Mushroom · Samba

I've been looking over the posts I've made in this blog, which I'm extremely glad I wrote at the time. Especially enjoyed the time when I began posting bits of  fiction. The nice thing about them is that they were unplanned,  unbidden. They just  popped into my head in a nature so complete I just had to put them down.

Despite my differences with LJ here, I am going to miss posting on it and its keeping me company during the nights. Aye, those were good times, Beijing blog. And BIG thanks particularly to Kristine, Roman, and S8 for always having something to say (sorry for rerouting you guys to yet another blog, hehe). I'll see you guys in the flip side.

Time to lift quotations.

Again, I've been looking at Jonathan Carroll's blog. Here's a quote from James Salter.

But happiness is not so easy to find, is it? It is very difficult to find. It is like money. It comes only once. If you are lucky, it comes once, and the worst part is there is nothing you can do. You can hope, you can search, anger, prayers. Nothing. How frightening to be without it, to wait for happiness, to be patient, to be ready, to have your face upturned and luminous like girls at communion. Yes, you are saying to yourself, me, me, I am ready. And nothing happens. It happens to all the others. Yes, you think, it will happen to me. And every year you have more to give, nothing is spent, nothing is taken away, you are richer, you are laden, and every year the same: nothing. Until finally there are almost no others, you are left alone like one flower in a great meadow, and it is autumn, yes, the days are growing shorter, the grass bends beneath the wind. And the sun comes and shines on you still, alone in that great field, the last flower, beautiful, yes, because of that, and there you are in the long, endless afternoons, waiting, waiting. 

Jonathan Carroll also posted a poem by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska called "Love At First Sight." Since Livejournal's template system simply refuses to have me make any changes to the format of an entry (case in point: to make additional line breaks and spaces so I can post a friggin' poem, even if I'm already fiddling with the HTML of their so-called Source function), just google it up and call it culture for the day; I would suggest the English translation by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

So I was reading it and after the first stanza I got the feeling I had bumped on this poem before, just couldn't remember where. Certainly wasn't in class back in university. When I hit the last line of the second stanza, it made sense and I figured it out. I first heard the poem in a Hong Kong romance movie called Turn Left, Turn Right, which I had watched admittedly only because Takeshi Kaneshiro was playing the male lead character (I am NEVER going to be taken seriously again, am I? Though in fairness to the movie, it was a very interesting concept, though lifted from a poem. I just think the ending was too flaky). The movie is an interpretation of the poem's theme, about two people who....well, you can figure it out, the poem's all over the Internet and it's not hard to understand (the poem's theme I find is in the last line of the second stanza: "Perhaps they have passed by each other a million times?"). And now that I've read the poem again I definitely see how it connects with the movie. And it is a beautiful poem. Lines I particularly appreciate (here we go, it's unavoidable):

• Such certainty is beautiful, / But uncertainty is more beautiful still.
• a moment face to face / in some revolving door?
• Every beginning / is only a sequel, after all, / and the book of events / is always open halfway through.

As for the movie itself, I wouldn't exactly watch it again if it weren't for seeing Takeshi Kaneshiro play a musician (a violinist at that too). I don't even know why I'm talking about this movie, though I strongly suspect it's because I like being reminded of him. =) And honestly, at the risk of sounding like more than half of the girls in East and Southeast Asia, he really is a looker. I'd post a picture of him, but none of the ones I can find in the net can really do him justice.

*wince*

I simply cannot believe I'm saying all of this.

Still....

...he looks so much better with longer hair. Short hair looks so ordinary on him.

Oh, here's a picture of him that isn't bad. This one too.

...

I really should stop now, shouldn't I?

I stood in the middle of the road, rain streaming across my face. Let me be, let me be, for a little while. Forever.

I watched from the window in silence, the curtains bunched up in my fist.

I walked across the puddles of water, my red umbrella drawn.

I bent over a bowl of rice.

I climbed a wall thousands of years older than me.

I shivered under the claws of the howling northern wind.

I reeled on the lake, letting fear hate me through the glass.

I ducked under the stone awnings of the little alleys.

I listened to the whistle on a pigeon's feet as it flew above me.

I waited as time mocked me.

I looked at the light that I could never enter.

I talked to the moon while she danced before me in all her splendor.

I chased the blue as the clouds threatened to cover him.

I paused to think as humanity swept past me on leather shoes.

I strolled in the courtyard of kings.

I laughed at the face of a spirit being broken.

I heard my heart beating when I saw color everywhere.

I dreamed of grassy plains and the shade of a tree, the sweetness of sleep.

I saw the cities and the clouds fall below me as I rose higher until there was only the sky.

I ran in my blindness, the future in my eyes. 

I was always running. I wanted the road never-ending so I would never have to decide where to stop.

I will remember. Let me be, let me be, for a little while. Forever.

由于服务员太早了来打扫房间的情况，今天早上我八点半已经起床了 （大家是否同意八点半是算太早了？）。我吃早饭，洗衣服，上网，忙着不知不觉时间已经过了。以后我一边复习综合课，一边接着上网（我真的不认真学习。我每天是这样，对不起）。我这样做到十二点四十五然后跟我的法国朋友，黎明， 吃午饭。我们去会中心里的日本饭馆。这次我又受骗了，服务员端来的寿司没有菜单的那么大。吃饭以后我们回宿舍去拿我们的书然后到会中心里的咖啡厅一起学习。

我们在那儿复习语法课，互相大笑， 互相帮助，互相糊涂起来。大概五个小时这样过去。后来黎明先走因为她的男朋友要从法国给她打电话。那时候我觉得我已经学太多了，已经被语法课疯了，可是我还坚持复习下去。我们提前约定了八点四十五在宿舍见面。真倒霉，突然下大雨，我偏偏没带雨伞，因此我在会中心，用英语说，stuck着。我给黎明打电话，叫她拿着我的雨伞来会中心给我。最后我们就去学校里另一家日本饭馆吃晚饭。

嗨，怎么样？还在这里吗？还没睡觉？我知道，我知道。别说什么作文风格，连语法都写错了。可是给我一点点身份把，我不用什么词典来帮我写。再说我累了，也还必须复习。我觉得还算不错。

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I shouldn't be here. It's uncanny how procrastination always leads me here. I have approximately 57 things I want to talk about, but I should be burying myself in those book two-and-a-half feet from me. So I shan't be here for long. I just want to leave a few quotations from Jonathan Carroll's blog; he's an American writer currently living in Vienna, Austria, teaching English. (Insert demonstrations of envy right here just about....now).

I love meeting people who are obsessed, or reading books about obsession. Sometimes I think it is the only thing to work or hope for in life. To become so caught up in someone or something that we become blind to rules or limitations. A little like Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" but it's not a religious thing. You're just so obsessed by whatever that you make the leap toward it without caring what happens if and when you land. To some people, that never happens. To others, they make sure they are never in that position. I feel sorry for both of them. 

That, and, a quote he placed from the Irish-American writer Frank McCourt:

 "Listen. Are you listening? You're not listening. I am talking to those of you in this class who might be interested in writing.

"Every moment of your life, you're writing. Even in your dreams you're writing. When you walk the halls in this school you meet various people and you write furiously in your head. There's the principal. You have to make a decision, a greeting decision. Will you nod? Will you smile? Will you say, Good morning, Mr. Baumel? or will you simply say, Hi? You see someone you dislike. Furious writing again in your head. Decisions to be made. Turn your head away? Stare as you pass? Nod? Hiss a Hi? You see someone you like and you say, Hi, in a warm melting way, a Hi that conjures up a splash of oars, soaring violins, eyes shining in the moonlight. There are so many ways of saying Hi, Hiss it, trill it, bark it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore." 

Frank McCourt, TEACHER MAN

Oh, and I've run out of toothpaste.

I am feeling extremely, extremely dissatisfied right now, here in my room. I'm not certain with what. But I am certain that no word in the English language can express my disposition right now as that. It's not a heavy feeling, like frustration. And usually I know what I'm frustrated about. No, this one is light and flaky like dandruff. Like. I want to go out and do something, even just an aimless stretch of the legs. But it's raining outside. I want to go to Wudaokou and take a walk among the neon lights. I want dessert cakes. I want tall frosty mugs of mocha frappes, I want the brightness of fresh fruit. I want the laugh of a friend in a clean, well-lighted place, I want the soft music floating like daffodils.

I want...I just want, I guess. Like any human being, I want things especially when you can't get any of them because it's 11:15 in the night and it's raining outside. 

What is it with people, eh? We build walls around us, brick by brick, fall off cliffs and survive, burn our bridges, never look back, follow Orpheus' steps, say one thing mean another. Why such contradictory creatures? Why the jest of the world? Why this obligation to be such mysteries rarely understood and often misunderstood by guessing?

I just want, that's all. I just want the world to be perfect.

For me, of course. The world differs per pair of eyes. But I want my neon, my cakes, my mugs, my fruit, my laugh, my music. I want these props to gather together and by their mere presence evoke my little cafe scene in the middle of a stormy night, water drops sliding on the window pane, bright umbrellas bobbing up and down, the distant roll of thunder, the voice of people weaving in and out of consciousness.

"...and he said, "I really-"

"I know, exactly, but you have to admit-"

"...about twenty percent-"

I took my fork and broke of a piece of cake. She was an old friend, from back home before I learned how to loiter in cafes. She was staying for two weeks in a hotel nearby. She was magnificently the same personality from years ago, one of those people whom time never seem to touch.

"Are you happy here?" she asked and ordered a cocktail.

"Yes."

She smiled. Was it genuine? Yes. Without thinking further, I swept my eyes from the cake to her face and asked, "Would that be hard to believe?"

The smile broadened. "Knowing you, I wouldn't put it past you."

I didn't know what that meant. "Cake?"

"No thank you." 

"So how have you been?"

"All right. Not bad."

There was nothing more to be said. Her cocktail came and we spent the minutes in silence. I was looking at a couple on another table, textbooks spread between them.

"How is your preparation for exams?"

"It's holding up." I wanted to tell her that I disliked small talk but the silence had become unbearable anyway. I finally looked away from the couple. "Enough to say I'm pretty confident about it," I offered.

"That's great."

"Yeah, it is." I felt us sliding back into the pit. "What about your work?"

She nodded, sipping her cocktail, and I felt a twinge of resentment. Many times I wondered why I bothered.

"Well." I finished my cake and paused, looking at the rain outside. 

"Should we ask for the bill?"

"Sure." I was glad I had brought my umbrella. I took my wallet and paid for my slice of heaven. Both of us rose from the table.

"Two weeks here, right?" I asked when we reached the door and the waiter pulled it open for us.

"Yeah." She was busy opening her umbrella. It was yellow. She looked up for a moment. "How long are your exams going to be?"

"Should be done in a week." 

"Oh. We should see each other sometime then before I leave."

I drew my umbrella up against the rain. "Yeah. Sounds good to me."

"We'll see then." She was squinting across the road. "I'm taking a taxi. You?"

"Walking back."

"Are you sure? It's raining pretty hard."

"I'm sure, thanks. And that corner's the best place to hail one."

"Thanks." 

There was another roll of thunder and the sound of rain on asphalt seemed to be rising in pitch. I stood there, my eyebrows knitted.

"You haven't changed much either," she said as she stepped out of the pavement. "Not surprisingly, if I may say so myself. Even if it's been  five years."

I looked at her for a moment before looking aside. "Yeah, well..." I smiled, what I did when I was unsure of what to do. "I guess I'm doing okay."

"Anyway." She looked very small against the dark rain and she was looking at her watch. "Good luck on your exams, all right?"

"Thanks. And you have a good time here."

"I will, thanks." She held a hand in half-wave and I returned in kind.

I looked at my watch as well as she disappeared. I still had enough time to study. In my stomach I felt the rumblings of protests of cake eaten much too quickly.

So another chapter has been closing before I even realized it. This has been one of the shortest ones so far. Just a year. But what a chapter it has been. I'm not going to start about the sheer experience 2005-06 has been; it would fill pages. I know I haven't written much here - I haven't even reached the limit of 20 posts so LJ would start shelving my first posts to the archives - but it's because it's been more of a build-up rather than an explosion of experience after another. It's the little things. And you need to pause and think about little things before you can understand them.

I think I've become incredibly sentimental here, for one thing. Due to the transience of our situation here, I figure. I have a cowhide-bound notebook that I brought here from the Philippines; it was supposed to be my journal of sorts (and it looks very worn and writer-like), but I also wrote about 2-3 entries before I began this LJ. October 25, 2005, Tuesday: "Fewer people today here. Am in the little area of chairs and tables between Dorm 6 and Dorm 8. Perhaps it's because of the noise. The construction is rather heavy today. People coming and going through this area, mostly local students. A lot like life, isn't it? People coming in and out of your little personal space, with only a handful to stay. The rest you will never see again. Transients." 

That early on I've definitely expected that in its theoretical aspect. I remember the few words I had with Thea, Connie's roommate, when I had dinner at their apartment last year. She had been staying in Beijing much longer than the rest of us and she was wanting to leave. I thought it was the lifestyle that bothered her, the dust of Beijing, the locals, the lack of hygiene. She said it wasn't. It was the fact that everytime she made friends, she could only watch them leave again because she would be the one staying behind. They'd be here for one semester, and at that time she'd been here for two years already, I think. A cycle of people going in and out and none staying; that she didn't want much longer. A few days ago, Arthur and I were talking about how most of our cell group members were leaving this July, me included. He's been here much longer than us and going to be here indefinitely, so far. He has seen so many come and go in and from our cell group. None of the people he had in cell group from the earlier part of last year is part of our cell group now except for Jacqueline.

It's tough to be the one left behind and watching people go. I wonder about Jane, and the stuff I have that I'm giving to her before I leave, and her saying, "I'm getting so many things from people but i'm losing my friends." A lot of us are leaving, a lot of which were her closest friends here for the longest time. But Jane will bounce back from that. I really don't think I have that kind of resilience, so I'm glad I'm not the one with that role. I mean, for heaven's sake, my flight is still three weeks away and I'm typing this already.

Well. But for what it's worth, wherever the heck each of us end up at, we'll always have Beijing.

Maybe I've always been sentimental and just never realized it. Or just never allowed myself to be. Prior to coming and during the first two months here, I've never had problems about eating alone, especially dinners. In fact, I didn't understand why some people were always looking for others to eat with when you could have a perfectly good time by yourself and your dish. Quite honestly. Unfortunately, this past year, I had the privilege of having friends eating with me almost every lunch or dinner. Good company like that certainly gives the whole situation a new turn. Nowadays when it comes the times when it's just me and my dish, I would be lying if I didn't say I don't feel a kind of vacuum around me.

Funny how life is sometimes. Sneaks up to you and punches you where you least expect it.

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I have no FRIGGIN' idea what that just was. I'm listening to Jason Mraz's You and I Both (splendid song) and waiting for the laundry and the sentences just appeared. I shall amuse myself by seeing what I can do with it.

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When she woke up she received another letter. He lived on the neighboring island and he loved to fish. She imagined a faceless boy fishing in the dead of winter by the shores of Kalazu.

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...what the heck is Kalazu?!! I guess that's the neighboring island.

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So she told him to hold off fishing until spring came or else he'd get pneumonia.

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*snort* Geez.

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They wrote a lot of letters of the similar kind until spring came and he was finally free to go fishing again and she had a stack of his parchment in the cupboard below her desk. He sent her a fish along with his next letter and went on about the usual thing of how he caught it fresh and all. She didn't like fish too much and there were bits of scales making the letter damp, but she thanked him anyway.

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Actually I should be studying right now. It's 6:39pm now and I have to go for dinner in an hour.

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She sent him a little basket she had woven out of straw because she wasn't sure how to show appreciation for fish. The next day she got her letter and another fish. He said it was a a different kind from the last one but she really didn't see the difference and told him so. He said that was all right and sent her more fish and a poem made from all their names.
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I have to get the laundry now. Hold on.

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She asked him if he was a poet and if he was, could he make a poem about her?

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Hanging laundry to dry. Thank goodness for the last pair of clips for my towel.

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She didn't get a letter the next morning like she usually did. She waited the whole day and went to bed at eleven, feeling a bit tired than usual. Her letter came the next morning and there was no fish this time. He said he would be pleased to write a poem about her, so she told him that she could go to Kalazu in a few days.

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Laundry done. I REALLY should go and study now. Finals are in two weeks and the illusion of adequacy is still far, far away.

Taken at my joy of realizing that one can take a picture of a deserted pathway to the Great Wall (you can see the outline of the Wall on the background).

Mine and Anne's shadows on the Wall itself.

A sentinel tower/weapon storage tower/ I actually don't know. But the sky was beautiful that day.

So that makes it the third time I climbed the Wall.

April 22 of '06. We arrived at the Beijing Botanical Garden after a horrendous bus ride. Another horrendous bus ride on the way back.

Um. Not sure what they are. White flowers with yellow centers.

Tulips! And...and a type of tree that was very proliferous there.

A stream. (Maybe I should stop posting pictures. Keeps your from practicing writing).

April 23 a family friend from the Philippines came and treated Rinna and me to an acrobatic show. I've seen two Chinese acrobatic shows in Shanghai; personally I found them much better, but the one we saw here was pretty awesome as well (acrobatic shows here usually are).

Just one picture because all the others were badly taken (have you any idea how hard it is to capture a body in acrobatic movement?) There's no acrobatic movement in this particular picture (this was taken at the beginning of the number) but it's one of my considerably clearer pictures. So there.

April 24 Anne and I went to the Poly Theater to watch the Russian ballet troupe perform Swan Lake. Can't remember which time this was for me to watch Swan Lake, but it was still fantastic. Favorite part ever still goes to the moment when Odette has to leave Siegfried to become a swan again. This occurs on the middle part of the ballet at the end of an act. So sad. A poignant moment crystallized. There's art for you.

What awaits me for Wuyi (May Golden Week...weeklong holiday in China)...nothing much. Unlike most of the students here I'm not going traveling around China. But I am going to a Turkish restaurant with Poy on Tuesday lunch. Then to watch the Lyon Children's Choir on Thursday. And then the ballet version of Carmen on Friday with the Filipino gang. Those, and incidents of studying and watching DVDs in between (more on DVDs, I suspect).

I went to the National Art Museum, 6th of April, with Anne and Astrid (one day I must introduce everybody who's had the misfortune of appearing in this blog). There it is below. It's pretty huge (the actual place, I mean).
 
We were supposed to be looking at a calligraphy exhibit, but it took just one hall so we went on with the Russian paintings that were the main feature of the museum. Also some paintings by Chinese people, of which the below picture was one of my favorites, because I liked the concept of light at the end of the alley and its subtle intrigue (i.e. what's going on over there, nobody knows, but the little boy in red is about to find out).

Oh, and I also learned how to read Cyrillic in the museum. Sort of. (Was comparing the Russian titles with the English translations and was pleased to accidentally find out that there's actually an equivalence between the alphabets).

April 8 I went to Ritan Park in Jianguomen with Bernadette, Val, and Joanna and her posse (i.e. Rachel, Grace, and Janelle). It was pretty big and it kept us occupied for a good number of hours, going up and down the pavilions and meandering around the blooming flowers. We saw two couples getting married there. Below is a picture I (very proudly) took of the pond in sepia colors, since I had finally read my camera manual the night before and had been feeling very trigger-(and OPTIONS) happy.

Very *insert title of random Chinese period movie here*, don't you think?

The day afterwards, 我的生日. That day of the year which infuriatingly increases my age. It was definitely one of the best birthdays I would ever have, I think. So many surprises from so many people the entire day and more. I have a shoebox filled with memorabilia now. 让我很感动. 真的.

After church I treated my friends to lunch in Chaoyang in a Brazilian restaurant and, after some deliberation in the subway station, went to Chaoyang Park with them. 

Apparently that's what our feet looked like during our deliberation. Thanks to Anne for having the wackiness of getting a shot of our denims.

Afterwards I treated a different set of friends to dinner that night. And played the silliest round of Mafia I have ever taken part of.

Anyhow, that's how my week went. My relatives arrived here in Beijing yesterday. I have to go to their hotel in Wangfujing to pick up a package from home from the concierge one of these days. And I might go to the Mutianyi section of the Great Wall this Saturday. Who knows. Wherever the wind takes me. As long as it's walkable, bussable, trainable, or taxible.

Gosh, she can just go on and on, can't she? It's amazing how enthusiastic she is about the whole thing, and yet that enthusiasm just doesn't seem to pass to us. Haha, I have to restrain all the laughter in my head now. She's really quite long-winded, and if she catches me writing this, I'm dead, grilled and deep-fried. Oh, here she comes back again to the differences between 英语 and 汉语 . And my mind's gone into blank mode to conserve energy. Hey, Big's got a question again. I think he really is interested in the subject matter...well, the class really...unlike the rest of us. Blank blank blank. OK, next topic please. How the word for calculator evolved to computer. She just exudes this self-rightenousness that's a little hard to sit through awake. In all fairness, she really knows a lot of the subject matter. It's just the way she goes about it that bothers me. She can go for fifteen minutes straight while I absorb a bunch of alpha waves, staring at a whiteboard covered with the residual marks of a French class. Haha, five years ago, in French class when I met Tin. Somewhere in the middle of a numbers quiz that everyone was pretty much failing. Gosh, what a parody that test was. Everyone was just staring at each other and grinning sheepishly because none of what Madame was saying was registering fast enough. The class had never been so united until that moment. Gosh, I miss the simplicity of university (ironically). Those were good times. I wonder how Tin is doing? She hasn't been online for a while. Good o'l Tin. What a trooper she was. It still astonishes me, really...

And then I had to participate in the practice exercises. Anyway, there's a piece of what goes around my head, unedited and uncut. Make no mistake, I actually like what that class is supposed to be. I just don't like the teacher as much, which ruins a a great deal of it.

One day I shall look back to this post and wince.

I've been thinking of taking the HSK-Intermediate on April to get it over with as soon as possible (HSK = Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi = 汉语水平考试 = to those whose eyes had never sparkled at learning that a friend had just received a Level 6 mark, it's "the" proficiency test in Chinese) which means I shouldn't be here and should be out registering, but I looked at the mock tests provided online...and now I definitely think I should take full advantage of this semester's 实用语法分析 class first before making any attempts to take the exam. So it's the June exam for me then. Otherwise there really is no point taking it, lol. (The grammar section is going to poleaxe any hope of me getting a Level 6.)

Geez, the Korean contingency is having their weekly basketball tournament again. I live in front of the basketball court; I heard them warming up this morning. One of the things that woke me up. Other than the much louder construction site I live next to, of course. I learned how to sleep through the sound of cutting metal last semester and now I'm quite skillful in sleepng through the sound of grinding cement, which is much easier anyway.(Gosh, I wish they'd take the Saturday morning off.) I'm just having trouble with the hammering, which is impossible to sleep through.

I went to the Russian ballet in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen last night with Anne, Sachiko, Deborah, Julia, Adeline (henceforth named Milk), Melissa (henceforth named Cookies), Charlie, Wade, Ryan, Kenny and his Singaporean friends. We had seats in the last rows of the balcony for 100rmb a pop but apparently there was free seating after 7:30 so we grabbed those in front of us. (The show the day before was invitation only because Putin was there.)

Well, it wasn't just ballet. It was basically a concert of excerpts from Russian operas, ballets, and chorus pieces, more on ballet though. The whole event was conducted in only (complicated) Chinese and Russian, so I gave up understanding what the excerpts were about and just enjoyed them for the sights and sounds. The pieces I recognized were The Dance of the Plum Fairies from the Nutcracker Suite and something that sounded like O Fortuna from Carmina Burana (though I'm not sure). Why was there no Swan Lake, the quintessential Russian ballet? I was kinda waiting for that. It never gets old. But good show, though, good show.

And getting back home from Tiananmen was no mean feat. We couldn't hail a cab on the road we were in Tiananmen; I think cabs weren't allowed to stop there (though you'd think the cab drivers would ignore that, being China and all), so we just thought of taking the subway to Xizhimen and hail a cab from there. It was 10pm by then and the last train was at 10:30pm and we still had to change lines. And there was only one train running on each route around that time. Waiting for a ride on the station took some time but we made it to Xizhimen and got home in a cab. With blisters on my feet and sleep in my eyes.