Purging (Cont.)

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.

50 Years of Opera in the 50th State

Missed seeing the Wolf moon last night, not just because I was sitting in an opera hall for 3.5 hours, but because it turned cloudy and rainy. This was a disappointment to the many opera-going women who had slipped into exotic shoes for the event; it was hard to tell whether the sweet young thing in the four-inch red-soled stilettos (Louboutins?) was just not quite able to walk in them, or was trying to keep them dry and pristine as she wobbled to the parking lot.

The Marriage of Figaro was confusing (it is also called a "day of madness")  but with Mozart's music it put everyone in a good mood. "I don't have any idea what's going on, but I love this" was a comment I heard from more than one person.  Everyone knows the overture for this one, but the rest of the music is less familiar, but beautiful.  The Wizard insists we saw it before, in 2001 (has it been that long?) but I really don't remember it.  The production was probably very different.  Last night's had a fine cast in a fairly simple set.  It was the yang version of my wu xia habit (chronicled in My Yin Side) --supertitles (as opposed to subtitles) to interpret the Italian, above the stage and orchestra, and action on a broad three-dimensional display (as opposed to my laptop's).  But similar in the themes -- revenge, lust, loyalty, and faithfulness.  There's also something political going on in Marriage of Figaro, but I think we missed it.

The high point for the audience was the startling reunion of the mother, played as a larger-than-life Queen of Hearts character, with her son...with whom she was in love until she recognized his birthmark.  She and the boy's father reunite, all together as a family, and with the son's real lover.  The ironic part was that the long-lost son --a stylish and charming Figaro-- and his lover were black.  (It was as surprising as the Barber of Seville's Figaro who one year performed entirely on a Segway.) I don't think Mozart had written color into the plot, but the multi-ethnic Hawaii audience found it quite amusing. It was like an element of Otello had bled into the Marriage.

As I have said before, the thing about opera is that you never know what's going to happen, but it is all part of a repeating cycle, like the lunar event that was obscured but most certainly happening.  We arrived from dinner a little late last night, just as the hall was dimming to raise the curtain. We took some vacant seats to avoid disturbing anyone already settled in.  At intermission we found our actual and somewhat better subscribed seats, as well as the Opera couple we see three Fridays each year.  (We all always get the same seats.) "We wondered where you were," they said. This year, HOT is celebrating 50 years of classic opera in Hawaii.  Mr. Opera told me he had been coming every year for as long as he could remember. Last night's program listed all the operas since 1961 and we enjoyed revisiting some memories over the past seasons; this was the fifth Marriage of Figaro in the company's history.  I'm actually surprised that HOT continues to thrive; our local symphony has declared bankruptcy (a sad phrase to see in print, how the economy affects the arts).  I suspect it's a matter of scale; the opera, which has itself cut its summer light offering, does only three productions a year. The symphony is an ongoing long-term commitment for the organization as well as its subscribers.  Mr. Opera and I agreed that it is easier to plan for three productions over six weeks than an entire season of many months.**  (Even with season opera tickets, we missed the first production in 2007, Samson and Delila, just because we weren't paying attention to the calendar.) And much as I like to hear live music, you can still enjoy a good symphony with a good CD and earphones; but live opera offers so much more stimulation (though there was a televised production of Turandot that I enjoyed a lot).

In two weeks, Wagner!

**Although that doesn't explain why people who are so inclined never fail to miss an episode of American Idol or House.

Starting to Begin Again

I once edited a monthly progress report for a scientist I worked for who had written the astonishing and confidence-building reassurance, "We are starting to begin the preparations to plan the event, an activity that will continue for several months." I don't know if that satisfied the government agency funding the project, but it did make the subsequent editing easy: I just struck out a level of planning each month until the event happened all by itself. That seemed ludicrous to me then, but now, on Gregorian/Solar New Year's Day 2009 it seems like a great approach. I will be using the next three weeks to get ready for the next New Year's event, Chinese Lunar New Year, beginning Jan. 26.

This is a grace period during which I recover from the festivities and feasting and fund depletion that started at Thanksgiving. The solstice happened (all by itself) while we observed our wedding anniversary with a dinner at a favorite restaurant at our favorite table. Later I started shopping and creating gifts for the girls in the office: I made 52 pairs of earrings, most of which look like hippie-styled Christmas ornaments. (Well, they are, really.)

I added a pan to the Wizard's All-Clad collection, but had the most fun on Christmas Eve at the hardware store. Here comes a suggestion to women who are stymied by their SO's practical nature. What to give a renaissance man who loves soldering irons and socket wrenches? (My artist friend says that tools for guys are the same as makeup for gals...you can never have too many brushes or eye shadow colors.) I had tried to go to our local hardware store, the venerable and charitable 100-year-old City Mill (eschewing Home Depot and Lowe's, those carpetbaggers) the evening before but arrived just at closing. The clerks were moving all the outside displays into the already darkened store. I asked what the hours were for Christmas Eve. One of the guys looked at me compassionately and said, "If there's something you NEED right now, I can still get it for you." If my toilet was running or I needed a new deadbolt, he would have made the effort to help me. I told him I was just planning to browse the aisles for guy-stocking stuffers, but I would be back next day. I believe had I been at one of the big-box stores I would not have gotten that genuine concern. That's why I like to shop local.

So next day I spent an hour pulling all kinds of odd weird cheap things off the City Mill racks--colored cable ties and etching tools and some Dremel bits, drill stops (a BIG hit!) and various glues. I had to ask for some assistance, and it may have been from the same guy I talked to the night before. Boy was he impressed with the haul in my cart! "Lucky guy," he said. And, now I know my way around City Mill! I got this notion because the Wizard usually loads my stocking with office supplies, the funny kind things you never buy for yourself, but eventually come in handy. Colored paper clips, map pins, post-its, hi-lighters, strange tapes and pens. He probably goes to Office Depot, but I forgive him: he also includes mini-bottles of single-malts and chocolates.

On the first day of Christmas I was delighted to find something under the tree I hadn't ever received as a young girl, not being quite in the right demographic at the time for a Barbie Doll. And there it was (I had pointed it out to Santa because it was so funny), Tippi Hedren, Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" Barbie, complete with attacking crows and nice stiletto shoes. Now I want a custom Barbie, "Baroness Counting Kolea." She will come complete with a white Mazda Miata (license TAO 61), 32 makeup brushes and an mini-nano-Barbie iPOD.

And last night, New Year's Eve, and the 7th day of Christmas (yes, the 12 days of Christmas come AFTER Dec. 25) my true love gave to me an obscure and hard-to-find Alibris-sourced book which I regrettably discarded when we moved to Hawaii: The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe: An occasionally indecent exploration of the sexual history of feet and footwear, published in the U.S. by Penthouse Press, but originally by a British house (it figures) in 1976. (I had discarded the Penthouse version; now I have the British one.) Written by William A. Rossi, a podiatrist who one suspects was also a bit of a foot fetishist, it is a fascinating treatise on the largely erotic significance of shoes, with sections on Chinese footbinding, stilettos, biker boots, and the people who love shoes. Since I always notice shoes, and have quite a collection of footwear, I was delighted to have this book back. (I would be even more delighted if I could still wear my Ferragamo stilettos and restore the black patent leather on my 3.5 inch Bally's; alas chronic plantar's fasciitis quite likely caused by those beautiful shoes obviates my indulgence. I am doomed to protect my Bubbling Well point with Tevas, Chacos, Crocs and Naturalizers! All very fine and comfortable, but utterly sexless shoes. Well, some of the Naturalizers are cute.) The ironic thing, I was a little late getting home last night because I had stopped at Macy's (which used to be the venerable and local Liberty House) to buy...some shoes. And I have an appointment this weekend to get a pedicure.

So this morning, after another of the season's dramatic series of dark and stormy nights (Dec. 26th's responsible in part for the power outage that made national news only because Obama was on-island) I am considering The Resolutions. No more extravagant shopping (which is why I bought all those shoes last night), eating right, getting exercise (walking in the Tevas), meditating to mitigate all these worldly desires, treasuring my friends, working smart, clearing clutter (yeah, right, see Yin post, A Perfect Mess). This year, which is coming to a close but not today, the Year of the Earth Rat, was the appropriate year for me, the Fire Pig, to start fresh. And I did. But today, anticipating the approaching Year of the Earth Ox, I start to begin it all again...an activity that will continue for several months.