Um, Seriously, Mr. Policeman?

For those of you in-country, you know that China’s a stickler for visas. I’m already running out of visa space on my new passport since I had to have an entry visa, a three-month visa to live in Chengdu, a one-year visa to live at my site, and now a second one-year visa to stay another year. Anywho, my old visa expires in about 6 days, so it’s getting pretty critical that I get it renewed. We were going to go today, but… visas schmisas! It’s more important that the station close so they can practice singing “that national songs” in honor of the PRC’s 60-year anniversary. And in case you didn’t get that the first time… yes, the police station (at least the part that deals with visas) is closed for three days so they can sing. But the madness isn’t only at the police station; classes at my university were also canceled Friday, Monday, and Tuesday so the students could practice their singing. It’s seriously confounding to me.

In other police news: I had my wallet stolen last week, and my waiban has been in contact with the police to see if it can be found (minus the cash, of course). I have a message for the man who said “thanks for supporting our work here at the police station”: no prob, Mr. Policeman, I’m glad I could get my wallet stolen so you’d have something to do today. Sorry to drag you away from the singing, though...

New blog template

Changing my blog template has caused me to ask some serious questions about myself and the universe in general:

1. Am I extraordinarily retarded when it comes to computers?

2. Do html programmers feel a sense of superiority when they create something that people can't figure out?

3. Why do electronics, more than any other object on the planet, cause us to revert to a caveman tendency to throw things against the wall?

4. Who decided that making each blog post on my site say "Posted in by Lisa" right under the title would be a cool or even grammatically correct thing to do?

5. Why can't I add the gadget that says what blogs I'm reading?

6. Why does it say edit at the top if I can't edit anything after I click on it?

7. Why am I sitting at my computer instead of doing something more useful, like finishing up one of the 472 half-read books in my apartment?

8. If I lean back against this wall, am I going to get mosquito guts all over my shirt and hair?

Oh well... I like the new template anyway, despite the grief it gave me. Kinda soothing, eh?

Greece 'n' stuff

Jet-lagged.

It’s 2:00 in the morning, and I just put on a pot of coffee. And for some reason, Leonard Cohen is playing on my iTunes. Perfect time to catch up on blogging, right?

I’m not going to bore you all with endless prattling about my trip to Greece, but I do have one thing to share with a few specific people who will find this interesting. On the ferry between Athens and Santorini, I was struck, as always, with this fiery, consuming fascination for the water. So, I sketched out some prosetry, and I’m presenting it here with a very special dedication to the people who like to tease me about wanting to commit suicide in the ocean. It’s just a first draft and not what I would ever call good poetry, but I’m throwing it out there just so Jo and Sigma have some more fuel for their endless teasing of me. See? I sacrifice myself just to make you guys happy.

Untitled

She hides secrets, the ocean.
Stolen from sailors, dictators, peasants, fish.
She steals them as she drags the unwary into a frothy green death.

If you listen closely, you can hear a word now and then.
A whisper.
An echo.
Each ripple, crest, wave sings a chorus.
The secrets of the ocean revealed in mumbles and hisses.
But if you really want to know her secrets, you have to make a sacrifice—
And you have to be chosen.

You’ll know if she calls you;
The whispering starts.
She beckons to you with the temptation of secrets.
Odysseus.
Alexander the Great.
Your ancestors.
Their whole history lies hidden in her depths.

It starts innocently enough.
She offers you pleasure first—floating in the waves, feeling the sand bury your feet.
Then when she has you captivated, she shows you her darker side.
Violence.
Terror.
And before you know it, the fear consumes you.
She’s all you think about.
You long for her.
She sings like a siren until you go mad from the longing.
And then—

The sacrifice.
You think it’ll be something simple, like Odysseus sacrificing his men for safe passage.
But it’s never simple; there’s only one sacrifice she wants.
She wants to add your secrets to her coffers, and there’s only one way for her to steal them.

Then…
The last glimpse of the sun, the sky.
The world turns green and eddies around you.
After a few seconds, the agony takes hold,
But that’s all part of the sacrifice.
And then the secrets are revealed—
The messenger? The corpses of the dead who were also stolen by the ocean.
They grab you—slimy and phosphorescent green—
They pull you close and whisper in your ear.
They speak of history and war,
Love and loss.
You’d think it would take a while, to learn all these secrets, but it doesn’t.
Only about a minute.
About the same amount of time it takes for you to die.
And then… you’re wise—fulfilled at the moment you come to the end of yourself.
After that, you take your place among the chorus.
You whisper your secrets.
You become the mystery that others seek.

Yi, Thriller, Purity

I feel like I’ve finally experienced the real China.

Staff banquets are often a painful event for me here in Bijie, but this one was different. This time, the balance of foreigners to Chinese people was equal. This time, I felt renewed. This time, I connected. This time, I almost got sacrificed to the Yi god on a bonfire.

First: nature walk in white boots. Creatures encountered: millipede (ew!), ponies, gnats, butterflies, poop. Benefits: renewal, nature, flowers, fresh air, silence.


















Second: eating, singing, and people dumping some kind of vinegar-flavored beverage into my mouth. Outcome: cool, smiles, men “happy”. Favorite quote from the night: “It’s okay if his juice goes into my cup. We are brothers. He does not have AIDS.”


















Third: the sacrifice. People grabbing me, turning me, twisting me, making my arms and legs go in ways they aren’t supposed to bend. The fire blowing its ashes and sparks at me as if it knew I needed to engage in this purification ritual. A chant like two birds seeking their mates in darkness. Spinning. Turning. Channeling Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”? The dancing frenzies then mellows then frenzies again in a ocean’s tide of happiness and sorrow. Finally, emptiness. Release. It’s over.

















Fourth: dirty songs in the van.

China is beautiful on this night. Maybe I did need the purification ritual.

(For a better account, go here.)

The beetle

I’m a murderer.

He came innocently into my home, announcing his presence with a flourish. He was beautiful, once I got over the shock of seeing him. Big and metallic red. Majestic, really. A god of his kind. But the sound and fury of his entry was like a war cry and I retaliated by grabbing the weapon closest to me. I closed him in the guillotine of my window.

In the morning when I opened it again, he was still alive. He’d endured the night of torture. He stumbled away, his legs and back broken, but made strong by his desire to die in the beauty of nature. He walked to the edge of the sill, hovering over the precipice where he knew he’d meet his death. After a moment, he spread his curved, red wings and fell.

Where my blood lives—a continuation of the last blog

I’ve learned to not look too closely at my apartment. If I do, I start to notice things—smears on the white tile floor, splatters of paint on the wood, nails in places where no sane person would hang things, the crappy engineering and architecture…

But today, I looked. I stared blankly at the stark bluish-white walls and I noticed. What did I notice? Bugs. Mosquitoes, to be more precise. They’re everywhere. Stuck to the grease on the kitchen windows because the last tenant didn’t bother to clean them off. Smashed on the walls. Dead in the windowsill. My apartment bears the signs of being an ongoing battleground for the war between humans and those blood-sucking, pesky, buzzing-in-your-ear-at-3-in-the-morning-when-you-have-to-get-up-at-6-and-teach mosquitoes. I’d like to say that the humans have been winning the war, based on the carnage covering my apartment, but I know it’s not true. Because my blood’s splattered on the walls right along with the mosquito that tore it viciously from me. It’s right by my bed. And the mosquito that lost the battle is squashed right beside it. That was a particularly joyous victory against the mosquitoes, despite the battle wound that I woke up with the next morning when my eye swelled shut from the bite on my eyelid.

But I find that little splatter of blood morbidly fascinating. It’s not red anymore, but a dull brownish color. Now I’m looking at all the squashed mosquitoes on my walls and wondering if the blood of past fighters in this war-on-mosquitoes is also smeared on the walls. I’m both disgusted and interested in this idea. Part of me wants to clean the smashed bugs off the walls, but part of me wants to leave them up there along with the blood that they sacrificed their lives for as a kind of monument to the war. Plus, I’m lazy. It makes me feel better to have an excuse to not clean up the war-carnage.

And why is it that mosquitoes in China seem smarter than their comrades in the U.S.? I’ve said before, and I still believe it, that they must have some kind of ninja training before they’re allowed to go out and join the war. They have this amazing ability to disappear the second the lights come on. They seem to know that if they land on a dark spot somewhere in the room and wait patiently, the humans can’t find and kill them. How are their brains even big enough to have that kind of survival instinct?!

Grrr. I hate mosquitoes.

Places where my soul lives

I spent about 13 hours on a bus this last weekend, so I decided to put every Ryan Adams album on my iPod and play through all of them. I realized we have something in common—a fascination with places. He has at least 10 songs where he talks about the places that have affected him: “Oh, My Sweet Carolina,” “Dear Chicago,” “Tennessee Sucks,” and “New York, New York” are some of them. But my favorite is “The End”:

"Oh Jacksonville, how you burn in my soul
How you hold all my dreams captive
Jacksonville, how you play with my mind
Oh my heart goes back, suffocating on the pines
In Jacksonville"

My fascination with places started in Rome and became consuming in Edinburgh. But I didn’t understand it until London. I tried to define it, understand it, write about it, but as always, found my ability lacking. But I found the answer in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway:

"But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter--even trees, or barns."

Here’s how I understand the quote: we exist in all the places we’ve touched. But it works the other way too: those places exist in us. We leave parts of our… I don’t know, essence or soul… in the places we go and we carry those places with us afterward. And so to know someone—I mean, completely know them—we would have to see all the same things in the same places at the same time. It’s almost a kind of soulmates, but obviously impossible to fulfill.

The whole deal with places goes deeper than this, though. The place itself seems to have a soul and identity. Rome is a philosophizing old man with a long beard. Edinburgh mystifies me. I've tried to identify it, and this is all I can come up with: It’s identity changes to suit each person, to draw in every unsuspecting visitor until they become fettered to it. Edinburgh is a vampire, a wise old man, a Druid sacrificing naive virgins, a seductress with fiery hair and a black dress. China doesn’t have a clear identity to me yet, but eventually I’ll figure it out.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how China affects my soul and what parts of myself I’m leaving here. Actually, I think I’m leaving the best parts of myself. It’ll live in the people I’ve affected most—my students. But how will China live with me afterward? Maybe China is the place where my soul became strong. Home is where my soul is renewed. Edinburgh is where my soul is mystified. Rome is where my soul is satisfied. I haven’t yet found the place that burns in my soul and captivates my dreams, as Ryan Adams says, but I’m pretty sure that place exists somewhere.

Love and dating

This last week, my students performed plays for their midterm exam. They had the option of choosing any topic that we’d covered in class so far this term. Topics included things like beauty, love/relationships, Earth Day, stereotyping, etc. Most of the topics were intended to get students thinking on their own and changing their minds about important issues, but that’s another blog…

I ended up a bit confounded that 75% of the groups chose the topic Love and Dating for their play. I was even more confounded that they all had exactly the same plot, although the insignificant details differed. Here’s how they all went:

1. Boy meets girl
2. Boy meets another girl
3. First girl finds out about second girl
4. Second girl finds out about first girl
5. Both girls leave boy
6. Boy’s reaction differs—often sadness, usually begging one of the girls to come back, one suicide

I think the oddity of 15 different groups from 4 different classes writing exactly the same play says a lot about cultural stereotypes on dating. The weird thing was that these weren’t only girls writing/performing the plays. One group of all boys wrote this play too. So these ideas about how relationships are “supposed to go” are pretty commonly accepted by both genders.

So what exactly does this say about love and dating in China? That every woman will be betrayed by a man? That all men want more than one woman? And what does the ending mean? Is it a realistic ending or is it an idealistic ending? Do the women really leave the men and do the men really feel grief when the women leave? Lots of questions… And I don’t have the answers.

I find the whole thing really sad. I can only conclude that girls go into relationships expecting betrayal because that’s what their culture says is okay. (I have heard many students say that it’s common (accepted?) that a boy have more than one girlfriend and that a man have a mistress after marriage, but I don’t know how often it really happens.) But in the guys’ defense, the girls here are kind of annoying in relationships. I mean, I wouldn’t want to date them. Most are whiney, prone to public fits, clingy, and very easily upset. They expect boyfriends to carry purses, lift heavy objects, provide emotional support, pay for every dinner, buy gifts, etc. And if they don’t… watch out! Foot stomping, purse throwing, loud wailing, and screaming will ensue.

But still… it’s just sad that girls have to expect the very high likelihood that they’ll be cheated on. It’s a pretty bleak future.

Phenomenal woman, that's me

The girls in China have a confidence problem. This semester, I decided to fix it. In my classes, we've talked frequently about beauty, inner beauty, confidence, how strength isn't just for men, etc. Despite pushing the subject so much, I'm not sure it's made much difference. But in a culture where "San Ba" (translated means 3 8, March 8) is both the name of International Women's Day and a slightly derogatory nickname for a woman who is too independent or doesn't know her place, I can't blame them for being a little hesitant or unable to embrace their woman-ness. The culture as a whole doesn't really encourage female power. Also, girls here are obsessed with beauty. They'll go so far as to bleach their skin, wear black contacts to make their eyes appear bigger, or smear youth-enhancing sheep placenta on their various body parts in order to fit the pretty rigid beauty mold (ask anyone: the requirements for beauty are white skin, big eyes, long hair, a "tall" nose, size zero clothing, and a small mouth). So between the cultural pressure and their own desires for acceptance and beauty, they've had some trouble taking my advice to heart.

So in light of our recent discussions about racial and gender equality in the U.S., I decided to bring to my Lit class a poem celebrating WOMAN. Check it out: Phenomenal Woman, by Maya Angelou.

I expected an energetic response from a class of 30 girls and 3 boys, but I got pretty blank faces all around. We even read it, they discussed it in groups, and still... nothing. So I metaphorically pulled up my sleeves and decided I needed to do some inspiring. (And considering this morning started with me lying on the kitchen floor in pain, I didn't expect anything good to come of the morning's classes.) The poem's not about being beautiful or fitting into the beauty expectations of your culture, it's about looking at all the flaws in your body and saying "you know what, those are mine! And they're awesome!" It's about confidence, no matter what "pretty women" or men think. I feel a little pride looking back at the experience. I feel like finally I may have changed their minds a little bit. I had a limited number of copies (I've started limiting my copies and collecting them after class since Earth Day), but I told them if they liked the poem and wanted to keep it around for inspiration or encouragement, they could. Usually, the kids just drop the copies back on my desk on the way out, but today, I got ambushed! The girls who didn't have a copy of the poem rushed up to me like it was Halloween and I was giving out free Reese's.

So, overall, a successful day. And one last word for the ladies:

I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Tortures that the untalented must endure

I said something a few posts ago about how my writing feels like something I've vomited up and that I always find the writing process painful. That thought has been occurring to me more often lately. Maybe it comes with the increased number of entries to this blog. I begin to wonder if blog writing has become the poor-man's writing medium. Blogs are the electronic music and modern art of the writing world. It's a place where those who have the desire but are a little lacking in the talent area can spill out their rhetoric in an increasingly-appreciated platform. Instead of creating symphonies and Mona Lisas, we're scratching out house music on a synthesizer and throwing blobs of paint onto a canvas hoping something meaningful comes out of it. And to anyone who's starting to be insulted by this blog, please don't. I'm talking only about myself here.

And speaking of symphonies and art, let me side-track for a moment and say that I never really liked the Mona Lisa anyway. My interests tend, more often than not, to lean toward the more morbid. At the moment, I'm listening to Franz Schubert's "Death and the Maiden," which also happens to be the name of one of my favorite paintings. I'll only include the link since the painting isn't really G-rated. And it also isn't really a painting; I think it's technically an etching. But I digest... (Fans of Family Guy will get it.)

Back to the writing dilemma... I feel like Cristina from Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She says, "I feel like I have so much to express, but I'm not gifted." I think all English majors, deep down in their little hearts, feel the desire to be the next Faulkner, Morrison, or, if they're in it for the fame and not the prestige, Meyer. I mean, that's why we're English majors, right? We see the beauty in the words, we feel moved, and if we're lucky, we see the entire world change in the course of 50 pages. And then we want to be the one that causes the world to change. But what about those English majors who realize, miserably and after years of struggling, that they just aren't 'gifted'? Does it become a case of "those who can't do it, teach it"?



I'm not sure why this is becoming such an issue at the moment. Maybe I'm just bored. Actually, I think I know why. I've been reading what's turning into a really amazing book. I highly recommend it to anyone who, like me, leans toward the macabre or is just bored of reading the tripe that comes most often from modern American authors. (Oh, if you're in China and can't get ahold of a hard copy, I have the ebook and audio versions. Just email me and I'll send one to you!)

So that's the deal. I'm reading this amazingly eloquent and morose book and wishing I had the... I don't know what it is... words, talent, attention-span... to create something meaningful myself. But all I come up with is... this... A blog about blogging.

Ways I didn't want to integrate...

When we volunteers first came to China, we were given instruction almost daily about how to integrate into our community and school. Most of these things include speaking the language, paying attention to customs and non-verbal communication, and trying to be inoffensive. But our trainers didn't say anything about nose-picking!














I've realized in my short time here that public nose-picking isn't such a cultural taboo. However, I never expected that I'd join the trend. But... that unfortunately has happened. It was during a seemingly uneventful shopping trip downtown. K and I were browsing inside a small clothing shop, and when we went to leave, we found that a crowd had gathered to watch (this is a pretty common occurrence here). At the front of the crowd was a grown woman with her finger pretty firmly planted in her left nostril. I suppose I was feeling a bit feisty/irritated/impatient this day, because instead of ignoring the unwanted attention and walking away, I decided to do some impulsive integration. So... you guessed it... I stuck my finger in my nose and wiggled it around in there for a full 30 seconds (and if this doesn't seem like an eternity to you, just stick your finger in your nose and try it!), all the while having a staring contest with my nose-picking soul-mate. I feel half-disappointed and half-relieved to report that I did not emerge the victor in the nose-picking competition. She was four times the nose-picking woman that I am.

Other ways that I've reluctantly integrated include sticking my head out of a bus window and puking, walking so slowly that a snail could lap me, and making Chinglish my first language (I accidentally said "They're very responsibility." the other day.)

I'm sure our trainers didn't have these things in mind when they gave us advice about integrating, but in a way, I feel like they might be just as important when learning about a people and culture. Now that I've picked my nose in public and puked out of the window of a moving bus, I can't really feel moral superiority anymore when I see someone else do it. So I have learned something from the experiences.

But don't worry, everyone, I don't plan on taking up the noble art of the hack-and-spit.

Foucault and Chinese categorization

I rediscovered a favorite quote the other day. It's written by Michel Foucault and it quotes Jorge Luis Borges who quotes a Chinese encyclopedia that says "animals are divided into:

a. belonging to the Emperor

b. embalmed

c. tame

d. suckling pigs

e. sirens

f. fabulous

g. stray dogs

h. included in the present classification

i. frenzied

j. innumerable

k. drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush

l. et cetera

m. having just broken the water pitcher

n. that from a long way off look like flies”

I've been trying to re-evaluate this quote in light of my recent experiences here in China. It's all about how Westerners can't stand when things don't follow a logical order. But I'm convinced now that the writer of this encyclopedia entry was talking more about humans than animals. It's a bit cynical to look at it this way, but a lot of the population here can be put into the same categories--tame, innumerable, et cetera, belonging to the Emperor (or in this case, the PRC).

And if you're wondering which category I put myself into, it's this one: m(e): having just broken the water pitcher. I'm sure I could make this into another existential poem, but I'll spare you all the pain. :-]

Some existential poetry

I've never claimed to be a poet. In fact, I kind of hate writing. But I got a little inspiration this morning. And since K and I were talking about existential poetry yesterday, it seemed fitting to post it.

"The Fly With His Legs Stuck in My Window Screen"

Sometimes he twitches
But most of the time, he’s still.
He’s realized by now that he’s not getting out.
His life has come down to this moment—
Staring into the world that he so desperately wants to be a part of.

He remembers the days of flight, of freedom.
He remembers, also,
(as he stares out into the big green world)
The day he left it.
The allure of the unknown was too much to resist.
I wonder if his other fly friends tried to warn him--
Those that enter that world never come back.

His twitches come less often now.
He spends his time looking at his comrades
Who have also fallen to the Charybdis of my window screen.

He’ll eventually fall
After he dies.
Then I’ll sweep him up
And throw him away with the rest of the garbage.

Woohoo! A new blog!

Maybe it's the influence of The Be Good Tanyas (which I've been listening to for the last hour) or The Raven (which I've been reading for the last hour), but for some reason I feel sentimental/inspired/reminiscent enough to vomit out some kind of blog.

And that's exactly what it feels like, you know? Every time I write on this stupid thing, I feel like I'm vomiting out all the crap I've ingested over the last months and hoping someone can poke through the mess and find something that might be worth re-consuming.

Gross.

I can't really figure out why writing is such a torment for me. Maybe I'm too lazy to put forth the creative effort. Maybe I'm the "live and forget" type that doesn't bother documenting the past. But in any case, I've realized that it usually takes an emotional upheaval combined with some seriously emo music to get my creativity flowing enough to write something worth reading. So is that the case now? Emo music---check. Emotional upheaval---nah.

My poor blog suffers from my current emotional stability. I need some heartbreak or something traumatic to spice the thing up a bit. Until then... I suppose it does pretty accurately reflect my life---seldomly upheaved and in a perpetual state of unbroken, monochromatic green.

That doesn't sound like a bad state to be in, now that I think about it...