people who get up and go from sun up to sun down, doing things they like and filling the day from top to bottom, and I wonder—how do they do it every day? If there are opportunities out there, I’m certainly missing them. Granted, I doubt they exist in a vortex of non-being like I do, but still. It seems like there should be something to do every day, something to motivate yourself towards and get out and accomplish. Go to the gym? I have a gym membership, but it’s about a fifteen minute bus ride away, and they have no heat. Neither one of those are inspiring incentives.

I’ve been struggling with the concept of self worth in recent days. A friend brought to my attention that really the most important thing you can achieve towards your own personal satisfaction is a sense of genuine self appreciation. Loving yourself unconditionally, and without reservation. Now, being the ego-centrist that I am, that seems like a given. I’m the most important person in the world to me, how could I not love myself unconditionally?

Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems like that actually might be harder than it sounds. I have realised that there are certain expectations I place upon myself, certain goals—whether it be daily or lifelong—and when I don’t meet those goals or fail to make progress towards them, I feel a distinct lack of contentment for myself. I suppose it’s only natural to have the desire to improve yourself, and if you were simply satisfied never accomplishing anything, where would that leave you? But I wonder, can you know the distinction? Can you recognise when you are being a boorish lout and not striving towards self-improvement, and when you’re simply never going to be satisfied with anything you do?

I’m not sure I can. I know most days, given the time, I can come to an appreciation of myself. But it seems there’s this nagging hesitancy that suggests that I’m not good enough unless I accomplish this or that, unless I have this image, unless I make sure I’m good at this other thing. Sort like being on the open sea, and needing a list of personal attributes and accomplishments to keep you afloat. If I didn’t have these things, I’m concerned that maybe I might sink? But who can say. How do you possibly test that theory? Is there any way to eve know which is which? It seems like there is perhaps no specific path towards discovering your own self worth, other than either banally telling yourself you’re special and unique and wonderful, or by random chance learning to feel that way through completely arbitrary and unrepeatable circumstances.

In any case, the day is cold, and my cats are fighting for my lap. If there were any surer sign of being important, I don’t know what it is.

One of These Things First

2010-02-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

So, I began this month with the intention of writing a new blog post everyday. I recently got back from Yunnan, and writing about my trip there was a lot of fun, and I received a lot of positive feedback. There's still a month left before I resume work here, and writing everyday seems like it might be a good idea towards being semi-constructive with my time. Although, god knows what I'll write about. My days are filled from beginning to end with sitting in front of the computer or lying on my bed reading.

But, there should probably be a time for that in everyone's life. I've always been convinced that either school or work or friends or concerns about impending comets has kept me from doing the writing I was certain I'd be doing otherwise. Well, now I'm here, and there is absolutely nothing getting in the way of writing. Except me.

So, I just watched Garden State for the second time, and I have to admit I liked it much better. The first time, it seemed slow and laboriously tedious. I really didn't get why most people liked it. It was just a melodrama about some disenchanted guy who had family problems. Watching the intimacy between the characters this time, however, was really wonderful. Everyone was dysfunctional, but I think that's probably accurate. I've given it some thought, and I don't really know anyone who doesn't have a book's worth of issues. Family issues, friend issues, personal dilemmas that haunt them in the small hours of the night. I suppose that's what makes us interesting? I mean, what would we be without those little quirks? Also, this time though, I think I might have fallen in love with Natalie Portman's character.

So let's talk! What is there to talk about? Admittedly, this is a self-exercise in discipline, so those of you with plans for the day, or who value your time, you might want to pack your bags and hit the road now. I don't think it'll get much better than this.

I'm rather alarmed at how much I rely on external stimuli to affect positive mood changes. Perhaps it's not reality, because I was feeling pretty good when I woke up this morning. Or maybe it was that e-mail from that cute girl. Women: if you ever think the world is unfairly stacked against you, that men run things, that you haven't gotten a fair shake, I have some advice: go home, and sit in front of the mirror, and do some good hard thinking. That person, the one you see in front of you, is the reason behind 90% or more of the things men do. The whole world is built to impress you. And if you think things aren't working out your way, it's because you probably don't know that. There was a woman who's face launched a thousand ships. There hasn't been a story like that written about a man. Yet. God help me, but I'll make it happen.

So, what was the point of all that? This is a cosy day. It's cold and gray and the ground is wet from a night rain. My cat is asleep in my lap, I'm listening to some great new music I picked up after hearing it on Pandora, and I have a hot cup of coffee and hot chocolate in front of me. My favourite hoodie is pulled up around my head, and I'm wearing the softest Izod pajamas. My bed isn't made, and there's some clothes from yesterday scattered around the foot. I haven't got a blessed plan for the rest of the day, and it feels fantastic. I don't think it gets better than this.

You ever have one of those days when everything turns out ok? Even if it's not what you wanted, it's ok? I'd really like to know how that happens, because after years of stop and go, getting caught up in the little corkscrews and eddies of daily life, that seems all too important when you're in the middle of it, it'd be really nice if I could just decide to see life like this all the time. Would you get bored? I dunno, but I wouldn't mind trying.

I'm 24. I'm living in China. I've got no reason to back to America, and so I'll probably stay here another year. Or two. Or just never come home at all and spend the rest of my life living these gray, coffee days from here to Kuala Lumpur. I really wanted to be rich when I was a kid. All the way up to about six months ago. Hell, I still wouldn't mind. But as I'm sitting here, enjoying this winter afternoon, I really can't see how money could improve my situation. There's nothing I want that I don't have.

So, I'm going to have another cup of coffee, and work on a short story. I hope I can remember this feeling when I'm down and blue, because right now, life's pretty wonderful. I can see the sun coming through the clouds.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2010-02-04T19:10:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

It bears mentioning that in China, the heat doesn’t work. I may have said this before, but as it is a repeating concern, it’s worth reminding those of you in civilised countries that it isn't always the twist of a thermostat away.We stayed in several hotels during our time in Lijiang, and none of them had heat. Which isn’t terribly surprising, because my apartment in Xuchang doesn’t have heat either, and neither do the classrooms or any of the buildings in the city. To summarise: there is no heat in China. So when my alarm went off at 7:00AM to get up and get ready for our hike, I was on the head of a week of no sleep in 30 degree rooms, and nursing a chest cold that had me coughing up god-knows-what and flailing about with sporadic asthma attacks that thin air and high pollution do nothing to help. On top of the fact that we had no heat, this was a morning that I wasn’t exactly feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. Neither of us were. But, being the stalwart American men that we are, we saddled up and rode out into the cold Chinese morning.

Finding the bus was pretty easy, and after a ridiculous fiasco wherein one Chinese ticketing lady told us we could buy tickets once we got on the bus, and then the bus driver told us to bugger off because we didn’t have any tickets, we finally managed to climb into a fairly empty passenger van and sleep the hour and a half it took us to arrive. Where were we going, exactly? Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a natural rift between two jutting mountain ranges, and is where the headwaters of the Yellow River (Yangtze) have their origins. We arrived at 11:30 in the morning, and disembarked into the tinniest little corner of hell this side of Glasgow. It’s amazing to think that a town of no more than 1,000 people could have offered a population made entirely of scavenging douche bags, but every person there was an avaricious villain out to steal our money in the crudest and most blatantly underhanded ways possible. We sat down to a light breakfast before we began what we imagined would be a punishing excursion, and at first, all seemed destined to be delightful. It was a clear day, the sun was shining, and we were about to set off into the wilds of China. I ordered rice with three eggs, and the others had noodle soup with some kind of meat. I contended that my rice only had one egg. Maybe. This is a meal which might cost, 3 quai, if they were feeling greedy. However, we received a bill at the end for 75 quai. My meal alone had run 35. For eggs and rice. Granted, this is only about 5 dollars. But this is also China, land of eternally hackneyed products and inferior quality. Where asking for three eggs results in one, and asking for chicken results in cat. We laughed in the squawking woman’s face and paid forty, which is frankly twenty too high, in my estimation.

Products in the local grocery store were marked up significantly, and when I displayed indignance, the grocer—a slim man with a mean, repugnant countenance—smirked and shrugged. I threw my 10 quai bag of M&Ms on the counter and walked out in impotent rage.

We then began our hike, and immediately regretted wearing so many clothes. The morning was warming up quickly, and my meagre camelback backpack couldn’t carry the heavy jacket, sweatshirt, and two pairs of long underwear I had brought in anticipation of a blizzarding winter pass. Short sleeves and rolled up trousers, with my pack stuffed and sweatshirt impossibly tucked into the outer pockets was the eventual solution. We set off with myself, Phil, Irene, and Marion, and quickly added an English couple, Sophie and her boyfriend Jono, to our pack, along with some Frenchmen who quickly disappeared behind us. Phil and I took the wrong road, a maintenance road that split off the main trail, fairly early on, but discovered our mistake after half an hour of uphill climbing. Even after this, we still managed to overtake everyone in the party—even a horde of Koreans on donkeys—and came out in first by a good margin. As Americans, it is important to be first in everything.

Our obscene lead diminished, however, as we began the gruelling “28 Bends”, a narrow section of the trail that zigzagged back and forth at about a sixty or seventy percent grade. Under the sun and my 12 kilo pack, we trudged upwards, aware that we were losing our advantage. We pressed on, but the Koreans on donkeys caught up with us, and it was then a full on race for national pride to be the first to the top. Braying asses harried us up the steep hike, and we could pause for no more than a minute before we would catch sight of them rounding the nearest bend, and our hellish sojourn would resume. Yet we persevered, and after about forty minutes, we finally reached the top. First. We made no qualms about announcing the fact that America, once again, had beaten everyone. There’s something diabolically satisfying in physically besting others who have an advantage over you. And make no mistake, those donkeys are cursed beasts. Light on their feet, even with an 80 kilo Korean whipping their haunches mercilessly.

The trail was mostly downhill from there, and we had a great time leaping and frolicking, ahead of everyone and finally able to enjoy the scenery at our leisure. The mountains were gorgeous. The image that kept repeating itself to my overawed mind was of a gigantic, planet-reaming saw blade that had been laid aside by some omnipotent celestial craftsman. The mountains were viciously ragged, with jutting peaks that seemed to writhe in tortured anguish against the deepening sky. Immense fissures and gaping rifts told the stories of ancient geologic battles in the earth, titan struggles whose outcome we would never live to see. The river plunged far below us, and cheerful winds mused through the knotty pines and swayed the yellowing groves of bamboo. It’s difficult to express the feeling of encompassing wonder and beauty that stole upon me as I walked through this primordial landscape. Tragically, the silence was occasionally punctuated by explosive blasts of dynamite as the Chinese diligently worked to destroy this national treasure. A million Indians standing on a lone butte, buckets of tears streaming down their sun darkened faces, couldn’t capture the sense of loss.

We paused at one scenic vista to take some pictures, and a lone Korean girl in a blue wind breaker passed us. We weren’t worried though. It was one girl! We’d catch up quickly, and America’s dominance would be reclaimed. Lingering for no more than a minute, we turned and headed off. After walking at a good speed for five minutes, we still hadn’t seen her, and so I suggested we run to catch up. We ran, packs on and in hiking boots over a winding mountain trail for another five minutes, and still didn’t see that elusive “Blue” as I called her. She must have gone off the trail somewhere, and we just didn’t see her. There’s no way she could have been that far ahead of us, not after only one minute. So we walked on, and came to a thicket of shadowy trees that reminded me much of England.

The sun had already dipped beyond the mountains to our left, the darkness spilling down from their shrouded peaks. We followed the path a while longer and saw the Tea Horse Guest Lodge up ahead. As we approached, there was Blue! Sitting on a rock beneath a waterfall, casually chatting on her cell phone. The broad had beaten us there! Never again, we vowed.

The guest house was charming, to say the least, and after meeting a man from Essex who was no less than a modern day Leonidas (at least in appearance), we had a great evening in the kitchen with the rest of the Koreans. They eventually arrived as a herd, and turned out to be quite agreeable. Phil discovered that he could make pizzas in the little kitchen they had provided, and so was recruited by the Chinese women who worked there. He ended up making about six pizzas, for the Koreans, for the English couple, and a few taste testers for no one in particular.

I got tired of waiting for my pizza, as they were successively co-opted by others as soon as they emerged from the oven. There was a brilliant waxing half moon, and so I went for a lone walk back along the trail. About a mile down the road there was a perfect chair-shaped rock that over looked the mountains opposite and the gorge below, shaded from the moon by a gently murmuring pine overhead. I nearly fell asleep watching the filtered moonlight play on the fallen leaves, listening to the quite rush of the wind through the mountain pines. There were no lights, no people, no noises but the occasional breeze. And the stars! There were a few clouds, but the stars were unbelievable. There’s enough soppy prose and poetry out there on how amazing stars are, so I’ll spare you. But as far as awe inspiring, it is unparalleled so far in my short existence.

We woke at 8:30 the next morning. The day was gray and cloudy. Rising, I glanced out my bedroom window. It looked down into the gorge and to the mountains beyond, and I thought to myself that this is the kind of view a man could get used to. A quick breakfast and a review of our bill revealed that we were expected to pay for every pizza from the night before. Because Phil had made them, we were charged for them. Even those we didn’t eat. I hadn’t even gotten dinner, so that was particularly shocking. We were able to talk them down to 90 quai, about 14 dollars, which was honestly what our bill should have been. They weren’t too happy about it though, and they charged our friends much more than they should have to make up for the difference.

Everyone had left by the time we got around to heading out. Phil and I were then stopped just beyond the camp by some lovely, lonely dogs that were chained to some trees. Their collars had worn off their fur, and thick, red, angry scabs circled their necks. We played with them for a good twenty minutes. They were extremely affectionate, one dog resembling a Bernese Mountain Dog, and the other a kind of Labrador-fox mixture, a smaller dog with thick, silvery black fur. There was also a horse, which was reluctant at first to let me pet him, but at last gave over to my charms and handfuls of green weeds. And, surprise of all surprises, a monkey! There was a baboon-type monkey locked in a very tiny, tarpaulin covered cage. When I approached the cage, he reached one hand out to me, in a gesture that was upsettingly human.

The walk was very similar to the day before, but colder and cloudier. I enjoyed this, it reminded me of Scotland. We kept up a brisk pace, going through tiny villages and eventually just bleak, barren, rocky landscapes with no signs of life. Tiny waterfalls trickled down from overhead, and we marvelled at the incredible rock formations, signposts of geological upheaval that was incomprehensible in its magnitude.

After forty minutes, we began passing the others from the group, and an hour and a half saw us once again in the lead. It might be difficult to understand this seemingly superficial importance. I cannot speak for Phil, but for myself, I don’t like to be behind anyone. Knowing that there’s someone ahead inspires a feeling of contemptible mediocrity. When you’re first, you experience everything first—you see the trail first, you walk the stones before anyone else. If you aren’t first, well then… you’re just some schmuck in a line of people. I don’t expect understanding, because it sounds absurd even as I write it. But there it is, nonetheless.

Two and a half hours after we set out, we arrived at Tina’s Guest House. She pointed us down the road towards Tiger Leaping Gorge, the place where the tiger had supposedly jumped across the river and escaped the hunter. I can’t fathom the deranged mind that would chase a tiger fourteen miles up and down a mountain and follow him down a canyon to a raging river. But there’s the Chinese mindset for you. Chase something stupid as hard as you can and then quit. Success.

The climb down the gorge was actually rather daunting. It was steep, and wandered back and forth on the edge of a very sheer cliff that, from the top, plunged about six or seven hundred metres straight down. It took about twenty minutes to descend, but once we were at the bottom, it was magnificent. There was the Yellow River, surging and roaring and spilling foamingly over enormous rocks the size of houses. I climbed a shoddily constructed little bridge to the patriarch of the stones, a massive monolith jutting into the centre of the current whereon a red flag was planted. I wouldn’t want to meet the tiger that could jump from there to the other side, as it was easily a good thirty yards to the opposite bank, and that was really nothing more than a sheer rock face ascending upwards for at least a vertical mile.

The rest of the group eventually made it down, and I had fun scrambling over the slippery-with-dust river rocks, crawling through all their little nooks and crannies and getting totally covered in dirt. I wanted to find a good vantage to take a picture from the middle of the river, but there weren’t really any good places that weren’t simultaneously ravaged by the monstrous current.

And so this was it! The culmination of a two day hike and fourteen miles, a two thousand yuan plane ticket and eight days in Lijiang and eight freezing nights in various hotel rooms with uncomfortable beds—this is what we had come here for, and it was stupendous. The canyon was so deep you couldn’t see the rim from the base, and the sun—now bright and overhead—couldn’t reach the bottom. The pervasive growl of the river surrounded us, and a feeling of rapturous peace was the only thing I could think of. How many people have done this! I don’t know, and I guess it doesn’t matter when it comes down to it. The point was, I was there, and in the middle of something ancient and wonderful. These were the waters that gushed and flowed across an entire nation, from time immemorial, and I was very nearly standing on their font. These rock walls, carved from antiquity by forces unknowable, encompassed everything I could see. It was the very essence of diminution—knowing your place in the world, and just how small it really is.

We spent a blissful hour enjoying the scenery before we headed back up. To my great surprise, the trail up took only half an hour, and not even an exhaustive half hour. With my 12 kilo pack and legs sore from the previous day’s hike, I was sure it would be hell. But it was over before I knew it, and an hour later we were on a rickety bus back to Qiao-Tow, the village of Satan’s minions.

The bus was stopped several times during the hour ride back. The “road” we were on was nothing more than a dirt path used by construction trucks as they dynamited the hillside above. Fallen rubble and piles of stones waylaid us several times, but that just gave us opportunity to look around to the sheer drop off a foot beyond the windows. It was a peaceful journey back.

In Qiao-Tow we left the bus to find that the local squadron of evil-taxi drivers had convened, and were willing to take us back to Lijiang for forty quai a piece. Since the bus ride up to Qiao-Tow had cost less than half of that—17 quai—we told them where they could put their offer. A few of the other tourists accepted when the price eventually came down to 30 quai, but we held steadfast and waved as they departed. I asked around and found out that a bus would be coming at 7:00pm, in spite of the insistence of the evil taxi drivers that there would be no more buses, and we would be stranded here and have to sleep under bridges and eat rats. The bus did come, ten minutes early, in fact, and when we boarded I asked the driver how much it would cost. “20 quai!” he assured me. That was that! We were on our way home.

Except, we weren’t. One of the evil taxi drivers—a little cancerous pustule of a wretch—told the bus driver that we had agreed to go with him for forty quai, and that the bus driver shouldn’t interfere. The bus driver agreed, and told us we had to get off. We said we didn’t know who the hell that little anus-dwelling-son-of-a-whore was, and that we wanted our 20 quai bus ride home. The bus driver thought about it for a moment, and then said, “Ok. 30 quai.” Phil and I had had enough of this crap from Chinese, and we exploded on the man. We bellowed a tirade of abuses at the top of our lungs, and I found myself shouting inches away from his face, barely restraining myself from cramming his impudent little bug eyed fish mug through the steering column. He agreed that 20 quai would be our price, and we left.

I’m really wondering what kind of impression the other people on the bus had of Americans after that. We had insisted on being first everywhere we went, we loudly announced that America was basically the best at everything, and when we didn’t get our way on the bus, it was the two Americans who jumped up and were ready to fight. It might be obnoxious, I suppose, but I rather like my contemplation of our appearance. At least we had some moxie didn’t just lay down and take their guff like the English and French.

After a hearty dinner that night at Buono Italia, we spent the night at Irene’s and left late the next morning for our flight home. Everything on the ride back went exceptionally smoothly, although my MP3 player stopped working just as the plane began to taxi to the runway for takeoff.

In all, it was a monumentally successful trip. I’m not sure what additional thoughts I can append to this, as most of my ruminations were included in the body of the dialogue. My job here might be less than ideal in terms of working conditions, and the administration is a joke, and the people are basically trained monkeys (although I hear monkeys have places set aside where they defecate, they don’t do it in the places where they live), it’s not a bad gig. A comparatively obscene salary (nothing by American standards, but almost god-like here) and so much free time I’m going crazy trying occupy it constructively, and being located in the heart of a region I’ve always wanted to travel… well, all the cards might not be aces, but they’re certainly coming up in my favour.

Tibetan Monks, etc.

2010-02-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 2, 2009

Sunday found our newly formed group splitting in three directions. It was Irene’s birthday, and so she stayed in Lijiang to make preparations for her celebration. Phil decided that eight days was just too long a time to make 2,000RMB last, so he decided on a nice free excursion into the countryside to discover a Tibetan temple which he’d been eyeing ever since we arrived. It glimmered gold on a hilltop a few miles outside the city, and like a man drawn to the divine, he could not be dissuaded from his holy purpose.

That left myself and Marion—the French girl from Brittany—to head for the mountains towards another Tibetan temple. This region of southern China has a Tibetan temple for every four people, so they aren’t uncommon. At least, that was the number quoted to me by… someone. I’m sure he knew his business, though.

So we rented bikes and took off for the mountains. We began in the heart of the city, and since I was given the map, Marion said she would follow me. I like being the leader, so I was ok with this—especially when I’m leading an attractive girl with a charming French accent. I think that must be part of the primitive male psyche. Part of that whole “I’ll protect you!”, white knight complex of bravado that seems so useless for today’s damningly liberated females. So she said I could lead, and as I started off in one direction, she innocently stopped me and said, “But I think we should go that way.” So, we went that way. Somehow, during the entire trip, I managed to stay twenty yards in front and she was still able to direct me effortlessly. But she assured me I was the leader. The girl was a wizard.

There is a quote that says nature has given women so much power the law cannot afford to give them more. It was interesting to ponder this as we miraculously emerged from the middle of a deserted cornfield six kilos outside the city onto exactly the right road towards the monastery. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.

The brochure said it was a mountain temple, and we could faintly espy it’s glittering minarets in the dim atmosphere far above us as we began the 8 kilometre bike ride uphill. It was probably a 30 percent grade the entire way, and two hours later when we reached the top, there was no question in my mind how the people who lived there could be religious. It would take a rigorous, fanatical faith in an immense divine reward to ensure anyone climb that hill daily. We parked our bikes and were greeted with a gang of young monks in faded red robes playing basketball. If you are unaware, basketball is in China what baseball was in America in the 1930s. Everyone plays it, all the time. My students stare at me blankly, uncomprehending, when I tell them not very many people play in America. Kobe Bryant is a national hero in China, his glory falling short only of Yao Ming. Although my students assure me that, among his many other great accomplishments, Mao Tse Tung was quite the basketball player in his heyday.

We then wandered about the temple complex, which was just a tributary to the grander complex further up the mountain. Thankfully, however, we would be hiking there and could leave our bikes behind. The temple was mostly full of young monks who seemed very interested and at the same time wary of our presence. The temple, as with most in China, had been built in the last several years, and colourful, ornate murals adorned the walls. They depicted scenes from religious texts, I imagine, but my knowledge of Buddhism is fairly limited. I did note one scene where people were being broken in half and tossed into a stream beneath fiery demons. That’s a side of Zen I’m not exactly familiar with. “Be peaceful, or else!”

An old man in sweeping robes and with no more than three teeth in his bald, leathery scalp invited Marion and I in for some tea. We accepted and entered a low building where some bizarre Chinese television programme was playing. The tea tasted like hot water mixed with hay and dirt, but in retrospect, it probably isn’t often in one’s life that a Buddhist monk in a temple invites you to have tea with him.

We thanked him and journeyed up the mountain through thick, overhanging trees. The flora reminded me greatly of areas in southern California or Colorado; dry, alpine-like trees and shrubs with deep green, waxy looking leaves. The temple had at first appeared to be quite far away, and we soon lost sight of it in the trees. After walking up stone stairs for perhaps ten minutes, we suddenly came around a bend and found it there in front of us. We looked down through a clearing in the trees and found the place we had started some thousand metres beneath us, along with the other temple lying hazily and indistinct amidst the sprawling mountainside. This quantum warping of time has happened several times since I came here, and tends to make very long journeys appear very short. I’m not sure if it’s simply a matter of being so engaged in what you’re doing you don’t notice the passage of time; but I’ve never found climbing stairs to be terribly engrossing.

As soon as we arrived we encountered a middle aged man, perhaps 38 or 40 (Chinese ages are remarkably difficult to determine; they have a seemingly preternatural ability to defy aging until they reach about 55 or so, and then they look like walking mummies). He was very friendly, though he didn’t speak much English. He laughed and smiled a great deal, but as soon as I went to take a picture of him, he became very sombre and dignified, wrapping his cloak about him and looking altogether stoic. As soon as the picture was concluded, he was all smiles again, as though he was determined to be immortalised as the epitome of a Buddhist monk.

Although an article in Lonely Planet informed us that this temple had been built in 1733, the temple we found had not even been completed. Several of the smaller chapels there had cornerstones engraved with (08.2009). I’m hoping when I eventually get to Tibet and south Asia, some of those temples will be older than fifty years. In the blur and rush of Chinese history and their indomitable march towards glory, their temples today date back to the dizzyingly ancient date of 1996. Who can even remember that long ago! Was I even alive back then? I don’t even know.

The most remarkable feature of the temple was a sacred cave with a spring that a famous monk had blessed as being on the road to enlightenment. Buddhist monks taking this journey are encouraged to come here and worship, and when they complete their pilgrimage they should return here and pray again. They hadn’t finished their work on the cave, but a genuine gap in the earth did exist behind an altar to bodhisattva and I descended into the gloom. Workman’s hats and a few candles lit the cavern, which ran maybe twenty feet down a stone staircase and then fell off into apparent oblivion. The only torch I had was from a tiny light on my phone, but the supernatural attraction I have for mysterious holes in the ground was irresistible.

I probably would have carried on if some workman hadn’t come to the cave and insisted I leave. I’m not sure if they were upset that I was violating some sacred place, or simply were concerned for my safety. But they proved very kind, and even gave us a book on the location and its history. It was all in Chinese, of course, but it’s the thought that counts. Then a Buddhist woman with a shaved head gave us candles to light and instructed us in a prayer ritual in which you clasp your hands to your face in a prayer and turn towards the statue of Buddha. Then you kneel and rest your forehead to the floor with palms flat beside your head. Repeat four times and then bow towards the statue with your hands closed in front of you. Again, I suppose there are a limited number of times this sort of thing happens in your life, and the experience was very gratifying and humbling.

It was now late, and after a quite stop by an adjacent temple, we shared some tea and Clementine oranges with our jovial monk and went home. To give you an idea of how far we had climbed uphill, the bike road home—coasting downhill at about 30 miles an hour—took half an hour.

Irene had her party that night, and we celebrated in a bar operated by a New Zealand man who looked exactly like Merry from Lord of the Rings. Except, he was seven feet tall if he was an inch. His bar was situated in a lovely corner of an old town, though his choices in decoration left me enjoying some birthday cake with a two foot long tribal phallus in my ear. The bar was rife with naked aboriginal midgets, carved with a generous amount of hand polished hard wood.

We had planned on taking a bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge the next morning, and so we headed back to the city. We were waylaid for about an hour at one of Irene’s friends houses, and enjoyed a summit of European powers. Travellers from German, Switzerland, France and Italy regaled us with stories of their adventures. The crazy, long haired, pot smoking Italian I took to calling Guido told us how he had hitch hiked from Italy to here, and of his various exploits along the way. One such story involved over-nighting with a gay Laotian millionaire who picked him up as he was wandering the streets. Intentions were misinterpreted, and hilarity ensued.

So we turned in, and prepared for an early start the next morning.

Part Deux

2010-02-04T19:08:00.002-08:00

Monday, February 1, 2010

On Friday we rode to a little Podunk town to the north, whose name I can’t even remember now. It was full of goats and toothless men, and we preferred the former’s company; frankly, they smelled better. After a light lunch of questionable content, we (Phil, myself, Irene, and her French compatriot Marion) inquired at the house of Dr. Ho. Phil and I were initially excited because we thought we were going to see Dr. No. But the genial little man we eventually met was perhaps no less remarkable, if only for the hour long seminar we were given by his son.

He lived in a rustic building beside a culvert and large, shadowy tree, and we were welcomed inside graciously by his son who proceeded to hand each of us pamphlets in our respective languages. Then we were led to the back garden and orated to for what seemed an eternity by a man whom I’m sure on all other accounts was quite affable, but when given to speech was the very devil. He smiled warmly and insistently as he handed us newspaper clipping after national geographic article about his esteemed father, Dr. Ho, who had apparently cured upwards of 300,000 people since he opened his free clinic. That made sense to me. Given enough time, most maladies might recede on their own, and after an hour I felt sure that if I had been ailing when I arrived, I was certainly ready to leave now. Dr. Ho finally met us and prepared some “Healthy Tea” for our consumption. He was a sweet old man after all, and if you are a young person and suspect an illness, a visit to Dr. Ho will see you return as middle aged and healthy.

We then rode our bikes on down the road and up into the mountains towards the place we suspected a Tibetan temple lay. After about a mile or two uphill we came to the temple, and mustered ourselves to pass through a gauntlet of touts to reach the entrance. There we were met by a determined band of aged, sun-beaten Naxi women in traditional garb who held hands and looked as though they would stand their ground to the last rather than let us enter. However, as we approached, they broke into song and dance, and waved a hat at us for donations. We passed them, and a toothless, one-eyed hag of a creature pointed and cursed at me.

There was, of course, a toll to enter. Since all Chinese temples were built in the last three years, we figured we could pass on this one and decided to go back home. It was a nice day for bike rides, at any rate.

Saturday was a quiet day and Phil and I hiked to the top of what we termed “Pagoda Hill”. There was a park entrance fee of 80 RMB, but since we were foreigners we managed to get a discount by walking around the tollgate and climbing over the wall. There was another fee for walking up the hill, and we found that our foreigner discount worked yet again. Let me tell you that the Chinese don’t have a high opinion of nature. I mean, it’s great to look at in pictures, and they love to believe that their country has lots of it, somewhere out there. Just not where they are. So the path up to the hill was made from steps, strewn with trash on either side. But that is a small matter, because there were lots of steps, and it was easy to forget about everything else. So many steps. I like to think of myself as a man, someone who is at least moderately fit, and can tackle most physical challenges imposed on me. But as I wheezed and huffed and puffed climbing those interminable stairs, children no more than four years old danced passed, laughing in the most infuriating way.

We eventually climbed to the top, and were met with yet more children. A more appropriate name for “Pagoda Hill” would be “Banshee Mountain”, because apparently when you reach the top, you should scream as loud as you can, for as long as you can, until you get tired and want to go home. As we were enjoying the scenic views, children began arriving and commenced to scream at the top of their lungs, for no reason that we could see. Their parents smiled adoringly, as if this were the triumph of their little lives and they had waited long for it.

Not wishing to impede local customs, we meandered a little further down from the hill top into a thicket of bushes. We must have missed the sign, but it seemed that this wasn’t just any part of the hillside, but rather an open air outhouse. There were piles of poop—human poop—all over the place, as well as wads of toilet paper and other refuse. Every secluded thicket we stumbled into had been marked diligently by some deviant defecator before us, and we had to search thoroughly to find a place that wasn’t someone’s bathroom. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Chinese think nothing of stopping to make fudge dragons on the city sidewalk, so relieving themselves in the pristine beauty of a sylvan glade must be heaven.

We had dinner that night at the Buono Italia, a little Italian restaurant managed by a convivial South African and his beautiful wife, and overall the day was a success.

I’m going to cut this short because there is a troop of keening Chinese larvae peeing outside my window right now, and I need to find some missiles to hurl at them.

More to come.

Adventures in Yunnan

2010-02-04T19:08:00.001-08:00

Sunday, January 31, 2010

“China: Crapping on the world since 1949”

“Want to crush the human spirit? China has what you need!”

"My other car is a coal factory."

"Feel free to leave your suggestions in the censorship box."

These, and others, are some of the possible slogans I’ve been considering submitting to the Chinese government as endorsements for their great country. I think I’ve got the idea, but the wording doesn’t quite seem severe enough. I’ll keep working.

I just returned from a weeklong trip in Lijiang, a smallish city in the heart of Yunnan in southern China. It buts up against Myanmar (or Burma, for you imperialists out there), and is I suppose about as natural as China gets these days. It’s situated in the middle of a mountain range that I think eventually becomes the Himalayas, and has no shortage of Tibetan monks and monasteries. Although, I think the latter has more to do with the benevolent Chinese tourist trade than true cultural prosperity.

However, as much as it is a part of China, and therefore yet another nexus in the great web of human despair, it was a haven compared to the rural wasteland of coal factories and hicks that we left behind in Henan. There is a part of the city called “Old Town”—an ironic moniker considering that they’re still building it—but which is intended to represent traditional Chinese life. The buildings all appear very old, but that’s no feat in China. A brand new building, given a year or two, will match the dated look and feel of any crumbling building from the 1930s in America, complete with wandering, ruinous cracks and mouldering edifices.

The Old Town is built around a series of charming canals, with strikingly clear water and numerous koi and species of goldfish. It gives the very great impression of a Chinese Venice. Except without the history, legitimacy, or authenticity. But we were very appreciative, as it is very much a tourist town, and as such is chalk full of western food shops. I think I had pizza every night but one. To clarify for those who don’t know, pizza, along with cheese and clean air, is something of a mythological commodity in China. We were sorely grateful for the chance to indulge our shameless western fancies.

The first night we stayed in what we believed to be the bargain hotel of a lifetime. It was a charmingly quaint bed and breakfast, with elaborate furnishings and a delightful view into a tiny sunlit courtyard. I lamented that I had no female companion, because this was as ideally a romantic location as one could wish. And the price was an astonishing 60RMB a night. That translates to just over $8.00. That figure was magnified over the entire city, with ornate western meals costing around four or five dollars—roughly half as much as in Henan. I still don’t understand the exchange system, but as we ended up spending about 150RMB a day on entirely frivolous expenses, we didn’t really care.

And, even rarer than western food, there were westerners themselves! I saw on average about six westerners a day, and it was a sweet nepenthe to my aching soul. You cannot conceive the grandeur and majesty of the English tongue until you are berated with the clangour of chickens screeching in your ears for four months. And once I discovered the youth hostel, forget about it. There were so many English speakers I overloaded with joy. I even met a few German speakers, and had a chance to practise that ill-used skill which is, in China, less than useless. Since German is the only other language I speak, I have often found myself defaulting to that when I want to respond to someone in Chinese, which really doesn’t help anyone.

The second night there I met a Swiss woman who was staying with friends, and she, being an adventurous soul, decided to go with me the next day on a horse ride. I have been developing a latent passion towards equestrianism these past few years, and so when I saw a poster advertising a horse ride through the mountains, I knew I had to go. The pictures showed tourists galloping across a pristine wetland with a shimmering lake and imperious mountains in the background. And the price, $20 for a day, seemed right.

I met with Irene, the Swiss woman, early the next morning, and we set off to find the location. It wasn’t far, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, a horde of touts accosted us for offers on horse rides. They suggested the lofty price of $25 dollars, and we eventually talked them back down to $20. Bargaining in China mostly it’s just laughing at the price they suggest and then walking away. Actually haggling usually gets you nowhere, but the threat of a no-sale is great incentive for price reduction.

So we headed off into the mountains astride our noble steeds, with an agreeably grouchy guide who left us to do whatever we wanted. I have ridden a few horses in my life, but I’ve never encountered such surly, ill-tempered, stubborn and lazy brutes as the little Tibetan mountain horses we were given. No amount of prompting could coax my horse into anything more than an irritated trot, and spurring his sides with my heels more often encouraged him to go in reverse than increase speed. When I dismounted to take a picture in the woods, he waited patiently, but as soon as I got back on, a fairly normal procedure for most horses I presume, he bucked and took off through the forest as fast as he could. “Whoa!” means nothing to a Chinese horse, and tugging on the reins in every way I knew how succeeded only in making him rear or pull his head back with no effect whatsoever. When I tied him off and got down to pet him, he first tried to bite me, and when I backed away he tried to kick me. I love horses—all animals, really—and so I resented this behaviour. But in consideration of his life, and the care with which most Chinese treat their animals, I can really only pity him.

We made our way to Baisha Lake, an inglorious little tarn which we were prompted to pay 30RMB ($4) to walk over to after we had dismounted. We laughed at this and walked over anyways without paying. There wasn’t much to see, so we rode back. We took a route through the woods that carried us past an otherwise beautiful mountain vista, except that the industrious Chinese had decided that beauty was not an profitably exploitable commodity, and so had dynamited the hillside into ruin. Half the mountain was simply obliterated into rubble, which enormous trucks were carting away to be refined. What little natural beauty China has left, it is actively destroying. There is a quote that says, “If we are to love our country, our country must be beautiful.” I think the Chinese propaganda machine has simply bulldozed over that motto.

In a town north of Lijiang, I saw a poster advertising various places to visit in China and all the beauty the country had to offer. I was surprised to see a German castle on the Rhine as being a part of China. When your populace is too poor to travel, and the only news they get is from the government, why not tell them their country has an abundance of beautiful countryside, German castles, gorgeous, unpolluted lagoons, and hell—why not the Statue of Liberty?

And you'll recall that we agreed on $20 as the price for the ride? Well, our hosts seemed to forget that fact, and demanded the outrageous sum of $25. Irene tried to argue with them, which was clearly going nowhere. I told her to give me her share, and together with my $20 I handed it to the woman. But she wouldn't take it. I was tempted to just keep the money altogether, but I strapped the money to the horse and we left. My god, China. They don't even try to treat you like you have a brain. Which stands to reason, I suppose. No one they've ever encountered ever has had one, so why should that change?

There’s more to tell about this week’s adventures, and I’ll get around to it soon. But 1,282 words seems like enough for one post.

In Defence of Liberty

2010-02-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 25, 2009

"That government rules best which rules least."

How to expound upon this? I, as Thoreau before, take this as my motto, my creed, and I support the institutions which do the same. It seems we are living in a time, as much of humanity has done since it first awakened, when man rules his fellows by clever devices set up to perpetuate himself in his office, and his actions are those of one who is fearful of losing his station. Power gathers power to itself, until its robes are so thick and ponderous it cannot move, but by making others move for it.

Every man must pursue his own ambitions, he cannot ride upon others or depend on their carrying him whether he will. How can the government be just, when its primary foundation lies in the coercion of others to carry it to its ends? If I want something, I wish to gain it for myself, and must leave others to do the same. Yet the government rides upon a heaving mass of slaves that bend their backs to its insipid will, and when they lift their heads to walk a separate path, they are trodden and run under by their comrades.

We have built facade upon facade, decadent display upon extravagant pageantry, and in the years of this compounding process we have learned to let others do our thinking for us. Think for yourself! The greatest, most beneficial adage man has known: think for yourself! Your friends, your peers, your society fellows, all will engage you to certain customs and ways of thought, that you might better reflect their own views of the machine and their place in it. But you are a man, strong and sturdy, built of the same sinews and fibres as they, and it is your lot to compose your own meditations as you see fit. Even the sparrow builds his own nest, as the badger digs his own burrow. So you must make your own way, and guide your feet upon your own path. It will not do to go astray, for then you must bow your head to follow the paths of others.

Would you trust your neighbour, your best friend, to manage your affairs, to assume control as your clerk, accountant, governor and trustee? A man you know personally, for as many years as you like—from birth even. Would you choose this person to govern your life, if you knew his judgment to be sound, and his mind to be reasonable? To leave your life in his hands? Then why in God’s name do you give your life—the custody of your possessions and place in this nation—to men you do not know? Why suffer yourselves to be led by strangers, men who have gained their position by force of will and sleight of hand, political machinations to gather the most power to their positions? You would trust such men with your life? You would give them the reigns of your future, believing them to care for your interests first? Folly; folly!

The state gives us leave to speak thusly, as though our words were its penance and it felt them deeply, the sombre politicians lying gravely awake in the dark hours pondering the ruminations of the land over which they keep their black watch. But this is merely a token gesture, for while it listens, it continues to scourge its people while nodding sagely in agreement with our cares. But a man cannot make a nation of farm animals, he must bring other men to his cause. He must appeal to their sense of honour and duty, ensnare them with sweet words of justice. A nation is powerless without men to follow it, and until the nation realises its power is drawn from the people it rules and treats them accordingly, it will suffer always from a debilitating corruption of spirit. What institution, faithful to the common good of man, must inspire its followers to obedience by the use of armed force? A man breathes by the lease of nature, not other men. A government constructed to levy support by erecting itself superior to this belief—that the rights of man are dispensed by their hand and not inherited—must shrivel under its own withering impulses.

Men may concern themselves with their own affairs and be unimpeachable in their conscience and conduct. But they may not claim clemency when they are yet a part of the odious machine they purport to oppose. Not everyone must be a hero or great, for a good few men will lift up the rest. But this is not the duty of any one man. Men are not born to improve the lives of others, they are born to live, and so am I. I may not be an agent of virtue, but merely her advocate, for I cannot give myself to a cause which seems hopeless. My chief concern is then that I accomplish my dreams by my own strength, and not with that of others, and that I do not give my power and breath to fuel the industry I call evil.

The Holiday Spirit and Stuff

2010-02-04T19:06:00.002-08:00

Thursday, December 24, 2009

I just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Man! What a great movie. I can't really put my finger on what I like so much about it, and surprisingly enough, there's a lot of it that made me pretty uncomfortable. I have a tendency to see myself more than I'd like in characters with lots of flaws. I dunno if that's me projecting my insecurities into the real world and magnifying them, but seeing some awkward guy on the screen saying dopey things always makes me squirm. And I have to admit that it's probably because I can see myself saying those exact same things, or feeling them. Maybe I'm just really good at empathising and I put myself in their shoes? It's hard to say. Impossible, probably. But what does make sense is that I relate to the relationship in this movie--the unpleasant, uncomfortable awkwardness and the feeling of just wanting to run away, run far away and not be there.

I know I’m certainly terrified of being dull, and that was the main accusation leveled at the protagonist in the movie. That’s probably my biggest fear, of everything—I’m afraid of being uninteresting. I’m afraid of living a boring life, of not making the most of what I’ve got, of being boorish because I haven’t got anything to talk about. That might sound funny coming from a guy living in China, but it’s more real than you might suspect. Maybe it’s vanity that drives me to do these things, because I want to have proof that I’m worth something, that I’ve done more than the next guy, that I’ve left a mark somewhere and I’m not just another empty face in the crowd. I guess that’s something I can tackle next. One thing at a time, right?

It isn't a commitment thing, it's a ... damn, I'm really not going to stand for this anymore. There's been a sort of realisation of late that I'm a little too good for my own good. Nice guys finish last because well, they're saps. And saps get used and stepped on. I've never been a sap, but when it comes to relationships, I tend to give a bit more than I get. Seeing this, feeling this, and knowing it really gives me access to this incredibly empowering feeling, an understanding and presence of mind I'm not sure I've experienced before. It feels like coming into your own for the first time, that you know what it's all about and you've got it under control. Maybe it's all an illusion.

After all, I'm coming across this in a vacuum of female influence. Perhaps their siren ways will send it all rushing away and I'll be that dopey, goofy guy falling over himself and all tongue tied in no time flat. I really hope not. This feels like it's here to stay, and who knows! Maybe a place like this--devoid of an influence I've actively and willingly indulged in for ... god, countless years-- is just what it took. I feel it has broader applications to my life, which is also rewarding. Although, to be perfectly fair, I'm also living in a place where my tolerance is pretty much drained to zilch right now, and the language and cultural barrier allows me to act out with basically no repercussions because everything translates so obscurely on both sides. When poor food, weather, retarded people and absolutely incomprehensible reactions to what should be common sense situations culminates into an explosive episode of shouting vainly in the air and cursing whatever gods may be, it's received as "Oh, those foreigners. So strange. Guess we better pay 'em again." Impotence. That's the pervasive feeling here.

So it's Christmas Eve, and I have no family, no friends, no familiar settings, no decorations or festive yuletide spirit of ages old. Certainly no presents, but that's pretty meaningless at this point also. There's nothing I really want that you can buy. I guess that means I'm a good person?

It's Christmas Eve, and I got run over by a stupid Chinese crap-breathing, brain dead zipperhead automaton. I'm walking across a pedestrian walkway, ten feet in front of his POS car, in full view of his headlights, and he just doesn't stop. You know, as you do. I know when people walk in front of my car, I don't stop either. I make a habit out of trying to hit them. Well, this guy did too and kept going and hit my thigh with his fender and then ran over my goram foot. I was wearing steel toed boots, but it still hurt and I gave both his doors a good kick with said steel toed boot. The asshat probably thought I was just saying "hi". This event is on the tail of the vespa that ran a red light yesterday and made me take a step back to avoid being run over. I slammed my fists into his vespa as he passed by , and for a gleeful second it looked as though he might wreck. But he didn't, and probably learned nothing from the experience. Good for him. I hope he runs over a baby and goes to jail.

It's so jolly over here, we're just brimming with the holiday spirit!

Ugh.

The holiday is entirely commercial here, there's nothing else to it. It's all about buying stupid crap and making a mockery of the western tradition, just like everything else in China. And all to the tune of "China is great! We are the centre of the world, everyone worship us!" Although, in all honesty, that seems to be the way it's heading in America as well. Maybe China beat us to something for once? Electric blue Christmas trees decked out in pink neon and festive songs such as "Knick knack patty whack" and "This Old Man" are paraded about in the true holiday spirit. It reminds me of "Demolition Man", where everyone is so juvenile they sing those innocuous little 1950's commercial tunes in place of real music. I was once surprised and delighted to see a man dressed as Santa with a bag on his back, making his way around campus. I approached him, eager to learn what he was about. He turned around and handed me an advertising flier for some stupid local shopping outlet. It was like, being kicked in the nuts by your grandma. Betrayed by Santa! If that doesn't reserve you a seat in hell, I don't know what does. If I had my way, every slant-eyed-yellow-bellied-brown-brother-egg-rolling-fish-faced idiot who runs about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips would be boiled in his own rice pudding and buried with a stake of holly up his ass.

Bah, humbug!

Winter Thoughts

2010-02-04T19:06:00.001-08:00

Friday, December 18, 2009

"A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?"

I think reality is truly a product of our own creation. It's a beast we give birth to, train, nurture, bring up after our own fashion, teach our lessons to. It's a coal that is pressed through our furnace, a breeze from our lips. And what is more than this? If it's all our own doing, if every facet of life is chiseled by our unconscious desires, then what's the point? I can easily imagine falling under the blissful stupor of an opium slumber. There's nothing left at this point! Of course, there's the world, there's conquest, there's desire and fulfillment. But reality isn't what is to come, reality is the bare present. The gift contains whatever you put inside it, a present to yourself. I read Conrad and London and Byron and Dostoevsky and I'm filled with the weight of other men's thoughts.

Profound thoughts, grand thoughts, barren thoughts, images and words of the lowest and highest, the most sublime and depraved, and they all feel like a piece of me that I've found before, a word or idea half formed and vainly grasped at, lingering on the edge of my awareness, skirting the flame of my consciousness like timid moths. Is it dark? Surely, it can be. Is it light? Well, do you want it to be? Bliss seems only a decision away, a realisation that there's no present but what you make.

Relativity in the utmost, existence wrought from careful, tedious intention. A plane of existence that coincides with others insomuch as there is cohabitation, but nothing further. A thought, once uttered, is false. There is companionship, but never true knowing.

Humans are capable of the most vile, wretched acts; but they are human nonetheless! Does that not lend some definition to the soul? After all, we call the most bizarre tendencies of animals merely a part of nature, and therefore neutral in evaluation. Is there not a similar standard for human behaviour? A scale weighted against our insanity? Does this then suppose a greater measurement that demands nothing but what is?

I notice in myself days of exuberance and ecstasy that is seemingly unaccountable. Joy, stemming from something absurd, such as the arrangement of clothes upon the floor or the proper alignment of morning routines. Inexplicable, unrepeatable sequences that produce happiness and a feeling that, beneath it all, everything is right with the world. Then there are days of mild enduring, where there is nothing tremendous or lamentable, but simply existence and passivity. And then there are days of mouldering scorn, of resentment and detestable, grudging animosity towards the unsympathetic world which does not understand.
Feelings of longing for something greater, of sublime loneliness, of isolation from humanity abound recklessly and torment without restraint. But where do they come from? Are these simply the natural, capricious tendencies of the unfathomable human soul? Is this the condition of living, precariously shifting from one pole to the next?

It seems that if these are continued experiences, there must be some truth to them, some particle of singular reason that might be quantified and relied upon as factual, as honest. But the feelings are so transitory, so fleeting, and come at unbidden hours. The same conditions one day might represent the manifestation of entirely contrary sensations. It leads to the conclusion that there is nothing save what I create. But this is tenuous! Do I allow my environment to enslave me, to engage me at its will and distort my feelings with its arbitrary composition? I want something more reliable, something internal that I can call upon to obtain a sense of self-reliance, a measure of peace that is within my power.

One recurring truth seems to be, however, that there is no kinship but with yourself. Humans are creatures of familiar habit, and whatever is not understood or part of their tedious routine is vilified and surgically removed without hesitation. This is no valid basis for gauging what is right and proper and true, however. Such a measuring device can only be gotten by the user, and to rely on the tools of others is to hopelessly abandon any chance for inner harmony. I must think on this more, it seems ill conceived at this point, but I feel as though there is a mark, and I am getting closer to its centre with each volley.

Rat Kings

2010-02-04T19:05:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

I find myself slipping further and further into a quiet assignation of mental reclusivity. The gearing of my mind adopts the slender, delicate mechanics of tacit operation, functioning smoothly in the near void of nurturing companionship. There is an aether of incomprehensible flourishing that whirls about me, a clamorous decorum of social acceptability that defies either proper reason or my inability to cope satisfactorily under its grudging torpidity. Perhaps, as was once speculated, my ‘think machine’ is broken, and the pristine gizmos inside have gone dreadfully awry. Or, perhaps as I think more likely, there is a fundamental and flawless disconnect between the nature of the steam that powers my own caprices and those of other men.

Perhaps, by rule of chance, every so often there is produced a die with uneven sides, and no matter the manner in which is it rolled, will not land upon the same side as all the other dice. We are from our earliest moments commanded by primal edict of natural law to comply with the garrulous mewling of the herd; we are ordered and begged and jeered, and if we yet do not comply we are denounced and thrown out upon our heels, scourged for lack of understanding on both sides. And indeed human society grows upon these mores and commandments, and great monuments are erected to those paragons who exhibit the finest qualities of self sacrifice and perseverance towards the propagation of the herd’s ideals. Cities and civilisations are built upon the foundations of communal operation and single minded unity. Always the dissident voice sets the choir on edge, and never is he hard to find. The imprecations are maddening, and the act of abstention abominable. Dear God, is the meaning of it all just simply get on with it, to do what must be done? Why does my prism produce lights that fascinate only me? Why do the looking glasses of others hold delights for them that I cannot measure or fathom? Are my eyes crafted of different stuff?

Or is this rambling pseudo philosophy merely a tried and tired prevarication for the uncertainty and incapacity of my own social functionality? Are these, indeed, sour grapes? But what does second guessing accomplish. The wheels of the mind are mired enough without this added burden.

I will not believe in ultimate relativism! There is a rule of human accord that is bound by aeons of unfaltering conduct, and I rest sustained by this belief that there are boundaries of moral decay that cannot be whisked away on the wings of mere arbitrary relativism! Human perception is a tool for guidance and right operation that by the nature of man is altered upon its hinges by each successive generation. What our fathers believed was right and true seems to us a glimmer of the true light, and we proceed to interpret that light by notions we think clever and insightful. We believe we are the preordained possessors of the keys to change and enlightenment, the final culmination of all human achievement, and that no eyes or minds have ever beheld or conjured the thoughts we think so brilliant. We are enamoured of our own greatness, and this bourgeoisie mentality, this squabbling rabble of mendicant philosophy is capable only of producing the most mediocre of human beings, creatures bereft of the ability to look beyond their contemporaries and witness the poverty of it all! There is no valour in society, no gleaming truth in the huddling of the yearning masses. If rats think they are gods, what of it? And what of the man who sits on the plateau and shouts that it is no good; the man who drinks the water and finds it bitter, bitter on his pink lips. What then? Is there isolation enough to realise the gulf between such a man and the distant crowds he walks among? Or is there hopeless romantic fantasy in the pale image of the lone prophet, shouting from the mountain tops into the raging wind? If I am too near the source, I cannot tell. But it is a brazen fire that burns and tells me not to be afraid, not to doubt or question the path that seems right to me.

The weight of it, the sheer size of the thing is so unbelievable I scarcely know what I have hold of. What elder titan ever looked across the infant expanse of cosmic wonder and was more surprised? The gravity of what is at stake, the sheer vastness of human consciousness that is welling up beneath the very scurrying feet of society, and incredibly ignored! This wilful, sinful ignorance is appalling; that man can perpetuate his slumber with such ease and lack of care—that he and I gaze upon the same visceral signs of our nascent being and are not both startled by the same flicker of imagining, the same wondrous sense of life and grandeur. Where is his mind? Where has he put his storehouse of intellect? I am not a spirit of some higher pantheon; my flesh is his flesh, my mortality the inseparable bond that binds us even through our dearth of commonality. Yet his awareness is like to me a dim flame that gutters in the slightest breeze, a breeze that stirs my own furnace into a roaring blaze. Am I defective? I have only these two conclusions, that either I am a broken, inharmonious note in the song of man, or that for some reason beyond reckoning a piece of the true puzzle has fallen in my lap from grace unknown, and somehow in my feeble grasping its vague edges and corners have made sense to me, the outline becoming clear. But both of these conclusions are horrible; who could choose to be blind while all else see plainly, or to have sight alone in the land of the visionless?

And it is fine, here, on paper, reclining in the sombre peace of my room. The words spill effortlessly and fluidly, as though copied from the mouth of another. But in person it will not do; as I walk about the streets the words stall on my lips, my tongue chokes on its own utterances, and I am just another of the vagrant caste I swim with. But, I think it doesn’t matter. If our eyes do not report the same measurements of the identical world we share, then whatever pearls I might offer wouldn’t be received as well as I can hope. Children and beasts can’t gauge the value of their own toys, and so my ledger means nothing. It is perhaps a great indulgence of vanity that impels me to produce these words, these thoughts; a fulgurous torrent of self placating whims that stab wildly at any little truth they find. There is some truth though, I am sure--some guiding principle which indicts the harried spirit to climb and seek surer footing. There is a depth of understanding, the breadth of which appalls the sensibilities of the highly cultivated, civilised mind--a mind which must needs buckle beneath the weight of this realisation if he is not sufficiently shored up against it. But my feet are dragging now, and the hour is late. The one thought, the flicker that draws me back ever anon, is simply this: there must be more. There must be more than what we are given, what we are asked to receive, more than we are asked or told is valuable and good. I do not know what it is, only that the treasures of my kin do not stir my soul or produce in me a sense of wonder, as is so readily apparent in their happy eyes.

On The Perils of Wanderlust

2010-02-04T19:04:00.004-08:00

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Many of you have written me asking about my daily life here. Naturally, teaching droves of little black eyed children of Genghis is endlessly exciting. But I am a misanthrope—a man of tacit inclination, whose wilful nature often takes him far afield of the average man, even so far as the Orient for a case in point. I am often given to long walks and ambling about the countryside, nourishing my roots apart from the many toxins of man. But my roots have gone wanting in China—for nourishing water, and soil to spread in. It is a country much parched of the things we westerners consider natural to the condition of being human. Of invention, curiosity, individuality, initiative, originality, opinion—even of thought, the most basic tenet of human existence, goes thoroughly neglected in this land of milk and lye. Of one thing it does not lack, and that is kindness. The Chinese will exert themselves to a great degree to offer you their service, though I think inwardly this is a feat of awe at seeing a foreigner, and not due to an innate benevolence bestowed by whatever gristly gods they worship. And it is a simple kindness—such as given by a child, or by a loving owner to its pet. It holds nothing of the sanctity or value that such an act carries when it is given between two beings of equal worth.

So to quench my soul, I decided one afternoon to go for a walk. I took a bus into town, and from some unknown point I departed and set off. The hour was early, and I was immediately thrown into the hustle and bustle of morning life. Shopkeepers were setting up their stands, vendors arranging their goods, and farmers unloading massive trucks of reeking vegetables. The morning was crisp, and I wrapped my scarf tighter around my face. This served a dual purpose of keeping me warm, and concealing my alien origins. This wasn’t aided when I stopped to take pictures of them, but I paid it no heed. Though, I do wonder how those folks at National Geographic do it. Every time I try to capture a Chinaman in the act of being Chinese, he stops and shoos me away. Where do these gorgeous candid photographs come from? Do the photographers bribe their subjects? Is it all a scam? I must discover their secret.

I wandered about the city for several hours, losing myself in the byways and alleys of the crumbling city, discovering new realms of fetor in decaying, twilit grottoes that were once the halls of men. There were several buildings that were either in the process of collapsing, or had not been finished, which—through neglect or forgetfulness—had been converted to trash storage. Buildings of indeterminate age, made of concrete and supported by nighted avenues of pillars, housed mounds upon mephitic mounds of noxious garbage. This scene extended from the mouth of these Tartarian caverns as far as I could see into the shadows, where lurked untold horrors of atavistic human atrophy.

I continued onward, through mounting incredulity and finally stupor, making my way to copse of trees between several apartment buildings. The area was walled off, but there was a small gate guarded by a compost pile. After several moments of indecision, I decided to venture inside and see what came of it. After all, it isn’t often one finds trees in China. Beyond the gate, I was rather at a loss. There were trees, of course, but they were sparsely planted and separated by odd, irregular mounds of earth. Trash was strewn about, but this was unremarkable, and so I made my way to one of the strange mounds. On top of it was a flat stone, lying on its side, with what appeared to be inscriptions. I was no student of Chinese, but this seemed by all tokens to be a grave. Yet the grave was desecrated. Trash was spread everywhere, and the tombstone itself was sundered, cracked and hewn by forces unknown. As I looked around, this was the scene in all directions: graves, with head stones upturned or broken, some barrows partially unearthed. Of the translations I could discern, I found one ornate stone half-buried beneath the soil which read, “As I lived in life, so I shall live in death.” It seemed to me a sad token.

I kept walking, finally into the countryside, leaving behind the shambling buildings and outlying villages. I followed a river for some time, passing through more small villages of little note, but enjoying the openness and greenery of the fields. There was no nature, however. Every tree, every shrub, even the tiniest sapling had been hand planted and had its position chosen. It was all contrived, and so the experience lacked something of the restfulness I had anticipated; though, it was an impressive lesson in human industry. I came then upon a factory. While the guard was relieving himself behind the guard house, I let myself in and went to see what I could of Chinese factories. It was a large complex, and after spending fifteen minutes wandering inside and out, I couldn’t fathom its purpose. Large machines with water cooled fan belts powered something that eventually produced large rolls of what appeared to be paper, but I couldn’t be sure. The whole place smelled strongly of cooked rice, though this might owe more to the people who worked there than what they manufactured. In any case, no one seemed to bother about my being there, so after a few pictures and furtive peaks into dark corners, I took my leave and walked out. The guard seemed surprised to see me leave.

Finally I came to a river, and after I was frustrated in crossing by a locked gate, I succeeded in climbing over a barricade and letting myself into what appeared to be some sort of nursery. I wandered about the grounds for a while, in and out of groves of bamboo and tall, evenly spaced trees, until I found some fields. I realised I’d been walking for a good while and it was growing late in the afternoon, so I decided to head home. Though I hadn’t a clew where I was, I knew I could follow my footsteps backwards and arrive safely where I had left off. However, as any avid wanderer/explorer will tell you, going home on the same route you left by is immeasurably wearisome, to say nothing of boring. Yet I didn’t know which way to proceed otherwise. At that moment, a train grumbled past in the distance, and it occurred to me there was a train station in Xuchang. If I merely followed the train tracks back to town, I could get there without any trouble.

After crossing a few fields, I found a high, concrete fence baring access to the train tracks, as well as extensive signs in Chinese posted every few feet. I felt certain these signs were encouraging me to climb the fence, offering guidance and promising a quicker way home. It was easy work to hop the fence and once on the other side, I discovered a lovely paved sidewalk, heading right back into town. No more cross country trekking through muddy fields and fens for me! It was the expressway home.

After walking at a good pace for about an hour, I heard some voices ahead of me. I had my hoodie pulled tightly over my head and so I hoped, as many furtive animals do, that I would remain invisible as long as I couldn’t see them. As I drew near the voices, they suddenly picked up in volume and began shouting, in what I can only imagine is anger in Chinese, and making as much ruckus as any common rook or squabbling jackdaw. I paid them no heed, and continued walking. Perhaps this was one of those things that would just go away? No go. A few moments later I heard footsteps rapidly approaching behind me and after another second a rough hand was on my shoulder. I turned to find a tall man dressed in black, angrily shouting at me. I expressed wonder and confusion at his concern, and vainly attempted to convey a sense of honest innocence. I had apparently come to the wrong shop, and he gruffly pointed me to a small iron gate in the fence. I followed him to it.

On the other side was a small, white building with a drive leading to the street. I presumed (rather, intended) that this concluded the episode and I wouldn’t keep them from their afternoon tea any longer. I made for the gate with what I hoped was a casual stroll, and I soon heard more angry voices. A moment later that hand was on my shoulder and the man spun me around, wagging his finger in my face. I felt I had endured enough of this castigation at this point, and responded with the little Chinese I knew, which is essentially, “Thank you, I don’t understand, I’m a teacher!” He didn’t seem pleased by this and pointed me in the direction of the building. I declined and continued walking towards the street. At this, he laid both hands on me and shook me. I’m not familiar with the customs of every culture, and perhaps this is a friendly gesture in China, a way of saying, “Good day sir! I hold you in high esteem. Will you join me for some tea?” But where I come from, thems a fightin gesture. With as much cowboy diplomacy as I could muster, I kindly removed him from my person and told him where he and China could respectfully go. At this point he pulled a wallet from his pocket and letting it drop, I felt my heart sink a little. He was the happy owner of a shiny gold badge that read Police.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard the rumours about Chinese police or not. I won’t lay them out here for you, but in short, they aren’t good. I think the man saw something of this feeling in my eyes when I saw his badge, and it must have made him smile. I resigned myself for whatever was to come, and followed him back up to his hut. Inside was a dark little cave with two chairs and a little bunk bed of steel. A pair of handcuffs and a sinister looking little truncheon hung from the wall, and I thought I’d better keep my wits about me if I wanted to be home in time for tea. The man proceeded to ask me a litany of questions, all of which I responded to with, “Tain bu dong” (I don’t understand). Somewhere in his mind he decided this obstacle could be overcome by writing his demands down. I explained to him that there wasn’t any kind of Chinese I spoke, but he diligently scribbled something, possibly a threat, possibly his mother’s recipe for dog soufflé, and handed it to me. I shook my head, and wrote something else down. He watched, excitedly, awaiting whatever revelation my words might reveal. When I handed him the paper, his disappointment was profound—it was written, of course, in English. We had come to an impasse.

So he got on the horn and rang up HQ, presumably to tell them there was a white devil on the tracks plotting to bring down China. I had no idea. I was helpless in my defence! Only ingratiating civility would save me now, or an act of God—and if my experiences here are any indication, God doesn’t know this country exists, or has turned a blind eye in its direction. After tedious minutes, the man gestured that he would call a cab, and I would ride back to town in this way. I insisted this wasn’t necessary, and that he needn’t trouble himself. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” I could imagine him saying, a troubling twinkle in his eyes. I indicated that I could happily walk back to town. I don’t know if he understood me, but he laughed anyways, which seemed terribly out of place in my predicament.

After it became clear there was no cab coming, he indicated that I was to ride with him on his motor bike back to town. This was a new experience on multiple fronts, as I’ve never been on a motorcycle, nor have I ridden with a policeman. I was breaking new territory, more speedily that I might have strictly preferred. So climbing on behind the officer, I held onto his shoulders and away we went. In America, they have recently implemented the policy that talking on your cellphone while driving your car is not only unadvisable, but occasionally lethal. This is to say nothing of motor bikes, which I assumed natural sense of self preservation would dictate as foolhardy. However, I forgot the trusty maxim, “It’s China, man”. Here, all bets are off. At the first intersection, the policeman answered his buzzing cellphone, and the already precarious ride became a chaotic dance of death between whirling busses and impatient taxicabs. Stoplights seldom purpose anything more than colourful decoration between intersections—festive ornaments of mysterious origins—and to navigate them, at the best of times, is a pursuit in masterful strategy. To do so while clinging for life to the back of a motor bike operated by a distracted man with one hand is something the Fremen might promote a chieftain for.

In any case, we made our way through the thoroughfare of bustling vehicles miraculously unscathed, and headed towards what appeared to be the train station. This was one of the places I had asked to be deposited, since our ultimate purpose here was unclear to me. As we drew nearer and nearer, I dared hope this was my salvation. And there it was—looming ahead, the leviathan of eroding mortar and concrete, and the answer to all my fears and doubts of the last hour. Yet suddenly with only thirty yards to our destination, we banked hard right and disappeared into a tunnel. A bright light flashed, displaying the proud banner of the Chinese Police force, standing in line, saluting the Red flag before the Great Wall of China.

Following another long hour of sitting in a dark room somewhere in the depths of that byzantine police station, I was taken in a car back to the university. The police followed me as I led them to the dean of foreign teachers, and it was eventually explained that I was just a stupid American who had overstepped his boundaries and, I assured them, wouldn’t let it happen again. They told me, through a diligent proxy, that if I had been Chinese, there would have been a stern penalty of prison time and a hefty fine to accompany my infraction. But, because I was American, they said they could let it slide. I never thought being foreign and completely ignorant of the language would ever work to my advantage, but lo and behold they invited me afterwards to come back to the station and share some drinks. I declined, but I think someday it wouldn’t be a bad idea to treat them to some good, old fashioned American hospitality. In China, it seems like being friends with the police can only be a good thing.

Rafters of Heaven

2010-02-04T19:04:00.003-08:00

Monday, November 23, 2009

I awoke from fitful sleep this morning as much a new man as anyone ever has been. My mind was alight with the passion of fevered revelations, and I felt reborn in my new awareness. For the first time in my life, I feel fully at one with myself—in tune and present in mind and spirit. There is a wholeness that exudes from my latent arousal, this lifting from slumber, that stirs me as the land is stirred by the footsteps of approaching giants. I feel the tread of my soul, marching indomitably, pursuing the vein of its right and proper course—like a wayward leaf that is caught in the mighty current, now suddenly bends the majesty of the river to its own will: a gnat who becomes a dragon, an ebbing star erupting into supernova. I cannot put this feeling fully into words, nor elaborate the complexities of what it entails, but I feel at once at peace and exhilarated, borne up by a self fulfilling prophecy of greatness. I have flung wide the shutters of my mind, the stale shadows flying before the wonder of inevitability. What matter if I stand alone? I wait with joy the coming years; though I see them through a shrouded veil, they glow brighter than the sun. I shall walk with the patriarchs of old and sleep beneath the pillars of the cosmos, for there are no walls built that may gird my soul, nor rafters spacious enough to contain my gaze. Joy and sorrow will be mine, and sown by my own hand. I will make obeisance before none, nor make my arm weary holding the candle that lights another man's dreams. Whatever dreams may come, they are my dreams, and I shall greet them with the embrace of one who knows his own.

Epistemology

2010-02-04T19:04:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, November 8, 2009

Epistemology

Things I’ve Learned in China

1. Everything you know is wrong. In fact, you don’t know anything. This is why the state must take care of you, or in your helpless squalor you might be forced to do something original.

2. China is great.

3. Genghis Khan was, in fact, Chinese. Not Mongolian.

4. Mongolia is, in fact, part of China. It always has been.

5. Mongolia and China have always been very good friends.

6. Genghis Khan never invaded China.

7. Genghis Khan invaded, and conquered, Russia.

8. China has never been conquered. Or invaded.

9. China owns Taiwan.

10. Taiwan is happy about this.

11. Tibet is just a western region of China, and it always has been.

12. Tibet is happy about this.

13. You’re asking a lot of questions.

14. Gays and lesbians have a disease.

15. If gays and lesbians are allowed to exist, everyone in China will become infected and turn gay, and there will be no more children.

16. Please, think of the children.

I had an enlightening discussion with my students the other day. After speaking with some Chinese friends during lunch, I was inspired to ask my class later that day, “What do you think of Mongolia?” They stared blankly at me for a moment, before one brave soul offered, “It is a very beautiful part of China.” Perhaps my western education has misinformed me. Perhaps American lies had filled my head, and I had never known it.

“ Please, do go on,” I encouraged the eager little urchin. Where had I been lead astray? I needed to know.

Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, I was patiently informed that Mongolia, because it’s people looked like Chinese, was of course a part of China—lovingly embraced and looked after. The vile rumours that Mongolia had once invaded and conquered China was a grave misunderstanding on my part. But I was American! I was of course to be forgiven for my ignorance. Genghis Kahn was also a valiant hero of China’s, bravely battling the villainous Russians to the north, and fending off their wretched empire. They explained away my concerns, saying it was not possible for Mongolia to invade China, because it was China. How could China invade and conquer itself? This was western foolishness, nothing more.When I mentioned the Great Wall of China, and queried it's apparently bizarre purpose, my worries were laughed away. "It's decoration!" they cried. It was made to show how skilled and talented Chinese artisans are. Why hadn't this occurred to me before? Why would this massive fortification--thousands of miles long and visible from outer space, raised from the raw earth upon the broken backs of a million starving peasants, whose failing bodies were made into mortar--be built for anything but ceremony and grandeur? It was all becoming clear.

Taiwan was, of course, a willing and friendly component of China—an extension of China’s greatness, and lovingly welcomed her as a mother. When I told them I knew several Taiwanese who did not share this view—and in fact openly denounced it—they mildly reprimanded me, saying that these were dissident Taiwanese, probably born in America, and without question they were exceptions. When I said every Taiwanese person I’d ever met felt this way, they replied quite easily that they were all simply exceptions. I nodded. I was learning much.

Tibet, or Xī Zàng, is just the western-most province of China. From its lofty peaks a proud Tibetan can gaze across his country and into his motherland of China, which, I was avidly assured, is his treasured homeland.

I was edified. Whatever gross and impure fallacies the west had taught me, I would renounce. China, surely, you are the way and the light. May we all follow in your blooming footsteps.

No Gods or Kings, Only Man

2010-02-04T19:03:00.001-08:00

Sunday, November 8, 2009

I woke this morning from a curious dream. I had met a girl, young and beautiful, with brunette hair to her back, and Azorean eyes. I was myself; that is to say, in the dream I was who I am today. Yet she was full of youth and innocence, ardour and passion for love and commitment, cherishing the splendour of romance and ennobling its highest ideals. She worshipped at the altar of Love, and for her, I was the very avatar of this supreme belief. She loved me with all her might, though she was reserved and gentle of spirit, kind and never untoward. She loved me fiercely, but without abandon, with a serene calmness that belied her true feelings. For my part, I cared for her, but was not drawn in by the same joy as she, and remained unmoved—though appreciative—of her companionship.

One day she came to me with a surprise. She was very excited, and showed me paperwork for a house. I was to sign it with her, and we would have a house together. I couldn’t. I did not feel the same way about her, and I was too busy with other avenues of my life to begin to settle down with this girl. I refused as kindly as I might, though she felt immensely the weight of my rejection. Without tears, without much emotion at all, she told me with surprising conviction that she felt her heart was breaking. It seemed to be a process she could intricately describe, noting vividly every detail, each nuance of exquisite pain that shuddered through her. I was her first love, her only love, and this denial seemed to shatter every triumphant bastion she had ever known. She left me, and I didn’t see her again until much later in my dream.

When I finally saw her, it was in a cabin in the woods, living with her family. It was winter, and the snows had fallen heavily, and the mighty arms of twisted pines had gathered up the winter’s white bounty, hoarding it after their ancient and solemn fashion. I met her inside, for she had called the community together to hear her joyous announcement, and there was no time to send them away after her defeat; now they were a mockery of the ambitions which hopeless fancy feigned.

She wanted nothing to do with me, though I saw on the living room table a compilation she had made earlier, a dedication to her love for me. My name was written on the cover (though I cannot think if it was Pearson, or Garrett, or something else), and it bore the marks of fervent and tender love. I confronted her after some time spent in awkward embarrassment, and she barely acknowledged me. When I forced it, she said that I had ruined everything, that there was nothing left which mattered, and that love was a hollow institution that consumed souls. I tried to convince her she was wrong, and that it was simply not meant to be in this case. From somewhere she produced a placard and read from it. “I am like the white snows of Snowdon, unblemished by the greasy city streetlights. “ She told me it was from a Psalm, and though there was a little more, I cannot summon it from my dream. She said that though she had failed with me, she was still untarnished and awaiting her true love.

There is more to the dream, but it is merely incidental. This portion, however, strikes me very deeply. If ever we receive messages from our subconscious, I think perhaps it is through dreams. “…unblemished by the greasy city streetlights,”: There is much meaning in this, meaning that seeks to direct me, guide me, show me whither I wander before my feet fall astray and I miss my mark. There is still honour in the world, and personal integrity counts when you retire and find you are alone with your thoughts. To me it seems the threat of eternity is unmatched when set against the omniscient voice of my conscience. My compass has so far proved true, my path right, and few are the wayward step have I taken. For what good is intimacy bereft of love? What use is it to know someone with whom your heart shares no bonds? We are all animals, there is no doubt. But we are so much more. While our feet may tread the earth, our eyes gaze beyond the clouds—vast tracts across the limitless aether, thoughts unbridled and unmarred by the conquering worm, who is our oldest brother. Even as we are consumed, we look to the stars above.

A man must have convictions, or what is the use of life? He must temper his dreams with intent, furnish his desires with a carriage, and pursue them to their end. Convictions, beliefs, ideals—these raise us up from the commonalities of existence, lift us to the tiers of gods, whence we might command our destinies. In the crowd of the elder pantheon, we take our place as Olympians, past the clutches of Erebus. Climb, brother, climb! And to look to the furthest horizon and beyond, never limited by the squalor of mediocrity—is there not more?

This seems to me an omen of our intent, a glimpse into our purpose. A white linen may fly from the line and fall to earth, soiled for a moment; but it still retains its nature—a cloth once white, and yet still evidently so. But to take this white sheet and throw it to the ground, dragging it through the muddy puddles and sodden dirt, until it neither bears semblance to a white cloth, nor remembers it ever was—what is the purpose in this? Denying true nature, creating false existence, revelling in the stuff of which we were not made. Man is not meant to lie with pigs, though his flesh rises from the same black earth. His faculties equip him for higher things, pursuits beyond the furthest glimmer in the nighted gulfs which stare down on us through the primordial wastes of time. I would prefer to glimpse a false horizon of golden towers, than gaze upon the bare ruin of an empty land; and so would I rather follow my heart into the cloudy peaks beyond, even though I should only find ghosts, and hear the echoes of raucous laughter far below. Love has a home for me: brightest truths, purest trust in the universe, all were for me in the kiss of one girl. So I shall find my way, and be the merrier when my weary heart knows its own and peace comes at last.

Not As Funny As It Could Have Been

2010-02-04T19:02:00.002-08:00

Friday, November 6, 2009

I think there’s something deeply ironic in deciding to go for a run the first time, and discovering it’s raining. I get up at six these mornings. Not because I have to, but because it feels good. I’ve never been an early riser, except when school demanded, and the mystery of the young hours has always appealed to me. But beds are warm, and I dream frequently, and the cold floor seems less inviting.

Moving to China reset my whole clock, and now getting up at six is pretty easy. Going to bed at ten is a little harder, but really, what are you going to do in those dark hours that you couldn’t in the morning?

So apparently I’m the architect. I approach the world from a point of view that encourages me to fervently believe in nobility, in the grace of mankind, in the honourable soul. I construct elaborate palaces with golden minarets that glimmer in the morning sun, a testament to the purity of the human spirit and its infinite endeavours. From this perspective, I find I am often disappointed. The gleaming castles I build are frequently erected upon shoddy foundations, which crumble when inhabited. Yet, though I may elect to manufacture these brilliant houses of cards, ever ready to topple, I should rather gaze upon their imaginary grandeur than look across a bleak landscape devoid of wonder.

This pretence may be my shortcoming. My friend and I had a discussion yesterday, and brief though it was, it set the gears of my mind in motion. His approach to life is as the reductionist. He gazes upon the intricate constructs of man and slowly disassembles them. He takes each piece, examines it thoroughly, then discards it as unnecessary to life and his place in it. Why create something that isn’t real? Why build a palace in a marsh? Why not just learn to live in the marsh, and by understanding it, surpass it—or, at the least, not deceive yourself into believing that you’re not really living in a swamp. While I may build mansions among the clouds, I would rather do this than tear down something beautiful—even if it is imaginary. There’s something noble in man, beyond the animal, beyond the gross tendencies we all must perpetuate. There is a lion in every man’s heart, and when he roars under the strain, we must rise and help him up.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. ~ Thoreau

But I find I tend to look behind me, rather than ahead. It’s like walking backwards. I don’t suppose this is the best way to go about things. There are periods in my life that glow in recollection, and those feelings are something I cherish; perhaps at the expense of the present. Like England! Egad, but I miss England.

On Federalism

2010-02-04T19:02:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

"Societies are produced by our wants, governments by our wickedness." - Thomas Paine

More government? Less government? I don't want someone telling me what to do. When someone makes rules for me, I have to ask why. Because someone, somewhere far, far away, really cares about me? Someone who's never met me and will never know me, that person knows what's best for me? That person really cares about whether I'm happy or not?

To my limited understanding, it seems such a person really only wants me to behave, and not cause problems for him. This seems what the function of a "rule" is. To limit the ability of others to make free choices that interfere with yours. This is the well spring of governments. The trappings of decency and common good, and the lifeblood of corruption and tyranny.

I will make my own choices, thank you.

Abrupt Massages - or - Haircuts in China

2010-02-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 2, 2009

So I had my first Chinese haircut today. Damn. In earlier days, the experience might have been commemorated with an opera, or an epic play by some balding Greek. Today, however, it was captured by my devoted chronographer, who videotaped and immortalised the event with plenty of photographs, some of which I’m sure you’ll see shortly.

It began, as most things do, with an innocent trip to the mall to buy some mittens. During a fateful lapse in judgement concerning where to proceed next in our search for hand garments, I noted the smell of shampoo and fresh cut hair—much as one subtly notices mown lawn on a summer’s morning. My hair needed cutting, and after assurances that the procedure would cost only 28 yuan (exactly $4.00), I determined it was probably safe to proceed. The improbable presentation of this dubious opportunity seems good evidence for a wry God.

We entered a spacious room equipped with alien technology, possibly for branding or psychic manipulation, and were escorted to some chairs by some shrubbery. I explained through our interpreter that I needed a simple “trim”, which through the bizarre prism that our plain English is decoded, translated to something much more elaborate. My coat and belongings were whisked away to a magical cupboard. Would I see them again? I wondered as I was led gently, but insistently, away.

I was then taken by the hand by a petite red head in delicately applied makeup, as by practise of many years. It should be understand that this was a man. I followed this lithe pixie into a darkened anteroom, adorned with long, supple beds of black leather. I was initially concerned for my prospects, but I noticed what appeared to be a sink at the head of each bed, and discerned something familiar in its purpose. I was not disappointed, as a plume of warm water subdued my mangy locks. I promised them, with as much vigour as I could muster, that this was entirely unnecessary—I had just washed my hair a few hours before. It was no use, they were single minded in their determination. I relented, and succumbed to a thorough washing.

My head was lathered with what smelt strongly of green tea, and then to my surprise, the water was shut off. No rinse had occurred. As tiny man fingers began to kneed my scalp, I assumed merely that this man, diligently earning his six yuan an hour, was merely performing his duties. But as his fingers worked deeper and deeper into my flesh, and the minutes began to roll by, I wondered at his true purpose. Careful application of pressure to points in my brain seemed, to me, superfluous at best where the art of hair cutting is concerned. Yet my interpreter explained that this was part of the process, and that I should just 'relax'. I inquired what process she meant, for clearly there was no hair cutting involved. But she was called away suddenly on some errand, and I never discovered the answer.

Meanwhile, this nimble fingered minx worked ancient Oriental magic into places beyond my comprehension, and I was about to object when he suddenly began pounding on my skull. He would take two or three fingers, then bash them against my head with his other hand. My initial response was that he must be sounding my skull, divining secrets and fathoming imperfections which must be useful when my hair was eventually, theoretically cut. This was followed by a treatment that resembled kneading bread dough—which, when applied to your head, is entirely disorienting.

This bizarre epilogue was extended over the course of half an hour, by the end of which I wasn’t certain where I was, or why I was there in the first place. However, the hair cut began after this, and by another mystical Chinese art, a good eight years was removed from my age as I sat immobile for what must have been twenty hours. A “trim” does not translate well, it seems, and after briefly resembling Harrison Ford, George Clooney, and Clark Gable, I was finally released from the tender clutches of that benevolently sinister man—much the younger in appearance and unsure as to what the meaning of anything was anymore. Were haircuts really haircuts? Was time travel involved? Was some sort of implied gratuity of deviance considered necessary after my treatment? Surely this extravagance was worth more than four dollars. What other payments might the eager little red head be expecting?

If you happen to find yourself in China, and are in need of a haircut, you may consider alternatives. Perhaps you don’t really need a haircut. Perhaps you could wait a while longer. Perhaps this is something you will never need again. Yet maybe deep tissue scalp massages from tiny, tiny, effeminate men are something you enjoy in lieu of an actual haircut—the haircutting itself merely an excuse to have your cerebrum probed by dainty Asian digits. This luxury is yours for a seeming bargain, though the true price may exceed the conservative suggestion of four dollars.

A Picture is Worth 1,200 Words

2010-02-04T19:00:00.002-08:00

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Intermission

So, I bought a new camera. I've been looking around for a camera for a while. The Kodak EasyShare Z812 IS I've been using has been a great camera. It's got an amazing 12x optical zoom that has been very valuable from time to time, but it just can't cut it anymore. Which is a shame. It's only about a year old. Yet, there have been tiny quirks that I've chosen to ignore, simply because I didn't know exactly what I was doing, and I didn't have the money to let it bother me.

However, having recently come into some finances from my fantastical new job, I decided now might be a good time to upgrade. Particularly because the batteries on the Kodak are apparently made of a tin sieve that drains energy faster than a two year old. It's been on the decline the last few months, but now it's at the point where I leave one of the two batteries I have charging for a few days, pop them in fresh from the charger, and manage about ten shots before it dies. If I leave it in there without taking any pictures at all, it's dead in a day or so.

So, after doing some research, I narrowed the categories down to the Canon Powershot SD880 IS, Nikon Coolpix P60, Sony Cybershot DSC-W150, and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1.

These are all little hand held cameras not meant for major photographic work. Someday--maybe in a few months when I can save up--I'd love to pick up the Canon EOS 450D or 500. But that's a sweet chunk of change, and I need the convenience of a little point and shoot that I can stow in my pocket while I'm running around 20,000 year old Chinese temples. >.>

So I head over to a store that equates to an ugly ménage à trois between Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and a Dollar Tree Store where everything costs a hundred dollars--the Pan Dong Lai. Which, roughly translated (exactly translated), means The Fat Man From The East. Don't you want to shop there? What would such a person buy?

Right away I find out that the model I had chosen as the best choice, the Canon Powershot SD880, just isn't sold in China. Or, at least not in that store, which is the same thing. So I move on down the list. They basically have the models I'm after, but the numbers are either slightly higher or lower. Does this make a difference? I don't know. This worries me. After searching and not really finding the cameras I had written down, I decided it would just be easier to research the cameras they had.

I came back with the Canon Powershot A2100 IS and the Fujifilm F200EXR. Some quick reviews told me the Canon ate batteries at an alarming rate, so that was out. But the Fujifilm, armed with its incredible "Super CCD EXR" technologies was apparently one of the best in its class. I himmed and hawed for a few days, pawing it longingly through the glass and touching its buttons in ways I'm sure the clerks weren't entirely comfortable with.

Finally, after deliberating on the virtues of being without a camera and in China for the first time, I decided it was time to make a move. With all the subtle, suave, sophistication of a hormone ravening teenager on a first date, I approached the gangly, pock faced clerk. Undeterred by his noisome, mephitic breath, I bravely proceeded to talk him down a good 600 yuan off the asking price. If I did my research right, I think I came out well ahead of you frisky American buyers.

In any case, I am now the (proud) owner of a Fujifilm F200EXR. It seems a good camera, and I'm looking forward to putting it through some rigorous paces this week. I have seven days to return it, so hopefully I can find any irreconcilable defects before then. If you have any suggestions about use or techniques, I'm happy to hear them.

Mein Geburtstag! Mon Dieu!

2010-02-04T19:00:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

It's my birthday, and I'll eat weird dishes with knobbly chicken knuckles and chunky pork fat, made lukewarm and dripping with something! I'll hang out with people I don't know, sing songs in a language I don't speak, and drink things customary to the occasion which may, or may not, make me regret the day I was born. ^_^

Twenty-four. Who'd have thought I'd make it this far? Wonder where 25 will be celebrated. I'll probably have more to say on this later, but I always feel compelled to commemorate the event with some sort of personal acknowledgment of my finite being, made gloriously apparent on this day. Thanks for the b-day wishes, I wish you all were here!

Bread and Circuses

2010-02-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

Monday, October 19, 2009

I think our generation is numb. Just plain ass numb. Nothing moves us anymore, nothing is impressive or awe inspiring or stirring or inspirational. We're all just a bunch of numb, retarded little kids kicking around for the next high. Watching movies that reaffirm we have nothing to live for and complaining how boring life is because we have it so damn good. We're opium addicts and the effects have worn off, and now all it's good for is abating the hunger. But even that little comfort is receding.

We've got more than anyone else has ever had in the whole world, and we don't appreciate a damn thing. Building the Hoover Dam! That's impressive! Have you seen that thing? Sending a man to the moon! Now we don't even tune in when a shuttle launches. So what do we have, after all that? X-Boxes and a thousand channels of static to make us forget we have nothing else to be excited for. Great God! I'd rather be a pagan, suckled in a creed outworn. Anything but this stillness of wonder.

We've become dead to the world, and the system needs a reboot.

Heuristic Anangoge

2010-02-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

Monday, October 19, 2009

It is difficult to express within the meagre confines of English the exact nature of the air in this country. More specifically, I speak of smells. I wake up in the morning and inhale deeply a smorgasbord of undetermined scents, and I nod, reassured that all is right with the world. I am always slightly anxious of the possibility of rising to find no smells at all, harbinger of some inconceivable catastrophe. Spectrums of smell that you once naively believed beyond human recognition will leap at you bodily from seemingly nowhere. The vigour with which these aromas assail your olfactory senses is nigh animate, and it takes no great imagination to perceive wilfully evil tendencies in their ninja-like manoeuvres. Each standing pool of water or fruit stand or grove of trees becomes a suspicious harbour, incorrigible sympathiser of these malignant odours. Drainage pipes mingle freely with the sewers, whose surface access the prudish westerner will find far too frequent for his mild tastes. When the wind strikes up, fragrant concoctions from unguessed regions greet in you in ways that are utterly charming.

Whereas an Englishman might guess the direction of the wind by whether it blew salty sea air his way, or perhaps cut grass from a mown field, so the Chinaman knows his Cardinals by the scent of the local construction or waste management plants. Surely, this method is far superior, as air from the sea can be such a general sort of smell. No one is apt to readily mistake the warm familiarity of sulphur or freshly laid asphalt for the imprecise vagrancies of sea air. Perhaps the English will one day abandon their Arcadian habits and attain this level of sophistication. No doubt they’re as eager as I am.

The Chinaman is a practical creature, given much to pragmatism in matters of construction and material functionality. Indeed, his remarkable ingenuity far exceeds our own western limitations. For example, a western electrician might house high voltage cables and wires in a cumbersome power box. Yet this is a tedious procedure, and restricts the necessary cables high off the street and away from easy access. The clever Chinaman knows better. He slings the wires together in a manner a crow or primate might commend, and shuns the impracticality of a housing. He knows they serve a dual purpose, being useful as a clothesline, and that sometimes children might want to climb them. A poor American child knows not the freedom he is denied, for truly, there is joy in swinging from thick, durable power cables. The plurality of their uses continues, saving Chinese families what might otherwise be bulky energy bills by expelling effulgent showers of sparks during the night. In some areas of Xuchang, conventional street lighting has been done away with entirely, permitting the full functionality of the power cables its proper place.

Continuing his bent for propitious solutions, a common remedy in China—with applicability bounding ahead of my every possible conception—is the liberal use of concrete. Cement, in China, is the bonding material of life itself. I am sure I saw an ad for a concrete car as I was waiting for the bus the other day. For example, the toilet in my apartment leaked freely from the base (through no fault of exquisite Chinese craftsmanship, the toilet was undoubtedly made in America). The fleshy repairman, who could have lived nowhere except beside or beneath a grease factory, helpfully suggested we fill the toilet with concrete. After rigorously exploring possible deviations in translation, I concluded we were on basically the same page, though I’m not convinced it was in the same book. “No leak!” he promised me. I was inclined to agree, but politely deferred to seek solutions elsewhere. Furthermore, there is also the problem of eggs becoming rotten as they sit for hours and years in the sun at market. The Chinese have bypassed this snag by encasing the eggs in nutritious, convenient concrete. I was surprised by this at first, but have come to see that it is in fact a hardy solution, and will ensure the survival of the egg long after man has abandoned his recidivistic tendency towards un-entombed breakfasts.

During my stay here, it has come to my attention that the Chinese are a highly considerate and helpful people. A Chinaman will think nothing of laying his wife across a puddle so you might keep your loafers dry. Several pairs of my Sketchers have been saved in this way. Nor, after a lengthy explanation on your part —involving many hand gestures and techniques you learned playing charades— will he balk at running quickly to the back of the store to fetch whatever it is you need. Be it potatoes, apples, or hair gel, he is certain to bring you something entirely different, but probably better. Most likely, you don’t actually know what you want, and he can help you with this. Perhaps he returns with an armful of “chicken bits”! This is well enough, except that you asked for milk. The gesture for milking a cow must surely have a limited number of interpretations.

After indicating that what he had brought me wasn’t indeed what I had wanted, I judged by his face that I had done something unpardonable. I was immediately sorry for my rudeness and thanked him for his troubles. I made off with my bag full of something, which I then generously left for the next man in the nearest bin. As a matter of courtesy, a Chinaman will also insist that you share a cigarette with him. Maybe you don’t smoke, maybe you have a debilitating lung disease which would kill you outright if you tried it—it is no matter. In his honest magnanimity, he will ensure you try —and enjoy— your proffered cigarette, lest he is irrevocably shamed in your eyes. No protestation will suffice, and if you find yourself often in many public venues, you will soon discover to your great surprise that you have become a smoker. It is a subtle transformation for many, and is merely another form of hospitality the average Chinaman would so willingly sacrifice your life for.

These strange occurrences have begun to reveal themselves in a recognisable pattern, one that appears so frequently my friend Phil and I find ourselves repeating its name hundreds of times each day. “China, man,” followed by a shaking of the head. This simple exclamation summarises every encounter with an alacrity that no Chinaman could fault. I have yet to discover a situation for which it is deficient.

A man steering a vespa with his chin down the highway? Peeing in the bushes? Cement eggs? Ice cream bars shaped and flavoured like corn? Roll with it, it’s China man.

Scribbles in the Orient

2010-02-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

In China, you pee in the street.

o_o

No, it's true. You do. Children have special bottomless trousers to aid this process, but adults can find serviceable substitutes as well. Just drop your drawers and find relief. Preferably somewhere secluded, but if not, it's ok. No one really cares. It's sort of understood that occasionally you will need a bathroom, and there just won't be one for ten or fifteen feet. No one really expects you to walk that far. So by all means, fill the planter. Or the bushes. Or the giant urn with a lion standing over it; just, whatever really speaks to you, man. It's sort of a personal choice, a defining artistic decision, comprising layers of complex aesthetics I'm sure I don't comprehend. It's built upon countless generations and perfected techniques, possibly involving planetary alignment.

Also? Driving is an exercise in supreme, living Taoism. It requires a fluidity of consciousness and release of corporeal concern that the average western driver has yet to accept as practical for daily use. There is no distinction between yourself and the cars, vespas, bicyclists, and pedestrians around you. You are all a part of the same body of careening metal and flesh, all functioning in time beyond the understanding of individual mortal agency. To attempt to rationalise spatial relationships is to abandon the harmony of the machine and invite certain disaster. Bus, car, or bike, make your peace before getting on a Chinese road.

Horns are decorations purely for the amusement of the driver. A blaring horn does not signal imminent death, or even moderate danger. The raucous call of a fell klaxon is simply the Chinese driver's method of saying, "hello" to those around him, and is generally considered a courteous act. Sometimes you honk to the driver behind you, just to tell him you know what he's about, and that you both share in the brotherhood of the road. Or you might honk at the pedestrian patiently waiting on the sidewalk, with no intention of walking, or maybe as you drive past your favourite building. Or at the people crossing the crosswalk while you're waiting at a red light. Let them know you see them walking, because they might not know otherwise, and may be concerned. Really, just any old time you choose, the horn is there for you to use. Loudly. And often.

And air! Air is, to the average Chinaman, wasted space. What is it good for? Clearly nothing. It just hangs there, clean and refreshing, doing nothing. So China decided to put the air to good use and has started rigorous programmes to efficiently and expediently fill it with exhaust. And smoke. And gas, of all kinds. See that pile of leaves just sitting there? Burn it! That paper? Burn it! That plastic? Don't even think of NOT burning it. That air is just there and empty, you better put SOMETHING in it, people might think you weren't being industrious. Ah, smell that? What is it? Who knows!

Also, there is food. Food in China comes in two kinds: made of many things indescribable, and made of one thing. The latter need not be explained. The former, however, involves so many permutations that a noted physicist might admit to bafflement; some cases verge upon the epistemological, confining a diligent philosopher to the tried adage that he is certain only that he does not know. For you see, a bowl of noodles is never just that. Spices unknown are compounded manifold into viscous, watery, limpid, emulsified gelatin, or meat, or bread, or tofu--but that's not saying it's one of those things or the other. You have no idea. Maybe it's all of them? Your meals are interesting and obscure, both coming and going, and there isn't one that doesn't remind you of what you've had and introduce you to new tactile sensations during and even hours after consumption. The western man is left with few familiar choices outside of KFC and, remarkably, one Pizza Hut in Zhengzhou (Jung-jo)--which, according to the Chinese woman in charge of Foreign Affairs, has either 120 million people, or 1 million, or twelve-thousand; she assured me it was somewhere exactly around there. I think the statistic that China has 2.3 billion people, if counted by a Chinaman, may be somewhat exaggerated. Maybe it's around there? Perhaps. Yet there is the occasional treat one finds while rummaging through vulgar heaps of "Prince of Tennis" crackers and "Essence of Happy Life" fruit biscuits, that have no fruit at all. These treasures, lately of the Oreo variety, lead the brave but desperate westerner to cling to anything familiar, like a crazed man lost in hallucination, grasping wildly for any anchor which ties him to the world he knows. Nourished by Oreos and Sprite, my body has slowly been detoxifying over the past several days, and I think I am nearly recovered.

Chinese are often considered to be a constructive, industrious people--this is a notion I hear bantered about quite a bit, verified and repeated from all quarters. And indeed, to look around, you will note countless buildings under construction, and many more which appear to have been built quite recently. Yet this is a clever rouse, I believe. For upon examination, no one is actually working on these silent, haunted structures. Empty towers loom lonely in the smog, and close inspection reveals but one Chinaman, high upon his scaffolding, taking a leisurely lunch break. You may find him taking a lunch break whenever you choose to come by. Visit him in the evening, and he will be sure to invite you to join him on his lunch break. Miles of new road lie dormant under the sparkling morning smog, re-bar jutting like the bones of a slain behemoth, and one lone Chinaman sits upon a stack of bricks taking his lunch break. Perhaps this one man, armed with his trusty red lunch pail and blue hard hat, is the back bone of China's industry. Beginning long before dawn, moving so quickly he seems not to move at all, he makes his rounds across the great countryside simply willing buildings into existence. Which, surely, must be tiring work, demanding constant sustenance from his endless lunch pail.

Finally, and I will be brief on this subject, there are spiders here that would give Shelob pause. They hang in invisible webs where you are wont to walk, gibbous, like some bad moon.

There is no limit to the wonders China offers. To those accustomed to the right and proper workings of humans and the societies that spring up around them, mechanisms ponderous but measurable, amazement and even astonishment await in plenty.

Inspiration: Go!

2010-02-04T16:43:00.001-08:00

Thursday, July 23, 2009

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.
– Frank Herbert

This is one of my very favourite quotes, and I have it at the top of the page of the notes I'm taking for my own novel. I read it often, and for some reason it always makes me feel better. When I am low and given to thoughts of despair as to my progress or my abilities or this or that, knowing that such a great writer as Frank Herbert evinced emotions which parallel my own--that his mind inhabited spaces I frequent--is of infinite value.

And he's absolutely right: pour yourself into it! Never say die!

My own particular hang up is that I'm still not dead set on my voice for the novel, as well as the thought that if I can read some more books--see how others have done it--I'll somehow be able to set about my work with better tools than I have now. While this is probably partially true, it's created in me this apprehension of starting before I've finished reading all the books on my list. The list isn't great, but as I finish one, I find another, and so I'm never really finished and each new one seems as applicable if not more so than the last to what I'm writing. And so I keep looking to an ever constant horizon of literature with no prospect of ever finding a stopping point.

I need to just start writing, and then not stop until I'm finished.

Future Tense

2010-02-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday, July 12, 2009

"The future does not exist as such, like lonely buildings in our path, waiting for us to come and inhabit them. No, the future is built by our hands from our earliest days, like a shinning white tower. And if we could see it, if we could look ahead into the future, it would be as if we were looking up towards the heavens, into the vast sky above, its silver margins wreathed by our imaginations." – July 22, 2008

This is a thought I wrote down almost a year ago, to this day. I rather like the imagery.