Document1 - a fragment

In moments of sheer ennui the one thing I always have to turn to is the vast potential of the as yet untarnished white expanse of "Document1". I can't quite explain the nature of my languor. The nature is no doubt just as boring as the boredom itself. Hmm...what does that even mean? I don't really think it is even boredom...a quick Shift+F7 is giving me "world-weariness" and I think that's closer to what I'm feeling.

I just took a walk around the building and it was not the most soul-sating experience, although I did like the brief sun-baking. It's not that I'm not working or don't have work to do; it's just this inexplicable lack of motivation to do more than what's necessary to get through the day. I don't understand it, it's strange. I just downed a tall non-fat mocha like it was a tall glass of something special, but even it failed to hit the spot.

Let's turn away from my inexplicable insouciance and wind the reel backwards. I took a new route to work today. The junction of madness had a flashing red man denying passage and instead of standing with the rest of the herd I looked ahead and noticed another pathway that would eliminate one unpredictable stoplight out of my two stoplight commute. I headed down the sidewalk towards the elevated walkway arcing above the busy avenue below and felt a new energy surging through me. I sucked my belly in and reveled in the extra exercise of two winding flights of stairs, one up and one down. Whew! Funny I hadn't thought of this path before.

During this new and improved walk I reflected upon the past year, paging quickly through the incredible material covered since December. Let's see: renounced hope in male/female relationships; decided it'd be okay to live alone for the rest of my life and adopt only if that maternal itch got too unbearable; went to a place far, far away; met the love of my life (a man, wow!); moved to a country still rising with the crimson tide; agreed on the general approach to curtains; proposed to twice; married once; migrated to a new position at my job; and erm...what else?...right - moved a second time. Weave into this general plotline trips to Beijing, Hong Kong, Chengdu, L.A., Oakland, Beijing, back to L.A., San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Hong Kong again, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Devon, Singapore, Chongqing, in that order. Then just to throw in a bit more "spice" add the love of my life alternating between Beijing and Shanghai every week, with side trips to New York and Inner Mongolia. So as I was saying, an uneventful seven months.

It's all whizzed by so quickly. I find myself now happily married and anxious to hang out with my husband on those wonder-filled days when the Fates graciously weave us both into the same city. I actually have a full year calendar tracking the days we are in the same city and the current forecast has us together 52% of 2006's 365. No joke. I am not sure what's sadder, the percentage itself or the fact that I came up with a percentage at all. Ah well, now's not the time to examine my slight obsession with the wonders of Excel (for the record though, Sheet1 can be just as enticing as Document1 depending on the particular demands of the day, oh and don't get me started on cell A1...ah, the possibilities!).

I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to get at here. I rarely have a plan when I open up a Document1, the trip-hop of words/random thoughts forms its own rhythm on the page. But I have a sneaking suspicion today's fragment has something to do with the fact that life is just speeding full throttle ahead and at times I'm the one strapped into the passenger seat, braced against the armrests, my right foot grinding through the carpet as I slam on the imaginary brakes - reminiscent of my mom when I was learning how to drive. Ah, the exhilarating memories of those first left turns into oncoming traffic.

I still have ultimate control of the steering wheel, but more often than before obligations and responsibilities force a warpspeed auto-pilot I'm not accustomed to. Not only are there my own responsibilities, but now those of my other half as well. The Technicolor has become even richer than I'd ever imagined it could be, but along with it comes the occasional blur of white as the reel motors on with you in tow.

So perhaps this inexplicable ennui is in fact not languor or boredom or world weariness at all, but a kind of wide-eyed Rothko of white. White whooshing by as I struggle to grasp the reel and slow it down enough for the technicolors to separate and form actual images. This leads me to think...perhaps at this very moment my way of slowing the wheel is taking the time to send these thoughts skipping across the expanse of white that used to be Document1. Hmm...a Rothko overcome by typewritten text, row after row laying claim to the white expanse - a strangely satisfying image.

A Walk in the Clouds - a fragment

I walk to work every morning these days. When my husband is in town, he walks me the ten to fifteen minutes it takes from our apartment to my office building, and we talk about our morning to come or various random observations. Otherwise, I walk alone. On the days that I walk alone, lack of conversation turns my energy outwards and my surroundings come into full view. Just today as I was walking in the clouds of exhaust and emission I could not help but admire just how intricate the human species is. Everywhere I looked there was a myriad of details involving the human beings coursing in waves around me.

Before I proceed, let me reinforce the fact that I now live in Shanghai – a metropolis teeming with humans that overflow from the gaping portals of subway stations and tumble from buses sighing and jerking along wide and narrow streets. There is this one large avenue that I cross every morning that particularly amuses me. The thoroughfare has three to four (cannot remember exactly, though I cross it everyday!) lanes going each way, and I cross at a T-intersection that leads into another fairly large three lane street. With each switch of the stoplight, the number of bicycles that pile up, biting at the reins to continue along the arm of the T or turn left into the leg of the T, never ceases to amaze me. When the light switches green, a whole army of bicycles are set in motion, along with the humans who then make their way across the zebra path in a massive horde. Bicycles and humans weaving in and out and around each other and somehow managing (most of the time) to avoid collision.

Amongst this throng I am in closest contact with my immediate neighbors, local Shanghainese people with a spattering of expats. It is an interesting feeling, to be so close to one another that you notice the fraying seam upon a blouse or the blossoming of sweat beads along a neckline. I find myself wondering what the lady with the ruffly yellow lace blouse matching a paisley green skirt is thinking on this Thursday morning as she carries on in pink kitten-heeled shoes to whatever workplace she is headed towards. Or the concerns of a delivery man sporting an offwhite towel and grayish-white vest, displaying an incredible strength of the thighs as he manages to ride with five mattresses in tow, stacked atop one another on the rickety cart tied to the back of his bicycle. I wonder if individual cows contemplate the thoughts of other cows as they are herded by angry looking traffic patrol "officers", in this case played by barking women wearing reflective vests over everyday clothing. These crazy ladies have a fondness for loud whistling and yelling at pedestrians to keep their feet off the streets and onto the sidewalks.

Today I saw a man, shirt tucked in the back but flapping defiantly in the front, who deliberately crossed the street in diagonal fashion without any noticeable concern for the cars and bikes about to run him over. When accosted by one crazy traffic whistler, he proceeded to yell at her unintelligibly (well, to me, since I do not understand Shanghainese. Judging from the traffic lady's expression I think she understood him loud and clear) and gesturing towards his diagonal destination as if to say, "I am going here, you idiot! Why would I cross one street, and then another, if I can cross diagonally?!" From an efficiency standpoint he is totally right, the hypotenuse is the way to go (details) but it was his attitude that struck me. Although he was obviously in the wrong, he yelled at the traffic cop as if she was mistreating him. I have noticed this general attitude often here, like when a taxi driver abandons his passengers in the middle of nowhere, yelling at them for not knowing the way, since of course, that is not his job. "Does it look like I have a map of Shanghai stored in this brain?!?" Um, no. He is right, what were they thinking? Silly passengers.

Other random Shanghai moments flock to the forefront. A crowd surrounding an accident scene, just looking, but not helping. Marketing folks sweating in subway stations that try to force business cards on you, and when denied, surreptitiously stuff them into your bags. Throngs of child beggars outside nightclubs, pulling at you to buy a single rose for 10RMB at three in the morning, led by women who are obviously not their mothers that you end up wanting to shake violently by the shoulders. "What the heck are you doing? Take these kids home! Put them in bed, you evil mother impersonator!" Strange land, I tell you.

I feel like a foreigner here, because I am. Do not let the Chinese face fool you. I am distinctly not Mainland Chinese. Distinctly not Shanghainese. Communicating is tiring here. Invariably taxi drivers have no idea what I am saying until I have said the same thing pronounced the same way six or seven times in crescendo. With waiters and waitresses, even if I know how to say the dishes in Mandarin, I find that it is easier and more efficient to just point at the right item on the menu. I learned that one from my husband, who has been here a few years and knows the Shanghai way. In fact, relying on elementary Japanese in Tokyo is much less stressful than speaking "intermediate" Mandarin in Shanghai.

It is funny, I started writing today thinking about the wonders of being in close proximity with humans that you may never have any contact with again. How humans manage to flow in hordes without running each other over, for the most part. How each of these humans around me represent an individual separate entity with a separate brain full of separate synapses firing at varying speeds, every single one teeming with his or her own throngs of thoughts and emotions and senses, coursing through the avenues of his or her body, feeding and nourishing the soul. And yet, I am only truly privy to my own set of entity/brain/synapse/thoughts/emotions/senses/soul. The closest I will ever get to most of these other sets is a brush of yellow lace.

But then one random thought of some rude guy and a traffic officer launched a whole trainful of negative Shanghai observations steaming fullspeed ahead into Shanghai-bashing land. Funny how the mind works. Well, this particular one at least.

Ode To The Turtlebug - Divine Delirium

Divine delirium, yes that's the only way I can describe it, the way you make me feel, the way 'we' make me feel, the way our coming together in this improbable world makes me feel. The way I can be completely exhausted and entirely replete with newborn energy humming along the delicate undersides of my skin, every inch buzzing along a single bass line written by you, improbable you, inevitable you. Yes, yes, that is it, that is how I feel, the whole of me awhir, awake and aware of your soul lying sweetly alongside mine. As if every step I have taken, sure and faltering, have conspired all along to lead me to this moment: two weary but ever-spirited travelers stumbling upon one another in a wide meadow of possibilities waving gently. They face one another on either side of a hammock strung between two trees swaying gently. Opposing hands reach out, hesitate, and in a blissful second, fingertips meet, senses reel in a current of pure joy as both realize that the other, facing, is real, not merely an apparition called forth by the stewards of hope and imagination. That blissful second stretching into an infinity of seconds as Time pirouettes and curtsies to a halt.

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

I read James Frey's uncompromising account of his drug rehabilitation on December 31st, in two separate sittings, the first on the way from Honolulu to Tokyo, and the second from Tokyo to Hong Kong. Would have probably read it in one if it wasn't for the layover. I was taken in by his unyielding stream of consciousness that opens a window to the world of Addicts and their Addictions. Frey's prose does not use standard phrasing and plants you smack dab in the pilot seat as he relives his nightmare. He does not even use any quotation marks to offset the dialogue outside of his head from the monologue within, which is at first confusing but you catch on pretty quick.

The details of drug addiction and the insight into the world of drug use are both fascinating and shocking, oftentimes invoking the reader's morbid curiosity. You learn specifics about crack and cocaine and meth use, as well as the ravages of those drugs on your mind and organs. Most heartwrenching is the extent to which Addicts degrade themselves when in need of a fix. But most captivating of all is how mercilessly Frey sizes himself up within the memoir, placing the responsibility squarely upon his own shoulders. His self-awareness and honesty are inspiring. Addicts or ex-addicts or not, everyone has something to learn from reading this memoir. Perfect read to end 2005. :) 

Oh, and a big Happy New Year hug to you all, here's to an incredible 2006 filled with love and inspiration! =D