hide and seek.

I am currently into listening to memoirs on tape--it's an interesting approach to literature as you can hear the tiny nuances simple written words and syntax cannot always convey as they are originally written.

I am in the last chapter of the first part of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. I know this seems grossly romantic and highly unconventional for my seemingly macabre tastes in Modernism, Gothic Romance, and cruel non-fiction. However, I find this travelogue to be a nice preparation for my next journey...it allows me moments of introspection as it poses thoughts and questions that I keep concealed within the insecurities that often plague my existence.

People think I am heading to China for various reasons: to learn Chinese, to teach, to enjoy my favorite culture, to be with my family, to invest in my life. These are the very things I have verbally vomited to others during the moments of unconscious, simple conversation.

But none of these express my true reasons for running away from an ideal job, beautiful love, and life of comfort.

In the last chapter of the first part of Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert discusses how every city has a word that defines it...Rome=Sex; New York=Achievement; Chicago=Success. More importantly, every person has a word. She thinks her word is seek, but it could also be hide.

I think her analysis is a bit naive. No person's existence is defined by a single word, and no city can truly be encapsulated in a single adjective.

I believe our lives are an amalgamation of stages. Each stage is unique and can be represented by particular diction; however, all words should in the end--when we sit in the moment before death--reveal a single word: a word that needs to define every human existence. Content.

Be careful. Contentment is not happiness...it is much harder to achieve and it can be unsettling when one knows his goal is to arrive at such an enigmatic state of existence.

My goal as of right now is to find the word that will my frame my life for the next few years. I am seeking and I am hiding. I am fleeing and I am finding.

My new word for the next year is understand. I want to understand what I want. I want to understand what I need. I want to understand what brings me happiness. I want to understand what roots me in sadness.

I need to know myself as others think they know me.

Shanghai is not my city; I know this. Like Rome does not belong to Gilbert, Shanghai will never be mine. Shanghai's word--in my context--falls into a strange lexical category: the gerund. Becoming. In becoming. At becoming. To becoming. Add any adverbial marker (or simple preposition) and the word becomes what I believe Shanghai to be for me: A place of becoming.

personal.

I found this poem in the July/August 2009 Poetry publication.

It sings my graces and reveals every nefarious beauty that makes me existentially neurotic.

It is why I am perfect at teaching and loving--and why I so achingly and ordinarily fail at both.

Personal, by Tony Hoagland

Don't take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal--

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain--
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn't and I didn't and I don't
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I'm-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool's backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

two years.

It has been two years since I have written anything on this blog. When I returned from China, my writing ceased; a lot of good things quietly and quickly dissolved.

I took a job; I taught 10th graders; I was quickly consumed by depression and anxiety; Summer of '08 came; I traveled to Africa, worked in an orphanage, and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro; I returned to my job and taught the IB curriculum; I fell back into the depths of depression; I quit.

Now I will venture back to China...back to the life I always saw myself living.

in between.

My job has ended and my flight is set for July 20th. I've landed in the lovely "in between":

In between jobs
In between countries
In between incongruent time frames
In between sadness and happiness

In between.

So, Gary and I are are going to travel for a month.

Destination 1:
We will fly to Chengdu tomorrow. Here I will achieve my life-long dream: holding a panda.

Destination 2:
On the 12st, we will fly to Tibet. I am extremely excited about this trip as it is physically daunting and intellectually stimulating. We decided to forgo expensive tours and attempt the eight day journey to Everest by ourselves. After spending three days in Lhasa, we will take a bus to Shigatse. We will hire a tour guide and begin a three day/40km trek from Shalu Monastery to Nartang Monastery. At the end of our trek, we will hire a Land Cruiser and driver to transport us to Rongphu Monastery. At this point, we will being another 2 hour trek to Everest Base Camp. After spending the night at EBC, we will descend back to Lhasa.

Destination 3:
Gary and I have decided to forgo planning this part of our adventure. From Lhasa, we will endure a 24 hour, hard sleeper bus ride to Golmud in Qinghai Province. At this point we will see what destinations are offered at Golmud's bus station, pick one, and begin province hopping. Technically, we are going to get on buses and trains and see where they take us. I am going to enjoy China as it should be enjoyed--through unplanned steps and an open-mind. We will return to Shenzhen on the 15th, see a few friends, and head to Guangzhou on the 19th.

The 20th will come far too soon.

Gary and I will blog about our travels after we arrive home.........until then, 再见！

and then it ended.

Yesterday was my last day of teaching.

I am not overcome so much with sadness as I am with disbelief. I've been told that time passes much more quickly as you age--a bitter truth.

One of Gary's students wrote him a note on the last day of class:

I don't know what to say. So I just sent you a paragraph I like.

How many times do we miss God's blessings because they are not packaged as we expected? Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not, but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Teenagers always amaze me; many of them possess much more insight than we credit them with.

It's perfect advice for my ending and beginning. May I have the strength and insight to follow it.

hues of happiness.

6.6.07

Gary and I traveled into the city last week and spent the day with some of our students. We ate breakfast, enjoyed ice-cream, visited a photo booth, and went shopping. One of my student's blogged about our "happy day".

For me, a thousand hues of happiness are caught in this picture:

rethinking wentworth.

Last year, after being awarded the Wentworth grant from my university, I traveled to China for an independent study of The Analects of Confucius. I wanted to understand how his teachings had influenced China's culture, people, and society. I was intrigued that the Confucian teachings could survive the rise of Legalism, the book burning campaigns of the Chin Dynasty, the Mongol invasion and rise of the Yuan Dynasty, the moral erosion of the Tang and Ming dynasties, the Opium wars of the 1800s, and the Cultural revolution. Moreover, I was dumbfounded that his philosophy of maintaining a strong moral construct to benefit the whole of society could remain ingrained in a people that endured such intense and prolonged suffering. How could the Confucian concept of ren (仁）--to love someone--be transmitted through 2,558 years of wars, epidemics, famines, political discord, and communism? I still haven't figured it out.

However, due to naivety and ignorance, I neglected to recognize the unpleasant consequences of this patriarchal philosophy.

Before I continue, it is important to note that I do not align myself with 21st century feminist ideals. Unfortunately, I believe the current feminist movement is mutating women into alienating, bigoted femi-nazis bent on destructing the male population. Thus, my criticism arises from a humanitarian stand-point, not a feminist's.

The Confucian teachings promote filial piety as the foundation for a fair and loving society. Confucius believed that filial piety was the spring board for kindness, good governance, humaneness, education, and a strict moral structure. In strict contrast to Legalism, Confucianism dictates all human are innately good--always capable of kindness and love. I truly believe Confucius was the Superior Man he always spoke of--one who only discriminated between good and evil.

Unfortunately, Confucianism bled into Neo-Confucianism: a sick deformation of the original philosophy used to subordinate woman. Girls became possessions--their worth determined by the number of sons they bore, the size of their "golden lilies", and how well they obeyed orders. They were a mouth to feed--a burden to bear--worthless things. Even "Confucius said: "Girls and inferior men are hard to raise. If you get familiar with them, they lose their humility; if you are distant, they resent it [17:25]." Once raised, "marrying a daughter (was) like throwing out a cup of water*." Women led horrible existences--trapped in shells of sadness. Their greatest hope of happiness was to adhere to this belief: when a girl, obey your father; when married, obey your husband; when widowed, obey your son. These beliefs led parents to commit infanticide, men to take concubines, and society to be visually blind to horrific humanitarian abuses.

But why?

Scholar Xiao Ma has said: "Women always have been fighting for a way out of the Confucian shadows." So how does Confucianism apply to women of the past and present? This is the question I should have asked a year ago. I now understand that trouble broods when societies are studied on a holistic scale. So, I am re-thinking and redefining my past Wentworth studies and my current understanding of this prominent Asian philosophy. After all, "Confucius said: "Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher [2:11]."

*Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

a lifelong love affair.

I recently lent My Antonia to one of my students. Joe not only read the novel in English, he also read it in Chinese--twice! After pondering the plot, language, textual ambiguities and ambiance, he meandered into my office for a literary discussion. We talked about the books' characters, themes, and language. We talked about about our favorite quotations and characters. We confabulated about the books' predominate social injustices and their roles within the novel and society.

I fell in love--once again:

Exchanging ideas, language, and knowledge--dissecting language and plot--disagreeing about the cause of Mr. Shimerda's death--pondering the hardships of immigrants and women--connecting the novel's lessons to our daily lives--exploring characterization--gnawing at historical influences and literary discourse.....


This is the beauty of literature--its a love affair in and of itself.

It has help rekindle my desire to teach literature and language. It has helped inspire me to face reality and begin applying for teaching positions in NC.

Joe and I meet regularly now. We talk about Chinese literature and philosophy. We discuss American history and pop culture. We debate current events.

We are currently tackling Wuthering Heights. This is an especially hard piece of literature for Joe, as its language, themes, and genre (gothic romance) befuddle many westerners. However, we plow through the chapters together....constantly questioning one another and the text. As Joe struggles to understand the complex nature of the novel's plot and characters, I sift through the chapters feeling as though I am being re-introduced to old friends.

When Joe sits in front of me befuddled by the text's ambiguities, tangled family tree, and flashback/forward narrative structure, I see a more intelligent version of myself: a person who pours himself into books, unknowingly creating a lifelong love affair.