TAO 61~The Yang Side

Gong Xi Nimen Fa Cai!

2012-01-23T10:59:00.000-10:00

Or as we more commonly say in Honolulu, kung hee fat choy (Cantonese). The year of the water dragon --shui long-- is upon us. So I put some hot water in my longjin (dragon well) tea this morning and started the year off right.

Breakfast with the dragons.

This is what fresh dragon well tea looks like, in a glass with a bit of dried orange peel.

Dragon well (longjin) tea in Hangzhou.

Alas, my Chinese painting class has been cancelled due to low enrollment. And my teacher is apparently not well. I am at a loss. Still, tonight I will attempt to paint a dragon.

The Chinese dragon is not like the dragons of Western mythology. They are auspicious, strong, and generally don't have wings. They are composites of nine animals, in variations with the head of an ox, horse or camel (works for me); the body of a snake with fish scales, tiger feet and eagle claws, horns of a deer, eyes of a rabbit, belly of a frog, mouse whiskers. If there are wings, they are the wings of a bat, and just a pair near the front legs. The status of the dragon--whether he is for commoners or the emperor-- is indicated by how many claws he has. He often is depicted with a pearl in his mouth or just within reach. The pearl is a symbol of good luck and prosperity. It is especially good to have nine dragons flying around. Speaking of the fish scales, he is supposed to have 117: 81 yang and 36 yin. Even though this is the year of the water dragon, they are generally associated with water anyway and will fly from the sea to the clouds and back. On a feng shui tour in Hong Kong once, I was shown how the surrounding hills are OBVIOUSLY nine dragons. And more than a few buildings there feature gaps so the dragon can fly through without obstruction. So they say.

Dragon Gate Apartments.

And one of my favorite little temples in Wudangshan features a nice spirit screen with a fresco of nine dragons. It's very old and "in need" of restoration, but I hope they don't overdo it.

Nine dragon spirit screen at Tai Chang Temple, Wudangshan

Here's a closeup of one of the faded nine. I think I can do this well with my brush.

Going for the pearl!

Here's a sturdier dragon--there were nine on this wall-- from Po Lin Buddhist Monastery in Hong Kong.

Dragon at Po Lin in Hong Kong.

So 2012 is here in earnest. No dragon your feet! Get on with it!

Lost in the Cloud

2012-01-14T08:53:00.000-10:00

This is how disasters happen I guess, not that this is much of one. In the blink of an eye, the click of a "cancel", or was it an "okay", I have inadvertently obliterated my bookshelf gadget here, where all of the books I have read over the past two or three years were chronologically listed, not for anyone else's benefit really, but more for a measure of my own study and entertainment, a personal diary of my reading. (Although, I was actually editing the list to add a new book, in the interest of promoting it, like another of which I recently read with more than a little personal interest.)

On the other hand, this is a little lesson in what is important. This list was not. The deletion happened as I was about to add my first new book of the new year, and I probably will ("What I Read in 2012"). But was the list for my benefit (I still have the books on my shelves) or was it really to show other people? You are what you read; this is me. See how well read I am? You should read these books, too. It would be like listing everything I've eaten in the past year. I am what I eat. See how well fed I am. Eat like me.

I just wonder where it went. Can you recover things from the cloud? (If someone knows how to do this, please let me know.) Or did I just free up some space on a server. I feel certain if it were a list of subversive contacts or activities, it would be out there in some NSA file to haunt me. But does anyone care about my reading list but me?

POSTSCRIPT
Ah, all is not lost! Search "recover blogger gadget" and the magic of "cached" is revealed. My list IS out there in the cloud, fortunately not too subversive. Now safely saved as a Word file, for personal edification, I can refer to it whenever I want, and start the 2012 list afresh. (Too much trouble to rebuild the history in the blog gadget, though.) Lesson learned: no panic, no loss. And nothing really ever disappears, it is just transformed (or hidden).

As the Energy Turns

2012-01-09T16:02:00.000-10:00

As usual, a much-needed haircut and the full moon rejuvenate me. Undoing the Christmas tree, which has served its peaceful purpose for more than a month, like my haircut, gets all the accumulated stagnant itchy residual energy of 2011 moving forward toward the Year of Dragon (by sweeping away hair clippings and pine needles). So Sunday I overcame my lethargy to get to the Art Academy for the show of landscape paintings on loan from the Forbidden City. The exhibit opened two months ago, partly in connection with November's APEC event, but I put it off and off and off until the last moment. I'm sorry I did that because I would go again and again and again if I could. But it has inspired me and I'm looking forward to my new painting class with my Chinese teacher starting on the Chinese New Year.

At the Academy I followed the docent tour that really didn't tell me much I didn't already know, and which presented the Yuan-to-Qing works from a very political perspective. These were no longer Imperial paintings, commissioned by the Emperor, but paintings of the people, by the people, and for the proletariat. I suspect this angle was imposed by Beijing, reluctant at first to lend 150 valuable scrolls (from a collection of thousands, and not counting the ones in Taipei) to a small (but lovely) art museum in the middle of the Pacific. But there was that APEC thing.

"Okay, we'll let you use them, but be sure to point out the political implications." Never once did the docent make any specific reference to Taoism or Buddhism, in which all of these shui mo images are steeped, or certainly flavored.

I explored the installation, twice, then bought the exquisite catalogue to have something to copy. (Baroness Radon, Xiong Shan Di, in the style of Wen Zhengming.) Then, completing the cultural afternoon, off to the piano store to find some music other than hymnals to play on my new keyboard. "Do you have any easy Bach?"

"There is no easy Bach," the lonely man said. (Who shops for grand pianos on a Sunday afternoon after Christmas?) "Maybe you'd like lessons?" he leered. (Memories of Ludwig.) I picked a couple of easy collections from baroque to new age--they LOOK easy--and then the guy asked me if it was a full 88-key unit.

"No. Sweetwater told my husband I didn't need it unless I played Chopin." Which I don't. The guy was sceptical, but ran my Visa anyway. A blog post can be expected wherein I discuss how something that looks easy isn't. (I discover George Winston is fond of F# Major...six sharps. That doesn't look easy. But he makes it sound so easy.)

Arrest me sometime;
here's my cell number.

Then a less cultural evening immersed in a contemporary Korean drama with Song Il-gook, uncharacteristically scruffy and sassy (but still utterly arresting) as a detective on the Seoul Homicide Squad. Like a "Law and Order: Kim Chee Unit," it was such a strange contrast to his addictive sageuks. Like any day in Asia, everyone is on their cell phone all the time and the ubiquitous devices provide creepily efficient ways to track victims and criminals and wayward squad members. And if the cell phone GPS locators don't work, "Get me the surveillance footage!" No swords, no archery, no horses. Big Techno-Brother is alive and well in South Korea. Still, when this series is done, I will find it difficult not to follow Mr. Song into the next drama, about kim chee and tofu restaurants, called "Fermentation Family."

I'm awakened at 4 a.m. by the light of the full moon and go to the lanai for a little meditation time to soak that energy up. And indeed today, the first regular Monday back in the office (but wait, MLK Day is next week!) I feel strangely energized and fresh. I'm in the mood for background music, and I brew some oolong in the pretty little gaiwan I bought last May in Wudang. An affectation to be sure, sort of the six sharps of tea brewing. But it feels so elegant, the tea tastes so good after pushing away the leaves with the lid, like a graceful concubine or a cool and collected martial artist in a Chinese historical drama.

Day 12

2012-01-07T13:33:00.000-10:00

Well, actually yesterday was the Twelfth Day of Christmas, a point I make every year, that the twelve days of Christmas are the dozen AFTER Dec. 25, not before. Marketing and sales people like the run-up; I prefer the run-down. I did not need to explain this to the Christmas cactus; their internal clocks work quite well.

Christmas Angel

Lao Hu, the Yellow Emperor, is not happy that we will be taking away his little piece of nature a little early this year. I would never take the tree out before Epiphany, but it really is dry and droopy. Still, it has given much pleasure to cats and humans over the past month. The cats gaze at the lights, hide under the branches.

Christmas Devil

Day 2, 2012

2012-01-02T17:28:00.000-10:00

Such a calm day, no mail, no obligations, no noise, a pleasantly cool morning after a pleasantly cool night. I brew some coffee, clean the Yellow Emperor's night soil box, wash pots and pans left (by a sleeping someone who will remain nameless) from yesterday's kielbasa, kraut and blackeyed pea feast, and settle in to read, sitting in my Grammy's rocking chair, on my lanai. A bagel with cream cheese and black raspberry jam, coffee, and later, but not very much later, the last of some nigori sake ("Dreamy Clouds," the "Summer Snow" having been demolished a couple days ago; what other booze has such entrancing names?).

I am reading Years of Red Dust, some anecdotes and tales (stories, fiction) of Shanghai from 1949 to the more or less present (2005). For some reason, recalling a previous read, I thought the author, Qiu Xiaolong, was a woman, but I am mistaken. I am reading these stories through the lens of my own visits to China and history of China watching, and trying to adapt them to my own experiences. Is my condo association like a neighborhood political action committee? No, but it is frighteningly conceivable. Am I trapped in some world of limited potentials by my family background, my political persuasion? No, but I could be. But perhaps to even imagine these parallels, is to romanticize--not quite the right word--the reality of China from 1949 and on.

Rich, red, zinfandel.

I follow the nigori with a bit of red wine. This might have meant something to Mao. To me, it meant a nap. Such a calm day. My red Christmas cactuses are outpacing the white in their blooming. It means nothing, but I can imagine that it might have on Red Dust Lane.

Old Farts

2012-01-01T16:21:00.000-10:00

Waiting for the kielbasa and sauerkraut to get good, with some blackeyed peas on the side, our personal New Year traditional feast, I am poking around in my extensive iTunes library, earphones on my head. I am always astonished at the consistency of my personal taste (although it would probably make no objective sense to anyone else.) Like my friends, the music I like has some kind of common thread. Some of it goes right to the lower dantian...some of it up higher. A melodic riff, a chord progression, a sentiment. And generally, music that captivated me early on, still does. Dylan. Miles Davis. Beethoven.

When I listen to old songs they take me back to old times, old friends, and I wonder what happened to them, people who were truly vital parts of my life. Where is Carol, with whom I listened to Heart in 1973? I can trace a vivid moment to the release of every Dylan album ever, (every song really). There is a certain Rolling Stones song, Brand New Car, that when I listen to it, I am sitting with my late father in a Pizza Hut in Orlando. I played it on the jukebox. He was a car guy; I don't know if the kinky erotic overtones were lost on him. (Best not to think about that.) And Sonata Pathetique has weirdly erotic connections with my piano lessons. (Best not to think about that.)

Like smells do, a lyric, a melody, a chord progression, can take you back to such a precise moment, you revisit the universe as it was at a moment in the past. A touch, a breeze, a word, a look, a heartbeat. The Wizard is very preoccupied with certain chord structures and progressions....inverted sevenths? I don't like to analyze music quite like that, but I suppose it's the same thing. I suppose it is the same as when my father would get all weepy when Glenn Miller played Stardust; I get emotional over Gordon Lightfoot doing Cobwebs and Dust (which I really want people to listen to at my funeral, should I ever have one). Another generation will get gaga over Lady Gaga. Maybe.

For an inexplicable reason, the past few months I have been not very musically inspired, listening to a lot of silence or narratives, but not music. But today, I am enjoying these very personal emotional sensory inputs which have really defined my life.

I wonder how many times I will ever again listen to a particular song that has deep meaning to me.

Like this one:

Red over White

2012-01-01T13:41:00.000-10:00

I was laying my money on my white Christmas cactus to be first out of the blooming gate...there were more buds and it just seemed it had an advantage. But red was the winner. Some people bet on horses. Why not flowers?

January 1, 2012

My Tao

2011-12-30T12:51:00.000-10:00

(Another offering for Rambling Taoists, you can read it here first.)

I've been contemplating a New Year's resolution, to go eremetic, to stop ruminating, to stop reading, to stop Facebooking, YouTube-ing, blogging, forum-ing, basically, turning inward to paint and make music, drink tea (and a little Nigori ) and contemplate clouds and rainbows from my lanai, with some qigong and meditation thrown in at appropriate times. A basic quiet lay-Taoist lifestyle. I was even ready to ask Trey to take me off the masthead here, saying "So long and thanks for all the fish."

Part of this is due to too much participation, too much red dust and noise, even though much of it has been Tao-talk-related. Pose a simple question, raise a simple point, and you get arguments, sanctimony, tutelage and weird flavors of Tao (Advaita Tao, Zen Tao, socio-political Tao, quantum physics Tao, self-transformation Tao, self-negation Tao, TCM Tao, environmental, cultural , esoteric, orthodox, hippie, new-age Taos...it goes on and on.) In just the past week, not just on The Rambling Taoists, but in other forums, there have been deep and sometimes disturbing discussions and postings --some of which leave me feeling like I'm the receptionist in the waiting room of a mental health clinic-- about guilt, free will, karma, text translation and exegesis, authenticity of practice, Chinese vs. western, ancient vs. modern, Lao Tzu vs. Jesus.) All of which suggests to me that the real truth in Taoism is the contradiction and paradoxes it allows. So many Taoisms, so many Taoists. (But just one Tao.)

Particularly perturbing to me is a notion expressed by Ta-Wan, that "We are little else than a sensitive spot in the universe." Even if this is the case -- which I'm not sure it is -- why would you want to believe it? Why would you want to act as if that is true? That we are no more than trigger hairs on a Venus fly trap, the responsive leaves of a mimosa tree? This is a genuine question, not rhetorical astonishment. Even with quoting the masters (who are in fact, just some guys, like us, with something probably lost in translation), or with reference to direct experience (to which another cannot be a party), I cannot sign on that dotted line; it leaves too much out.

We are more than amoeba…we are self-aware energy beings.
We are particle and wave.
We are matter and energy.
We are here, in space.
We are now, in eternity.
We are body, mind, and spirit.
We are human beings, feet on earth, head in heaven.
We are sentient and knowing.
We are cause and effect.
We think and feel.
We are the freedom in a deterministic universe.
We are poems that “be” and stories that “mean.”
We are science and religion.
We are technology and art.
We are certain in our uncertainty; uncertain in our certainty.
We are born and die against our will, but while living, we exercise and express will.
This I believe, and this I act.

Yet Another Morning After

2011-12-26T16:24:00.000-10:00

All that frenzy--which in my case was not really very frenetic--behind: I am left to contemplate the curious stocking stuffers, red and green, that my personal Santa left.

The green tea mints I can understand, but I am a little leery of Fois Gras bubble gum, featuring "artificial liver flavor." I would probably, to the dismay of pretty much everyone I know, savor a bit of real fois gras, but bubble gum?

More delightful is the BIG gift, a very nice electronic keyboard, way more than a piano, something I haven't had intimate access to for nearly 30 years. When we embarked on this journey to the tropics, like missionaries, we left behind a junky old upright, probably a church basement castaway, that I enjoyed when we lived in the country and no one could hear me play. I used to tune it myself. (Frequently, in the way you might cut your own hair, a constant touching up.) I have a tuning hammer, a very lovely crafted tool for which I now have absolutely no use. The upright was pretty much the same piece of furniture I grew up with, a player piano with the player guts removed and which my mother painted white in some fit of purity. At some point in my disastrous childhood piano lesson trajectory, the piano, which I think was my grandmother's, was moved to the basement where I played/practiced so no one could hear me. I was a terrible pianist. I liked the playing part, but the practice baffled me.

When I left home and my basement piano, I went through a self-taught ukelele and guitar phase. My college roommate sat on my uke, (perhaps a foreshadowing of my destiny in Hawaii) and no longer could I play All My Loving, all cute and Paul McCartney, like a primitive and talentless Jake Shimabukuro. The guitar saw me through a few more folky/hippie years, but really, my first love was the piano. I had a teacher whose name actually was Ludwig, who allowed us access to his fabulous upright Steinway; I imagined if I had THAT piano at home, instead of the lobotomized player, I would have been more accomplished. Today I am distressed now that I cannot find my copy of Sonata Pathetique, the most advanced I ever got under Ludwig's tutelage and vague sexual abuse. (The old shaggy white-haired German liked to stroke our backs as we worked through the Sonatas.) Not that I played it very well. (Although I just found that I can download the score; it looks really scary. I need to practice.) Then the old country upright saw me through a free phase, where I discovered that I didn't have to play what was written, I could play what I wanted. No practice, no sticky stars on the pages of my piano lesson books, I could just play. It was liberating. (But I sorta missed Ludwig.)

So now, the electronic keyboard. What I locate for music are my old Methodist and Episcopal Hymnals from 1939 and 1940: Christmas music to break in the keyboard. Not just a piano. An organ setting! A strings setting! A guitar setting! Automatic salsa rhythm! What fun! Like any number of great R&B legends, I start with that good old gospel music. (Although some of it is Handel and Bach.) I have three volumes of Hours with the Masters (which my friend and I called "Hours with the Monsters") stored somewhere...most of which is dreadful except for the notation for Fur Elise. It is possible that the Wizard has discarded them somewhere (he finds Mozart too "tinkly" and Beethoven too...piano teacher-ish. Ah, how I miss Herr Ludwig.). The Wizard urges me to play themes from Scheherazade, for which I can find some beginner-accessible sheet music. And it is lovely.

So far, though, I am only performing with the earphones, not quite ready to inflict my unpracticed fingering (including my permanently dislocated left pinky) on a listener other than myself. Still, to me, it sounds pretty good. I am much less concerned with playing the RIGHT written notes....just notes that sound pretty and expressive. It's a little like my Chinese painting. It's all about the doing, not the done.

Really Reliable, Really Ripe

2011-12-23T12:57:00.000-10:00

Just days ago, this bud was like a green grain of rice stuck on the end of the leaf. I can feel the energy gathering to bring it to blossom.

The Morning After

2011-12-22T11:47:00.000-10:00

Beginning to inhale, the Winter Solstice moment has passed. Yang is rising. I was restless all day yesterday, maybe too much yin. Couldn't work in my office because some ADA-required modification to the building is underway and it is unsafe to walk through the corridor. How ironic. I should have taken the free time to do some shopping, but that was just too dreary and depressing.

At home, after monitoring business email, I succeeded in a technological challenge. I managed to hack the settings of my new alleged all-region DVD player which came ready to read only U.S. region DVDs. But I watch and acquire a lot of Asian media. How to correct this is not documented in the manual or officially on-line. But, you can find anything on the Internet, and in less than a minute, I discovered instructions on how to accomplish this. Well, five different methods for the Coby 514; eventually one of them worked. I am so proud of myself (and grateful to the video geeks who posted the information). This should probably be a topic for the yin Tao 61, but the activity seemed so yang. I will not review here the truly awful movie that I used to test the modified region setting. (How can Andy Lau stoop so low?)

My old Christmas cactus is clearly ready to bloom, the miracle that re-occurs without my intervention, despite my neglect. I would post a photo of the delicate new buds, but my camera connector is in my office. I am disabled.

The kolea are busy in the yard and patrolling the street looking confident and at home. They are not concerned with the discussions I have been over-preoccupied with on several Taoist forums; they are simply Tao manifest. I watch them the way Zhang San Feng observed the snake and crane. How can I be more like them, and the cactus, and my cats?

And we honored properly, our solstice wedding anniversary, a true celebration of yin and yang. Our favorite table, at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, a crisp Bombay martini, a table-side-constructed Caesar salad, a perfect glass of Cabernet, osso buco, shrimp and scallops, linguine, zabaglione. But the restaurant was very busy, very crowded, very noisy, waiters were rushed. And the inevitable heartburn at 3 a.m.

But today, the morning after, all is well. Except I still must go to shop, plunge into the Christmas frenzy. Why didn't I do more on-line? If only it was as easy and natural as the kolea snagging bugs in the grass.

Head in the Heavens, Feet on the Earth

2011-12-13T11:33:00.000-10:00

(Another post I expect to offer to Rambling Taoists, but you can read it here first.)

I've been thinking, yes, about a little remark Ta-Wan made earlier:

"I live life as it appears to be and I die. My life is full as no time was spent attempting to know what can't be known. I live. I don't think about living."

Which on the surface seems to be very Taoist, very spontaneous and in the moment. I feel this way whenever I enjoy a maitai under the big banyan tree on the beach in Waikiki, gazing at Diamond Head, watching the surf, hearing the joy of children and laughter of lovers on the sand. This is about as close to Paradise as I can imagine, but I don't get there as often as I would like. (Getting to Waikiki is a nuisance. I can do maitais on my own lanai.)

But in the context of our talk of "philosophical" Taoism, I wonder...philosophy is about asking questions (with no expectation of answers), but still the asking of questions, pondering arguments, seems like a worthwhile pursuit to me. Or maybe I'm too Socratic. My feet are on the ground, but my head is in the clouds.

Years ago, maybe 1967, I asked a friend, "Why are you experimenting with all these drugs?" Experimenting was the term of the time; now people just "do" them, I guess. Experimentation appealed to me. It suggested research, discovery and proof. Hypotheses and their testing. But his answer to my question was, perhaps the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me, "Because it's fun."

And now, I find, decades on, the drugs and alcohol are no longer fun, and if anything they were just fiddling with the fine tuning of the so-called cognitive shen--the sense faculties. A useful exercise, but it's no wonder we talk about burn-out and flashbacks and distortion. Like a little kid with a remote and a screwdriver, fool around with the controls too much and you may break the set. And in this case, you can't go to Best Buy and get a replacement.

But I'm not really talking about psychoactive substances here: I'm talking about thinking. It's fun to think about living, doing logical exercises to test hypotheses about the meaning of life, causality, God, memory, consciousness. Not expecting answers. Just filling in some blanks, considering new possibilities. One is never done. You don't burn out from thinking. I think.

Which brings me to the real purpose of this post. Trey asked us if we might suggest ideas for holiday giving, for those inclined to do so in spite of materialism, the economy and the competitive shopping season, (an issue I leave to others to debate). As a big proponent of lifelong learning and thinking, I direct attention to The Great Courses, products of The Teaching Company. I am in no way a rep for the organization, although I've certainly earned some frequent thinker miles on my account. No matter what a person is interested in, there's a top quality lecture series just for them. "Them" is probably a demographic of reasonably affluent, already well educated people who have been out of school for a long time and who might want to revisit that course, or pick up one that was never offered in their major. Anyone who is a commuter and a thinker, an explorer, would appreciate these on long freeway drives. I don't like audio books, but lectures are meant to be listened to. No need to spend the money for DVDs; the audio CDs are compelling, and you can always look up any visuals later on the web. One caveat: don't spend the "full price"...eventually, everything goes on sale.

And if you don't want to spend that much money, here are some other ideas: I often give Deng Ming-Dao's 365 Dao as a gift that can keep on giving, year after year, even. (To me, since 1992.) But this year, a special recommendation: former NPR reporter Eric Weiner's Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine, just out, about the author's exploration of several faith traditions, seeking something he can use. I think it might appeal to readers of this blog. A self-described gastronomical Jew, he visits Sufis, Buddhists, Taoists, Franciscans, Kabbalahists, Wiccans, Shamanists and Raelians. It's funny, it's serious, it is even more entertaining and thought-provoking than his previous Geography of Bliss. The fact that I have a minor speaking part in Chapter 5 might be enough to intrigue you.

So those are the under $100, and under $20 categories. If you don't want to spend money, give something from your hand, your heart or your head. Homemade jam. Knit a bookmark. I'm making little brush paintings.

I think it's good to give.

Bei Luotuo!

2011-12-05T13:31:00.001-10:00

I have more or less confirmed from two completely independent sources, a Chinese friend in Hawaii, and a Norwegian teacher of Cantonese in Hong Kong, that "Bei luotuo" could mean "prepare the camel," in the same sense that the Chinese protagonists in the dramas I like to watch often order their servants, "Bei ma!" (Prepare the horse.) And don't I want to.

This is from a festival in Inner Mongolia, which is just where I want to escape to from a Hawaii winter! All that Butterfly Living....

Butterfly Living

2011-11-28T10:56:00.001-10:00

In the planning stages it was a dream. Then we lived it. Now it seems like a dream again. If pictures are worth 1,000 words, here's something like 14K on our Thanksgiving holiday on Maui.

Our rental, The Hendrix House, secluded in the woods, was a former barn, nicely renovated by new owners.

Our yin-yang front yard; in 1970 Jimi Hendrix performed in the field just beyond the horses. You can see the surf line, from our altitude of about 2,500 feet. Still when you live at sea level, that's way up. We call it "upcountry." (Haleakala, the mountain volcano the slopes of which we were on , is about 10,000 feet at its highest point.)

Like we needed to be told to slow down!

Blooming aloe in eucalyptus forest.

Walk on a country road.

Blooming protea, a Maui speciality, just off the road above.

Neighborly goat.

More neighbors.

A horse Thanksgiving.

Not a dream

Safe in the butterfly barn.

The Butterfly House

Lilikoi -- passion fruit--in bloom at the gate to the Hendrix House.

Pine and bamboo--Chinese symbol of winter. It was cold and windy up country, with gusts to 66 mph reported.

Butterfly Dreaming

2011-11-22T13:46:00.001-10:00

The sun has entered Sagittarius, my own birth sign, causing me to feel a little like a butterfly emerging, moving toward the solstice, yet a month away. It has become a truism for me that from, say, Labor Day, the season is one big wild roller coaster ride of thinking and effort, and this year, no different. Travel (albeit both business and pleasure), home maintenance, health adjustments, office work...I need a little holiday, like maybe on a butterfly farm.

Which is exactly where I'm flying off to tomorrow for the Thanksgiving holiday. The Rainbow Bridge House is somewhat famous, like a Maui Big Pink, for having been associated with a Jimi Hendrix event in 1970 when Jimi and countless other counterculture spiritualists and druggies did a concert and some movie production on Maui, just a few months before Jimi's death. I didn't know this when we made the arrangements to stay at the house, which is co-located on a butterfly farm. And I didn't know you could farm butterflies, but someone does, for release at weddings and other events, hopefully of a somewhat spiritual nature. I would be very disturbed to find hordes of monarchs clouding the PowerPoint presentations of a business conference (like I just endured for two weeks on the chilly mainland).

And this all should come as no surprise--every time I do background research on some spiritual personality, musician or poet, it appears that they live on Maui, or one of the other Hawaiian Islands, for at least part of their lives. Maui has a reputation for attracting spiritual types of all persuasions, from Chinese Taoists to Gaia goddesses, Buddhists, Sikhs, Sufis, and Catholic saints. Ram Dass and W.S. Merton both live on Maui, as did George Harrison. Master Alfred Huang, an expert on the I Ching and a teacher of Taoist philosophy, physical arts and meditation, lives on Maui. (Hawaii as a whole has been home and host to an inordinate share of celebrities from sports, entertainment, and politics.)

While everyone else is hitting the malls on Black Friday, or whatever they call it, maybe I will do some holiday shopping of my own. You can buy butterfly kits! I have slightly mixed feelings about this but maybe I'm just dreaming. But I'll know better if I take a tour of the farm. Wonder what kind of chores you do on a butterfly farm? Tending the milkweed?

I don't think the farm will mind that I share one of their beautiful images:

I am looking forward to this weekend. Please let me know if you feel a disturbance in the force caused by butterflies flexing their wings atop a volcano in Hawaii. In the meantime, please enjoy this little butterfly dream:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Un-Selfless in Portland

2011-11-17T16:59:00.001-10:00

This probably should have gone with the previous post. Learn to adjust your spirit and then go next door for a manicure.

I bet Alley Pat spun this one more than a few times at WERD:

Of course, if you don't have a self (because the smoke got in your eyes) none of this matters one whit. But you can always check it out:

On the internet no one knows you don't have a self.

Do You Have A Choice?

2011-11-16T07:55:00.001-10:00

Another post for The Rambling Taoists---but you can read it here first:

Do You Have A Choice?

There's been an issue raised over the past day or so in posts by Ta-Wan and Scott having to do with decision, choice, and passivity that has sparked my earth-based yin-respond-to-yang impulse to talk about actually living in the red dust.

In "Yes...But" Scott referred to "the freedom of allowing ourselves to be carried along by things," wondering if Zhuangzi was really suggesting that we be so utterly passive. And Ta-Wan in "Have You Ever Done a Thing?" suggests that we never really make decisions or choices because we aren't selves to make them in any case.

Though my behavior is certainly influenced by how I apprehend the esoteric aspects of Tao (being and non-being, yin and yang, change and material impermanence, etc.), I posed the question to Ta-Wan (but perhaps I should have used the pronoun "one" instead of "you"), "If you really believe this no-self-ness, really act like this, how do you live? Do you take responsibility for your actions, no pleasure in your daily affairs? How can you be employed? How can you raise a child? Love a friend?" And much as I like to meditate on where I was before I was born, I also must contemplate who pays my taxes.

Indeed, the sun and moon do their dance, the tides ebb and flow, the seasons change, trees flower and shed their leaves, the oxygen and hydrologic cycles keep us and our environment vital. As "Taoists" we recognize and honor these things (and as a female, I am perhaps more sensitive to these things than some men). They occur quite apart from our intervention (hopefully, will continue in spite of our intervention). But still, Taoists (at least those of us who have not achieved immortality) are humans affected by ever-changing material circumstances. Through training and deep understanding, we can become well-equipped to respond to situations--make choices-- that do not impede the flow, finding paths of least resistance and conserving energy. (The Tao of Electrical Engineering?) Practices like martial arts and Chinese painting, even qigong, are not passive and involve skill and choice/response. I make that painting; indeed it is impermanent (although looking at Tang brushwork on silk gives one pause in that regard.) I am loathe to destroy it as Tibetan Buddhist monks cast away their sand mandalas, though I understand why they do that. I am also loathe to paint interminable enso's, though I understand that too. (Bamboo and mountains are more interesting and convey complex messages.)

I didn't decide that a dead car battery and a failed waterheater would manifest on the same busy day...requiring the assistance of mechanics and plumbers and mechanics...although it certainly can be argued that intervention through preventive maintenance might have avoided these things. (And getting TAO 61 started was perplexing until we detected a failure of the jumper cables!) I respond to these things with Tao-inspired patience...and decision-making. I dare say the Confucian lost his temper with the fascist condo manager who insisted that our lack of water was not an emergency. Better him than me. I might have pointed out with some rage the manager's ongoing poorly worded "warnings" about delays in a building painting project that has caused much disorder in my personal life. I try to avoid the tendency of the characters in the Asian dramas I enjoy, to sweep things off desks, overturn tables, when they are angry and frustrated. Bad anger management. But this IS life. Sometimes it is disordered. It is likely a yin to yang shift going on. As there is always chaos between dynasties.

Modern humans manage things. Life in a Taoist community, attending to nothing but the condition of one's body and spirit, climbing temple steps to meditate, eating vegetarian food, wandering like a cloud in the mountains, is lovely. I experiment with it from time to time in China. It sustains and heals me. But I always return to everyday life, making a living, engaging with loved ones and friends, trying to live a low-impact lifestyle. Tao is there, it informs my decisions.

The decision before me at this moment? Post or not to post?

Brush Lessons

2011-10-29T15:20:00.000-10:00

Another post for Rambling Taoists...but you can read it here first:

Brush Lessons

There’s a lot of discussion here at RT about self andno-self, reality and non-being, socialism and capitalism, I think sometimes alot of yammering, but none of it compares with my relationship with my wolf brush.

I have sometimes talked about the necessity of practice, theactual doing of something, just youand the something, to understand Tao: qigong, meditation, study of classics. Butmy newest teacher has a bamboo handle and is so flexible and responsive to themoment, I have come to see painting as a kind of energy practice and a teachingof how to regard the world. Ofcourse, this is nothing new: the Chinese painting masters have always beendriven by Tao in their compositions and subjects. Painting as an activity is a two-way street. I actually look at things differently,and the attempt to “capture” the energy is a humbling lesson. This may be whyMatteo Ricci, the great Jesuit who loved China and was beloved by the Chinese,never quite “got it.” As a painterhe was still trapped in a Western vision of the world, unlike Castiglione,another Jesuit who is considered to be a great Chinese painter.

I have been blessed to study with a wonderful woman, my age,trained in classical techniques in Fujian and Taiwan, and who has “transmitted”some sort of energy to her students. She’s a Christian, is learning English through Bible study (as I learnChinese through Tao Te Ching study), wears a delicate golden cross at herthroat, but says her mother was “a Buddha.” (At my throat is an ancient faience Egyptian wadjeteye, which has nothing really to do with Tao…or does it?) She is a taijiquanpractitioner and freely refers to and demonstrates the qi required inpainting.

Two years ago, when I was obsessed with landscapes but nother bird and flower emphasis, she said, “Maybe in two years you paint aflower.” While landscapes are still my preferred subject, lately I have beenenjoying the Four Gentlemen and doing roses, peonies, and fuschia. With thecoming of autumn I’ve been painting a lot of chrysanthemums. She is so prescient. Once I presented three versions ofsomething for her review. “Ah,this one is best,” she said. “You did it first?” She was right. Spontaneity is a key element in Chinese painting of the xieyitype.

I was just doing an inventory of my paint and brushes. I have acquired lots of tubes of Western,Japanese, and Chinese watercolor, including the strange pricey pans of bright kawaiiJapanese color (from my Korean teacher). I told the Wizard, “If you see medrooling over some paint box, please to remind me that I need no morepaint.” In fact all you reallyneed is a good indigo, a good yellow, some sort of red, black ink and whitegouache; everything derives from those, a sort of yin-yang melding of CMYK andRGB. Although that sounds so PhotoShop, which is completely antithetical to what goes on with the brush, the ink and water, and the paper; there is nothing spontaneous about bit-fiddling. And generally, you can't modify anything after the brush meets the paper.

And I have a lot of wonderful brushes, but there are reallyonly several I use consistently. Acouple of wolf brushes, a couple of fine-line brushes, and a nice stiff shan ma(mountain horse) brush. This all suggests that the real key to painting, andprobably any other thing you want to do, is about skill in using simple toolswith well-taught and well-practiced technique.

Haircut Moon

2011-10-27T12:36:00.000-10:00

Once again renewed by a close haircut (which suggests more Buddhist tendencies* than Taoist**) and pivoting of the dark/new moon, I am feeling yang energy rising like the bubbles in champagne. (Perhaps that "falling" thing that Guinness does is yin energy?)

Yesterday in a neighborhood where I rarely do business or shopping, on a sunny, balmy morning, after a hurried necessary bank deposit, I stopped in at a shop I never noticed before. All banks are pretty much the same, and so too perhaps, all shops offering "Himalayan Treasures." Just a quick poke-about to see what was on offer, I picked up some incense and a random CD, not knowing if it would be chanting or Nepali jazz. It turns out to be pretty good, manufactured and marketed by the Kathmandu Music Center.

The music, new-agey jazzy with tablas and sitars and flutes and western guitars, highlighted a very peaceful and positive feeling I haven't had in the middle of an ordinary workday for a while; satisfied, happy, and complete, I am liking my job.

For which I today needed to remake some travel arrangements to add on a week of mainland visits...a whirlwind to Atlanta and Washington for some training and project planning. The two weeks will culminate over Veterans Day with another quick stop to visit my son in Portland, Ore., where there is another Himalayan shop with a big brass bowl that has been singing my name to my heart since last I visited. I didn't want to bring a huge singing bowl back with me on a plane, and now I find some very nice similar bowls on King Street, right here in Pacific Ocean City. Is it appropriate to ask for a Tibetan singing bowl for Christmas?

My travel plans conflict with something delightful I found in the mail on the same energetic day: an invitation to the opening of "Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City," an exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where I have studied Chinese painting over the past three years. Quel dommage, my teacher will probably be there, and I will be some tens of thousands of feet over Cleveland. Still the exhibit continues through January 8, so after I tire of my Christmas singing bowl, I can be sure to take in the landscapes. And I can take advantage of the lecture series which includes topics like "How to Read a Chinese Painting," "Confucianism and the Aesthetics of Becoming Consummately Human," (with UH's own sage of the Tao, Roger Ames), "Dong Qichang and the Formation of the Literati Canon" and "Landscape Painting and Garden Design." Such are the topics I had hoped, in vain, would be part of the current "Oriental Painting" class I am taking right now.

I will also miss the concurrent film series, "Cinematic Treasures from China, ...highlighting the influential, trailblazing films of Chinese, Taiwanese and Chinese-American filmmakers." But I've not only seen all these films by Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Ang Lee, I own them all.

So many good things happen all at the same time. The only thing I will really miss is a lion dance at the exhibit opening. I'll have to wait for Chinese New Year for that. And since at such a late date, I couldn't get a non-smoking room in Atlanta, I will carry with me some "energy" and "wisdom" Himalayan incense to burn there: it is a smoking room after all!

*My own ongoing private Asian film festival is currently featuring a long Chinese series, "The Shaolin Warriors," about Shaolin monks and pirates. It features Sammo Hung and his adorable son Sammy, as a Shaolin master and a monk. What I can't figure out is, while Sammy and his warrior mates are properly shaved, Sammo Shifu sports a hairdo that looks like my own shoulder length locks circa 1972. Do Shaolin masters use hot rollers? In one scene, Sammy and his reluctant monk buddy actually wash the master's hair.

**A Taoist master I met in Wudang last May, when asked what one had to do to be a real Taoist, said: 1) you must know the history of your lineage, the generations; 2) you must have a deep understanding of Tao, and 3) you must grow your hair long, for at least three years, to be natural and to be able to wear the taiji topknot at the bai hui point, where yin and yang meet. In fact the topknot is twisted in a kind of chignon to create a yin/yang object. No wonder the Buddhists shave their heads.

Physical Taoism

2011-10-25T08:16:00.000-10:00

Here's another essay I have created for The Rambling Taoists. You can read it there too, where it will likely generate comment. Or not.

Physical Taoism
On the occasion of Trey’s recent un-birthday, I remarked thathe had yet to reach the real milestone, the 60th, which in traditional Taoist, andAsian cosmology generally, is a significant one. There is a sixty-year cycle based in the wuxing and stem and branchtheory. Before dismissing this asnot germane to the “philosophical” thrust of this blog, please note that Iconsider the philosophical/religious distinction somewhat arbitrary, made bywesterners cherry-picking and interpreting the texts and traditions for supportof pre-existing socio-political or personality predispositions. Although there is ritualistictemple-oriented Taoism, the underlying principles of Tao and the cultural and historicalmilieu in which they developed are one (just as western thought and “practice”is rooted in Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian attitudes). Although we don’t generally do it, you can make adistinction, I suppose, between “philosophical” Christianity and “religious”Christianity, but really only someone outside or sailing against the tradition islikely to do that.

The 60-year cycle though, to this yin creature, makes sense,and it suggests to me a physicalTaoism that is referred to in both the “philosophical” and “religious” realms.Taoists have long been preoccupied with the physical maintenance and condition ofthe body to be in balance in the world. For women, the physical connection withthe universe is for most of our life, a chronic condition. One of my firstqigong teachers, a kind and sensitive one-time karate champion, once said,sympathetically, “It’s hard to be a woman.”

In a post comment earlier about tattoos and Barbie dolls(strange, the topics that turn up here) I voiced my concern about the earlypuberty of girls in westernized culture, even before I read the article (arecurring theme over the past decade) in the most recent issue of Timemagazine. (There is also someconcern that boys may be subject to early puberty, but it seems less easy tomeasure, and I sensed a so-what attitude, “so they ejaculate early, boys willbe boys.”) And, concerning theother side of the coin, in yet another memoir by one of the hip generation ofwomen discovering menopause, Sandra Tsing Lo wrotein the Atlantic that, “all women are different” (from each other, to saynothing of men)…but suggested that maybe the menopause, generally complete by60, is a returning to the girls we once were. That is, our reproductive cycling is perhaps the out-of-norm,not the other way around.

It is my observation, from that yin sensitivity to physicalcycles, that at this certain age, women, and men too, have the opportunity toreturn to the personhood we were developing at 12, but which was so rudelyinterrupted by the biological destiny thrust upon us by the universe (and now,too soon, like an artificial climate change phenomenon). Women who found completeidentity in the aspects of this destiny spend their later years in a JoanCollins drive to stay attractive, cling to younger men, or if of the nurturingpersuasion, obsess on grandchildren, or become social moms, putting notable noblenurturing energy into community causes. But some of us may be glad to be rid of that entire identity, still yin,but returning to the wonder of childhood—learning, exploring, creating, andplaying with the energy of a 10-year-old, albeit with five decades of acquiredwisdom and experience, to use or abandon.

I recently have taken up the paintbrush, a Chinese one, andhave been drawing and painting with abandon and fervor, in the way I once did beforeI “became a woman,” like a girl with her crayons, spending whole rainyafternoons in artistic play. Had Ibeen encouraged—an interesting word, to be given the courage—I might have pursuedthis passion through my life, like my teacher and friend who paint like magiciansbecause they’ve been doing it daily for 30 or 40 years.

I also observe in men similar “return” phenomena. Men whodie a week after their retirement or vegetate in the La-z-boy have probably failedto rediscover who they were before they “became” adult and burdened with worldlyconcerns and red dust. Those whodo, tend to become the pre-adolescents they once were, clever and exploring, orpreoccupied with toys and torment.

There is a tradition in certain Taoist sects (and otherspiritual traditions too) to retreat after 60, to turn inward to develop thatpart of ourselves that we lost in the hormonal shift called growing up. That’s one reason for maintaininghealth and energy. It is too badthat today’s children may be experiencing that moment too soon. I only hope they can live long enoughto complete the cycle of return and enjoy the spring of their lives once again. We who aspire to Tao-based lives oftentalk about being childlike, returning to that less-carved state of wonder andinnocence. But perhaps only afterwe achieve a certain age, can we really accomplish that.

“Things grow andflourish and then go back to their root.” (TTC v. 16 tr. Joseph Hsu.)

Two-ting My Own Horn

2011-10-22T20:39:00.000-10:00

And not my Miata's, soon to achieve twoness (222,222 miles).On invitation from a blog I follow, I posted something rambling about my personal philosophy of Tao, who I am and what it means to me. I copy it here, although you will be able to read it here sometime tomorrow, I think.

“And,” she said.

When Trey asked me to consider being a contributor to Rambling Taoists, I first dismissed the notion; though I had contemplated offering myself even before he asked, I perceived my persona as a lurking pesky commenter to be sufficient response to bring a little yin to the yang of the blog, through occasional friendly sparring, like “push minds.” Sometimes I wonder, “Why am I even reading this blog?” and then I once again click the link from my own, where I deal a bit obliquely with the "subject matter" (through the ordinary perplexities of my life, Sinology and China watching, wuxia drama, hot Asian shifus and actors, and Bactrian camels).

And (despite my seventh-grade English teacher’s admonition to NEVER start a sentence with “and”) I am cursed with that copy editor mentality that honors precision, accuracy, and honesty (and the serial comma) in the written word, all the while regarding it like a martial arts weapon—mightier than the sword to carve out truth and slice up lies, but not as any truth in itself. Do I really want the pressure of performing in another venue?

And… I am happy and fortunate to have the luxury and time for things that are making my aging brain sparkle: brush painting (lots of Chinese painters take up the brush in later life), sitting in on a class in Chinese thought at the university where I now earn my living, commuting with stimulating Teaching Company lectures, wary participation in another more or less Taoist online activity group, and planning to go back to China some time in 2012 for more study and training.

And…I have a perspective, not just female/yin, but du certain age, in a particular cultural setting (Hawaii is different—by no means an East-West melting pot, but a place where lunch may include rice with your spaghetti, and where the defense industry is as important as tourism to the vitality of the economy). When I confront the topics that turn up here (self and no-self, war and peace, politics and economics, philosophy and religion, faith and reason, orthodoxy and heresy, sickness and health, work and play, rice and spaghetti), I like to consider the contradictions in a Chinese way, resolving them with “and” rather than “or.” It’s my answer to everything, like Scott’s “yes.” The yin of the taiji is “secondary,” but always overcoming yang, adding something to one to make three, and on and on. Odd numbers are yang; even numbers are yin. Without yin, there is no balance. In this cumulative dynamic, maybe that is why pi, irrational and transcendental, is neither yang nor yin, like Tao, infinitely developing, repeating, manifesting (as far as we know).

And…to clarify my positions, I am not very interested in the emptiness of Buddhism (except in an academic way and to the extent it has influenced Quanzhen); I feel the philosophical/religious Taoism distinction is somewhat artificial; I am not a social-political activist (I have abandoned idealistic social conscience for a somewhat realpolitik tendency, so perhaps it's just as well); I have deep respect for certain Christian traditions, and I don't have a lot of patience with new-agey posturing. I like the Confucian Temple with its gnarly old cedars in Beijing much more than the smoky Lama Temple across the street (though my true heart is in Wudang). I have a degree in philosophy with a lot of religion and literature credits thrown in. I picked up history and science, later, on my own. I have made my career, now waning, in the communications industry. I am an only child, married for nearly 43 years, have one son (I am respected by the Chinese), but I'm not very family-oriented in terms of my identity, though I probably have done right enough in the filial piety area.

But…I do think that Laozi and Zhuangzi, all the way to the Quanzhen school, and before and beyond, (incuding the wuxing, the bagua, the Yijing and its hexagrams) describe a superb way, a framework with fabulous metaphors, that explains how the world works and how we can function in it. My engagement with it has made me a more satisfied and, I hope, better, person.

"Let me think about it," she said, eyeing that water buffalo heading west.

And then she said “And.”

The Master-Student Cycle

2011-10-20T23:51:00.000-10:00

When does a student become a master? When does the master need a student? An apprentice? A disciple?

I've been having a little crisis of ...something... lately, thinking about teaching and learning. I have been variously absorbed in my brush painting class, Teaching Company commuting lectures, sitting in on a class about Chinese thought and Taoism, and working on a project that involves mentoring of promising students to help them get doctoral degrees. A certain studiousness has rubbed off on me as a result of my new job in an academic environment. There is a library just across the road from my office!

What is the differnce between a master (shifu) and a teacher (laoshi)? All masters and teachers surely have a perspective, but perhaps the really good ones leave their personal perspective somewhat hidden? Or not? (Like the Mormon who did just a really superb job on the "Great Minds of the East" Teaching Company course. This is not to be construed as any kind of comment about Mitt Romney.) Maybe it depends on the level of students and their needs and desires? A master should not take on a student that is more advanced, or more correctly said, on a different path? The student should know how to pick the master that's right for him at the time? At what point do the master and student become colleagues, sharing their own perspectives, supporting each other? All masters are still students? What does the master learn from the student? What is mentoring? Why am I writing all these thoughts as questions?

In the end, one is always a student, trying to master oneself.

After I once again didn't quite copy my painting teacher's example, but brought the assignment forth according to my own taste and previous training, she said, "You know a lot about Chinese painting. Maybe you don't need a teacher."

Self-teaching does pay off. Earlier today a Chinese colleague was telling me about a terrible hit-and-run incident involving a Chinese toddler. "Where?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know, I can only say it in Chinese," he said. "Try me," I said. "Foshan, near Guangdong." "Ah, home of wing chun!" "You know that?" Yep. (I watch, and listen carefully to, a lot of martial arts movies.) He went on to suggest that perhaps people are better in the countryside. "They still have heart." Sadly, while looking for these links, I discover the child has died about half an hour ago.

"How to Paint
Lifelike Camel"

I know something about Chinese painting, but not a lot, and I still learn...maybe not the precise lessons on offer, but something that justifies the time spent in the studio (which may be more practice than actual learning). I have come to understand that my teacher is not quite presenting traditional techniques, and her own style is a modern mix of west and east, and not just China, but Japan (the terminally cute brightly colored part) and Korea (the less Chinese part) too. I showed her the lesson book (at right) I just got from Shandong, instructions and tips on how to paint camels (loutou). Amazing what you can find on eBay. Since I can't read the tips, presented in Chinese with no helpful subtitles, I was hoping she might demonstrate the brush strokes, the direction, the ink loading.

"You can do that at home," she said. I don't know whether she meant I should do that only at home, or that I was competent to do it on my own at home. She glanced sideways at my chrysanthemums, and said, "I am teaching basics here, so they (the undergraduates taking the class for credit) can do their own art."

I am a disciple without a master. Here are my chrysanthemums, symbols of autumn, longevity, and a life spent in quiet retirement. I wish.

Chrysanthemums: Autumn Symbol

Thursday Painting Class

2011-10-13T21:34:00.000-10:00

One for the teacher:

Magnolia

And one for me:

Little Landscape

The magnolia has a seal on it because I "turned it in" as an assignment. I never would have chosen to paint it myself. When I finished the floral exercise, I did a quick little ink landscape out of my own head and through my mountain horse brush, but the teacher pretty much ignored it.

I was happy when I got home to find in the mail an album of paintings by Shen Zhou, a Ming Dynasty painter whose work I admire and which I actually copied some of a while back.

My Shen Zhou Copy #1

My Shen Zhou Copy #2

I was working from a tiny print in a little illustrated volume of the Tao Te Ching, more interesting for the pictures than the translation, unless you really like James Legge's version; I can never decide whether to shelve it with my art books or with my other Tao Te Chings. (Or maybe it's not the source of my models; now that I look at it, I don't see these paintings in it, but there is an awful lot of other nice inspirational art reproduced therein. It would be a very nice gift for a Tao-inclined or Sinophiliac friend.) The Shen Zhou album, direct from Beijing, is a much larger format so I can study the brush strokes more closely.

Funny...my new teacher has admonished me not to copy (a completely proper tradition in learning brush painting)...except when it's her paintings. The magnolia is based--albeit somewhat loosely--on one of hers.

The Mountains are High

2011-10-08T13:38:00.000-10:00

...and the emperor is far away.

Another class doing brush work that isn't exactly my style, but trying to work nice with my new teacher, a very kind and serious Korean nun. Before she arrived in the studio, I was attempting a copy of a painting by Wu Zuoren, a 20th-century Chinese painter, trained in classical western watercolor and oil techniques in Europe in the '20s and '30s, but who returned to traditional Chinese styles. He is well known for his paintings of camels and yaks, not common objects of (or subjects in?) brush painting, but he was attracted to them after spending time in Mongolia and Xinjiang. I love these. I own two paintings of WZ-style camels -- I assume they are copies. One is very bad, I bought it on eBay from a seller in Shanghai, I could have done it; but the other, acquired at a silent auction at a local Chinese culture event, is pretty good. Perhaps I have a hidden genuine gem in my collection.

Genuine Wu Zuoren or copy? Nimen zhidao ma?

I was about to try to approximate the brush strokes of a couple of Wu Zuoren's eagles flying over an abstract landscape when my teacher arrived. She didn't smack my fingers with her brush, but she did tell me to put the book away, and not to copy. (Never mind that copying masters is a traditional Chinese training technique.) "You can do that at home, but not here. I want you to develop your own style. No copying."

So, based on her textbook (not the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, or any of the other fine Chinese landscape guides I have), I produced some rocks, below, choosing my own washes, but deferring to her technique for depicting water.

Rocks and Water

She seemed satisfied and then said, "Now paint this." Copy this? I wasn't sure what "this" was, apart from some abstract mountains in the background. There were no brush strokes I could identify to mimic, like in Wu Zuoren's paintings, and it occurs to me now that it looked more like a Willem de Kooning piece than a traditional brush painting.

Teacher's Landscape

Since she had advised me not to copy, I decided to interpret what I thought I saw in my own way, also with reference to her own textbook. My piece includes a funny little guy entering from the left, a fisherman developed to cover an unfortunate ink blot left by a careless brush:

My Interpretation

I felt very humble and bad, really, as she occasionally hovered behind me and I was pretty much ignoring everything in her painting. I turned my finished piece in as a class assignment, and then mentioned to her that I was enjoying a Korean drama, Painter of the Wind, very very loosely based on the lives of the 18th century Korean artists, Kim Hong-do and Shin Yun-bok. (Regarding this, see Tao 61 Yin post.)

"Ah, Kim Hong-do," she said. "So you are interested in this history...you have background. How long have you been studying?" I told her about my experiences over the past three years with a traditional Chinese bird and flower painter and visiting Chinese museums and studying the history of that tradition.

Then she photographed me with my interpretation of her painting. Perhaps I'll turn up on her blog as a troublesome student.

Pesky student. Wu Zuoren copy? Zhidao ma? Lousy paper!

Mountaineering

2011-09-29T21:26:00.000-10:00

Engineering mountains (mountaineering?) in painting class...my heart is in the mountains. I feel like Slartibartfast making his fjords.

Landscape Mode

2011-09-22T02:49:00.000-10:00

Although nothing really compares with the landscape view at the top of my blog, or any of the other several thousand images of China, Florida, Oregon, Hawaii in my digital photo library, it is relaxing to play god with my mountain horse (shan ma) brush and ink. Several recent images emerged from the brush during my new painting class. Not what the teacher was really trying to get me to do, but enough already with the plum blossoms and orchids.

Happy Rocks

Misty Bridge

Raining in the Mountain

White Walls, White Gloves

2011-09-18T12:35:00.000-10:00

How lovely it is to read an old book, well, maybe not that old really, but a letter-press first edition of New Yorker commentaries from the 1950s. Christopher Rand's A Nostalgia for Camels, an interesting Alibris score, has been on my "to-read" pile for months. Who knows why you pick up a book and it resonates when it does. There are plenty of books that I pick up and then put down because the timing and mood just isn't right. I want to read them, and I believe I will, but it's just not the moment. Then, some time later, it's THE book to read.

A Nostalgia for Camels is a collection of some pieces this old China Hand wrote from his observations in Asia from the very late '40s through the '50s. I am struck halfway through by a piece about architecture in Chandigarh, when Corbusier, a prominent modernist form-follows-function Swiss-French architect of the period, was designing buildings for the capitol of this new city in the Punjab in the '50s. (One of my readers will appreciate that Corbusier's name was not really Corbusier, but a nom de plume which, according to Rand, means "The Crow.")

Corbusier was implementing some interesting human/ecological elements into his design for the High Court building, utilizing poured concrete and gunite. But Rand also mentions the living quarters of the laborers who worked on the modern structure. They were built of cheap brick,"a rich, warm red, rather brownish, and give a substantial look. Often they are set off by trim of white-painted plaster, which adds a smart touch like that of white-walled tires or white gloves."

When was the last time you saw a car with white walls or a woman wearing white gloves (and not on Mad Men)? Or even a hotel concierge? I grew up in white-walled, white-gloved America. And I played with Lincoln Logs (as did my son) and American Bricks (which had white lintels for the window construction). I had a friend who lived in a house that looked like it was built from American Bricks, although my own home was a white-painted, lap-sided "Lincoln Homes" plan, the construction of which was directed by my father who did a lot of the work himself, though he called in specialists to do the plastering of walls, laying of plumbing, and stone masonry for the fireplace and flue. (The gray slump brick was later whitewashed.)

I read Rand's lovely book, an artifact of pre-digital publishing (not sure it would feel so sweet as a Kindle version) and think of the white walls and white gloves. Things don't really change. Now kids play with the more abstract Lego bricks, and white walls have given way to weird wheel rims; naked female hands sport manicures with tiny elaborate artwork, sometimes bejeweled. The smart touches of the new millennium.

All is change, but nothing really changes, does it?

Blank Canvas

2011-09-07T16:55:00.000-10:00

Washing Away Summer on Maui

Woke up groggy today, probably a side effect of the sense that summer is over, at least the series of events that started last March or April--a moved office, a new job, Beijing, Washington, Portland, and this weekend, Maui.

My reading from 365 Tao today seemed precise and profound:
An ocean of ink in a single drop
Trembling at the tip of my brush
Poised above stark white paper
A universe waits for existence.
"...A painter poises above blank paper. But it is not the painting to come that is as important as that single moment when all things still lie in a state of potential," Deng Ming-dao writes. "Will something ugly or beautiful be created? The stately determination to make something worthy of the materials and the moment is reverence."

There was a lot of potential in my summer, all that travel and new possibilities. With my recent visit to the next island over, I concluded something and now feel on the verge of the next roller coaster that will build up speed until the New Year.

"Only when we tire of our excesses can there be esteem," Deng continues. That describes how I felt on awakening this morning.

So much potential in a drop of ink. My new painting class is good, but challenging, because the style and techniques seem not as traditional as my previous teacher's. (Well, not strictly true. I was immediately moved to an advanced level; most of the rest of the students are painting grass orchids, and have been for three weeks. Fortunately I have escaped that boring exercise.) It's all rooted in the "oriental" method, but with different (Japanese) paper, different (Japanese) brushes, different (Japanese) colors. The ink is the same, but I cheat: I surreptitiously grind my ink stick in bottled ink, a quick trick I learned from my Chinese teacher. I feel my old teacher's admonitions and instructions. I think she would say what I am doing is ugly. But, she's not there, and I actually kinda liked the image I made last night (regrettably I had to "turn it in" for class, and I failed to photograph the landscape of somewhat garishly colored trees, mountains, and rocks.) The beholder I suppose determines if it is ugly or beautiful; the painter simply creates a universe. Maybe a Japanese universe. Or Korean--my new teacher is a Korean nun. She is quite kind and patient; I don't expect her to smack my fingers with a brush handle.

I realize other students are not necessarily in the class for the same reason I am; they are undergraduates fulfilling some requirement. I am there to paint, and increase my skill and knowledge. I did not expect challenges to my already acquired method. But I find some wisdom in The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, a classic Chinese text from the 17th century:
"To be without method is deplorable, but to depend entirely on method is worse. ... If you aim to dispense with method, learn method. If you aim at facility, work hard. If you aim for simplicity, master complexity."

And if you didn't think there is Tao in Chinese painting, there it is.

One of the things that all this painting exercise has done for me, perhaps the real point, is to cause me to look at real things a little differently. I notice the structure of trees more, the beauty of a flower, the mist on a mountain, a carp in the koi pond. And at the same time, I look at classic paintings and enter them. They are the original virtual reality. Photos become inspirations for paintings. Like this fish, a denizen of a koi pond on Maui.

Happy Fish

But I won't paint that fish. Or even a fish. The aim is simply to paint fish.

____________

NOTE: Not sure if this post is going to publish correctly; I have been having a little struggle session with Windows 7, which seems to exxhibit some quirks regarding my habitual blogging method. Taoists are supposed to cope with change, but not sure that patience with operating systems is what is intended. Those are methods you do come to depend on; why not, when they work? One time when I hate change!

Blog as Diary

2011-08-26T06:46:00.001-10:00

One of my blog-o-pals has been threatening from time to time to delete her blog and start over, and in this sluggish dog-day period of August I have sometimes had the same urge, though I resist it; it seems vaguely suicidal. And today I'm glad I haven't done it. There's useful information there.

Yesterday I was at my doctor, the one who does lady-health things, and the question "Have you had a colonoscopy?" came up. I have! Why he didn't know puzzled me. But he is part of a different health care system, so the records were not so easily accessible (a whole 'nother issue).

"Within the past two years, maybe three...I think," I assured him. Though I wasn't completely sure myself. "Do I need another?" Fortunately, no, only if they found things previously; otherwise I'm good for 10 years out.

But when was it? I did recall that I wrote about it, over on My Yin Side (a colonoscopy has a yin quality, dark and hidden things) and there is the post: March, 26, 2009. My memory, and my blog, served me well. I suppose I could put it on my calendar for later, if I had a 2019 calendar. Oh wait, I can put it on my online version, which I never use. Or on my phone, which I do; I have it set so that a crowing cock announces upcoming events. Sometimes I wonder why a chicken is "singing" in the office or in my bag, only to realize it's my phone alerting me to something I have tried to forget.

In any case, I would have gladly scheduled another colo-check if necessary; a good friend is coming to O'ahu next month for her own. We could have done it together. A sort of spa day. It would have been fun. Now we'll just have to go shopping.

A Little Early

2011-08-09T07:34:00.000-10:00

Yesterday, 8/8, a double eight day. I spotted the first kolea of the season, looking a little confused, standing in the middle of the street. It surely is a returning one; I haven't seen one in the area since well before I left for China, last April. Checking my records, last year I noted the first bird's return on August 17, and even then it seemed a bit early. It's been such a strange summer, with weather, travel, world events, change...maybe my bird's return on 8/8 means things will settle down.

But probably not.

Monumental Capitols (Part 2)

2011-08-03T07:22:00.000-10:00

Escaping the over-air-conditioned business conference rooms in our close-to-the-Capitol Hyatt, I took opportunities to thaw out (easily done in the high heat) and sample some area pleasures:

briefly browsing the National Gallery where I contemplated the difference between Western and Chinese paintings; looking at a famous Rembrandt or Rubens is not a bad way to spend a coffee break.
walking through the Georgetown University Law Center grounds and Chinatown (such as it is in Washington; Beijing doesn't really have a gweilo town, having dispensed with the foreign concessions some decades ago).
taking the Metro from Union Station to the Pentagon Center mall (where I actually bought a copy of Mandarin Rosetta Stone software--I'm such a sucker for personable, good-looking salesmen at mall kiosks. I suppose this is a good location for Rosetta Stone, a lot of diplomats and lobbyists who might need to acquire a second language).
dinner and drinks with a friend from China pilgrimage 2010 in the oldest Irish pub in Washington, dating all the way back to...1967. (I thought maybe Thomas Jefferson might have tossed back a shot of Jameson's there, but more likely a Kennedy.)

Leaving the Nation's Capitol in a cheap cab ride that allowed me to glimpse the Washington Monument and other familiar markers, I moved on for a long weekend in Portland, Oregon. I had a hotel reservation in a motel near my son's home, but somehow it seemed like I was supposed to stay here, a far cry from the Hyatt Capitol Hill, but still, what coincidence.

I haven't seen such retro signage and architecture since the Motel Vietnam, my one-time regular home-away-from-home in Central Florida, which has as much in common as not, with Oregon, as like and different as Washington and Beijing.

If you're open to it, you can be at home and happy no matter where you land. Especially if there are flowers, imbued as they are with memory, as well as fragrance and color. Maybe this was my Summer of Flowers (the Summer of Love long past). Here's a sampling from Beijing to Washington and Portland (not that we don't have a profusion of flowers all the time in Hawaii):

Peonies in Beijing

Hibiscus in Washington:

Roses, waning slightly, in the parking lot of my motel in Portland:

And just to round things out, lotus at Lu San Yuan Chinese Garden in Portland, sister city to Suzhou, China.

Monumental Capitals (Part 1)

2011-08-02T14:35:00.000-10:00

I notice a lot of blogs I read have been a little stalled lately, perhaps it is the laziness of hot dog days, or just that summer is busy with travel and leisure. I feel stalled, but have compelled myself to share some observations about my recent travel.

My May China trip was certainly personal, but I mixed a little pleasure with business during a trip to Washington, D.C., a town I haven't visited in decades, and even then it was with grandparents or Girl Scouts. I vaguely remember cherry blossoms and a spitting camel at the Washington Zoo, or that may just be because of photos of me at four with Grammy and Pap. I have more valid memories of the Girl Scout trip, lead partly by my co-troop-leader mother, who made me call her "Mrs." and never paid any more attention to me and my troubles than any of the other Scouts, some of whom "sneaked a boy into their room." (I couldn't get away with that.) We visited our Congressman, and I sliced my big toe open (not in Congress). Mom made me drip blood in the bathroom. "Don't bleed on the hotel carpet!" she advised. "Bleed in the bathroom!"

I measured this recent trip against the recent walkabouts in Beijing. I was in D.C. during the budget debates and heat wave--but you'd never have known the dealing was going on just by walking around, although the heat was obvious and oppressive. I wanted to contrast the capitals, but found more in common than not. Yes, one party versus two, but really, which government gets more or less done. One is impotent, the other reckless; I leave it to you to determine which is which. It's kind of yin/yang.

It would appear that Congress has gotten the message.

The Great Hall of the People! Walk don't linger.

A constant police presence at the Capitol.

A constant police presence in Tiananmen. But this guy doesn't have the luxury of dougnuts in an air-conditioned squad car while on duty.

A bronze lion guards Capitol Hill.

A Yuan Dynasty stone lion guards something imperial.

Warriors for the people, justice for all!

Warriors for the people, but these guys don't have any shade trees.

I left Washington for a brief sojourn in Oregon before returning to the 50th State, which is just about as close to Beijing as it is Washington, at least judging by my air travel time.

More irony to follow in Part 2.

Back in the Classroom

2011-07-19T16:07:00.000-10:00

Yesterday I was stuck in terrible traffic caused by a terrible fatal three-car accident caused by someone who was driving the wrong way on the freeway at 4 in the morning--sounds hard to do, but happens with more frequency than you might expect. The freeway was closed for investigation over several exits, or entrances; apparently the difference is not clear to some. The traffic delay gave me a chance to contemplate the meaning of life even before the teddy bears and plastic flowers are placed on the roadside at the scene: once I discovered why the traffic wasn't moving, I was in a spot where I couldn't change my course and go home to wait it out even if I'd wanted to.

It was the first time I've driven myself to work in over a month, commuting as I have been with the Wizard. Traveling together in his car has given me opportunity to gawk around and use mobile devices with impunity. A passive partner in the passenger seat, I've been listening to HIS Teaching Company lectures, so far learning rather dreary biographical information about Mozart, Mahler, Shostakovich, and Churchill. We have an informal agreement that the driver gets to choose the audio. (I'd rather listen to Mahler than hear about his personal misery, to say nothing of Shostakovich.)

But yesterday, because the Wizard is on the mainland, I had the opportunity to resume my own Teaching Company lessons in my own hot little car (his big car has air-con)--literally, The Meaning of Life, Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions.* I had left off the lectures before leaving for China in May, and then there was another sound system glitch that needed attention. It took some recollection, but I'd stopped just after Zen, and just before Hume--Lecture 22, Taking Stock of the Classical World. Since yesterday morning, I have quickly progressed from Hume to Kant to Mill to Nietzsche, with a little side trip into Tolstoy.

Who knew that The Death of Ivan Ilych could be interpreted as a Taoist fable? All through this journey into modernity and beyond, I was struck by ancient Taoist themes, usually just before the lecturer said, "Now this may remind you of the Taoists... ." Eastern thought is discussed far more --14 out of 36 TC lectures** --in this course than in any of the survey courses like this I took in college. In fact, I don't think Eastern thought was EVER included in my classic liberal arts humanities curriculum. Well, maybe once in a comparative religion class. In any case, I never would have expected to be listening to a lecture on "Nietzsche--Achieving Authenticity" some 40 years later in a traffic jam in Hawaii. Some eight o'clock class!

And now I'm looking forward to the drive home: moving on to Gandhi, Lame Deer, and the Dalai Lama, before the concluding lecture, "So, What Is the Meaning of Life?"

I just can't wait to find out. But it's a question I'll likely be asking until I die.

*The Wizard and I are both fans of The Teaching Company. I should point out that the prices cited on the the site are never what we pay; I can't imagine that anyone would...the ongoing "sales" are far more reasonable, and we expect to donate our collected curriculum to the university we both work at or pass them on to persons in need of education.

**And counting two lectures on Lame Deer, the Lakota Sioux medicine man, I think it adds up to a pretty nice balance of East and West, indigenous and European thinkers.

A Brush with Ambivalence

2011-07-10T15:45:00.000-10:00

I've been spending some quiet time recently on my lanai studio with my brushes and ink, and studying some Chinese painting manuals. I picked up a couple of interesting volumes in a bookshop in the Beijing airport on my way home last month: very fine "How To" manuals of landscape, and bird and flower painting, the two major genres in Chinese painting, along with figure painting, which I don't do or have much interest in other than looking at. Although, one of my favorite paintings, the figure of a herbalist, at right, probably a copy of some classic, hangs in the window in a Chinese pharmacy in Chinatown, and I own a similar scroll of a literati guy with some ducks. But the style I am most attracted to is shan shui (mountain and water) landscape. My teacher is bird and flower painter, but she is tolerant of my interest and more than proficient to teach the techniques of landscape.

Though a teacher is essential, manuals are an interesting element in Chinese culture studies. Wuxia stories often involve the search for some esoteric lost martial arts manual that has the final secret to some ultimate power. Likewise painting manuals describe technique and offer background into the philosophy and techniques, very interesting once one has had the foundational guidance of a teacher. Similarly qigong videos and books are useful and informative to someone once they have been initiated into the basic techniques. You can't reliably learn these any of things just from a book, but once you have been taught, the books are of value.

In this frame of mind, I scrolled through an article in the New Yorker about the purchase of a painting we all surely know (if you studied English literature in high school--I thought the artwork was called "Thanantopsis"; it always illustrated the poem) and its recent destination in a new art gallery in Arkansas. Kindred Spirits, to which I alluded in reference to my own painting exercise not so long ago, was acquired in 2005 for some $35 million by Alice Walton, the middle daughter of Sam Walton (as in Wal-Mart, not that depression-era TV series), and something like the second or third wealthiest woman in the world. She's been buying lot of American art (not infrequently by cell phone while riding a horse) to display in a museum in her home town in Arkansas which boasts a bigger endowment than the Whitney. The dynasty's outlet --or at least its related philanthropic foundation --where I got a photo for my last Chinese visa is financing a major collection of American art. She is apparently not a shabby collector, but it is something of an affront--or surprise-- to the art establishment that her acquisitions will find a home in an obscure town in the Ozarks, as an economic boon to a heartland community.

Justifying her purchase of Kindred Spirits, she said of the previous owner, "They needed the money." I'd be glad to have her give me $350...even $35...for my little "kindred spirits" echo. Why not? It's in the Chinese style, but by an American. Sort of a reverse Wal-Mart tradition.

Live and Laugh at It All

2011-07-04T13:11:00.000-10:00

The Wizard made a grocery run today, and despite returning home with an excess of plastic bags, he somewhat redeemed himself with a surprise: the first of the season's Rainier cherries, for which I budget a sizable guiltless amount of dough (and I don't mean pastry) while the things are in season. Not yet as sweet as I hope they will be --who knows what the weather in the Northwest has done to my favorite fruit--but a sign of better things to come. And maybe I can train the family shopper to take reusable bags, which he resists, convinced that they are "germy" and maybe not as eco-friendly as purported. I need to edit the plastic bag stash; I have a friend who has a dog that's bigger than she is and she always needs more poop bags, which is creepy to think about, but there it is.

Well, as the song goes:

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don't take it serious,
Life's too mysterious
You work,
You save,
You worry so
But you can't take your dough
When you go, go, go

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh, aha!
Laugh and love
Live and laugh,
Laugh and love,
Live and laugh at it all!

Sun and Moon Obsessions

2011-07-02T09:53:00.001-10:00

Although the Summer Solstice came and went, marked largely by my beginning a new job...auspicious for me, I guess, but no one else, I note today, once again, that it is the mid-point, the yin/yang pivot really, of the Gregorian year, as many days ahead as behind. Just past new and dark, the moon begins to wax today (wax on/wax off). This weekend, a chance to regulate my breath, contemplate the cycles of my life, clean a closet, make a painting, get a haircut, finish the intriguing A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy - An Anthropological/Psychological View, by You-Sheng Li, Ph.D. (2005).

I acquired this volume of apparently self-published essays (which I recommend to fellow Tao-seekers and persons interested in Chinese cultural studies) almost two years ago, but it only just recently jumped off my shelf, after my return from Wudang Pilgrimage IV (吴朝圣四). In it Dr. Li hangs many of his arguments on an anthropological distinction between primary and secondary society (echoing the pre-heaven and post-heaven Taoist concepts). In an essay called "The South and The North," in a subsection "Social Power and Talented Culture are Separate," he writes (in a somewhat Aristotelian way):

Industry is near the military side, while education and academics are near the basic human nature side. ... Universities and academic institutions are places where human talents are concentrated. ... Military power is measurable and material stuff is measurable but human nature is not measurable.

Now I understand why I may be happier, in a Taoist way, in an academic institution (even though doing essentially the same things, managing proposals) than I was in a high-tech firm that did network security R&D for the DoD. I became frustrated at the over-emphasis on metrics and processes, at the expense of human nature, that seemed unrelated to the actual good we might have been accomplishing. To articulate this at this pivotal moment in the annual cycle seems significant to me. Tao manifests itself in my life in the most surprising ways.

Ah, now to that haircut....

Changes

2011-06-29T16:57:00.000-10:00

Gosh, ten days go by, and it's almost July. I think I said the same thing just a year ago.

My brain is a little full and fuzzy (blame the Spam?), still in some kind of recovery from China, a couple weeks at home alone, and now a new job in a new milieu.

It took the new personnel department to point out that my driver's license was six months overdue for renewal and insist that I update it if I want to park my car on campus. Actually I knew it, but that's the sort of thing you can ignore...or I can...and anyway, I've been carrying my passport with its interesting China visas to prove my identity. I'd been putting off the delayed renewal because I didn't want to take a test, written or on-the-road. And as it turned out, I didn't have to. I just had to pay 20 bucks extra "for being so punctual," as the license clerk put it. (Amortized over seven years, the extra $20 on top of the $24 renewal doesn't seem so bad; the license would have expired on the same date even if I renewed it on time six months ago.)

I was a little shamed because I'd just read an item about women in Saudi Arabia for whom driving is something of a revolutionary act, a symbol of freedom. (A burqa-clad woman carries basic toiletries and a prayer rug with her in case she is caught and incarcerated for being behind the wheel of her SUV.) I was willing to risk being pulled over with an expired license; these women are risking being pulled over simply for DRIVING. I was looking at a fine; they are looking at serious jail time. But now, I'm street-legal until December 2018, by which time it is conceivable that I will make that 286,000 fly-me-to-the-moon milestone with TAO 61.

And in other women-and-work news, I noticed after reading Factory Girls, about female migrant workers in China, that the new trend is for the factories to relocate in the interior provinces like Sichuan, the source of many migrants...because labor is cheaper there. And China is outsourcing for the same reason, to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and India. Just when you think you have figured out China politics and economics, it all changes by the time the book goes to paperback. In time, in some kind of economic taiji turn, I expect labor to become cheaper in the U.S. ...when some Laotian entrepreneur decides to set up a factory in Arkansas.

Back to Work

2011-06-19T09:18:00.000-10:00

I arrived home from my pilgrimage to enjoy a vacation; I sent an email of resignation to my office from Beijing, certainly a first for the HR department. It was the earliest I could have done it, not having the new position quite lined up until Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, an auspicious day to quit. After using the hotel's 20-yuan-an-hour computer, I went back to my room and listened to Maggie's Farm on my iPod 61 times. (Well, not quite, but it is a ritual I observe when I quit a job.)

I have allowed myself a gentle re-entry: minor transitional activities out of the job and some lunches with friends, but mostly just ignoring housework and recovering from the nasty respiratory souvenir I brought from China. (One of China's major exports is phlegm. Since there is an ongoing campaign against spitting, I think they just send all the crud home with visitors.) Reading, writing, painting, watching DVDs, and practicing the new qigong routines--my days have been ordered by these activities. (I have failed to do any planned serious housecleaning and tomorrow I MUST renew my drivers license before returning to the work-world on Tuesday.)

I will miss the luxury of lying in bed half the day to read. I finished Peter Hessler's third China book, Country Driving, which I began before I left. I'd read both of his previous books, and always enjoyed (and envied) his pieces for the New Yorker about life in China. Towards the end, it seemed to point to the next book in my to-read pile, Factory Girls, by Leslie T. Chang, where it had been languishing since it came out in 2008. I did not know that the author is Peter Hessler's wife; they wrote the two books at the same time, together in Colorado. This seems very romantic.

Country Driving was a terrific re-entry read...I could feel vividly all the craziness of his highway and interpersonal adventures in China, but Factory Girls was the real surprise, about the most current cultural revolution in China, the huge migration of rural workers to the cities, where they find jobs gluing together shoes and punching machine parts, manufacturing all the things we don't anymore in the U.S. Even though the book relates the author's observations as much as a decade earlier in China, it still is timely; who hasn't heard the recent stories of suicides in Shenzhen sweatshops? (Oddly, my guide/interpreter wants me to acquire an iPad for her because it's cheaper in the U.S. But they make them there!)

Factory Girls gives my own transition from one job to another an odd perspective. The factory girls of Chang's book leave their village homes, holding up their half of the sky, and transform themselves in the city, with boyfriends, fashion, and an unexpected determination to better themselves. They never go back home except during that newsworthy annual trek at Chinese New Year, taking gifts and cash back to village families who have no clue what the girls are actually doing in the factory cities.

Chang confines her story mainly to the young women, and gives it an interesting twist: an interwoven family memoir about her own family's immigration from China in the '50s. It is good to understand one's own micro-history against the larger story of current events. Family events and personalities become integrated, make sense in a way they might not seen in isolation. There are lots of personal stories about and by refugees and victims of the turmoil of China's recent history (i.e., the past century or so), but Chang finds parallels to the current internal migration in the country. What could easily have been two books, is a marvelously integrated whole, which explains something about the Chinese mentality and character, and sheds a new, bright light on China that defies the usual stereotypes held by Americans who don't seem to realize that Mao is dead and a puzzling new New China has risen. (In some ways of course, Mao is not dead, in the same way that Qin, Han, Tang, and Qing emperors are not dead...that 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.)

I am wallowing in a historical moment of my own...I would really rather be retiring than just switching to a new office position. (But like lots of boomers of what used to be retirement age, not working isn't quite the option just yet. We're that 10 years younger generation I mentioned previously.) I'm thinking of these determined factory girls who claim their independence (from family, if not work), entrepreneurial spirits who will never live the life of their mothers. I cannot imagine the intolerable conditions of the factory--well actually I can. For a few weeks after my freshman year in college, I did a stint in a shirt laundry, working with mangles and hangars to process piles of wet dress shirts. It was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. Unknown to me, the laundry had gone bankrupt and I never got paid, but I did have an experience among some people with whom I had absolutely nothing in common except slaving for money. An old woman with grotesquely burn-scarred arms, a tough girl who told stories of beating up her boyfriend or her mother the night before, men who had maintained the equipment and kept the steam flowing for years.

"Why are you going to college," the tough bitch asked. I couldn't give her an answer she understood, I'm not sure I even knew then, but I did know I would not spend more than a few weeks in a truly sweaty shop. (Now I might answer, "To have the luxury to move from one office job to another with a trip to China in between.") I also did a brief stint in retail, selling wedding gowns in another between real-jobs moment, and after reading Factory Girls, I am certain they would have made higher commissions than I ever did, possibly ending up owning the shop. But quite frankly, I don't know if I ever have had their determination to create their own new futures. I was protected, pampered and lucky. I grew up in the U.S. My parents got through the Great Depression and WWII. And then I came along. And that was it.

Leaping Forward in Time

2011-06-16T07:41:00.000-10:00

One of the questions routinely asked of foreign visitors in China is "How old are you?" I usually got amazed looks when I was honest with strangers and cute massage therapists: "Wo liushisan sui." Despite short sage-silver hair that looks like I may have abandoned a nunnery just weeks ago, but with a relatively unlined, unwrinkled, even, moist complexion (which I attribute to living in a mild humid climate, good sun-blocking moisturizers, and retin-A), people always thought I was younger than I am. Chinese femmes du certain age liked to pose for pictures with me. I must look like a sturdy energetic immortal who does not choose to dye her hair black. (I should open a retin-A franchise; it would be more effective for youth-preservation than the ubiquitous Chinese skin-whitening products.)

Still, I am unnerved by the revelation in China Daily that the Bee Taoist is only 76. (I am unnerved that I might think anyone is "only 76".) I would have put him a decade beyond than that. And once, while strolling in a park on the morning of my arrival in Beijing, two women with a little one in a stroller proudly pointed to the bent old ye ye following with a walker. "He is 80!" I would have sworn he was 90 or even pushing 100, although 80 is a respectable age in China.

Then it occurred to me. There is a time warp in China, and it was caused by Mao Zedong. I think Baby Boomers and their parents -- that is to say, everyone still alive and born before 1966 -- have actually physically aged 10 years, if not chronologically. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution cost all those folks decades of their youth, like a debit account; in the effort to move China ahead, the effect was just to make everyone appear older than they really are.

In contrast, it seems that all those coming of age or born post-Mao, after 1976, actually seem younger than their chronological age. I was surprised that the master who taught me Five Animals was 45; he looked mid-30s. Other "young people" well into their 30s seemed to me to be just coming out of their 20s. I credit the Taoist practices for longevity and immortality for the physical youth of the masters and teachers in the mountains; but I suppose the economic revolution since Deng Xiao Ping has served to keep the beneficiary generation young. (I see that in the U.S. as well...the narcissism of the "Me Generation" and material comforts keep one from aging as expected, or as demonstrated by the generation who lived through the Great Depression and the stifling '50s. And then there's cigarettes.)

In the Chinese TV serial drama I just completed, The Shadow of Empress Wu, which featured the Five Animals as a plot point about health, there is a curious bit of philosophy quoted, twice.

"People in their 60s count down their death by years; people in their 70s count down their death by months; people in their 80s will die without any sign." Anything after that is considered immortality. In his weird way, I guess Mao--who was preoccupied with his own longevity-- just pushed people closer to immortality.

The Commercialization of Tradition

2011-06-12T09:38:00.000-10:00

I feel a little tension, a little ambivalence, very mixed feelings, in the increasing commercialization of Wudangshan as a center for Taoist wellness and spiritual cultivation. Traditional masters abound, equipped with cellphones, updating their websites, becoming media personalities, published authors, and extras in TV and film. And I can say I feel part of the blame for this.

A small group of westerners working with our top-knotted teacher, we were overwhelmed and observed by Chinese tourists one morning (on the so-called International Tourism Day, when you could get into the Wudangshan area, like a national park, for half price.) One chicly shod and clad young woman (it is amazing the heels and sequins you see in the temples and on mountain stairs) jumped into the group to "pose" beside the teacher, in his traditional robe, flashing the ubiquitous "V" sign to her boyfriend/photographer. It was odd to be a visitor transformed into part of the attraction.

My beloved "hermit" is also a media celebrity. You can find him in many youtube videos, showing off his bee friends to barbarian seekers from all over the world, but now he has turned up in mainstream media in a recent China Daily feature that revealed details about him that I would rather not have known. He's only 76? He subscribes to magazines and newspapers to keep up with national affairs? (Although that sounds more like China Daily talking than Jia Ye himself.) Even while we were visiting, a film crew arrived, doing a documentary on the Four Seasons of Wudang. I may turn up in it; they did several repeated takes of me and him in farewell embraces. He seems to take these things with equanimity, but still, what a life for a eremetic Taoist! When we asked him when he meditated, he said, "Not during the day; I have too many friends who come to visit."

And if I don't turn up in a Chinese documentary, I already have some presence in the internet marketing of Wudang Tao, practically a registered trademark. Last night, visiting with one of my Chinese friends in Honolulu, dining on Japanese noodles before going to see a Korean movie, I was describing my experience with the rooftop shifu who taught us the Five Animals routine, encouraging her to join me next year. "Look, here's his website," I said, retrieving my iPad from my bag. Scrolling down through the photos, I came across a familiar scene. "This is exactly where we practiced, it was just like this." In fact it WAS us. In just two weeks we have become part of the marketing collateral, an example of "American Students."

In Wudang, over the past year, a curious "Taoist Vegetarian Cultural Experience Center" had opened, a restaurant which also showed martial arts and wuxia movies at night for free. I didn't eat there (I'm told there was nothing vegetarian on the menu anyway), but I did poke around to inspect some paintings on the walls. (I spent a lot of time on this trip closely inspecting paintings.) Mostly they were illustrations of Taoist figures and legends, but there was one HUGE shan shui mural on the wall behind the retractable video screen, a traditionally styled illustration of the 72 peaks of Wudang, the wandering clouds, waterfalls, some tiny immortals at sacred sites. And in the lower left, a mountain road winding up from the valley below. And on this road, a delicately brush-stroked MOTOR BUS. (There is no bus in my little reference volume of traditional Chinese painting elements, such as tigers and trees, fishermen and sages.)

One day I actually witnessed a traffic jam of buses on the two-lane village street. The driver of an aggressive black Honda SUV barreling the other way around the curve was sufficiently alert not to plow into them, but he did indulge in some incessant and ineffective horn-blowing in an attempt to break up the tangle of buses. I had just walked back from the hermit's cave in a light rain; it was a strange contrast to observe. There were photographers with really fancy cameras with long lenses and tripods everywhere taking pictures of the cloud-shrouded mountains that looked like living shan shui masterpieces. (One moment when I indeed did miss my little Casio.) I guess the bus in the mural was not so out-of-place after all.

The ancient techniques of internal alchemy and other Taoist arts and practices are the same as ever, but they are no longer hidden from the ordinary public. They are on offer to anyone who can afford to make the once laborious trek up the mountain. I have been astonished by the incredible development in China's cities, and in commerce, since my first experience in Beijing in 1988 when Deng Xiao Ping's "To get rich is glorious" reforms were beginning to lift China out of Mao-era economics. Now these developments are reaching the most remote and reserved parts of the country. In fact, our guide and interpreter says the place we really all should go is Yunnan. "That's the hot tourist destination now." Dally in Dali!

The Charms of Feng Shui

2011-06-10T10:52:00.000-10:00

The feng shui charms I bought to carry with me on my trip may or may not have provided me protection. The lapis elephant and jade rhino were scrutinized by lots of security screeners, one of whom, in the interest of protecting people I had no intention of harming, did manage to relieve me of my nice big traveling Leatherman with its wicked blade and pliers; I'd neglected to transfer it to my checked luggage when flying from Hangzhou to Wuhan. I tried to be less obnoxious than the Russian who, several years ago, was enraged because police would not let him take his fancy new tai chi sword on the train. (They did let him take the scabbard.) So when the cute security guy finally found the all-purpose tool in my bag, he said "Sorry," and I said "I understand, wo mingbai, mei wenti, you did a good job. Hao ba." He was also puzzled by the large solid chocolate Easter rabbit I was carrying; he pulled it out of my rucksack like a magician. I was saving it for a special "Year of Rabbit" moment in Wudang with my friends, who had occasional chocolate cravings. He let me retain the "qiaokeli tu," and the Leatherman's nice leather case. I wonder what happens to the confiscated items. I hope the security guard pocketed my excellent tool; it gives me pleasure to think of him using it. It was not deposited in the bin along with hundreds of cigarette lighters and suspicious bottles of water and hand lotion.

I don't know when the lapis elephant broke his leg. Not a fine piece of stone, and the fracture seemed to be along an exisiting fault line. I pointed this out to a companion. "Maybe he broke his leg so you won't," she said. Well, anything is possible, although my constant reliance on a nice collapsible walking stick probably had more protective value than the elephant.

"It only works if you believe it does," the feng shui woman told me when I bought the charms(thus limiting her liability). I'm not sure what that really means; I have lots of jade charms and carvings that give me a certain pleasure, dangling from my purse, rear view mirror, and bookmarks. Some are sentimental gifts. When I look at them they remind me of what power they're supposed to have. (I also constantly wear a very old antique Egyptian faience protective wadjet eye pendant; the only time in the past two decades I wasn't wearing it I wrecked my car.) Do I believe these things work? What does "work" mean?

Feng shui (wind/water) is ancient shamanic Chinese geomancy, and is readily evident in the placement of tombs. On the train ride to Wudang, I pointed out the tombs in a certain hilly area placed on slopes that clearly pre-dated the rail right-of-way.* Although in Hong Kong even modern buildings have odd adjustments to their architectural placement and design, and in the countryside, you come across tombs in the oddest places, until you notice the wind/water influences.

There are lots of books that will explain this (I particularly recommend this novel) and also tell you where to hang crystals in your living room, what charms to put on your desk to bring prosperity to your office, and which direction your head should point while sleeping. (If you're lucky, it's the same one your partner's should point. If your partner snores, put your head near his feet...but that just seems like common sense, like, don't place yourself with your back to the door in your office.** Consider Mafia bosses who have the common sense to know where to sit in restaurants.) Generally, I regard this charm and crystal stuff as superstitious (if entertaining) bunk, but, still, I always wear my wadjet eye. I also always wore my taiji ear studs, but I lost the yang one somewhere in Wudang, which seems okay. Now I'm just wearing one, but I am reluctant to remove it. It connects me to its counterpart in the mountains. I have recently littered China with all kinds of personal objects...an earring, my Leatherman, a broken camera, a bulky pair of jeans sacrificed to make room in my luggage for take-home tea.

Yesterday, I was to meet a colleague for lunch. We'd picked a little Chinese restaurant, and when he didn't show up I went ahead and ordered anyway. Channeling Brigitte Lin, I wished I'd had a sword with me to lay across the table. A perfectly decent local Chinese meal, but it made me long for the auto workers' restaurant in Shiyan where the peppery food was energizing and comforting on a cold rainy day. The Hawaii restaurant's menu did list "Zechuan" specialities and the "ma pao tofu" was guaranteed to be "splicy." Still, I ordered a bland chicken and black mushrooms and some shrimp and vegetables with noodles. When I left with a substantial doggie bag, I noticed a little shop around the corner: The Joy of Feng Shui. How could I not go in? But after China, everything on offer seemed sort of hip new agey and commercial, to say nothing of terribly expensive. There was nothing I wanted or needed, although I did ask the proprietor if he knew where I could get a good authentic Chinese foot massage. He didn't.

Next week, we try again, at an Italian restaurant. I will sit facing the door (so I can see my friend arrive). But I think I will take along my little lapis elephant with the broken leg. He makes for a good story.

*The Wizard just related a story to me, which may be apocryphal, but has a ring of veracity to it. In 1901, the Chinese rerouted an entire rail line around a mountain to assure that the dead noble the funeral train was transporting was always laid out in an auspicious direction.

** Last time I did this, I turned to answer a knock on the door and it was the Governor of Hawaii stopping in to admire the dry-erase bamboo sketches on my whiteboard.

It's All About Me

2011-06-06T12:46:00.000-10:00

I was thinking this morning about the incredible self-absorption (or is it absorbtion?) of some people who call themselves Taoists, and came across this survey on one of my most faithful reader's blogs and just had to mop myself up.

Thanks to the wonderful Falu Nuwu, law witch, I decided to jump in and do this:

ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT? Large scar on right thigh, obtained just after my Grandmother said, "Slow down. Watch out for that open tin can!"
WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR BEDROOM? Dust bunnies and vivid acrylic paintings by my dear friend and astrologer.
WHAT DOES YOUR MOBILE PHONE LOOK LIKE? A tiny plasma TV.
WHAT MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO? Bob Dylan, anything influenced by Bob Dylan, and anything that influenced Bob Dylan. And Miles Davis and Beethoven. And Chinese guqin music.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME YOU WERE BORN? No, but they TELL me it was 9 p.m.
WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW? A gin and tonic.
WHO DO YOU MISS? An old hermit in Wudang.
IS ANYONE IN LOVE WITH YOU OR HAS A CRUSH ON YOU? An old hermit in Wudang.
WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU KISSED? The Wizard. And an old hermit in Wudang.
WHAT’S YOUR MIDDLE NAME? Chinese or English?
THE BEST TV SHOW EVER CREATED? House M.D. and Mad Men.
THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO? My friend who I lovingly call Chatty Kathy.
DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DARK? Only if there are accompanying weird noises.
THE LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU CRY? Sun Honglei, in "If You are the One, 2"
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOGNE / PERFUME? Angel, (Thierry Mugler).
WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX? Chinese ponytails and topknots and dark eyes.
WOULD YOU RATHER BE SMART OR FUNNY? I am smart and funny.
COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINKS? Green tea.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PIZZA TOPPING? Cheese and pepperoni.
IF YOU CAN EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Cheese and pepperoni.
WHO IS THE LAST PERSON WHO MADE YOU MAD? I have abandoned anger.
DO YOU SPEAK ANOTHER LANGUAGE? Enough Chinese and French to get me out of the trouble it got me into.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST GIFT SOMEONE EVER GAVE YOU? A tiny gold charm shaped like a bell, long gone, but it still rings in my memory.
DO YOU LIKE SOMEONE? Of course.
ARE YOU DOUBLE JOINTED? All except my permanently dislocated left pinky which is frozen at 60 degrees and automatically sets the caps lock key when I least expect it.
FAVORITE CLOTHING BRAND? My custom-made taichi suits.
WHAT’S YOUR DREAM CAR? Jaguar XK8, my vintage Miata all grown up.
WHAT COLOR IS IT? Pewter.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF EXERCISE? QIgong with hot Chinese masters.
WOULD YOU FALL IN LOVE KNOWING THAT THE PERSON IS LEAVING? Of course, everyone is leaving.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO TELL SOMEONE HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO YOU? Just say so.
WRITE A NUMBER FROM ONE TO A HUNDRED? 61.
BLONDES OR BRUNETTES? Chinese.
WHAT IS THE ONE NUMBER YOU CALL OFTEN? I never make phone calls, only receive them.
WHAT ANNOYS YOU MOST? Making phone calls.
HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY? WHERE DID YOU GO? WHAT PLACE DID YOU LIKE BEST? Indeed. The Middle Kingdom, the Counterweight Continent. Tai Chang Temple, Wudangshan.
YOUR WEAKNESSES? A little arthritis in my right thumb joint, and gin and tonics.
FRIES/CHIPS, RICE, OR BEANS? Yes, please. In China, all of these can turn up in the same meal.
FIRST JOB? In a bankrupt shirt laundry in July; worked like a dog, never got paid.
EVER PRANK CALLED SOMEONE? Not since I was 13.
WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE YOU FILLED OUT THIS? Reading Falu Nuwu's blog.
IF YOU COULD GET PLASTIC SURGERY WHAT WOULD IT BE? I wouldn't, but sometimes a face lift looks like a wonderful thing.
WHY DID YOU FILL OUT THIS MEME? Ego.
WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST? Wisdom, sense of humor, and kindness. But they're probably lying.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL? Learn to make bathtub gin.
WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY? No more birthdays.
HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT? I only wanted one and I got him.
WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? No, I was the first to be named.
DO YOU WISH ON STARS? Yes, Vincent Zhao and Song Il-guk.
WHICH FINGER[S] IS YOUR FAVORITE? What? I could do without that dislocated pinky. Not really.
WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? A papaya, rice and beans and a bourbon and soda.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Depends on the pencil and paper.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Salami.
ANY BAD HABITS? Salami, bourbon, gin. I recently overcame a bad habit of pointing at things. Now I sort of wave.
WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING CD ON THE SHELF? "The Hollies Sing Dylan"
IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Who else could stand me?
HAVE YOU EVER TOLD A SECRET YOU SWORE NOT TO TELL? No, but I'm lying.
DO LOOKS MATTER? You can't judge a book by its cover, but if it looks creepy, you may not get to page 1.
YOU RELEASE YOUR ANGER? I have abandoned anger.
WHERE IS YOUR SECOND HOME? Hangzhou, but I haven't done the deal yet.
DO YOU TRUST OTHERS EASILY? Sometimes, too easily. True trust is trusting people who are untrustworthy.
WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? Tiny plastic animals; I liked playing God.
HOW MANY NUMBERS ARE IN YOUR MOBILE PHONE? I never make calls.
DO YOU USE SARCASM? Oh, never....
DO YOU KNOW ANYONE FAMOUS? I think so. I once ran into Jerry Lewis in a deserted bar, but refused to introduce myself.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A MOSH PIT? Too old for that, although I did recently dance in the street in Hangzhou with our driver in a night market until the police turned off the music.
WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A PLACE TO LIVE? A toilet, a sink, light switches and absence of vermin.
WHAT ARE YOUR NICKNAMES? Baroness, Empress, Mrs. Bee Hermit.
HOW MANY HATS DO YOU OWN? WHAT’S YOUR HAT SIZE? Hats make my head itch; my head is bigger than my husband's. (Although, on second thought, I do actually own a real vintage Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat, a strange gift from the Wizard. I would wear it to a Dylan concert, but it makes my head itch.)
DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? I don't practice that kind of bondage.
WERE YOU UPSET ABOUT STEVE IRWIN DYING? Who is Steve Irwin?
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Vanilla with bits of almond and/or chocalate.
ARE YOU LAZY? No, just good at prioritizing...so much simply doesn't need to be done.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT THE MOMENT? Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BAND? Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan's.
HOW MANY WISDOM TEETH DO YOU HAVE? Teeth gone, retained the wisdom.
DO YOU WANT TO GO ANYWHERE SPECIAL THIS YEAR? Maui, Portland,Or., Taiwan...
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Birds and the electric fan.
LAST THING YOU ATE? See # 51...the bourbon and soda,
LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Chatty Kathy.
WHATS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT YOURSELF IN THE MORNING? That I'm alive.
FAVORITE THOUGHT PROVOKING SONG? Desolation Row (Bob Dylan)
FAVORITE TWO THINGS TO HATE? Politics and sports. But, I have abandoned anger.
FAVORITE DRINK? Gin and tonic.
FAVORITE ZODIAC SIGN? Chinese or Western? I like myself, a Sagittarian triple Fire Pig.
SPORTS YOU LIKE TO WATCH? Kung fu, if you call it a sport.
WHAT IS YOUR HAIR COLOR? Now or then? I'm..uh...silver.
EYE COLOR? Muddy algae.
DO YOU WEAR GLASSES? More and more.
SIBLINGS? Nope, I'm a born hermit.
FAVORITE MONTH(s)? January/February (Chinese New Year)
DO YOU LIKE SUSHI? Yes, except for soft-shell crab, which tastes like burned hair.
LAST THING YOU WATCHED? The Shadow of Empress Wu, episode 56 of 62.
FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR? Today.
ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? I'm married, and the Hermit is thousands of miles away.
SUMMER OR WINTER? I live in Hawaii, I do not understand these terms.
KISSES OR HUGS? Hershey Hugs.
RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE-NIGHT STANDS? I'm married, and the Hermit is thousands of miles away.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE CELEBRITY? Song Il-guk.
WHO IS THE LEAST LIKELY TO ASK YOU ON A DATE? My husband.
BOOKS YOU’D LIKE TO SEE TURNED INTO A FILM? My own novel in the making.

Weekly, Weakly

2011-06-05T07:00:00.000-10:00

Has it been a full week since I arrived home? I've been in a daze, time-and space-lagged, slowly divesting myself of one of China's major exports (phlegm) and exiting from a job I've held for four-and-a-half years. I somewhat theatrically emailed a resignation notice from Beijing on Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, ceremonially played Maggie's Farm a few times on my iPod, treated myself to a Chinese "hurts so good" massage and cupping therapy, and ultimately came home to an open-ended situation. A new opportunity begins, auspiciously, on the Summer Solstice. Some folks assumed I was retiring, but it's not dark yet.

In the meantime, I am trying to process the events of the past month, with little photographic evidence, but some journal notes. I really didn't go anywhere I'd never been before, but even so, revisiting revealed new lessons and new teachers, the kind who present themselves when you are ready, doors that were always there mysteriously opened. And just like when you leave a job you didn't really much like, saying, "But I'll miss the people," so too, part of the pleasure of a pilgrimage is the fellow pilgrims and priests.

One morning in the mountains, where I usually awoke at dawn with birds who may also have been restless during the full moon period, I took my tea and journal to the rooftop of the hotel to watch the sun rise over the very landscape which is the banner of this blog. After some stretching and breathing in first light and fresh air, I seated myself along the railing to make some notes about the previous evening when the group had been entertained by a charming literati type who sang some Chinese opera and folk songs, spontaneously, when we were enjoying the full moon.

In the dawn, the same young master emerged on the roof from his own little apartment with his tea and began a morning qigong routine. His back was to me, so I watched for a few moments and then realized he was doing movements I was familiar with, so I quietly began to follow him. At some point, he turned to acknowledge me. "I know some of this, it's eight brocades," I said, hoping he did not object to my energy, and he told me, yes, but what he was doing was a mixture. And then proceeded to demonstrate. Then he offered to teach me the Five Animals exercise.

Before I left home, I had been enjoying a 2009 Chinese TV series, The Shadow of Empress Wu, in which the five animals is a plot point -- a clever and manipulative Taoist applies the ancient routine to cure the sickly young prince (though the Taoist's elixirs were not for the good of the dynasty). I had been interested in the exercises, and it seemed uncanny that the master brought them up. (And I just discovered there is an earlier series about the Empress which also features my muse Vincent Zhao as Tang general Li Zunxian in a fictional romantic role...well, why not?)

But back to the exercises. After tiger (no tiger mom) comes bear, oh my...when we did that one, young master said to me, "Now you are a happy bear," not knowing then that my Chinese name is Xiong Shan Di (which a Chinese friend at home says may be interpreted as Empress of Bear Mountain, something like a Baroness). Later he began to call me Madame Xiong. A happy Madame Xiong. (Xiong=bear, which is in fact, my family name.)

We continued over the next few days, early morning before breakfast, on the roof, to complete instruction in the five movements. It was an unplanned program, one of many spontaneous happenings off the itinerary and schedule, but linked to full moon and sunrise. To be practicing while the sun and moon were both in the sky, together hovering over the mountains, was magical.

And now after a week, I am 95 percent well, 5 percent weak ---the phlegm is almost gone. I hope my memories linger longer.

Pivotal Return

2011-05-29T20:02:00.000-10:00

I could have chosen even more simplicity, and in some ways it was chosen for me. My dithering about what camera to take, what device to encumber myself with, worked itself out when I dropped my faithful five-year-old Casio XILIM on a concrete patio step in Hangzhou. The backup, the Wizard's old one, failed to launch as well (some persistent lens error) so I have no photos from Hangzhou forward and there was no opportunity to buy a camera until I got back to Beijing. (Not that I don't already have hundreds of images of Wudang and Beijing from previous trips.) By that time I had freed myself from the photo compulsion. (Still I am hoping to receive some images of pivotal moments from my traveling companions.)

It was a liberating exercise in simplicity, being mindful of what was happening in the moment, rather than snapping photos every time I saw a beautiful cloud in a valley or a handsome guy on the street, a traffic jam on a mountain road or incomprehensible Chinglish signage. Moments are etched more firmly in my memory, more in my feeling, than any array of pixels on a screen can capture.

As I revisit this trip, contemplating observations and conclusions, it will have to be through words, and maybe ink and brushstrokes. If the ancient Chinese had had digital cameras, what a lack of poetry and painting we would suffer.

Xuanzi Jiandan

2011-05-08T16:35:00.000-10:00

That may be bad Mandarin, 选择简单, but I think it means "choose simplicity," which I have. The smaller bag is packed, and a rucksack for carry-on is loaded with my iPad, two pocket point-and-shoot Casios (forget the Nikon SLR with extra long lens and the Sony videocam), my phone, an extra iPod and a couple of phrase books, including Outrageous Chinese--A Guide to Chinese Street Language. While it's fun to know how to talk like a sailor, it's wise to know how not to, as well. (In Chinese you can make some bizarre mistakes. For all I know, the title of this post is "choose sodomy.")

I would like to carry Peter Hessler's Country Driving, which I haven't finished yet, but it's a heavy hardback. I am taking Terry Pratchett with me to the Counterweight Continent (Interesting Times) and I have lots of reading material on the iPad. I packed my brushes, ink and some paper (as if I can't get them in China). I am not taking any tea.

I do not anticipate blogging on the road, behind the Great Firewall, but one never knows. It may be a useful exercise in simplicity to make my observations in my little Moleskine notebook with my favorite 0.07 mechanical pencil.

I do know that, even in the mountains, anything I think I might need or have forgotten can be easily obtained. There's not much to need really.

So, see you all in June!

Shit Keeps Happening

2011-05-05T00:54:00.000-10:00

Very early in the morning the day before I go to pick up my passport stamped with a visa to visit China, ($195!), I am pensive about taking a trip that feels a little like watching a favorite movie I have seen many times before, knowing the ending, but having forgotten choice bits of dialogue or screen angles. The way you remember the events that were going on outside the theater when you went to see that movie the first time. Which is more real? (A somewhat troubled little girl once asked me about something, "Was that on TV or was that in real?")

This moment of personal planning is colored by the reactions of the world around me to the "end" of the Osama drama--jubilation on the one hand, and a sceptical wary disbelief on the other, the mixed emotions of the public to events they have no ability to influence. ("Was that on TV or in real?") I lie awake pondering this decade of global rubbernecking, ten years of natural and economic and political disasters and debacles...curiously taking place on a screen projected for entertainment and edification. No wonder I stopped watching news and listening to radio several years ago. (It's been more than a little coincident with my deepening involvement with Taoism, these trips to Wudang. This upcoming trip feels like a senior seminar, the fourth-year summarization of independent study and practice. Graduation? A degree? Immortality?)

It was just a few days after I returned from a trip to Hong Kong in 2001, one of the last in a series of fairly frequent regular visits since the mid-'80s, that I was awakened at 4 a.m. by a friend who phoned. Pre-dawn phone calls are never good things, at best wrong numbers, but in this case, "Turn on your TV! We're being attacked." (Never mind that the attack was in New York City and we live in Honolulu, as if there were something we could do by turning on the TV).

The Wizard, not completely diplomatic when he's awakened just a little too early, sarcastically responded, "I'll be sure to let the President know." Then, of course, we turned on the TV to watch in sad shocked disbelief the images which are now etched in my memory as vividly as mushroom clouds, a slain president in a convertible, a guy standing in front of a tank with flowers (was that 1989 or 1968?). Movies that rerun in memory, as vivid as Gone with the Wind or It's a Wonderful Life.

The same friend who made that early morning panic call sent me a text a couple days ago that I didn't see until 24 hours later. (Texting is not my preferred method of communication. I get texts, but rarely initiate them. Like I get a lot of lunch invites, but rarely suggest them.)

"R U watching news?"

The next day I replied, "No, but I see Osama is dead." Who could miss it? (To say nothing of the Royal Wedding, which people who had stayed up late to attend kept telling me about, somewhat against my wishes. I wasn't invited, I didn't care. But which reminded me that Diana was killed just days after I returned from a different trip to Kong Kong, 1997, during the Handover. I also remember I didn't pay much attention to that early '80s wedding either, except to think that she was all wrong for Charles. Why are all these events linked in my mind with travel?)

"Yay 4 our troops and intel folks" my friend instantly replied to my very late text-back.

Despite not watching a bit of this on the TV, I am bombarded by internet discussion -- hard to avoid when you're on line a lot. And it got me to thinking about all the decade's events to which I have been a witness, if not exactly a participant. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, corrupt elections, financial meltdowns, escalating wars in hopeless regions of the world, disease and starvation (why would anyone put melamine in milk, anyway?). Ten years used to seem like a long time, now it seems just a long tedious movie, one I really don't want to watch again. And the trivial markers in my own life...I come across a bottle of nail enamel I first used on that trip in 2001...I thought it was new; it's ten years old. (But remarkably still fluid.) I've changed jobs three times in the decade, moved on, and on, from endless daily invented office crises (all of which had to do with the bottom lines of money or politics or both) that in time are as fleeting as the rain that fell and has since recycled into the atmosphere. As the rain that is falling right now as I write this. The shit that just keeps happening, all while I keep on moving on.

Beyond the mild anxiety about my visa (the true meaning of anxious), the rest of my trip planning is as routine as going to the office. I have become that seasoned. My list making consists of about six tasks which I didn't really need to write down anyway. It's just nice to monitor the progress. (The only things left are "pack" and "get a haircut.") Some people seem awed when I tell them I'm going to China on my own for three weeks. "Oh I would love to do that, but..." All you have to do is do it. Leave behind the obligations, the fears, the daily news, and just go. Live your own life, the shit will keep happening whether you know about it or not.

Just Trust the Cycles

2011-05-02T11:04:00.000-10:00

As I predicted, today, the day of the new moon, my reliable Chinese travel agent called to tell me my passport with essential visa had made it back from the Chinese Embassy. The one hurdle that causes the most anxiety is negotiated. Now it's all administrative and housekeeping...travel insurance, register with Department of State (a good idea for travelers should one require assistance from one's own embassy abroad), collect travelling cash, get a haircut, shop for necessities, pack.

Decisions. The big bag or the small one? The digital SLR with two lenses or the pocket Casio? Video camera or just a notebook? I lean to small and I have never regretted it. (The opposite of buying memory for devices: no one ever complains of having too much memory.)

Again I envy the kolea...they just take off and arrive. They must be settling into their nesting areas now, have overcome jet stream lag, are engaged in family planning activities. I am not the only one who wonders about these birds and their mysterious magnificent migrations.

May Day, M'aider?

2011-04-30T13:32:00.000-10:00

Perhaps it is the holiday of May Day that has caused a delay in in my China visa arrival. I will grant government workers, mine and theirs, a little slack. Or maybe it's not a delay, I am just impatient. Last year, coincident with the kolea's departure, my visa arrived April 27 for the same time frame of travel. But my beloved migratory birds seem to have left last Tuesday evening, their cosmic visas approved. I won't feel like I'm leaving until my passport is in hand. Birds don't carry passports.

Why do our Chinese visas have to go to Los Angeles? There are enough Chinese people here in Hawaii, enough travel to and from the Middle Kingdom, a desire to increase it, that there should be a consulate. I think we should be able to get Chinese visas at Wal-Mart.

Monday's New Moon seems auspicious. I hope my travel agent calls me. "Come pick up your passport. And bring $150 for the processing fee."

A week to go before I pack. Next weekend, a haircut and last minute shopping for anything I might need. (Lomotil, Band-aids, batteries.) This is beginning to feel routine. I love traveling, paring down my baggage to bare essentials (and I don't mean that complicated cosmetic that is touted as simple). On the road, you simplify, you live in the moment. When that plane lifts off, I leave all my cares behind. "Will you be accessible?" someone in my office asked. I hope not. The point is not to be. And I can use the Great Firewall as an excuse. Some years ago, when the Wizard was in Hong Kong regularly, he said the pleasure was the difficulty of communication. Now, with email, internet, and Facebook, the getting away is the difficulty. I want to vanish for a while. M'aider? Let me alone.

Still Here, But Itchin' to Go

2011-04-26T18:49:00.000-10:00

Those of us who monitor the kolea share gossip. "I saw one this morning in my yard." "There was one still in my area when I came home last night," and so on.

And there was one still, all dressed up and ready to go, in my neighborhood tonight. Perhaps waiting patiently for his visa for his annual trip to Alaska. Just like me. I called my faithful Chinese travel agent today. "Should I be nervous about my visa application?" I leave for China in less than two weeks. Mr. Lee assured me that he had checked. "It's on the way." I don't like that my passport is in the hands of the Chinese Embassy, in Los Angeles no less. But I do trust Mr. Lee, who is also the travel agent of choice of my Chinese painting teacher.

But all we can do is wait. When the kolea are finally gone, surely in the next few days, perhaps my visa will arrive. Funny that I should attach my own cycles to a migratory bird's. To say nothing of seasonal allergies. The albizia off my lanai, the one that was so drastically trimmed a couple years ago after a branch fell off and blocked egress on the bridge across the stream from my parking lot, is blooming. All of the scarred trimmed areas have sprouted new green branches. It's fragrant, attracts bees, but I think it's why I wake up in the morning coughing and struggling to breathe through some major congestion in my upper skull. Not everyone likes them.

Today I bought some feng shui charms, a lapis elephant and a jade rhinoceros, to protect me and keep me safe while traveling. "These only work if you believe they do," Lillian Hong, the feng shui shopkeeper told me. "They are to remind you of positive energy." (And I took advantage of her buy-one-get-one-free offer.) This reminded me of a line in the wonderful old King Hu film, A Touch of Zen. The protagonists are in a very spooky place. One asks, "Is this place haunted?" His companion responds, "It depends on whether you believe in ghosts or not."

Ghosts? Tao? Whatever it is that moves the kolea, draws me back to Wudang. When the time is right, I'll board the plane, all documents (and charms) in order, ready for another experiment in spontaneity.

Digging Up Treasure

2011-04-23T08:54:00.000-10:00

On a day when, in the Christian tradition, focus is on the interment of something precious, I am intrigued to find a story about buried treasure. Some guy in Austria discovered a big cache of centuries-old jewelry in his backyard. There's not much in the story about the actual provenance of the stuff, ornate rings and brooches and belt buckles. The "who" and the "why" are TBD, but the historical antiquities people are all excited about the "what." How the stuff got there is a mystery.

The story triggered a memory. When my son was about eight years old, I gave him stash of old costume jewelry (I hope), that was my late mother's and my somewhat Victorian aunts', and broken stuff I never wore any longer. I put it in a small chest so he could play pirate games with his plastic sword and spade (but no rum). He took it quite seriously. After unstringing all the beads, faux (I hope) pearls and gems and filigree findings, he buried the chest somewhere in the vast wild backyard, never to be found again.

Now, I sometimes wish I had some of those old pieces for projects, but alas, they are gone forever. That backyard, decades and a continent away, has long since been turned into a parking lot. I've often wondered if some backhoe operator turned up a chest of odd beads and things and wondered, "What the...?" Did he take them to his girlfriend? Did he put them in the trash? Did they just get plowed under and paved over? And now I wonder, was that find in Austria just some little kid's pirate game? Was his mom pissed at the loss of the family jewels?

Who knows? In the end it doesn't matter. But, in my case, I do hope all the stuff was faux. Or, in 650 years, someone is delighted over a strange archaeological find in suburban Pittsburgh.

Day 108...Again

2011-04-18T07:27:00.000-10:00

In its constant return year after year, today always seems like just yesterday. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

I observe this morning it is again Day 108. I quote from Deng Ming-dao's 365 Tao below. Some of my numerologically inclined readers may find this interesting.

NUMBERS

One gives birth to two, two gives birth to three,
Three gives birth to the ten thousand.
One hundred and eight counts make one cycle,
Constant turning creates all things.

Today is the one hundred and eighth day. Why are numbers so important to those who follow Tao? Even today, when numbers are more commonly yoked to the service of finance and engineering, there are those who revere numbers with the cheap version of mysticism -- superstition. Numbers form a closed world with mysteries to explore and exploit if our understanding is deep enough.
Followers of Tao emphasize certain numbers : One is the unity of Tao. Two is duality. Three is the unevenness that will generate movement. Four is the seasons. Five elements generate the world. Six parts of the body are the arms, legs, head, and trunk. Seven is the day of the waxing moon by the lunar calendar. Eight is the number of divination. Nine is the number of life. Ten is heaven's cycles.
There are twenty-four periods in a year, each with its own characteristics. Thirty-six is six squared. One hundred and eight is three cycles of thirty-six and represents a greater cycle, although there are even more esoteric connotations attached to it.
Numbers are only symbols, a way for human beings to project order upon the universe. They are a language more precise than words. But does Tao talk? Numbers are important to master, but take care to look beyond language and numbers to the true reality that they foreshadow.

And, oh yeah, just in case you didn't notice, last night the moon was full. This has been a year of interesting congrurences in the cosmic cycles of yin and yang.

What the Hell, Life Goes On, and Then You Die

2011-04-16T14:24:00.000-10:00

I went to the mailbox on my way back from visiting my poor soggy car.

Yesterday TAO 61 got drenched, flooded really, because I neglected to put the top up in a parking lot, foolishly not paying attention to the clear signs that it was going to rain...hard. Nothing that won't dry out, though the ever-cryptic radio is having a moisture-related problem. Last night it didn't seem to actually turn off; I wanted to make sure the battery was still live today. It was. But I still need the humidity (and foul sour stench) to dissipate before I reprogram the settings...assuming I can.

But to the mailbox where I retrieved the usual bills, charity solicitations and catalogs, and a couple of magazines: Shambhala Sun with the ubiquitous smiley face of the Dalai Lama on the cover, and Time, with its standard pre-Easter cover feature, this year, "What If There's No Hell?" Not only that, but a sub-feature called "Living Younger Longer." Could this be the year for Taoism?

Let me say I love magazines, the real kind on paper that come in the mailbox or are discovered at newsstands (brick-and-mortar phenomena that seem as doomed as Blockbuster and Borders stores). The current Time issue flashed me back to maybe 1966, when my college mailbox was the receptor of Time and Reader's Digest, both subscriptions subsidized by the parents who wanted to make sure I was current with the mainstream culture. I recall the Time issue, probably also a pre-Easter feature, (on searching I find it was indeed April 8, 1966, my memory does not fail me) that proclaimed on the cover, in big white Helvetica type on a black background, "God is Dead!" ** Although Nietzsche had made that suggestion 80 years earlier, for some reason in 1966 it was news. (I had a professor in the religion department of my church-related college who was widely assumed to be a death-of-god theologian, purveying the pernicious concept that the Time article was about. It was a big deal then, someone had written a book.)

Reader's Digest was a counter to that, I guess, but really the only things I remember about that little journal were the jokes (like the cartoons in The New Yorker), the"notable quotes" and one article about "Red China" that described torture: "Then they plunged chopsticks in his ears!" (Which I have no doubt "they" did.) Reader's Digest summarized and packaged a particular American cultural vision; today I get Utne Reader, which does something of the same, although I am sometimes as sceptical of it as I am of Reader's Digest.

So what if there's no hell? The actual article in fact is titled "Is Hell Dead?" (Ah, the deja vu!) "Rogue pastor Rob Bell's argument about salvation and judgment has Evangelicals in a fury --and a younger generation rethinking Jesus," the subhead relates. I haven't read the article yet, but it looks interesting.

Curiously, the article that precedes it is a profile of Ai Weiwei, "The Activist Artist of China," (as subversive and pesky as the Dalai Lama), whose works include the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium and a piece of pottery I would really like to own, a Han Dynasty-style urn emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo.

And following the article about hell, "Amortality: Why acting your age is a thing of the past." Taoists call it longevity or immortality, but some of the "sages" cited seem far from Taoists:

Hugh Hefner (about to begin creepy dual cultivation with a woman 60 years -- that Chinese life cycle --younger than him; Joan Rivers, jewelry and cosmetic surgery queen and comedian I always confuse with Joan Collins (another amortal); and Mick Jagger. A "Sympathy for the Devil" reference is probably too obvious for this post.

The conclusion I am left with from these articles is that in America, amortality has to do with never growing up, I mean, if there's no hell....it's just biological and let's have fun, eat right, exercise, and play golf or sky-dive. Or do qigong or tai chi. But I see no spiritual aspirations here. But I haven't read about Rob Bell, the rogue evangelical, yet. Hope springs from the strangest sources.

**Searching further, I discover that the magazine cover I remember actually featured big red type on black and did not proclaim, but asked, "Is God Dead?" Whatever. Close enough after all these years.

Waiting for My Turn

2011-04-15T02:21:00.000-10:00

I'm sitting on my balcony in the moonlight (and the light of my laptop), enjoying a cool breath of air, a cool drink of water, listening to lusty frogs in the stream honking at one another, a white noise of chirping insects, and the occasional restless song bird. Someone just came running through the parking lot below. (Who runs at 2:30 in the morning? Who writes blog posts at 2:30 in the morning? I have a friend who would make a haiku out of all this.)

I'm wondering where the kolea are right now. I really don't know where they sleep, these busy bug eating birds with their long legs and strong wings. Every day they are looking plumper, more vivid in their new feathers. Usually they are diligently picking through the grass like rice farmers, or monitoring the traffic on the road, but lately they look like they are gathering in a lobby, waiting for an announcement: "Kolea Air Flight 411 to Alaska is now open for boarding." They are ready with their round-trip tickets for a four-month holiday of breeding and family fun.

By the time they actually leave, I will be just days away from my own trip, not exactly a vacation, not exactly like a return home, but like the kolea's, a sort of pilgrimage of renewal. My China plans are firm, unaffected in the end by the Japan disaster. I have no anxieties about any of it, I'm just awake in the middle of the night, roused by a peculiar dream brought on, I suppose, by an emotional movie, the weather with its haze and humidity, and a little indigestion. It's always best to just get up and let the feelings subside, not wondering too much about whether I was the Baroness dreaming I was escaping from a house in danger, or if I am dreaming now that I am the Baroness blogging on my lanai. Do the kolea dream?

The moon is flirting with me from behind fast moving clouds. The kona weather from the south has everything running a little backward. All the planes at the airport are taking off from the opposite direction on the reef runway; my new office, still annoyingly fragrant with the smell of gallons of fresh latex paint, does feature an exquisite view of the airport and the harbor area. Twelve hours ago, I watched several big-old-jet-airliners gather at the end of the runway like patient kolea, politely (safely) waiting until one of their own kind made a landing, the scene framed by two huge cargo ships lying just off the reef. Later two F-18s made sudden, shocking, nearly simultaneous takeoffs, showing off their speed and climbing capabilities in a now-you-see-us-now-you-don't exercise. Helicopters and small planes flitted about like mosquitos and flies. I could watch this activity for hours, the mountains on one horizon, the sea on the other. I wait like the kolea for my turn to take off.

Postscript: The first rooster is calling, at 3:39 a.m., to the frogs. Perhaps it's time to go back to bed! And, my laptop is at 61% of battery power. The universe is speaking to me. Good night, and good luck.

What Goes Around

2011-04-06T06:33:00.000-10:00

...doesn't always come around. Have been distracted and exhausted as a result of various planned and unplanned demands on my time and challenges on the to-do list. I have been so busy I haven't even blogged about the beauty pageant I attended as a guest, the office move of the company I work for, the planning of a trip to China in less than 5 weeks. I identified a lot with the tire I lost on my way to work a week ago. "How could such a thing happen," I asked the Goodyear guy, who unfortunately couldn't find any of the right size on the island, a strange thing since every 10th car here seems to be a Miata. "You probably picked up a nail, the pressure was low, then at high speed the heat just blew it out," he said. There seems to be a Taoist message here, or at least a physics lesson. And I couldn't complain: it was kind of a nice location for a flat tire to occur. The last time I felt so peaceful during a flat tire event was on a freeway in Hubei Province in China. And speaking of which, I am now merely waiting for my visa, in the list-making stage, tossing things I might need or don't want to forget into a box prior to packing for another three-week journey to the Middle Kingdom: Beijing, Hangzhou, and Wudang. This time I am assured, there will be a train in the itinerary! Last year, seems like yesterday, during the flat tire moment, I summoned all my skills to buy a bottle of beer from a roadside shop (wo yao yi ping pijiu) to enjoy while the bus tire was changed. This time, I look forward to beer and peanuts in a dining car while making the same journey. And though it is pretty much the same itinerary, there are things I haven't done before, and I want to make sure I don't miss them. Like indulging my fetish for camels by setting foot in one of the Camel leather goods shops that seemed to pop up everywhere but in the mountains. Not that they were camel-leather goods (I think), but just a logo for footwear. (Nike="Just Do it"; Camel="Just Hump It".) Maybe what went around does come around again, like a plodding camel caravan, just my speed. You never have to change a camel's tire.

Synchrony

2011-03-20T09:57:00.001-10:00

Only in My Dreams

I have been restless at night the past couple or three days --that supermoon perhaps disturbing my sleep-- the moon that I wasn't able to observe because the weather is rainy and cloudy, which also makes my arthritic wrist ache, giving me an excuse to avoid housework (not that I need an excuse). They said the moon--like a new and improved product--would be 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than usual, in a display that hasn't been seen since...1993...wow! This is almost as underwhelming as the announcement of the new thinner iPad (way too much like yin hygiene advances) sporting two useless cameras (to me anyway) and nothing else much different. Same old moon. Same old iPad. (I'll wait to upgrade when there's a real USB port and Flash, thank-you. But do I love the one I have. A shame I forgot to take it and its 3G connection with me to the office when the IP network connection went down last week.)

There has been an unusual correlation of full moons with solstices and equinoxes this year. I didn't realize that until I noted that today is the vernal equinox, a moment of perfect (solar) yin/yang balance. The emphasis of the yang full moon must be what has made me itchy and plagued by dramatic dreams. (Surely earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear disaster and escalating war activities in the Middle East have nothing to do with it!)

Or it is my decision to return to China in May for what seems to be becoming an

annual qi adjustment? Assuming that Japan will not go completely out of control in a nuclear way, I am waitlisted for flights (routing through Korea, home of the ultra-attractive Song Il-Guk, right). My travel agent (not at right) was in hyper-crisis mode, dealing with exit flights out of Japan, refunds for cancellations of tickets. I am confident that my plan will work out...one way or the other. Compared to all that is going on in the world, my ability to get a seat seems quite trivial. Life has its rhythms beyond my control; sometimes, like now, they are more dramatic and jazzy than others. It would be foolish to make a Tao-inspired trip and be anxious about it. Life is just one big waitlist anyway.

Causes and Effects

2011-03-12T18:18:00.000-10:00

I'm wondering...is it because I was watching CNN at 3 a.m. Friday, yesterday, in anticipation of the faint ripple of a tsunami that panicked Hawaii for a few hours, creating a school holiday and not much else. Is that why, as I am reviewing images of the devastation and ongoing threats of horrible destruction on Honshu in Japan (that recall images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), all I can do is alternate wiping my eyes with exclamations of "Holy shit!" and "OMG." A week after my little sake and shochu adventure, and days after my Ash Wednesday observance, reality bites. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Going with the flow?

When warning sirens went off around here at 10 p.m. Thursday, I turned off my wuxia drama to see what was going on. I'd heard about the Japan quake (and one in China too, on the Yunnan-Myanmar border) earlier, and paid attention to the warning. We are not in an inundation zone, so I just made a note to be alert at 3 a.m. when wave effects were expected. Titillated by the tidal surge in Japan, Hawaii people were out lining up for hours to buy gas and water and groceries just in case (even though we live in a hurricane prone zone and are constantly reminded to BE PREPARED with water, food, batteries, and first aid supplies). The Wizard was up monitoring the situation -- he had a responsibility to his organization -- but I just watched (rubbernecked). Observing the paltry local ripples on TV for a while, I went back to sleep, glad I was not a newsman interviewing a disaster specialist in the wee hours.

Which was was mildly entertaining. A geophysicist with the Tsunami Warning Center who was answering questions for the media kept going in and out of the building (which happens to be well within the inundation zone). At one point, looking jazzed on caffeine, finding some meaning in his life in the kind of excitement his profession studies but doesn't really want to see, he said, "I come back out here to talk to you because it's crazy in there." He was doing all he could to avoid saying "no problem" for Hawaii--it was up to the governor to finally announce that nothing was happening, and all the schools and clinics had closed for no reason.

The effect on me was just a restless night; the local consequences were all totally unrelated to the actual event. In the morning, our AT&T service was down. The Wizard's iPhone wasn't working and I confirmed that there was no service with my iPad. Probably too many people tweeting. Lesson learned: maintain the landline.

But now, trying to comprehend the devastation in Japan from the tidal surge across land I have flown over, terrain that always looks like a tidy model train layout, is overwhelming. All of the silly discussions and speculations I've been indulging in about politics and spiritual development seem a little trivial. History --or geophysics--repeats itself. And we are still at the mercy of nature, complicated by man's efforts to control it. No one wants to see this:

Scanning a Child for Radiation Effects

I would rather be reading Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go with that child.

But not with these images, below, truly scary and speaking for themselves, not toybox clutter, and lacking the cute mice and cats and dogs in a world where nuclear reactors don't explode and kids have to be evacuated or pulled from rubble or found by sniffer dogs.

Po Me

2011-03-09T04:22:00.000-10:00

Feeling very deeply the shift in cycles, I wonder if I will find time to visit a sanctuary of the Catholic variety to have ashes imposed on my forehead today. (I'm supposed to drop off taxes at the accountant's; his office is right next to St. Andrews Episcopal Cathedral; I could have a death and taxes moment, and then visit Dragon Gate bookstore, where there is a Tai Seng sale going on.) Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite of the liturgical events in the traditional Christian calendar, kicking off 40 days of contemplation of what it means to live in the material world. (Miss you, St. George.)

I did not observe Mardi Gras last night, unless watching several episodes of Eagle Shooting Heros counts. (I'm up to number 20 of 50. Should get me through Lent.) I marked the waning moments of carnal indulgence over the weekend, unaware of the new moon that seemed to bring me out of a yin funk I'd been in for two weeks. I dined Saturday night with a Chinese friend, an aficionado of things Japanese, at a fine restaurant, enjoying delicate and tasty homemade tofu and a curious Japanese liquor called shochu. We had planned to go to an Okinawan restaurant which features impromptu folk singing and instrumentals by the owner, but alas, the new moon was being celebrated by a private party and we couldn't get seating. So off to Gazen Izakaya where we drank their shochu and sake, reserving my BYOB of Summer Snow, a nigori ginjo, for the next day. I've become fond of this white unrefined sake, shown here, which looks like the booze my mythical martial arts and wuxia heroes toss back while resting from sword fighting and inner cultivation, in quaint inns and outdoor pubs in various ancient dynasties. An Asian holy water, a milky sacrament brewed from water and rice! (Shochu is distilled.)

Last Friday, I noticed that the kolea, the Pacific Golden Plovers, my animal spirit touchstones for the workings of the Tao, are apparently also in tune with the yin-to-yang moon, beginning to change into their breeding plumage; their white yang stripe is developing, contrasting with new black feathers on their head and neckline. Are they also observing some kind of avian Lent before their return flight to Alaska by the end of April? Perhaps come Easter, I will toast their bon voyage with Red Stripe, the Jamaican beer. The first changing bird I saw was at the post office, the day of the new moon, (also my son's birthday) next to Honolulu International Airport; but last night, I also observed several in my own woodland residential complex.

With a clarity of mind brought on by fasting (mostly abstaining from alcohol and, I intend, the free cello-wrapped carbo-loaded snacks in the company kitchen unfortunately just outside my office), I wake early with thoughts of the pos and huns, the collection of Chinese souls which go their various ways at death. Our po souls --seven, or more, of them--are yin entities, and return to the earth; and our three yang huns make their way off to a celestial realm. The huns may join with new energies in a kind of recombinant reincarnation, or not, becoming immortal, depending on one's own spiritual progress through internal alchemy in the corporeal existence. This is esoteric Taoism. I can't speak for its truth, but the metaphors are appealing. This process of transformation takes 7 weeks, 49 days, a little longer than the Lenten fast of 40 days which culminates in Easter, the Western celebration of the success of the hun to overcome the material po.

At 5 a.m., it's easy to slip over the edge when thinking like this. (This is in fact the time I would be meditating in Wudang retreats; I should be now, but blogging is so compelling, and the sliver of waxing moon is obscured by dense cloud cover.) In the Catholic tradition, Lent is a time of reconciliation and preparation, a time to rise above our corporeal natures. This is traditionally done through prayer (maybe this is a prayer), fasting and self-denial. (I could use a slurp of nigori right about now; must go brew coffee.)

I am advised by a certain socially conscious Roman Catholic Brother that Lent is also properly observed, not merely in the "giving up" of something, but by "taking on" a task, or working on a positive character trait. I will look at those "happy" men--the Asian Jew, the Buddhist monk--about whom I just posted, for modeling behaviors: compassion, a sense of humor, and a long view, which I think I have to a degree, can always be ramped up. How easy it is to forgo the Summer Snow (at least a few days in); how difficult to actually change oneself and the world.

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This is a warning, from my Anglican Book of Common Prayer, to our po spirits. This is a time to work on our huns. And to remember, it's all metaphor for inner grace. With an outward sign of ash.

Sleepy, Happy Hawaii

2011-03-08T13:21:00.000-10:00

Just days after Hawaii was cited for being home to the sleepiest --or most sleep-deprived --people in the country, and months after Hawaii was once again determined to be the happiest state to live in (though Bhutan holds the global claim), as well as often the healthiest, we find the happiest man in the nation lives in Manoa, the neighborhood adjacent to the University of Hawaii.

A practicing Jew named Wong, with a nice house in one of Hawaii's nicest neighborhoods, he was selected by the following statistical criteria (by The New York Times, via Gallup):

"[H]e's a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year."

Introducing Alvin "Happy" Wong:

It's not clear to me that Mr. Wong knew he was the happiest man in America before he was contacted by the pollsters.

In any case, he has interesting competition. The happiest man in the world is thought to be Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk, French translator and buddy to the Dalai Lama. He was scientifically proven to be happiest in clinical tests by the University of Wisconsin! He has some things to say about happiness too. It may be interesting to consider the traits Mr. Wong and the monk have in common. On the surface, it seems not too many, although both have a spiritual grounding.

That must be it.

Searching for Life's Meaning

2011-03-05T10:43:00.000-10:00

Dessicated Cicada, Dried Orange Leaves,

Water-worn Fragments of Temple Tiles*

How unusual for me, it's been three weeks since last I posted here. (Not counting a couple of weak movie reviews over on my Yin diary.)

For various reasons including dreary asthmatic weather, moderate illness (even missing a Chinese painting class), and career stress, I have been in quiet retreat with myself. (Still there was an opera, La Traviata, a girls' night out with nice food at Cafe Sistina and pretty music. But without the commitment of a pricey season ticket and female companionship --the Wizard was traveling so missed the Verdi--I might have forgone the show and the very fine martinis served amidst the faux-Michelangelo decor of the the Italian restaurant.)

I have been pensive these weeks, contemplating the meaning of life and vitality (thinking of my father's birthday last week, his 91st, had he not died four years ago)...and in part because my latest Teaching Company course is "Philosophy, Religion and The Meaning of Life,"** which was pretty much my major in college, enhanced by the very interesting available extracurricular activities of the late '60s.

The 18-hour audio course, which probably sets me up to be miserable on arrival at my day-job, is a classic survey of Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian-Islamic thought and its implications, within a hero/saint framework (do we live for ourselves or others?) to consider the arguments of figures from Plato and Abraham to Jesus...and Mohammed...to Marx, Darwin and Freud, ending with Simone Weil and Hollywood. Last night's lecture on my way home from work, number 20 of 36, on Nietzsche ("The Return of the Tragic Hero") seems to have put me back at the keyboard.

No Buddha or Lao Tzu or Confucius here: Asian thought, which also has much to say about my favorite question, was consciously left out of the course, the way the militant athiests today tend to intentionally ignore the Eastern religious traditions in their rants. The Asian tradition (and Islam) was also largely absent from my undergrad studies as well, except for one survey course on mysticism and the reading of Hesse's Siddhartha in some philosophy class. And the extracurricular decades-long borrowing of The Gospel of Ramakrishna from the humanities library. (I eventually returned it, and I'm sorry I did.) Now revisiting the Western body of thought has been from a somewhat broader perspective; for the past several years I have been deep in exploration of Asian thought, particularly Taoism.

The TC course has really pointed to nothing new for me; when I went to college, at a small "church-related" liberal arts school, it was imperative that we middle-class baby-boom provincials all take a Western Civilization seminar ("Great Epochs in World Culture") on arrival, and in addition, a course on Biblical History. These freshman prerequisites were to expand and correct the narrow views many of us graduated from high school with. There was also a senior concluding seminar called "Integration of Art, Knowledge and Conduct," that was to put the cherry on the top of our education. This was a last ditch effort to dissuade us from those inculcated narrow views. (The actual events of the '60s --civil rights movements, Vietnam, sex, drugs and rock and roll--were probably more effective than that last seminar. Experience was the best teacher, despite the occasional overdose, war casualty, or unintended pregnancy.)

No matter your major, these courses were mandatory. The school at the time distributed its curriculum in three "Divisions." Division One was the humanities (art, history, language, philosophy, theology and religion); Division Three was the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, math). Division Two was the blurry no-man's land, the interface, the "soft" sciences of psychology, sociology, political science and economics, anthropology and...home economics. (My first roommate was a home-ec major; she left the school after her sophomore year to go to a more "party-oriented" university with sororities. Last I heard, she had gotten a job with the Singer Sewing Machine Company.) Apparently this classic Aristotelian division of disciplines has since given way to career-oriented "tracks." As a Division One major (who, in my case, started out in biology but quickly left that world), what jobs could one get apart from continuing in academia or law school? Teaching, journalism (the outcome I was lucky to enjoy, for a time).

So there is a nostalgia as I enjoy the 36 lectures of "P,R & MoF." It is good to have a structured tour of this stuff that I once studied but have not thought of in an integrated way in years. (It must be the appeal of those "learning cruises," also aimed at the demographic the Teaching Company exploits--educated, reasonably well off old farts; nothing makes you feel alive and young like taking a course...without tests and papers. Not the person in the New Yorker cartoon who says to her travel agent, "I'd love to take a cruise, as long as I don't have to learn anything.")

I don't feel like writing a paper (or a blog post) on this course, although I may have something to say later on the hero/saint motif in contrast to Eastern icons. Sage/shaman? Son of Heaven/slave? Enlightened man/wandering ghost?

In any case, this driving study (Commuter Courses) gives me something to think about during the day, when I am bored and blinded by email, spreadsheets and voice messages. In meetings, I look for the heroes and saints (even sages or shamans) in hopes of finding meaning.

And in a saintly attempt, I will begin Lenten fasting come Wednesday, but more heroically to adjust my stagnant liver qi than to earn credit for suffering. I will be thinking about those martinis consumed amid the reproductions of Michelangelo's astonishing naked men at Cafe Sistina. Do I abstain from those martinis for myself or for others? That's a question of the meaning of life.

*I discovered this cicada (a Chinese symbol of immortality) in a brass hulu (bottle-gourd shaped vase, a magical tool in Taoism) I bought in Wudangshan. The tiles were gathered from a stream where fragments of destroyed temple walls had washed down, perhaps from Cultural Revolution damage. The leaves are from an orange that was given to me by an old Taoist hermit. I find some meaning in this "still-life" arrangement.

**Note: If you become a customer of the Teaching Company, which I highly recommend, you can ALWAYS get these courses substantially cheaper than the advertised retail price.

Becoming a Cabbage

2011-02-14T12:49:00.000-10:00

Ornamental Cabbages

Portland, Oregon, Farmer's Market

During a moment of anger and self-doubt (yes, I have my share), I came across a poem in Shambhala Sun, one of the four free magazine subscriptions I got a few months back for filling out a marketing survey. I should say they weren't exactly free--they came with a $2-apiece shipping and handling charge, but still, eight bucks total for a year of Time, Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and the aformentioned Buddhist review, not a bad deal really.

Shambhala Sun is probably the only subscription renewal I will likely accept...well maybe Atlantic, but it takes so long to read that one, and so much socio-politics.

Anyway, in one of those moments of synchronicity when it seems as if everything in the universe is converging on a particular place in your own mind or brain or skull, whatever, there came this poem that just spoke to just me. Synchronicity is just being open to everything that's all connected anyway. But in moments of stress, it does feel like the universe is talking to you, and you alone.
**********

The Art of Disappearing
Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
**********

Did I mention anger and self-doubt? Well, we all have moments like that, brought on by pressure or its opposite, whatever that is, (what is it? a sucking vacuum?) that undoes the glue of the things that hold our identities together, the things like marriage, career, health. (And no, my marriage is fine, my health is okay, my career...well, another story.)

In an earlier post about change, where I said how nice it would be to just have a reset command for the shuffle of our life, an issue not completely articulated has to do with free will and determinism. One of the big questions that comes up from time to time. In the Philosophy of Mind audio course I'm "taking" during my morning commute, this issue was nicely dealt with: we do have free will, in a deterministic universe. Kind of like my iPod analogy. We can make all those choices moment to moment, reshuffling, but still there is only a limited library of songs, a limited program, to shuffle.

In addition, we observe how our lives are like and unlike others'. We can identify, or not, with the tragic intellectual tortured by the peasant during the Cultural Revolution; we can relate, or not, to Lucia di Lammermoor, first of the suicidal victims in the opera of the same name, with its archaic Romeo and Juliette plot. (Pretty music though; Friday's performance was enjoyable, pre-Verdi, not so energetic and emotional, except for the madness scene.) Pretty extreme examples, but archetypical plots.

But right now, I think I just want to become a cabbage.

Success and/or Failure

2011-02-10T08:19:00.000-10:00

Recently I was in a conference room where there was a plaque on the wall that said, "What would you do if you were guaranteed that you could not fail?" That's one of those ubiquitous quotes, like the serenity prayer, mantras that organizations use to express their wishful corporate philosophies, to stimulate (or possibly just simulate) positive thinking and achievement.

I was searching for the origin of the quote, and found another version:"...if you were guaranteed that you would succeed." Whatever, it's like asking is the devil or god in the details? (Actually, it's god, the devil quote is a derivation, but widely and more frequently used.)

Which got me to thinking, why must we frame everything we do in terms of success and failure? (Maybe Nike has it right: "Just do it.") I sometimes feel beset in a world seeking growth and improvement, feet held to the fire through processes and procedures, metrics and measurements, profit and loss, time and money. Good and evil, god and the devil. Right and wrong, rights and wronged. As if living was just a matter of applying an algorithm.

I would rather ask "What would you do if success or failure didn't matter, one way or the other?" I think that's the real question. Does a guarantee of a "successful outcome" matter? If not, those are likely the things you might really want to do.

"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."

I should go do some goal-less meditation now, but I need to get ready to "go to work," the extra-curricular thing I do to put my way through the lifelong-learning courses I have signed up for. Once I went to school to build a foundation for a career. Now I have a career that feels like something I do to put myself through school.

A word from the older but wiser to my younger readers: find and maintain work that isn't separate from what you love to do. And think about what you would do if you had all the time in the world. (Well, you do, really...it's probably money that holds you back, time and money being too often conflated. And there's the rub.)

The Wave

2011-02-08T18:41:00.000-10:00

All day I was bothered, trying to recall something I thought of as I left home this morning that would make a postable piece...I was pretty clear about what I accomplished on the Yin side, but what was it I was thinking? Like a dream that vanishes on awakening; was it lost forever in the deepest recesses of my mind? I need a dictaphone in my car. Or I guess I could send myself voicemail; I have a friend who does that all the time.

Then coming back home, driving into my complex it came to me when a local guy who appears to be cultivating a Qing Dynasty queue walking his red dog with the funny ears waved at me. That was it. Handwaving. (Not the wave that was probably an element in the audience at the Superbowl.)

This morning, as I was leaving the complex, a series of neighbors, some walking dogs, one waiting in the parking lot on her scooter chair for a ride, all waved at me. I hadn't greeted so many people so sequentially ever. I felt like a beauty queen greeting her subjects, like Miss Hawaii (left) in the Chinatown Chinese New Year Parade. I can understand why that waving can cause tendinitis or tennis elbow.

But it left me with a positive feeling. I didn't need to TALK to any of these folks, just smiling and waving acknowledgment of a nice morning was sufficient communication. Maybe a little simple and primitive, but it conveyed all the good will in the world.

Which got me thinking about handwaving. I looked it up on Wikipedia, fingertip font of all knowledge, and found:

...handwaving is an informal term that describes either the debate technique of failing to rigorously address an argument in an attempt to bypass the argument altogether, or a deliberate gesture and admission that one is intentionally glossing over detail for the sake of time or clarity.

I certainly wasn't engaged in any debate, but "glossing over detail for the sake of time or clarity." Yes, I suppose that's it. And maybe just that loving-kindness thing.

Change

2011-02-07T22:08:00.000-10:00

Driving home from my Chinese painting class in the driving rain, thinking about the inevitability of change to come with the new Rabbit Year energy, changes I want, changes I might dread, this came up on my iPod. I didn't even know it was there...was it Wilson Pickett? Someone solo with Booker T. and the MGs? Sam and Dave? I couldn't even be sure of the decade. I repeated it about 10 times and finally recognized Taj Mahal...from 43 years ago.

I think the iPod on shuffle is a great metaphor for fate and destiny. When you hit that shuffle command, your fate is pretty much set. It looks random, but really there is an unknown but unchangable path set like fate through your music library. You can walk back through the shuffle and see the "random" selections frozen in time. But, reset it and you can change your destiny any time.

If only life had such an easy reset feature. In any case, "Everybody's Got to Change Sometime."

Welcome Year of Tu!

2011-02-03T10:59:00.001-10:00

Kung hee fat choy/gung xi fa cai to everyone! Hope year of bunny brings benefits!

Thanks to my poetic friend for enhancing my little rabbit with an auspicious haiku.

Don't Look Back

2011-01-31T21:54:00.000-10:00

Arrived home after the second session of my current Chinese painting class, which also includes language, calligraphy study, cultural education, and the revelation that at least two of the class members are mutual acquaintances through work associations. It's just like Facebook, but blood and bone, something like brick and mortar.

First task, sort the mail: charity solicitations from World Wildlife Fund (please save the tigers), the Sierra Club (please conserve the land), and Doctors Without Borders (please heal the sick), an envelope with Important Tax Information Enclosed, subscription offers to decline for Archeology Today and the Columbia Journalism Review, my Amazon delivery of the I Ching as interpreted by Hua-Ching Ni, and most distressing, diaries to record one week of my TV viewing to participate in a Nielsen ratings survey. (Do they think I'm going to watch the Superbowl?)

Apparently, buying a big new TV put us on a list somewhere: we want to know what THEY watch! Well, won't THEY be surprised? They sent three diaries, because I apparently revealed that there were three TVs in the household when I agreed to do this. (I'm happy to skew the study, and besides, they included a crisp new one dollar bill which makes a nice bookmark in the I Ching. Two more, and I can cast hexagrams with bills, not coins, some kind of inflation.) The former primary TV has since been recycled through the Salvation Army. I'm not sure the second one actually works, it's hidden in a little cabinet in the living room. No one watches TV in the living room (although sometimes I watch DVDs there on an old iMac G4, my obsolete but still somewhat useful manapua Mac, you know the one, it looks like a Luxor lamp crossed with a big cha siu bao, something that might have been a character in The Brave Little Toaster.

The third TV (now number one), in my former-closet-now-entertainment-center, will be the focus of this diary keeping. I did check to see if I can record viewing in 15-minute increments, like billable agency hours, because that's about all the news I can stand in the morning, pretty much the only time the unit has been used so far to access cable or broadcast. I've been using the nice big display for movies and Asian drama on DVDs, and hope soon to get the connecting cable to be able to run similar stuff from my laptop: streaming Netflix and dramafever.com. I don't think Nielsen is interested in that, although I see there is a nice space in the diaries for comments about my television habits. That'll be fun.

It seems like a strange way to start the new year, Year of Rabbit, the noisy welcome of which I enjoyed Saturday in Chinatown with a fine dim sum lunch, an exuberant lion and dragon dance parade, shopping for videos (for the numbah one TV) at my favorite Chinatown vendor, bargaining for some scroll landscapes with a cool old gentleman from Shanghai, and demonstrations of wushu and more lion dancing on the stage at the Chinese Cultural Plaza.

My personal attitude toward a new year, a new day even, is "don't look back." But maybe this guy just wasn't paying attention. Well, the dancing lion isn't on the World Wildlife Fund's endangered dangerous big cat list. (Although it is considered appropriate to pop some cash in his mouth.)

Look! Behind You!

The Nature of His Game

2011-01-29T09:52:00.000-10:00

The three-part Hawaii Opera Theatre's season opened last night with Faust. As a non-opera-loving friend said earlier, "That's the one about the guy who sells his soul to the devil, right?" Indeed, the Faust legend is deep and complicated and, despite an opera plot that seems dated by contemporary standards of drama and real life (who cares if someone has a baby out of wedlock, conceived by a devil-driven rogue) still has a lot of appeal in an era where moral integrity and success seem to be so easily compromised, at least as witnessed in economic and political news of the day.

Throughout the well-received production, I was looking for Taoist themes, an exercise that seems a little like meditation, to the extent that between acts I was googling on the iPad, Faust+Tao, but found nothing really. (Not talking, the Wizard was playing solitaire on his iPhone, willing himself to suppress the flu-based cough he's had since MLK Day.)

The opening act was stunning. Decrepit and sooty (oh wait, this is Gounod, not Wagner), Faust is complaining to a corpse on a gurney about his frustrations with philosophy, science, and religion to explain life...and dammit, why must he get old? (Well, don't we all, d'un certain age, ask that one?) Suddenly the corpse animates. A lithe stylish, tastefully leather-clad rock star arises from under the shroud.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," he seems to say.

Then you notice the tiny horns sprouting from his forehead, and there is indeed something troubling about his game. Sympathy for the Devil was not part of the score, but this guy (Jamie Offenbach, Hawaii-born, but with roots even less developed than Obama's) could have done it really well, channeling Mick the way Johnny Depp does Keith in his pirate persona. HOT's devil-in-leathers also sported gorgeous long shiny silky black hair that rivaled any of my Wuxia heroes'. His little nubs of horn kept growing from act to act, and by the finale it was pretty obvious who he was; his smooth leather pirate boots grew a lot of goaty fringe and cloven-toed hooves and he looked more and more menacing. Though not the protagonist, he kinda stole the show. (Or maybe it was just me.)

Mephistopheles...Satan!... appears to be a manifestation of Faust's deluded craving for knowledge and lust for youthful life (especially in the form of a chaste young lady.) Kind of a Taoist theme, I guess, with really horrible consequences.

The final scene in which the naive Marguerite, shunned and imprisoned for giving birth illegitimately to Faust's child, languishes, even killing her infant, in her jail cell. Faust and the Devil appear on the scene of battle over her soul. We think Mephistopheles wins: "Judged!" But no, it's almost a reprise of Shen Yun, and the angels sing, "Redeemed!" Marguerite casts off her earthly shell and ascends to heaven. With the dead baby left lying on the prison floor, it's a creepy scene, and I longed for the Falun Gong angels to descend to take HIS poor soul to Heaven's Gate. There are some unresolved plot points here.

Now that I'm thinking of it, Shen Yun was the opener of the opera season, which this year at least includes no Wagner. Next up, Lucia di Lammermoor, which shares place setting, though not plot, with Brigadoon, a Lerner and Lowe Broadway musical in which I was a chorus member in a high school production. That was a period when kilts were faddish, something that occurs from time to time. Off-hand I can think of no other Scottish-themed extravaganzas, except Mel Gibson's Braveheart, which I don't think had any kind of musical enhancements. Just half-naked men being tortured, a favored theme of Mr. Gibson's.

And today...Lunar New Year festivities in Chinatown. I look forward to seeing the 150-foot-dragon dance/parade and poking around in the shops for an amulet to "protect" the Rooster-Wizard during the Year of Rabbit (Tu) which begins next week (Feb. 3). I must paint some more rabbits; lao shi said Monday, at the first class of the painting season, my little shui mo bunny was good (she's no Tiger Mom teacher) and I should practice more. Her own rabbit painting is richly colorful; for some reason my qi is stuck in a black and white mode, like black and white photography. The seven shades of Tri-X.

Color is eluding me. Shall I summon help from the underworld?

What Goes Up

2011-01-22T12:10:00.000-10:00

...will come down, eventually.

So today, I finally attack the chore of undoing the Solstice/Christmas sacrifice (in preparation for Year of Rabbit and Lent). What in early December was a pleasant task (even if I didn't quite throw myself wholeheartedly into it) now is just another tedious housekeeping job. (The lazy part of me just wants to torch the whole thing, but that would be so arsonistic, and I do love the ornaments, some of which are nearly personal antiques.) I AM glad I didn't put ALL the accumulated holiday crap on it. But in the end, we did get our money's worth out of the tree, to say nothing of considerable light and joy. Which is the point.

So I thought I was finished, poking around in the branches to make sure I didn't leave something sentimental behind, and there it is.

The pickle!

Tucked away in a hollow of the branches, a green glass dill, looking a little like a curiously diseased limp penis, that I bought maybe 20 years ago in "Germany" at Epcot Center, locus of world culture and commerce (by Disney). It was referenced to some legend (likely of the urban variety) that my Bavarian friend insists he never heard of --who would hang a pickle on a Christmas tree? And why? (Amanita mushrooms I get, but pickles?) I predict someday a Disney Christmas animation, to rival Polar Express, The Sour Legend of the Christmas Pickle. Or The Pickle vs. the Mushroom. A walking talking holiday pickle. Sounds obscene. As out of touch as I usually am, I suspect it has already been done. If not, I am conceiving a screenplay* and copyright for the concept. I had another one of these silly dills, probably acquired at Wal-Mart, given to me by my German/Druidish mother-in-law, but I passed it on (I think) to my son in a tradition-building sort of way.

Still, the dill has become an odd little element in my personal Christmas tradition and makes me recall the whirlwind Epcot ersatz trip to Germany, England (where I drank several pints of Bass), Morocco (where I ate a nice couscous), Canada, China (where I bought some tea), France, and the Global Future (where I got kinda sick on some crazy ride--shouldn't have drunk all the Bass followed by the couscous). I see Epcot "Theme Park" continues as a perpetual Disneyfied world's fair.

But wait...undoing the tree, I'm wrong, I'm not finished...I find yet another ornament tucked away, a hippie-style love bug****, another German artifact, more or less. The Volkswagen done up in a transformed tradition. (I never had a Volkswagen, not my style really, British roadsters** are more me, although I have a friend who has a new VW and it's a nice enough car. It has a vase for a flower on the dashboard.)

The VW and the Pickle.*** The Christmas tree is a German tradition after all.

Froeliche Weihnachte

*The plot for which is pickling. Any child who ever lived remotely near Pittsburgh, home to Theresa Heinz, the Pirates, the Steelers, the Penguins (but with no team ever named the Pickles--maybe a debate team in my screenplay), got a field-trip to the Heinz 57 catsup and pickle factory. And came away with cute little larval-looking pickle pins. These petite plastic pickles were my son's, but I think, as a child, I got cute little tin ones. Next year, these go on my tree...should send to him, but he doesn't do a Christmas tree. But now I think, they might make nice earrings. For a pregnant woman.

Pickle Larvae

**Speaking of which, I saw an old right-drive Morgan, dill-pickle green, in the parking lot at Starbuck's the other day. I walked around it, looking at the wooden dash, the tiny windscreen, the way Bob Dylan circled around Johnny Cash, and said "Yeah."

***Which also recalls to me an obscene limerick a friend and I concocted concerning a nun and pickle. Since she really deserves the copyright on it, I will not quote it here except to note the rhymes involving "dilly," the nun named Millie, whose affection for God was quite silly. It also involved jerkin' gherkins.

****Which is the name for some annoying insects which splatter on your windshield and radiator at a certain time in Florida; I had to scrub their remains off after that visit to Epcot in 1990-whatever.

Meditation

2011-01-17T15:51:00.000-10:00

During my first serious retreat doing some Taoist meditation I was a little alarmed.

"We're practicing how to be dead," I thought to myself.

A silly thought. But not really too far off the mark.

Recently, in a brief dialogue among some bloggers about this very topic of meditation, someone said I should elaborate (I think that's what she meant) on my comments about my understanding of the "goal" of meditation.

I blog (which sounds like it comes from the same root as, say, "blah, " as in "blah, blah, blah") about the mundane yin and yang aspects of my daily life and observations thereof. I don't usually care to talk about these very deep, expansive things. So much literature is out there, my comments have far less significance than any other commentary on the Tao Te Ching or the I Ching.

But today, after arising from a delightful winter afternoon nap and then, a little sit in the sunshine on my lanai, I think, maybe I do have something to say about this.

Or at least quote (from Thomas Cleary's translation, Taoist Meditation):

"In olden times there was a man who used black and white beans to make of record of his self-examination of mind. Whenever he had a good thought, he would put a white bean in a bowl; and whenever he had a bad thought, he would put a black bean in the bowl.

At first, there would be mostly be black beans. Later the black and the white would be half and half.

Eventually there would be mostly white beans, then nothing but white beans. Ultimately there would not even be white beans.

There is something to this method, clumsy as it seems."

In specific reference to the blog comments, there would be no kids doing the counting, no gorillas either.

Of course, I might be completely misinterpreting what the other bloggers were talking about.

And now I'm going back to the lanai, with the Yellow Emperor, who really gets it, where there is still some sun, to do some not-thinking.

Weishenme bu?

2011-01-17T13:36:00.000-10:00

Why can't he just heal everyone?

Here Comes the Sun

2011-01-15T17:04:00.000-10:00

After a week--or maybe it was more, seemed like more--of rainy, cold, clammy unpredictable Hawaii winter weather, a warm dry sunny day.

The cats are positioning themselves in the small spots of sunshine coming through the windows. The clear skies encouraged a delightful outing to make a charity delivery of the TV made obsolete by the new one; to pick up a $165 money order reimbursement at the Post Office (for the UTTER FAIL of a guaranteed Express Mail delivery at Christmas to the 90-year-old patriarch); to down a pint or two or three at the Irish pub across the street from the other one that was closed where we would have had lunch if it had been open; and for a necessary grocery/pharmacy/Chinese kitchen run. Everyone on the island is in a superlative outgoing good mood. It's the sun, I'm sure. Each of these outing efforts is a story.

Getting rid of the old TV: We tried to give it to Goodwill, where I dropped off a couple bags of old clothes and such, but Goodwill does not accept "electric" things. The very nice man handling the intake said we could take it next door to Best Buy where they would "recycle" it. (I interpreted that as "throw it away.")

"Let's try the Salvation Army, downtown," I said to the Wizard. "And if they won't take it, IHS will." IHS is our local homeless sheltering organization. We donate cash regularly to both of these charities. Goodwill seems to have gone a bit upscale, reselling things to people just a little older or poorer than us. A few miles closer to town, we arrived at the Salvation Army donation spot. They were DELIGHTED to get the item, a perfectly decent relatively new working 19" color TV with a remote and the owner's manual.

Since we were downtown, I said, "Let's stop at Murphy's," our favorite Irish pub/restaurant.

"Just what I was thinking," said the Wizard. But when we got there, it was closed, not open until 4. It was 12:30. (Downtown Honolulu --unlike Waikiki--is kind of dead on Saturday afternoon.)

"Well, let's go over to O'Toole's," the other Irish pub across the street where the neon beer brand signs were on.

"Just what I was thinking," said the Wizard.

Claiming the money--A few pints later, we pulled out to go to the Post Office to collect a certified mailing of Postal Money Orders (sent from the Post Office) to reimburse the colossal Express Mail Fail. (This is a whole 'nother horrible story, better posted on the yin side, yet to be written.) Long lines near closing time at the neighborhood P.O., but when we finally got to the counter, retrieved the mail, and asked for payment on the money orders, Rudy the clerk couldn't have been nicer. His service and sunny manner completely exonerated the Post Office in my mind.

"You two have been together for a long time," he said, cheerfully handling our claim. It was a little ambiguous as to exactly who got the cash. We may have been the most interesting thing he had to deal with all day. He reminded me of a fabulous United Airlines ticket agent who put us together on a flight out of Hong Kong for which I had a business class seat and the Wizard had coach. How charmed I was when the Wizard came after boarding to sit with me in the upgraded section.

Healthy shopping--Then to the grocery. We got everything on the list and then some. Looking at his iPhone notepad, in (on?) which I had entered something. The Wizard asked, "What is cargaine?"

"Oh, that's coffee..I can't type that small. I was trying to type caffeine. Last time you got decaf. It was awful. We need real coffee."

On checkout, the next person in line lauded us on our "healthy" purchases. "But what about the gin," I said.

"Oh, but that has juniper! Berries! Healthy!"

Exactly what I say every time I shake up a classic Martini.**

And what could be better than a crisp Martini at sundown on a perfect sunny day? Which is what I think Sandra Bullock's character said in 28 Days, or something like.*

*"Yeah, I know I drink a lot, I know I do because I'm a writer and that's what I do, I drink. I'm not like those people out there, I can control myself! I can, if - that - if I wanted to, I could, if I wanted. I can! I can! "

**The Martini was invented as the first cocktail that mixed, completely contrary to conventional wisdom and common sense, wine and spirits (i.e., gin and vermouth.) No "wine", no Martini.

Shen Yun Hao Bu Hao*

2011-01-15T08:01:00.001-10:00

I was forewarned. Or at least fore-informed to expect 70 percent performing arts, 30 percent shameless (but entertaining) promotion of Falun Dafa.

I was almost late for last night's performance of Shen Yun (ironically, because I was poking around in a bookstore looking for a particular translation of the I Ching), but made it on time to meet the Wizard in the lobby. And then the fun began.

As payback for enduring Wagner operas, I put in the Wizard's Christmas stocking (kinda pricey) tickets to this "inspirational" production about China's 5,000 years of civilization, stressing the "compassion and loyalty, kindness and bravery [that] lie at the heart of traditional Chinese culture."

I'm not sure everyone in the audience knew that Shen Yun (meaning something like divine style) is a performing arts troupe that is "associated" with the loose Falun Dafa empire and has a mission "to renew the true, divinely-inspired cultural heritage of China." In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, Falun Dafa and its founder register somewhere on the scale of fear between the Guomingdang and the Dalai Lama. Although, I think Li Hongzhi has a lot in common with Hong Xiuquan, the anti-Qing official who thought he was the brother of Jesus and instigated the Taiping Rebellion. And in a civilization with 5,000 years of history, that was like yesterday, and not easily forgotten by the new dynastic powers.

The show largely featured classical, folk and ethnic dance routines, pretty familiar to us; we've seen a lot of this done by local dance troupes and Chinese touring companies. Shen Yun, based in New York, is banned in the PRC, which may be why the annoying Western narrator pointed out that "You'll never see anything like this in China." In fact I saw things exactly like this in China, except for the stunning operatic Falun Dafa hymns and three acts which featured police beating up and killing Falun Dafa practitioners. In one, a practitioner is harassed and

killed when he tries to put up a banner in a public park in, was it Beijing? Shanghai? Hong Kong? I saw one of these banners in Hong Kong in 2008; the attacks aren't quite so blatant there, Hong Kong not quite under the total control of the Party yet. Although, recently a Shen Yun show had to be cancelled there because the "Hong Kong authorities" (read Beijing) would not issue some of the performers visas.

By the third of these counter-revolutionary-opera scenes, the audience was tittering...the police had a Keystone Cops quality about them, and the descending heavenly maidens were just too predictable as they revived the victim and took him off to a glittering palace (Heaven's Gate) in the sky. It reminded me that this was public relations (the Chinese invented propaganda), more than just promoting culture through dance, a little like calling the soup I enjoyed when I got home "vegetarian." I'd concocted it the night before with the few vegetables I could find in the fridge--some lightly stir-fried onion, carrots, mushrooms, and Shanghai bok choy. With some leftover cooked rice. All added to the broth from the remnants of a roasted chicken. 70 percent vegetables, 30 percent chicken broth. A dash of shoyu, and any Chinese peasant or prisoner would think it was great.

"Vegetarian" Soup is Good

Still, the 70 percent entertainment part of the program was just lovely. The dancers were lithe, flexible, strong and acrobatic. Costumes were colorful and matched the front-projection scenery. (In one of the blatant Fala Dafa persecution scenes, the backdrop was an idyllic Chinese villa in the mountains. "I could live there," I said to the Wizard. "No," he replied, "the feng shui is really bad, look how the stairs go up to the door.")

The show improved after opening with a bizarre dramatization of a creation myth and a hymn sung by a formidable soprano, called "Spreading True Words" (...Corrupt as the world is, the Dafa spreads...The followers of Dafa spread true words.) Acts included a tribute to the Qin terra cotta warriors, although the much more elaborate "5,000 years of..." show I saw in Hangzhou featured live horses in a battle scene with fire. The Monkey King and Pigsy had an interlude, and the Mongolian horsemen (sans horses) were really quite good. "Mischievous Monks" were cute, not exactly Shaolin-style, but heartwarming. A particularly lovely moment was "Plum Blossom," the ladies of the company dancing with fans that simulated the winter flowering, promising the arrival of spring. One of the fluttering fans came undone during the dance, but the dancers recovered with extreme grace. In fact, all of the ladies' dances reminded me of the dancers who entertain emperors in the historical dramas I like to watch.

Still I am a little conflicted. I love Chinese dance, and it was good. I am interested in Chinese spiritual practices, but I look to tradition, not a latter day -- dare I say -- cult. I have no doubt that the followers of Li Hongzhi's sometimes bizarre teachings are sincere, moral and high-minded, and who would argue that the CCP's harassment and fear of these folks is not despicable. But at the same time, Falun Dafa has become positioned as an adversary to the Chinese power structure, and we saw what happened at Tiananmen.

Earlier in the day, in the run-up of activities before Hu Jintao visits Washington, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech that suggests she understands very well the yin and yang of international politics. But according to The Epoch Times, a media arm of Falun Dafa, she was "suggesting that China get rid of the Communist Party. What an excellent idea!"

Who knew that this stage show would be connected to something so deeply political. Religion and politics, mixing it up again: Falun Dafa evangelism, despised by the Chinese government, with millions of followers, a prominent voice in the media and beautiful stage shows!

I just hope my interest in Chinese dance doesn't prevent me from getting a visa for my next trip to Wudang to study traditional Taoism. In any case, this performance will be remembered personally as a Chinese prelude to the western opera season which begins in just two weeks with Faust. Stay tuned.

*Shen Yun is okay, good/not good. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, an idiom a Chinese friend had difficulty understanding.

Winter in Hawaii

2011-01-13T14:53:00.001-10:00

It was a dark and stormy night. The cats gravitated, sinking in heavily, to the mink blanket. I replaced my flip flops with my 30-year-old sheepskin slippers. I drank some Scotch (not really a tropical tipple, except on a dark and stormy night) for a levitating effect. I thought about people who are here for a warm winter holiday. Sixty degrees at night with hard rain and wind seems dreadful to me, but for the folks from Atlanta or Boston, I'm sure it is just wonderful. Not quite what they were planning, but wonderful. They're probably enjoying their mai tais.

The weather is slowing down my thinking, I feel like hibernating with the cats, under the mink blanket. Driving home in the driving rain was a challenge, though with a recently replaced timing belt and new oil pump I wasn't too worried about road trouble. (TAO 61 has made 213,000 miles; if she were human we wouldn't have financed such an organ transplant, but I think she is immortal. I used to call her Emma; now I call her Sun Buer, which sounds a little like my maiden name.) I turned on the heater. It still works. I think I used it last year about this time.

I post this ramble mostly to move the focus on the Tuscon shooting down a notch; it was bothering me to see that first thing when I log on to my own site.

The white Christmas cactus is blooming. A little yang to offset the day's yin.
Stay warm and dry, everyone, no matter where you are.

SO UGLY

2011-01-08T13:24:00.000-10:00

This is so ugly.

I take an in breath, an out breath. What else can I do?

Purging (Cont.)

2011-01-01T07:34:00.000-10:00

The energy of the New Year is stimulating the urge to purge...or it's just necessary. There is a disadvantage in living in one place for a long time, in my case, a rather small tenth-floor apartment (though large and cheap by Hong Kong standards) for 15 years, with no attic or basement and seriously limited closet space. Until here and now, the divestment of possessions has always occurred because we were moving. A little like dying I guess, or at least starting a new life, you realize there's stuff just not worth taking with.

And it's so hard to get the stuff out of the house. Used to be the charity scavengers would make occasional visits; we could leave stuff at the mailbox lobby, but the wise tree-slaughtering building management put an end to that convenience, probably for some insurance liability reason.

So now my purging of stuff usually means just moving things around until constipated piles accumulate and must be taken to Goodwill or Salvation Army. This is making me think of digestion; bulimic purging is equally messy although certainly more dangerous.

In order to accommodate a gift from the Wizard, I have had to sacrifice a closet which was largely occupied by shoes and bags, because I once alluded, not seriously, that it would be a great, or at least logical place for a large television. (Even though conventional wisdom is to not install televisions in a bedroom.) And now it will be. Ostensibly this will be better for my eyes than watching so many videos on my laptop, an in-bed-habit. (I live a sort of kang lifestyle.) Now I will be able to watch swordfights and conversations over tea tables, nearly life-sized, going on in my closet! And read the subtitles too (which was difficult and distracting from a distance on the now-obsolete 19-inch screen).

But the dunging out...it forced me to finally discard 15+-year-old suits and shoes that even if they fit, I would probably never wear again. Lacking a sister or a daughter (or a friend who would accept the stuff) I am left to bag it all up for Goodwill. (One word of advice from a friend; when you do this, NEVER go back to visit the bag.) I could take it to a consignment shop, or do some e-Bay trading, or have a garage sale, but that would just become another task. (Or I could wait until I became thin (if not young) again, but likely from some wasting disease which would not encourage the wearing of tailored tweed suits and silk blouses.)

The Wizard is very good at purging. But then, like many men, he buys new clothes, like uniforms, once a year, identical pants and socks to replace the ratty ones. He fails to understand the emotional attachment women have for old clothes, many of which outfits he bought for me; he always liked the career girl look, tailored suits and bowed Ferragamos. And a particularly difficult issue is what to do with old underwear...by which I mean lingerie that looked good when I was 32, but now is silly as a hippo in a tutu...underwear you can easily throw out when it gets sloppy, but silky, lacy, satin lingerie...how can you pass on used garments of seduction in a Goodwill bag or put them in a dumpster. I suppose some sort of witchy sacramental burning ritual is called for, crones in caftans chanting some passage from the Story of O while torching the lacy demi bras and thongs and teddies, feeding the fire with old bottles of Chanel No. 5 and the weirdly named Samsara.

In the end purging is about balancing practicality and passion. And "letting go." It is easy to speak about these things, like speaking about clearing the mind in meditation, but in actual practice, it takes great will. How many shoes and handbags does one actually need? (Hardly any.) But how many do you love? (All of them.) In my mind, this associates with fantasy promiscuity, looking for the perfect man. (With whom I already live, the one I would never discard.) These comments probably belong over on the yin side, so female, but the energy is all yang.

So now I am stranded among piles of old clothes and accessories (to say nothing of old board games), finally cutting some cords of attachment...but first I want to get that plasma TV installed so I can see Song Il-guk and Vincent Zhao (also perfect men) in high def.

Maybe I'll look through that lingerie pile again.

Floor Scrubbing/Smooth Sailing

2010-12-30T14:47:00.000-10:00

Not one to really get into floor scrubbing, being the world's most indifferent housekeeper (in my house, floor-scrubbing is on a par with remodeling), I finally succumbed to the really necessary task. The floor was sticky. I highly recommend the made for TV scrubbie especially since I could not find a proper rag mop or even a sponge. Actually there was a sponge mop in the closet, but so old it bio-degraded just as I put it into the Spic and Span solution.

I could do better...there are a few spots that could use a down and dirty massage with a Brillo pad, but I'm not a down-on-my-knees kind of girl, especially when it comes to housekeeping. I throw a few bowls of hot soapy water around the floor, and with the efficient TV-scrubbie/squeegie...eventually, everything comes clean...enough. Gou le. Ca suffit. A few final swish/swashes with the TV mop/squeegie and a half roll of paper towels to sop up all the muddy water...not perfect, but not too bad.

As Guan Yin advised me, smooth sailing!