Moments forming memories

I have not been religious about my posting recently an have not written anything remotely current in months. I have been posting writings from the last year as I realize that many of the thoughts, emotions and dilemmas are still very real for me-- so much for progress.
However, the last few months since i returned from China have been laden with realizations, relaxations and lusciousness. It also seems that I am gearing up for yet another adventure : this one may be the grandest all others paling in comparison (details to follow s the aspirations become more realistic.

But as for the recent past there is much that deserves recognition. And as my recent trend proves, I am better with pictures than with words. So Here I show what is going on in my mind and heart.

Western Side of the Eastern Shore

A visit to the Eastern Shore (Maryland) brought delicious and beautiful encounters with "love," life (death) and Butterflies. In between all that I got to indulge and visit with family from the oldest to the youngest (8 to 95). All of this makes me think how different things look from close up. How would it be if we looked at all of life this way?

12.1.07 Living a life without doors

A life without doors
in a country of chaos,
anxiety,
sunshine
and smiles
where no opportunity awaits
just around the bend.
nothing is just around the bend.
everything disappears into the darkness.
and there is no future
there is no change
there is no hope
of future or change;
Is this his reality?
The absence of doors merely mocks the reality
of being trapped
without identity,
individuality
or privacy,
naked for the world to see
like an animal in a zoo
yet invisible
to all
exposed
totally
and simultaneously
nonexistent
further humiliated
by the irony
of life.

10.2008 Last Week

The Silk Road
Urumqi to Dunghua via Turpan

The Uyger Hat-making Family of Turpan
Most of the people in Turpan (the second lowest place on the planet 154m below sea level) are the Ethnic Uyger. They are Muslim, they are Chinese, the speak a form of Turkish and use the Arabic script. Confused yet? They live in an oasis in the heart of the desert that has been fed by an ancient irrigation system nearly 2000years old. In underground canals, dug by their ancestors, the snow melt from the Tian
Shan Mountains (Heavenly Mountains) runs with the help of gravity to this natural depression creating the greatest place to grow the sweetest grapes. The Kiraz irrigation system is famous for its technique and effectiveness, keeping this community alive for centuries.

The Uyger family factory we visited makes traditional Uyger hats. We had an opportunity to learn how the bead-work is done and the practice a bit ourselves. It is not easy and very time consuming, especially for our city hands which are
particularly impatient and our young agile fingers are best at typing and videogame joystick maneuvering.

We were treated to delicious naan bread and local grapes under the shade of grapevine
canopy. We each were suited with a traditional hat according to custom; Men wear black hats with white beaded patterns, while women wear red or burgundy hats with gold and pink bead-work and tassels. In return I left them with a few photos. Their smiles said it all.

Muslim Village- Muslim City.
China is so big. There are parts of China that China doesn't even know about yet. In any particular day (and on one in particular) you can wake up in a crummy Chinese hotel, hop on a bus to an Israeli town past that into an Afghani village in the mountains, into the Egyptian desert, and finally rest in the afternoon under the grapevine shade of a Greek estate. China is not only Chinese, in fact more of it is not Chinese than is. While Han are the ethnic majority, the land is vastly not the typical CHINESE landscape and there are people over nearly half of it that are Tibetan, Mongolian, Kazak, Turk, Russian, Uyger and many other smaller ethnicities.
And even that is not all the city is another story all together. Yet they all are Chinese, Just ask them (in what ever language they speak and they will tell you.)

Week before last
Habitat for Humanity
Ganhaiza (a village too small to be on any map), Yunnan, China post one: The Village rests on the far side of a mountain. The nearest road stops in a local township where we stayed in a rugged "guest house." In the mornings after breakfast we would hike over the mountain to the village where we would work with the villagers, play and eat in rapid succession. The people of the village are ethnic Miao people. They
are one of China's largest ethnic minority groups and populate large parts of Southern China. The women wear their hair up in the traditional fashion once they have children. The men wear suit coats for all manner of work: digging, farming, basketball and eating. even some of the younger boys wear them. It is an ironic image to see a muddy man with pick ax wearing a ragged tailored suit.
many pictures in between

Post Two:
We worked on various projects: digging a foundation, picking and shucking corn, cooking, and then befriending the village and getting schooled on the Basketball court. The students worked with total dedication, played with enthusiasm and loved completely. I was so pleased with the work they did, the attitude they brought, the patience they showed with the projects and each other...; they were truly
amazing. I presented regular challenges and to every one they approached each completely. I have not remembered being so impressed in a while. The land we were working in spread out in front of us, below us and above us constantly inspiring awe. The air was fresh, a welcome alternative to Shanghai's din and suffocating heat and tangible air.

today's horoscope

My favorite places on the Moon are the Sea of Clouds, Sea of Fertility, Sea of Ingenuity, and Sea of Nectar. They're not actual bodies of water. The old astronomers who named them didn't know they were actually dark plains formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. But the great thing about the moon is that it piques our imaginations and massages our dreams as much as it speaks to our rational minds. And I encourage you to take advantage of that power now. Here's one possible way: Daydream a story about a heroic quest in which you acquire four magical boons, one each at the Sea of Clouds, Sea of Fertility, Sea of Ingenuity, and Sea of Nectar.
http://www.freewillastrology.com/

9.28 Off on an adventure

Today I leave for the first of two week-long trips that I am leading with students around China.
Will wake up and hop into a taxi to trudge through traffic, find a group of 16 teenagers then shepard them all on to a plan. We fly to Kunming, which is the major city in the southern province of Yunnan (near Laos and Myanmar). We will be working with an organization, during this week (which is the Chinese national holiday that celebrates Mao’s founding of the PRC), called Habitat for HUMANITY. We will be working in a remote village building houses and maybe a school. This will certainly be an amazing trip.

As if that were not enough… I will be leaving again only hours after returning from that week…
China Alive is an annual trip the school sponsors for all freshmen and sophomore students. 7 trips explore various, historical, cultural and tourist destinations in China. I will be leading a trip of 60 students along the ancient Silk Road in western China… from Durban?? To Urmiqi… by train and camel etc. to the turpan pendi, a place only my students and the random person knows about, as the second lowest point on the planet (154 meters below sea level), past the singing sand dunes reported in Marco Polo’s account of his controversial visit to China during the Yuan Dynasty (1280- 1366). This will certainly be an amazing trip. I have already packed my cameras and film.

Both experiences will be incredible. I am excited and a bit exhausted already, I will load pictures onto the blog and report details of all adventures upon my return.

I will drop off the radar (more than already) in the next two weeks because I know I will be beyond internet access and mostly out of cell range. Thank goodness. There are so few cell free zones left on the planet…. Be well and eagerly await tales of adventure, sweat and adolescent brilliance, humor and growth…. And my typical wordy observations.

10.10.08
The Village rests on the far side of a mountain. The nearest road stops in a local township where we stayed in a rugged "guest house." In the mornings after breakfast we would hike over the mountain to the village where we would work with the villagers , play and eat in rapid succession.
The people of the village are ethnic Miao people. They are one of China's largest ethnic minority groups and populate large parts of Southern China. The women wear their hair up in the traditional fashion once they have children. The men wear suit coats for all manner of work: digging, farming, basketball and eating. even some of the younger boys wear them. It is an ironic image to see a muddy man with pick ax wearing a ragged tailored suit.
We worked on various projects: digging a foundation, picking and shucking corn, cooking, and then befriending the village and getting schooled on the Basketball court. The students worked with total dedication, played with enthusiasm and loved completely. I was so pleased with the work they did, the attitude they brought, the patience they showed with the projects and each other...; they were truly amazing. I presented regular challenges and to every one they approached each completely. I have not remembered being so impressed in a while.
The land we were working in spread out in front of us, below us and above us constantly inspiring awe. The air was fresh, a welcome alternative to Shanghai's din and suffocating heat and tangible air.


I have been around the world without leaving the boundaries of China. I have traveled the Silk Road in the dry desert of western China and build a house with Habitat for Humanity in the red earth of the Yunnan mountains.

Learning Tower. 8.11.07

My accidental up-brining and my intentional growth and travel as an adult have taught me a great deal. I have learned how to live comfortably with less... If I can, I know we each can.
I have seen people around the world with more smiles and kinder heart who have virtually nothing but each other. the human spirit is incredible and we can nurture our community and our spirit by
living with less.
The modern world has encouraged us to consume a lot, desire a lot and waste a lot. I know that I especially grew extremely attached to the things that i owned... a fortunate set of events this past year arranged for me to part with nearly everything I had owned and acquired. It was a remarkable process to let everything go. It was a challenge at times, but the result was amazing … and continues to fill me with a sense of calm… ( or something nearly impossible to express… but like that)
I have moved to a new country and have not replaced most of the things that I have learned to live without. I am living simply. And it is almost a cliché. There is a magazine that you can order that tells all about how to live simply … and all the products you can buy to simplify your life… WHAT IRONY> I think that is where we all have it wrong.
And I am not advocating we all renounce our belongings and become nomadic, but there is something to be said for really examining our lives and habits to see what is essential what is important, what is real in each of our lives.

I think it is even as simple as eating a little less. We treat or bodies like we treat our homes; we fill them with crap, most of which we don’t need and can easily live without. And that stuff follows us around. I am really speaking mostly of myself. But when we let go of it, and look closely at what we bring in then things change.

So to list my ideas… and THINGS THAT I REALLY DO:

*Eat less, maybe two meals a day, OR just several snacks
*Re-use every bag. I will never buy trash bags in my life.
*Turn off the lights
*Turn off the air conditioning. (when I use it at all I cool the house for an hour in the morning and then it stays cool all day.
*Put on a sweater before turning up the heat
*I host COUCH SURFERS.- I let travelers stay at my house. I have more space than I need and it creates a little family.
*I am cautious and conscientious of what I buy EVERY TIME>
*I wear my clothes more than once before washing them- maybe it sounds dirty, but dirty is a relative concept.
*I don’t own a TV and I don’t watch it… I don’t want to share my mind space with advertisements.
*I sweep my floor
*I don’t through away food.
*I share my ideas with people I know
*I am willing to make mistakes, fuck it up and try again. I am not perfect, don’t intend to be, but I want something better for my children and your children.

Get Lost 6/30/07

The memoirs of someone too young to have written a memoir. (chapter one)

I didn’t mean to become this person… I didn’t really think it would work. I had no idea what I was getting into when a year ago I sat by the stream of my childhood and made a promise to myself. I couldn’t have imagined that on the eve of this anniversary I would be lying here, looking like this, feeling like this… and have lived this year more and in more ways than I had even imagined …
I was hurtling myself towards an abyss and a world of unknown… but I was hurtling all the same. I had no tangible goals… but there was certainly a direction and for the first time in my life I felt a certainty and a calmness that I had never known. It was the utter risk of it all that gave me that faith (if you will)that I had to go out, abandon all the shoulds and the ought -to’s.

It was something that had been building… depending on how you count it, for years…
But there was something about that summer…there existed something that had pushed me further than I had been pushed before which, I think must have brought me to that point.

This is a tale of fear, loss, risk, growth, love, more loss, disappointment and renewal.

The title is more of a recommendation of self than it is a reproach… so take it to heart.

There is no beginning that is really the beginning. These things start. Do these things start at birth? Shortly after? Before birth are these things we inherit or are they part of our nature… and for some reason we are born with our own set is nearly impossible set of idiosyncrasies… and suffer as a result… I don’t know the answer to these questions, nor are their answers nearly relevant.

What is relevant is that I was broken. I had been a teacher for several years giving my all, literally my heart, soul, money, time and sleep rather lack of sleep. I had a unquenchable passion. I was driven to be a good teacher. I was young and new at my job. I had to prove myself. But even more so, my students deserved better. They deserved the world and for the most part they had been deprived the essentials. As is common among poorer urban youth, their education involved much of what they shouldn’t know… and not nearly enough of what they should know. And as a history teacher, you might imagine that I would include the constitution, bill of rights and various revolutions around the world against oppression as “what they ought to know.” But I am not your average passionate teacher. Above all, above even my subject of history, I believe that my students ought to know how precious they are, how capable they are, how powerful they are… and that they have the ability to change the world. And I would like to apologize for the use of so many and so obvious the clichés, however there are moments when they are unavoidable, often moments of sincerity.

The disenfranchised poor, minorities, immigrants and the young suffer the greatest damage.

Needless to say at this point, I worked hard. I was passionately committed to my work and my students for reasons sited above and more. But I slowly also realized that there was something else. It wasn’t just the passion that regularly kept me at school past 9pm. It was really that I was hiding with equal dedication and effort from something that I didn’t even know existed… but I was hiding all the same. Hiding with so much force that I wouldn’t be able to recognize it for several years…
I had worked with this schools pioneering class and had promised to be there until those students graduated, where so many others had left them. I had made a promise that I intended to keep to each of those kids, those remarkable people. I was not going to abandon them. I had been there working hard for three years… and with four days left in the year, we were all told that the school was closing and that the following year each of the students would have to find a new school to attend for their senior year. This also meant that I was without a job and slim chances of finding another for the coming fall. but that was a secondary matter to devastation I felt for my students.
It wasn’t until later after the school had closed, the students had left, the boxes were packed and the walls were bare that it sunk in… that I no longer had work. There was something terrifying yet relaxing about that…
But not the way you think.

I had wanted a break. Who wouldn’t love a year off? It seems to be any ones dream. But shortly it was all that time that started to scare me…
There was something that needed to change. I wasn’t even sure.
I needed a change. My life… wasn’t really a life up to that moment. It had been a vigorous comma. I was living a vacant life.
I was merely the operator of my life… I hadn’t actually participated in it… since… well maybe the last real thing I can remember doing was in the eight grade when I told my best friend that I had a crush on her boyfriend, my other best friend. Everything after that was a version of me doing what I was supposed to… or running and hiding from life.. Hiding from anything that might ever hurt me. But it was a very still silent and slow kind of running… the kind of running no one would notice… not even me…
It is almost like the next thing I remember in my life was fifteen years later when my best friend at the time, a colleague at school and an awesome chemistry teacher, asked me a question that shook me. It shook me so much that it took me a long time to even process it… We were out or a drink at a sort of swanky bar that her boyfriend managed; she is the ex-model, red-haired, bomb-shell-type and men are always all over her, either in reality or psychically. This made it interesting to be the woman next to her. But she is also smart and sharp and more than anything direct, which is how we came to be friends. But one instant she turned to me and said “Do you know why you are such a Bitch?” or something to that effect.
I hadn’t realized…
Well to preface this by saying I had just deterred another one of her suitors in a flip and equally direct way. So the comment was relatively appropriate.
All the same it struck home… and I think that must have been the intention… cause somehow it didn’t quiet seem like an attack, as it might have seemed… she genuinely wanted to know… and I dint have an answer for her… I hadn’t even quite realized that I was a bitch… but the truth was out…
There are, primarily, two women responsible for my transformation and neither of them managed to produce immediate results. They both planted seeds and the results have sprouted this year.
There are many other people who have contributed… several men, romantic interests and my father… who has been a touch stone among other things.

Through these relationships I have been reborn. Certainly revised.
If not so much of a cliché
(This story although over a year old is still un finished as is the journey, the transformation and the posting)

5.3.07 i time bomb

The pieces lay around me. The clock ticks away the seconds. Lights pass on the street sending shadows darting across the walls. An open book, a note page and scratched lists and columns: pros and cons. This or that. Now or later? Now or never. No or …. no… or, well no. crumpled Kleenex and a clear plastic wrapper. Were there tears or was it more practical?

Papers here. Papers there. Piles of future things. Ideas and not quite yets. Keys to a place that is not mine. Next to a key ring yet to unlock anything of mine. and no prospects of doing so. My I.D. so I am not confused with whom? An envelope marked “confidential” in beautiful feminine script, but not mine… my handwriting is more like a bastard born of both my parents’ … like me I guess. Is there irony in that. ? . And a dirty bowl. Remnants of a meal long ago eaten, savored… and even longer ago concocted.

A book of correspondence. Between two passionately connected characters, but the validity, the existence of one is always in question and the sanity of the other is dubious. Yet there are glimpses into my reality that through into sharp contrast the letters I have written, not sent or otherwise, received, and longed for.

“like Ariadne holding the string for Perseus while he enters the Minotaur’s labyrinth, your words might keep me from going astray.”

Wallet open, sadly no money worth mentioning resides within. Only records of money already spend, dreams already spent. The darkness creeps. And the truth is it hasn’t changed that much since I moved in, but I have. The pieces lay around me.

Do you think it is possible to measure a life… weigh a life? Are the relics of a life half lived enough to do that calculation?.. If not then what else is there to evaluate? A half made bed still warm, half drawn curtains. Half made decisions. Half light, half loved, half sure. Half-time and great desire for refreshments. Ice cream and popcorn all around… or just to feel refreshed… to feel fresh and not like Perseus in a maze, without the string. Without Ariadne. The pieces lay around me. Had I not seen them before. Had I seen and ignored. Are they even there now, as I lie amongst them? Am I the potentially nonexistent character in some book of correspondence? Am I the other equally questionable fellow with questionable sanity?

The last part is certain. For I lie amongst relics of something dead. Or dying. Or even worse something that may never have been at all.

How is any of that measured.

It is not.

Not by me.
Not by anyone. Not now not never… notever.
but the pieces lay beside me.

*they lay themselves down, as if of their own volition and no active will of my own. They lay themselves down.

4.2.07 Army of Faith

Tonight I scour the city with my army of faith. We search for a place that does not exist to reach a place that is so far it may not be at all. We desire something that can not be, they even more than me because they are an army of faith…. And have hope and wonderment, where I have the decided defeat well rooted in me from the first moment, from the first sign… and as much as I wish for them to be right, and this is why I follow them to the ends of the earth and back, I am sorry to report that I am correct in my acceptance of defeat. Now at least it can be said that we tried… and that there isn’t any possibility that we did not try. All meeting the same fate and the same result. Mei you. Nothing. Not have. All means the same thing. You can’t get what you want. You cant have it you cant have it you cant have it youcanthaveityoucanthaveityoucanthaveit. Ok. Ok. It is no big deal. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok.
But my army of faith is just that. An army of faith. Nothing if not determined. Armed with weapons of persistence. Spears of hope. Arrows of truth. Cannons. Of diligence. Bombing failure. And the army grows. And with it the strength and resilience and unyielding determination to bring me to my destination. Pulling me, literally at moments into the darkness and into the light. Into the hope. And through the despair.
Into the night. The same result. mei you. Nothing. Not have. All means the same thing.
An army of faith defeated.
Is there anything more disappointing. Mei you.

Obit-

I have only had one relationship. There are surely a number of men who will resent the count, but there has really only been one. And this is not the beginning of a tragic or moral love story. It feels far more like an obituary. And maybe it will be… marking the death of one terror-scarred girl who has grown into a woman without wanting to or meaning to and certainly without her knowing.

Here lies a passionate teacher… passionate only about teaching, a beautiful, smart woman who lived her life for others while refusing their kindness. She died of loneliness imposed entirely of her own making. She walled herself off and guarded her heart with …vigilance and fervor. She lived in constant fear… of what is not entirely clear… and that is part of what killed her. She feared rejection; she feared abandonment and loneliness, but more than that she feared love and all that it brought with it. She feared needing something or someone who wasn’t there. She feared opening herself and then when she was most vulnerable being rejected or unloved. It was not the fear that killed her. It was the wall. As it happened, she had many opportunities to find happiness, comfort and love. She had people, who wanted to be around her and that cared for her, but she held them all at an unbearable distance, and no one could brave the treacherous fortress built up around her heart. And so here she lies. Here she lies having made all her worst fears materialize around her. She will be missed and loved although she lacked the fundamental key to her happiness, knowing and loving herself. Amen.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

7.7.08 Light comes once again to the land.

The tree toads quiet and move into the shadows. The earth separates from the sky as the blues differentiate themselves shown the lines between near and far.
It is in this world, in this life that she begins.
Ten thousand miles separate her from the world she knew and left behind, from where she was broken.
The stories she wants to tell: Bangladesh, Silk Road, Chinese cops, Tibet, There is something about Thailand, Couch surfers & The darkness.
And all will be forth coming… stay tuned.

8.27.06 ORBIT

Metaphysical debt.
Have you ever been indebted to someone?
Life changes in an instant. It changes all the time. Everything from there is just a matter of what we do with it. I don’t like change.. I know there is a word for that but I can’t remember it. I am learning to deal. I find that the little changes yield some interesting results…
Breathe
“I hope that some day you will be comfortable with me telling you I love you.”
For a month I rattled on about whatever I thought or felt and I did not hold back because, sadly I didn’t care about him. I knew that he cared for me… and it was unfortunate. For some reason and by mere coincidence we started spending time together, I can’t even remember how. But I told him my fears and my eccentricities… I told him how I, for some reason, was petrified of the idea of being loved. I don’t remember much of what I said during those sessions, and I am not sure if he spoke at all or if he shared with me too… I don’t remember. What I do remember burns like a candle in my brain. After another night of lying in the dark together and pouring my [heart out] we stood in the doorway. The crisp, actually glacial, air burning my skin and the whipping wind pulling at my clothes were silenced by his words: “I hope that some day you will be comfortable with me telling you I love you.”
Although it was over ten years ago, I remember word-for-word the beginning of my relationship with him. It was at that moment I knew he had been listening to me, really listening. And without realizing and certainly not meaning to I had let him know me. I had been real and he liked me. That was the beginning of my only relationship. It lasted for almost three years. But every time I measure it, it gets longer… it may have really only been just over a year. I can’t seem to find an accurate measure.
It was also at that exact moment that our relationship ended, because although I was intoxicated by the thought of him and our “love” our relationship never progressed from its origins. “momma was restin’ since the day we met and it never really went away, our whole life together was a rainy day.” I was the vibrant one. I felt like the sun and he was the plant that needed me. But the sun doesn’t need the plant, even when she wants to need the plant. And so I burned him…
I wanted something to change my orbital path. I wanted something out of a fairytale. I didn’t work for my mom and I watched her suffer with that realization, in their many incarnations, but somehow I thought I was different. I still think I am different. I am still looking for my orbit. Thus far, I determine what, where, when and who. I make the choices and I make the rules. I am not quiet so egomaniacal as to think I really am the center of the universe, but I certainly have not orbited around anyone in a Cosmological decade. At least an Eon. I am not even sure that I want to orbit around anyone else. It is so unnerving and uncontrollable. I feel comfort and power in the strength of my own gravitational pull. To release and be at the mercy of another’s gravitational field… is just so risky. That is why I could have loved that first man then, because he was my moon. I eclipsed him and only my tides were swayed. I fear that I have left a much more lasting mark on him.
Why should I be afraid of that? What is so bad about leaving a mark.. or an impression. What is wrong with being influenced, touched or even wounded by another? I think I fear for others what I fear the most for myself. I fear to he hurt. I fear being someone else’s moon. I want to find a new celestial body a new relation. A mutual orbit. And form an ellipse. Will that ever happen? Can it. I am concerned now both with metaphysics and my own ability to love and to be loved, to release and let the powers of nature work. I want to be a binary star. Want to have and orbit around my companion star.
Interminable
A sun burns brightly and shines on all it sees. It provides light, warmth and life. It is essential. A moon, as far as we know, is dark and lifeless. As far as a comparison, this is entirely unfair, because this is not in fact true about any man. He is a wonderful person and I do care about him, but for the analogy it works.
The moon provides no light. It only reflects the glory of the sun. The moon is miraculous… but I want a binary star.