A Butterfly Dream

Back from three weeks in the Middle Kingdom, completely vague about what day it is. I left Beijing on Saturday and passed through Gate 61 at Narita, and as I write this, it is still Saturday.

Liushiyi men, (Gate 61) how cool is that?

My hotel (the Hong Run Business Hotel in SE Beijing) thoughtfully changed a little rug in the elevator every day, like a calendar (or those little-girl underpants I never had but actually would be useful for traveling).  Now back in the Islands, it is still Saturday, although the Saturday I left seems like a lifetime ago, a dream. And it was, really.

Xingqiliu (Saturday)

Dear reader, I would have posted, but the intermittent wifi access with the VERY COOL 3G iPad was not the real problem.  My blog, along with my YouTube account, was blocked by the Great Firewall.  Highly privileged persons (the Wizard, my son and my office) did get some email updates, but broadcasting my musings was not possible.  And I was unable to download my photos daily, but I blame Apple for that--I was not able to get a camera connector for the VERY COOL iPad before I left.  Attempted USB workarounds failed (the proprietary connector apparently triggers the application). On the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to buy two (cheap) 2G memory cards for my faithful Casio EXILIM in Chinese department stores and geek shops.  I was able to do it speaking Mandarin.

So, now home, after a glorious nap in the soft Hawaii breeze on my heavenly Tempur-pedic (why the Chinese make these wonderful fluffy quilts only to sleep on rock-hard mattresses I will never understand), I have downloaded nearly 2,000 photos through which I must sift to correlate with my various notes (recorded both on the VERY COOL iPad and in a little Moleskine notebook).  Categories are organizing themselves: Chinese old and new contrasts, ubiquitous doting grandparents and indulged grandchildren, a theme of China then and now. Food. Kung fu. Televison (I LOVED watching TV in Beijing: CCTV has whole channels devoted to Chinese opera, martial arts dramas, and cultural studies).  Confucius, politics and image. Taoism and Buddhism. Food. Cute Chinese men and annoying young Chinese teens, Little Emperors at puberty. Air and water. Living Chinese painting scenery. Did I mention food?

My last night in Beijing, where I magically connected for a few precious hours with a friend from Scotland on her way to Wudangshan, (a sort of Taoist yin/yang arrival and departure moment) we dined in a lovely little restaurant, well away from but near Wanfujing, distinguished mostly by being next to a public toilet, catching up over many pots of jasmine tea, laughing hysterically over a menu (with photos) that included:

• Trepangs with elbows
• XO sauce explodes squid
• Pineapple money cattle
• The young acupuncture needle of boiler fertilizes a cattle
• Pig hands with chili
• Stir fry a rape completely
• The egg stir fries a garlic bolt
• The shelled fresh shrimp fried the Chinese yam

Or perhaps this was the plot of a Peking opera. (These dishes were even more extreme than the "arrogant chicken" on offer in a restaurant in Hangzhou.  Dish made from very elegant cocks only, I guess. Perhaps there is a Chinese government bureau which names dishes to entertain, or mock, Westerners.)  Still we lingered over our truly wonderful slow meal of Mongolian leg of lamb, a garlic eggplant better than any I have ever tasted, a meat thing in wrappers, rice, the endlessly delicate jasmine cha, and all conveniently next to the public toilet. For 140 kuai, about 10 USD apiece.  I can easily spend that on mediocre plate lunches in Honolulu, without the tea, the charm and the toilet accessibility.  It was so good, my friend has already advised me that before her overnight train to Wudang, she went back for lunch.  She did not tell me what she ordered.  (Not likely a completely stir-fried rape.)

So, stay tuned and bear with me.  There's lots more to digest, so to speak.

Auspicious Post

I notice, revisiting my most recent post about packing, that it is the 108th I have made here on the Yang Side of TAO 61.  If that isn't auspicious for setting off on my China trip, I don't know what is!

Picked up some omiyage to carry with me -- some red Hawaiian salt, koa bookmarks, some charged collectible Starbuck's cards from Hawaii -- and all I have to do yet is hem a pair of pants, which I will do while watching the second part of 14 Blades,  Donnie Yen's latest movie which should put me in a mood to visit the Wudang Mountain Kung Fu Ranch and Lychee Nut Farm, where the Wizard seems to think I am going.  He's not far off.

Got a new battery for the watch I bought on the way there, two-and-half-years ago, in the Swatch store in Incheon.  I never much wore a watch before that, but it seemed like a good thing to have while traveling.  Now I feel naked without this basic analog, big-numbered, black and white dial, black leather-strapped watch, whose battery failed last week.  It's got a big vivid display I can see even without my glasses and the strap has acquired a lovely complex fragrance from the various perfumes I dab on my pulse points. New battery installed, it's ticking now, counting down the hours until I leave...and it gets reset to Beijing time...real soon now.

Tao-Loading

For me, actually achieving entry into a foreign country is far easier than deciding what to take there. Nearly packed for my early morning departure, well under the 44-pound bag limit, have remembered toothpaste this time, tucked in with various chargers and power converters, a reasonable if not extravagant assortment of clothing for any occasion, miscellaneous tools, medical supplies, entertainment items, and gifts.  Spare eyeglasses. Pared-down toiletries and cosmetics and bijouterie. Notebook, sketchbook, brushes and ink.  My nifty new iPad is carry-on, along with digital camera, phone, a backup iPod and a nice volume explaining Chinese characters.  (And I mean ideograms.)

My only dilemma (which this isn't really**), not even a weight issue: do I take a video camera?  Had it with me the last time, never used it, but there was one moment I wish I had lugged it along to record a marvelous tai chi demo by a master at Purple Heaven Palace.

Movement in Stillness (Wudang 2008)

But I also I feel video cameras move you one step away from actually participating in the present moment, making a movie of your own memories, which you didn't really see first hand because you were playing cinematographer.  The digital still camera, for me feels freer, merely like I'm underlining scenes to share and remember, making checkmarks on a document instead of photocopying the whole thing without reading it.   

My hesitance may also be because it's just one more piece of technology to master.  Right now, even though I know it's mindlessly simple, I feel like its slave. I need to read the manual. I don't think the decision to take it with me is going to happen until I actually walk out the door tomorrow morning.  It might be interesting if I could videotape my decision making.

**When I was a young girl, I was really eager to go to the circus one year because I had heard there would be "dilemmas."  This seemed exotic to me. I imagined three-ring mysteries, metaphysical high-wire acts, all accomplished by ethereal and spooky clowns. I was enchanted.  And then disappointed to discover that "the llamas" were just part of a parade of zoo animals.  

Testing, Testing

Testing ability of new iPad for posting. Wanted to not have to carry laptop. A little slow on 3G but that probably won't work in China anyway. Keyboard not bad. But seems that I have to use HTML option to enter post text. (But the pad spell-checker is great.) And don't have--yet--a camera connector so may not be able to post photos.

We'll just have to wait and see. I wanted this thing for travel, but failed to get the first shipment, wifi-only version had sold out. Would the 3G arrive in time? It did! A short wait in a line at store opening bell, very efficient and energetic, I got satisfaction!

I have always believed, tried to act as-if, at least, if you go with the flow, without anxiety, things work out. Someone told me I might be disappointed if I could't get my new toy. I had pretty much assumed I wouldn't. But now I'll never know if my attitude was actually well adjusted.

Imminent Departure and Arrival

Plans become preparations, then it's time to leave.  The well-nourished and well-dressed kolea are gone; I saw the last one last Friday. I thought they had already left, hadn't seen any for a couple days. Then one last bird, maybe the first one I saw last August, picking through the grass at my parking entrance, seemed to give me a goodbye nod.  Bird migrations are quite mysterious, mystical even. How do they do this?

I was relying on the exodus of the kolea to kick my own travel preparations up a notch, and so they have.  The waxing moon, full tomorrow, may also have helped. Perhaps it has helped the kolea navigate to Alaska. They have already arrived, I think, their 36-hour crossing anticipated by someone on the other end, saying "They're back!" just as I am saying "They're gone."  Arrival and departure, a very Tao thing.

And so today I go to pick up my visa-stamped passport, the first of the last of a few steps before I make my own flight in less than two weeks.  The kolea have a compelling vision of Alaska, I suppose; my vision is the Bund in Shanghai, the gardens in Hangzhou and Suzhou, the mountains of Wudang, and the imperial treasures in Beijing.

But especially the mountains.

My last painting of the session, after more than a year of brush painting study (a class once a week, and weekend painting exercise) with my teacher, who says I may frame this one. Though her specialty is bird and flower painting, she says I should specialize in landscapes. "Maybe in two years, you paint a flower."  I will resume classes in the fall, but take my brushes with me to China.  I plan to spend some hours at the Summer Palace in Beijing with them.

The mountains in Wudang aren't quite like my vision above. They are dense and green, would appear to be perfect hiding places for yiren or yeren (a Chinese-style bigfoot, yeti or Sasquatch, sightings of which have been reported in the area.)

I am eager to revisit my favorite spot, the area behind the modest Taichang Temple not far from the more famous Nanyan.  It's easy to visualize myself there now.  Espcially because I have photos from 2007 and 2008.

Spirit Screen at Taichang with Lao Tzu

Taichang Plaque

Path to Follow Just Outside and Beyond Taichang Gate

Though I have made barely a babystep in "Opening the Dragon Gate,"perhaps I have done better than I think.  I have meditated on that path above and even now, closing my eyes I am there.  Not with the same skill as Wang Liping, I'm sure, but I have over the years cultivated an ability to "memorize moments,"places where I have been at peace, experiencing wholeness with the environment. (I suppose it would be loss of these memorized moments that makes Alzheimer's so poignant and tragic.)  Oddly, I am loathe to revisit the places of memorized moments of many years ago; too many changes, too much disappointment.  My memories are better.

I did this exercise often when I was young, like imprinting something, as my parents sailed around the Chesapeake.  And later, in my father's final years in Florida, I would visit Shell Mound, memorizing part of a Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast near Cedar Key (hot spot for hurricanes).  I once spent some time  meditating at the spot below.

Memorized Moment

Different Path to Enlightenment

After I meditated, I strolled about the park, listening to insects that sounded exactly like the cicadas in the mountains of Wudang. I asked a park ranger exactly where this "shell mound" was.  I saw nothing like a mound.

"Actually, you're standing on it," he said of the accumulated oyster shells under my feet, left by an earlier indigenous people.  It was their garbage dump.  I can't imagine anyone meditating or enjoying a modern landfill. Some things are meant to be forgotten. If only they could be.

Contemplating my desk globe, I see that Shell Mound is at just about the same latitude as some of the NW Hawaiian Islands, which are just a little below Shanghai and Wudang.  I have many memorized moments hovering around the 30th parallel.

L'Heure Bleue 108

It may mean nothing to you, but today is (Gregorian) day 108, a numerologically meaningful number to those of us who find it amusing to wake up at 11:11 or 1:23 or other interesting digital times.  After an afternoon of napping and cuddling under a blanket --it's been"cold" (~mid-60s to mid-70s) in Hawaii the past couple days-- I stepped out onto the lanai in the dusk to observe the crescent moon, a perfectly balanced upturned cup, poised directly over Venus (I presume it is Venus), in l'heure bleue.  That's also the name of a Guerlain perfume dating from 1912, a sample of which I just dabbed on my pulse points. Not my favorite (I'm an Angel girl, preferring patchouli over sandalwood), but perfume students need to understand and recognize the very classic Guerlains. Once I bought a bottle of Samsara, a more modern Guerlain, from 1989, and was soaking myself in it despite the fact that there was something in the drydown, precisely at 11 minutes, a fleeting odor of death and decay, that made me nauseous for just a moment.  I drenched my way to Hong Kong, drunk on it, spritzing in the bathroom at Narita, probably making everyone in the plane suffer needlessly. (They might have thought they were airsick.)  Arrived in HK, continuing my overindulgence, the Wizard observed as we sat in the back of a mini-bus, "There's a strong smell of urine in here."


I haven't been able to bring myself to wear the weirdly named Samsara since. And l'heure bleue is probably best enjoyed, visually, with a glass of cabernet on my lanai.

Went to See the Guru

...and the guru said...why not enjoy living, because you're not dead.

Well, not exactly what he said, but that's the message I took away.  This was Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not THAT Ravi Shankar), leader of a non-profit organization called the Art of Living Foundation.  (First time I heard of him, I thought he was Irish: Art O'Fliving.)  Six years ago,  I went with a friend when the good guru visited Hawaii to talk and lead us in meditation and answer questions about the meaning of life. Then, as he was ceremonially exiting the hall, I offended someone with my quip, "And next week, the Pope."

But yesterday, I saw an ad in our vaguely alternative newspaper announcing his appearance again at the Japanese Cultural Center (of all places).  My horoscope in the same newspaper suggested that this would be an "excellent time for you to take inventory of what brings you pleasure....see if you can gain access to an experience that could accurately be described as a blessed state of bliss."

Well, I just HAD to go.  The newspaper also had an ad for a concert of Cantonese music, naahmyam, at the East-West Center.  Seeking bliss, I dragged the Wizard (who loved it) to this event, featuring a singing style performed in brothels and opium dens in turn of the century Canton. By blind musicians.  It was really interesting, but that's another story.

And here it is:  Naahmyam is an operatic storytelling style, sentimentally like Mississippi Delta blues or Portuguese fado:  I think of it as Pearl River Delta blues.  I didn't understand a word of it,  but the emotion was conveyed.  By Blind Willie McCheong.  The Doc Watson of Guangzhou. Or  even Stevie Wonder. No, I'm not making fun, it was really cool. Not exactly the state of bliss suggested in my horoscope, but it was certainly worth the attention.

Back to Sri Sri.

The guru is about a decade younger than me.  He taught a head massage which was very like some Taoist qigong techniques I have learned, and then a meditation which was good, but interrupted with some weird "Oms" and guidance that I found distracting.  The persons at my left and right in the hall were fidgeting.  The meditation ended much sooner than I expected.

Still, his comments and responses to questions were right on.The local person who introduced him talked about "aloha" and "Ha-wai-i". "Ha" is the Hawaiian word for breath (like prana or even qi); wai means "sea" and "i" is spirit. Alo-ha is the sharing of "ha"(which is why it can be both a salutation or greeting and a farewell). I'm not really enchanted with aspects of ancient Hawaiian/Polynesian culture, (kind of stone age, really) but spiritually there is a commonality...breath and spirit...so whether it's a Hawaiian kapuna (an honored elder), Sri Sri, or Hu Lao Shi (my Chinese Tao teacher)...the teachings are similar.

I don't really know what a holy person is. But there are times when you meet someone, are in someone's presence, that you get an energy, a confirmation of things you know to be true. Maybe that's bliss. Maybe my horoscope was right.