Equinoxed Up

'Tis the beginning of fall, marked by the autumnal equinox, a moment of balance or synchrony with the sun, and a time when yin begins to dominate, to reach its fullest at the winter solstice.  I have been anticipating this day since the new (haircut) moon, when the Wizard reported his energy was unusually high.  And just as well it was.  What odd coincidence that the garbage disposal and the ice-maker failed just as his toilet started to leak.  (Was some triple-threat demon at work?  If you could apply TCM to household appliances, I suppose some channel was clearly blocked. I need a feng shui plumber.)  All is repaired now, and I have also recovered from recent unpleasant efforts at my job.  Sometimes I am burdened by uncontrollable deadlines and an excess of paperwork.  I am not a numbers person and  spreadsheets and schedules result in serious MEGO.

Fortunately my eyes were not beyond appreciating the latest technological acquisition the Wizard surprised me with.  I am not an early adopter (and may or may not jump on the iPhone bandwagon by Christmas) so it will seem dull that I am impressed with the Blu-ray player that arrived. The Wizard bought it just to watch Robert Downey Jr.'s latest Sherlock Holmes film. (Industrial Age London looks even grittier in high definition.) And it was impressive, although the movie left me a little cold. (Though the Wizard, a Holmes aficionado, says it was true to the spirit, if not the letter.) I am too prejudiced by my wuxia preferences, though Holmes certainly had some MA background, and Downey's moves weren't too bad.  Still, now I crave seeing Vincent Zhao and Song Il-guk in such perfection.

I quickly switched my Netflix account to accommodate the new player (which sits alongside my all-region player for Asian releases meant mainly for Malaysia and Taiwan.)  My first netflix Blu-ray DVD: Puss In Boots, a peculiar conflation of nursery rhymes and fairy tales, in animation that makes Studio Ghibli seem a little primitive. (I must find Totoro in Blu-ray!)  But why did I think Puss In Boots was Johnny Depp?  (It's Antonio Banderas.)  The pirate boots and flair for haberdashery, especially the products of hatters, I guess.  And a strange leftover sensation from last fall when the Peeping Tom kept me up half the night in a hotel room at LAX.

View out the window from my hotel bed.  LA. is a truly strange place.

I suppose this post really belongs on Tao 61, where I talk about movies and yinny things, but being the equinox, it hardly matters, no difference.  I'll post something there about another interesting acquisition, as the earth hangs for a moment in perfect balance before leaning the other way.  Next on the agenda: gotta get some mooncakes.

Moon Madness

I awake at 6:30 before it is light, darker even than it was when I awoke earlier at 3 a.m. to the moonbeams shining through my window.  I wasn't aware it was the full moon (full dragon) as I went to the lanai to drink a bit of water.  It was raining, but the moon was shining bright through clouds; I could discern a misty clot of vapor in the the stream valley below.  Not up for moon cream meditation, I lingered a bit before returning to my warm bed with its fresh soft sheets and a cat who rearranged himself between my legs, purring.  We don't know what purring really means...is it happiness or submission?  I have come to see it as a sort of qigong device, like the kneading routine they go through before settling down.  The faint vibrations from his body to the back of my knee helped me drift off again.

I was feeling a little more relaxed anyway, having relieved myself of a burden...I have been blocked (probably stagnant liver qi) for the past few weeks, unable to complete a painting project to which I had committed myself.  I owed one more image to my friend to illustrate --as if it's necessary-- her collection of haiku.  But the dragon I envisioned just wouldn't come. I did a little Chinese New Year's sketch that had been taunting me on my table as I passed everyday, but I just couldn't finish it.  I confessed my blockage, but not to worry, she is not waiting on me, so some relief.  Perhaps now the dragon will come easily; it is hard to get the image out of my head and on to paper when there is an obligation involved.  It interferes with the spontaneity.  I am not professional or commercial enough (which simply means I'm not getting paid for it) to produce on demand.

On awakening in the dark --the moon has long set--I made a conscious effort to remember the dream I was having.  I was at an academic conference of some sort. I  went back to the dining hall to retrieve a missing shoe, a red stiletto. It was still under the table.  Attached to it was something like a bicycle chain, which on closer inspection turned out to be something like a tapeworm.  (In dreams things are always "something like.")  To the tapeworm was attached a card with instructions on how to ingest it, with special notes on how to take it camping.  I know there are people who use tapeworms as weight loss devices.  My reader who recently did a piece on her own dreams might explain what all this means.  Unblocking the liver qi?

Liu Ye

No, I suspect the dream is related to the surreal and shocking media I have been indulging in the past few days. Last week I watched a little film called Dark Matter, with Meryl Streep, Aidan Quinn and the extremely versatile Liu Ye.  I've enjoyed his eager, brooding style before in several films--Postmen in the Mountains, Purple Butterfly, Curse of the Golden Flower, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and a couple of historical Chinese political propaganda epics. I've not been able to get this story out of my mind. Loosely based on an actual event, the plot concerns the trajectory of a brilliant young Chinese doctoral student in a western university--literally in the Rocky Mountains. Reviews suggest this was unappreciated by mainstream audiences, but I was blown away. Under the ineffective protection of Meryl Streep, who studies tai chi, mandarin and tea making, as part of her support of young Chinese students at the university, Liu Ye's character (Liu Xing) tries to adapt, but in an inappropriate way.  Liu Xing gets mixed messages all along the way.  He is encouraged to challenge his professor (Aidan Quinn) who advises him that his dissertation thesis is way over his head, (meaning way over his advisor's head and challenging his mentor's theory).  A staged western shootout in a tourist pioneer village is contrasted with his watching a wuxia film on pirated TV and foreshadows the disastrous end.  The film is accented by chapter divisions that follow the wu xing, a Chinese cosmological symbol which probably was not understood by most people who watched this film.  A patronizing cultural clash leads to a shocking conclusion.  Why I am discussing movies lately here on my yang side may indicate some integration of yin and yang.  (I wouldn't mind integrating a bit with Liu Ye, which Meryl Steep failed to do do in one sexually tense scene when the failed cosmology student, reduced to selling cosmetics, applies cream to her hands and face.)

At the same time, I am nearly at midpoint in 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's new big novel (925 pages).  I'm not sure why, but I need to finish it, hopefully without injury.  The last time I read a big book like this, that big Ken Follett book about gothic cathedral building, I did actual diagnosed arthritic damage to my wrist (which I have since overcome through qigong). 1Q84 has the pace of a long Korean drama with cliff-hanging chapters, with intense and possibly unnecessary physical descriptions of characters, especially the shapes of people's heads.  With even more bizarre sex scenes than Ken Follett's, set in contemporary Japan, it has a manga, Studio Ghibli feel, as if interpreted by John Irving. It's oddly compelling, but I'm not ready to say yet that it's really very good.  A few good lines to underline...in 925 pages one would hope.  Easy to read, but one wonders what might be lost in translation.  I have read some Murakami before, none of his novels, just short stories in the New Yorker.  Over the past several years I have ceased reading New Yorker fiction, and now I think I know why.

The sky is lightening, but not like it was at 3 a.m.  The world seems a little different today, though not as different as 1Q84's with TWO moons in the sky.  I must get ready for my day in my academic office.

One Hump or Two?

Quick, how many movies can you think of that feature camels in major roles?

I can name two: " The Story of the Weeping Camel" and "The Big Animal". Maybe three if you include "Lawrence of Arabia", but they were Arabian dromedaries and had the same supporting roles, so to speak, as the horses. And four if you include "The Ten Commandments", but it's not really historically accurate that the Jews took camels out of Egypt when they left anyway. And five, the camels in "Kingdom of Heaven", Arabians.

For me, as screen stars, it's those big Bactrians, the shaggy two-humpers, that deserve the Oscars, in the "Weeping Camel" and "The Big Animal."

For a long time, I thought the only movie with a camel as a central character was "The Weeping Camel", a National Geographic documentary about Mongolian nomads who are dependent on their herds. It's a fabulous tale of magic and the clash of modernization against the old ways.

But then along comes "The Big Animal", a Polish film about individuality and eccentricity and its clash with a rigid society that can't tolerate anything that hasn't been properly assigned a taxable category. Not that far from "The Weeping Camel."

I wonder if there is a camel's actor's guild?

I don't know why I didn't publish this post earlier; ( wrote it some weeks ago, but this Google posting seems to limit me to the day I started my essay...one of the problems of blogging...I can't ruminate and edit a post over time). I'm too lazy/busy right now to create links to those films. Just go to IMDB and you'll find all the details. I love these movies.

My pathetic painting above is inspired by a B&W image in John Blofeld's "City of Lingering Splendour-A Frank Account of Old Peking's Exotic Pleasures." A good read. Google that too.

And if you really care about camels, read "The Lost Camels of Tartary," by John Hare. When it comes to endangered or fragile species, some people like pandas. Some people like Florida panthers. Some people like wolves (not that they are fragile or endangered, really.) I like Bactrian camels.