Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams — Both Sides of the Ocean

When my mind wanders, most often, it’s back in Asia. Seven years, and now, two years back home in the US. While I remain appreciative of the wide open spaces, clean air, and uncensored internet of America — there is a haunting wildness that will most likely always pull my thoughts back east. bit.ly/1yXLsjo

Perversely Delicious Irony

Laughter is the best medicine http://nogglization.com/perversely-delicious-irony/

My Top 10 Podcast Review: More Than Just Noise

Chinese opera in taxis, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Mandarin flowing over me, through me, … http://bit.ly/1wfiUBL

Odds & Bobs around the Globe

After chatting with friends in Beijing and Germany this morning, I cleaned my room and found a map of Busan, South Korea and an IF SIM card from Taipei. Then a talk with Texas after lunch. This transitional period post Asia in Indiana has lasted longer than I expected, an ongoing limbo I've yet to leave. During this equinoctial solstice of the soul, I'm working on orienting my attitude each moment. Life has a funny way of working out, and much has happened that I never could have anticipated.

Sorting through stuff as I attempt to remain organized, throwing out the old to make way for the new, I came across a silk scarf from Vietnam. The scar on my left foot a different kind of memento from the trip. Our past does not define us, and yet, it does contribute to our current perspective. I'm not sure what my next chapter holds, but looking through old notebooks filled with tall tales, I can only hope for more stochasticity and adventure.

Excerpt from random page of hand scrawled notes:

Monday, June 23 2008

Taipei, Taiwan
8:22 am

Is that a Picasso? from the blue period? One never knows what could be behind the next corner in Taiwan, or the door for that matter. I didn't quite know where to sit in the archaic apartment tucked up in the mountains outside the city and filled with apparent antiques of various ages. The couch was overflowing with cushions and two Russians, so I chose a throne-like chaise with gold lion heads for arms and a purple fur of dubious origin draped across the back.

What's going on?? I'd arrived at Kunyang MRT stop at 7:30 am armed only with the knowledge that I was getting picked up in order to film a tea commercial. Organic herbal tea it turned out, good for the health. "Bring sexy clothes, workout clothes, and comfy house clothes," I had been informed by the Taiwanese talent tycoon. With the Russians, the fluffy fur rugs scattered over the marble floor, and the distant location, I became mildly apprehensive that this might turn into a really bad porn.

The same mysterious lady, who had been dressed in a crushed velvet teal and turquoise dress when I'd ridden the stone camel at the audition, picked me up at the station. This time, her outfit was head to toe tan with a cream crocheted top and giant LV bag. Asians age differently than Americans, although I'd put her well into mid life. She rolled up in her white Mercedes with black tinted windows. I wasn't even sure it was her until she popped out and asked if I'd seen two other white "nuhai waiguo ren."

Nope, not yet.

"The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life." 

 - Henry Miller

Just laugh. 

Gung Ho!

          54 days. The number throbs through my heart, my brain, my guts. I’m leaving China, returning home. After 6.5 years in Asia, I’d be lying if I said I wasn't more than just a little nervous to head back to the States … home of the free. I haven’t set foot on American soil since January 2007 … Why? Many reasons, and long stories, mostly summed up in this: wanderlust and an undying thirst for adventure. I've always loved pushing limits, conquering my fear, and now, ironically, heading home is one giant two headed beast of trepidation and excitement that I’m more than ready to wrestle with. 

          As I lay momentarily stunned on the cold asphalt in the middle of a busy Beijing intersection, having been T-boned off my motorbike and almost into oblivion, my life hung suspended eerily close to my consciousness, like the grey polluted clouds above me. I realized with unutterable clarity in that precious moment, when my life was handed back to me, gift wrapped in miraculously unscathed skin, that even more than not wanting to die in China, I don’t want to end up paralyzed or in a horror house they call hospitals here. I booked a one way ticket home the next day. The time has come, to talk of many things, of ships and shoes and epiphanies, and whether old roads traveled … all lead to home.

          Travelling the world, one is bound to have near death experiences, perhaps not all of them so enlightening or truly life threatening. I was wounded in ‘Nam in a minor motorcycle accident, fractured a foot in Barcelona and Taipei, chased by men with guns in Amsterdam, and countless other minor kerfuffles I don’t bother to worry my parents with. I’ve had food poisoning more times than I can count, each time, a harrowing and soul searchingly cathartic, not to mention cleansing episode. 

          Monday of this week found me praying to the porcelain gods and confessing all my sins. I’m suspecting some under cooked chicken was the culprit, from an upper scale pizzeria joint in the ‘jing. Gung Ho! Gourmet Pizza, the source of the gung ho battle cry of my intestines as they seemed to attempt to exit my body via any route possible, gave me pause and I sat/kneeled and pondered the paradox that I was gung ho on emitting. The Anglicized American version of 工合, "gōng hé" has little relation to the actual Chinese translation of the characters, “work” and “together,” which of course all good Communists should. General misunderstandings between America and Asia goes both ways. As did the pizza. Beware of chicken and Camembert cheese disguised in delicious wine soaked blackcurrants, and a tiny Chinese woman driving a black Camry (though, to her credit, she did get out and look briefly in my direction before checking the damage to her vehicle).  

          “I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy …” I hear the beginning of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody belted out from the next room over as I lay writing in bed. Oh E. He’s the best; endlessly entertaining, lordly, a quintessential Englishman of great taste and taller tales than even I. Getting him for a roommate was a stroke of marvelous luck, but that’s another story. He brought me tissues and coconut water to settle my stomach when I was too sick to move far from the throne. Speaking of sick things in the mouth, two Mondays ago, he helped me attempt to syphon gas from his motorbike into mine … a hilarious/painful debacle that had us both spitting fumes. Unsuccessful sucking by each of us, for several long minutes, late at night, in the bitter, biting, Beijing winter, on the side of the road led me to suck harder. I got a mouthful and started gagging, whipping the tube away and getting an eyeful of petrol in the process. I thought I would go blind, blithering on the street like a maimed mongrel; he brought me water to wash my flaming eyeball. 

          Finally, in desperation, I asked a stranger for help in Chinese. He walked over, and sucked like an expert, setting the syphon in motion and declining our proffered water in thanks. That man rode off on his own bike into the night, with a mouthful of gas, and my humble gratitude and admiration. Like a pro. As much as I’m tired of Big Brother breathing down my neck in this suffocating country, as much daily confusion exists among everyone, foreign or not, as difficult and trying as each day may be, the Chinese still surprise me, and elicit awe. Their stalwart determination under dark oppressive forces, their resourcefulness, and ability to survive, even thrive, in what many in the west would view as filth and squalor never ceases to amaze me. As much as I hate the … well, I won’t go into that now, there is a cavernous darkness living deep behind the wall here, and within me. 

          Well, this just took another turn. I've only recently recessed out of a blackness that almost pulled me down into eternal silence. Zoloft, lifted me enough to continue on a few more days, and a few more after that. Now, I only have 54 left.

          I’m not usually so morbid, but I guess it’s good to get this out of the way now. I've been around the world, had way too much fun, checked off many things on my life list, and fought the demons within. Things are better now, but it’s an ongoing process, an eternal epic battle that wages in many, all around the world.  

Anyway, I’m thankful to be here. Thankful I’m alive, and realizing, that although I haven’t always been proud to be an American, I’m certainly grateful. I appreciate so much I used to take for granted, like clean air, freedom of speech, and internet access. It’s the little things …

          I get histrionic at China University of Political Science and Law. This semester, I teach “Mass Media” and “Intro to Foreign Culture.” Vague, for sure, but this gives me freedom to cover what I like, or dare. Cameras point at me in every classroom, but, like many things in China, I suspect they are just for show, and not actually on. I’ve banked on that too much, I’m sure, but as I only have three weeks left in the semester, I’ve thrown caution to the wind. Encouraging them to get their own VPN’s to climb the Great Chinese Firewall, and telling them to check their sources, read CNN and BBC, not just swallow everything the CCP spoon feeds them via CCTV and closed circuit new sources. So far, so good (knock on wood).

          I know I’m taking chances with some of the topics I've discussed in class, politics, war porn, spy satellites, objective journalism, but it’s not all subterfuge. I encourage them to speak out too, well, actually I make them. This week I heard reports on “jingle bread,” “teriyaki rabbit heads,” and “rapeseed oil.” So, their English is not perfect, and their interests range widely. It’s always strange to see what captures their attention most, which oddly enough seems to be vampires, the Big Bang Theory, Justin Bieber and Thomas More.
          Random, exotic … erotic. Travelling, and, strangely enough for an American girl from a small town in Indiana, Asia, is in my blood, under my skin. I’m half terrified, half thrilled to leave, I’ll probably be back, but for now, I need a good solid break. On Thursday, during a discussion on the meaning of “moments” a student asked me the most memorable ones in my life. I thought about it, and two readily stood out. Since my brush with death, and second chance at living, it’s become even clearer to me that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away. I told them of how I could barely breathe as I shakily stood up on that cold morning, a bus slamming to a stop on the other side of me. How it slowly dawned on me that I should have died, but was unharmed. Euphoria and shock and fear and utter exuberance coursed through me as I realized I was alive. 

          The other moment that still makes me sigh at my inward eye, like Wordsworth and his dancing daffodils, happened in Spain. Travelling by train from Madrid to Barcelona, I was taking a short nap, when I awoke to see my first glimpse of the Mediterranean as we ran along the coast. The late afternoon sun was at such an angle to set the sparkling blue green waves into radiant shimmers that still sends shivers down my soul. One of the most beautiful and memorable moments that I still recall in vacant or in pensive mood, then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the sea foam frills. 

          I've wandered, lonely, as a cloud, from country to country, searching, hunting, exploring. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to truly “settle down,” for in my heart, I know I’m a nomad, lusting after new conquests and achievements of various sorts. I’m headed home in 54 days, but I know deep down, it’s only for a visit. I want to remember the small things while they’re fresh, while I can, and I’m able. While I’m alive and there’s breath in my body, hence, this reverie. Genghis Khan is a hero of mine, and as a hot blooded American, I still prefer the western interpretation of gung ho: enthusiastic and dedicated. I can just picture him, building his empire, taking Peking, rallying his troops. Gung ho on conquering … Though I may not have beat Beijing, I’m determined to fight another day, to record my adventures in Asia. I’m not sure what my future holds, but I know I’ll keep on keeping on, as we do.

"They change their skies, 
but not their souls 
who run across the sea."

Horace -- Roman Poet, 65 B.C.

Walking on Water, Taipei, Taiwan

Guomao Jianwai SOHO, Beijing, China